Society

US Government Preparing For Civil Unrest In America

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Legislation to Establish Internment Camps on US Military Bases

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FEMA Camps Courtesy of Google Earth (Click on image to enlarge.)

The Economic and Social Crisis

The financial meltdown has unleashed a latent and emergent social crisis across the United States.

What is at stake is the fraudulent confiscation of lifelong savings and pension funds, the appropriation of tax revenues to finance the trillion dollar “bank bailouts”, which ultimately serve to line the pockets of the richest people in America.

This economic crisis is in large part the result of financial manipulation and outright fraud to the detriment of entire populations, leading to a renewed wave of corporate bankruptcies, mass unemployment and poverty.

The criminalization of the global financial system, characterized by a “Shadow Banking” network has resulted in the centralization of bank power and an unprecedented concentration of private wealth.

Obama’s “economic stimulus” package and budget proposals contribute to a further process of concentration and centralization of bank power, the cumulative effects of which will eventually resul in large scale corporate, bankruptcies, a new wave of foreclosures not to mention fiscal collapse and the downfall of State social programs. (For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, America’s Fiscal Collapse, Global Research, March 2, 2009).

The cumulative decline of real economic activity backlashes on employment and wages, which in turn leads to a collapse in purchaisng power. The proposed “solution” under the Obama administration contributes to exacerbating rather than alleviating social inequalities and the process of wealth concentration.

The Protest Movement

When people across America, whose lives have been shattered and destroyed, come to realize the true face of the global “free market” system, the legitimacy of  Wall Street, the Federal Reserve and the US administration will be challenged.

A latent protest movement directed against the seat of economic and political power is unfolding.

How this process will occur is hard to predict. All sectors of American society are potentially affected: wage earners, small, medium and even large businesses, farmers, professionals, federal, State and municipal employees, students, teachers, health workers, and unemployed. Protests will initially emerge from these various sectors. There is, however, at this stage, no organized national resistance movement directed against the administration’s economic and financial agenda.

Obama’s populist rhetoric conceals the true nature of macro-economic policy. Acting on behalf of Wall Street, the administration’s economic package, which includes close to a trillion dollar “aid” package for the financial services industry, coupled with massive austerity measures,  contributes to precipitating America into a bottomless crisis.

“Orwellian Solution” to the Great Depression: Curbing Civil Unrest

At this particular juncture, there is no economic recovery program in sight. The Washington-Wall Street consensus prevails. There are no policies, no alternatives formulated from within the political and economic system. .

What is the way out? How will the US government face an impending social catastrophe?

The solution is to curb social unrest. The chosen avenue, inherited from the outgoing Bush administration is the reinforcement of  the Homeland Security apparatus and the militarization of civilian State institutions.

The outgoing administration has laid the groundwork. Various pieces of “anti-terrorist” legislation (including the Patriot Acts) and presidential directives have been put in place since 2001, largely using the pretext of the “Global War on Terrorism.”

Homeland Security’s Internment Camps

Directly related to the issue of curbing social unrest, cohesive system of detention camps is also envisaged, under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon.

A bill entitled the National Emergency Centers Establishment Act (HR 645) was introduced in the US Congress in January. It calls for the establishment of six national emergency centers in major regions in the US to be located on existing military installations. http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-645

The stated purpose of  the “national emergency centers” is to provide “temporary housing, medical, and humanitarian assistance to individuals and families dislocated due to an emergency or major disaster.” In actuality, what we are dealing with are FEMA internment camps. HR 645 states that the camps can be used to “meet other appropriate needs, as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security.”

There has been virtually no press coverage of HR 645.

These “civilian facilities” on US military bases are to be established in cooperation with the US Military. Modeled on Guantanamo, what we are dealing with is the militarization of FEMA internment facilities.

Once a person is arrested and interned in a FEMA camp located on a military base, that person would in all likelihood, under a national emergency, fall under the de facto jurisdiction of the Military: civilian justice and law enforcement including habeas corpus would no longer apply.

HR 645 bears a direct relationship to the economic crisis and the likelihood of mass protests across America. It constitutes a further move to militarize civilian law enforcement, repealing the Posse Comitatus Act.

In the words of  Rep. Ron Paul:

“…the fusion centers, militarized police, surveillance cameras and a domestic military command is not enough… Even though we know that detention facilities are already in place, they now want to legalize the construction of FEMA camps on military installations using the ever popular excuse that the facilities are for the purposes of a national emergency. With the phony debt-based economy getting worse and worse by the day, the possibility of civil unrest is becoming a greater threat to the establishment. One need only look at Iceland, Greece and other nations for what might happen in the United States next.” (Daily Paul, September 2008, emphasis added)

The proposed internment camps should be seen in relation to the broader process of militarization of civilian institutions. The construction of internment camps predates the introduction of HR 645 (Establishment of Emergency Centers) in January 2009. There are, according to various (unconfirmed) reports, some 800 FEMA prison camps in different regions of the U.S. Moreover, since the 1980s, the US military has developed “tactics, techniques and procedures” to suppress civilian dissent, to be used in the eventuality of mass protests (United States Army Field Manual 19-15 under Operation Garden Plot, entitled “Civil Disturbances” was issued in 1985)

Read moreUS Government Preparing For Civil Unrest In America

US: Emergency Internet Control Bill Gets A Rewrite

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Sen. Jay Rockefeller alarmed technology and telecommunications firms last year when he announced a plan for the president to seize “emergency” control of the Internet. Now the West Virginia Democrat is trying again with a new version that aides hope will be seen as less extreme.

During a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill on Wednesday attended by about a dozen industry representatives, CNET has learned, Rockefeller’s staff pitched a revised version of his controversial cybersecurity legislation.

It says that after the president chooses to “declare a cybersecurity emergency,” he can activate a “response and restoration plan” involving networks owned and operated by the private sector. In an attempt to limit criticism, instead of spelling out the plan’s details, the latest draft simply says that it must be developed by the White House in advance.

There is no requirement that the emergency response plan be made public, meaning it could still include a forcible disconnection of critical Web sites from the Internet–which is what the March 2009 version of the legislation had proposed.

Read moreUS: Emergency Internet Control Bill Gets A Rewrite

Irish Catholic Church Paid Child Sex Abuse Victim To Keep Quiet

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Reports of settlement overseen by bishop of Derry adds to abuse scandals surrounding Catholic churches in Europe

The Catholic church in Ireland was today embroiled in another child abuse scandal after allegations that a victim was paid to keep quiet in a deal overseen by the bishop of Derry.

Bishop Seamus Hegarty was named as a party in a confidential civil settlement after a woman claimed she was abused by a priest for more than a decade, according to a report in today’s Belfast Telegraph. According to the newspaper, the claim was settled without admission of liability but with a payment of £12,000 to the alleged victim. The settlement between the archdiocese of Derry and the woman, who was eight when the abuse began, reportedly contained a confidentiality clause preventing her from discussing the case.

See also:

– Catholic Church Child Abuse: Nuns Now Also Accused (Radio Netherlands Worldwide)

– Church: Pope Had Role in Moving Molesting Priest (Bloomberg)

– Pope knew priest was paedophile but allowed him to continue with ministry (Times)

– Pope will struggle to survive abuse scandal (Irish Independent)

– Benedict’s involvement ’shows extent of cover-ups’ (Irish Independent)

– Sinead O’Connor: I’d help Jesus to burn down the Vatican (Irish Independent)

– RIGHTS-GERMANY: ‘Catholic Church Protects Paedophile Priests’ (IPS)

– Child abuse claims sweep Catholic Church in Europe (AP)

Her ordeal allegedly began in 1979 and lasted for a decade before she revealed at her 18th birthday party that she had been repeatedly abused by the priest.

The allegation came as further developments in similar abuse scandals in Germany and Austria compounded the woes of Pope Benedict XVI. In Germany, the archbishop of Munich, Reinhard Marx, said Catholic bishops in Benedict’s home state of Bavaria felt “deep consternation and shame” at the reports of abuse.

Read moreIrish Catholic Church Paid Child Sex Abuse Victim To Keep Quiet

Pharma Backed Australian of the Year Psychiatrist Wants Millions in Government Funding for Brave New World of “Pre-Drugging” Kids

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Who is Patrick McGorry and what does he promote?  He’s a psychiatrist just named Australian of the Year for his work in “youth mental health reform.”  What does that reform consist of?  What he calls a “new form of climate change.” It sure is.

[See TIME Magazine Article “Drugs Before Diagnosis?”]

He not only promotes youths being put on antipsychotics and antidepressants, cited by international drug regulatory agencies as causing hallucinations, hostility, personality change, life-threatening diabetes, strokes, suicide and death, McGorry goes a giant step further-drug them before they’ve even developed a “psychiatric” disorder.

The Association for the Accreditation of Human Research Protection Programs (AHRPP) likens such concepts to “performing mastectomies on women who are at risk of-but do not have-breast cancer.”[i]

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has expressed “serious concerns” about child drugging and Senate investigations in the United States have found high profile psychiatrists who were pharmaceutically funded and using fraudulent research being among the heaviest promoters of psychiatric drug use on children. While the rest of the world is experiencing serious alarm at the rampant use of deadly psychiatric drugs on children, McGorry pushes full steam ahead to increase the amount of children being needlessly subjected to psychiatry’s most powerful drugs-antidepressants and antipsychotics.

His theory and practices are so controversial that even his colleagues in the United States have backed away from it.  And a parallel study done in the United States based on the same theory that McGorry uses was considered an abject failure-even by the investigators themselves.  Other psychiatrists have criticized McGorry’s pre-drugging practice as unethical and harmful to adolescents.  More on that later.

This is especially so as the “symptoms” McGorry and cohorts invented to “pre-label” youths as potential candidates for psychosis and “schizophrenia” (to start with) are, according to one U.S. psychiatrist, “remarkably common…adolescence is a period of life that is normally marked by tumultuous changes in personality.”

And what was the first thing he did to capitalize on his winning his “Australian of the Year” award?  He demanded the Australian government hand over another $200 million to fund more of his centers where he can drug more children.  Worse, the government is entertaining the idea.

Read morePharma Backed Australian of the Year Psychiatrist Wants Millions in Government Funding for Brave New World of “Pre-Drugging” Kids

Russia: Bloggers Battle Corrupt Bureaucrats

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Russian blogger Alexander Malyutin as he speaks in his office in Moscow in 2009

MOSCOW — It started with a golden bed and African drummers and led to Russia’s latest, surprising, political duel pitting tenacious bloggers against bureaucrats whose excesses went a step too far.

Russians typically shrug their shoulders at the lavish lifestyles of government officials, assuming nothing can be done about bureaucrats who take bribes and pocket state funds.

But when Russia’s interior ministry announced plans to buy a golden bed, it raised an outcry — and revealed the potential of the Internet for stirring up outrage against entrenched corruption.

While the docile, state-dominated media looks the other way, a small but determined group of Russian bloggers is challenging corrupt bureaucrats, rallying public opinion and goading prosecutors into action.

Their blogs have attracted unanticipated popularity, reflecting deep-seated anger at the high-handed behavior of officials in Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s government.

“I didn’t expect the blog to become so popular,” said Alexander Malyutin, who runs a blog devoted to exposing suspicious government tenders, including the interior ministry’s infamous golden bed purchase.

Last August, the ministry announced plans to buy 24 million rubles (800,000 dollars) worth of furniture, including a bed “covered with a thin layer of 24-carat gold,” according to the official tender documents.

The documents were posted deep within a website where all the government’s purchases must be published, under a law passed in 2005 during one of the Kremlin’s periodic efforts to root out corruption.

After bloggers and journalists exposed the plans, the ministry defended itself from ridicule by saying the bed was needed for a special VIP guesthouse in Moscow where it hosts foreign officials.

Read moreRussia: Bloggers Battle Corrupt Bureaucrats

Catholic Church Child Abuse: Nuns Now Also Accused

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Following recent reports about sexual abuse of children by Dutch priests, it now appears that some nuns also took advantage of their charges. Tuesday’s edition of newspaper De Telegraaf contains the story of Herman Harends, who says he was abused by nuns at a Roman Catholic boarding school he attended in the 1950s.

Radio Netherlands Worldwide and newspaper NRC Handelsblad published their report on sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic church two weeks ago. Since then, more and people have come forward, saying they, too, were childhood victims.

Mr Harends and his two brothers attended a boarding school in the southern Dutch town of Tegelen.
“I have not spoken out before because it is a hard claim to substantiate,” he explains, “I’m not looking for atonement or apologies, most of the nuns have died.”

“The abuse by the sisters started when I was 11. When I was in the bath they played with my penis and tried to give me an erection … They would also put my hand under their robes and into their underwear.”

Read moreCatholic Church Child Abuse: Nuns Now Also Accused

IRS visits Sacramento carwash in pursuit of 4 cents!!!

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A midtown fixture for years, Harv’s Car Wash was a target for the Internal Revenue service for a delinquent tax bill of 4 cents.

It was every businessperson’s nightmare.

Arriving at Harv’s Metro Car Wash in midtown Wednesday afternoon were two dark-suited IRS agents demanding payment of delinquent taxes. “They were deadly serious, very aggressive, very condescending,” says Harv’s owner, Aaron Zeff.

The really odd part of this: The letter that was hand-delivered to Zeff’s on-site manager showed the amount of money owed to the feds was … 4 cents.

Inexplicably, penalties and taxes accruing on the debt – stemming from the 2006 tax year – were listed as $202.31, leaving Harv’s with an obligation of $202.35.

Zeff, who also owns local parking lots and is the president of the Midtown Business Association, finds the situation a bit comical.

“It’s hilarious,” he says, “that two people hopped in a car and came down here for just 4 cents. I think (the IRS) may have a problem with priorities.”

Now he’s trying to figure out how penalties and interest could climb so high on such a small debt. He says he’s never been told he owes any taxes or that he’s ever incurred any late-payment penalties in the four years he’s owned Harv’s.

In fact, he provided us with an Oct. 22, 2009, letter from the IRS that states Harv’s “has filed all required returns and addressed any balances due.”

IRS spokesman Jesse Weller isn’t commenting “due to privacy and disclosure laws.”

Read moreIRS visits Sacramento carwash in pursuit of 4 cents!!!

Church: Pope Had Role in Moving Molesting Priest

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– Pope knew priest was paedophile but allowed him to continue with ministry (Times)

– Pope will struggle to survive abuse scandal (Irish Independent)

– Benedict’s involvement ‘shows extent of cover-ups’ (Irish Independent)

– Sinead O’Connor: I’d help Jesus to burn down the Vatican (Irish Independent)

– RIGHTS-GERMANY: ‘Catholic Church Protects Paedophile Priests’ (IPS)

– Child abuse claims sweep Catholic Church in Europe (AP)

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Pope Benedict XVI prays in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem on May 15, 2009. Photographer: Yannis Behrakis/Pool via Bloomberg News

March 12 (Bloomberg) — Pope Benedict XVI, during his tenure as archbishop of Munich, played a role in a decision to move a priest accused of sexual molestation to his diocese to undergo therapy, the church said today.

The priest was later reassigned by another church official and committed more abuse, the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising said in a statement on its Web site. Benedict, at the time Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger, “was involved” in a 1980 decision to move the priest, identified only as “H.,” from a church in Essen, Germany, to a rectory in the Munich region for treatment, the diocese said.

A former vicar-general in the church administration, Gerhard Gruber, subsequently allowed the accused priest to continue pastoral duties, during which he committed abuse and was convicted by a court in 1986. Gruber said in the statement that the decision to re-post “H.” was his alone.

“The repeated employment of ‘H.’ in pastoral duties was a serious mistake,” Gruber said. “I take full responsibility for this and I deeply regret that this decision led to offenses against youths — I apologize to all those who were harmed by this.”

A wave of allegations of sexual abuse by Catholic priests has emerged in Germany this year, beginning at an elite Jesuit high school in Berlin, Canisius-Kolleg. The head of the German Bishops’ Conference, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, last month issued an apology to more than 100 pedophilia victims, echoing Benedict’s statement that such abuse is a “heinous crime.”

Read moreChurch: Pope Had Role in Moving Molesting Priest

French bread spiked with LSD in CIA experiment

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A 50-year mystery over the ‘cursed bread’ of Pont-Saint-Esprit, which left residents suffering hallucinations, has been solved after a writer discovered the US had spiked the bread with LSD as part of an experiment.

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An American investigative journalist has uncovered evidence suggesting the CIA peppered local food with the hallucinogenic drug LSD

In 1951, a quiet, picturesque village in southern France was suddenly and mysteriously struck down with mass insanity and hallucinations. At least five people died, dozens were interned in asylums and hundreds afflicted.

For decades it was assumed that the local bread had been unwittingly poisoned with a psychedelic mould. Now, however, an American investigative journalist has uncovered evidence suggesting the CIA peppered local food with the hallucinogenic drug LSD as part of a mind control experiment at the height of the Cold War.

The mystery of Le Pain Maudit (Cursed Bread) still haunts the inhabitants of Pont-Saint-Esprit, in the Gard, southeast France.

On August 16, 1951, the inhabitants were suddenly racked with frightful hallucinations of terrifying beasts and fire.

Read moreFrench bread spiked with LSD in CIA experiment

Censorship: New Zealand’s Internet Filter Goes Live

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The Department of Internal Affairs’ (DIA) internet filter is now operational and is being used by internet providers (ISPs) Maxnet and Watchdog.

Thomas Beagle, spokesperson for online freedom lobby Tech Liberty says he’s “very disappointed that the filter is now running, it’s a sad day for the New Zealand internet”.

He told Computerworld the filter went live on February 1 but DIA has delayed announcing that until it held a meeting with its Independent Reference Group. He says he’s disappointed the launch was conducted in such a “stealthy mode”.

The manager of the Department of Internal Affairs’ Censorship Compliance Unit, Steve O’Brien, denies any subterfuge in the launch, saying the trial has been going on for two years and that has been communicated to media for “quite some time”.

“The Independent Reference Group has met and the filter system processes were demonstrated as set out in the code of practice, that is that the website filtering system prevents access to known websites containing images of child sexual abuse,” says O’Brien.

Beagle says the DIA refuses to say which other ISPs will be joining the filter, claiming the right to negotiate in secret.

Read moreCensorship: New Zealand’s Internet Filter Goes Live

US: Mass School Closures Approved in Kansas City, Mo.

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In this photo taken Feb. 28, 2010, unused space is seen in the Board of Education building in Kansas City, Mo. The district will renew efforts to sell the administration building, which is less than half used, to help cut $50 million from next years budget. (AP Photo/Orlin Wagner)
In this photo taken Feb. 28, 2010, unused space is seen in the Board of Education building in Kansas City, Mo. The district will renew efforts to sell the administration building, which is less than half used, to help cut $50 million from next years budget. (AP Photo/Orlin Wagner)

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Kansas City school board narrowly approved a plan Wednesday night to close nearly half the district’s schools in a desperate bid to avoid a potential bankruptcy.

The board voted 5-4 after parents and community leaders made final pleas to spare the schools even as the beleaguered district seeks to erase a projected $50 million budget shortfall. The approved plan calls for shuttering 29 of 61 schools – a striking amount even as public school closures rise nationwide while the recession eats away at academic budgets.

“The urban core has suffered white flight post-the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown v. the Board of Education, blockbusting by the real estate industry, redlining by banks and other financial institutions, retail and grocery store abandonment,” Kansas City Councilwoman Sharon Sanders Brooks said to applause from a standing-room-only crowd of more than 200 people.

“And now the public education system is aiding and abetting in the economic demise of our school district,” she said. “It is shameful and sinful.”

Read moreUS: Mass School Closures Approved in Kansas City, Mo.

US: Study finds median wealth for single black women at $5

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See also:

– US: 43% Have Less Than $10k For Retirement

– US: Wealth Disparities Approaching 1920s Levels

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Women of all races bring home less income and own fewer assets, on average, than men of the same race, but for single black women the disparities are so overwhelmingly great that even in their prime working years their median wealth amounts to only $5.

In a groundbreaking report released Monday by a leading economic research group, social scientists turned a spotlight on the grave financial challenges facing an often overlooked group of women, many of whom could not take an unpaid sick day or repair a major appliance without going into debt.

“It’s rather shocking,” said Meizhu Lui, director of the Closing the Gap Initiative based in Oakland, Calif., who contributed to the report “Lifting as We Climb: Women of Color, Wealth and America’s Future.”

– Racial disparities in net worth pdf PDF

Among the most startling revelations in the wealth data is that while single white women in the prime of their working years (ages 36 to 49) have a median wealth of $42,600 (still only 61 percent of their single white male counterparts), the median wealth for single black women is only $5.

“Even for those of us who have been looking at the wealth gap for a while, we were shocked and amazed at how little women of color have,” Ms. Lui said.

Researchers at the Insight Center for Community Economic Development, based in Oakland, Calif., analyzed data from the 2007 Survey of Consumer Finances, a voluminous report the Federal Reserve Board issues every three years that examines household finances in this country.

Read moreUS: Study finds median wealth for single black women at $5

US: ID Card for Workers Is at Center of Immigration Plan

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(Wall Street Journal) — Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill have settled on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would eventually be required to obtain.

Under the potentially controversial plan still taking shape in the Senate, all legal U.S. workers, including citizens and immigrants, would be issued an ID card with embedded information, such as fingerprints, to tie the card to the worker.

The ID card plan is one of several steps advocates of an immigration overhaul are taking to address concerns that have defeated similar bills in the past.

The uphill effort to pass a bill is being led by Sens. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), who plan to meet with President Barack Obama as soon as this week to update him on their work. An administration official said the White House had no position on the biometric card.

“It’s the nub of solving the immigration dilemma politically speaking,” Mr. Schumer said in an interview. The card, he said, would directly answer concerns that after legislation is signed, another wave of illegal immigrants would arrive. “If you say they can’t get a job when they come here, you’ll stop it.”

The biggest objections to the biometric cards may come from privacy advocates, who fear they would become de facto national ID cards that enable the government to track citizens.

“It is fundamentally a massive invasion of people’s privacy,” said Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. “We’re not only talking about fingerprinting every American, treating ordinary Americans like criminals in order to work. We’re also talking about a card that would quickly spread from work to voting to travel to pretty much every aspect of American life that requires identification.”

Read moreUS: ID Card for Workers Is at Center of Immigration Plan

Gendercide: The Worldwide War On Baby Girls

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Technology, declining fertility and ancient prejudice are combining to unbalance societies

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XINRAN XUE, a Chinese writer, describes visiting a peasant family in the Yimeng area of Shandong province. The wife was giving birth. “We had scarcely sat down in the kitchen”, she writes (see article), “when we heard a moan of pain from the bedroom next door…The cries from the inner room grew louder-and abruptly stopped. There was a low sob, and then a man’s gruff voice said accusingly: ‘Useless thing!’

“Suddenly, I thought I heard a slight movement in the slops pail behind me,” Miss Xinran remembers. “To my absolute horror, I saw a tiny foot poking out of the pail. The midwife must have dropped that tiny baby alive into the slops pail! I nearly threw myself at it, but the two policemen [who had accompanied me] held my shoulders in a firm grip. ‘Don’t move, you can’t save it, it’s too late.’

“‘But that’s…murder…and you’re the police!’ The little foot was still now. The policemen held on to me for a few more minutes. ‘Doing a baby girl is not a big thing around here,’ [an] older woman said comfortingly. ‘That’s a living child,’ I said in a shaking voice, pointing at the slops pail. ‘It’s not a child,’ she corrected me. ‘It’s a girl baby, and we can’t keep it. Around these parts, you can’t get by without a son. Girl babies don’t count.'”

In January 2010 the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) showed what can happen to a country when girl babies don’t count. Within ten years, the academy said, one in five young men would be unable to find a bride because of the dearth of young women-a figure unprecedented in a country at peace.

Read moreGendercide: The Worldwide War On Baby Girls

The 21st-century African land grab by rich countries facing global food and water shortages

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Highly recommended article.

An Observer investigation reveals how rich countries faced by a global food shortage now farm an area double the size of the UK to guarantee supplies for their citizens

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A woman tends vegetables at a giant Saudi-financed farm in Ethiopia.

We turned off the main road to Awassa, talked our way past security guards and drove a mile across empty land before we found what will soon be Ethiopia’s largest greenhouse. Nestling below an escarpment of the Rift Valley, the development is far from finished, but the plastic and steel structure already stretches over 20 hectares – the size of 20 football pitches.

The farm manager shows us millions of tomatoes, peppers and other vegetables being grown in 500m rows in computer controlled conditions. Spanish engineers are building the steel structure, Dutch technology minimises water use from two bore-holes and 1,000 women pick and pack 50 tonnes of food a day. Within 24 hours, it has been driven 200 miles to Addis Ababa and flown 1,000 miles to the shops and restaurants of Dubai, Jeddah and elsewhere in the Middle East.

Ethiopia is one of the hungriest countries in the world with more than 13 million people needing food aid, but paradoxically the government is offering at least 3m hectares of its most fertile land to rich countries and some of the world’s most wealthy individuals to export food for their own populations.

The 1,000 hectares of land which contain the Awassa greenhouses are leased for 99 years to a Saudi billionaire businessman, Ethiopian-born Sheikh Mohammed al-Amoudi, one of the 50 richest men in the world. His Saudi Star company plans to spend up to $2bn acquiring and developing 500,000 hectares of land in Ethiopia in the next few years. So far, it has bought four farms and is already growing wheat, rice, vegetables and flowers for the Saudi market. It expects eventually to employ more than 10,000 people.

But Ethiopia is only one of 20 or more African countries where land is being bought or leased for intensive agriculture on an immense scale in what may be the greatest change of ownership since the colonial era.

An Observer investigation estimates that up to 50m hectares of land – an area more than double the size of the UK – has been acquired in the last few years or is in the process of being negotiated by governments and wealthy investors working with state subsidies. The data used was collected by Grain, the International Institute for Environment and Development, the International Land Coalition, ActionAid and other non-governmental groups.

The land rush, which is still accelerating, has been triggered by the worldwide food shortages which followed the sharp oil price rises in 2008, growing water shortages and the European Union’s insistence that 10% of all transport fuel must come from plant-based biofuels by 2015.

Read moreThe 21st-century African land grab by rich countries facing global food and water shortages

Vatican Hit By Gay Sex Scandal

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Vatican chorister sacked for allegedly procuring male prostitutes for papal gentleman-in-waiting

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Pope Benedict XVI greets cardinals in the Clementine Hall at the Vatican. Photograph: Max Rossi/AFP/Getty Images

The Vatican was today rocked by a sex scandal reaching into Pope Benedict’s household after a chorister was sacked for allegedly procuring male prostitutes for a papal gentleman-in-waiting.

Angelo Balducci, a Gentleman of His Holiness, was caught by police on a wiretap allegedly negotiating with Thomas Chinedu Ehiem, a 29-year-old Vatican chorister, over the specific physical details of men he wanted brought to him. Transcripts in the possession of the Guardian suggest that numerous men may have been procured for Balducci, at least one of whom was studying for the priesthood.

The explosive claims about Balducci’s private life have caused grave embarrassment to the Vatican, which has yet to publicly comment on the affair.

While Catholicism does not condemn homosexuality outright, its teaching is that homosexual acts “are intrinsically disordered”. The Catechism of the Catholic church states unequivocally: “Under no circumstances can they be approved.”

Balducci was arrested on 10 February, suspected of involvement in widespread corruption. A senior Italian government official, he is alleged to have to steered public works contracts towards favoured bidders. He has not been charged.

It was during this investigation into corruption that wiretaps revealed his alleged sexual activity. In one conversation, Ehiem tells Balducci: “I saw your call when I was in the Vatican, because I was doing rehearsals … in the choir … in St Peter’s.” He then suggests Balducci meet a man who he describes is “two metres tall … 97 kilos … aged 33, completely active.”

Balducci is also a senior adviser to the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, the department that oversees the Roman Catholic church’s worldwide missionary activities.

Read moreVatican Hit By Gay Sex Scandal

Greek Workers Shut Down Transport And Tried To Storm Parliament As Lawmakers Passed 4.8 Billion Euros Budget Cuts

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Empty rail tracks are seen at at the entrance to the Thision underground railway in Athens on March 5, 2010. (Bloomberg)

March 5 (Bloomberg) — Striking Greek workers shut down transport and tried to storm parliament as lawmakers passed 4.8 billion euros ($6.5 billion) in budget cuts, including wage reductions, needed to trim the region’s biggest budget deficit.

Police with riot shields fired tear gas as demonstrators wearing biker helmets and ski masks pelted them with stones outside parliament in Athens where lawmakers approved the measures. Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou told parliament the cuts will show European Union allies and investors that Greece is making good on its deficit pledges.

“We didn’t create this crisis but now we have to pay for it,” said Manthos Adamakis, who was protesting with other catering workers outside the five-star Grande Bretagne Hotel on Syntagma Square in downtown Athens.

Read moreGreek Workers Shut Down Transport And Tried To Storm Parliament As Lawmakers Passed 4.8 Billion Euros Budget Cuts

US Gun Owners Buy 14 Million Plus Guns In 2009 – More Than 21 of the Worlds Standing Armies Combined

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Firearms Manufactures Working Hard To Keep Up

Washington, DC –(AmmoLand.com)- Data released by the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) for the year reported 14,033,824 NICS Checks for the year of 2009, a 10 percent increase in gun purchases from the 12,709,023 reported in 2008.

So far that is roughly 14,000,000+ guns bought last year!

The total is probably more as many NICS background checks cover the purchase of more than one gun at a time by individuals.

To put it in perspective that is more guns than the combined active armies of the top 21 countries in the world. countries by number of troops

Of the NICS background checks preformed less than and average .005% were denied, showing, overwhelmingly, that law abiding American citizens are the ones buying guns and that criminals are getting their guns elsewhere.

14,033,824,000 billions rounds of Ammo

Assuming each gun buyer bought 1000 rounds of ammo for each purchase, and you and I know that it is way, way more than that, that would be easily 14,033,824,000+ billions rounds of ammo fired by USA gun owners.

Read moreUS Gun Owners Buy 14 Million Plus Guns In 2009 – More Than 21 of the Worlds Standing Armies Combined

The Economic Elite Vs. The People of the United States of America

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– I: Casualties of of Economic Terrorism, Surveying the Damage

– II: The Rise of the Economic Elite

– III: Exposing Our Enemy: Meet the Economic Elite

– IV: The Financial Coup d’Etat

– V: Overcoming the Divide and Conquer Strategy

– VI: How to Fight Back and Win: Common Ground Issues That Must Be Won

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Microsoft Downs Cryptome Site After Top-Secret Guide Published

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Surveillance guide gets Cryptome site into hot water.

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The sign at a main entrance to the Microsoft corporate campus. The Redmond Microsoft campus today includes more than 750,000 m² (approx. 8 million square feet) and over 30,000 employees.

The noted government whistleblowing website Cryptome has been taken down after Microsoft saw red over its publication of a top-secret Internet surveillance guide normally shown only to law enforcement agencies.

The 22-page Global Criminal Compliance Handbook contains a reasonably detailed rundown on the information gathered by Microsoft from its various Windows Live operations, including Hotmail, Messenger, MSN Groups, and even the gaming platform, Xbox Live. The guide explains the information that is retained by Microsoft from customer activities, for how long it is saved, and how it can be accessed by police and security services in accordance with US legal requirements.

After discovering the document on the site, Microsoft is reported to have demanded its removal, citing the US Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA), a request that was rejected by Cryptome editor and founder, John Young. Microsoft then persuaded domain hoster Network Solutions to pull the site, which remains offline as of the morning of 25 February (GMT).

Microsoft botnet take down will not stop spam, says researchers

Was Microsoft well advised to come down so heavily on a site that has come to be seen in civil liberties circles as an important bulwark against government secrecy?

Read moreMicrosoft Downs Cryptome Site After Top-Secret Guide Published

Study: Cell phones show human movement predictable 93% of the time

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So you are tracked down, when using your cell phone, …

… and you’re greatly increase your chances of developing cancer:

– WHO landmark study: Long-term use of mobile phones ‘may be linked to cancer’

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We’d like to think of ourselves as dynamic, unpredictable individuals, but according to new research, that’s not the case at all. In a study published in last week’s Science, researchers looked at customer location data culled from cellular service providers. By looking at how customers moved around, the authors of the study found that it may be possible to predict human movement patterns and location up to 93 percent of the time. These findings may be useful in multiple fields, including city planning, mobile communication resource management, and anticipating the spread of viruses.

It’s not currently possible to know exactly where everyone is all the time, but cell phones can provide a pretty good approximation. Cell phone companies store records of customers’ locations based on when the customers’ phones connect to towers during calls. Researchers realized that taking this data and paring it down to users who place calls more frequently might allow them to see if they could develop any measure of how predictable human movements and locations are. The users they worked with placed calls an average of once every two hours, connecting to towers that cover an area of about two square miles.

The authors analyzed various aspects of the information related to the calls, as well as information that could be aggregated over multiple calls: number of distinct locations, historical probability that the location had been visited in the past, time spent at each tower, the order in which customers usually visited towers, and so on. With these numbers, the authors could create measures of the entropy of the customers’ trajectories. To control for uncertainty, they also looked at instances where a customer was not in communication with the grid and effectively invisible to them, and removed those that had frequent extended periods of invisibility.

Most customers seemed to stick to the same small area, a radius of six miles or less, but there were a few callers that regularly traveled areas of a radius of hundreds of miles. It would seem that the cell phone users who traveled the least would be the most predictable in their movements, but the authors found this to be untrue. All users were roughly equally predictable, regardless of the size of their typical traveled region. Everyone seemed to have a set area that they rarely left, and that area was always traveled in a very regular way-even the jet-setters appear to rarely deviate from their travel patterns.

Customers that stuck to the same six-mile radius had predictability rates of 97 to 93 percent, and this fell off as the typical area of travel grew. But the predictability eventually stabilized, and remained at 93 percent even as the radius of travel rose to thousands of miles. Regardless of how widely they traveled, the researchers could adequately predict their locations, down to the specific tower, 93 percent of the time.

Read moreStudy: Cell phones show human movement predictable 93% of the time

US: Baby DNA Sent To Military Lab For National Database

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State says blood specimens were sent for research that will help identify missing persons.

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Lawyer Jim Harrington has sued over lack of consent in DNA policy and may sue over database.

An Austin lawyer threatened to pursue a new federal lawsuit Monday after learning that some newborn blood samples in Texas went to the U.S. military for potential use in a database for law enforcement purposes.

The Department of State Health Services never mentioned the database to Jim Harrington, director of the Texas Civil Rights Project, who settled a lawsuit in December with the state over the indefinite storage of newborn blood without parental consent, or to the American-Statesman, which first reported on the little-known blood storage practice last spring. Harrington said he thought another suit was likely unless the health department destroys the information obtained from the blood samples or obtains consent.

“This is the worst case of bad faith I have dealt with as a lawyer,” he said Monday.

Read moreUS: Baby DNA Sent To Military Lab For National Database

Greece: Police Clash With Protesters During Strike Against Austerity Plan

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– Nationwide Strike Paralyzes Greece (Wall Street Journal)

– Germany parries Greek broadside over Nazi occupation (Reuters)

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Clashes broke out between police and protesters on the streets of Greece

Police in Greece have clashed with protesters striking over austerity measures designed to save the economy.

Greek police fired tear gas at a group of some 50 protesters on the edges of the rally, reports said.

It is the second general strike in two weeks and coincides with growing anger at the EU’s response to the crisis.

The action is set to be the biggest since Greece’s socialist government introduced cuts to bring the country’s debt and deficit under control.

Greece has closed airspace to all flights, trains and ferries are standing idle, and archaeological sites have been shut.

The country currently has a spiralling public deficit of 12.7%, more than four times higher than eurozone rules allow.

The government has pledged to cut this to 8.7% this year, and also reduce the 300bn-euro ($419bn; £259bn) national debt, by freezing public sector salaries, raising the average retirement age to 63 by 2015, and increasing taxes on petrol, alcohol and tobacco.

It also wants to crack down on tax avoidance. Greece’s black economy is estimated at 30% of official gross domestic product.

Read moreGreece: Police Clash With Protesters During Strike Against Austerity Plan

Famous Investor Marc Faber: ‘Buy Farmland And Gold’ – ‘Prepare For a Dirty War’

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“When I tell people to prepare themselves for a dirty war, they ask me: “America against whom?” I tell them that for sure they will find someone.”
– Marc Faber

I told you before that after bankrupting America and destroying the dollar the plan of the elite is to start WWIII.

There are also other forces at work that try to stop this, but you need to prepare yourself now, in case the elitists get their way.

I am not talking about preparing yourself out of fear. Not so many years ago preparedness was common sense.

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The world’s most powerful investors have been advised to buy farmland, stock up on gold and prepare for a “dirty war” by Marc Faber, the notoriously bearish market pundit, who predicted the 1987 stock market crash.

The bleak warning of social and financial meltdown, delivered today in Tokyo at a gathering of 700 pension and sovereign wealth fund managers.

Dr Faber, who advised his audience to pull out of American stocks one week before the 1987 crash and was among a handful who predicted the more recent financial crisis, vies with the Nouriel Roubini, the economist, as a rival claimant for the nickname Dr Doom.

Speaking today, Dr Faber said that investors, who control billions of dollars of assets, should start considering the effects of more disruptive events than mere market volatility.

“The next war will be a dirty war,” he told fund managers: “What are you going to do when your mobile phone gets shut down or the internet stops working or the city water supplies get poisoned?”

His investment advice, which was the first keynote speech of CLSA’s annual investment forum in Tokyo, included a suggestion that fund managers buy houses in the countryside because it was more likely that violence, biological attack and other acts of a “dirty war” would happen in cities.

He also said that they should consider holding part of their wealth in the form of precious metals “because they can be carried”.

One London-based hedge fund manager described Mr Faber’s address as “excellent, chilling stuff: good at putting you off lunch, but not something I can tell clients asking me about quarterly returns at the end of March”.

Read moreFamous Investor Marc Faber: ‘Buy Farmland And Gold’ – ‘Prepare For a Dirty War’