Project Censored 2013: The Expanding Police State Tops Annual List Of Stories Underreported By Mainstream Media

Oldspeak: While the silenced majority is inundated with innumerable distractions via technology,  infotainment, reality tv, materialism, sex, sport, endless scandals, & plutocratic politics, the police state grows.  Our environment is in peril. Our food supply is toxified and at risk of collapse. Our water is being poisoned at an ever faster rate, Our economic system is poised to collapse. A disproportionately black and brown prison labor/slave work force is replacing gainful employment. Immigrants are being purged at historic rates. Whole cities and regions of the U.S. are being sacrificed for corporate profit. Banksters and other multinational corporations have co-opted our representative government. Our civil rights to protest and petition our government have been constrained.  The five stages of collapse are upon us. Yet we hear nothing from corporate media about it. The good news is the awakening is in progress, world-wide. People are beginning to see the current exploitation and extraction based societal model is unsustainable moving forward.  The paradigm shift is coming. And it will be right on time.

Related Story:
Top 25 Underreported Stories of 2013

By Yael  Chanoff @ Boulder Weekly:

People who get their information exclusively from mainstream media sources may be surprised at the lack of enthusiasm on the left for President Barack Obama in this crucial election. But that’s probably because they weren’t exposed to the full online furor sparked by Obama’s continuation of his predecessor’s overreaching approach to national security, such as signing the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, which allows the indefinite detention of those accused of supporting terrorism, even U.S. citizens.

We’ll never know how this year’s election would be different if the corporate media adequately covered the NDAA’s indefinite detention clause and many other recent attacks on civil liberties. What we can do is spread the word and support independent media sources that do cover these stories. That’s where Project Censored comes in.

Project Censored has been documenting inadequate media coverage of crucial stories since it began in 1967 at Sonoma State University. Each year, the group considers hundreds of news stories submitted by readers, evaluating their merits. Students search Lexis Nexis and other databases to see if the stories were underreported, and if so, the stories are fact-checked by professors and experts in relevant fields.

A panel of academics and journalists chooses the Top 25 stories and rates their significance. The project maintains a vast online database of underreported news stories that it has “validated” and publishes them in an annual book. Censored 2013: Dispatches from the Media Revolution will be released Oct. 30.

For the second year in row, Project Censored has grouped the Top 25 list into topical “clusters.” This year, categories include “Human cost of war and violence” and “Environment and health.” Project Censored Director Mickey Huff told us the idea was to show how various undercovered stories fit together into an alternative narrative, not to say that one story was more censored than another.

In May, while Project Censored was working on the list, another 2012 list was issued: the Fortune 500 list of the biggest corporations, whose influence peppers the Project Censored list in a variety of ways.

Consider this year’s top Fortune 500 company: ExxonMobil. The oil company pollutes everywhere it goes, yet most stories about its environmental devastation go underreported. Weapons manufacturers Lockheed Martin (58 on the Fortune list), General Dynamics (92), and Raytheon (117) are tied into stories about U.S. prisoners in slavery conditions manufacturing parts for their weapons and the underreported war crimes in Afghanistan and Libya.

These powerful corporations work together more than most people think. In the chapter exploring the “global 1 percent,” writers Peter Philips and Kimberly Soeiro explain how a small number of well-connected people control the majority of the world’s wealth. In it, they use Censored story number 6, “Small network of corporations run the global economy,” to describe how a network of transnational corporations are deeply interconnected, with 147 of them controlling 40 percent of the global economy’s total wealth.

For example, Philips and Soeiro write that in one such company, BlackRock Inc., “The 18 members of the board of directors are connected to a significant part of the world’s core financial assets. Their decisions can change empires, destroy currencies and impoverish millions.”

Another cluster of stories, “Women and Gender, Race and Ethnicity,” notes a pattern of underreporting stories that affect a range of marginalized groups. This broad category includes only three articles, and none are listed in the top 10. The stories reveal mistreatment of Palestinian women in Israeli prisons, including being denied medical care and shackled during childbirth, and the rape and sexual assault of women soldiers in the U.S. military. The third story in the category concerns an Alabama anti-immigration bill, H.B. 56, that caused immigrants to flee Alabama in such numbers that farmers felt a dire need to “help farms fill the gap and find sufficient labor.” So the Alabama Department of Agriculture and Industries approached the state’s Department of Corrections about making a deal where prisoners would replace the fleeing farm workers.

But with revolutionary unrest around the world, and the rise of a mass movement that connects disparate issues together into a simple, powerful class analysis — the 99 percent versus the 1 percent paradigm popularized by Occupy Wall Street — this year’s Project Censored offers an element of hope.

It’s not easy to succeed at projects that resist corporate dominance, and when it does happen, the corporate media is sometimes reluctant to cover it. Number seven on the Top 25 list is the story of how the United Nations designated 2012 the International Year of the Cooperative, recognizing the rapid growth of co-op businesses, organizations that are part-owned by all members and whose revenue is shared equitably among members. One billion people worldwide now work in co-ops.

The Year of the Cooperative is not the only good-news story discussed by Project Censored this year. In Chapter 4, Yes! Magazine’s Sarah Van Gelder lists “12 ways the Occupy movement and other major trends have offered a foundation for a transformative future.” They include a renewed sense of “political self-respect” and fervor to organize in the United States, debunking of economic myths such as the “American dream,” and the blossoming of economic alternatives such as community land trusts, time banking and micro-energy installations.

As Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed writes in the book’s foreword, “The majority of people now hold views about Western governments and the nature of power that would have made them social pariahs 10 or 20 years ago.”

Citing polls from the corporate media, Mosaddeq writes: “The majority are now skeptical of the Iraq War; the majority want an end to U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan; the majority resent the banks and financial sector, and blame them for the financial crisis; most people are now aware of environmental issues, more than ever before, and despite denialist confusion promulgated by fossil fuel industries, the majority in the United States and Britain are deeply concerned about global warming; most people are wary of conventional party politics and disillusioned with the mainstream parliamentary system.”

“In other words,” he writes, “there has been a massive popular shift in public opinion toward a progressive critique of the current political economic system.”

And ultimately, it’s the public — not the president and not the corporations—that will determine the future. There may be hope after all. Here’s Project Censored’s Top 10 list for 2013:

1. Signs of an emerging police state

President George W. Bush is remembered largely for his role in curbing civil liberties in the name of his “war on terror.” But it’s President Obama who signed the 2012 NDAA, including its clause allowing for indefinite detention without trial for terrorism suspects. Obama promised that “my administration will interpret them to avoid the constitutional conflict” — leaving us adrift if and when the next administration chooses to interpret them otherwise. Another law of concern is the National Defense Resources Preparedness Executive Order that Obama issued in March 2012. That order authorizes the president, “in the event of a potential threat to the security of the United States, to take actions necessary to ensure the availability of adequate resources and production capability, including services and critical technology, for national defense requirements.” The president is to be advised on this course of action by “the National Security Council and Homeland Security Council, in conjunction with the National Economic Council.” Journalist Chris Hedges, along with co-plaintiffs including Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg, won a case challenging the NDAA’s indefinite detention clause on Sept. 1, when a federal judge blocked its enforcement, but her ruling was overturned on Oct. 3, so the clause is back.

2. Oceans in peril

Big banks aren’t the only entities that our country has deemed “too big to fail.” But our oceans won’t be getting a bailout anytime soon, and their collapse could compromise life itself. In a haunting article highlighted by Project Censored, Mother Jones reporter Julia Whitty paints a tenuous seascape — overfished, acidified, warming — and describes how the destruction of the ocean’s complex ecosystems jeopardizes the entire planet, not just the 70 percent that is water. Whitty compares ocean acidification, caused by global warming, to acidification that was one of the causes of the “Great Dying,” a mass extinction 252 million years ago. Life on Earth took 30 million years to recover. In a more hopeful story, a study of 14 protected and 18 non-protected ecosystems in the Mediterranean Sea showed dangerous levels of biomass depletion. But it also showed that the marine reserves were well-enforced, with five to 10 times larger fish populations than in unprotected areas. This encourages establishment and maintenance of more reserves.

3. U.S. deaths from Fukushima

A plume of toxic fallout floated to the U.S. after Japan’s tragic Fukushima nuclear disaster on March 11, 2011. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found radiation levels in air, water and milk that were hundreds of times higher than normal across the United States. One month later, the EPA announced that radiation levels had declined, and they would cease testing. But after making a Freedom of Information Act request, journalist Lucas Hixson published emails revealing that on March 24, 2011, the task of collecting nuclear data had been handed off from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to the Nuclear Energy Institute, a nuclear industry lobbying group. And in one study that got little attention, scientists Joseph Mangano and Jeanette Sherman found that in the period following the Fukushima meltdowns, 14,000 more deaths than average were reported in the U.S., mostly among infants. Later, Mangono and Sherman updated the number to 22,000.

4. FBI agents responsible for terrorist plots

We know that FBI agents go into communities such as mosques, both undercover and in the guise of building relationships, quietly gathering information about individuals. This is part of an approach to finding what the FBI now considers the most likely kind of terrorists, “lone wolves.” Its strategy: “seeking to identify those disgruntled few who might participate in a plot given the means and the opportunity. And then, in case after case, the government provides the plot, the means, and the opportunity,” writes Mother Jones journalist Trevor Aaronsen. The publication, along with the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California-Berkeley, examined the results of this strategy, 508 cases classified as terrorism-related that have come before the U.S. Department of Justice since the 9/11 terrorist attacks of 2001. In 243 of these cases, an informant was involved; in 49 cases, an informant actually led the plot. And “with three exceptions, all of the high-profile domestic terror plots of the last decade were actually FBI stings.”

5. Federal Reserve loaned trillions to major banks

The Federal Reserve, the U.S.’s quasi-private central bank, was audited for the first time in its history this year. The audit report states, “From late 2007 through mid-2010, Reserve Banks provided more than a trillion dollars … in emergency loans to the financial sector to address strains in credit markets and to avert failures of individual institutions believed to be a threat to the stability of the financial system.” These loans had significantly less interest and fewer conditions than the high-profile TARP bailouts, and were rife with conflicts of interest. Some examples: the CEO of JP Morgan Chase served as a board member of the New York Federal Reserve at the same time that his bank received more than $390 billion in financial assistance from the Fed. William Dudley, who is now the New York Federal Reserve president, was granted a conflict of interest waiver to let him keep investments in AIG and General Electric at the same time the companies were given bailout funds. The audit was restricted to Federal Reserve lending during the financial crisis. On July 25, 2012, a bill to audit the Fed again, with fewer limitations, authored by Rep. Ron Paul, passed the House of Representatives. H.R. 459 was expected to die in the Senate, but the movement behind Paul and his calls to hold the Fed accountable, or abolish it altogether, seem to be growing.

6. Small network of corporations run the global economy

Reporting on a study by researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute in Zurich didn’t make the rounds nearly enough, according to Censored 2013. They found that, of 43,060 transnational companies, 147 control 40 percent of total global wealth. The researchers also built a model visually demonstrating how the connections between companies — what it calls the “super entity” — works. Some have criticized the study, saying control of assets doesn’t equate to ownership. True, but as we clearly saw in the 2008 financial collapse, corporations are capable of mismanaging assets in their control to the detriment of their actual owners. And a largely unregulated super entity like this is vulnerable to global collapse.

7. The International Year of Cooperative

Can something really be censored when it’s straight from the United Nations? According to Project Censored evaluators, the corporate media underreported the U.N. declaring 2012 to be the International Year of the Cooperative, based on the co-op business model’s stunning growth. The U.N. found that, in 2012, 1 billion people worldwide are co-op member-owners, or one in five adults over age 15. The largest is Spain’s Mondragon Corporation, with more than 80,000 member-owners. The U.N. predicts that by 2025, worker-owned co-ops will be the world’s fastest growing business model. Worker-owned cooperatives provide for equitable distribution of wealth, genuine connection to the workplace, and, just maybe, a brighter future for our planet.

8. NATO war crimes in Libya

In January 2012, the BBC “revealed” how British Special Forces agents joined and “blended in” with rebels in Libya to help topple dictator Muammar Gadaffi, a story that alternative media sources had reported a year earlier. NATO admits to bombing a pipe factory in the Libyan city of Brega that was key to the water supply system that brought tap water to 70 percent of Libyans, saying that Gadaffi was storing weapons in the factory. In Censored 2013, writer James F. Tracy makes the point that historical relations between the U.S. and Libya were left out of mainstream news coverage of the NATO campaign; “background knowledge and historical context confirming Al-Qaeda and Western involvement in the destabilization of the Gadaffi regime are also essential for making sense of corporate news narratives depicting the Libyan operation as a popular ‘uprising.’”

9. Prison slavery in the U.S.

On its website, the UNICOR manufacturing corporation proudly proclaims that its products are “made in America.” That’s true, but they’re made in places in the U.S. where labor laws don’t apply, with workers often paid just 23 cents an hour to be exposed to toxic materials with no legal recourse. These places are U.S. prisons. Slavery conditions in prisons aren’t exactly news. It’s literally written into the Constitution; the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery, outlaws “slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” But the articles highlighted by Project Censored this year reveal the current state of prison slavery industries, and its ties to war. The majority of products manufactured by inmates are contracted to the Department of Defense. Inmates make complex parts for missile systems, battleship anti-aircraft guns and landmine sweepers, as well as night-vision goggles, body army and camouflage uniforms. Of course, this is happening in the context of record high imprisonment in the U.S., where grossly disproportionate numbers of African Americans and Latinos are imprisoned, and can’t vote even after they’re freed. As psychologist Elliot D. Cohen puts it in this year’s book: “This system of slavery, like that which existed in this country before the Civil War, is also racist, as more than 60 percent of U.S. prisoners are people of color.”

10. H.R. 347 criminalizes protest

H.R. 347, sometimes called the “criminalizing protest” or “anti-Occupy” bill, made some headlines. But concerned lawyers and other citizens worry that it could have disastrous effects for the First Amendment right to protest. Officially called the Federal Restricted Grounds Improvement Act, the law makes it a felony to “knowingly” enter a zone restricted under the law, or engage in “disorderly or disruptive” conduct in or near the zones. The restricted zones include anywhere the Secret Service may be — places such as the White House, areas hosting events deemed “National Special Security Events,” or anywhere visited by the president, vice president and their immediate families; former presidents, vice presidents and certain family members; certain foreign dignitaries; major presidential and vice presidential candidates (within 120 days of an election); and other individuals as designated by a presidential executive order. These people could be anywhere, and NSSEs have notoriously included the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, Super Bowls and the Academy Awards. So far, it seems the only time H.R. 347 has kicked in is with George Clooney’s high-profile arrest outside the Sudanese embassy. Clooney ultimately was not detained without trial — information that would be almost impossible to censor — but what about the rest of us who exist outside of the mainstream media’s spotlight?

New York Federal Reserve ‘Bomb’ Plotter Ensnared In FBI Sting: FBI Provided Encouragement, Guidance, Money & Materials Needed For Attack

Oldspeak:”The case appears to be the latest to fit a model in which, in the process of flushing out people they believe present a risk of terrorism, federal law enforcement officials have played the role of enabler. Agents and informers have provided suspects with encouragement, guidance, money and even, the subjects of the sting operations are led to believe, the materials needed to carry out an attack. Though these operations have almost always held up in court, they have come under increasing criticism from those who believe that many of the subjects, even some who openly espoused violence, would have been unable to execute such plots without substantial assistance from the government. –Mose Secret. Not quite sure how this highly questionable, entrapment-like practice doesn’t qualify as state-sponsored terrorism. Money, materials and guidance provided by the FBI, paid informants orchestrating the whole excercise, yet this poor schmuck, gets disappeared for “attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and attempting to provide material support to al-Qaida.” Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis, Tarek Mehanna, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, Faisal Shahzad, The Newburg 4, The Liberty City 7, The Fort Dix 5, etc, etc etc, the names change, but as Robert Plant wailed “The Song Remains The Same”… Federal agents crucially involved in “terrorist” plots in which federal agents  “controlled the “entire operation to ensure the safety of the public” where the public “was never at risk”. High profile arrests are always widely reported. When one understands that “With three exceptions, all of the high-profile domestic terror plots of the last decade were actually FBI stings.’-Trevor Aaronson, one sees this latest “foiled” terror plot for what it is, a means to an end. “As long as the American people are still easily whipped into a frenzy over forged menaces from afar, their blood and treasure will go on to be squandered on military boondoggles and redundant intelligence agencies.  War and fear end up becoming a way of life.  And so does the state’s command over what could be a life of peace and tranquility for the nation it supposedly protects.” -James E. Miller “The populace is convinced with these FBI coordinated terror attacks to believe that the perpetual “War On Terror” needs to continue. That militarized, violent, vengeful response and increasingly automated response is the best response to terrorism. That no critical thought should be devoted to positively changing the conditions (in all probability created by U.S. actions) that are creating terrorists. Your duty as a citizen has been reduced to a few essentials Vote,work, shop, eat, drink & believe. Question nothing, consume everything. “War Is Peace”, “War Is A Drug”, “War Is A Racket”

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Tarek Mehanna Convicted For Words, Not Deeds, After 3 Years Surveillance, Failed Inducement To Commit Terrorist Acts & Turn Informant For FBI

Fake Terror Plots Using Paid Informants: The Tactics Of FBI ‘Entrapment’ Questioned

Al-Qaida “Underwear Bomber” Was Working For The C.I.A. : The Yemen Bomb Plot & Other Hobgoblins

Informant Posing As Drug Cartel Member “Foiled” Iranian Assassination Plot

By Adam Gabbatt @ The U.K. Guardian:

A man has been arrested in New York for allegedly trying to blow up the Federal Reserve with what he believed was a 1,000lb bomb but was in fact a fake device provided by federal agents.

The FBI said its sting operation culminated in the arrest of Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis, 21, in a hotel room near the Fed as he tried in vain to detonate the inert device.

The agency said it had controlled the “entire operation to ensure the safety of the public and New Yorkers”, adding that the public “was never at risk”. But the FBI’s admission that it ran the whole operation will inevitably attract accusations of entrapment.

According to the FBI, Nafis travelled to the US from Bangladesh in January with the intention of conducting a terrorist attack. Upon arrival he “actively sought out al-Qaida contacts within the US to assist in carrying out an attack”, the FBI said.

In the course of his search he came across an undercover FBI agent posing as an al-Qaida facilitator. The agent supplied Nafis with 20 50lb bags of fake explosives, the FBI said, and drove to the Federal Reserve with Nafis on Wednesday morning.

During the journey to lower Manhattan the 21-year-old assembled what he thought was a 1,000lb bomb using the material supplied by the undercover agent. When the van arrived at the Federal Reserve, just a few blocks from the World Trade Center, Nafis and the agent left the vehicle and walked to a nearby hotel, where Nafis “repeatedly, but unsuccessfully, attempted to detonate the bomb”, which had been assembled using “inert” explosives, the FBI said.

Nafis was arrested by agents from the Joint Terrorism Task Force at the scene.

“Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis, 21, was arrested this morning in downtown Manhattan after he allegedly attempted to detonate what he believed to be a 1,000-pound bomb at the New York Federal Reserve Bank on Liberty Street in lower Manhattan’s financial district,” the FBI said in a statement.

“The defendant faces charges of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and attempting to provide material support to al-Qaida.”

Nafis is said to have proposed several targets for the attack, including a “high-ranking US official” and the New York Stock Exchange before settling on the New York Federal Reserve. In a written statement he had professed a desire to “destroy America” and praised Osama bin Laden.

Nafis has been charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and attempting to provide material support to al-Qaida.

The Federal Reserve bank in New York is one of 12 locations around the country that, along with the Board of Governors in Washington, make up the Federal Reserve System that serves as the central bank of the United States.

Man Is Charged With Plotting to Bomb Federal Reserve Bank in Manhattan

By Mosi Secret @ The New York Times:

Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn charged a 21-year-old Bangladeshi man with conspiring to blow up the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, saying he tried to remotely detonate what he believed was a 1,000-pound bomb in a van he parked outside the building in Lower Manhattan on Wednesday.

But the entire plot played out under the surveillance of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the New York Police Department as part of an elaborate sting operation, according to court papers.

 

The man, Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis, who arrived in the United States in January on a student visa, tried to make contacts and recruit people to form a terrorist cell to help him carry out an attack, according to a criminal complaint in the case. But one of these recruits was an F.B.I. informer, who later introduced him to an undercover F.B.I. agent who helped him with the plot.

 

In addition, the complaint said, Mr. Nafis spoke of a desire to “attack and kill” a high-ranking government official. A senior law enforcement official said Wednesday night that the official was President Obama, but that Mr. Nafis’s desire never got past the talking stage.

 

Mr. Nafis was charged with conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction and providing material support to Al Qaeda. He could face up to life in prison if convicted.

 

Mr. Nafis arrived at Federal District Court in Brooklyn, looking boyish despite his trim beard. He spoke quietly when answering the questions of the magistrate judge, Roanne L. Mann.

 

The case appears to be the latest to fit a model in which, in the process of flushing out people they believe present a risk of terrorism, federal law enforcement officials have played the role of enabler. Agents and informers have provided suspects with encouragement, guidance, money and even, the subjects of the sting operations are led to believe, the materials needed to carry out an attack. Though these operations have almost always held up in court, they have come under increasing criticism from those who believe that many of the subjects, even some who openly espoused violence, would have been unable to execute such plots without substantial assistance from the government.

 

Both F.B.I. leaders and federal prosecutors have defended the approach as valuable in finding and stopping people predisposed to commit terrorism.

 

In a prominent case in 2009, several men, urged by an unusually persistent government informer, planted what they believed to be homemade bombs in front of synagogues in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. Four men were convicted, but the judge who oversaw the trial also criticized the law enforcement agents who helped push the plot forward: “The government made them terrorists.”

 

The court papers describe Mr. Nafis as a man of persistence, who wanted to be respected by Al Qaeda leaders.

 

The undercover agent began meeting with Mr. Nafis in July, first in Central Park and later in hotels in Queens, secretly recording Mr. Nafis’s statements. Mr. Nafis had grand but vague plans, according to the indictment. “I don’t want something that’s like, small. I just want something big,” he said, according to the complaint. “Very, very, very, very big, that will shake the whole country.”

 

He settled on the financial district as a target, hoping to shake the American economy. The original plan was for a suicide mission but that changed when Mr. Nafis said he wanted to go home to Bangladesh first to put his affairs in order. The undercover agent told Mr. Nafis that he could use a remote-control device, so that he could stage the attack and then return to Bangladesh.

 

On Wednesday morning, they drove to a warehouse and assembled the fake bomb, placing supposedly explosive material in trash bins they had bought, then putting the bins in a van, according to the complaint. They assembled a fake detonator that was to be triggered by a cellphone and drove to the fortresslike Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the largest bank structure in the world when it was completed in 1924, about two blocks from Wall Street.

 

Mr. Nafis and the undercover agent parked the van outside the bank and walked to a nearby hotel, where Mr. Nafis recorded a video statement addressed to the American people, which he planned to publicize after the attack. In the statement, he said, “We will not stop until we attain victory or martyrdom.”

 

Then he tried again and again to detonate the bomb, dialing the cellphone repeatedly until agents arrested him.

 

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.

 

 

 

 

 

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab

Crucial Issues That Obama & Romney Avoid

Oldspeak: “There are two issues of overwhelming significance, because the fate of the species is at stake: environmental disaster, and nuclear war…  Elections are run by the public relations industry. Its primary task is commercial advertising, which is designed to undermine markets by creating uninformed consumers who will make irrational choices — the exact opposite of how markets are supposed to work, but certainly familiar to anyone who has watched television. It’s only natural that when enlisted to run elections, the industry would adopt the same procedures in the interests of the paymasters, who certainly don’t want to see informed citizens making rational choices.” –Noam Chomsky. Chomsky brilliantly elucidates 2 major issues of a constellation of vital issues that are largely ignored by corporate controlled political parties. The reason is that both candidate have similar positions on many more issues than they most think . Privatization (education, health care, politics, war, public sector, etc) , dirty energy, cutting the social safety net, poverty, currency devaluation, “free trade”, militarization, stripping of civil liberties, warrantless surveillance, deregulation, targeted assassination, regime change, covert/perpetual war.  etc etc…. Corporate controlled media dutifully ‘reports’ on the differences between the selected candidates, not asking any questions challenging status quo worldview and ideology.  Focusing the ovine populace on inane minutiae like how often a candidate drinks water, facial expressions, flag pin size, way of standing, competence of the moderator,  etc etc etc… never once questioning the waves of bald-faced lies, exaggerations, misrepresentations and mangled-truths that come out of the candidates mouths.  Then they switch coverage to “spin rooms” where corporate approved “surrogates” “allow the campaigns to coordinate their message and serve it up as a buffet-style meal for news reporters: All the quotes you can eat“. All this effort expended to perpetuate a blinding illusion of choice. “Ignorance is Strength”

By Noam Chomsky @ Chomsky.info:

With the quadrennial presidential election extravaganza reaching its peak, it’s useful to ask how the political campaigns are dealing with the most crucial issues we face. The simple answer is: badly, or not at all. If so, some important questions arise: why, and what can we do about it?

There are two issues of overwhelming significance, because the fate of the species is at stake: environmental disaster, and nuclear war.

The former is regularly on the front pages. On Sept. 19, for example, Justin Gillis reported in The New York Times that the melting of Arctic sea ice had ended for the year, “but not before demolishing the previous record — and setting off new warnings about the rapid pace of change in the region.”

The melting is much faster than predicted by sophisticated computer models and the most recent U.N. report on global warming. New data indicate that summer ice might be gone by 2020, with severe consequences. Previous estimates had summer ice disappearing by 2050.

“But governments have not responded to the change with any greater urgency about limiting greenhouse emissions,” Gillis writes. “To the contrary, their main response has been to plan for exploitation of newly accessible minerals in the Arctic, including drilling for more oil” — that is, to accelerate the catastrophe.

This reaction demonstrates an extraordinary willingness to sacrifice the lives of our children and grandchildren for short-term gain. Or, perhaps, an equally remarkable willingness to shut our eyes so as not to see the impending peril.

That’s hardly all. A new study from the Climate Vulnerability Monitor has found that “climate change caused by global warming is slowing down world economic output by 1.6 percent a year and will lead to a doubling of costs in the next two decades.” The study was widely reported elsewhere but Americans have been spared the disturbing news.

The official Democratic and Republican platforms on climate matters are reviewed in Science magazine’s Sept. 14 issue. In a rare instance of bipartisanship, both parties demand that we make the problem worse.

In 2008, both party platforms had devoted some attention to how the government should address climate change. Today, the issue has almost disappeared from the Republican platform — which does, however, demand that Congress “take quick action” to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency, established by former Republican President Richard Nixon in saner days, from regulating greenhouse gases. And we must open Alaska’s Arctic refuge to drilling to take “advantage of all our American God-given resources.” We cannot disobey the Lord, after all.

The platform also states that “We must restore scientific integrity to our public research institutions and remove political incentives from publicly funded research” — code words for climate science.

The Republican candidate Mitt Romney, seeking to escape from the stigma of what he understood a few years ago about climate change, has declared that there is no scientific consensus, so we should support more debate and investigation — but not action, except to make the problems more serious.

The Democrats mention in their platform that there is a problem, and recommend that we should work “toward an agreement to set emissions limits in unison with other emerging powers.” But that’s about it.

President Barack Obama has emphasized that we must gain 100 years of energy independence by exploiting fracking and other new technologies — without asking what the world would look like after a century of such practices.

So there are differences between the parties: about how enthusiastically the lemmings should march toward the cliff.

The second major issue, nuclear war, is also on the front pages every day, but in a way that would astound a Martian observing the strange doings on Earth.

The current threat is again in the Middle East, specifically Iran — at least according to the West, that is. In the Middle East, the U.S. and Israel are considered much greater threats.

Unlike Iran, Israel refuses to allow inspections or to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It has hundreds of nuclear weapons and advanced delivery systems, and a long record of violence, aggression and lawlessness, thanks to unremitting American support. Whether Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons, U.S. intelligence doesn’t know.

In its latest report, the International Atomic Energy Agency says that it cannot demonstrate “the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran” — a roundabout way of condemning Iran, as the U.S. demands, while conceding that the agency can add nothing to the conclusions of U.S. intelligence.

Therefore Iran must be denied the right to enrich uranium that is guaranteed by the NPT and endorsed by most of the world, including the nonaligned countries that have just met in Tehran.

The possibility that Iran might develop nuclear weapons arises in the electoral campaign. (The fact that Israel already has them does not.) Two positions are counterposed: Should the U.S. declare that it will attack if Iran reaches the capability to develop nuclear weapons, which dozens of countries enjoy? Or should Washington keep the “red line” more indefinite?

The latter position is that of the White House; the former is demanded by Israeli hawks — and accepted by the U.S. Congress. The Senate just voted 90-1 to support the Israeli position.

Missing from the debate is the obvious way to mitigate or end whatever threat Iran might be believed to pose: Establish a nuclear weapons-free zone in the region. The opportunity is readily available: An international conference is to convene in a few months to pursue this objective, supported by almost the entire world, including a majority of Israelis.

The government of Israel, however, has announced that it will not participate until there is a general peace agreement in the region, which is unattainable as long as Israel persists in its illegal activities in the occupied Palestinian territories. Washington keeps to the same position, and insists that Israel must be excluded from any such regional agreement.

We could be moving toward a devastating war, possibly even nuclear. Straightforward ways exist to overcome this threat, but they will not be taken unless there is large-scale public activism demanding that the opportunity be pursued. This in turn is highly unlikely as long as these matters remain off the agenda, not just in the electoral circus, but in the media and larger national debate.

Elections are run by the public relations industry. Its primary task is commercial advertising, which is designed to undermine markets by creating uninformed consumers who will make irrational choices — the exact opposite of how markets are supposed to work, but certainly familiar to anyone who has watched television.

It’s only natural that when enlisted to run elections, the industry would adopt the same procedures in the interests of the paymasters, who certainly don’t want to see informed citizens making rational choices.

The victims, however, do not have to obey, in either case. Passivity may be the easy course, but it is hardly the honorable one.

“Meducation” In America: Poor, Otherwise Healthy Children Given Powerful Antipsychotic & Psychotropic Stimulants To “Improve” Behavior, Academic Performance

Oldspeak:”“There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.” – Aldous Huxley And just like that, with little or no fanfare, doctors and parents clamoring for it, we have arrived as a society at Huxley’s “A Brave New World”.  9 year olds on psychiatric medication.  We are medicating our children with powerful, addictive, antipsychotic and psychotropic medications to modify their behavior.  Designing our children’s behavior.  Making children more docile, “manageable”, “better able to concentrate” to  “increase academic performance”.  Replacing parenting, counseling, teaching, social and emotional development with pharmacological drugs.  Making no significant efforts to address inequality, poverty, scarce resources, austerity measures or most importantly: DIET. No examination or acknowledgement of the numerous documented deleterious effects of the many poisons children, particularly poor children consume.  Cheap, Genetically modified, highly processed, nutrient deficient, chemical additive, sugar & pesticide laden frankenfood.  These children’s brains are literally malfunctioning from exposure to the poisons, and rather than cleaning out & optimizing their systems with real, whole foods, doctors are suggesting introducing more toxins, more poisons, that induce frighting and dangerous possible side effects. Tics, hearing voices that aren’t there,  suicidal ideation, and sudden death are the most serious ones. In this punitive and inherently unfair funds for resources public education system lately known as “race to the top”, grades and performance on the standardized tests funds are tied to are more important than children’s health and well being. This disturbing trend represents a windfall for pharmaceutical corporations, exposing children to their highly addictive and toxic products, makes for life-long non-critically thinking, chemically dependent customers. Children’s freedom to be, well, children, scatterbrained, hyper, excitable, energetic, inquisitive, unique, expressive, creative, angry, depressed, etc etc; is being medicated away. As are children’s ability to deal effectively with challenges, hardships & emotions. All this, with no concrete idea of the long term effects these drugs  will have on children’s brains, they are basically participating in yet another giant uncontrolled experiment. Behold the fruits of austerity era education in America! “Ignorance Is Strength”

By Alan Schwartz @ The New York Times:

The pills boost focus and impulse control in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Although A.D.H.D is the diagnosis Dr. Anderson makes, he calls the disorder “made up” and “an excuse” to prescribe the pills to treat what he considers the children’s true ill — poor academic performance in inadequate schools.

“I don’t have a whole lot of choice,” said Dr. Anderson, a pediatrician for many poor families in Cherokee County, north of Atlanta. “We’ve decided as a society that it’s too expensive to modify the kid’s environment. So we have to modify the kid.”

Dr. Anderson is one of the more outspoken proponents of an idea that is gaining interest among some physicians. They are prescribing stimulants to struggling students in schools starved of extra money — not to treat A.D.H.D., necessarily, but to boost their academic performance.

It is not yet clear whether Dr. Anderson is representative of a widening trend. But some experts note that as wealthy students abuse stimulants to raise already-good grades in colleges and high schools, the medications are being used on low-income elementary school children with faltering grades and parents eager to see them succeed.

“We as a society have been unwilling to invest in very effective nonpharmaceutical interventions for these children and their families,” said Dr. Ramesh Raghavan, a child mental-health services researcher at Washington University in St. Louis and an expert in prescription drug use among low-income children. “We are effectively forcing local community psychiatrists to use the only tool at their disposal, which is psychotropic medications.”

Dr. Nancy Rappaport, a child psychiatrist in Cambridge, Mass., who works primarily with lower-income children and their schools, added: “We are seeing this more and more. We are using a chemical straitjacket instead of doing things that are just as important to also do, sometimes more.”

Dr. Anderson’s instinct, he said, is that of a “social justice thinker” who is “evening the scales a little bit.” He said that the children he sees with academic problems are essentially “mismatched with their environment” — square pegs chafing the round holes of public education. Because their families can rarely afford behavior-based therapies like tutoring and family counseling, he said, medication becomes the most reliable and pragmatic way to redirect the student toward success.

“People who are getting A’s and B’s, I won’t give it to them,” he said. For some parents the pills provide great relief. Jacqueline Williams said she can’t thank Dr. Anderson enough for diagnosing A.D.H.D. in her children — Eric, 15; Chekiara, 14; and Shamya, 11 — and prescribing Concerta, a long-acting stimulant, for them all. She said each was having trouble listening to instructions and concentrating on schoolwork.

“My kids don’t want to take it, but I told them, ‘These are your grades when you’re taking it, this is when you don’t,’ and they understood,” Ms. Williams said, noting that Medicaid covers almost every penny of her doctor and prescription costs.

Some experts see little harm in a responsible physician using A.D.H.D. medications to help a struggling student. Others — even among the many like Dr. Rappaport who praise the use of stimulants as treatment for classic A.D.H.D. — fear that doctors are exposing children to unwarranted physical and psychological risks. Reported side effects of the drugs have included growth suppression, increased blood pressure and, in rare cases, psychotic episodes.

The disorder, which is characterized by severe inattention and impulsivity, is an increasingly common psychiatric diagnosis among American youth: about 9.5 percent of Americans ages 4 to 17 were judged to have it in 2007, or about 5.4 million children, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The reported prevalence of the disorder has risen steadily for more than a decade, with some doctors gratified by its widening recognition but others fearful that the diagnosis, and the drugs to treat it, are handed out too loosely and at the exclusion of nonpharmaceutical therapies.

The Drug Enforcement Administration classifies these medications as Schedule II Controlled Substances because they are particularly addictive. Long-term effects of extended use are not well understood, said many medical experts. Some of them worry that children can become dependent on the medication well into adulthood, long after any A.D.H.D. symptoms can dissipate.

According to guidelines published last year by the American Academy of Pediatrics, physicians should use one of several behavior rating scales, some of which feature dozens of categories, to make sure that a child not only fits criteria for A.D.H.D., but also has no related condition like dyslexia or oppositional defiant disorder, in which intense anger is directed toward authority figures. However, a 2010 study in the Journal of Attention Disorders suggested that at least 20 percent of doctors said they did not follow this protocol when making their A.D.H.D. diagnoses, with many of them following personal instinct.

On the Rocafort family’s kitchen shelf in Ball Ground, Ga., next to the peanut butter and chicken broth, sits a wire basket brimming with bottles of the children’s medications, prescribed by Dr. Anderson: Adderall for Alexis, 12; and Ethan, 9; Risperdal (an antipsychotic for mood stabilization) for Quintn and Perry, both 11; and Clonidine (a sleep aid to counteract the other medications) for all four, taken nightly.

Quintn began taking Adderall for A.D.H.D. about five years ago, when his disruptive school behavior led to calls home and in-school suspensions. He immediately settled down and became a more earnest, attentive student — a little bit more like Perry, who also took Adderall for his A.D.H.D.

When puberty’s chemical maelstrom began at about 10, though, Quintn got into fights at school because, he said, other children were insulting his mother. The problem was, they were not; Quintn was seeing people and hearing voices that were not there, a rare but recognized side effect of Adderall. After Quintn admitted to being suicidal, Dr. Anderson prescribed a week in a local psychiatric hospital, and a switch to Risperdal.

While telling this story, the Rocaforts called Quintn into the kitchen and asked him to describe why he had been given Adderall.

“To help me focus on my school work, my homework, listening to Mom and Dad, and not doing what I used to do to my teachers, to make them mad,” he said. He described the week in the hospital and the effects of Risperdal: “If I don’t take my medicine I’d be having attitudes. I’d be disrespecting my parents. I wouldn’t be like this.”

Despite Quintn’s experience with Adderall, the Rocaforts decided to use it with their 12-year-old daughter, Alexis, and 9-year-old son, Ethan. These children don’t have A.D.H.D., their parents said. The Adderall is merely to help their grades, and because Alexis was, in her father’s words, “a little blah.”

”We’ve seen both sides of the spectrum: we’ve seen positive, we’ve seen negative,” the father, Rocky Rocafort, said. Acknowledging that Alexis’s use of Adderall is “cosmetic,” he added, “If they’re feeling positive, happy, socializing more, and it’s helping them, why wouldn’t you? Why not?”

Dr. William Graf, a pediatrician and child neurologist who serves many poor families in New Haven, said that a family should be able to choose for itself whether Adderall can benefit its non-A.D.H.D. child, and that a physician can ethically prescribe a trial as long as side effects are closely monitored. He expressed concern, however, that the rising use of stimulants in this manner can threaten what he called “the authenticity of development.”

“These children are still in the developmental phase, and we still don’t know how these drugs biologically affect the developing brain,” he said. “There’s an obligation for parents, doctors and teachers to respect the authenticity issue, and I’m not sure that’s always happening.”

Dr. Anderson said that every child he treats with A.D.H.D. medication has met qualifications. But he also railed against those criteria, saying they were codified only to “make something completely subjective look objective.” He added that teacher reports almost invariably come back as citing the behaviors that would warrant a diagnosis, a decision he called more economic than medical.

“The school said if they had other ideas they would,” Dr. Anderson said. “But the other ideas cost money and resources compared to meds.”

Dr. Anderson cited William G. Hasty Elementary School here in Canton as one school he deals with often. Izell McGruder, the school’s principal, did not respond to several messages seeking comment.

Several educators contacted for this article considered the subject of A.D.H.D. so controversial — the diagnosis was misused at times, they said, but for many children it is a serious learning disability — that they declined to comment. The superintendent of one major school district in California, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, noted that diagnosis rates of A.D.H.D. have risen as sharply as school funding has declined.

“It’s scary to think that this is what we’ve come to; how not funding public education to meet the needs of all kids has led to this,” said the superintendent, referring to the use of stimulants in children without classic A.D.H.D. “I don’t know, but it could be happening right here. Maybe not as knowingly, but it could be a consequence of a doctor who sees a kid failing in overcrowded classes with 42 other kids and the frustrated parents asking what they can do. The doctor says, ‘Maybe it’s A.D.H.D., let’s give this a try.’ ”

When told that the Rocaforts insist that their two children on Adderall do not have A.D.H.D. and never did, Dr. Anderson said he was surprised. He consulted their charts and found the parent questionnaire. Every category, which assessed the severity of behaviors associated with A.D.H.D., received a five out of five except one, which was a four.

“This is my whole angst about the thing,” Dr. Anderson said. “We put a label on something that isn’t binary — you have it or you don’t. We won’t just say that there is a student who has problems in school, problems at home, and probably, according to the doctor with agreement of the parents, will try medical treatment.”

He added, “We might not know the long-term effects, but we do know the short-term costs of school failure, which are real. I am looking to the individual person and where they are right now. I am the doctor for the patient, not for society.”

As Obama, Romney Hold First Debate, Behind The Secret GOP-Dem Effort To Shut Out Third Parties

Oldspeak: “The Obama and Romney campaigns have secretly negotiated a detailed contract that dictates many of the terms of the 2012 presidential debates. This includes who gets to participate, as well as the topics raised during the debates.” This pact ensures that no difficult questions will be asked, and candidates will be able to recite their talking points with no fear of having to talk about issues they don’t want to talk about.  “The Commission on Presidential Debates gets the vast majority of its money from major businesses that support it. Anheuser-Busch is far and away the biggest contributor to the commission. So, by and large, our presidential debates are brought to you by Bud Light. And if you actually go to some of these debate sites — I don’t know how it is this year, but in the past there have been Anheuser-Busch tents where scantily clad women are passing out pamphlets denouncing beer taxes. The CEOs of these companies get access to the debates, they sit in the audience, they’re invited to receptions to meet with campaign staff. They get a wonderful benefit because they are able to simultaneously demonstrate their support for both major parties, hit two birds with one stone and get a tax deduction to boot. –George Farah The U.S. Presidential Debates, brought to you by the Transnational Corporate Network. “Ignorance Is Strength”

By Amy Goodman @ Democracy Now:

Guest:

George Farah, Founder and Executive Director of Open Debates. He is also author of the book, “No Debate: How the Republican and Democratic Parties Secretly Control the Presidential Debates.”

AMY GOODMAN: We are broadcasting in Denver, Colorado. We are on the road, here, just miles from the University of Denver, the site of tonight’s presidential debate between Mitt Romney and President Obama. It is the first of three presidential debates before the November 6th election. Tonight’s debate will focus on domestic policy, but one issue that will not be covered is the actual structure of the debate itself. The Obama and Romney campaigns have secretly negotiated a detailed contract that dictates many of the terms of the 2012 presidential debates. This includes who gets to participate, as well as the topics raised during the debates. Now 18 pro-democracy groups are calling on the commission of presidential debates, a private corporation that runs the debates, to review the details of the negotiated agreement. Meanwhile, Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico, has filed an antitrust lawsuit for entry into the debates against the Commission on Presidential debates. In addition, supporters of Green Party nominee Jill Stein plan to protest outside of the debate under the banner of Occupy the CPD. While Obama and Romney debate in Denver, Stein and Justice Party Candidate Rocky Anderson will appear on Democracy Now!‘s expanding the debate exclusive tonight. We will air the Obama-Romney debate, pausing after questions to include equal time responses from Dr. Stein and Rocky Anderson. We invited Gary Johnson, but his campaign said he had other plans for the night. Our special begins at 8:30 p.m. Eastern time. If it’s not being broadcast on your station as it’s being broadcast throughout the country, you can also go to our website at Democracynow.org. To talk more about the debates, we are joined now, in New York, by the George Farah. He’s the founder and Executive Director of Open Debates, the author of “No Debate: How the Republican and Democratic Parties Secretly Control the Presidential Debates.” George, welcome to Democracy Now!. You are there in our studios in New York, and we are here just outside Denver where the debates are taking place tonight, so we can bring folks and expanded version of the debates. George, how did it come to be that the commission of presidential debates came in to being? What is this commission?

GEORGE FARAH: The Commission on Presidential debates sounds like a government agency, it sounds like a nonpartisan entity, which is by design, is intended to deceive the American people. But, in reality, it is a private corporation financed by Anheuser-Busch and other major companies, that was created by the Republican and Democratic parties to seize control of the presidential debates from The League of Women Voters in 1987. Precisely as you said, Amy, every four years, this commission allows the major party campaigns to meet behind closed doors and draft a secret contract, a memorandum of understanding that dictates many of the terms. The reason for the commission’s creation is that the previous sponsor, The League of Women voters, was a genuine non-partisan entity, our voice, the voice of the American people in the negotiation room, and time and time again, The League had the courage to stand up to the Republican and Democratic campaigns to insist on challenging creative formats, to insist on the inclusion of independent candidates that the vast majority of American people wanted to see, and most importantly, to insist on transparency, so that any attempts by the Republican and Democratic parties to manipulate the presidential debates would result in and of enormous political price. And it’s precisely because the League…

AMY GOODMAN: George, you have a lot of time here, so I really want you to lay out how this happened. Explain the moment when this was taken out of the hands of The League of Women Voters and this commission was formed. How was this justified?

GEORGE FARAH: The best part of the history starts in 1980. In 1980, John B. Anderson, an independent candidate for president, runs against Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. President Jimmy Carter absolutely opposed independent candidate John Anderson’s participation in the presidential debates, and The League had a choice; do they support the independent candidate’s participation and defy the wishes of the President of the United States or do they capitulate to the demands of President Jimmy Carter? The league did the right thing, it stood to the President of the United States, invited John B. Anderson. The President refused to show up. The League went forward anyway and had a presidential debate that was watched by 55 million Americans. You fast forward four years later, Amy, and the Walter Mondale and Ronald Reagan campaigns vetoed 80 of the moderators that The League of Women Voters had proposed for the debates. The were simply trying to get rid of…

AMY GOODMAN: Eighty?

GEORGE FARAH: Eighty. They were trying to get rid of difficult questions.

AMY GOODMAN: Eight-zero?

GEORGE FARAH: Eight-zero. Eighty. And The League didn’t just say, OK that’s fine we’ll allow you to select a moderator that’s going to ask softball questions, The League held a press conference and lambasted the campaigns for trying to get rid of the difficult questions. Of course there was a public outcry. So The League marshaled public support to criticize when they attempted to defy our democratic process and the result was fantastic. For the next debate, the campaigns were required to accept The League’s proposed moderators for fear of an additional public outcry. And you fast forward four more years later and you have the Michael Dukakis and the George Bush campaign’s drafting the first ever 12-page secret debate contract. They gave it to The League of Women Voters and said please implement this. The League said, are you kidding me? We are not going to implement a secret contract that dictates the terms of the format. Instead, they release the contract to the public and they held a press conference accusing the candidates of “perpetrating a fraud on the American people” and refusing to be “an accessory to the hoodwinking of the American people.”

Well, Amy, conveniently, just a year earlier, the Republican and Democratic parties had ratified an agreement “to take over the presidential debates, and they created this artifice, this commission, and the commission was waiting in the wings and stepped right in and implemented the very same 12-page contract that The League had so effectively denounced, and ever since we’ve had a contract.

AMY GOODMAN: Since The League did release it — The League of Women Voters at the time — what was in this 12-page contract, at least then?

GEORGE FARAH: The 12-page contract then said very specific provisions that the candidates cannot actually ask each other any questions during the debates, that no third party candidates would be permitted to participate in those events, that there would be a certain number of audience members that would be supportive of the various candidates. Actually, it is quite tame compared to the contracts we have seen in recent years. That contract was 12 pages. The 2004 contract that we’ve managed to obtain a a copy of, was 32 pages. So, over time, the candidates have made even greater efforts to control various components of the debates to eliminate both third party candidates, unpredictable questions, and any threat to their dominance in our political process.

AMY GOODMAN: So, this Commission, talk about the heads of the commission and who they are, who they were when it started, Frank Fahrenkopf and Paul Kirk, and who they are today, and who they represent?

GEORGE FARAH: Frank Fahrenkopf and Paul Kirk were the original co-chairs on the Commission on Presidential Debates. Frank Fahrenkopf is the former hair of the Republican party, and Paul Kirk is the former chair of the Democratic party. When they created the commission, for 15 months, they simultaneously served as co-chairs of their respective parties and the commission, so, it was of course by definition an entity that was absolutely loyal to the two parties. Well, guess what, Frank Fahrenkopf still is co-chair of the Commission on Presidential Debates, decades later. And he has one other job, his day job; he is the director of the American Gaming Association. In other words, he is the nation’s leading gambling lobbyist. When I asked Frank, do you feel comfortable having a beer and tobacco companies paying for our most important election events, our presidential debates? He said, boy, you’re talking to the wrong guy, I represent the gambling industry. The other co-chair of the Commission on Presidential Debates now is Mike McCurry, former Press Secretary to Bill Clinton and also a lobbyist. He’s lobbied aggressively on behalf of the telecommunications industry. So, you have two people in charge of these presidential debates that, number one, are loyal to their parties, they’re political operatives, and number two, have demonstrated time and time again a willingness to sacrifice the interests of the American people for private, political, and financial interests. These are not exactly people who hesitate to subjugate the democratic process to the private interests that benefit from these actual debates.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about what happened this past week, George Farah? The advertising agency BBH, the YWCA, Phillips North America, terminating their sponsorship of the debates. First of all, what are corporations doing sponsoring these presidential debates and why have these organizations pulled out?

GEORGE FARAH: Well, the Commission on Presidential Debates gets the vast majority of its money from major businesses that support it. Anheuser-Busch is far and away the biggest contributor to the commission. So, by and large, our presidential debates are brought to you by Bud Light. And if you actually go to some of these debate sites — I don’t know how it is this year, but in the past there have been Anheuser-Busch tents where scantily clad women are passing out pamphlets denouncing beer taxes. The CEOs of these companies get access to the debates, they sit in the audience, they’re invited to receptions to meet with campaign staff. They get a wonderful benefit because they are able to simultaneously demonstrate their support for both major parties, hit two birds with one stone and get a tax deduction to boot. Back when the League of Women voters used to sponsor these events, they struggled to raise $5,000 contributions from companies, it was very difficult. But, because they are now perceived as a sort of soft money donation, this is yet another avenue for businesses with regulatory interests before Congress to influence our political process.

We have launched a campaign since the inception of my organization in 2004 to pushing our supporters, which number in the tens of thousands, to write letters and e-mails to the very sponsors demanding that they withdraw their support of the commission. This year, with the support of other organizations, one called Help the Commission, an infusion of enthusiasm from third parties, including the Libertarian party and the Green party, for the first time ever we actually have succeeded in achieving some tangible goals. Not just one sponsor, but three of the ten sponsors have withdrawn support. BBH, a British advertising agency, YWCA, a nonprofit, and most importantly, Philips Electronics, a tech giant. Due to the extraordinary public pressure that we have exerted on them, they have said they will no longer be affiliated with an entity that is perceived, correctly, as being partisan and fundamentally anti-democratic. This is a triumph for the debate reform movement and I hope the beginning of unveiling the commission for what it truly is, and displacing it.

AMY GOODMAN: George Farah, say again the companies that continue to support the Commission on Presidential Debates?

GEORGE FARAH: There are seven remaining sponsors. There are three companies; Anheuser-Busch, again the poster child for contributing to the commission, you have Southwest Airlines, you have the International Bottled Water Association, then you have two foundations, The Howard Buffett Foundation, Howard Buffett happens to be a board member of the commission, something called the Marjorie Kovler Fund that’s affiliated with the Kennedy Library. And then you have two law firms, Korman, a specific law firm that focuses on specific issues in Washington, and Sheldon Cohen, a national security lawyer. These are the seven entities that are backing our Commission on Presidential Debates. This is not the way these ought to be run. These should be supported by civic groups, non-partisan organizations with a real focus on the democratic process, and instead they’re subcontracting out our presidential debate process to Anheuser-Busch.

AMY GOODMAN: It will be interesting to see if there is bottled water on their podiums, or if there is Bud Light. I wanted to go to one of the third party candidates shut out of tonight’s debate, Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson the former governor of New Mexico. He appeared recently on Neil Cavuto’s show on Fox Business.

NEIL CAVUTO: Governor, half the battle is getting on those ballots and polling well to get in those debates. So, it’s sort of like a tough…

GARY JOHNSON: Very catch-22. Right now I’m 5% nationally. Fact is I’m not being recognized though at 5% nationally and if people recognized that I was at 5% nationally, Neil, the overwhelming reaction would be well who the hell is Gary Johnson.

NEIL CAVUTO: What does it take to get into the debates?

GARY JOHNSON: Well, you got to get in the polls first to determine who’s in the debates.

AMY GOODMAN: And earlier this summer the Green Party wrapped up its convention with the nomination of its presidential candidate the physician Dr. Jill Stein and her running mate the anti-poverty activist Cheri Honkala. Stein called her ticket a viable third-party challenge too corporate-beholden Republicans and Democrats.

CHERI HONKALA: I strongly agree that grass-roots democracy grows from the local community up, but at the same time, we have a state of emergency, I think, at the national level. And to silence the only hope of an opposition voice in this election when so much is at stake, I think, would be just a terrible loss for the American people. There is no reason why Americans should have to walk into the voting booth in November and only effectively two Wall Street-sponsored choices.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein. Democracy Now! spoke to Justice Party nominee Rocky Anderson during the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida last month.

ROCKY ANDERSON: These two parties, Republicans and Democrats, have a stranglehold on our democracy. They are depriving people around this country of not only being able to get on the ballot. They are denying all us of our freedom of choice. We are seeing it in the most aggressive ways.

AMY GOODMAN: Again, we are going to have this presidential debate, including Rocky Anderson, the presidential candidate from the Justice Party, Dr. Jill Stein, the presidential candidate from the Green Party, we will be doing that tonight, expanding the debates. Just having them, not comments afterwards, but actually they will participate in the debate. We’ll just hit pause on the presidential debate, they will be given the same amount of time in the same format as the main presidential candidates, so that TV and radio and Internet audiences at Democracynow.org can hear what democracy sounds like. George Farah, there was a third-party candidate outside of Anderson, of course, Ross Perot. So, George, how did he get into the debates? Why was it agreed to then?

GEORGE FARAH: Amy, the Ross Perot story is absolutely fascinating, and I’d love to talk briefly. About 1992 and 1996, Ross Perot managed to get into the 1992 presidential debates. One of the great public misconceptions is that the Commission invited him. The commission loves to take credit as well. They say we are not as bi-partisan or as partisan as people accuse us of being. We included Ross Perot in 1992. That is not what happened. President George H.W. Bush believed strategically that Ross Perot was taking votes from then challenger Bill Clinton. So Bush’s campaign insisted on Ross Perot’s inclusion. The commission actually opposed Perot’s inclusion, first pushing to keep out of all three debates, then lobbying for allowing him to participate in just a single debate. It was only because President George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton pushed for Perot’s inclusion that he was included. If you fast forward four years later, Ross Perot ran for president again. He had $29 million in taxpayer funds. Seventy-six percent of the American people wanted to see him in the debates. He was widely deemed the winner of two of the three debates in 1992, yet, he was excluded. Why, because this time, the candidates wanted to keep him out.

Bob Dole was desperate to keep Perot out of the presidential debates because he thought Perot would take more votes away from him. Bill Clinton did not want anyone to watch the debates. He wanted what George Stephanopoulos told me was a non event because he was comfortably leading in the polls. So they reached an outrageous agreement; Bill Clinton agreed to exclude Perot on the condition that one of three debates was canceled, and the remaining two debates were scheduled opposite the World Series of baseball, and no follow-up questions were asked. So, this is what viewers at home got. They got not Perot, they got two debates at the same time as baseball and they had no follow up questions, and that’s exactly what President Bill Clinton wanted, by design, the lowest debate audience in the history of presidential debates. Who took the heat? Not the candidates. The candidates never paid a political price. The polls after the debate showed 50% of the public blamed the commission. Only 13% blamed President Clinton, and only 5% blamed the Bob Dole. In other words, the critical role that the commission plays is allowing the candidates to engage in anti-democratic manipulations behind closed doors without having to pay a political price. If Bob Dole and Bill Clinton had to look in the camera and tell the American people, we’re going to keep out a candidate out you’re paying for, that you’re supporting and that you want to see, they would have never have had the courage to do so. It would have been perceived as cowardly and they would have been forced to allow Ross Perot up on that stage.

AMY GOODMAN: What about this comment, that Gary Johnson made, the former governor of New Mexico who’s running for president on the Libertarian line, this point about what you poll and this catch-22 of how you increase your standing in the polls if you are not in the debates?

GEORGE FARAH: Due to explicit criticism of the commission in 1992 and 1996 and an investigation by the Federal Election Commission, the commission was forced to adopting a numerical figure as a kind of decision making, at what point third-party candidates could participate in the presidential debates. So, they have announced that if a third party candidate, or any candidate gets 15% of the polls, that they will invite them to a presidential debate. Fifteen percent of the polls? Amy, that is crazy. There has not been a third-party candidate in the last 100 years that’s gotten close to 15% in the polls prior to any sort of presidential debate, it’s ridiculously high. Congress gives candidates millions of dollars of taxpayer funds if they win 5% of the popular vote. How is it that we actually can we subsidize a candidate, yet they need three times that level of support just to get into these presidential debates? Third-party candidates faced extraordinary structural barriers, discriminatory ballot access, scant media coverage, loyalties of the political class in the voting public, enormous campaign finance disparities. So, if they managed to convince a majority of Americans that they ought to be included in the presidential debates, it is outrageous that a private corporation backed by Anheuser-Busch, controlled by the two parties is telling them no. It absolutely is a catch-22. The presidential debates are the gatekeepers to credibility. If third party candidate gets in, he is instantly deemed credible, viable worthy of voter attention and worth of media attention, but if he is excluded, he is dismissed as marginal unworthy of voter attention of media attention, and his campaign is relegated in many ways to the dustbins of history. These is outrageous that the gatekeepers to our election process are not non-partisan entities like The League [of Women Voters], but partisan individuals with loyalties to the Republican and Democratic parties. It stifles debate, by design.

AMY GOODMAN: How do you see this changing right now, George Farah? You are the founder and executive director of Open Debates. You have been watching this over the years. The League of Women Voters, are they organizing? How are groups actually organizing? How do you see this playing out?

GEORGE FARAH: We created something in 2004 called The Citizen’s Debate Commission in. It was comprised of 17 civic leaders from across the political spectrum, from Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council on the right, to Randall Robertson, founder of Transafrica on the left. It was backed by 60 civic groups on its advisory board, 23 newspapers around country from The L.A. Times to The Seattle Times editorialized in support of the Citizen’s Debate Commission. And its specific purpose was clear; we were going to break the monopoly that the commission exerts over our presidential debate process. Unfortunately, Amy, we failed for the simple reason that there wasn’t sufficient public pressure. But, this is not reason to throw up your arms in defeat and say, oh my gosh, we can’t break this, that was just planting the seeds. This was the beginning of a broad based movement. The only way to truly break the monopoly of The Commission on Presidential Debates is to create a viable alternative that has so much grass roots support that it becomes politically costly for the major party nominees to avoid those debates. Once upon a time, the major party candidates could avoid debates altogether. There were no presidential debates in 1964, ’68 and ’72 because it wasn’t expected. Now any major party candidate seen avoiding the debates looks cowardly. It’s impossible, they must debate, whether they like it or not. We just want to take that expectation the public has and elevate it, so that not only will a candidate pay a price if they avoid the debates, but they will pay a political price if they avoid real debates that they aren’t controlling. So this is a matter of evolving and pushing the public expectation and step by step, I think we’re going to succeed. It is just a matter of time. The fact that three of the ten sponsors this election cycle withdrew their support is testimony to the fact that it is now becoming expensive to be too politically associated with the commission. If we can broaden that attack to not just include corporations but actually the individual candidates, we’re going to start to see some headway, we’re going to start to break the commission’s monopoly.

AMY GOODMAN: George Farah, I want to thank you for being with us. Founder and Executive Director of Open Debates, also author of “No Debate: How the Republican and Democratic Parties Secretly Control the Presidential Debates.” He’ll be joining us tonight. We will be starting a half hour before the actual presidential debate at 8:30 Eastern Standard time. Vincent Harding will also be with us, close ally of Dr. Martin Luther King. He is based here in Denver. He helped to write the speech that Dr. King gave in Riverside Church in New York, why he opposed the war in Vietnam a year to the day before Dr. King was assassinated. Then we start the debate exactly at 9:00 Eastern time, just as the debate begins here in Denver. We will broadcast the debate, it is moderated by Jim Lehrer of the PBS News Hour. He will put the questions to the major party candidates, Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama, and then we will hit pause, we will expand the debate. The candidates will be here with us in the studio also in Denver; Dr. Jill Stein and Rocky Anderson, both presidential candidates, third parties. Gary Johnson was invited but he won’t be in the city. We will expand the debate just as if they were standing right there at the University of Denver.

With Corn Feed Scarcer, Costlier Than Ever, U.S. Farmers Feed Cookies, Marshmellows & Fruit Loops To Cattle

Oldspeak:”In the mix are cookies, gummy worms, marshmallows, fruit loops, orange peels, even dried cranberries. Cattlemen are feeding virtually anything they can get their hands on that will replace the starchy sugar content traditionally delivered to the animals through corn. “-Carey Gillam Is there a more perfect descriptor of the utter and complete absurdity of industrial scale agriculture? Rather thank let their cattle graze on grass, as farmers have done for the bulk of human history, BigAg farmers in a desperate attempt to cut feeding costs, are feeding their cattle even more unnatural,  less healthy & nutritious junk food. America, as the most gluttonously obese nation on the planet literally is what it eats. Junk.  Junk in, Junk out.  A junk economy. Junk politics, Junk science. Junk education. Junk spirituality. Junk laws. Etc etc etc… This is a perfect illustration of the madness that Casino Capitalism begets.  Poisons Proliferate. Profit is Paramount. Wall Street “Speculators” gamble with the global food supply. Greed defies logic. It skirts safety. It makes human and animal health mere “externalities”.  This is unsustainable. We will reap what we sow.”

By Carey Gillam @ Reuters:

Mike Yoder’s herd of dairy cattle are living the sweet life. With corn feed scarcer and costlier than ever, Yoder increasingly is looking for cheaper alternatives — and this summer he found a good deal on ice cream sprinkles.

“It’s a pretty colorful load,” said Yoder, who operates about 450 dairy cows on his farm in northern Indiana. “Anything that keeps the feed costs down.”

As the worst drought in half a century has ravaged this year’s U.S. corn crop and driven corn prices sky high, the market for alternative feed rations for beef and dairy cows has also skyrocketed. Brokers are gathering up discarded food products and putting them out for the highest bid to feed lot operators and dairy producers, who are scrambling to keep their animals fed.

In the mix are cookies, gummy worms, marshmallows, fruit loops, orange peels, even dried cranberries. Cattlemen are feeding virtually anything they can get their hands on that will replace the starchy sugar content traditionally delivered to the animals through corn.

“Everybody is looking for alternatives,” said Ki Fanning, a nutritionist with Great Plains Livestock Consulting in Eagle, Nebraska. “It’s kind of funny the first time you see it but it works well. The big advantage to that is you can turn something you normally throw away into something that can be consumed. The amazing thing about a ruminant, a cow, you can take those type of ingredients and turn them into food.”

PRICING VARIES

Feed is generally the largest single production expense for cattle operators. Whatever is fed needs to supply energy and protein levels that meet the animals’ nutritional needs. High prices for soy has operators seeking alternatives for both corn and soy.

Corn alternatives are in particular demand as supplies are so tight that in some areas of the country, feed corn is not available at any price.

Pricing and availability of the many different “co-products” as they are called, varies from place to place, but buyers report savings of 10 percent to 50 percent.

The savings for operators are shrinking, however, as savvy resellers tie pricing for their alternative offerings to the price of corn, which surged to record highs this summer due to drought damage.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture said last month the harvest now underway will yield the smallest corn crop in six years due to the drought that is still gripping more than half of the nation.

“They are using less corn in a number of these rations, but as corn prices go up, prices for really every other co-product go up too,” said Greg Lardy, head of the animal sciences department at North Dakota State University.

Operators must be careful to follow detailed nutritional analyses for their animals to make sure they are getting a healthy mix of nutrients, animal nutritionists caution. But ruminant animals such as cattle can safely ingest a wide variety of feedstuffs that chickens and hogs can’t.

The candy and cookies are only a small part of a broad mix of alternative feed offerings for cattle. Many operators use distillers grains, a byproduct that comes from the manufacture of ethanol. Other common non-corn alternatives include cottonseed hulls, rice products, potato products, peanut pellet.

Wheat “middlings,” a byproduct of milling wheat for flour that contain particles of flour, bran, and wheat germ, also are fed.

And every now and then, there is a little chocolate for the hungry cows.

Hansen Mueller Grain out of Omaha, Nebraska, which markets chocolate bars alongside oats and peanut pellets, said it all comes down to fat, sugar and energy.

“That’s all it is,” said Bran Dill, a spokesman at Hansen Mueller. Demand is high, he said.

But he also said increasing prices are making alternatives less attractive.

“The price of this stuff has gone up so much it’s gotten ridiculous,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Michael Hirtzer in Chicago; Editing by Leslie Gevirtz)

Obama Wins Right To Indefinitely Detain Americans Under National Defense Authorization Act

Oldspeak:”It is my view that this is why the government wants to reopen the NDAA — so it has a tool to round up would-be Islamic protesters before they can launch any protest, violent or otherwise. Right now there are no legal tools to arrest would-be protesters. The NDAA would give the government such power. Since the request to vacate the injunction only comes about on the day of the riots, and following the DHS bulletin, it seems to me that the two are connected. The government wants to reopen the NDAA injunction so that they can use it to block protests.” Yet another example of the “War On Terror” being used as pretext to deprive Americans of their rights to dissent, protest, and petition their government for grievances. All this after Obama expressing ‘serious reservations’ about signing this law, he’s now aggressively litigating to retain the constitutional rights violating provisions in it.   Newspeak par excellence is on display here : “The fact that I support this bill as a whole does not mean I agree with everything in it. In particular, I have signed this bill despite having serious reservations with certain provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation, and prosecution of suspected terrorists.” –Barack Obama. Silence in corporate media on this assault on Constitutional Rights. Meanwhile, untold numbers of men, many of them without charges or cause are being detained indefinitely, tortured, rendered, interrogated, silenced in untold numbers of secret and no so secret locations around the globe. “Serious reservations” did not prevent this man from continuing the relentless expansion of a global U.S. led totalitarian police state.  Left unsaid is the profoudly slippery slop this ruling leads us down. How long will it be before “Islamic Protestors” is replaced with “Occupy Wall Street Protestors”? “Political Protestors”?  “Immigrant Protestors”? “Union Protestors”? “Education Protestors”? “Environmental Protestors”? “Veteran Protestors”? ” ‘What-you’re-protesting-here Protestors”?  ”Freedom Is Slavery”, “Ignorance Is Strength”

By RT:

A lone appeals judge bowed down to the Obama administration late Monday and reauthorized the White House’s ability to indefinitely detain American citizens without charge or due process.

Last week, a federal judge ruled that a temporary injunction on section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 must be made permanent, essentially barring the White House from ever enforcing a clause in the NDAA that can let them put any US citizen behind bars indefinitely over mere allegations of terrorist associations. On Monday, the US Justice Department asked for an emergency stay on that order, and hours later US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit Judge Raymond Lohier agreed to intervene and place a hold on the injunction.

The stay will remain in effect until at least September 28, when a three-judge appeals court panel is expected to begin addressing the issue.

On December 31, 2011, US President Barack Obama signed the NDAA into law, even though he insisted on accompanying that authorization with a statement explaining his hesitance to essentially eliminate habeas corpus for the American people.

“The fact that I support this bill as a whole does not mean I agree with everything in it,” President Obama wrote. “In particular, I have signed this bill despite having serious reservations with certain provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation, and prosecution of suspected terrorists.”

A lawsuit against the administration was filed shortly thereafter on behalf of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges and others, and Judge Forrest agreed with them in district court last week after months of debate. With the stay issued on Monday night, however, that justice’s decision has been destroyed.

With only Judge Lohier’s single ruling on Monday, the federal government has been once again granted the go ahead to imprison any person “who was part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners” until a poorly defined deadline described as merely “the end of the hostilities.” The ruling comes despite Judge Forrest’s earlier decision that the NDAA fails to “pass constitutional muster” and that the legislation contained elements that had a “chilling impact on First Amendment rights”

Because alleged terrorists are so broadly defined as to include anyone with simple associations with enemy forces, some members of the press have feared that simply speaking with adversaries of the state can land them behind bars.

“First Amendment rights are guaranteed by the Constitution and cannot be legislated away,” Judge Forrest wrote last week. “This Court rejects the Government’s suggestion that American citizens can be placed in military detention indefinitely, for acts they could not predict might subject them to detention.”

Bruce Afran, a co-counsel representing the plaintiffs in the case Hedges v Obama, said Monday that he suspects the White House has been relentless in this case because they are already employing the NDAA to imprison Americans, or plan to shortly.

“A Department of Homeland Security bulletin was issued Friday claiming that the riots [in the Middle East] are likely to come to the US and saying that DHS is looking for the Islamic leaders of these likely riots,” Afran told Hedges for a blogpost published this week. “It is my view that this is why the government wants to reopen the NDAA — so it has a tool to round up would-be Islamic protesters before they can launch any protest, violent or otherwise. Right now there are no legal tools to arrest would-be protesters. The NDAA would give the government such power. Since the request to vacate the injunction only comes about on the day of the riots, and following the DHS bulletin, it seems to me that the two are connected. The government wants to reopen the NDAA injunction so that they can use it to block protests.”

Within only hours of Afran’s statement being made public, demonstrators in New York City waged a day of protests in order to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Although it is not believed that the NDAA was used to justify any arrests, more than 180 political protesters were detained by the NYPD over the course of the day’s actions. One week earlier, the results of a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the American Civil Liberties Union confirmed that the FBI has been monitoring Occupy protests in at least one instance, but the bureau would not give further details, citing that decision is “in the interest of national defense or foreign policy.”

Josh Gerstein, a reporter with Politico, reported on the stay late Monday and acknowledged that both Forrest and Lohier were appointed to the court by President Obama.

Occupy The Trans-Pacific Partnership: Civil Disobedience Actions Blockade Entrance To Site Of TPP Negotiations In Virginia

Oldspeak: “This is the “trade agreements” that Obama bragged about in his nomination speech. It is  not good for anyone but corporations. “The TPP is called a ‘trade agreement,’ but in actuality it is a long-dreamed-of template for implementing a binding system of global corporate governance as bold as anything the world’s wealthiest elite has attempted before. It is outrageous that civil disobedience like this is necessary to have the public’s voice included in these discussions. The stakes are just too high for the world’s environment and for farmers, workers and all of our intellectual property rights far into the future for these decisions to be made behind closed doors.”  –Laurel Sutherlin The Transnational Corporate Network is working in secret to consolidate its control over governments worldwide and by extension the people. The people are resisting. We need more people to become aware, and join the resistance.  The fate of our world depends on it.

Related Story:

Trans-Pacific Partnership: Obama To Sign Secret Treaty That Will Offshore U.S. Jobs To Slave-Wage Countries; Decimate Corporate Regulations

By It’s Our Economy:

Two people were detained this morning after a tense stand-off with police while blockading international trade negotiators from entering the Lansdowne Resort, site of the secretive Trans Pacific Partnership negotiations taking place this week. Other activists greeted the arriving international negotiators with a 75-foot high banner suspended by weather balloons shaped like giant buttocks that read “Free Trade My Ass: Flush the TPP.”

A rapidly growing movement is organizing to oppose the unprecedented lack of transparency surrounding the Obama Administration’s handling of the TPP discussions. While 600 corporate lobbyists have been allowed access to and input on the draft texts from the beginning of negotiations three years ago, the public and even members of US Congress have not been allowed to see what is being proposed on their behalf.

“People need to know that the Trans Pacific Partnership is being negotiated in secret to hide the content. The TPP will redefine the terms of trade in ways that give corporations power over nations, makes them unaccountable and threatens the health of people and the future of the planet,” said Baltimore native Dr. Margaret Flowers, co-director of ItsOurEconomy.us, as she dangled by a climbing harness 20 feet above the pavement and dozens of agitated police officers and sheriff’s deputies. Flowers is a medical doctor and said she was moved to take action in particular because she is concerned about the likelihood that the TPP would increase drug prices by expanding corporate patent rights.

Police responded aggressively at first to the blockade, threatening to taze the metal poles suspending Flowers and to pepper spray the mother of three into compliance. Confused trade negotiators abandoned cars and attempted to walk towards the hotel complex. Stymied by how to safely remove her and open the roadway, police representatives eventually sought to negotiate Flowers exit. Flowers only agreed to be removed if her colleague, Dick Ochs, who had been handcuffed and detained for blocking the road was also released. Eventually the police agreed to release Flowers and Ochs if she lowered herself on her own accord.

Dick Ochs Blocks the Road

Dick is taken into custody

The Lieutenant, Tarak Kauff and Kevin Zeese negotiate the exit.

Margaret refuses to come down unless Dick is released

No arrest for Margaret, Dick Ochs released

“The TPP is called a ‘trade agreement,’ but in actuality it is a long-dreamed-of template for implementing a binding system of global corporate governance as bold as anything the world’s wealthiest elite has attempted before. It is outrageous that civil disobedience like this is necessary to have the public’s voice included in these discussions. The stakes are just too high for the world’s environment and for farmers, workers and all of our intellectual property rights far into the future for these decisions to be made behind closed doors.” said Laurel Sutherlin of Rainforest Action Network, one of the organizations supporting this week’s demonstrations.

Phil Ateto, Ellen Barfield, Lisa Simeone and Dick Ochs hold sign along the road

Today’s actions follow a colorful rally on Sunday at the same location that was endorsed by dozens of regional and national environmental, labor and social justice organizations. Members of this diverse coalition, upset by the TPP’s complete lack of transparency, have orchestrated a series of demonstrations throughout the week of negotiations.

Arthur Stamoulins of Citizen’s Trade Watch (which was not part of this action) is interviewed by Eddie Becker

In 2008, candidate Obama promised that as president he would renegotiate NAFTA with Canada and Mexico with new terms favorable to the United States. Now his administration is negotiating one of the largest corporate trade agreements in history, that would outsource jobs, lower wages and undermine environmental, consumer and labor laws.

In a report on the TPP, Kevin Zeese, co-director of Its Our Economy wrote: “the Trans-Pacific Partnership would do even more harm to U.S. employment than NAFTA. The TPP is being negotiated in secret by the United States, Australia, Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam. It contains an unusual provision, a docking agreement, which allows other countries to join. This October, Canada and Mexico are expected join the TPP. Later, Japan and China will likely join but it will almost certainly not stop there. The TPPcould set the standard for worldwide trade – a major reshuffling of our social contract with almost no public participation.”

Bill Moyer of the Backbone Campaign

 

 

 

 

Photos by Ellen Davidson.  More photos here.

Click here for more on the TPP.

All DAY! ALL WEEK!: Occupy Wall Street Is Back

Oldspeak: “Nothing else in the world… not all the armies… is so powerful as an idea whose time has come.” –Victor Hugo.

 

By Mike Ludwig @ Truthout:

Occupy Wall Street and the 99% are preparing to rise back up – evolved, re-energized and looking forward to “starting some trouble” to celebrate where it all began. 

Monday, September 17, now dubbed #S17, marks the one-year anniversary of the protest and occupation in New York City – an event that captured the world’s attention and ignited protests, occupations and grassroots community organizing around the globe.

To celebrate and continue challenging the corporate elite, activists in New York City are preparing for three days of teach-ins and direct actions in the heart of the Wall Street financial district, where it all began.

In New York, a weekend of gatherings and free educational events will culminate in a day of action on #S17. Organizers are calling for massive civil disobedience, mobile intersection takeovers and an evening gathering at Liberty Plaza, aka Zuccotti Park, where the original Occupy Wall Street camp was held for two months last year.

Solidarity actions and celebrations also are planned in cities across the country. Activists can use this Wiki to post or find events and network at www.InterOccupy.net.

New York police also are preparing for #S17 and have erected giant concrete walls around Zuccotti park, according to reports from activists.

It remains to be seen if #S17 participants will attempt to establish another campout-style occupation. After confronting police and city officials across the country, activists within the Occupy movement say they are ready to tactically evolve beyond the campout spectacle. In fact, much the movement already has.

“The actual camping was as [a] spectacle to get people who were interested in anti-capitalist action to come together,” said Joan Donovan, an InterOccupy.net and Occupy Los Angeles organizer. Donovan was preparing to travel to New York City for #S17 when Truthout spoke with her on Thursday.

The national network of Occupy campouts established in late 2011 and the spring of 2012 became a media spectacle as well, especially when police at occupations in New York, Oakland and Berkeley started cracking skulls and spraying tear gas in response to protests.

As winter and frustrated police forces closed in, the camps began to disappear, and so did much of the mainstream media coverage.

But the end of the camps did not mark the end of the movement. Local and national networks formed in camps across the country, and Occupy soon gave birth to campaigns addressing a range of pressing issues, such as fighting to save families from foreclosure evictions, challenging the indefinite detention clause in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), and, most recently, taking on the infamous genetically engineered seed purveyor Monsanto.

The Occupy meme also influenced movements addressing age-old struggles. Occupy the Hood, for example, established a national network of activists fighting to improve the quality of life for disenfranchised people of color.

“I didn’t see the end of the occupation as the end of what this movement is about; I mean, this movement has generated all sorts of different kinds of protests,” said Donovan, who pointed out that Occupiers in Los Angeles were just recently camped out on a family’s front lawn to protect them from a foreclosure eviction.

The Canadian magazine Adbusters, which heavily backed the original Wall Street occupation, recently addressed the evolving nature of Occupy on its web site:

To put it in a nutshell: the Zuccotti encampment model might have passed its heyday, but the spirit of Occupy is still very much alive … evolving and inspiring, expanding our understanding of the possible, exploding our political imagination.

For Donovan, who is excited about “starting some trouble” in New York City this weekend, the past year has been a great one for direct action.

“This idea that everyone has to converge in [Washington] DC or wherever in order to have a protest is starting to wane away a little bit and people are starting to realize that if you can start enough commotion in many cities at the same time … you can be just as effective and not waste resources or the energy of activists,” Donovan said.

U.S. Judge Stikes Down Indefinite Detention Provision In National Defense Authorization Act; Obama Administration Appeals Decision

Oldspeak: “The NDAA included a clause which afforded the military the power to detain civilians — even Americans — indefinitely, without charge or trial, if they are accused of certain ‘anti-state crimes’ or are accused of “substantially supporting” those accused of said crimes or forces associated therewith.    If that sounds tortuous and nebulous it’s because it is:” –David Segal. This is great victory for journalists, political activists, dissidents, and scholars. No longer will Americans and civilians around the world be allowed to be “disappeared” for speaking out against the woefully anti-democratic U.S. Government and its cohorts worldwide. “

 

 

 

Related Story:

Obama To Authorize Indefinite Detention Of U.S. Citizens For First Time Since McCarthy Era

By Alexander Reed Kelly @ Truthdig:

A temporary stop on the U.S. military’s power to imprison anyone deemed to have “substantially supported” terrorist groups was made permanent on Wednesday when U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest ruled that journalists could be snatched up under the law.

The ruling against a provision in the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act frustrates the government’s attempts to grant itself the ability to indefinitely detain anyone it could associate with terrorist activity, including domestic protesters.

Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges had sued the Obama administration over the provision, along with journalists, scholars and political activists Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg and Naomi Wolf. Judge Forrest placed a temporary injunction on the provision in Section 1021 of the law in May.

“This court does not disagree with the principle that the president has primacy in foreign affairs,” Forrest said in Wednesday’s ruling. But government arguments in favor of the provision were not convincing, she said.

“The government has not stated that such conduct—which, by analogy, covers any writing, journalistic and associational activities that involve al Qaeda, the Taliban or whomever is deemed “associated forces”—does not fall within § 1021(b)(2).”

U.S. Judge’s Rule Protects Reporters, Activists In Their Middle East Work

By  Basil Katz @ Reuters:

A federal judge made permanent on Wednesday her order blocking enforcement of a U.S. law’s provision that authorizes military detention for people deemed to have “substantially supported” al Qaeda, the Taliban or “associated forces.”

U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest in Manhattan had ruled in May in favor of non-profit groups and reporters whose work relates to conflicts in the Middle East and who said they feared being detained under a section of the law, signed by President Barack Obama in December.

Wednesday’s 112-page opinion turns the temporary injunction of May into a permanent injunction. The United States appealed on August 6.

The permanent injunction prevents the U.S. government from enforcing a portion of Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act’s “Homeland Battlefield” provisions.

The opinion stems from a January lawsuit filed by former New York Times war correspondent and Pulitzer Prize winner Chris Hedges and others. The plaintiffs said they had no assurance that their writing and advocacy activities would not fall under the scope of the provision.

Government attorneys argued that the executive branch is entitled to latitude when it comes to cases of national security and that the law is neither too broad nor overly vague.

“This court does not disagree with the principle that the president has primacy in foreign affairs,” the judge said, but that she was not convinced by government arguments.

“The government has not stated that such conduct – which, by analogy, covers any writing, journalistic and associational activities that involve al Qaeda, the Taliban or whomever is deemed “associated forces” – does not fall within § 1021(b)(2).”

A spokeswoman for the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office, which represents the government in this case, declined to comment on the ruling.

The case is Hedges et al v. Obama et al, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, No. 12-cv-331.

Judge Strikes Down Indefinite Detention: Tell Obama To Stop Supporting This Wretched Law

By David Segal @ The Daily Kos:

We just won the lawsuit against Obama et al over the indefinite detention provisions of the fiscal 2012 National Defense Authorization Act. These provisions represented a blatant violation of due process and First Amendment rights, and plaintiffs argued that they were already having a chilling effect on journalists and activists.

The NDAA included a clause which afforded the military the power to detain civilians — even Americans — indefinitely, without charge or trial, if they are accused of certain anti-state crimes or are accused of “substantially supporting” those accused of said crimes or forces associated therewith.    If that sounds tortuous and nebulous it’s because it is: What the heck does “substantially support” or “associated force” even mean?

You can urge Obama not to appeal the ruling by clicking here.

In a sweeping 112-page ruling (which I’ve not yet read in full) Judge Katherine Forrest issued a permanent injunction against the use of such powers.  Here’s Reuters:

A federal judge made permanent on Wednesday her order blocking enforcement of a U.S. law’s provision that authorizes military detention for people deemed to have “substantially supported” al Qaeda, the Taliban or “associated forces.”

U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest in Manhattan had ruled in May in favor of non-profit groups and reporters whose work relates to conflicts in the Middle East and who said they feared being detained under a section of the law, signed by President Barack Obama in December.

Plaintiffs include Chris Hedges, Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg, Tangerine Bolen, and others; Demand Progress and RevolutionTruth members have raised more than $20,000 to support the lawsuit and used it to pressure lawmakers to revoke the provions in question.  We lost a relatively narrow vote in the House a few months ago, and the Senate will take up amendments to end indefinite detention in coming weeks.

We’re hoping the Senate will actually take this finding of unconstitutionality to heart and explicitly revoke the codification of the indefinite detention authority when the NDAA gets a vote in coming weeks.

This ruling required great fortitude on the part of Judge Forrest: She was appointed by Obama just last year.  After initially expressing concerns about the provisions in question — because they infringed on certain executive power, not because of all of the reasons above — Obama has consistently supported and defended them.  He signed them into law under cloak of darkness on New Year’s Eve and has aggressively defended them in court.

This’ll probably get appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court — but you can click here to urge Obama to stop protecting this awful law.