911 We will not Forget

I am not into conspiracy theories.  From day one when I saw the fall of the towers on the television from Jerusalem, my first thought was a controlled demolition.  Of course, I had/have no idea who did this, but the reality is reality.  And why should reality be denied?  Who would NOT want to know who/what/and why?  

In life when there are problems, are we not taught to find the truth to solve the problems so it will not happen again?  There are many videos that have been coming out over the time and this one is very clear, professional using experts on demolitions and the destruction of buildings.  They explain realities very well.

What alerted me to the fact that something was very wrong was the lack of transparency from our own government.  It was the faulty way that they investigated the collapse and the lack of experts that they decided to conduct the research.  Key insiders had a high level of conflict of interest.  President decided to limit the funding, and access to the research.  It was the fact that all airspace in the United States was closed except for the few who were allowed to leave the country.

Behind closed doors, no oath, no recorders were allowed, and everything was submitted to security personnel.  The issue was not discussed.  The air defense was disabled due to exercises of war games while drone planes were flying around the country.  

After this tragedy, the world has not been the same and has gotten worse.  Trillions of dollars has been spent on unjust wars based on lies...even the lies that were admitted, that there was not any mass weapons of destructions.

Remember the propaganda that was repeated on the news and around the world, war on terror, weapons of mass destructions, and repeated runs of the buildings falling down.  The news who were on the ground, reported from the field mentioning we do not see any evidence of planes, but some sort of explosion at the Pentagon building.  "Another explosion, a secondary explosion from the building"

All these reports were removed from the news and from our viewing.

I ask, when will the American people stand up and demand war crime investigations on President Bush and Dick Cheney?  Is the global leadership already in power, it is not a nation that is going..but a nation that is already there.

The Bad Outlook for the Working Class American Man

MODERN TIMES/ROY EXPORT S.A.S. SCAN COURTESY CINETECA DI BOLOGNA

From:  The National Journal
by: Jonathan Rauch

This is an excellent read, it covers the reality of the American economy today and the truth.  I just had to include it here.  

"The higher you stood on the income ladder, the better you did; the highest-paid 1 percent of earners soared above and away from everyone else, practically occupying an economy of their own. By contrast, the bottom 90 percent of earners—which is to say, almost everyone—saw barely any increase, and much of what they did see came in the boom years of the late 1990s."

If the American economy were an automobile, you would say the transmission is failing. The engine works, but not all wheels are getting power. To put the matter less metaphorically: The economy no longer reliably and consistently transmits productivity gains to workers. The result is that many millions of Americans, in particular less-skilled men, are leaving the workforce, a phenomenon the country has never seen before on the present scale.

Well. That was a mouthful. It certainly bites off more than Washington’s polarized politicians can handle at the moment. In the next few months, they need to worry about the so-called fiscal cliff, the round of automatic tax increases and spending cuts that, if not averted, might start a recession. Plus a politically vexing debt-limit bill, which will need to be passed early in 2013. Plus a recovery that, for many Americans, feels more like a recession. (The median family income fell as much during the first two years of the recovery as it did during the two years of the recession itself, according to the Pew Research Center.) Plus a debt crisis and downturn in Europe. Isn’t that enough?

Sadly, no. The U.S. economy has weakened, and much needs fixing—beyond the fiscal cliff—if it’s to regain its strength. A reelected President Obama and a still-divided Congress face a lengthy To Do list for the economy. We’ve chosen eight entries: innovation, jobs, rising health care costs, entitlement programs,  college-completion rates, infrastructure, housing, and retirement security. None of them will be easy to fix.

But first, let’s consider a nexus of troubling economic trends that seem to be driving and deepening many of the specific problems—and may prove to be the most intractable problem of all. If economic strength means anything, it is that the economy can make almost everyone better off, thereby strengthening the country’s social fabric as well as its balance sheet. Such an economy unites rather than divides us.

Today’s economy, by that standard, is struggling. Its ability to deliver rising living standards across the income spectrum is in decline, and perhaps also in question. “This is a fundamental problem,” says Robert J. Shapiro, the chairman of Sonecom, an economic consultancy in Washington. “This is America’s largest economic challenge. People can no longer depend on rising wages and salaries when the economy expands.”

As other articles in this issue suggest, a number of policy responses are on the agenda already, such as creating jobs, helping more students finish college, and reducing wage-denuding health care inflation. Others, such as reforming the federal disability program, have yet to attract much notice. In truth, however, the extent of Washington’s ability to repair the economy’s gearbox is an open question, because the problem is complex. It implicates not just one slipped gear but many: disruptions in long-established connections between productivity and earnings, between labor and capital, between top earners and everyone else, between men and work, between men and marriage. Together, they are bringing the economy to a place where a large and growing group of people—indeed, whole communities—are isolated from work, marriage, and higher education. That place might look like today’s America, only with a larger welfare state. But it might just as easily bring social unrest and class resentment of a magnitude the country hasn’t known before.

SLIPPING GEARS

Begin with Chart 1. It shows one of the most basic of all economic relationships, that between productivity and hourly compensation. Productivity measures the value of the output (brake pads, stock transactions) a worker produces in, say, a day; compensation is a measure of earnings that includes the value of benefits such as health insurance. The chart also shows compensation for all U.S. workers and specifically for workers in production and nonsupervisory jobs—blue-collar and clerical jobs, for example.

For decades, productivity and compensation rose in tandem. Their bond was the basis of the social compact between the economy and the public: If you work harder and better, you and your family will be better off. But in the past few decades, and especially during the past 10 years or so, the lines have diverged. This is slippage No. 1: Productivity is rising handsomely, but compensation of workers isn’t keeping up.

More...

BP Disaster and Link of Sick Children in the Gulf of Mexico, USA

Reprint:  Riki Oatt

All six of Julie Creppel’s young children are sick. Vomiting. Blisters all over their bodies, even in their throats. Boils. Severe headaches that wake them up screaming at night. Nausea. Fevers. Diarrhea. Stomach spasms that contort their bodies in pain. Skin lesions. Psoriasis. Nose bleeds that gush unexpectedly. Respiratory infections. Dizziness. Sinus infections. Hand, Foot, and Mouth disease. Hair loss. And more.

The Creppels live in Boothville, La., in south Plaquemines Parrish. Area health clinics and hospitals are experiencing an influx of sick children for treatment for a range of symptoms that began after the BP oil disaster. The increase in numbers of sick children coincides with the massive spraying of toxic chemical dispersants into the water and air that began in 2010. More troubling is the fact that the children are still having these symptoms to this day.

The Corexit dispersants used in the Gulf are known human health hazards, causing eye and skin irritation, respiratory problems, harm to liver, kidney, and blood cells, injury and even death to unborn babies, immune suppression, skin disorders, and more.

Not surprisingly, the symptoms Julie’s children suffer are epidemic across the Gulf states that were impacted by the BP disaster — and the secondary disaster, the widespread use of Nalco’s Corexit dispersants. Most medical doctors in the Gulf have continuously treated the sick with standard drugs used for infections and viruses. Nasonex. Citirizine. DryMax. Azithromycin. Zofran. Cefdinir. Xopenex. Amoxicilin. Flovent. Suprax. Viravan-P. Albuterol. Cefixime. Ichitha ointment. Budesonide. And more.

Some of these are potent drugs that children should not be taking for long periods of time because of side effects, including, ironically, many of the very symptoms being treated. They are taking the drugs for months and now even years because the children (and adults) are not getting better. So the medical doctors prescribe more drugs, but the persistence of the symptoms belies the diagnoses.

It should be clear to the medical community by now that they are misdiagnosing the illness and mistreating the patient. I believe the children are suffering from chemical illness, not from biological agents. This should have been clear back in 2010 after the first six to eight rounds of antibiotics and medication prescribed for babies, elders, coastal residents, visitors, and spill responders didn’t clear the symptoms. It should have been clear two years after the disaster in March 2012 when BP completely reversed its position of denial of any harm to human health from oil-dispersant exposure and listed pages of same symptoms and illnesses that people had been reporting for two years as now covered by the BP medical benefits settlement (Exhibit 8) — so-called, I can only suppose, because it mostly benefits BP, but that’s another story.

The problem is the illnesses ­­– like BP’s oil­­ — just don’t “go away” because it’s an inconvenience for oil companies and the federal government in charge of an impossible situation: There is no way to clean up oil spills, including tar sands spills. But there are many ways to lessen the impacts to workers and the public, none of which have been done to date in the Gulf.

Plenty has been done to lessen the liability and financial impacts to BP and the other companies involved in this tragedy. The most recent injustice was when U.S. District Judge Barbier dismissed Nalco from lawsuits over health problems stemming from use of its products. Barbier shielded Nalco from liability because, he reasoned, the dispersants had been approved by the federal government, and in most cases pre-approved by the Gulf states for use during spill response. The judge also was noted that a lawsuit might have a “chilling” effect on future use of these same dispersants in oil spill response — exactly the opposite effect desired by the federal government and the oil industry.

The two main dispersants stockpiled in the United States for use on future spills are Corexit 9500 and Corexit 9527A — the same dispersants that were known to be harmful to ecosystems and humans before the BP disaster, and that proved to be so after the disaster. These two dispersants are stockpiled in coastal communities around the contiguous United States and in Alaska and Hawaii. Most are owned either by the U.S. Coast Guard regional strike teams or the major national Oil Spill Response Organizations.

The federal government shields itself from any liability for use of these and other dangerous oil spill response products. Even worse, the federal government now considers human health an acceptable “risk tradeoff” for dispersant use. The March 2012 Dispersant Use Initiative, a document intended to guide and plan research needs and decision-making in future spills, states that key needs include, among others, “understanding risk to workers and public safety, and communicating the risk successfully, andunderstanding the trade offs of using dispersants with respect to human health” (emphasis added).

In other words, what happened in the Gulf of Mexico could happen to anyone who lives or works near, or recreates, or visits America’s coasts. Many of the same chemicals in dispersants are also ingredients in diluents for tar sands and drilling fluids for hydraulic fracturing and manufactured by — guess who — Nalco. We need to stick together on this one, or all get sick together. Making it right in the Gulf is up to all of us before the next marine oil disaster.

Here are some suggestions for how YOU can help make it right in the Gulf.
1. Write a short letter to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in support of the People’s Petition to amend the National Oil Spill Contingency Plan …. The letter should refer the People’s Petition, document number AX120019088, and state who you are, why you care, and what you want the EPA to do. Personal letters carry more weight than form letters. Mail to: Lisa Jackson, Administrator, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Ariel Rios Building, 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20460.
2. Find out what dispersants or products are stockpiled in your backyard for oil spill response. Start by contacting your State Emergency Response Commission (google State name + SERC). The SERC page will list all the Local Emergency Planning Committees. Contact an LEPC near you and ask for a complete list of oil spill response products, which they will have as required under the Community Right-to-Know Act. For coastal communities, I would be surprised if that list did not include the ubiquitous Corexit dispersants. Raise local support to have your municipality pass a rights-based resolution to ban toxic dispersants and chemicals during oil spill response within the city’s jurisdiction. A resolution template is available at www.ultimatecivics.org.
3. Ask your congressional delegates to hold hearings to investigate the link between Corexit dispersants and public health, especially children’s health, in the Gulf of Mexico. Ask your delegates to support banning Corexit dispersants used during the BP Gulf disaster, as human health “tradeoffs” cannot be justified.


I would like to personally appeal to Warren Buffet to fund community health clinics in the Gulf of Mexico. His stock trading company Berkshire Hathaway bought shares of Nalco in 2009 before the BP disaster as an investment on water filtration, which at the time was most of Nalco’s business. Berkshire divested its Nalco holdings in late 2010 — after Nalco made millions in dispersant sales. The idea for community health clinics originated within the impacted communities as a way of getting treatment for immediate needs, but it was cherry-picked by BP as the centerpiece of BP’s medical benefits settlement. One clinic in particular in Jean Lafitte, La., was ready to open its door to clients in fall 2011 but the doors remain closed because the settlement is stalled in court. Opening that clinic, now and independent of BP controls embedded in the settlement, could be done with private donations to the Jean Lafitte Health Clinic.

Early into the BP disaster, I warned people about the short- and long-term consequences of exposure to oil and dispersants. Now those consequences are hitting home — especially vulnerable are the children. Don’t believe those BP ads. We need to all help make this right for real.
Riki Ott will be touring the Gulf of Mexico in February, helping communities organize at the grassroots level to ban toxic chemical dispersants. Persons interested in hosting a training should contact via her web site,www.RikiOtt.com.

© 2012 Riki Ott

Riki Ott, PhD is a Marine toxicologist and Exxon Valdez survivor. Her latest book, Not One Drop: Betrayal and Courage in the Wake of the Exxon Valdez is on social trauma of this disaster. She is a co-founder of Ultimate Civics, a project of Earth Island Institute.

U.S. Justifies the Targeting of Children

Susan Brannon 
5 December 2012

It has been brought to my attention recently that there has,  been "reported" and non reported incidents of the NATO bombing of children in Afghanistan. Robert Dreyfuss The Nation writer and blogger reported on 16th of October 2012, that three children ages 12, 10 and 8 were blown into pieces by NATO while picking up dung for fuel.

A similar incident was reported by the NY Times, as "The…case of three children allegedly killed" (note allegedly) picking up dung.  Later, the incident was investigated and Maj. Adam Wojack a spokesperson for the international forces reported, "“I.S.A.F. did conduct a precision airstrike on three insurgents in Nawa district, and the strike killed all three insurgents." and added, "None of our reporting stated that any children were killed during the strike."

NATO watched explosive devices being planted in the area and then targeted the insurgents planting them stated the Marja governor “As a result two I.E.D. planters were killed and the shrapnel killed the three children who were wandering nearby,” he said. In the end, we have different reports: One says that no children were killed while witnesses saw the mangled children who were all from the same family.

It is normal to pick up dung as fuel for fire in these regions, how else can they light fires to cook their food? NATO needs to provide some regional cultural training. Our war heros are so hot to find "insurgents and terrorists" that they are able to misinterpret picking up dung for planting explosive devices. Imagine three young boys performing their family duties, playing in the fields and laughing as brothers normally do and only to find that their lives are quickly destroyed. Who was looking through the viewers that they look through to find "enemies" and how could they not see that they were three young boys? I believe that they do so because the men need some action and need to report some progress that they actually see what it is that they want to see and not the reality.

The boys names were Borjan, 12; Sardar Wali, 10; and Khan Bibi, 8. These deaths need to be brought to life, they need to be recognized not as terrorists but as children and civilian deaths by those who are too quick to pull the trigger.

There may have been men who dug holes in the area as reported by a local witness, he saw some holes but he did not see any bodies of me. He said that he only saw sacks of dung with the children's blood splattered all over them.

A different article was written in the Military Times on 8th of December 2012 as a direct response to the the reported and "alleged" deaths.  The response was a justification of the soldiers actions and to supply counter explanations to the readers that children too can be terrorists and insurgents and therefore, it is okay to shoot them.  These military ideologies turn the plate over to the reporter and project him/her as ignorant and use the new term, "media propaganda" terrorist.  The unsaid projection of media propaganda reporter/terrorist therefore denies any credibility to the reporting and eye witnesses.  It minimizes the deaths of three young children and the broken heart of the mother.  It dehumanizes the realities of war and their consequences all in the name of patriotism and its just cause.

The Military Times article explains, "Before calling for the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System mission in mid-October, Marines observed the children digging a hole in a dirt road in Nawa district, the official said, and the Taliban may have recruited the children to carry out the mission...The use of children by the Taliban — through recruitment and as human shields — complicates coalition forces’ efforts to eliminate enemy fighters from the battlefield without angering civilians."

The report continues to state: "“It kind of opens our aperture,” said Army Lt. Col. Marion “Ced” Carrington, whose unit, 1st Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, was assisting the Afghan police. “In addition to looking for military-age males, it’s looking for children with potential hostile intent.”

This last sentence clearly states that the US military looks for children and gives the approval to shoot if the soldiers feel that they have "hostile intent".  Intent is defined as, "the state of a person's mind that directs his or her actions towards a specific object." The U.S. military can understand a person's intention from the viewer while watching another's actions.  I wonder if an 8 year old can really have the intent to damage NATO.

The reality is that we continue to fight in a war that is not ours to fight and we continue to justify the unjustifiable killings of innocent civilians in the region.

Update: Bank of America Petition for Laura B Progress!

4 December 2012 I had posted a request to sign a petition for a woman who was having huge problems with Bank of America in regards to keeping her home. Her story: "After countless and fruitless hours on the phone with Bank of America over the past year, the bank ignored my repeated requests to take my ex-husband’s name off of my mortgage and get a modification on my loan. Then I got an email from The New Bottom Line, asking me if I wanted to create an online petition to save my home. My home is my livelihood. It’s where the small businesses the I built keep a roof over my family’s head. Soon after my petition went live, over 2,000 people had signed in support and I was working with the New Bottom Line to organize a rally at my home. My story made it into the local paper. I even was able to get Senator Mark Udall’s office to make a call to Bank of America on my behalf. But still I heard nothing from the bank." And it continues: "So early Thanksgiving week, the New Bottom Line activated its online community (that's you!) to call the two bankers that I had been in contact with at Bank of America. They left messages for the bankers throughout the day, voicing their support for my cause. Then on Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, I received a call from the CEO’s office at Bank of America. “We’ve been getting a lot of calls about your account,” the Bank of America representative said. She went on to tell me that she was had all my information right in front of her (unlike every other banker I’d spoken to) and that she had the authority to handle my claim completely, from taking my ex-husband’s name off of the mortgage to getting me the correct paperwork to file for a modification. Thank you for making these calls. The five minutes that you took to leave a message supporting me means so much. I am so thankful for your willingness to take a stand and help me keep my home. I’m not completely out of the woods yet; I still need my modification approved. But today I feel better about my mortgage situation than I’ve felt in more than a year. And your call shows how we can challenge big bank power together--and win."

Modern Western Civilisation: SHEIKH IMRAN HOSSEIN

An interesting video on our culture:  a voice of a sheikh and something to think about... their view.

Disclose.tv - 'Modern Western Civilisation' [Sheikh Imran Hosein]

Obama Letter: Aid to Israel should comply with the Law

reposted:  Jewish Voice for Peace

“My family in Israel has bomb shelters. They are, actually, safe. In Gaza, there is no such thing as “safe.” Please, ask your friends to join me in asking President Obama to make aid to Israel contingent on not using it to target civilians.”


I wear many hats. I’m a dad, a videographer, a Jewish Israeli, a veteran. But I’m telling you my story, and asking you to forward this email and ask your friends to sign this letter to President Obama about US military aid to Israel, as a human being, as a citizen of the world, and as someone who deeply cares about the people in Israel and Gaza.
My wife, kids and I live just on the outskirts of Tel Aviv, Israel, where life during the past weeks for the most part carried on as normal. 
There were four sirens in the eight days of the Israeli operation, which means we had to move into a room in the house that has reinforced concrete walls. In our case, we went down to our apartment building’s bomb shelter for 10 minutes—as far as I know every apartment building in Israel has one. Fortunately, the kids took it well and were not scared.
In the south close to the border with Gaza where I’ve been working, life is much, much different.  People who could do so temporarily moved northward and stayed with family and friends out of rocket and mortar range.
Being outdoors when the siren goes off in the south is quite scary. Most rockets are relatively small, up to 12 pounds of explosives, and cannot bring down a building. But in the open space they splatter lots of metal fragments.
The bigger long distance rockets that were fired at lower intervals were the "Fajar" Rockets that carry 90 lbs of explosives. They cannot bring down a building but can destroy an apartment and killed 3 people in an apartment building. People in bomb shelters are considered to be safe.

And of course, the Iron Dome defense system reportedly destroyed 85% of rockets headed towards Israeli populated areas.
Still, in the south, the sirens went off many times a day and there was no school and no work because parents naturally wanted to be near their kids.
In contrast, in Gaza, the bombs dropped by the Israeli military ranged from 500 to 1,000 pounds, and in the past, also 2,000 pounds.  Ten or 20 times more powerful than those which they have sent our way.
When I’d go to our bomb shelter with my family, I would think of families like mine in Gaza. They had no sirens, no Iron Dome defense, no shelters, and because they are essentially trapped, nowhere to go.
But mostly, I thought about how terrified I'd be during the bombings.
There is no safe place to go in Gaza.
It wouldn’t matter if buildings had shelters since the Israeli bombs often flatten the building they hit. There's literally nothing left.  
I want you to ask your friends to sign this letter to President Obama asking him to make aid to Israel contingent on not using it to target civilians because there is no military solution. Not for Palestinians. Not for us Israelis.
To reach a true peace for all of us, Israeli and Palestinian, our governments must choose diplomacy over more bombing. The Israeli government must end its terrible siege of the Palestinians.
And the US must stop sending my government weapons they know will be used to violate the law and harm civilians.
I am happy we've reached a cease-fire and I hope this will lead to negotiations with the Hamas government. I remind myself that the British in pre-state Israel also considered the Israeli political groups terrorist entities.
With hopes for a fair and lasting peace for both of our peoples,

Dear President Obama,

We are Americans from small towns and big cities, and we are Palestinians and Israelis a world away. We are the women, men, and children who are suffering every single day in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel, and we are the people from across the world who seek to end that suffering. We are mothers of soldiers and children of refuseniks. We are Jews and Muslims, Christians and atheists, and people of the many other traditions of the world.

And we are all united by our determination to see a truly just peace take root in Israel and Palestine. That goal became even more elusive during your first term, but the American voters have just given you a second chance to make history.

Our request is simple.

Fifteen church leaders have bravely spoken out in a letter to Congress--stating a principle that should be obvious: Israel, the biggest long-term recipient of US aid, should not be above the law. Mr. President, please condition US aid to Israel on compliance with US and international law. It must not be used to violate the rights of Palestinians.

Anything less is a danger to Palestinians, to Israelis, to Americans and to the entire world.