Gulf scientist: Justice Department is gagging me from studying oil spill

The Justice Department continues to impose stifling restrictions on independent scientists seeking to study the catastrophic effects of Gulf spill, according to one scientist.

In an opinion piece at The Scientist, ecosystem biologist Linda Hooper-Bui explains her frustration with corporations and government bureaucracies, both of which have been preventing independent scientists like her from accessing the Gulf of Mexico.

"I want to collect data to answer scientific questions absent a corporate or governmental agenda. I won't collect data specifically to support the government's lawsuit against BP nor will I collect data only to be used in BP's defense," says Hooper-Bui.

But doing so has been a difficult task.

In May, a US Fish an Wildlife officer took away ant samples from some of Hooper-Bui's PhD students because their project had not been approved by Incident Command, a joint program of BP and federal agencies.

http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0811/gulf-scientists-hampered-restrictions-confidentially-agreements/

Extremely Resistant Superbug Is Spreading Internationally

A new superbug that makes an enzyme called NDM-1 which probably travelled back to the UK in patients who went over to India and Pakistan for surgical treatments has entered UK hospitals, experts say. This superbug is resistant to virtually all antibiotics, even the most powerful ones. So far, only 50 cases have been reported in Great Britain. However, there is a significant risk of it spreading worldwide.

NDM-1 (New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase 1) is a new gene that enables a bacterium to become highly resistant to nearly all antibiotics; it is spread in Enterobacteriaceae taken from patients in India and Pakistan. It has also been found in UK patients who travelled to India for elective surgery.

You can read about this in an Article published Online First and in the September edition of The Lancet Infectious Diseases.

The authors of the report say that the time has come for extremely close international monitoring and surveillance, as antibiotics may become redundant with the rapid emergence of these multi-drug resistant NDM-1 producing bacteria and their potential worldwide spread.

Timothy Walsh, Cardiff University, Wales and an international team first detected the NDM-1 gene in Klebsiella pneumonia and Escherichia coli bacteria taken from a Swedish patient admitted to hospital in India.

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Iran 'digging mass graves for US troops' in case of invasion

Guardian

Iran has dug mass graves in which to bury US troops if America attacks the country, a former commander of the elite Revolutionary Guard has said.

The digging of the graves appears to be a show of bravado after the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, said last week that the US military had a contingency plan to attack Iran, although he thought a military strike was probably a bad idea.

The US and some of its allies accuse Iran of using its civilian nuclear programme as a cover to build nuclear weapons. Iran says its nuclear programme is geared merely toward generating electricity.

General Hossein Kan'ani Moghadam, who was the Revolutionary Guard's deputy commander during the 1980s, said graves had been dug in the south-western Khuzestan province, where Iran buried Iraqi soldiers killed during the 1980-88 war with Saddam Hussein's regime.

"The mass graves that used to be for burying Saddam's soldiers have now been prepared again for US soldiers, and this is the reason for digging this big number of graves," Moghadam said. He did not say how many were being prepared.

Recently obtained footage shows a large number of empty, freshly dug graves in a desert region of Khuzestan. The digging of the graves was first reported earlier this week by Iran's semi-official news agency, Fars.

Moghadam repeated warnings that Iran would retaliate against US bases if it was attacked. The US navy's 5th Fleet headquarters is based just across the Gulf in Bahrain.

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UN report reveals sharp spike in Afghan civilian casualties

WSWS

Afghan civilians suffered a 31 percent increase in casualties during the first half of this year, according to a United Nations report released on Tuesday. While the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan blamed anti-occupation forces for the bulk of the killing and maiming, the spike coincides with Obama’s military “surge,” which has deployed an additional 30,000 combat troops in the country.

According to the report, there were 3,268 civilian casualties during the previous six months, with 1,271 killed and 1,997 wounded, “most of them severely.”

The UN mission blamed 2,477 of these civilian casualties on so-called AGEs, or anti-government elements, which include the Taliban as well as other forces resisting foreign occupation and the corrupt US-backed government of President Hamid Karzai. It attributed 386 of these casualties to “pro-government forces [PGF],” which includes the US military and other foreign troops as well as Afghan security forces. It added that for 10 percent of the casualties, it was not possible to determine who was responsible.

The report attributed the rise in casualties allegedly caused by Afghan resistance forces to a marked increase in the assassination of government officials and others seen as collaborating with the occupation, which the UN said had reached a level of 18 a day in May. In addition, there has been, according to the report, a substantial increase in casualties resulting from IEDs (improvised explosive devices). These roadside bombs, aimed against foreign troop convoys, not infrequently are set off by civilians. The report blamed these bombs for the deaths of 557 civilians and the wounding of 1,137 more.

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9/11: Planes That Hit WTC Were Not Boeing 767s

Voltairenet

The official report by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) relating to the two planes that crashed into WTC on September 11, 2001 shows that they were traveling at a speed of 945 km/h and 796 km/h respectively.

Pilots for 9/11 Truth, an international organization of pilots and aviation professionals, has pointed out that, according to the manufacturer, the Boeing 767 develops structural failure and dismembers at a speed surpassing 660 km/h when flying at near sea level in thick air. This has also been certified by a former senior NASA executive, Dwain Deets.

It necessarily follows that the aircraft that slammed into the World Trade Center could not have been the planes corresponding to commercial flights United 175 and American 11.

In his book The Big Lie, Thierry Meyssan had entertained the possibility that the two aircraft had actually been substituted by military planes according to the procedure contemplated in Operation Northwoods (p. 168).

The NTSB report, which was declassified at the request of Pilots for 9/11 Truth, had already revealed that the cockpit door of flight American 77 had remained locked from the time of take-off until it disappeared from radar screens and allegedly crashed at the Pentagon site. The logical conclusion is that it would have been materially impossible to highjack the flight.

Source: http://www.voltairenet.org/article166661.html

How the Shadow Elite Is Shorting 'Third World America'

Huffington Post

That riotous metaphor should give you a sense of Arianna Huffington's engaging and insightful call-to-arms -- her new book, Third World America. In it, she catalogues the alarming signs of decay in American life -- the "better life" she admired so deeply as a child in Greece now seems in dire straits: the vanishing industrial base, the crumbling infrastructure, the failing schools, the economy battered by rogue corporations, and the political system controlled by a small elite -- the foxes, if you will -- dominating both parties.

In my book, Shadow Elite, I have another name for the foxes -- flexians -- the most agile of a new breed of movers and shakers who glide effortlessly in and out and around government, corporate, media, and think tank roles. The cachet of these new power brokers is in information: their access to and control of official (or should-be official) information, their ability to use information gleaned in one venue in other venues, their skill at getting their own version of the truth branded as the most authoritative one and using the media to promote it.

In pressing personal agendas regardless of the broader impact, these power brokers, who've risen over the past few decades, have been "shorting the middle class," as Arianna aptly puts, to devastating results. In the economic arena alone, she demonstrates, the decisions made by this new breed -- from those who ruined Enron to those who wrought more recent Wall Street wreckage -- have had a huge impact on the lives and futures of Americans. They have shown disdain for shareholders and ordinary people, and by extension, the American dream. To quote an anonymous email called "We Are Wall Street" that circulated this spring, directed at Main Street America: "We eat what we kill, and when the only thing left to eat is on your dinner plates, we'll eat that."

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First Gitmo conviction under Obama shrouded in secrecy: Judge seals sentence

US military judge seals sentence for Guantanamo detainee who struck plea deal with prosecutors

A U.S. military judge on Monday ordered that a plea agreement capping the sentence of an Osama bin Laden aide be sealed, shrouding in secrecy the first Guantanamo conviction under President Barack Obama.

The judge, Air Force Lt. Col. Nancy Paul, said the deal limiting how much more time detainee Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al-Qosi spends in confinement will not be revealed until after his release. She said that condition of the plea bargain was requested by the government and agreed to by the detainee's lawyers.

The sealing of the sentence is a first for the military commissions system, which the Obama administration has pledged to make more transparent.

A spokesman for prosecutors, Navy Capt. David Iglesias, said he could not comment on the reasons for the secrecy. But he said it was consistent with federal courts' handling of matters involving national security and claimed it was also in al-Qosi's best interest.

"We don't want to create a disincentive for a detainee to plead guilty," Iglesias said, without elaborating.

A jury of American military officers is expected to begin deliberating a sentence Tuesday, but officials overseeing the tribunals will reject their decision if it exceeds the terms of the plea bargain, Iglesias said. A longer sentence could be applied, however, if al-Qosi did something to break the terms of the plea agreement, Iglesias added.

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Who Are You Going to Believe -- Tim Geithner or Your Own Lying Eyes?

Huffington Post

The jobs situation stinks, even as corporate profits keep rising. Another 131,000 jobs were lost to the economy in July, according to the Labor Department's latest report released Friday. The measured unemployment rate stayed stuck at 9.5 percent.

The only reason it wasn't worse was because more workers gave up looking for nonexistent jobs, leaving a smaller labor force to measure against the meager supply of work. Small comfort.

Meanwhile, another important government report, by the Social Security Trustees, showed only a trivial improvement in the gap between what Social Security owes the next generation of retirees and the tax receipts that it can expect.

There is, of course, a direct connection between rising unemployment, declining wages, and the condition of Social Security. That's because Social Security is funded by payroll taxes.

If wages had continued to rise with the growth of the economy's productivity, instead of profits and bonuses taking an ever larger share, Social Security would be enjoying an endless surplus.

Based on recent trends and a dismally pessimistic projection of our economic future, Social Security's Trustees assume wage growth of just 1.2 percent a year. But that can be changed by better policies.

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We Are in Equivalent of Great Depression: Strategist

CNBC

The mid-summer rally is over and stocks will begin a downward leg before bottoming in October, as the world economy is in what looks like a Great Depression, Robin Griffiths, a technical strategist at Cazenove Capital, told CNBC Monday.

"Equities are for losers and bond markets for winners. Equities are simply for people who like losing money," Griffiths said.

"A double-dip is inevitable and imminent, as Keynesian stimulus measures have never worked anywhere. We are in the equivalent of a Great Depression following 3 years of credit crisis," he added.

But there will be some winners or relative outperformers in the stock markets, according to Griffiths.

"Firms like Caterpillar [CAT  71.8201    0.2601  (+0.36%)   ] will do well, America has some great companies and CAT is one of them, able to export anywhere in the world as it has good products people want to buy," he said.

"I also like the German market. Exports are doing well and will be further boosted by the performance of the euro over the last 12 months," Griffiths said.

German exports rose by a higher than expected 3.8 percent in June following strong demand from across the world for German goods, according to data released Monday.

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Fed set to downgrade outlook for US

The Federal Reserve is set to downgrade its assessment of US economic prospects when it meets on Tuesday to discuss ways to reboot the flagging recovery.

Faced with weak economic data and rising fears of a double-dip recession, the Federal Open Market Committee is likely to ensure its policy is not constraining growth and to use its statement to signal greater concern about the economy. It is, however, unlikely to agree big new steps to boost growth.

Smaller measures to help the economy could initially take the form of a decision to reinvest proceeds from maturing mortgage-backed securities held by the US central bank, thereby preventing the Fed’s balance sheet from shrinking naturally.

Investors will also examine closely any changes to the pledge made by the FOMC in June to “employ its policy tools as necessary to promote economic recovery and price stability”, which could be hardened if policymakers choose to signal the potential for more aggressive move to boost the economy in the future.

But even if that happens, most economists believe that it would take several more months of poor data for the Fed to actually begin a new round of asset purchases on the scale of those carried out during the recession.

In congressional testimony last month, Ben Bernanke noted “unusual uncertainty” in the economic outlook and in a speech last week the Fed chairman warned of a “considerable way to go” before the US achieves a full recovery.

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Barry Soetoro AKA Barack Obama’s Political Dynasty Crashes And Burns

Prison Planet

Barry Soetoro lavishes himself at a luxury Spanish resort amidst deepening economic turmoil, back home his political dynasty crashes and burns as his approval ratings plunge to a record low of 41 per cent with less than a few months to go before the October midterm elections.

Obama has come under widespread criticism for preaching austerity and financial discipline while sunning himself at an opulent resort in the Costa del Sol region as his wife Michelle parades around in expensive designer clothing.

As the economy worsens and top financial experts openly talk of American entering a second great depression, Obama’s approval ratings continue to head south in a hurry.

As we exposed in the Obama Deception, the manufactured populist euphoria behind the crowing of Soetoro was always likely to rapidly deflate once it became apparent that Obama was the ultimate puppet, a vacuous servant of the bankers and the elite to whom he owes his entire political dynasty.

Having A Supply Of Healthy Foods That Last Just Makes Sense

Just 41 per cent approved of the way Obama was handling the job in a recent USA TODAY/Gallup Poll, the lowest figure since Soetoro took office in January 2009.

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Freddie seeks $1.8bn from US Treasury

Financial Times

Freddie Mac, the second largest US mortgage finance company, said on Monday that it would need an additional $1.8bn from the US Treasury Department, as souring home loans continue to saddle it with losses.

The company said it lost $6bn, or $1.85 a share, in the second quarter. That marked a sharp increase from the same period a year ago, when it lost $840m, but was improved from the first three months of the year.

Charles Hadelman, Freddie chief executive said, that the company “continues to support the still-fragile housing market by providing America’s families with access to affordable home financing and foreclosure alternatives” but that the market still faces real challenges.

As it requested further aid, Freddie also paid a $1.3bn dividend to Treasury. Freddie and its larger rival Fannie Mae have received about $150bn in assistance since the government’s 2008 bail-out of the companies.

In June, Freddie and Fannie were ordered to be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange for failing to meet minimum price guidelines. Republicans have been pushing for the government-sponsored entities to be broken up and privatised, but the Obama administration is not planning to address reforming the troubled companies until next year.

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Oil Expert Matt Simmons Found Dead --- Was He Murdered?

Matt Simmons was one of the harshest critics of the BP oil gusher often stating that the only way to stop the flow of oil would be to nuke the site because the well casing was no longer in place. He also frequently warned residents in the Gulf of Mexico to leave the area for health reasons.

One news source (WLBZ) is reporting that he drowned while another source (Business Insider) is reporting that he had a heart attack!!

According to one report, emergency medical workers responded to a possible drowning a little before 10 p.m. local time yesterday, said John Dietter, a crew chief for North Haven, Maine. He declined to comment on the cause of Simmons’s death.

Mr. Simmons called the GOM disaster the biggest environmental cover-up ever!! Was he murdered for speaking the truth?

Mr. Simmons shed light on the lies, mismanagement, and potential dangers such as methane gas related to the BP gulf oil disaster. He stated that the real blowout is 10 miles from where BP is stating and showing on CNN and other news organizations.

The Knox County Sheriff's Department says Matthew Simmons, the founder of the Ocean Energy Institute, drowned at his house on North Haven late Sunday night.

Simmons was a leading investment banker for the energy industry and had recently retired to work full time on the new Ocean Energy Institute.

He was a leading proponent of offshore wind power and had started raising money to develop and build offshore turbines.

Ex-Pak spy chief: 9/11 was a pretext to a war already under consideration

The U.S.-led war in Afghanistan is a "lost cause," said a former Pakistani intelligence chief, and the United States needs to negotiate peace with Taliban leader Mullah Omar. "You have to talk to him, and I'm sure it will work out very well," Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul told CNN's Fareed Zakaria in an interview to air Sunday. 

U.S. intelligence documents published last week by WikiLeaks cited Gul and implicated Pakistani intelligence as supporting al Qaeda. Gul has denied the allegations. "I'm quite a convenient scapegoat," he said. "I don't support any one faction in Afghanistan. I support the Afghan nation."

The career military officer, who supported the U.S.-backed Taliban resistance against Soviet occupation during the 1980s, called the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan "unjust" and said he sees legitimacy in the Afghan insurgency against Western forces. "This is a national resistance movement. It should be recognized as such," he said. "They are Mujahedeen of Afghanistan as they were during the occupation of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union."

The attacks of September 11 were a pretext to a war already under consideration, Gul said. "I think some of the neocons, who were very close to President [George W.] Bush, they wanted that he could embark on a universal adventure of Pax Americana, and they thought that the world was lying prostrate in front of them," he said. The 2001 terrorist attacks helped win the public support for the neocon plans, he said.

There was no legitimate reason for the United States to attack Afghanistan, Gul said, because the FBI had no solid evidence that Osama bin Laden was involved in the attacks on New York and Washington.

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My Letter to Obama: "Build a Mega-Mosque ON Ground Zero to Atone for 9/11 Inside job!"

President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear President Obama,
In your Cairo speech of June 4^th, 2009, you greeted the Muslim world with "as-salaaamu alikum," meaning "peace be with you." In that speech, you said:

I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect; and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles – principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.

Mr. President, if you genuinely seek a new beginning, you need to revisit the moment when things went massively, wildly wrong: The morning of September 11^th, 2001. In your Cairo speech you had this to say about 9/11:

I am aware that some question or justify the events of 9/11. But let us be clear: al-Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 people on that day. The victims were innocent men, women and children from America and many other nations who had done nothing to harm anybody. And yet al-Qaeda chose to ruthlessly murder these people, claimed credit for the attack, and even now states their determination to kill on a massive scale. . . .

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What BP and the US Government Don't Want You to Know, Part I

Huffington Post

The unprecedented disaster caused by the BP oil spill at the Deepwater Horizon Mississippi Canyon 252 site continues to expand even as National Incident Commander Thad Allen and BP assert that the situation is improving, the blown-out source capped and holding steady, the situation well in hand and cleanup operations are being scaled back. The New York Times declared on the front page this past week that the oil was disolving more rapidly than anticipated. Time magazine reported that environmental anti-advocate Rush Limbaugh had a point when he said the spill was a "leak". Thad Allen pointed out in a press conference that boats are still skimming on the surface, a futile gesture when the dispersant Corexit is being used to break down oil on the surface. As the oil is broken down, it mixes with the dispersant and flows under or over any booming operations.

To judge from most media coverage, the beaches are open, the fishing restrictions being lifted and the Gulf resorts open for business in a healthy, safe environment. We, along with Pierre LeBlanc, spent the last few weeks along the Gulf coast from Louisiana to Florida, and the reality is distinctly different. The coastal communities of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida have been inundated by the oil and toxic dispersant Corexit 9500, and the entire region is contaminated. The once pristine white beaches that have been subject to intense cleaning operations now contain the oil/dispersant contamination to an unknown depth. The economic impacts potentially exceed even the devastation of a major hurricane like Katrina, the adverse impacts on health and welfare of human populations are increasing every minute of every day and the long-term effects are potentially life threatening.

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Across Texas, 60,000 babies of noncitizens get U.S. birthright

Dallas News

As Republican members of Congress press for changes to the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, preventing automatic citizenship for babies born to illegal immigrants, opponents insist the debate is not really about babies.

Instead, they say it is about politics and votes – not fixing the immigration system.

Still, the debate could resonate in Texas, where not only 1.5 million illegal immigrants are estimated to reside but at least 60,000 babies are added to their households annually.

Parkland Memorial Hospital delivers more of those babies than any other hospital in the state. Last year at Parkland, 11,071 babies were born to women who were noncitizens, about 74 percent of total deliveries. Most of these women are believed to be in the country illegally.

State Rep. Rafael Anchía, D-Dallas, accused Republicans of using the births to generate an explosive election issue.

"They're pulling the pin on the immigration grenade," he said. "It's all about the November elections and continuing to use the immigration issue as a wedge to win votes this fall."

But to Republicans, the emerging national debate is long overdue, considering that millions of immigrants have been living illegally in this country for years.

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New evidence of police brutality during Katrina

Nola

When I pulled up in front of the house on Danneel Street a couple of weeks ago, three men were standing out front. I showed them a picture of the guy I was looking for: His name, I had been told, might be Tennessee.

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Spike Lee: Government lying about Gulf oil cleanup

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. | Filmmaker Spike Lee is calling a "lie" a U.S. government report that 75 percent of the spilled Gulf Coast oil is gone.

Speaking to a meeting of the Television Critics Association on Saturday, Lee said journalists should expose what he called the real story. He argued that it's unlikely that "abracadabra, presto chango" the vast majority of the oil has vanished from Gulf of Mexico waters and coastal wetlands.

Federal scientists said last week that nearly three-quarters of the oil has been removed by various artificial or natural means, but that the spill's effect on wildlife will long continue.

Lee was promoting his new documentary about New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. "If God is Willing and Da Creek Don't Rise," a follow-up to his 2006 film about the hurricane, debuts Aug. 23 and 24 on HBO.

The Associated Press reports “Spike Lee is calling a ‘lie’ a U.S. government report that 75 percent of the spilled Gulf Coast oil is gone.”

According to the AP, “Lee said journalists should expose what he called the real story. He argued that it’s unlikely that ‘abracadabra, presto chango’ the vast majority of the oil has vanished from Gulf of Mexico waters and coastal wetlands.”

A report on deadline.com reveals one hour of Spike Lee’s Katrina movie to be dedicated to BP’s Gulf oil disaster.

Lee said, “It’s really eye-opening the power that BP has. There’s no way it should be dictating what’s going on. But it shows the power of the company.”

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Ahmadinejad: 9/11 scenario dubious

Press TV

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says Western media hyped the September 11, 2001 attacks to pave the way for the US-led invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq.

"What was the story behind September 11? In the space of five to six days, and with the aid of the media, they swayed public opinion to the point of considering an attack on Afghanistan and Iraq permissible and a right [for themselves]," he said in a televised speech.

The president went on to add that while 3,000 deaths had been announced, no report containing the names of these victims had been released.

"Presently, more than 110,000 people [have been killed] in Afghanistan and over one million people have been killed across Iraq. But they will not allow [the figures to be made public]. How? [By] using media and fabricated news," he was quoted by IRIB as saying.

The Iranian president made the remarks on Saturday at a ceremony in Tehran marking the eve of the National Press Day.

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