Dprogram.net “Countering Propoganda”
While investors and the media look to the market numbers as an indication of where the economy is headed, others are looking to political leaders who say bailing out Wall Street is not enough.
John Terrett reports. AlJazeeraEnglish – Oct 17 2008
Democracy Now!
Oct 16, 2008
Breaking the Sound Barrier: Third-Party Candidates Ralph Nader & Cynthia McKinney Respond to Final McCain-Obama Debate
Senators Barack Obama and John McCain met last night for the final debate before the November 4th presidential election, sparring over the economy, tax policy, negative campaigning, trade agreements, abortion and the educational system. As with the other debates, third-party candidates were not invited to participate. We break the sound barrier and hear from Green Party presidential nominee Cynthia McKinney and independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader. [includes rush transcript]
see
Presidential Debate Oct. 19th for ALL candidates
Obama vs McCain 3rd Presidential Debate (link) + Who is Joe, the plumber?
Please read Citizenworm’s blog posts:
More clarity about Wurzelbacher & Eisenstadt still popping up
Clearing some smoke, corrections etc.
My blog:
http://citizenworm.wordpress.com
Just posted on Politico “McCain discovers plumber no ordinary Joe”
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/…
Here’s the fake Iraqi TV piece
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L27uHy…
Here’s that guys old yt channel
http://www.youtube.com/user/abrad2345
Joe the Plumber: Not a Licensed Plumber
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-…
Joe in the Spotlight
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/20…
Negative Joe the Plumber ad.
Vodpod videos no longer available.
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Joe The “Unlicensed” Plumber
http://cspanjunkie.org/
October 16, 2008 MSNBC Keith Olbermann
see
Obama vs McCain 3rd Presidential Debate (link) + Who is Joe, the plumber?
Democracy Now!
Oct 16, 2008
15 Arrested Outside Presidential Debate in Protest Led by Iraq Veterans Against the War
Outside the Obama-McCain debate, at least fifteen people were arrested at a protest organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War. IVAW member Nick Morgan was left bloodied and nearly unconscious after being trampled by a police officer on horseback. [includes rush transcript]
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Clashes in New York outside Obama-McCain debate
Fierce words flew as the U.S. presidential candidates slugged it out in the final TV debate. In a series of fractious exchanges Barack Obama and John McCain battled over everything from education to taxes to healthcare.
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Iraq veterans protest pres. debates
see
Obama, McCain Rebuff Protesters, Veterans Arrested During McCain’s ‘Last Chance’
Obama vs McCain 3rd Presidential Debate (link) + Who is Joe, the plumber?
Researchers revisit Stanley Miller’s famous spark experiments from the 1950s and find some new results.
Vodpod videos no longer available.
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Volcanic lightning may have sparked life on Earth
by Catherine Brahic
NewScientist.com news service
New Scientist Environment
16 October 2008
One of the most famous experiments of all time has just been found to have been even more successful than anyone realised. The Miller-Urey spark flask experiment could hold the key to the origin of life on Earth.
Jeffrey Bada of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California and colleagues re-analysed the original 50-year-old samples left by Stanley Miller of the University of Chicago, in 1953 and 1954. His was the first experiment ever to produce amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, from inorganic molecules and a spark of electricity.
Bada’s team discovered more organic molecules than Miller had been able to detect, and also showed that a secondary experiment – one that Miller carried out but never published – offers the best clue to how life on Earth began some 4 billion years ago.
[…]
Warning
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This video may contain images depicting the reality and horror of war/violence and should only be viewed by a mature audience.
Mosaic needs your help! Donate here: http://linktv.org/contribute
“Afghans Trained by Blackwater Defect to Taliban,” Al Jazeera English, Qatar
“Terrorist Cell in Northern Lebanon Dismantled,” New TV, Lebanon
“Syria and Lebanon to Establish Diplomatic Relations,” Abu Dhabi TV, UAE
“British troops not necessary in Iraq,” Al Arabiya TV, UAE
“Tensions in the Old City,” Dubai TV, UAE
“Gazans forced to live in Cemeteries,” New TV, Lebanon
“Algeria Encourages Breastfeeding,” Algeria TV, Algeria
Produced for Link TV by Jamal Dajani.
Vodpod videos no longer available.
More at http://therealnews.com/c.ph…
For independent voters, Barack Obama won all three debates with John McCain
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Canada re-elects Stephen Harper
More at http://therealnews.com/c.ph…
Murray Dobbin: Harper will continue to dismantle social democracy
see
Presidential Debate Oct. 19th for ALL candidates
Obama vs McCain 3rd Presidential Debate (link) + Who is Joe, the plumber?
Developing countries are still hit hard by food costs.
As World Food Day is marked, human rights groups claim the current agricultural system needs to be reconsidered if the hungry are to be fed.
Laura Kyle reports.
By Noam Chomsky
Interviewed by Simone Bruno
ZNet
October 13, 2008
I would like to talk about the current crisis. How is it that so many people could see it coming, but the people in charge of governments and economies didn’t, or didn’t prepare?
The basis for the crisis is predictable and it was in fact predicted. It is built into financial liberalization that there will be frequent and deep crises. In fact, since financial liberalization was instituted about thirty five years ago, there has been a trend of increasing regularity of crises and deeper crises, and the reasons are intrinsic and understood. They have to do fundamentally with well understood inefficiencies of markets. So, for example, if you and I make a transaction, say you sell me a car, we may make a good bargain for ourselves, but we don’t take into account the effect on others. If I buy a car from you it increases the use of gas, it increases pollution, it increases congestion, and so on. But we don’t count those effects. These are what are called by economists externalities, and are not counted into market calculations.
These externalities can be quite huge. In the case of financial institutions, they are particularly large. The task of a financial institution is to take risks. Now if it is a well managed financial institution, say Goldman Sachs, it will take into account risks to itself, but the crucial phrase here is to itself. It does not take into account systemic risks, risks to the whole system if Goldman Sachs takes a substantial loss. And what that means is that risks are underpriced. There are more risks taken than should be taken in an efficiently working system that was accounting for all the implications. More, this mispricing is simply built into the market system and the liberalization of finance.
[…]
via ZNet – Financial Crisis Interview
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see
Chomsky: If I were in a swing state, I’d vote for Obama
Anti-democratic nature of US capitalism is being exposed by Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky: The United States Has Essentially a One-Party System
Latest info: Sunday’s Debate Postponed + Rescheduled Debate: Oct 23
Presidential Debate Oct. 19th @ Columbia University Nader, Barr, McKinney, Baldwin, McCain and Obama All Invited
PASS IT ON: http://Tinyurl.com/PresidentialDebate…
http://www.freeandequal.org/events.ph…
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/20…
http://www.independentpoliticalreport…
Vodpod videos no longer available.
see
Obama Girl Calls Barack With Ralph Nader!
Three Way Vice Presidential Debate: Palin, Biden, Gonzalez
Talk by James Howard Kunstler author of “The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century” given June 9, 2005 at University Bookstore Seattle.
Oct 16, 2008
Vodpod videos no longer available.
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Obama, McCain Rebuff Protesters, Veterans Arrested During McCain’s ‘Last Chance’
DigitalJournal.com: The Power of Citizen Journalism
Obama, McCain, and CBS rebuffed veterans and active duty service-people who sought to ask a question in the final debate. Amid arrests outside of debate grounds, the pundits’ early verdicts are not a good for McCain, as Obama held strong defense.
Hempstead, NY – Tonight at approximately 7:05 the Iraq Vets Against the War (IVAW), a coalition of veterans and active duty American service people, were stopped by police approximately one block from the gate entrance to the Hofstra University debate grounds.
The group committed an act of non violent civil disobedience and attempted to cross the lines, After a short standoff with local police on horseback and supported by police in light riot gear, 15 individuals were arrested.
A total of 15, including 5 protesters were detained and arrested after attempting to enter at the north Hofstra gate. Spokesman for Nassau Police,Dept. Lt. Kevin Smith informed Newsday, “When they insisted on coming through they were placed under arrest
… there might have been one injury. I don’t believe that it was serious and he was taken to an area hospital.”
The arrested IVAW members and protesters were held for approximately 5 hours, and the hospitalized member, Nick Morgan, an honourably discharged veteran diagnosed with PTSD, was badly injured by one of the police horses. The IVAW reports that the police initially refused Morgan treatment. Nassau County police offered no comment at this time.
[…]
h/t: GlobalPunditOrg
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Veterans Protest, Arrested, Outside Hofstra Debate
h/t: GlobalPunditOrg on current
see
Obama vs McCain 3rd Presidential Debate (link) + Who is Joe, the plumber?
by Tom Burghardt
Global Research, October 14, 2008
Antifascist Calling…
Just in Time for the Capitalist Meltdown: Army, Justice Department to Field ‘Pain Ray’.
Back in July I reported that Raytheon (No. 4 on Washington Technology’s “Top 100 List of Prime Defense Contractors,” with $5,170,829,645 in revenue) was developing a microwave “non-lethal” weapons (NLW) system for the U.S. Army.
At a cost of $25 million, five truck-mounted NLWs will soon be shipped off to Iraq for heavy-lifting in Iraqi cities for use against militant oil workers and citizens should U.S. energy multinationals finally get their greedy little hands on that nation’s oil wealth. A slimmed-down version of the Active Denial System (ADS) is sought for deployment in the “homeland. According to Aviation Week,
Raytheon is kicking off a U.S. Army program to mount Joint Silent Guardian non-lethal, directed energy weapons–with a range of more than 250 meters–on Ford 550 commercial trucks for crowd control.
The high power microwave (HPM) device heats water in a person’s outer layers of skin to the point of pain. Tests have shown that the effects can reach through cracks in and around concrete walls and even through the glass of automobiles, company officials say. (David A. Fulghum, “High Power Microwave Nearly Operational,” Aviation Week, October 9, 2008)
Aviation Week also reports “the program is expected to be awarded by year’s end. A year after the contract is signed, the combination vehicle/weapons will start be fielded at the rate of one per month.”
With the American automative industry in a death-spiral as a result of capital’s historic credit crunch, what better means to “rescue” the industry than buying a fleet of Ford 550’s for “crowd control.”
Particularly handy for deployment in American cities should “rioters” object to a stolen presidential election or the state moves to terminate what little is left of the social “safety net” (in the interest of kick-starting the “recovery,” of course) Silent Guardian is a product whose time has come!
Raytheon describes the system as “a revolutionary less-than-lethal directed energy application that employs millimeter wave technology to repel individuals or crowds without causing injury.” Without a hint of irony considering its intended use, Silent Guardian is touted as a “protection system” that can “save lives” and even “de-escalate aggression.” Designed as a tool for “law enforcement, checkpoint security” and “peacekeeping missions,” the Department of Justice’s (DoJ) National Institute of Justice (NIJ) has been hawking its “benefits” for several years. According to the NIJ:
NIJ is leveraging a less-lethal technology developed by the U.S. Department of Defense for use in law enforcement and corrections. The technology, called the Active Denial System, causes people to experience intolerable discomfort. It makes them stop, turn away and leave the area.
The Active Denial System emits electromagnetic radiation (radiofrequency waves) at 95 GHz. The system stimulates nerve endings and causes discomfort but does not cause permanent injury–the radiation penetrates less than 1/64th of an inch into a person’s skin. Symptoms dissipate quickly when the device is turned off or the person moves away from the radiation beam. …
NIJ has created a small working prototype of the military Active Denial System that law enforcement and correction officers can carry. (“Active Denial System Deters Subject without Harm,” National Institute of Justice, October 25, 2007)
It now appears that Silent Guardian is ready for prime time.
But not so fast. A new report by Deutsche Stiftung Friedensforschung (DSF, German Foundation for Peace Research) physicist Dr. Jürgen Altmann, states that the ADS may be highly-damaging or even lethal. According to Dr. Altmann,
The Active Denial System (ADS) produces a beam of electromagnetic millimetre waves; such radiation is absorbed in the upper 0.4 mm of skin. The beam stays approximately 2 m wide out to many hundreds of metres. With a power of 100 kilowatts, the beam can heat the skin of target subjects to pain-producing temperature levels within seconds. With a prototype weapon, mounted in a military multi-purpose vehicle, the effects have been tested on hundreds of volunteers. In order to produce pain while preventing burn injury, the power and duration of emission for one trigger event is controlled by a software program. Model calculations show that with the highest power setting, second- and third-degree burns with complete dermal necrosis will occur after less than 2 seconds. Even with a lower setting of power or duration there is the possibility for the operator to re-trigger immediately. (Dr. Jürgen Altmann, “Millimetre Waves, Lasers, Acoustics for Non-Lethal Weapons? Physics Analyses and Inferences,” Deutsche Stiftung Friedensforschung (DSF), 2008, p. 4)
Between 1995 and 2006, the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate (JNLWD) have spent approximately $51 million on the technology. What have U.S. taxpayers gotten for their money? Dr. Altmann avers,
In 2005 the military press reported about requests from the armed forces and mentioned fast deployment to Iraq. However, in September 2006 Secretary of the Air Force Wynne was quoted as being reluctant to deploy ADS on the battlefield; to avoid vilification in the world press it should be used on crowds in the US first.
In January 2007 a media day with live demonstrations of ADS system 1 was held at Moody AFB, Georgia. A deployment date of 2010 was mentioned; press reports said that the beam heats the skin to 50C [122F] without lasting harm, not mentioning the fact that this depends on the beam being switched off immediately when such a temperature is reached. (Altmann, op. cit., p. 18) [emphasis added]
Yes, you did read that correctly: “to avoid vilification” it was recommended that the pain beam “should be used on crowds in the US first.” Dr. Altmann continues,
As a consequence, the ADS provides the technical possibility to produce burns of second and third degree. Because the beam of diameter 2 m and above is wider than human size, such burns would occur over considerable parts of the body, up to 50% of its surface. Second- and third-degree burns covering more than 20% of the body surface are potentially life-threatening–due to toxic tissue-decay products and increased sensitivity to infection–and require intensive care in a specialised unit. Without a technical device that reliably prevents re-triggering on the same target subject, the ADS has a potential to produce permanent injury or death. (Altmann, op. cit., p. 24)
Never mind that the system may cause permanent injury or even death via “complete dermal necrosis,” our capitalist masters are plowing full-speed ahead! A June 2007 accident report, initially covered-up by the JNLWD, reveals that a lack of operator training and the removal of ADS safety features led to a “test subject” suffering painful burns that required hospitalization in a burn unit. Obtained by Wired defense analyst Sharon Weinberger the internal JNLWD document describes how,
Crucially … the “ADS Crew did not realize that the ADS, when it came back to ‘stand-by’ mode, had defaulted to the previous setting of 100% power and allowed at least a 4 second trigger pull.” A casual, or secondary, factor was related to hardware: specifically, there was no working built-in range finder during the test, which could have helped prevent over-exposure.
Two people who reviewed the unredacted report for DANGER ROOM said the accident raises some basic questions about the weapon. Built-in range finders “have been basic features of high tech line-of-sight weapons and sensors for decades” and typically will prevent operators from using systems in an unsafe fashion, says one Pentagon official familiar with weapon’s development. “Yet those critical safety features, that were integrated into the HMMWV [Humvee] ADS System 1, were removed by the AFRL [Air Force Research Lab] prior to testing, exposing the test subjects to unconscionable risks.” (Sharon Weinberger, “Pain Ray Test Subjects Exposed to ‘Unconscionable Risks’,” Wired, October 14, 2008)
Just another day at the office for Pentagon weaponeers. And given how local beat cops love tasering “suspects,” imagine the hijinks when the riot squad lets loose on a bunch of commie protesters down at the old Stock Exchange!
As University of Bradford researcher Neil Davison points out, the United States and their NATO “partners” are resisting any moves to restrict NLWs from being developed or deployed, despite risks to their intended “targets”: “homeland” citizens rebranded as “rioters” and “domestic terrorists.”
For emerging acoustic and directed energy weapons, however, there are no international agreements restricting their development and proliferation beyond compliance with international humanitarian law, and the additional protocol to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) that prohibits laser weapons intentionally designed to blind. Military establishments are keen to resist additional constraints on the development and use of “non-lethal” weapons technologies, as exemplified in a recent NATO report: “In order to ensure that NATO forces retain the ability to accomplish missions, it will be important that nations participating in NATO operations remain vigilant against the development of specific legal regimes which unnecessarily limit the ability to use NLWs.” (Neil Davison, “The Contemporary Development of ‘Non-Lethal’ Weapons,” Bradford Non-Lethal Weapons Research Project (BNLWRP), May 2007, p. 37)
In a telling–and chilling–description of why the ADS is “needed,” the Pentagon’s Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, informs us,
The ADS will support a full spectrum of operations ranging from non-lethal methods of crowd and mob dispersal, checkpoint security, perimeter security, area denial, port protection, infrastructure protection and clarification of intent (identifying combatants from non-combatants). Most currently available non-lethal weapons use kinetic energy, where the size and range of the target can limit or change the effectiveness of the weapon. The range of the ADS is 10 times greater than other non-lethal weapons and will have the same compelling non-lethal effect on all human targets, regardless of size, age and gender. (“Frequently Asked Questions Regarding the Active Denial System,” Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, no date) [emphasis added]
Yet despite these risks, the National Institute of Justice in a cool “risk-benefit” analysis worthy of Dr. Mengele, is very much interested in a “hand-held, probably rifle-sized, short range weapon that could be effective at tens of feet for law enforcement officials.”
As global capitalism enters a new and potentially “terminal” phase of its disintegration, the U.S. ruling class and their European “partners” will increasingly resort to escalating levels of violence–from the criminalization of dissent to martial law–should “domestic terrorist” threats “get out of hand.” A general deployment of “non-lethal weapons” for use in “homeland” cities clearly has a prominent role to play along this repressive continuum. As Durham University geographer Stephen Graham avers,
Those experiencing frequent ‘terrorist’ labelling by national governments or sympathetic media since 9/11 include anti-war dissenters, critical researchers, anti-globalization protestors, anti-arms-trade campaigners, ecological and freedom of speech lobbyists, and pro-independence campaigners within nations like Indonesia allied to the US. Protagonists of such a wide spectrum of opposition to transnational US dominance are thus all too easily dehumanized or demonized. Above all, they become radically delegitimized. Who, after all, will speak out in favour of ‘terrorists’ and their sympathizers? (“Cities and the ‘War on Terror’,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Volume 30.2, June 2006, p. 257)
And so it goes during the never-ending “Year Zero” of the Bush regime. Silent Guardian: Coming soon to a city near you!
Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly and Global Research, an independent research and media group of writers, scholars, journalists and activists based in Montreal, his articles can be read on Dissident Voice and The Intelligence Daily. He is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military “Civil Disturbance” Planning, distributed by AK Press.
© Copyright Tom Burghardt, Antifascist Calling…, 2008
The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10564
see
“Non-Lethal” Weapons: Where Science and Technology Service Repression
Greg Palast: Voting Fraud is a Fraud + Exposing flaws in the voting system
Non-Lethal, Active Denial, Genetically modified, Scientifically crafted Terrorism
‘Invisible Wars’ of the Future: E-Bombs, Laser Guns and Acoustic Weapons (’06)
Why does capitalism go into crisis? In this video I attempt to summarize the basic ideas behind the theory of the falling rate of profit, often considered the corner-stone of crisis theory.
Full Text can be read at: http://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/2008/10/16/falling-rate-of-profit/
Oct 15, 2008
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[Sorry video is no longer available.]
EXCLUSIVE!! Joe the Plumber connects to Keating 5
I’m really breaking a big one here guys. Here are some links. More to come. Watch the video. WEEEEEEEEEEEEE
http://citizenworm.wordpress.com
Here’s a related blog entry from another site that claims that Rick Davis was over heard screaming at staffers because of Joe’s connection to Keating.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/…
did I say WEEEEEEEEEEEEEE?
More: Confirmation of Joe’s Identity and Link to Keating
A Keating connection to Joe the Plumber?
Joe “the Plumber” Wurzelbacher related to Charles “the Crook” Keating. Oops.
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[Sorry video is no longer available.]
Countdown: The Final Debate
http://cspanjunkie.org/
October 15, 2008 MSNBC Keith Olbermann
Vodpod videos no longer available.
see
Presidential Debate Oct. 19th for ALL candidates
15 Arrested Outside Presidential Debate in Protest Led by Iraq Veterans Against the War
Obama, McCain Rebuff Protesters, Veterans Arrested During McCain’s ‘Last Chance’
Obama vs McCain 2nd Presidential Debate (link)
Barack Obama and John McCain Presidential Debate 09.26.08
Dandelion Salad 