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Better Believe It
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Better Believe It's Journal
January 11, 2012
Unemployment Scars Likely to Last for Years
BY BEN CASSELMAN
January 9, 2012
The U.S. job market is showing signs of a sustained recovery. But the country's prolonged struggle with unemployment will leave scars that are likely to remain for years, if not generations.
Economists and academicians believe long-term unemployment may be a bigger problem than high unemployment.
Research shows the longer people are unemployed, the less likely they are to find jobs. Economists aren't sure why- to what degree it's because workers' skills deteriorate, or because they find ways to cope and give up looking for work, or whether the stigma of being unemployed for so long makes companies unlikely to hire them.
But the effect is the same: many of the people out of work the longest likely will never work again.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203513604577144483060678656.html#mod=djempersonal
Many of the people out of work the longest likely will never work again
Unemployment Scars Likely to Last for Years
BY BEN CASSELMAN
January 9, 2012
The U.S. job market is showing signs of a sustained recovery. But the country's prolonged struggle with unemployment will leave scars that are likely to remain for years, if not generations.
Economists and academicians believe long-term unemployment may be a bigger problem than high unemployment.
Research shows the longer people are unemployed, the less likely they are to find jobs. Economists aren't sure why- to what degree it's because workers' skills deteriorate, or because they find ways to cope and give up looking for work, or whether the stigma of being unemployed for so long makes companies unlikely to hire them.
But the effect is the same: many of the people out of work the longest likely will never work again.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203513604577144483060678656.html#mod=djempersonal
January 11, 2012
Sh*t Republican Candidates Say
I thought I had a potty mouth, but you should hear the way this GOP field talks. For starters, they're obsessed with sex …
by Lizz Winstead
January 10, 2011
After Iowa, we are left with a half-dozen halfwits who want to defeat Barack Obama and become leader of the free world. These are the Top Dogs, the Pick of the Kitty Litter, the Jewels in the Clown.
So, how did these masterful hatesmen earn their coveted place in the Cream of the Crap? With their unwavering obsession with sex. All kinds of sex. Same sex, opposite sex, sex with animals.
Oh, and Muslims. But not Muslim sex. Not yet, anyway. There is so much to talk about when it comes to gay sex that they probably just haven't gotten around to it. But they will. If they know nothing about something, they always make time to spout off about it.
So, after watching 15 debates, I can't help but ask myself, "Is this the only time in their lives they are allowed talk about sex?" and "Why do guys with no access to my lady junk spend more time talking about it than guys that do?"
Read the full article and highlights of the Republican candidates "pillow talk" at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/jan/10/sht-republican-candidates-say
Shit Republican Candidates for President Say: Their Unwavering Obession with Sex
Sh*t Republican Candidates Say
I thought I had a potty mouth, but you should hear the way this GOP field talks. For starters, they're obsessed with sex …
by Lizz Winstead
January 10, 2011
After Iowa, we are left with a half-dozen halfwits who want to defeat Barack Obama and become leader of the free world. These are the Top Dogs, the Pick of the Kitty Litter, the Jewels in the Clown.
So, how did these masterful hatesmen earn their coveted place in the Cream of the Crap? With their unwavering obsession with sex. All kinds of sex. Same sex, opposite sex, sex with animals.
Oh, and Muslims. But not Muslim sex. Not yet, anyway. There is so much to talk about when it comes to gay sex that they probably just haven't gotten around to it. But they will. If they know nothing about something, they always make time to spout off about it.
So, after watching 15 debates, I can't help but ask myself, "Is this the only time in their lives they are allowed talk about sex?" and "Why do guys with no access to my lady junk spend more time talking about it than guys that do?"
Read the full article and highlights of the Republican candidates "pillow talk" at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/jan/10/sht-republican-candidates-say
January 11, 2012
Fidel Castro warns of climate change, nuclear threat
January 9, 2012
Cuba's iconic revolutionary Fidel Castro warned that the world was on an "inexorable" march into the abyss this year because of climate change and the threat of nuclear war.
In an article published Thursday -- Castro's first since November 2011 -- the 85-year-old retired leader also took aim at the United States and at gas shale "fracking," a new source of fossil fuels condemned by environmentalists.
"Many dangers threaten us, but two of them, nuclear war and climate change, are decisive and are drifting further away from a solution," he wrote in an article entitled "The March Towards the Abyss."
On the subject of climate change, Castro expressed fears about hydraulic fracturing -- or "fracking" -- a process by which water, sand and chemicals are blasted into the ground to release oil and gas trapped in solid rock.
http://news.yahoo.com/fidel-castro-warns-climate-change-nuclear-threat-140231159.html
Read Castro's full article at:
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/reflections-i/reflections-4january.html
Fidel Castro warns of climate change, gas shale "fracking", nuclear war threat
Fidel Castro warns of climate change, nuclear threat
January 9, 2012
Cuba's iconic revolutionary Fidel Castro warned that the world was on an "inexorable" march into the abyss this year because of climate change and the threat of nuclear war.
In an article published Thursday -- Castro's first since November 2011 -- the 85-year-old retired leader also took aim at the United States and at gas shale "fracking," a new source of fossil fuels condemned by environmentalists.
"Many dangers threaten us, but two of them, nuclear war and climate change, are decisive and are drifting further away from a solution," he wrote in an article entitled "The March Towards the Abyss."
On the subject of climate change, Castro expressed fears about hydraulic fracturing -- or "fracking" -- a process by which water, sand and chemicals are blasted into the ground to release oil and gas trapped in solid rock.
http://news.yahoo.com/fidel-castro-warns-climate-change-nuclear-threat-140231159.html
Read Castro's full article at:
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/reflections-i/reflections-4january.html
January 10, 2012
Smoking pot doesn't hurt lung capacity, study shows
By Kimberly Hayes Taylor
January 10, 2011
Periodically smoking marijuana doesn't appear to hurt lung capacity, the largest study ever conducted on pot smokers has found.
Even though most marijuana smokers tend to inhale deeply and hold the smoke in for as long as they can before exhaling, the lung capacity didn't deteriorate even among those who smoked a joint a day for seven years or once a week for 20 years, according to the study published Tuesday in JAMA, the journal of the American Medical Association.
In recent years, studies on marijuana smoking and its effects on lung function have been contradictory. While most studies have shown no effects on the lungs from smoking cannabis, others have shown adverse effects, and still others have shown improvement in lung function. Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, and University of Alabama at Birmingham knew tobacco smoking causes lung damage and leads to respiratory issues such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), but they wanted to be clear whether smoking marijuana, had similar effects.
They measured lung function multiple times in more than 5,100 men and women during a 20-year period. In fact, the research shows, some people who regularly smoke marijuana can have a slight improvement in lung function.
Read the full article at:
http://vitals.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/10/10098412-smoking-pot-doesnt-hurt-lung-capacity-study-shows
Smoking pot doesn't hurt lung capacity, 20 year study shows! Report in AMA Journal
Smoking pot doesn't hurt lung capacity, study shows
By Kimberly Hayes Taylor
January 10, 2011
Periodically smoking marijuana doesn't appear to hurt lung capacity, the largest study ever conducted on pot smokers has found.
Even though most marijuana smokers tend to inhale deeply and hold the smoke in for as long as they can before exhaling, the lung capacity didn't deteriorate even among those who smoked a joint a day for seven years or once a week for 20 years, according to the study published Tuesday in JAMA, the journal of the American Medical Association.
In recent years, studies on marijuana smoking and its effects on lung function have been contradictory. While most studies have shown no effects on the lungs from smoking cannabis, others have shown adverse effects, and still others have shown improvement in lung function. Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, and University of Alabama at Birmingham knew tobacco smoking causes lung damage and leads to respiratory issues such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), but they wanted to be clear whether smoking marijuana, had similar effects.
They measured lung function multiple times in more than 5,100 men and women during a 20-year period. In fact, the research shows, some people who regularly smoke marijuana can have a slight improvement in lung function.
Read the full article at:
http://vitals.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/10/10098412-smoking-pot-doesnt-hurt-lung-capacity-study-shows
January 7, 2012
by Abby Zimet
January 5, 2012
Two time-traveling “chrononauts” who took part in a secret CIA intergalactic program in the early 1980s say they encountered President Obama, aka Barry Soetero, at least twice at U.S. facilities on Mars after he was teleported there by a “jump room” for a perilous mission to establish a defense regime, during which his primary task was "to be seen and not eaten." The White House has denied the claim, though they admit the young Obama once watched "Marvin the Martian.” Of course, you'd expect them to. Still, time travel might help explain how a former constitutional law professor could subsequently blatantly disregard so many fundamental legal rights and principles once he gained power as president.
http://www.commondreams.org/further/2012/01/05-8
------------------------------------------------------------------------
White House Denies CIA Teleported Obama to Mars
By Spencer Ackerman
January 3, 2012
Forget Kenya. Never mind the secret madrassas. The sinister, shocking truth about Barack Obama’s past lies not in east Africa, but in outer space. As a young man in the early 1980s, Obama was part of a secret CIA project to explore Mars. The future president teleported there, along with the future head of Darpa.
Perhaps this all sounds fantastical, absurd, and more than a little nuts. We couldn’t agree more. That’s one of the reasons we love conspiracy theories — the more awesomely insane, the better. Each week during 2012, when the Mayans tell us to expect the apocalypse, Danger Room will peel back a new layer of crazy to expose those oh-so-cleverly hidden machinations powering this doomed plane of existence. Welcome — back — to Tinfoil Tuesday.
Officially, the White House says Obama never went to Mars. “Only if you count watching Marvin the Martian,” Tommy Vietor, the spokesman for the National Security Council, tells Danger Room. But that’s exactly what a secret chrononaut wants you to believe.
It is not known what exactly Obama did on Mars. (Socializing Martian health care, perhaps? Building a birth-certificate printing press?) His mission was a perilous one, according to Basiago and Stillings. The CIA wished to “establish a defense regime protecting the Earth from threats from space” as well as a legal claim to “territorial sovereignty,” making Obama something of a Martian conquistador. Presumably, Obama’s CIA handlers needed him to “acclimate Martian humanoids and animals to their presence” in order to secure the U.S.-Martian alliance. (We’ll bet you weren’t even aware of Martian animals.)
“Simply put, your task is to be seen and not eaten,” an elder chrononaut, retired Army Maj. Ed Dames, is alleged to have told a young Obama.
Read the full article at:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/01/obama-mars/
White House Denies CIA Teleported Obama to Mars
CIA Teleported Obama to Mars At Least Twice. Or Not.by Abby Zimet
January 5, 2012
Two time-traveling “chrononauts” who took part in a secret CIA intergalactic program in the early 1980s say they encountered President Obama, aka Barry Soetero, at least twice at U.S. facilities on Mars after he was teleported there by a “jump room” for a perilous mission to establish a defense regime, during which his primary task was "to be seen and not eaten." The White House has denied the claim, though they admit the young Obama once watched "Marvin the Martian.” Of course, you'd expect them to. Still, time travel might help explain how a former constitutional law professor could subsequently blatantly disregard so many fundamental legal rights and principles once he gained power as president.
http://www.commondreams.org/further/2012/01/05-8
------------------------------------------------------------------------
White House Denies CIA Teleported Obama to Mars
By Spencer Ackerman
January 3, 2012
Forget Kenya. Never mind the secret madrassas. The sinister, shocking truth about Barack Obama’s past lies not in east Africa, but in outer space. As a young man in the early 1980s, Obama was part of a secret CIA project to explore Mars. The future president teleported there, along with the future head of Darpa.
Perhaps this all sounds fantastical, absurd, and more than a little nuts. We couldn’t agree more. That’s one of the reasons we love conspiracy theories — the more awesomely insane, the better. Each week during 2012, when the Mayans tell us to expect the apocalypse, Danger Room will peel back a new layer of crazy to expose those oh-so-cleverly hidden machinations powering this doomed plane of existence. Welcome — back — to Tinfoil Tuesday.
Officially, the White House says Obama never went to Mars. “Only if you count watching Marvin the Martian,” Tommy Vietor, the spokesman for the National Security Council, tells Danger Room. But that’s exactly what a secret chrononaut wants you to believe.
It is not known what exactly Obama did on Mars. (Socializing Martian health care, perhaps? Building a birth-certificate printing press?) His mission was a perilous one, according to Basiago and Stillings. The CIA wished to “establish a defense regime protecting the Earth from threats from space” as well as a legal claim to “territorial sovereignty,” making Obama something of a Martian conquistador. Presumably, Obama’s CIA handlers needed him to “acclimate Martian humanoids and animals to their presence” in order to secure the U.S.-Martian alliance. (We’ll bet you weren’t even aware of Martian animals.)
“Simply put, your task is to be seen and not eaten,” an elder chrononaut, retired Army Maj. Ed Dames, is alleged to have told a young Obama.
Read the full article at:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/01/obama-mars/
January 7, 2012
Does Mitt Romney Care About Jobs or Just Making Money? Two steelworkers speak out in video
Two steelworkers tell their story about how they lost their jobs when Mitt Romney and Bain Capital took over the steel plant in Kansas City and eventually shut the place down.
January 6, 2012
by Ray McGovern
During his career as a CIA analyst, Ray McGovern prepared and briefed the President's Daily Brief and chaired National Intelligence Estimates. He is a member of the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
January 5, 2012
President Barack Obama desecrated the Constitution that he and I swore to defend when he signed the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, which includes language violating the Bill of Rights and other constitutionally protected liberties.
Those existing laws – including the original post-9/11 use-of-military-force authorization and the Military Commissions Act passed in 2006 and modified in 2009 – opened the door for presidents to declare anyone of their choice, American citizen or non-citizen alike, an “enemy combatant” and to subject the person to military prison or even assassination.
The American Civil Liberties Union also disputed Obama’s claim that the NDAA was essentially business as usual. “The statute contains a sweeping worldwide indefinite detention provision,” the ACLU said, without “temporal or geographic limitations, and can be used by this and future presidents to militarily detain people captured far from any battlefield.”
In other words, the ACLU is noting that since the United States relies on the principle of “laws, not men,” the assurance of any individual president that he won’t exploit an abusive legal power doesn’t mean that the next president won’t. The right thing to do in such a case is to veto legislation that contains that kind of unconstitutional provision, not simply sign it, promise not to use it, and express “serious reservations.”
Read the full article at:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/05-3
President Barack Obama: "Defiling the Constitution, Betraying the Founders"
Defiling the Constitution, Betraying the Foundersby Ray McGovern
During his career as a CIA analyst, Ray McGovern prepared and briefed the President's Daily Brief and chaired National Intelligence Estimates. He is a member of the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
January 5, 2012
President Barack Obama desecrated the Constitution that he and I swore to defend when he signed the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, which includes language violating the Bill of Rights and other constitutionally protected liberties.
Those existing laws – including the original post-9/11 use-of-military-force authorization and the Military Commissions Act passed in 2006 and modified in 2009 – opened the door for presidents to declare anyone of their choice, American citizen or non-citizen alike, an “enemy combatant” and to subject the person to military prison or even assassination.
The American Civil Liberties Union also disputed Obama’s claim that the NDAA was essentially business as usual. “The statute contains a sweeping worldwide indefinite detention provision,” the ACLU said, without “temporal or geographic limitations, and can be used by this and future presidents to militarily detain people captured far from any battlefield.”
In other words, the ACLU is noting that since the United States relies on the principle of “laws, not men,” the assurance of any individual president that he won’t exploit an abusive legal power doesn’t mean that the next president won’t. The right thing to do in such a case is to veto legislation that contains that kind of unconstitutional provision, not simply sign it, promise not to use it, and express “serious reservations.”
Read the full article at:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/05-3
January 6, 2012
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 5, 2012
CONTACT: Rights Groups
AIUSA: Sharon Singh, (202) 509-8194, or ssingh@aiusa.org
NRCAT: Samantha Friedman, office: (202) 265-3000, cell: (202) 215-9260 or Samantha@rabinowitz-dorf.com
CCR: Jen Nessel, (212) 614-6449 or JNessel@ccrjustice.org
WAT: Jeremy Varon, (732) 979-3119 or jvaron@aol.com
Broad Coalition Opposes NDAA and Calls on President Obama to Keep His Promise and Shutter Guantanamo Bay Now
Groups will mark 10th anniversary of first detainees imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay with rally, human chain starting at White House; military, legal, religious and 9/11 families among speakers’ list
WASHINGTON - January 5 - A broad coalition of human rights groups and other like-minded organizations will mark the 10th anniversary of the first detainees being jailed at the U.S.-controlled detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Wednesday, January 11, 2012, by holding a rally at Lafayette Park in Washington, D.C., beginning at 12 p.m. Participants oppose the detention provisions in the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that violate human rights and are urging President Barack Obama to keep his promise and shut down the detention facility.
Speakers at the rally include Colonel Morris Davis, executive director of the Crimes of War Education Project, who previously served as the chief prosecutor for the office of military commissions at Guantánamo Bay; Talat Hamdani, mother of Salman Hamdani, an emergency medical technician who died in the September 11, 2001 attacks while helping people at the Twin Towers in New York City and Ramzi Kassem, an attorney who represents Guantanamo and Bagram detainees and supervises the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR) project at CUNY School of Law.
After the rally, the demonstrators will march down Pennsylvania Avenue, led by 171 people in orange jumpsuits and black hoods, representing the men still detained at Guantanamo. The marchers will continue all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, holding brief rallies at four locations to dramatically demonstrate the chain of responsibility that connects the White House, the Department of Justice, the U.S. Capitol and the Supreme Court.
Prior to the rally and demonstration, there will be a press briefing from 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. at the National Press Club (First Amendment room), with Rear Admiral John Hutson, an early critic of the military commission system and the treatment of detainees as one of the featured speakers.
Media is encouraged to attend and cover the rally and vigil. Details below:
What: 10th anniversary of the opening of the Guantanamo Bay prison –
10 years and counting – with a rally and human chain
Date: Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Time: Rally: 12:00 p.m.
Human chain vigil: 1:00 p.m.
Location: Lafayette Park, Pennsylvania Ave. and Jackson Place, NW, Washington, D.C. 20006
For a list of comments from the January 11 coalition members, please go to www.nrcat.org/gitmo2012_quotes.
Participating groups include
Amnesty International USA, Center for Constitutional Rights, National Religious Campaign Against Torture, Witness Against Torture, 8th Day Center for Justice, Appeal for Justice, Arab American Association of New York, Backbone Campaign, Baltimore-Washington Area Peace Council, Bill of Rights Defense Committee, Bradley Manning Support Network, Casa Esperanza, Catholic Worker, Chicago Committee to Free the Cuban 5, Code Pink, Council on American-Islamic Relations, Courage to Resist, Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility, Fellowship of Reconciliation, High Road for Human Rights, Human Rights USA, International Justice Network, Islamic Circle of North America-Council for Social Justice, International Federation for Human Rights, Just Foreign Policy, Latin America Solidarity Coalition, Liberty Coalition, Midwest Anti War Mobilization, Muslim Peace Coalition, National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance, National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms,Natural Solutions Foundation, No More Guantánamos, North Carolina Stop Torture Now Coalition, Occupy Washington DC, Pakistan Solidarity Network, Pax Christi USA, Peace & Justice Center,Physicians for Human Rights, Project Salaam, Quaker Initiative to End Torture, Rabbis for Human Rights-North America, Refuge Media Project, School of the Americas Watch, September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, South Asian Americans Leading Together, Texans for Peace, The Rutherford Institute, Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition, United National Antiwar Coalition, United Nations Association-USA East Bay Chapter, U.S. Peace Council, Veterans for Peace, Veterans for Peace, NY Chapter 34, Voices for Creative Nonviolence, War Criminals Watch, War Resisters League, WarIsACrime.org and World Can’t Wait.
.
###
http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2012/01/05-0
Broad Coalition Opposes NDAA and Calls on President Obama to Keep His Promise and Shutter Guantanamo
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 5, 2012
CONTACT: Rights Groups
AIUSA: Sharon Singh, (202) 509-8194, or ssingh@aiusa.org
NRCAT: Samantha Friedman, office: (202) 265-3000, cell: (202) 215-9260 or Samantha@rabinowitz-dorf.com
CCR: Jen Nessel, (212) 614-6449 or JNessel@ccrjustice.org
WAT: Jeremy Varon, (732) 979-3119 or jvaron@aol.com
Broad Coalition Opposes NDAA and Calls on President Obama to Keep His Promise and Shutter Guantanamo Bay Now
Groups will mark 10th anniversary of first detainees imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay with rally, human chain starting at White House; military, legal, religious and 9/11 families among speakers’ list
WASHINGTON - January 5 - A broad coalition of human rights groups and other like-minded organizations will mark the 10th anniversary of the first detainees being jailed at the U.S.-controlled detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Wednesday, January 11, 2012, by holding a rally at Lafayette Park in Washington, D.C., beginning at 12 p.m. Participants oppose the detention provisions in the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that violate human rights and are urging President Barack Obama to keep his promise and shut down the detention facility.
Speakers at the rally include Colonel Morris Davis, executive director of the Crimes of War Education Project, who previously served as the chief prosecutor for the office of military commissions at Guantánamo Bay; Talat Hamdani, mother of Salman Hamdani, an emergency medical technician who died in the September 11, 2001 attacks while helping people at the Twin Towers in New York City and Ramzi Kassem, an attorney who represents Guantanamo and Bagram detainees and supervises the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR) project at CUNY School of Law.
After the rally, the demonstrators will march down Pennsylvania Avenue, led by 171 people in orange jumpsuits and black hoods, representing the men still detained at Guantanamo. The marchers will continue all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, holding brief rallies at four locations to dramatically demonstrate the chain of responsibility that connects the White House, the Department of Justice, the U.S. Capitol and the Supreme Court.
Prior to the rally and demonstration, there will be a press briefing from 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. at the National Press Club (First Amendment room), with Rear Admiral John Hutson, an early critic of the military commission system and the treatment of detainees as one of the featured speakers.
Media is encouraged to attend and cover the rally and vigil. Details below:
What: 10th anniversary of the opening of the Guantanamo Bay prison –
10 years and counting – with a rally and human chain
Date: Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Time: Rally: 12:00 p.m.
Human chain vigil: 1:00 p.m.
Location: Lafayette Park, Pennsylvania Ave. and Jackson Place, NW, Washington, D.C. 20006
For a list of comments from the January 11 coalition members, please go to www.nrcat.org/gitmo2012_quotes.
Participating groups include
Amnesty International USA, Center for Constitutional Rights, National Religious Campaign Against Torture, Witness Against Torture, 8th Day Center for Justice, Appeal for Justice, Arab American Association of New York, Backbone Campaign, Baltimore-Washington Area Peace Council, Bill of Rights Defense Committee, Bradley Manning Support Network, Casa Esperanza, Catholic Worker, Chicago Committee to Free the Cuban 5, Code Pink, Council on American-Islamic Relations, Courage to Resist, Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility, Fellowship of Reconciliation, High Road for Human Rights, Human Rights USA, International Justice Network, Islamic Circle of North America-Council for Social Justice, International Federation for Human Rights, Just Foreign Policy, Latin America Solidarity Coalition, Liberty Coalition, Midwest Anti War Mobilization, Muslim Peace Coalition, National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance, National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms,Natural Solutions Foundation, No More Guantánamos, North Carolina Stop Torture Now Coalition, Occupy Washington DC, Pakistan Solidarity Network, Pax Christi USA, Peace & Justice Center,Physicians for Human Rights, Project Salaam, Quaker Initiative to End Torture, Rabbis for Human Rights-North America, Refuge Media Project, School of the Americas Watch, September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, South Asian Americans Leading Together, Texans for Peace, The Rutherford Institute, Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition, United National Antiwar Coalition, United Nations Association-USA East Bay Chapter, U.S. Peace Council, Veterans for Peace, Veterans for Peace, NY Chapter 34, Voices for Creative Nonviolence, War Criminals Watch, War Resisters League, WarIsACrime.org and World Can’t Wait.
.
###
http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2012/01/05-0
January 5, 2012
Whistle Blower Threatened with 35 Years in Prison, Warns of Developing Tyranny
Thomas Drake blew the whistle on a massive domestic information gathering scheme and was called "an enemy of the state" (speech at Sam Adams Awards)
January 4, 2011
Thomas Drake is the 2011 winner of the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence. Thomas Drake attempted to expose massive NSA mismanagement and the agency's use of a data collection program that was more costly, more threatening to American citizens' privacy rights, and less effective than a readily-available alternative. For his actions, Drake's house was raided, and he was subsequently charged under the Espionage Act, facing 35 years in prison.
Bio
Thomas Andrews Drake (born 1957) is a former senior official of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), decorated United States Air Force and United States Navy veteran, computer software expert, linguist, management and leadership specialist, and whistleblower. In 2010 the government alleged that he 'mishandled' documents, one of the few such Espionage Act cases in U.S. history. His defenders claim that he was instead being persecuted for challenging the Trailblazer Project.
TRANSCRIPT EXCERPT
In my case, while a senior official at the National Security Agency, I found out about the use of electronic eavesdropping on Americans, turning this country into the equivalent of a foreign nation, for the purposes of blanket surveillance and data mining, blatantly disregarding a 23-year legal regime that was the exclusive means for the conduct of such electronic collection and surveillance, which carried criminal sanctions when violated. I also discovered that NSA had withheld critical and crucial intelligence prior to 9/11 and after 9/11, as well as data and information that was available but remained undiscovered, and if shared—if shared—could have made a decisive difference alone in preventing the 9/11 attacks from ever happening. I also learned about a massively expensive and failing surveillance program under development called Trailblazer that largely served as nothing more than a funding vehicle to enrich government contractors and keep government program managers in charge, when a cheap, highly effective, and operational alternative called ThinThread was available in-house that fully protected Americans' privacy rights under the law, while also providing superior intelligence to this nation.
These secret programs which deliberately bypassed the Constitution and existing laws were born during the first few critical weeks and months following 9/11 as a result of a willful decision made by the very highest levels of this government. Such shortcuts and end-runs were not and never necessary, as lawful [incompr.] existed that would have vastly improved our intelligence capability with the very best of American ingenuity and innovation, as well as time-honored noncoercive interrogation techniques.
Read the full speech at:
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=767&Itemid=74&jumival=7755
See the Sam Adams Award acceptance speech on YouTube at:
U.S. Whistle Blower Threatened with 35 Years in Prison, Warns of Developing Tyranny
Whistle Blower Threatened with 35 Years in Prison, Warns of Developing Tyranny
Thomas Drake blew the whistle on a massive domestic information gathering scheme and was called "an enemy of the state" (speech at Sam Adams Awards)
January 4, 2011
Thomas Drake is the 2011 winner of the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence. Thomas Drake attempted to expose massive NSA mismanagement and the agency's use of a data collection program that was more costly, more threatening to American citizens' privacy rights, and less effective than a readily-available alternative. For his actions, Drake's house was raided, and he was subsequently charged under the Espionage Act, facing 35 years in prison.
Bio
Thomas Andrews Drake (born 1957) is a former senior official of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), decorated United States Air Force and United States Navy veteran, computer software expert, linguist, management and leadership specialist, and whistleblower. In 2010 the government alleged that he 'mishandled' documents, one of the few such Espionage Act cases in U.S. history. His defenders claim that he was instead being persecuted for challenging the Trailblazer Project.
TRANSCRIPT EXCERPT
In my case, while a senior official at the National Security Agency, I found out about the use of electronic eavesdropping on Americans, turning this country into the equivalent of a foreign nation, for the purposes of blanket surveillance and data mining, blatantly disregarding a 23-year legal regime that was the exclusive means for the conduct of such electronic collection and surveillance, which carried criminal sanctions when violated. I also discovered that NSA had withheld critical and crucial intelligence prior to 9/11 and after 9/11, as well as data and information that was available but remained undiscovered, and if shared—if shared—could have made a decisive difference alone in preventing the 9/11 attacks from ever happening. I also learned about a massively expensive and failing surveillance program under development called Trailblazer that largely served as nothing more than a funding vehicle to enrich government contractors and keep government program managers in charge, when a cheap, highly effective, and operational alternative called ThinThread was available in-house that fully protected Americans' privacy rights under the law, while also providing superior intelligence to this nation.
These secret programs which deliberately bypassed the Constitution and existing laws were born during the first few critical weeks and months following 9/11 as a result of a willful decision made by the very highest levels of this government. Such shortcuts and end-runs were not and never necessary, as lawful [incompr.] existed that would have vastly improved our intelligence capability with the very best of American ingenuity and innovation, as well as time-honored noncoercive interrogation techniques.
Read the full speech at:
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=767&Itemid=74&jumival=7755
See the Sam Adams Award acceptance speech on YouTube at:
January 5, 2012
Ron Paul Would Allow ‘Open Season’ on Union Organizers
By Mike Elk
January 4, 2012
It appears Paul would actually like to take away a key protection Americans currently enjoy at work. He supports ending a provision of the National Labor Relations Act that makes it illegal for employers to fire workers based on their support of unions.
Several times between 2001 and 2009, Ron Paul sponsored the Truth in Employment Act, legislation that would amend the National Labor Relations Act to allow employers to fire pro-union workers (sometimes called “salts”) who join a workplace with the intent of unionizing it. Paul's office did not return phone calls from In These Times about the candidate's support for this piece of legislation.
UE Political Action Director Chris Townsend, however, says that if passed, the Truth in Employment Act would lead to “open season” on workers hoping to organize a union. The legislation "would allow employers to refuse to hire, or even to fire, any worker suspected of—or declared by the boss to be -- a union supporter. No worker will be safe if employers are given this license to discriminate on the basis of one’s beliefs about unions or anything else,” Townsend says.
While Paul claims he is for individual liberty, his support for the Truth in Employment Act shows that when its comes to the workplace, an employer's liberty trumps that of a worker.
Read the full article at:
http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/12481/ron_paul_would_allow_open_season_on_union_organizers/
Ron Paul Would Allow ‘Open Season’ on Union Organizers
Ron Paul Would Allow ‘Open Season’ on Union Organizers
By Mike Elk
January 4, 2012
It appears Paul would actually like to take away a key protection Americans currently enjoy at work. He supports ending a provision of the National Labor Relations Act that makes it illegal for employers to fire workers based on their support of unions.
Several times between 2001 and 2009, Ron Paul sponsored the Truth in Employment Act, legislation that would amend the National Labor Relations Act to allow employers to fire pro-union workers (sometimes called “salts”) who join a workplace with the intent of unionizing it. Paul's office did not return phone calls from In These Times about the candidate's support for this piece of legislation.
UE Political Action Director Chris Townsend, however, says that if passed, the Truth in Employment Act would lead to “open season” on workers hoping to organize a union. The legislation "would allow employers to refuse to hire, or even to fire, any worker suspected of—or declared by the boss to be -- a union supporter. No worker will be safe if employers are given this license to discriminate on the basis of one’s beliefs about unions or anything else,” Townsend says.
While Paul claims he is for individual liberty, his support for the Truth in Employment Act shows that when its comes to the workplace, an employer's liberty trumps that of a worker.
Read the full article at:
http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/12481/ron_paul_would_allow_open_season_on_union_organizers/
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