NightBlogger

Proposals would give Washington unprecedented control over kids
The U.S. House of Representatives is scheduled to debate two bills that could give the federal government unprecedented control over the way parents raise their children – even providing funds for state workers to come into homes and screen babies for emotional and developmental problems. The Pre-K Act (HR 3289) and the Education Begins at Home Act (HR 2343) are two bills geared toward military and families who fall below state poverty lines. The measures are said to be a way to prevent child abuse, close the achievement gap in education between poor and minority infants versus middle-class children and evaluate babies younger than 5 for medical conditions. More

Source: WorldNetDaily
A Wall Street Journal columnist has advised people to “start stockpiling food” and an ABC News Report says “there are worrying signs appearing in the United States where some … locals are beginning to hoard supplies.” Now there’s concern that the U.S. government may be competing with consumers for stocks of storable food. “We’re told that the feds bought the entire container of canned butter when it hit the California docks. (Something’s up!),” said officials at Best Prices Storable Foods in an advisory to customers. Spokesman Bruce Hopkins told WND he also has had trouble obtaining No. 10 cans of various products from one of the world’s larger suppliers of food stores, Oregon Freeze Dry.

He said a company official told him on the telephone when he discussed the status of his order that it was because the government had purchased massive quantities of products, leaving none for other customers. That, however, was denied by Oregon Freeze Dry. In a website statement, the company confirmed it cannot assure supplying some items to customers. “We regret to inform you Oregon Freeze Dry cannot satisfy all Mountain House #10 can orders and we have removed #10 cans from our website temporarily,” the company tells frustrated customers. “The reason for this is sales of #10 cans have continued to increase. OFD is allocating as much production capacity as possible to this market segment, but we must maintain capacity for our other market segments as well.”

The company statement continues, “We want to clarify inaccurate information we’ve seen on the Internet. This situation is not due to sales to the government domestically or in Iraq. We do sell products to this market, but we also sell other market segments … The reason for this decision is solely due to an unprecedented sales spike in #10 cans sales. “We expect this situation to be necessary for several months although this isn’t a guarantee. We will update this information as soon as we know more. We apologize for this inconvenience and appreciate your patience. We sincerely hope you will continue to be Mountain House customers in the future,” the company statement said. But Hopkins wasn’t backing away from his concerns. “The government just came in and said they’re buying it. They did pay for it,” he told WND about the summertime shipment of long-term storage butter. “They took it and no one else could have it.

“We don’t know why. The feds then went to freeze dried companies, and bought most of their canned stock,” he said. A spokeswoman for Oregon Freeze Dry, sales manager Melanie Cornutt, told WND that the increasing demand for food that can be stored has been on the rise since Hurricane Katrina devastated large sections of the Gulf Coast, cutting off ordinary supply routes. “We are currently out of stock on our cans. We are not selling any of our cans,” she confirmed. She then raised the issue of government purchases herself. “We do sell to the government [but] it is not the reason [for company sales limits],” she said. Officials with the Federal Emergency Management Agency told WND whatever government agency is buying in a surge it isn’t them. They reported a stockpile of about six million meals which has not changed significantly in an extended period. But Hopkins said it was his opinion the government is purchasing huge quantities of food for stockpiles, and Americans will have to surmise why.

“We don’t have shelters that [are being] stocked with food. We’re not doing this for the public. My only conclusion is that they’re stocking up for themselves,” he said of government officials. Blogger Holly Deyo issued an alert this week announcing, “Unprecedented demand cleans out major storable food supplier through 2009.” “It came to our attention today, that the world’s largest producer of storable foods, Mountain House, is currently out of stock of ALL #10 cans of freeze dried foods, not just the Turkey Tetrazzini. They will NOT have product now through 2009,” she said. “This information was learned by a Mountain House dealer who shared it with me this morning. In personally talking with the company immediately after, Mountain House verified the information is true. Customer service stated, ‘I’m surprised they don’t have this posted on the website yet.’ She said they have such a backlog of orders, Mountain House will not be taking any #10 can food requests through the remainder of this year and all of the next.

“Mountain House claims this situation is due to a backlog of orders, which may very well be true, but who is purchasing all of their food? This is a massive global corporation. “One idea: the military. Tensions are ramping up with Iran and news segments debate whether or not we will implement a preemptive strike in conjunction with Israel,” she wrote. Hopkins raised some of the same concerns, suggesting a military conflict could cause oil supplies to plummet, triggering a huge increase in the cost of food – when it would be available – because of the transportation issues. The ABC report from just a few weeks ago quoted Jim Rawles, a former U.S. intelligence officer who runs a survival blog, saying food shortages soon could become a matter of survival in the U.S. “I think that families should be prepared for times of crisis, whether it’s a man-made disaster or a natural disaster, and I think it’s wise and prudent to stock up on food,” he told ABC.

“If you get into a situation where fuel supplies are disrupted or even if the power grid were to go down for short periods of time, people can work around that,” he said. “But you can’t work around a lack of food – people starve, people panic and you end up with chaos in the streets.” At his California ranch, the location of which is kept secret, he said, “We have more than a three-year supply of food here.” In the Wall Street Journal, columnist Brett Arends warned, “Maybe it’s time for Americans to start stockpiling food. “No, this is not a drill,” he wrote. His concern was about various food shortages around the globe, and the fact that in a global market, prices in the U.S. reflect difficulties in other parts of the world quickly.

Professor Lawrence F. Roberge, a biologist who has worked with a number of universities and has taught online courses, told WND he’s been following the growing concern over food supplies. He also confirmed to WND reports of the government purchasing vast quantities of long-term storable foods. He said that naturally would be kept secret to avoid panicking the public, such as when word leaks out to customers that a bank may be insolvent, and depositors frantically try to retrieve their cash.
Also See: US, UK, France, prepare to attack Iran?

Rising food prices are putting millions of people in East Africa at risk of severe hunger and destitution, the UK-based charity Oxfam has warned. Droughts, war and poverty have put an estimated nine to 13 million people in the region in urgent need of humanitarian assistance, it says. The situation has been made worse by rising food prices, with wheat and rice particularly expensive. A BBC correspondent says some people have started to eat animal feed. Many people in the remote north-eastern Afar region raise animals for a living but many camels have died and the goats are starting to succumb to hunger too. More

This just came in off the tipline, it seems the husband of a U.S. citizen has gone missing somewhere on that magical highway between Naco and Cananea, Sonora. Lots and lots of things happen on that 35 mile stretch of road, many of them terrible, none of them clear. If it bears out, and so far it seems to, this isn’t good. Last week, the Mexican Army uncovered a grave with what they said were four bodies inside. Others, including a Cananea law enforcement source, tell me it was actually 11 bodies in that grave. That doesn’t include eight more people have been reported missing between June 19 and today. It says something of what’s been happening in Cananea lately that the families of the eight missing men all willingly went to police. What’s always stayed inside, between the families, is now on the outside. This smells of panic. More

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has confirmed a ban on Iraq from competing in the Beijing Games in a major blow to seven Iraqi athletes who had hoped to travel to China this August, an IOC letter said. In the letter dated July 23 and addressed to the Iraqi Minister of Youth and Sports, Jassim Mohammed Jaffer, the IOC said it was moving ahead with a ban first imposed on Iraq’s athletes last month. More

Moscow is angry about U.S. plans for missile-defense sites in eastern Europe and Izvestia cited a “highly placed” military aviation source as saying, “While they are deploying the anti-missile systems in Poland and the Czech Republic, our long-range strategic aircraft already will be landing in Cuba.” Izvestia said this apparently refers to long-range nuclear-capable bombers. Former Russian Air Force Commander-in-Chief Anatoly Kornukov told Russia’s Interfax news agency Thursday that the country’s “strategic bombers are entitled to use airfields in any country, including Cuba, as long as its leaders do not object.” More

TFEX 08-4 “Operation Brimstone” Flexes Allied Force Training

Navy NewsStand

Story Number: NNS080715-21
Release Date: 7/15/2008 5:17:00 PM

From Commander, U.S. 2nd Fleet Public Affairs

NORFOLK (NNS) — More than 15,000 service members from four countries will participate in Joint Task Force Exercise (JTFEX) 08-4 “Operation Brimstone”, July 21-31 in North Carolina and off the eastern U.S. coast from Virginia to Florida.

JTFEX 08-4 serves as a ready-for-deployment certification event for the Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group (TR CSG) and the Iwo Jima Expeditionary Strike Group (IWO ESG). The exercise will also serve as a Joint Task Force Capable Headquarters sustainment event. In addition, JTFEX 08-4 will offer preliminary accreditation for 2nd Fleet’s Maritime Headquarters with Maritime Operations Center (MHQ with MOC)). MHQ with MOC is a new approach to command and control for fleet commanders.

“This exercise is a tremendous opportunity to train; not only as the Navy and Marine Corps team, but with our joint and coalition partners as well,” said Commander, 2nd Fleet Vice Adm. Marty Chanik.

“JTFEX 08-4 will flex our warfighting capabilities from the operational level through expeditionary strike force and strike group operations with several of our coalition partners – France, Brazil and the United Kingdom.”

The exercise also marks the first time that forces from Navy Expeditionary Combat Command are participating in an East-Coast JTFEX. NECC forces operating in the littorals and riverine environment are supporting integrated operations.

“Navy Expeditionary Combat Command provides a self-contained adaptive force package with a command element tailored to support the full spectrum of operations from major combat operations to unconventional and irregular warfare,” said NECC commander Rear Adm. Mike Tillotson.

U.S. and coalition naval assets underway for the exercise include the U.S. aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71), the amphibious assault ship USS Iwo Jima (LHD 7) with associated units including the British aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal (RO 7), the Brazilian Navy frigate Greenhalgh (F-46) and the French submarine FS Amethyste (S 605). BNS Greenhalgh is the first Brazilian Navy ship to operate integrated in a U.S. strike group.

French Rafale fighter aircraft assigned to the 12th Squadron, and Hawkeye early warning aircraft assigned to the 4th Squadron will conduct carrier qualifications and cyclic flight operations with U.S. Carrier Air Wing 8 during Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group’s Joint Task Force Exercise. This marks the first integrated U.S. and French carrier qualifications and cyclic flight operations aboard a U.S. aircraft carrier. More

In a new sign of increasing inequality in the U.S., the richest 1% of Americans in 2006 garnered the highest share of the nation’s adjusted gross income for two decades, and possibly the highest since 1929, according to Internal Revenue Service data. Meanwhile, the average tax rate of the wealthiest 1% fell to its lowest level in at least 18 years. The group’s share of the tax burden has risen, though not as quickly as its share of income. The figures are from the IRS’s income-statistics division and were posted on the agency’s Web site last week. The 2006 data are the most recent available. The figures about the relative income and tax rates of the wealthiest Americans come as the presumptive presidential candidates are in a debate about taxes. Congress and the next president will have to decide whether to extend several Bush-era tax cuts, including the 2003 reduction in tax rates on capital gains and dividends. Experts said those tax cuts in particular are playing a major role in falling tax rates for the very wealthy. More

The Federal Emergency Management Agency asked a federal judge Wednesday for immunity from lawsuits over potentially dangerous fumes in government-issued trailers that have housed tens of thousands of Gulf Coast hurricane victims. Lawyers for victims of hurricanes Katrina and Rita accuse FEMA of negligence for sheltering them in trailers with elevated levels of formaldehyde, a preservative used in construction materials that can cause health problems. But a government attorney told U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt that the FEMA’s decisions in responding to a disaster, including its use of travel trailers after Katrina, are legally protected from “judicial second-guessing.” More
Also See: FEMA crimes: formaldehyde trailers sicken tens of thousands

A couple has contacted the Secret Service claiming a Central Florida bank gave them 10 counterfeit bills during a transaction. Ulises Garcia said he was withdrawing cash from a Wachovia Bank and depositing it into a Bank of America so he could pay his bills online. However, the Bank of America teller noticed something funny about 10 of the 36 $100 bills Garcia said he received from Wachovia Bank — they were counterfeit, Local 6’s Tony Pipitone reported. More

TOKYO - Japan’s weather agency says a strong earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.8 struck off the northern Japanese coast. The Meteorological Agency says there was no danger of a tsunami, or seismic waves, from the 12:26 a.m. (11:26 a.m. EDT) quake, which occurred about 75 miles below the ocean’s surface off the coast of Iwate. More

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Tropical Storm Dolly has triggered the shutdown of about 5 percent of crude oil and natural gas production from the Gulf of Mexico, the U.S. Minerals Management Service said Tuesday. As of 11:30 am CST (12:30 p.m. EDT), energy companies operating in the Gulf of Mexico shut some 60,621 barrels of daily crude production and 395 million cubic feet of daily natural gas production, the MMS said.

Prison Planet
The gun control capital of America - Chicago - where only the criminals are allowed to own firearms - has been hit by a fresh wave of crime and violence, prompting Governor Rod Blagojevich to call for National Guard helicopters to be used in law enforcement operations. Blagojevich plans to form an “elite tactical team” to help the city fight crime, according to a speech he gave last week. “Violent crime in the city of Chicago is out of control,” Blagojevich said at the bill signing ceremony. “I’m offering resources of the state to the city to work in a constructive way with Mayor Daley to do everything we can possibly do to help stop this violence,” said the governor. More

Times Online
She robs, she injects herself with heroin, she seems to kill with almost professional precision – and, as far as German detectives are concerned, she has no identity. The hunt for the woman known as the Phantom of Heilbronn has been stepped up after the discovery of new traces of her DNA in a blood-stained white Ford Escort. “The noose is tightening,” Erwin Hetger, the chief of police in Baden-Württemberg, southwest Germany, said. For 15 years a mysterious woman has been leaving traces of her DNA at crime scenes across Europe, suggesting her involvement in at least six murders and scores of break-ins. Rarely are there witnesses. Instead, police in the countries where she has been roaming – Germany, France and Austria – have had to piece together a profile from saliva left on biscuits nibbled at the site of a murder, a discarded cigarette packet and a spot of blood. She may flit across borders like a ghost but she has been leaving a trail behind her. A human being loses on average four hairs in an hour and sheds a million dead cells in 40 minutes: that forensic scence harvest is all the police have to go on. More
Also See: Junkie’s needle may lead to woman serial killer they call the Phantom
Germany hunts phantom killer

A group visiting Omaha has called for the legalization of drugs, saying the government’s current efforts to control the problem has failed. “While we definitely have a problem with drugs in this country, we definitely have to have a change in the policy,” said Tony Ryan. The retired Denver police officer is a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a national group, made up mostly of current and former police, which favors repealing laws that make drugs against the law. “The only way to have control is to legalize it, regulate it and perhaps, tax it,” Ryan said. He spoke in Omaha Thursday night. More

US forces shot dead the 17-year-old son and another relative of the governor of northern Iraq’s Salahuddin province in a raid today, local officials said. The US military said it shot two armed men and later found out they were both related to the governor. Governor Hamad al-Qaisi’s brother, Lieutenant-Colonel Saad al-Qaisi, said American troops stormed a family house in the town of Beiji, where the governor’s son Hussam and his cousin were staying. “They shot dead Hussam and wounded three others. This is barbaric and inhuman,” he said. More

Michael Hoffman
Blackwater Worldwide is building up its own Air Force. Airmen might soon find Blackwater blimps patrolling Iraq and Afghanistan skies in addition to its helicopter and light transport aircraft already flying thousands of missions in theater. According to Blackwater Worldwide CEO Erik Prince, eight Blackwater CASA 212 light transport aircraft flew 11,000 sorties in Afghanistan last year supporting 38 combat outposts over 19,000 square miles. Its aircraft transported more than 40,000 personnel and 9.5 million pounds of supplies last year. “We moved about 40,000 passengers, and our total costs, our total invoice for that mission is about what the U.S. Air Force is paying for one new C-27,” he said. “So the idea of outsourcing versus having government do it, that’s a pretty simple math question for me.” Prince, who sat down July 7 for a rare, exclusive interview with Military Times editors and reporters, said he isn’t looking to replace the Air Force — simply fill a void where his company is needed. More

African American Opinion
Trailers used to house Katrina survivors throughout the Gulf Coast, had dangerously high levels of Formaldehyde, a preservative once used for dead bodies. Formaldehyde is also linked to nose cancer. While none of this information is new…members of the company that built the toxic trailers KNEW ABOUT IT the whole time. And said nothing- in fact, they did not release any information to Congress. More
Also See: FEMA may use toxic trailers again despite formaldehyde contamination
FEMA crimes: formaldehyde trailers sicken tens of thousands

Source: Mainichi Japan
An earthquake struck the Tohoku and Kanto regions on Saturday morning, prompting the Meteorological Agency to issue a tsunami warning. The quake, which struck at depth of about 10 kilometers off the coast of Fukushima Prefecture, registered 4 on the 7-point Japanese intensity scale in areas including Morioka, the Fukushima Prefecture city of Koriyama and the Miyagi Prefecture city of Ishinomaki. Its estimated magnitude was 6.6. The Metrological Agency issued a tsunami warning for Miyagi Prefecture and Fukushima Prefecture. Quake generated waves measuring 20 centimeters in height were observed in Ishinomaki at 12:16 p.m. and 12:21 p.m., but as of early Saturday afternoon no tsunami damage had been reported. The agency lifted the tsunami warning at 1:20 p.m.

GENEVA (Reuters) - Iranian officials ruled out any freeze in uranium enrichment on Saturday at the start of talks over Tehran’s nuclear program attended for the first time by a senior U.S. diplomat. “Any kind of suspension or freeze is out of the question,” an Iranian official told Reuters, rejecting the main condition set by the United States and other major powers for formal negotiations to end the long-running dispute. More

The Market Oracle
…I wanted to make a special point to the folks who are viewing this week’s two-day rally as the potential start of a massive bull-market upswing. And that point is this: None of the factors that we were worried about before the rally have changed or gone away. Nor have any of the other potential pitfalls that we’ve repeatedly warned you about. The U.S. Federal Reserve is still scrambling to deflate the asset bubble it created - and is trying to do that in an orderly manner (a mistake on both counts). But the backstory isn’t pretty. Banks are still taking big write-offs, and in some cases also are under investigation. And there still are many reasons to be worried about commercial real estate, the U.S. housing market, inflation, stagflation, soaring food and commodities prices, and stratospheric energy costs.

The other thing that concerns us is that the markets tend not to do well when bad news is interpreted as good news - as Citigroup Inc.’s ( C ) latest numbers were overnight. Somehow the Street thinks that Citi’s loss of a mere $2.5 billion this quarter is good because it was less than the $2.86 billion of red ink that the Street was expecting. Let’s not forget that the beleaguered banking giant has written off nearly $40 billion in the past 12 months, revenue has fallen 29%, and that it is laying off 15,000 employees. That brings us to the broader markets, and our belief that rallies like those we’ve had in recent days are suspect, at best. The data seems to support this.

The bottom line: As much as we wish this weren’t the case, the strength we’ve seen in recent days may be nothing more than a massive short-covering rally. [Interestingly, Money Morning Contributing Editor R. Shah Gilani said precisely the same thing in his “Inside Wall Street” column published earlier today (Friday).] While it’s true that we may have a tradable bottom here that takes us as high as 1,370 or thereabouts on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (only about a 9% increase from current levels), such numbers are hardly impressive when viewed against the harsh light of history. More

LONDON—A bloody knife-crime wave sweeping across Britain has left a slew of urban teenagers and young adults dead or seriously injured. And the numbers seem to keep piling up. In London alone, 20 teenagers have been killed by knives this year, including an 18-year-old who died of stab wounds Thursday night. On a particularly lethal day earlier this month, six people were killed in knife attacks, four of them in London. More

Mary Ann Akers
While congress considers a taxpayer-funded rescue plan, the twin mortgage giants are planning to host receptions in Denver, where Democrats will hold their convention beginning Aug. 28, and in Minneapolis-St. Paul, where Republicans will gather a week later. “Building stable communities for America’s future,” reads the invitation to join Fannie and Freddie for a “housing industry open house reception” at the posh Graves Hotel in Minneapolis, which is listed as one of the “gold list reserve top hotels in the world” by Conde Nast Traveler magazine. “More than 400 expected to attend,” the invitation promises. (The planned parties are especially ironic given that both the Denver and Minneapolis metropolitan areas have been plagued with record numbers of foreclosures.) “Fannie and Freddie should focus on opening the doors to home-ownership, not the doors to swanky lobbyist parties with politicians,” says DeMint’s spokesman Wesley Denton. “If Americans are being forced to bail them out, they should learn to buy drinks on their own dime, not the taxpayers’.” More

gawker.com
Vanity Fair writer Alex Shoumatoff got himself arrested for crashing Bohemian Grove, a private men’s club in northern California for the upper echelon of the rich and powerful. He was there to spy on the three-week camp they hold every July, where said rich and powerful relax while living in tents in their private woods. (Nixon was a member, but called it “most faggy goddamn thing that you would ever imagine.”) The backstory on the weird club, plus the reason for the trespassing and arrest? More

Companies collected millions of dollars in government contracts by claiming to have main offices in poor neighborhoods that were actually empty duplexes, part-time offices and other ineligible locations, congressional investigators charge. Billions more remain at risk because the Small Business Administration doesn’t usually check paperwork, rarely conducts audits and is slow to kick out firms that are no longer eligible for the $8 billion in special contract set-asides for small businesses, the Government Accountability Office said. More

The Charlotte Observer
Tamika Shears says she never missed a rent payment, but she was still forced out of her home. Her situation reflects a growing number of renters facing eviction because of the widening foreclosure crisis gripping Charlotte along with the rest of the nation. Shears and her two children had lived in a four-bedroom house in northwest Charlotte for more than a year when their landlord lost the house to foreclosure. “My first thought was, ‘Where are we going to go?’” she recalled. Homeowners displaced by foreclosures have received much attention. But legal and housing experts estimate at least one of every four homes in foreclosure in the Charlotte area is non-owner occupied. Renters were similarly punished during the mortgage industry meltdown in the early 1990s, but this time problems are far more widespread, said Judith Liben, a lawyer with the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute. She testified before Congress last year about the issue. More

They have yet to show up on Craigslist, but ads offering the services of a killer for hire are appearing in Mexican classified sections and on web sites. According to one of the ads, you can hire a hit man for as little as $6,000. And the job is guaranteed to be carried out in 10 days or less. The ads may be fake or they may be real, but Mexico law enforcement is taking them seriously. In the increasingly lawless environment of drug cartel violence, a hit man could simply be taking advantage of the law of supply and demand. And demand there is, as the organized gangs are mowing each other down on a daily basis. A hit man for hire could have more work than he can handle, as 1,700 people have been killed already this year in attacks between rival cartels. More

6.1 Magnitude
* Sunday, July 13, 2008 at 14:58:32 UTC
* Sunday, July 13, 2008 at 10:58:32 PM at epicenter
* Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location 21.017°N, 121.098°E
Depth 10 km (6.2 miles) set by location program
Region TAIWAN REGION
Distances 115 km (70 miles) NW of Basco, Batan Islands, Philippines
190 km (115 miles) S of T’ai-tung, Taiwan
450 km (280 miles) S of T’AI-PEI, Taiwan
710 km (440 miles) N of MANILA, Philippines
Location Uncertainty horizontal +/- 5.5 km (3.4 miles); depth fixed by location program
Parameters NST=127, Nph=127, Dmin=199.6 km, Rmss=1.05 sec, Gp= 40°,
M-type=moment magnitude (Mw), Version=Q
Source USGS

They’re worried about $8000 while a U.S. Army officer and his wife collected $9 million in bribes and Halliburton and KBR steal billions of Iraqi funds.

It is a politician’s dream: Handing out cold, hard cash to people on the street as they plead for help. Iraq’s prime minister has been doing just that in recent weeks, doling out Iraqi dinars as an aide trails behind, keeping a tally. The handouts by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and a handful of other top officials are authorized — as long as each goes no higher than about $8,000, and the same people don’t get them twice. Aides say they are meant merely to ease the pain a bit, and are motivated by a belief that better conditions will lead to more security. More

Source: New York Times
A volcano erupted Saturday with little warning on a remote island in Alaska, sending residents of a ranch fleeing from falling ash and volcanic rock. Okmok Caldera erupted hours after seismologists at the Alaska Volcano Observatory began detecting a series of tremors. The explosion flung an ash cloud at least 50,000 feet high, said a geophysicist, Steve McNutt. Nine people, including three children, were at Fort Glenn, a cattle ranch near the volcano on Umnak Island, in the western Aleutians. They called the authorities on a satellite phone before losing the connection, the Coast Guard said. A vessel responding to a request for emergency assistance picked them up. Okmok is 60 miles west of a busy fishing port, Dutch Harbor, on Unalaska Island. Ash was reported to be falling in the region, Mr. McNutt said. The 3,500-foot volcano last erupted in 1997, Mr. McNutt said. It had shown signs of increased activity in recent months, he said.

Bill Moyers
Our media institutions, deeply embedded in the power structures of society, are not providing the information that we need to make our democracy work. To put it another way, corporate media consolidation is a corrosive social force. It robs people of their voice in public affairs and pollutes the political culture. And it turns the debates about profound issues into a shouting match of polarized views promulgated by partisan apologists who trivialize democracy while refusing to speak the truth about how our country is being plundered.

Our dominant media are ultimately accountable only to corporate boards whose mission is not life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for the whole body of our republic, but the aggrandizement of corporate executives and shareholders.

These organizations’ self-styled mandate is not to hold public and private power accountable, but to aggregate their interlocking interests. Their reward is not to help fulfill the social compact embodied in the notion of “We, the people,” but to manufacture news and information as profitable consumer commodities.

Democracy without honest information creates the illusion of popular consent at the same time that it enhances the power of the state and the privileged interests that the state protects. And nothing characterizes corporate media today more than its disdain toward the fragile nature of modern life and its indifference toward the complex social debate required of a free and self-governing people. More

Russia is thinking of aiming nuclear weapons at western Europe for the first time since the end of the cold war, according to defence sources in Moscow. The move is being considered in response to American plans to develop a defence shield against missiles from Iran and other countries. The plans under discussion include the possible deployment of ballistic missiles to Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave between the European Union countries of Lithuania and Poland. Kaliningrad has been nuclear-free since America and Russia agreed to scale back their nuclear arsenals at the end of the cold war. A Russian parliamentary committee visited the enclave 10 days ago to examine how a new generation of nuclear missiles could be based there. Any such deployment would significantly escalate tensions in Europe between Moscow and Washington. More

A high-level Chinese military source secretly disclosed last week that the recent earthquake in Sichuan Province caused a chain-reaction of explosions in the Sichuan mountain areas. The explosions destroyed Chinese army’s largest armory, new weapon test bases and part of nuclear facilities including several nuclear warheads. This information is considered China’s top military secret.

After the earthquake, Chinese authorities had ignored the disaster victim’s initial calls for help. Only after the first critical 72 hours had passed did the authorities allow international aid to be delivered to the disaster region. Military analysts believe that this delay occurred because Mianyang City of Sichuan Province is one of important areas for the Chinese military nuclear industries and also its largest armory. The Chinese regime did not want potential spies from the outside world in this very sensitive military area during a time when there may have been a nuclear accident.

“I went to see the site of the explosion again. Villagers on the road told me, ‘These concrete blocks and soil were from the explosion,’” said a medical team member. According to sources, a nuclear accident did happen. On June 27, the Chinese military disclosed that 2,700 chemical cleanup workers had been sent to earthquake disaster areas for nuclear chemical emergency rescue. More

io9.com
The United States has existed for only a little over two centuries, which is a paltry amount of time when you consider that many nations and city-states have lasted for thousands of years (hello, Rome). Now it’s starting to look like this brief experiment with human government is going to fail, and soon. Science fiction writers from William Gibson to Lyda Morehouse have written about a future where the United States no longer exists, or has been so heavily reorganized that it isn’t recognizable. And Stanford futurist Paul Saffo recently told the San Jose Mercury News, “The U.S. may not exist in any recognizable form in the middle of this century.” Though he didn’t offer a long list of reasons, we know exactly what he means. There are good reasons to believe that the U.S. is falling apart, and we’ve got five big ones for you to mull over as you watch this once-powerful twentieth century empire slowly drip down the drain.

1. Too many internal divisions
2. A decadent culture
3. Too much military, not enough social welfare
4. Citizens do not trust their government
5. No science and engineering leadership
More

Source: Vlogging The Apocalypse.com

The patent reads:

Upon activation of the electric shock device, through receipt of an activating signal from the selectively operable remote control means, the passenger wearing that particular bracelet receives the disabling electrical shock from the electric shock device. Accordingly, the passenger becomes incapacitated for a few seconds or perhaps a few minutes, during which time the passenger can be fully subdued and handcuffed, if necessary. Depending on the type of transmission medium used to send the activating signal, other passengers may also become temporarily incapacitated, which is undesirable and unfortunate, but may be unavoidable.

Jan Edwards
The founding fathers of the United States were not interested in giving constitutional rights to corporations. In fact, they wanted to regulate corporations very tightly because they had had bad experiences with corporations during colonial times. The crown charter corporations like the East India Company and the Hudson Bay Company had been the rulers of America. So when the constitution was written, corporations were left out of the Constitution. Responsibility for corporate chartering was given to the states. State governance was closer to the people and would enable them to keep an eye on corporations.

In the eighteenth century, corporations had very few of the powers that we now associate with them. They did not have limited liability. They did not have an unlimited life span. They were chartered for a limited period of time, say 10 or 20 years, and for a specific public purpose, such as building a bridge. Often a charter would require that, after a certain amount of time, the bridge or road be turned over to the state or the town in which it was built. Corporations were viewed differently in early America. They were required to serve the public good.

But over time people forgot that corporations ad been so powerful and that they needed to be strongly controlled. Also, corporations began to gain more power than the wealthy elite.
After the Civil War, Congress passed several constitutional amendments relating to slavery. The Thirteenth Amendment freed the slaves, the Fourteenth Amendment gave the newly freed male slaves equal protection and due process under law, and the Fifteenth Amendment gave voting rights to these same former black male slaves. More

A FIRE broke out today on the roof of a turbine hall at a nuclear power plant on Sweden’s west coast but was quickly extinguished and the reactor was never in danger, the plant said. [Of course it was in danger]. “There was a small fire and our internal fire brigade was able to put it out in just a few minutes,” Goesta Larsen, a spokesman for the Ringhals plant, the largest nuclear plant in the Nordic region, said. More
Also See: Waste containing unenriched uranium has leaked into two rivers from a nuclear plant in southern France.

Russia has accused a British diplomat based in Moscow of spying. He was named in media reports as Chris Bowers. A Foreign Office spokeswoman said: “I can confirm that a member of the British staff is suspected of spying by the Russians. He is the acting director of UK Trade and Industry. However we do not comment on intelligence matters.” The allegation follows weeks of antagonism and growing tension between London and Moscow. An unnamed source within Russia’s intelligence services is said to have accused Mr Bowers of being a high-ranking secret service officer and to have claimed he worked undercover in the 1990s as a BBC reporter in Uzbekistan. More

Source: VLADIVOSTOK, July 8 (RIA Novosti) - Over 20 combat and auxiliary ships from Russia’s Pacific Fleet started on Tuesday a large-scale naval exercise in the Sea of Japan, which includes live firing drills, a fleet spokesman said. “The exercise is part of the summer combat training program,” Captain 1st Rank Roman Martov said. “More than 20 combat and auxiliary ships will participate in about 20 individual and group drills.” The core of the naval task force participating in the exercise consists of the Varyag, a Russian Slava-class missile cruiser dubbed ‘the killer of aircraft carriers,’ the Bystry, a Sovremenny class destroyer, and a group of missile boats. According to the exercise scenario, the Russian naval task force and shore-based naval aircraft are tasked with the search and destruction of an ‘aggressor force’ attempting to establish a beachhead on the Russian coast. The ships will conduct a series of live firing drills against ground, surface, and air targets. During the exercise, the Varyag and the Bystry will test-fire new surface-to-air missiles at a target drone.