35,000 Worldwide Convicted for Terror

At least 35,000 people worldwide have been convicted as terrorists in the
decade since the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. But while some
bombed hotels or blew up buses, others were put behind bars for waving a
political sign or blogging about a protest.

In the first tally ever done of global anti-terror arrests and
convictions, The Associated Press documented a surge in prosecutions under
new or toughened anti-terror laws, often passed at the urging and with the
funding of the West. Before 9/11, just a few hundred people were convicted
of terrorism each year.

The sheer volume of convictions, along with almost 120,000 arrests, shows
how a keen global awareness of terrorism has seeped into societies, and
how the war against it is shifting to the courts. But it also suggests
that dozens of countries are using the fight against terrorism to curb
dissent and throw political opponents in jail.

http://breakallchains.blogspot.com/2011/09/35000-worldwide-convicted-for-terror.html

Woolly Rhino Fossil Discovery in Tibet

A new paper published in the journal Science reveals the discovery of a primitive woolly rhino fossil in the Himalayas, which suggests some giant mammals first evolved in present-day Tibet before the beginning of the Ice Age. The extinction of Ice Age giants such as woolly mammoths and rhinos, giant sloths, and saber-tooth cats has been widely studied, but much less is known about where these giants came from, and how they acquired their adaptations for living in a cold environment.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110901142100.htm

Rick Perry: Consistently Wrong on Social Security

Republican presidential candidate Gov. Rick Perry’s statements about Social Security have been consistently false or misleading, and completely out of touch with the American people. At best, they reveal a dangerous ignorance about Social Security, a program that has provided essential economic security to America’s working families for the past 76 years. At worst, they telegraph the candidate’s willingness to disregard and distort the facts, and his deep hostility to Social Security. Governor Perry has said:

• Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. Wrong.
• The idea that Social Security will be there for today’s young people is a “monstrous lie.” Wrong.
• Social Security is unconstitutional. Wrong.
• We need to consider raising the retirement age. Wrong.
• We need to consider means testing Social Security. Wrong.

http://www.truth-out.org/rick-perry-consistently-wrong-social-security/1314989236

We're Not Broke, Just Twisted: Extreme Wealth Inequality in America

193,000 Jobs: The True Cost of the Wasted $60 Billion in Iraq and Afghanistan

193,000 jobs. That's what we could have created, at minimum, for the money that war contractors wasted in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Associated Press reported on Wednesday that "as $60 billion in U.S. funds has been lost to waste and fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade through lax oversight of contractors, poor planning and payoffs to warlords and insurgents, an independent panel investigating U.S. wartime spending estimates."

Sixty billion dollars is a massive amount of money to blow on two wars that don't make us safer, to say nothing of the basic scandal that the taxpayers did not get what they paid for. When you consider what that amount of money would have done had it been spent here at home, the scandal becomes a massive disgrace.

A 2009 study by the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst) shows that military spending ("wasted" spending or not) is a poor creator of jobs. If you take $1 billion from the military budget and just give it back to taxpayers, you'd create about 28 percent more jobs. If you took that same $1 billion and spent it on education, you'd create 150 percent more jobs. Put another way, at minimum, for every billion dollars you move out of the domestic economy and spend on military purposes, you essentially destroy at least 3,222 jobs.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/09/03-0

Bank of America, JPMorgan Among 17 Banks Sued by U.S.

Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) were among 17 banks sued by the U.S. to recoup $196 billion spent on mortgage-backed securities bought by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency, on behalf of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, filed 17 lawsuits yesterday in New York state and federal courts and in federal court in Connecticut. The FHFA accuses the banks of misleading Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac about the soundness of the mortgages underlying the securities.

“The loans had different and more risky characteristics than the descriptions contained in the marketing and sales materials provided to the enterprises for those securities,” the FHFA said in a statement.

FHFA is seeking to rescind the transactions plus other damages, including civil penalties and punitive damages in cases alleging misconduct.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-03/jpmorgan-bofa-among-17-banks-sued-by-fhfa-over-196-billion-in-securities.html

Sheriff Saves $1 Million By De-Privatizing County Jail

Privatization has nothing to do with saving money and everything to do with giving kickbacks to politically connected contractors like Corrections Corporation of America:

Sheriff Michael Page of Hernando County, Florida, is the latest in a line of Sheriffs to inherit the headache that is the county jail. After being operated by CCA for 22 years, the facility had fallen into exceptional disrepair, after CCA had neglected to perform millions of dollars worth of required maintenance. The county took over the facility a little more than a year ago and started the long process of upgrading the security, staff, and conditions of the jail.

Initial projections by then-Sheriff Richard Nugent hypothesized that the county could save up to $200,000 compared to what CCA would have charged. It turns out that de-privatizing the jail has actually saved Hernando County taxpayers more than $1,000,000 this year. Maybe Ric Scott and JD Alexander ought to reconsider their bullheaded push to privatize half the state’s prison system.

http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/sheriff-saves-1-million-de-privatizin

Colbert Report: Three Billy Goats Gruff Budget Negotiations

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The Tea Party is the Enemy - Make No Apologies

Liberals tend to apologize for their outbursts. We even apologize for defending ourselves against some very unreasonable attacks from Republicans. Conservatives know that and like any form of predator take full advantage. Almost every time you see a liberal blast a conservative figure or activity, some conservative will announce they are outraged by the allegations or lack of civility and next thing you know, the liberal is apologizing and the conservative is smiling smugly for getting away with another one.

Our political discourse has been shaped by these types of exchanges for a decade. It has to change, and it seems to be changing, since the popular revolutions in Wisconsin and Michigan, and even nationally, to judge from recent outbursts by members of the Congressional Black Caucus. California Rep. Howard Dean set the stage on Face the Nation in early August by saying, “I think this is a tea party problem, I think they are totally unreasonable, and doctrinaire and not founded in reality, I think they’ve been smoking some of that tea and not just drinking it…”

But Maxine Waters took the Tea Party critique to a whole new level by announcing that “the tea party can go straight to hell!”

I know I wasn’t alone in cheering this courageous woman for saying what millions of us are thinking and looking forward to expressing in 2012.

Polls show that Americans increasingly agree with this sentiment, including a Pew poll from April of this year which reveals declining approval even among Republicans. Indeed, Tea Partiers are the only ones who show no awareness that as a movement of any substance they’re living on borrowed time.

This reversal in Tea Party fortunes is a positive trend and it has been too long coming. It is unfortunate that we had to let them bring the us to the brink of ruin before America woke up to the threat and began to do what was necessary.

http://www.politicususa.com/en/the-tea-party-is-the-enemy-make-no-apologies

Taliban Kidnap 30 Pakistani Children

The boys had either inadvertently wandered across the unmarked border or had been lured over according to reports and were then seized by fugitive militants.

Intelligence officials said the captors were apparently allied with Maulvi Faqir Mohammad the Taliban commander who led insurgents in Pakistan’s Bajaur tribal agency until fleeing to Afghanistan last year.

The 10 to 18-year-olds crossed from the Gharkhi area of Bajaur into Afghanistan’s eastern Kunar province on Thursday.

At first 40 were seized, but those aged under 12 were allowed home the following day.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/8737787/Taliban-kidnap-30-Pakistani-children.html

Right-Wing Commentator: Poor People Voting is ‘Un-American’

Many conservatives appear to think badly of poor people, but Matthew Vadum of the Capital Research Center takes it a step further. According to the title of his latest article for American Thinker, he believes that "registering the poor to vote is un-American."

"Why are left-wing activist groups so keen on registering the poor to vote?" Vadum asks. "Because they know the poor can be counted on to vote themselves more benefits by electing redistributionist politicians. Welfare recipients are particularly open to demagoguery and bribery."

"Registering them to vote is like handing out burglary tools to criminals," he continues. "It is profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population to destroy the country-- which is precisely why Barack Obama zealously supports registering welfare recipients to vote. ... Encouraging those who burden society to participate in elections isn't about helping the poor. It's about helping the poor to help themselves to others' money."

Vadum goes on to claim that "registering the unproductive to vote is an idea that was heavily promoted by the small-c communists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven" -- and if that assertion sounds suspiciously like the similar theories involving Cloward and Piven promoted by Glenn Beck, it is no coincidence.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/09/02/right-wing-commentator-poor-people-voting-is-un-american

US Lagging Behind in Prevention of Newborn Deaths

A report published earlier this week shows that while mortality rates for infants in the first month of life have declined globally over the past 20 years, progress has slowed, particularly in countries suffering from the highest rates. Significantly, the study documents the fact that the United States, the world’s wealthiest industrial nation, has fallen to 41^st place worldwide in neonatal deaths per 1,000 live births, placing it next to last among developed countries.

 

Newborns in the US are more than three times as likely to die as those in Japan. The US is tied near the bottom of industrial nations with Serbia and Croatia. Only Latvia, with six deaths per live births, ranks lower.

 

The United States, which spends the greatest percentage of its GDP on health care of any country in world, has a neonatal mortality rate of 4.3 per 1,000 live births placing it even with Qatar (4.3) and below Poland (4.0), Cuba (2.9), South Korea (2.2.) and Cyprus (1.6).

http://wsws.org/articles/2011/sep2011/mort-s03.shtml

Time for Good Republicans to Oust Whacko Republicans

The Federal Election Commission agreed Thursday to investigate a complaint GOP presidential candidate Fred Karger filed last month against Fox News, according to Karger’s presidential campaign.

The substance of Karger’s complaint, filed under the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, is that Fox News did not allow him to participate in the network’s televised presidential debate on Aug. 11 in Ames, Iowa.

“I qualified for last month’s Fox News Channel Debate fair-and-square, and was fully expecting to be on that stage in Ames,” Karger said in a press statement Thursday. “For some reason, Fox News did not want me debating the other presidential candidates.”

Karger claims he met all of Fox’s requirements to participate in the debate, which included reaching an average of 1 percent in five national polls based on most recent polling leading up to the registration day. Karger met the mark: achieving    1 percent support in four polls leading up to the debate (including a Fox News poll from April) and 2 percent support in a Harris Interactive poll from early August, in which he tied with former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who is no longer in the race.

According to Karger’s campaign, after Karger met Fox’s requirement, the network “changed its criteria in order to exclude Karger.” Last month, Fox News Vice President of News Michael Clemente told The Des Moines Register that Karger did not qualify for the debate because the polls he cited were not good enough.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/09/time-for-good-republicans-to-oust-whacko-republicans/244492

FEC to Investigate Fox News’ Refusal to Let GOP Candidate Karger into Presidential Debate

The Federal Election Commission agreed Thursday to investigate a complaint GOP presidential candidate Fred Karger filed last month against Fox News, according to Karger’s presidential campaign.

The substance of Karger’s complaint, filed under the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, is that Fox News did not allow him to participate in the network’s televised presidential debate on Aug. 11 in Ames, Iowa.

“I qualified for last month’s Fox News Channel Debate fair-and-square, and was fully expecting to be on that stage in Ames,” Karger said in a press statement Thursday. “For some reason, Fox News did not want me debating the other presidential candidates.”

Karger claims he met all of Fox’s requirements to participate in the debate, which included reaching an average of 1 percent in five national polls based on most recent polling leading up to the registration day. Karger met the mark: achieving    1 percent support in four polls leading up to the debate (including a Fox News poll from April) and 2 percent support in a Harris Interactive poll from early August, in which he tied with former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who is no longer in the race.

According to Karger’s campaign, after Karger met Fox’s requirement, the network “changed its criteria in order to exclude Karger.” Last month, Fox News Vice President of News Michael Clemente told The Des Moines Register that Karger did not qualify for the debate because the polls he cited were not good enough.

http://www.americanindependent.com/192247/fec-to-investigate-fox-news-refusal-to-let-gop-candidate-karger-into-presidential-debate

Pat Bagley, Copyright 2011 Cagle Cartoons

Turkey Expels Israel Ambassador Over Flotilla Raid

Turkey expelled Israel's ambassador and will cut military ties with the country over its refusal to apologize for last year's deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla, officials said Friday, further straining a relationship that had been a cornerstone of regional stability.

Turkey's move came before the anticipated publication Friday of a U.N. report about the Israeli raid, which killed nine activists. The breakdown in ties also raised concerns that other countries, including Egypt and Jordan, may follow suit by recalling ambassadors and increase Israel's alienation in the region.

"If this ends with Turkey, it will be a miracle," said Alon Liel, a former Israeli ambassador to Turkey. "There is a lot of internal pressure in Egypt, and Turkey could use its clout in the Arab and Muslim world to pressure other nations to follow suit."

Relations between Turkey and Israel were once close — Turkey had mediated several rounds of indirect negotiations between Israel and Syria in 2008, but the talks made no significant headway and were suspended following the Israeli military offensive in Gaza the following year.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=14433830

U.S. Right Wing and GOP Presidential Candidates Spreading Paranoid Anti-Muslim Hysteria as Part of Take-Over Strategy

The Islamophobic crusade raging across the country is in line with longstanding goals and methods of conservative organizing, and is being used to further big business's agenda.

The sudden rise of Islamophobia in the United States is alarming while the movement that advances anti-Muslim resentment seems bizarre and filled with eccentric, even dangerous characters. But when viewed in the context of a new, groundbreaking research document by the Center for American Progress and an obscure, decades-old political memorandum by a long-forgotten former Supreme Court Justice, the Islamophobic crusade raging across the country appears perfectly in line with longstanding goals and methods of conservative organizing, and appears to focused on much more than demonizing Muslims.

In 1971, former US Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell submitted a confidential memorandum to his friend, Eugene Sydnor, the chairman of the US Chamber of Commerce, an umbrella group representing American big business. Powell, who was serving on the boards of 11 corporations at the time, warned that America was suffering from a surplus of democratic freedom thanks to the legacy of the New Left and the countercultural revolt of the 1960's. He declared, "No thoughtful person can question that the American economic system is under broad attack." Powell warned that "Communists, New Leftists and other revolutionaries" were joining forces with "perfectly respectable elements of society from the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians" to bring down American capitalism.

http://www.alternet.org/story/152274/u.s_right_wing_and_gop_presidential_candidates_spreading_paranoid_anti-muslim_hysteria_as_part_of_take-over_strategy/?page=entire

Condi Rice Fires Back at Dick Cheney

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice joins Colin Powell in protesting claims made by Dick Cheney in his memoir.

The heads are still exploding from former vice president Dick Cheney's recently published memoir.

The latest blow-up, on Wednesday, came from former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Rice spoke out against several claims about her in Cheney’s book, “In My Time: A Personal and Professional Memoir,” saying that she viewed it as an “attack on my integrity.”

In an interview with Reuters Wednesday, Rice protested Cheney’s suggestion that she had misled President George W. Bush about nuclear diplomacy with North Korea.

"I kept the president fully and completely informed about every in and out of the negotiations with the North Koreans," Rice told Reuters in her first public comments on the matter. "You can talk about policy differences without suggesting that your colleague somehow misled the president. You know, I don't appreciate the attack on my integrity that that implies."

In the book, Cheney argues former Secretary of State Rice was naïve for trying to reach a nuclear weapons agreement with North Korea and that the concessions she delivered to Kim Jong Il were wrong. He called her advice on the issue “utterly misleading.”

Cheney was also extremely critical in the book of anyone who he said stood in the way of the president’s Iraq war plan, including Rice. He chided Rice for clashing with White House advisors on the tone of the president’s speeches on Iraq.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2011/0901/Condi-Rice-fires-back-at-Dick-Cheney

Job Growth at Halt in U.S. - Worst Showing in 11 Months

The economy failed to add new jobs in August, the first time there has been no increase in net jobs in the United States in 11 months.

The flat performance was down sharply from a revised 85,000 gain of jobs in July, the Labor Department said Friday, and was far below a consensus forecast by economists of 60,000 new jobs. The unemployment rate stayed constant at 9.1 percent in August.

The nonfarm payrolls numbers were unchanged after a prolonged increase in economic anxiety in August that began with the brinksmanship in Washington’s debt-ceiling debate, followed by the country’s loss of its triple-A credit rating, stock market whiplash and renewed concerns about Europe’s sovereign debt.

Wall Street stocks promptly lost more than 2 percent of their value at the opening of trading. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 210 points Friday morning to 11,280.07.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/03/business/economy/united-states-showed-no-job-growth-in-august.html?_r=1

The True Cost of 9/11: Trillions and Trillions Wasted on Wars, a Fiscal Catastrophe, and a Weaker America

The Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks by al-Qaida were meant to harm the United States, and they did, but in ways that Osama Bin Laden probably never imagined. President George W. Bush's response to the attacks compromised America's basic principles, undermined its economy, and weakened its security.

The attack on Afghanistan that followed the 9/11 attacks was understandable, but the subsequent invasion of Iraq was entirely unconnected to al-Qaida—as much as Bush tried to establish a link. That war of choice quickly became very expensive—orders of magnitude beyond the $60 billion claimed at the beginning—as colossal incompetence met dishonest misrepresentation.

Indeed, when Linda Bilmes and I calculated America's war costs three years ago, the conservative tally was $3 trillion to $5 trillion. Since then, the costs have mounted further. With almost 50 percent of returning troops eligible to receive some level of disability payment, and more than 600,000 treated so far in veterans' medical facilities, we now estimate that future disability payments and health care costs will total $600 billion to $900 billion. The social costs, reflected in veteran suicides (which have topped 18 per day in recent years) and family breakups, are incalculable.

http://www.slate.com/id/2302949