Koch and Exxon write your State's legislation

Koch Industries Inc. and Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) are among companies that would benefit from almost identical energy legislation introduced in state capitals from Oregon to New Mexico to New Hampshire -- and that’s by design.

The energy companies helped write the legislation at a meeting organized by a group they finance, the American Legislative Exchange Council, a Washington-based policy institute known as ALEC.

The corporations, both ALEC members, took a seat at the legislative drafting table beside elected officials and policy analysts by paying a fee between $3,000 and $10,000, according to documents obtained by Bloomberg News.


The opportunity for corporations to become co-authors of state laws legally through ALEC covers a wide range of issues from energy to taxes to agriculture. The price for participation is an ALEC membership fee of as much as $25,000 -- and the few extra thousands to join one of the group’s legislative-writing task forces. Once the “model legislation” is complete, it’s up to ALEC’s legislator members to shepherd it into law.


“This is just another hidden way for corporations to buy their way into the legislative process,” said Bob Edgar, president of Common Cause, a Washington-based group that advocates for limits on money in politics.

Chavez 10 : Exxon 1

Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) must pay about $750 million to Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM), a 10th of what the U.S. company is seeking, for assets nationalized by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in 2007, according to two people with knowledge of the case.

The International Chamber of Commerce in New York, an arbitration court, gave a “favorable” ruling to Venezuela’s state oil company, a spokesman for PDVSA, as the Caracas-based company is known, said yesterday.

Egypt: You think getting $1 bln in aide from the USA might make you slightly interested in human rights .... "nah"

Officials said Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Anne Patterson spoke December 30 with senior Egyptian officials to stress Washington's concern about the raids on the organizations, which include three groups funded by the United States.



State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Egyptian authorities told Patterson that the raids would stop, and that seized property would be returned to the groups.


The Pentagon said Defense Secretary Panetta had spoken about the issue in a telephone call to the head of Egypt's ruling military council, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi.

On December 29, Egyptian police raided a number of non-governmental organizations, including the U.S.-funded National Democratic Institute, the International Republican Institute and Freedom House.

Egypt’s government receives more than $1 billion in aid annually from the U.S.

Syria next unavoidable step = civil war...

Syria is at risk of civil war or foreign intervention if the mission can’t end the unrest, said Burhan Ghalioun, leader of the Syrian National Council, the umbrella opposition group that seeks to topple Assad. In Homs, 70,000 people rallied Dec. 26 and 50,000 marched in Duma yesterday, Merei said.

The delegation is getting the “needed cooperation” from all sides, including Syrian government, the Arab League said today in an e- mailed statement.

Guilty, guilty, guilty: Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer, BASF, Dow and Dupont – collectively known as the “Big 6”, for their human rights violations, including internationally recognized rights to life, livelihood and health.

Citing Systematic Human Rights Violations, International Court Hands Down Verdict to Six Largest Pesticide Manufacturers



After an intensive public trial covering a range of human rights violations, jurors issued a scathing verdict to the six largest pesticide and biotechnology corporations, urging governments, especially the US, Switzerland and Germany, to take action to prevent further harms.


“The trial shed light on widespread and systematic human rights violations by the world’s six largest pesticide corporations,” said Kathryn Gilje, co-director of Pesticide Action Network North America, and who reported live from the trial. “The existing justice system has failed to provide adequate protections for our health, our food and farmers’ livelihoods. Pesticide corporations will continue to go to great lengths to avoid responsibility for their human rights violations until we create a strong system of accountability.”


The verdict was handed down to the six largest pesticide corporations – Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer, BASF, Dow and Dupont – collectively known as the “Big 6”, for their human rights violations, including internationally recognized rights to life, livelihood and health. The agrichemical industry is valued at over $42 billion and operates with impunity while over 355,000 people die from pesticide poisoning each year, and hundreds of thousands more are made ill. In addition, pesticide corporations have put livelihoods and jobs in jeopardy, including, farmers, beekeepers and lobstermen.


“Pesticide corporations have gotten away with human rights violations for far too long,” said Paige Tomaselli, staff attorney from the Center for Food Safety, and a prosecutor at the trial. “We have brought them to this international court to shine a spotlight on their brazen violations of rights to live, health and livelihood.”

Over the past few days, witnesses from across the globe, including the United States, shared their stories of the harms of pesticides and biotechnology. Their stories, available on YouTube, in addition to a 230-page legal indictment, document violations of human rights to life, health and livelihood.


“The right to care for and work the land is basic and fundamental,” said David Runyon, a 900-acre Indiana farmer. “Monsanto and Co. have undermined my ability to provide for my family and prosper as a farmer. And the Big 6 have overstepped any system of justice and need to be held to account for their activities.”


Runyon is one of over fifteen witnesses to testify at the trial in Bangalore, India. He and his wife Dawn almost lost the family farm when pesticide and genetic engineering giant Monsanto found contamination of seeds on their property. The company threatened to sue Runyon unless he paid them for genetically modified seeds, seeds that had been carried by the wind from a neighboring farm.


The verdict also names three particular nations as culpable alongside the corporations. Their preliminary findings state, “The United States, Switzerland and Germany [home states for the pesticide corporations] have failed to comply with their internationally accepted responsibility to promote and protect human rights…The three States, where six corporations are registered and headquartered, have failed to adequately regulate, monitor and discipline these entities by national laws and policy.”


The trial began on the anniversary of the Bhopal disaster, in which over 20,000 people have died after an explosion at a Dow Chemical facility. And it concluded before International Human Rights Day. The trial was hosted by the Pesticide Action Network International, a network of over 600 participating nongovernmental organizations, institutions, and individuals in over 90 countries working to replace the use of hazardous pesticides with ecologically sound and socially just alternatives.


The Permanent People’s Tribunal was founded in Italy in 1979 as a people’s court to raise awareness of massive human rights violations in the absence of another international justice system. The PPT draws its authority from the people while remaining rooted in the rigors of a conventional court format. Citing relevant international human rights laws, precedents and documents such as the UN Declaration of Human Rights in its findings, the Tribunal examines and passes judgment on complaints of human rights violations brought by victims and their representative groups.

Republicans no longer think it's a Right for you to have: clean water, air, and land!!!

House Republicans and Republican presidential candidates have launched unprecedented attacks on the Environmental Protection Agency.

Among the other things causing Richard Nixon to turn over in his grave may be Republican attacks on the Environmental Protection Agency, which the former president and Congress established in a bipartisan response to public demand for cleaner water, air, and land.


Since Republicans regained control of the House of Representatives in the 2010 midterm elections, they have introduced an unprecedented number of measures designed to weaken longstanding environmental protections and block the EPA from putting forth new regulations.


Rep. Henry Waxman, D- Calif., an environmental advocate, has called this “the most anti-environmental Congress in history.” The perceived assault has prompted the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, chaired by Waxman, to develop an online database tracking the number and scope of anti-environment bills proposed on the House floor. According to the searchable database, as of September 2011 there have been 170 anti-environment votes under the Republican majority in the 112th Congress. The database breaks down this number by category, finding the vast majority of anti-environment votes targeting the EPA (91 votes). Some of these seek to block actions that prevent pollution (71 votes), and others to dismantle the Clean Air Act specifically (61 votes). Fewer measures have been directed at weakening regulations of the Department of Energy and Department of the Interior, blocking action on climate change and defunding clean energy initiatives.

USA = Best, Safest place to invest for 2012!!!

Both the S&P 500 and the Dow are among the 10 best performers this year among 91 national indexes tracked by Bloomberg. The Dow has rallied 6.1 percent in 2011. That’s below the average gains of 12 percent in years before presidential elections since its creation in 1896, according to data compiled by Bloomberg and Dow Jones.



Stocks gained today as companies cranked out more goods in December and pending sales of existing homes jumped in November for a second month, pointing to a pickup in U.S. economic growth as 2011 comes to a close. The number of Americans filing claims for jobless benefits dropped to 375,000 on average (INJCJC4) over the past four weeks, the fewest since June 2008, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington.

Investors also watched developments in Europe’s attempt to tame its crisis. Italy auctioned 7.02 billion euros ($9 billion) of bonds, falling short of the target, as borrowing costs declined in its final debt sale of the year.

Now for a truly dumb move...Iran to close Strait of Hormuz...give the regime 45 days to survive that move!!!

U.S. officials and outside experts concede that Iran could block the strait, at least temporarily. Testifying to Congress in March, Defense Intelligence Agency Director Army Lieutenant General Ronald Burgess said that Iran is expanding its Persian Gulf naval bases, allowing it to “attempt to block the Strait of Hormuz temporarily” during a crisis.

Were Iran to make such a move, it might be hurt more than its adversaries.

Iran’s economy is shaky, as is popular support for its clerical rulers, Nader said. The country is facing new Western efforts to halt its suspected nuclear weapons program, including U.S. sanctions that are awaiting President Barack Obama's signature and a possible European Union ban on imports of Iranian oil.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Iran’s net oil export revenues were approximately $73 billion in 2010; crude oil and its derivatives account for nearly 80 percent of Iran’s total exports; and oil exports provide half of the nation’s government revenue.

Women's Rights = protect the living before the unborn

Rick Perry on Tuesday said that he has reversed his acceptance of abortion in some severe circumstances, saying that he now opposes the procedure even in cases of rape and incest.

We think if the governor then agrees to cut off the scrotum of the rapist or the person who commits incest and shoves  one testicle down the governor's throat and the other down the offender's throat then we're okay with the reversal.  

A woman's body is her right, her choice, and not yours == legislate elsewhere....

India's Reliance in emerging financial fraud case....

A legal battle in London has revealed that a conglomerate controlled by Anil Ambani, the Indian telecoms tycoon, used a Mauritius-based fund to make covert investments in one of its own companies, triggering calls in India for a full investigation.


UK regulators have found that Mr Ambani’s Reliance Group, spanning interests from financial services to infrastructure, invested $250m in the offshore fund that in 2007 bought securities linked to one of the companies within the group, in violation of Indian law.

The complex chain of investments, long the subject of media speculation in India, is now at the centre of a disciplinary action brought by the UK’s Financial Services Authority against the former private bankers at UBS who set up the investment fund.

The long-running case has already established serious compliance failings at UBS, the Swiss bank whose flagship wealth management arm competes fiercely for the business of billionaires such as Mr Ambani. The bank paid an £8m fine in 2009 for control weaknesses on its “Asia II” private banking desk based in London, which dealt with “mega clients” such as Mr Ambani and several other Indian tycoons.

So far, only Mr Ambani’s group has been publicly identified as using this structure. But one Indian investor with knowledge of the vehicle claimed that as many as 25 Indian businessmen had used similar funds.

Euro must survive or the USA fails then China fails and so forth.....but its still fun to trade around!!!

Refined-copper imports by China climbed to the highest since June 2009 last month, the General Administration of Customs said Dec. 21. Global oil demand will rise 1.4 percent next year, with China accounting for more than a 10th of the total, according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency.

Funny how all the radical Islamic countries have oil....could it be that the Mullahs & Imans like money too...all in the name of Allah/GOD/Ra/Yaweh/Krishna/Zeus of course

Islamist militants set off bombs across Nigeria on Christmas Day - three targeting churches including one that killed at least 27 people - raising fears that they are trying to ignite sectarian civil war.



The Boko Haram Islamist sect, which aims to impose sharia law across the country, claimed responsibility for the three church bombs, the second Christmas in a row the group has caused mass carnage with deadly bombings of churches. Security forces also blamed the sect for two other blasts in the north.



St Theresa's Catholic Church in Madala, a satellite town about 40 km (25 miles) from the center of the capital Abuja, was packed when the bomb exploded just outside.


"We were in the church with my family when we heard the explosion. I just ran out," Timothy Onyekwere told Reuters. "Now I don't even know where my children or my wife are. I don't know how many were killed but there were many dead."


Hours after the first bomb, blasts were reported at the Mountain of Fire and Miracles Church in the central, ethnically and religiously mixed town of Jos, and at a church in northern Yobe state at the town of Gadaka. Residents said many were wounded in Gadaka, but there were no immediate further details.


A suicide bomber killed four security officials at the State Security Service in one of the other bombs, which struck the northeastern town of Damaturu, police said. Residents heard two loud explosions and gunfire in the town.

A Reuters reporter at the church near Abuja saw the front roof had been destroyed, as had several houses nearby. Five burnt out cars were still smouldering. There were scenes of chaos, as shocked residents stared at the wreckage in disbelief.


"Mass just ended and people were rushing out of the church and suddenly I heard a loud sound: 'Gbam!' Cars were in flames and bodies littered everywhere," Nnana Nwachukwu told Reuters.

Father Christopher Barde, Assistant priest of the church, said: "The officials who counted told me they have picked up 27 bodies so far."


Police cordoned off the area around the church. Thousands of furious youths set up burning road blocks on the highway from Abuja leading to Nigeria's largely Muslim north.


Police and the military tried to disperse them by firing live rounds into the air with tear gas.

"We are so angry," shouted Kingsley Ukpabi, as a queue of hooting vehicles lined up behind his flaming barrage.

And now to the American Dream: Racially Isolated and Seperate but equal....(Sure and I just saw a flying a pig....)

At Dugsi Academy, a public school in St. Paul, Minnesota, girls wearing traditional Muslim headscarves and flowing ankle-length skirts study Arabic and Somali. The charter school educates “East African children in the Twin Cities,” its website says. Every student is black.



At Twin Cities German Immersion School, another St. Paul charter, children gather under a map of “Deutschland,” study with interns from Germany, Austria and Switzerland and learn to dance the waltz. Ninety percent of its students are white.


Six decades after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down “separate but equal” schools for blacks and whites, segregation is growing because of charter schools, privately run public schools that educate 1.8 million U.S. children. While charter-school leaders say programs targeting ethnic groups enrich education, they are isolating low-achievers and damaging diversity, said Myron Orfield, a lawyer and demographer.


“It feels like the Deep South in the days of Jim Crow segregation,” said Orfield, who directs the University of Minnesota Law School’s Institute on Race & Poverty. “When you see an all-white school and an all-black school in the same neighborhood in this day and age, it’s shocking.”

Charter schools are more segregated than traditional public schools, according to a 2010 report by the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles. Researchers studied 40 states, the District of Columbia, and 39 metropolitan areas. In particular, higher percentages of charter-school students attend what the report called “racially isolated” schools, where 90 percent or more students are from disadvantaged minority groups.

Double Down Romney will destroy the middle class and create further extreme poverty in the USA!!!

Mitt Romney wants to double down on the policies that caused the greatest economic calamity since the Great Depression.

“Romney is satisfied to settle for an economy in which fewer people succeed, while the majority of Americans are left to tread water or fall behind,” Biden wrote in an opinion essay published today in the Des Moines Register, the biggest newspaper in Iowa, where the caucuses that kick off the Republican presidential nominating contest will be held Jan 3. “Americans cannot afford a return to policies that rewarded the recklessness of a few while millions of small businesses and workers were left to clean up the mess.”