Goldman Sachs Defaults on $5,000 pledge to Credit Union for the Poor!!!

Earlier this month, hundreds of New Yorkers received an unusual dinner invitation from the Lower East Side People's Federal Credit Union.



The Credit Union, a small lender serving New York's poor, was holding a fund-raiser to celebrate its 25th anniversary. Among the chief sponsors listed on the invitation was Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Among the honorees: "Occupy Wall Street."


They might as well have asked Marie Antoinette to dig into her purse to support Madame Defarge's knitting business.

Shortly after the invitation was sent out, Goldman withdrew its name from the dinner. It also pulled the plug on its $5,000 funding pledge.

It's worthy of note the CEO of Goldman Sachs makes $16,000 per hour.....and Goldman Sachs benefited from billions of dollars of bailout money during the financial crisis that they caused.

Much like Mercury Poisoning from Coal Fired Power; Climate Change is REAL!

A new climate study shows that since the mid-1950s, global average temperatures over land have risen by 0.9 degrees Celsius (1.6 degrees Fahrenheit), confirming previous studies that have found a climate that has been warming – in fits and starts – since around 1900.

Most climate scientists attribute warming since the mid-1950, at least to some degree, to carbon dioxide emissions from human activities – burning coal, oil, and to a lesser extent gas, and from land-use changes.

The latest results mirror those from earlier, independent studies by scientists at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research in Britain, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Occupy Everywhere!!!

A month on, however, Occupy Wall Street has become Occupy Everywhere with demonstrations across 951 cities in 82 countries, and counting.


Quick hits from News Bytes: The head of France's intelligence agency is to be investigated for spying on a journalist; France blocks access to a website that shows alleged police wrongdoing; Press TV looks set to be taken off the British airwaves; and the UK's Guardian newspaper scores another point against Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation

EU: Calls Canadian Tar Sands the Filth they are!!!

Oil derived from tar sands will be penalised by the European Union after its executive arm resisted pressure from Canada to exclude the fuel from new pollution standards.


The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, decided to target tar sands on Tuesday after more than a year of review, which saw intense lobbying from Ottawa and the oil industry. It will classify oil derived from tar sands as being nearly a quarter more polluting than conventional crude in new legislation that requires suppliers to reduce transport fuels’ carbon emissions.


In order to import such oil, suppliers will also have to invest in biofuels and other green products to offset the pollution – which could be cost prohibitive.

Although tar sands oil is almost non-existent in Europe, the new restrictions could scupper plans for future exports from Canada and Venezuela.

They could also influence other markets, including the US, as they debate the merits of an abundant new source of energy that critics contend is highly polluting.

The US will decide this year whether to allow the proposed $7bn Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry heavy crude extracted from the oil sands of Alberta to refineries on the US Gulf of Mexico. “That’s why the Canadians are so worried about this. They know it will set a precedent and have financial implications for them,” said Nusa Urbancic, a policy adviser at Transport & Environment, a campaign group.

We are the 99%

When protesters under the banner “Occupy Wall Street” assembled last month in the heart of America’s business prowess, detractors dismissed them as a motley crew of disgruntled folks who would quickly run out of steam.


The detractors were wrong. Not only has Occupy Wall Street shown a great deal of staying power, it has triggered similar protests in more than 900 cities around the world.

Therein lies the chief difference between OWS and the tea party, to which it has been compared. One is a domestic movement aimed bringing about change in government through the ballot box. The other is an international push against what participants see as the cause of the global economic collapse: The major financial institutions that are not confined by national boundaries.

Tea party adherents believe government is too involved in the lives of Americans; Occupy Wall Street protesters argue that the absence of strong regulations and the lack of government oversight into the day-to-day operations of Wall Street companies led to an anything-goes attitude that ultimately brought down the American economy and the economies of most of the western world. To avoid a global depression, governments were forced to bail out the financial institution with huge amounts of public funds.

The result: Profits and bonuses are now booming for those on Wall Street and other financial centers, while the unemployment rates skyrocket, the Middle Class dwindles and cuts in public spending rise sharply.

The disparity of income and wealth has given rise to the “We are the 99%” slogan, which reflects the belief of the Occupy Wall Street protesters that wealth is now concentrated in the hands of 1 percent of the population. In addition, politicians who are perceived to be in the pockets of the corporate barons are also being targeted.

But all the protests and slogans won’t bring about the change in behavior on Wall Street and in Congress unless those assembled in Zuccotti Park in New York City and around the country do what the tea party has done: Become a credible political force for change.

Recent polls should provide some encouragement to the Occupy Wall Street movement. In general, a majority of the respondents agree with the premise of OWS protests.

A United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection polls shows that 56 percent of non-college educated whites back the protesters, according to the Washington Post. Thirty-one percent oppose them.

Overall approval

A Time magazine poll shows that 54 percent of non-college educated men, and 48 percent of non-college educated women, agree with the OWS protesters. That’s an overall approval rating of 51 percent.

The protests have attracted a wide array of Americans, from members of labor unions, to young people who can’t find jobs, to Hollywood types.

Actor Alec Baldwin made a brief stop at the OWS camp in the park and offered this observation on Twitter, the Post reports:

“Campaign Finance Reform should be the goal of Occupy Wall Street. Wealth is not the issue. It’s using wealth to buy the govt, that’s the issue.”

The need for a cogent plan of action to bring about the necessary changes is clear. So long as the disparate groups involved in OWS simply vent their anger and talk in generalities, the detractors will continue to dismiss them, and the decision-makers will continue to avoid them.

The ballot box is a powerful tool to force change in a democracy.

Another one bites the dust!!!

Muammar Gaddafi has been killed after National Transitional Council fighters overran loyalist defences in the toppled Libyan leader's hometown and final stronghold of Sirte.



But questions remained on Thursday over the circumstances of Gaddafi's death as footage appeared to show he had been captured alive, following an apparent attempt to flee the besieged coastal city in a convoy which came under fire from French warplanes and a US drone aircraft.


Other footage showed Gaddafi's lifeless and bloodied body being dragged along a road.

"We have been waiting for this moment for a long time. Muammar Gaddafi has been killed," Mahmoud Jibril, the de facto Libyan prime minister, told reporters on Thursday in Tripoli, the capital.


Jibril said Gaddafi had been shot in the head "in crossfire" between his supporters and NTC fighters after his capture.


"He was alive up to last moment, until he arrived at hospital" in the town of Misrata, Jibril said.


After his death, Gaddafi's body was reportedly transferred to a mosque in the city.


Crowds took to the streets of Sirte, Tripoli, Misrata and Benghazi, the eastern city that spearheaded the uprising against Gaddafi's 42-year rule in February, to celebrate the news, with some firing guns and waving Libya's new flag.


"I'm so proud now," a Tripoli resident told Al Jazeera."It's a new era. Look to our eyes and you'll see happiness, finally".


One of Gaddafi's sons, Mutassim, was also killed on Thursday, having been hiding with his father, Mahmoud Shammam, Libya's information minister said. Earlier reports had suggested that he had been captured alive but injured.

fishberries anyone? -- omega 3 with the taste of a strawberry.....

Right now a debate is raging in the United States about Genetically Engineered (GE) ingredients in our food. The biotech industry claims that GE food crops will save the environment and solve the hunger crisis. But a growing number of scientists, doctors and consumers consider them a threat to the planet, and organizations like Christian Aid and the Institute for Food and Development Policy say GE food crops are likely to increase world hunger.



How can you make sense of this tricky subject? Read on to find out the truth behind the genetic engineering myths.


MYTH #1: Genetic engineering is merely an extension of traditional breeding.

REALITY: Genetic engineering is a new technology that has been developed to overcome the limitations of traditional breeding. Traditional breeders have never been capable of crossing fish genes with strawberries. But genetically engineered “fishberries” are already in the field. With genetic engineering, these types of new organisms can be created and released into the environment1. Food and Drug Administration scientists stated that genetic engineering is different from traditional breeding, and so are the risks2. Despite this warning, the FDA continues to assert that GE foods and crops are not different and don’t require special regulations or labels.


MYTH #2: Genetic engineering can make foods better, more nutritious, longer-lasting and better-tasting.

REALITY: The reason for the millions of acres of GE crops grown in this country today has nothing to do with nutrition, flavor or any other consumer benefit. There is little benefit aside from the financial gains reaped by the firms producing GE crops. Nearly all of the GE corn, soy, and cotton grown in the United States has been genetically altered so that it can withstand more pesticides or produce its own.

MYTH #3: GE crops eliminate pesticides and are necessary for environmentally sustainable farming.

REALITY: Farmers who grow GE crops actually use more herbicide, not less. For example, Monsanto created Roundup-Ready (RR) soy, corn and cotton specifically so that farmers would continue to buy Roundup, the company’s best-selling chemical weed killer, which is sold with RR seeds3. Instead of reducing pesticide use, one study of more than 8,000 university-based field trials suggested that farmers who plant RR soy use two to five times more herbicide than non-GE farmers who use integrated weed-control methods. GE crops may be the greatest threat to sustainable agriculture on the planet. Many organic farmers rely on a natural bacterial spray to control certain crop pests. The advent of genetically engineered, insect-resistant crops is likely to lead to insects that are immune to this natural pesticide. When this biological pesticide is rendered ineffective, other farmers will turn to increasingly toxic chemicals to deal with the “superbugs” created by GE crops. Meanwhile, organic farmers will be out of options.

MYTH #4: The Government ensures that genetic engineering is safe for the environment and human health.

REALITY: Neither the FDA4, the Department of Agriculture (USDA)5, nor the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)6 has done any long-term human health or environmental impact studies of GE foods or crops, nor has any mandatory regulation specific to GE food been established. Biotech companies are on the honor system. They have virtually no requirements to show that this new technology is safe. FDA scientists and doctors warned that GE foods could have new and different risks such as hidden allergens, increased plant-toxin levels and the potential to hasten the spread of antibiotic-resistant disease.


MYTH #5: There is no scientific evidence that GE foods harm people or the environment

REALITY: There is no long-term study showing that GE foods or crops are safe, yet the biotech industry and government have allowed our environment and our families to become guinea pigs in these experiments. Doctors around the world have warned that GE foods may cause unexpected health consequences that may take years to develop. Laboratory and field evidence shows that GE crops can harm beneficial insects, damage soils and transfer GE genes in the environment, thereby contaminating neighboring crops and potentially creating uncontrollable weeds.


MYTH #6: GE foods are necessary to feed the developing worlds growing population.

REALITY: In 1998, African scientists at a United Nations conference strongly objected to Monsanto’s promotional GE campaign that used photos of starving African children under the headline “Let the Harvest Begin.” The scientists, who represented many of the nations affected by poverty and hunger, said gene technologies would undermine the nations’ capacities to feed themselves by destroying established diversity, local knowledge and sustainable agricultural systems7. Genetic engineering could actually lead to an increase in hunger and starvation. Biotech companies like Monsanto force growers to sign a ãtechnology use agreementä when growing their patented GE crops which stipulates, among other things, they the farmer can not save the seeds produced from their GE harvest. Half the world’s farmers rely on saved seed to produce food that 1.4 billion people rely on for daily nutrition.
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1 Rissler, Jane and Mellon, Margaret. The Ecological Risks of Engineered Crops (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996, 4-5.)


2 Discovery documents from the lawsuit Alliance for Bio-Integrity et al v Shalala, May 1998. Center for Food Safety, 666 Pennsylvania Ave, SE, Washingotn DC, 202-547-9359.

3 Benbrook, Charles. “Evidence of the Magnitude of the Roundup Ready Soybean Yield Drag from University- Based Varietal Trials in 1998,” Ag BioTech InfoNet Technical Paper Number 1, July 13,1999. http://www.biotech-info.net/herbicide-tolerance.html

4 Statement of James Maryanski, FDA Biotechnology Coordinator, Before the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, October 7, 1999.

5 Sally McCammon, USDA, “Regulating Products of Biotechnology,” Economic Perspectives, US Department of State, vol 4, #4, October 1999.

6 “Genetic Genie: The Premature Commercial Release of Genetically Engineered Bacteria,” Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, September, 1995. From PEER, 2001 S Street, Washington DC 20009.


7 “Let Nature’s Harvest Continue!” African Counter Statement to Monsanto, at the 5th Extraordinary Session of the FAQ Commission on Genetic Resources, June 12, 1998.


8 Peter Rosset, “Why Genetically Altered Food Won’t Conquer Hunger,” New York Times, September 1, 1999

Dollars, Not Sense: Government Contracting Under the Bush Administration. United States House of Representatives, Committee on Government Reform - Minority Staff, Special Investigations Division

8 Years of Fleecing the American People by the Bush Administration.
The US Special Inspector General past investigations into reconstruction contracts revealed that, in some contracts, overhead expenses accounted for more than half of the costs that Kellogg, Brown, and Root (KBR) billed the federal government. A recent audit report, “Review of Administrative Task Orders for Iraq Reconstruction Contracts,” found that relatively high overhead costs were charged, and that these costs were significantly higher than work performed by other companies in Iraq. For these contracts, overhead costs ranged from 11% to 55% of projected contract budgets. For example, the SIGIR found that in five KBR projects, administrative costs outdistanced the costs of the projects alone. For example, the report cites a project where administrative costs totaled about $52.7 million, while the actual project costs were about $13.4 million. In another case, the combined administrative costs for five contractors totaled about $62 million, while the direct construction costs totaled $26.7 million. The SIGIR found that overhead expenses accounted for more than half of the costs KBR billed the federal government.



Overhead fees can also result as a part of fees passed from one contractor to another. One such example is the case of Blackwater Security Firm’s contract for private security services in Iraq. Blackwater’s contract paid workers who guarded food trucks a salary of $600 a day. The company added overhead costs and a 36% markup to its bill, then forwarded the bill to a Kuwaiti company. The Kuwaiti company then added costs and profit, then sent the bill to the food company. The food company did the same, and finally sent the bill to KBR. KBR passed its cost to DOD. Yet the U.S. Army stated in a congressional committee hearing that it had never authorized KBR to enter into a subcontracting relationship with Blackwater. The matter remains pending.

While US Refineries Close; Costing Americans good paying jobs; The Pentagon pays Dictators for Fuel that could be sourced from Pennsylvania (home of the Liberty Bell)!!! Now that's Patriotism (just whose??)

Officially, the U.S. does not pay other governments for rights to military bases. The logic is straightforward: funneling money to the treasuries of foreign dictators cannot form the foundation of genuine strategic alliances. Yet, to fight wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while staring down the mullahs in Iran, over the last decade the Pentagon has come to rely in an unprecedented way on a web of bases across the Middle East. And a NEWSWEEK investigation of Pentagon contracting practices in Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, and Bahrain has uncovered more than $14 billion paid mostly in sole-source contracts to companies controlled by ruling families across the Persian Gulf. The revelation raises a fundamental question: are U.S. taxpayer dollars enriching the ruling potentates of friendly regimes just as the youthful protesters and the Arab Spring have brought a new push for democracy across the region?


Take a look at Abu Dhabi. The wealthiest of the United Arab Emirates, it hosts a U.S. Air Force base at Al Dhafra, which is a vital refueling hub in the region. As is the case in most Gulf states, Abu Dhabi is ruled by a single family that dominates both government and business. Here it is the Nahyan family, and the emir is 63-year-old Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who is known for his interest in camel racing, is worth $15 billion, and controls the country’s national oil company, ADNOC. As it turns out, every drop of fuel America buys for its planes at Al Dhafra—more than 200 million gallons a year, costing $5.2 billion since 2005—is purchased from the Al Nahyan–-controlled ADNOC.  Estimates are that the US Military paid $2 billion more than it would have cost to source the fuel from American Refineries!!!

Yet, according to contract documents, that money has bypassed the competitive bidding process that is supposed to accompany any -purchase—of firearms, flak jackets, or fuel—by the Pentagon.

In Abu Dhabi, “we may be essentially buying our presence,” says Alexander Cooley, a professor at Barnard College who studies U.S. basing strategy. The U.S. regularly pays rents to foreign landowners, but those payments are separate from base rights, which are government-to-government agreements.
Nearly three decades ago, after a spree of spending scandals—there was a $436 hammer and a toilet seat that cost $640—Congress passed the 1984 Competition in Contracting Act requiring competitive bidding. The principle is simple: competition drives down prices and increases quality. According to Charles Tiefer, a member of the federal Commission on Wartime Contracting, “The law mandates competition with very limited exceptions.”

Abu Dhabi has exploited one of those exemptions brilliantly. Five years ago, at the height of the Iraq War, an American fuel contractor based in Florida called IOTC challenged a $500 million sole-source contract teed up for ADNOC. The award “must be open to full competition,” a contract lawyer, Ronald Uscher, wrote in a protest letter to the federal Government Accountability Office. The Pentagon fought back, citing what it said was U.A.E. law, but IOTC’s lawyer says the military “was unable to produce any such law or decree.”

Internal Pentagon emails obtained by NEWSWEEK under the Freedom of Information Act show confusion even inside the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), which handles procurement for the military. After a colonel questioned the sole-source process with ADNOC in 2008, the acting division chief of the agency responded, “Basically, it’s the only company we are allowed to source fuel from as per the local gov’t.” Later, a U.S. contracting officer asked, “Is there any documentation or history” about the Abu Dhabi law? Even the U.S. Embassy in Abu Dhabi said that it could not actually find a copy of the law. Only a few months later, the Pentagon issued another $918 million sole-source contract to ADNOC. In Tiefer’s estimation, “you are turning the keys to the treasury over to the sheikdom.”

Lack of Controls = certain death = in this for consumers and corporate share price

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) said its head of China operations and a top deputy resigned, as the company grapples with a pork-labeling investigation that shuttered 13 stores and led to the detention of at least 27 people.



Ed Chan’s resignation was for personal reasons and not connected to the pork-labeling probe in the southwestern city of Chongqing, Anthony Rose, a Hong Kong-based spokesman, said by phone today. Clara Wong, Wal-Mart China’s senior vice president for people, also resigned.

The world’s largest retailer’s 15-year expansion in China is under threat from the probe over the labeling of ordinary pork as organic in Chongqing, where Wal-Mart has faced 21 cases of false advertising and sales of expired or uninspected food since 2006. China has increased scrutiny of food retailers after cases including the sale of melamine- tainted milk and reprocessed cooking oil.

Scott Price, chief executive of its Asian operations, will replace Chan on an interim basis, the company said in an e- mailed statement today. Chan had held the post for almost five years. Rose would not comment on Wong’s reasons for stepping down.

The rich and mighty about to lose their Judicial Platinum Card in Bolivia

La Paz - Bolivians go to the polls on Sunday but not to elect law makers; instead to elect judges.



It will be the first time judges in a Latin American country will be selected by popular vote.

In Bolivia voters will pick new justices to the Supreme Court as well as judges from three other lower courts. In all, 52 judicial positions will be voted upon.


President Evo Morales pushed for the election in order to "decolonise the judiciary", as he put it. Supporters say the election will help strengthen Bolivia's democracy and also transform a historically weak and inefficient justice system that disenfranchise the county's indigenous majority.


At the San Pedro prison in La Paz, the problems of the Bolivian judiciary come into sharp focus. The decrepit facility is more than 110 year old, has crumbling walls, and houses more than 2,000 inmates in a facility the size of an entire city block.


It's an open prison – with no confined jail cells - where all the inmates share an open space with a maze of makeshift rooms where inmates organize themselves by sections.


On Saturday, a team from Al Jazeera spent about an hour touring parts of San Pedro, where as many as fifty inmates were crammed into dimly lit rooms with no running water or bathroom facilities and forced to sleep on filthy mattresses on the ground.


A smell of mold, human feces, and marijuana mixed together.

Walls on the prison were rotting, and some second level floors housing dozens of inmates in one room were so flimsy they felt they could collapse at any moment.

All the inmates are poor, and most have yet to have their cases reviewed by judges. They remain in a state of limbo without the financial resources for top lawyer to push through their cases to a judge.


The obvious prison overcrowding, jail officials say, is a direct result of a poor judicial system that Sunday's election is meant to help solve.


In Bolivia, it's well accepted that people who are wealthy and well-connected have access to good lawyers and speedy justice.


Everyone else ends up at prisons like San Pedro