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GAIA AND HOMOSAPIENS
View this unusual film on the evolution and sustainability, or not, of gaia and homosapiens here.
- LINK

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Note:The symbol " denotes that that article continues at the link.

Breaking News Alert

Obama Declares Swine Flu a Nationa Emergency
Emergency email to homosapiens.ki
New York Times - October 24, 2009
- LINK ^

Imaging Life

US | Health Reform Message from First Lady Michelle Obama
My Barack Obama - Posted by Cloe Axelson - October 23, 2009

The White House released a new web video today featuring First Lady Michelle Obama. In the video, Mrs. Obama shares a personal story about youngest daughter Sasha?s health scare as a baby and explains why the President?s plan is essential to families and women in particular. The video also features Roxi Griffin, a cancer survivor who?s now being forced to choose between paying for medical tests and being able to afford to stay in her home (so far, she?s choosing her home), and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius who explains how our current health care system discriminates against women when it comes to the services insurance plans cover - often not the services women need - and how they regularly charge women more than men for the same care.

Help fight the tyrannosaurs in Congress and the health insurance corporations by making a $25 (or more) donation to Barackobama.com on the upper right hand corner of this link.
- FEEL GOOD DONATIONS & MICHELLE VIDEO LINK ^

The Iranian Puzzle

Iran trapped in a ring of unrest
Asia Times - By Mahan Abedin - October 22, 2009
- LINK ^

Last Sunday's suicide bomb attack on a conference hall in the Pishin region of Iran's vast Sistan and Balochistan province is by all accounts a major blow against the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the most important military and security institution in the country.

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Carrumpah-Lobo - The Homosapiens.ki Blog
- Share your opinions here.

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International

Gaza | Goldstone dares US on Gaza report
Al Jazeera - October 22, 2009
- LINK ^

Richard Goldstone, the jurist who authored a UN report accusing Israel of war crimes and crimes against humanity during its war on Gaza, has challenged the US to justify its claims that his findings are flawed and biased.

Germany | Rich Germans demand higher taxes
BBC News - October 23, 2009
- LINK^

A group of rich Germans has launched a petition calling for the government to make wealthy people pay higher taxes. The group say they have more money than they need, and the extra revenue could fund economic and social programmes to aid Germany's economic recovery. Germany could raise 100bn euros (?91bn) if the richest people paid a 5% wealth tax for two years, they say. The petition has 44 signatories so far, and will be presented to newly re-elected Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The group say the financial crisis is leading to an increase in unemployment, poverty and social inequality. Simply donating money to deal with the problems is not enough, they want a change in the whole approach. "The path out of the crisis must be paved with massive investment in ecology, education and social justice," they say in the petition. Those who had "made a fortune through inheritance, hard work, hard-working, successful entrepreneurship, or investment" should contribute by paying more to alleviate the crisis.

The man behind the petition, Dieter Lehmkuhl, told Berlin's Tagesspiegel that there were 2.2 million people in Germany with a fortune of more than 500,000 euros. If they all paid the tax for two years, Germany could raise 100bn euros to fund ecological programmes, education and social projects, said the retired doctor and heir to a brewery.

German coalition agrees to tax cut
BBC News - Saturday, October 24, 2009
- LINK ^

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives have sealed a coalition deal with the Free Democrats (FDP) based on major tax cut plans. The deal between the CDU/CSU and the pro-business FDP paves the way for the coalition to take office next week. Income taxes will be slashed by 24bn euros ($36bn, ?22bn) starting in 2011, according to the coalition agreement.

Myanmar | Swarms of rats plague rural Myanmar
Asia Times - By Colin Hinshelwood - October 21, 2009
- LINK ^

CHIANG MAI - A spreading plague of rats has devoured crops in western Myanmar, giving rise to a famine that threatens hundreds of thousands in the country's remote Chin State. The lack of government assistance has driven a mounting number of people across the border into neighboring India and other countries, representing the latest human crisis to emanate from Myanmar's borders.

Russia | Red meat back on (some) Russian tables
Asia Times - By John Helmer - October 21, 2009
- LINK ^

Russia has agreed to accept shipments of Canadian beef in a deal expected to be worth about US$31 million for Ottawa annually. The move marks a mini-revival in Russia's battered meat imports, but also points to the inability of the domestic industry to come up with the goods.

Saudi Arabia | Lashes for Saudi woman journalist
BBC News - By Sebastian Usher - October 24, 2009
- LINK ^

A female journalist in Saudi Arabia has been sentenced to 60 lashes over a TV show in which a Saudi man described his extra-marital sex life. The programme, made by Lebanese satellite network LBC, caused a huge scandal in conservative Saudi Arabia when it was shown several months ago. The journalist is one of two female LBC employees who have been arrested.

Mazen Abdul Jawad, the Saudi man who talked about how he picked up Saudi women for sex, has already been jailed.. Mazen Abdul Jawad provoked outrage by describing his techniques for meeting and having sex with Saudi women. He tearfully apologised but was jailed for five years and sentenced to 1,000 lashes.

LBC has made no comment about the cases. Ironically, however, LBC is part-owned by the Saudi media mogul and billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal.

Citizens / Civil Organizations / Activism

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter" - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Art and Culture

Leonard Cohen | "First We Take Manhattan, Then We Take Berlin" | Music Video
- LINK ^

The Military and Corporate Crimes

"The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson.?
--- Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1933-Nov-21, in a letter to Colonel E. Mandell House

Government and Corporate Crime - The Linkage

***** US | How About Some of that Painful Welfare Reform for Wall Street?
We force very low income single moms to jump through hoops to get their welfare checks, but we let Wall Street's welfare kings walk all over us
Alternet - By Les Leopold - October 22, 2009
- LINK ^

.Are we becoming a nation of hypocrites?

We force very low income single moms to jump through hoops to get their welfare checks. We resent them living off our tax payer dollars. We want them out working hard to support themselves even if there are no suitable jobs available, no day care for their children, nor decent transportation to get them there. We see it as a matter of personal responsibility: they are poor because they let themselves stay that way. If that's not mean spirited enough, our politicians thrive on chastising the fictitious welfare queens who supposedly turn our hard-earned tax dollars into Cadillacs.

But when it comes to Wall Street we let the welfare kings walk all over us. Let us count the ways:

We deregulated the financial sector, starting in the mid-1970s, removing many of the New Deal era controls that constrained speculation. Then, in the early 1980s we changed the tax code so that more money could rise to the top fraction of the income distribution in order to spur investment.

Predictably, the two "reforms" spurred a series of speculative bubbles -- the savings and loan meltdown, the dot.com crash, and the housing explosion and meltdown. The driving force, especially in the latest bubble, was Wall Street's "innovative" products -- CDOs, synthetic CDOs, CDO squared and cubed -- which Warren Buffet called "financial weapons of mass destruction" (all of which are still unregulated.)

About a year ago the mass destruction did indeed hit us, but not before Wall Street "earned" more than $300 billion of which at least half went to fat compensation packages. When housing prices failed to continue their improbable rise, the assets that were layered upon them like a house of cards, collapsed in value threatening the entire financial system. The $300 billion previously earned melted away. But no one gave back their phony profits.

Meanwhile, Fannie, Feddie, AIG, and CitiGroup basically were nationalized. Bear Sterns, and Merrill Lynch were merged away. To prove that we were not going to bail out everyone, Lehman Brothers was left to fail, and the global markets panicked, froze and then nearly sent us back into the Great Depression. That's when we learned that the major financial institutions really were too big and too interconnected to fail. So we put them all on welfare.

Just like there are many forms of welfare for the poor -- food stamps, workfare, SSI, Medicaid -- there are many forms of Wall Street welfare as well. There is TARP, of course. But also there are more subtle kinds. When we bailed out A.I.G., for example, we allowed it to pay up in full on its failed bets -- something the government had no legal obligation to do. Goldman Sachs got $13 billion. Had we not bailed out A.I.G., Goldman Sachs would have received pennies on the dollar. If that's not welfare, nothing is.

Meanwhile, the government also provides low interest loans. It is allows the big banks to float bonds guaranteed by the FDIC. And on top if it all, the government guarantees a variety of toxic assets. (That is, assets that were totally speculative -- the bankers' equivalent of a crap shoot -- and would now be pretty much worthless if it weren't for the government's guarantees.) The total Wall Street welfare bill according to Nomi Prins, the author and former Morgan Stanley managing director, comes to more than $13 trillion, . (That's about 37 years worth of total welfare transfers to low-income Americans.)

Now we're witnessing the transformation of Wall Street welfare into bonuses -- the dons will soon be driving taxpayer-funded Ferraris to the marina so they can sail on taxpayer-funded yachts to visit their off-shore accounts filled with taxpayer dollars. Lo and behold, the big boys are making money again, hand over fist. In fact their profits and bonuses are expected to exceed the highest years of the bubble. Some commentators gush about the true genius of these financial gurus. Call it what you will, taxpayer welfare is making it happen.
- Continued ^

Civil Organizations and Activism

UK | Video | Protesters march through the streets of London urging an end to Afghan war
BBC News - October 24, 2009
- LINK ^

Soldiers and military families were among an estimated 5,000 protesters in London demonstrating against UK military operations in Afghanistan. The Stop the War Coalition says it was the first march against the Afghan war since the conflict began in 2001.

Economy and Finance

Bloomberg Economic News
- LINK ^

Bloomberg Current Worldwide Financial News
- LINK ^

Record recession for UK economy
Britain's economy contracted unexpectedly in the third quarter of this year, quashing hopes that the downturn was ending and instead marking the country's longest recession since records began in 1955
Al Jazeera - October 23, 2009
- LINK ^

****** US | This Year's Biggest Hoax Is Tim Geithner's 'Solution' for the Economy, Not the Balloon Boy
Alternet - By Robert Scheer - October 22, 2009
- HOAX ^

If we could get one of the banking lobbyists to float a duct-taped flying saucer balloon, Wolf Blitzer might cover the real hoax.

Who are these people? I am not referring to the pathetic parents of ?Balloon Boy,? whose fake drama I have been unable to escape while on the treadmill this week, thanks to my gym?s insistence on tuning its flat-screen TVs to Wolf Blitzer?s nonstop self-parody.
The Colorado incident was significant only in the tawdriness of those who perpetrated the made-for-TV scam and their allies in the mindless media who covered this sham ?reality? so relentlessly. But even so, it was enough to push aside most consideration of the true hoax reported last week with far less fervor: the obscene rewards that Wall Street bankers bestowed upon themselves for ripping off our economy.

The people I want to know more about are the superrich who expect to be rewarded for their failures, like the folks at Goldman Sachs who will receive $16.71 billion in bonuses?an average of $530,000 per employee?this year after their company did as much as any to bring the world economy to the brink of disaster.

?The Guys from Government Sachs? is what The New York Times once called them in recognition of their chokehold on the federal government. Their power is marked by the two treasury secretaries who led the fight to legally enable and then reward Wall Street for its obscene excesses. Why wasn?t there a CNN stakeout at the homes of former Goldman-execs-turned-treasury-chiefs Robert Rubin and Henry Paulson aimed at finding out how they feel about the almost $7 billion profit that Goldman Sachs made in the last two quarters in the wake of the government?s bailout of the firm?

They were both deeply involved last fall, along with Rubin prot?g? and current Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, then head of the New York Fed, in saving Goldman as archrival Lehman Brothers was forced to go belly up. As opposed to Lehman, Goldman was allowed to change its status and become a commercial bank qualifying for Federal Reserve and TARP funding. Goldman received $10 billion in immediate bailout funds, and we are supposed to be grateful that the company has paid it back in return for an end to any pretense of government control over its executive compensation. The additional cool $12.9 billion that Goldman received from the government as a pass-through from the bailout of AIG to cover Goldman?s toxic paper is money the investment bank has no intention of ever paying back.

The rationale for saving Goldman and the other too-big-to-fail usurers was that the rescue would increase lending to businesses and consumers and thus revive the economy. But Goldman made money last quarter by shunning such loans and instead putting the government-guaranteed low-interest money it now can borrow toward acquisitions and bond and stock trading. As The New York Times reported: ?Titans like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase are making fortunes in hot areas like trading stocks and bonds, rather than the ho-hum business of lending people money.?

Health and Fitness

US | Obama warns of climatev'cynicism'
Al Jazeera - October 23,2009
- LINK ^

Legal and Constitutional Issues

Bloomberg Index of Current Legal News
- LINK ^

***** US | After the Billionaires Plundered Alabama Town, Troops Were Called in ... Illegally
Alternet - By Mark Ames, AlterNet - October 24, 2009
- LINK ^

"We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all," says one Goldman Sachs adviser. But tell that to the people of Samson, Ala.

g transfer of public wealth to Wall Street's pockets is illustrated vividly in Mark Ames' article below, which covers some very disturbing recent events in Alabama, where billionaires and banks are squeezing the locals so hard that they're literally going bankrupt just for flushing their toilets, where violence and the threat of violence are reaching a boiling point and where even the Posse Comitatus Act is under threat. "We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all," said one Goldman Sachs vice-chairman recently. Well, here's a tale of the kind of inequality the finance industry expects citizens to tolerate.

One of this year's more disturbing stories that were ignored was the illegal Army occupation of Samson, Alab., in March following a shooting spree that raged across two towns by a disgruntled worker, leaving 11 people dead.

As I wrote at the time, Michael McLendon, 27, went on a killing rampage following years of relentless corporate exploitation and harassment against him, his mother (whom he mercy-killed), and the entire rural Alabama region, which suffered like so many parts of rural America at the hands of billionaire goons like chicken oligarch Bo Pilgrim of Pilgrim's Pride notoriety.

One of the creepiest details to emerge in the shooting rampage were reports that troops from nearby Fort Rucker were brought into Samson and other surrounding areas to patrol the streets. This is a clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, every freedom-loving American's worst nightmare.

And now, finally, the Army officially agrees that its occupation of the Alabama streets was illegal, according to an internal report the Associated Press got a hold of, following a Freedom of Information Act filing:

An Army investigation found that soldiers should not have been sent to man traffic stops in a small Alabama town after 11 people were killed in March during a shooting spree.

An Army report released to the Associated Press on Monday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request said the decision to dispatch military police to Samson from nearby Fort Rucker broke the law. But an Army spokesman said no charges have been filed following the Aug. 10 report.

The report from the Department of Army Inspector General found the use of military personnel in Samson violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits federal troops from performing law-enforcement actions. The names of those involved were redacted from the report.

According to the report, the officer's "intent was to be a good Army neighbor and help local civilian authorities facing a difficult, unique tragedy affecting the local community. There were no apparent adverse collateral effects to the support provided."

Indeed. For a lot of Americans, the sight of troops occupying their towns is their worst nightmare come true -- part of the reason that America came into existence was to create a country where this sort of thing would never happen, even if the Army's sole intent was to be a good neighbor and help old ladies cross the streets.

Strangely enough, there was almost no media coverage of the occupation -- you had to rely on various right-wing outlets like CNSNews.com, whose article I blogged at the time, or the left-wing Democratic Underground.

But what even the right-wing anti-government people won't report is the true reason why the Army was called out in the first place, something that goes right back to the cause of the shooting rampage: billionaire exploitation of the local Alabamans, not just by the chicken oligarch, but from higher up the predator food chain -- Wall Street banking behemoth JP Morgan Chase.

You see, thanks to a combination of corporate-tax holidays (which reduce local revenues), billionaire greed like the sort that bankrupted Pilgrim's Pride, and Wall Street investment-banking scams on places like Alabama that result in corrupted local officials and bankrupted municipalities, counties and states -- now, there's no money left to fund local police forces, as the U.S. Army report reveals: ^

Media

US | 8 Reasons Fox Is Not a News Organization
PR for the GOP? Yes. Platform for right-wing hatemongers? Definitely. But a news organization? Definitely not.
Alternet - By Adele Stan - October 24, 2009
- LINK ^

Even before Barack Obama was elected to the presidency, Rupert Murdoch had declared war on him via the personalities of Fox News Channel, a subsidiary of Murdoch's media conglomerate, News Corp.

Since Obama's election, the cable channel's hosts and paid analysts have launched a full frontal assault on the president, smearing his nominees, calling him a racist and suggesting that his administration was trying to persuade disabled veterans to off themselves.

Now the fearmongers at Fox are crying foul since the president and his aides declared Fox not to be a news organization. Earlier this month, White House Communications Director Anita Dunn called Fox an "arm" of the Republican Party. Obama went even further, suggesting this week that Fox "is operating basically as a talk-radio format," and we know what that means: A format in which the most provocative opinions dominate the discourse and facts are optional.

Faux Religion and Anti-Philosophies

UK | Carey rejects BNP Christian claim
BBC News
- LINK ^

Former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey has urged Christians to "stand Shoulder to shoulder" in rejecting the British National Party. He told the News of the World the party's leader was a squaid racist".
HS EditorTsk.tsk.tsk, Archbishop.

Rights and Freedom

The doctrine of blind obedience and unqualified submission to any human power, whether civil or ecclesiastical, is the doctrine of despotism, and ought to have no place among Republicans and Christians."
--- Angelica Grimke - (1805-1879) Source: Anti-Slavery Examiner, September 1836

"Yes, we did produce a near-perfect republic. But will they keep it? Or will they, in the enjoyment of plenty, lose the memory of freedom? Material abundance without character is the path of destruction."
--- Thomas Jefferson - (1743-1826), Source: in a letter to John Adams as quoted in John A. Stormer, None Dare Call it Treason (Florissant, MO: Liberty Bell Press, 1964)

Science & Technology

Bloomberg Index of Current Science News
- LINK ^

Sound and Fury

Photography - US | Photos from the Book, Who We Were: A Snapshot History of America
- Slide Show / Audio

Hip Hop | Maestro Fresh Wes - Drop The Needle
- Video

Bouncing barefoot on the sidewalk
- Video

A Song for the Times - Bing Crosby (1932) ?Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?
- Audio

The History of A Great Depression-Era Anthem For Our Time
- Audio/Text

Yip Harburg (1970)
- Audio

The Internet Press Room

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Music Video | Leonard Cohen | "Democracy Is Coming to the USA"
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