I Want My Money Back! (Pres. Obama!)

I want my money back.

I gave $20 a week for seven months, plus $60 every once in a while for a t-shirt and sticker.  I gave of my modest purse joyfully.  Once I add that all up, it makes a grand total of… $106 billion?!  Wait a minute, I thought I was supporting change I could believe in, not more of the same bloodshed and war!

Betrayal is a part of life.  After awhile, you just come to expect it.  Yet, the initial shock always hits you as a surprise.  Alas, the nature of betrayal.  Humans are vulnerable to being betrayed because underneath our husky shells, our pain and hardened hearts, we are soft and trustful creatures.  We want to believe in people.

I’m not that young, so I possess some cynicism.  But I’m not that old either, so I manage some idealism.  Sure, I am used to being betrayed by my government.  But I thought my days of calling the White House in tears were over.  To think that Barack Obama preyed on this naive hope in me and millions like me is unforgivable.

I expect the Republicans to throw money at the Military Industrial Complex.  Yet, from the Democrats, I was promised a different direction (like OUT of the Middle East).  Regrettably, there has been miniscule change.  There is still nothing to believe in.

It is against my religion to say the Pledge of Allegiance.  (I am a Christian so I pledge allegiance only to God.)  I did, however, pledge my time and treasure to Barack Obama.   On November 4, 2008, I danced in the streets waving the American Flag, feeling proud to be an American.  I was pathetically close to bustin’ out some Toby Keith ditties.

It’s not just the $106 billion that makes me feel betrayed.  It’s not just the fact that Gitmo probably won’t be shut down after all.  It is not even the president’s assurance to Republicans that he will not release the photos of detainee abuse.

It is the rumors of intimidation and strong-arming that are, to me, the greatest betrayal.

That President Barack Obama sent Rahm Emanuel and Nancy Pelosi to bully anti-war Democrats into voting for the supplemental (and threatening to withdraw the leadership’s support for their re-elections if they didn’t) is a shameful misuse of power.  Where’s the humanity I once saw in Barack?  It’s just more of the same and I can’t stomach it.

I knew I was naïve; yet like millions of Americans, I had no choice but to believe.  Our hearts were desperate for hope.  We saw Barack Obama as an oasis in the desert.  To think that he may be just a mirage is heartbreaking.

When you have a minute, give Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold a call at (202) 224-5323.  He was the only Democrat in the Senate to vote against the war funding (along with three Republicans and an Independent).

Oh, and please consider supporting my grassroots campaign to get my $680 back so I can donate it to the Whatcom Peace & Justice Center. Thanks.

Source: Common Dreams

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No More Cash Payments on E-470 Tolls

Starting Saturday, July 4, cash payments will no longer be accepted at the tolls on E-470 in Colorado.

The only payments that will work are an Express Toll account or a license plate toll. With the license plate toll, a picture will be taken of the front and rear license plate and the owner of the vehicle will then receive a bill in the mail.

If you are using an Express Toll account, with an Express Toll tag that is attached to your credit card account, you get a 10 percent discount.

All of the cash lanes will be converted to the new system, with no employees needed to man the booths.

Source: KKTV

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Milk and meat from the progeny of cloned animals could soon be hitting the shelves of European supermarkets. Some groups have been critical of such products, which are already on sale in the United States.

European agriculture ministers approved the sale of milk and meat from the direct offspring of cloned animals on Monday. Germany had long opposed the move, but finally changed its position.

According to Monday’s decision, food products originating from the progeny of cloned animals will still have to receive approval by the European Food Safety Authority before they can be sold in the EU. The sale of meat and milk from cloned animals themselves, however, is not permitted.

No scientific differences

A scientific committee set up by the EFSA came to the conclusion in a July 2008 report that there were no convincing arguments against permitting the sale of food products from cloned animals.

“There is no indication that differences exist in terms of food safety for meat and milk of clones and their progeny compared with those from conventionally bred animals,” the EFSA report said. “Such a conclusion is based on the assumption that meat and milk are derived from healthy animals, which are subject to relevant food safety controls.”

The authority, however, also said there were uncertainties in the risk assessment of food from cloned animals due to the limited number of studies available and the small sample sizes investigated.

Ethical dilemma

Germany’s Farmers Association has come out against the sale of food products from cloned animals or their offspring. Also pointing to the small amount of scientific research on the topic, the group said food products from cloned animals and their offspring should not be sold until all possible consequences of consuming it have been analyzed.

The European Parliament has also criticized plans to sell the meat and milk of cloned animals’ progeny. The body’s most recent position on the issue came in March, when it opposed the sale of such products.

Peter Liese, a German member of the European Parliament, told reporters Monday that the agriculture ministers’ decision was “not the last word” on the issue, adding that the Parliament was against the cloning of animals for food production.

While food from cloned animals is not necessarily harmful to humans’ health, “its risks also cannot be ruled out,” he said.

German Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner has called for the EU to analyze the ethical dimensions of selling food from progeny of cloned animals in a year’s time, a demand also made by the German Farmers Association. But further discussions are likely as not all EU members are in favor of such a study.

Labeling requirements

The consumer rights group Foodwatch also called for a study examining the ethical dimensions of cloning animals. The group wants regulations requiring any food products from cloned animals or their offspring to be clearly labeled.

“People should be have the right to refuse cloned meat and fish for any reason,” Foodwatch head Matthias Wolfschmnidt told reporters. “If cloned meat is in something, then the label has to say so.”

The United States was the first country to allow the sale of meat and milk from cloned cattle, swine and goats. The US Food and Drug Administration approved the products for human consumption in 2008 and does not require that they be specially labeled.

Despite the debate raging in the European Union, Germany’s Deputy Agriculture Minister Gert Lindemann said he doesn’t expect many foods from cloned animals to be landing on tables.

“At the moment, a cloned animals costs about 50 times as much as a non-cloned animal,” he said.

Source: Dw-World

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Court case aimed at revealing Saudi Royal family links to attacks quashed after pressure from government

The Obama administration has effectively ended the efforts of families of victims of the September 11th attacks to bring lawsuits against members of the Saudi Royal family for financial links to the conspiracy.

The Supreme Court today ruled that it will not allow any lawsuits to go ahead, just a few weeks after the government filed a court brief asking that the case be quashed.

The court, in an order Monday, is leaving in place the ruling of a federal appeals court that the country and the princes are protected by sovereign immunity, which generally means that foreign countries can’t be sued in American courts, reports the Associated Press.

In late May, the Justice Department had sided in court with the Saudi monarchy in seeking to halt further legal action to hold it liable for the attacks.

The move came less than a week before Obama was scheduled to meet Saudi King Abdullah as part of his “rebuilding” trip to the Middle East.

More than 6000 family members denounced the move as an “apparent effort to appease a sometime ally” in a public statement.

The lawsuits claimed that Saudi Arabia and four of its princes actively aided in financing the plot through front groups posing as charities.

Last week, the New York Times ran a report highlighting how documents uncovered by lawyers for the 9/11 families “provide new evidence of extensive financial support for Al Qaeda and other extremist groups by members of the Saudi royal family.”

The documents consist of “several hundred thousand pages of investigative material” assembled by the 9/11 families, according to the report.

The families also point to a 28-page, classified section of the 2003 joint congressional inquiry into 9/11 that deals with the Saudi role in the attacks.

Senator Bob Graham, who sat on the 9/11 Commission, has also charged that Saudi involvement in the attacks has been covered up.

As we have previously reported, US authorities, including the FBI, allowed the entire Bin Laden family to fly out of the US, and back to Saudi Arabia, in the days after 9/11, without questioning any of them.

Furthermore, agency documents later revealed that the FBI were aware that Osama Bin Laden himself may have personally chartered one of the flights. They subsequently redacted his name from the records in order “to protect privacy interests.”

The documents provide clear proof that the FBI was protecting the Bin Laden while the rest of the world was being told that he had masterminded the biggest terror attack in history. The FBI then attempted to cover up this fact.

The same documents revealed that the Bureau did not consider a single Saudi national nor any of the Bin Laden family worthy of investigative value.

The protection of Bin Laden by federal authorities has been ongoing since BEFORE 9/11 when agents were told to “back off the Bin Laden family” in order to protect business interests that the Bush family had with the Bin Ladens and other Saudi nationals.

The FBI asserts that no one on the planes that left had any terrorist links, yet documents (specifically FBI document 199I WF213589) uncovered back in November 2001 prove this to be a falsehood.

The Obama administration is now continuing the exact same long running policy as the Bush administration by obediently backing the Saudi monarchy and keeping secret this vital information on 9/11.

How disgustingly ironic it is that “sovereign immunity” is cited in a case relating to 9/11, when the same notion of sovereign immunity is violated on a daily basis as CIA drone delivered missiles rain down on Afghanistan and Pakistan.

As pointed out by writer Barry Grey, in his excellent piece on the effort to shut down the lawsuits, any exposure given to the Saudi connection would open the flood gates for more suppressed evidence:

“The revelations would undoubtedly shatter the official explanations of the September 11 attacks and point to complicity on the part of US intelligence and security agencies.” Grey writes.

“Given its longstanding and intimate ties to the Saudi royal family and Saudi intelligence, it is not possible to believe that the CIA would have been unaware of Saudi support for Al Qaeda and at least some of the 19 hijackers, 15 of whom were Saudi nationals, as they were preparing to carry out the attacks on New York and Washington.”

Again, the mountain of suppressed information regarding the most important event of the century, as well as the continued efforts on the part of the new administration to keep it that way, highlights the need for a new independent investigation into 9/11.

Source: Prison Planet

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The 55-year-old West Philadelphia man shot and killed by police Wednesday evening was standing in the doorway of the home where he grew up – holding a revolver in his hand – when officers arrived, neighbors said.

The officers ordered Tony Anderson to drop the gun. Anderson then tossed it toward the police, neighbors said yesterday, but his movement apparently spurred two officers to fire nine shots before the gun landed at the feet of one officer.

Anderson was hit twice in the chest. He was pronounced dead at 8:50 p.m. Wednesday at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

Residents in the 4200 block of Otter Street, a small street near railroad tracks, were angry yesterday about Anderson’s death.

“They killed a good man this time,” said Tina Williams, who grew up on the block four doors down from Anderson.

Police were summoned about 7:30 p.m. Wednesday for a report of a man firing a gun. Neighbors said Anderson, embroiled in some sort of argument, had fired his revolver into an empty lot across the street.

Several neighbors said they did not know the nature of the argument, and Anderson’s family declined to comment yesterday.

Anderson had the gun when the officers arrived, but what happened next is under investigation, said Lt. Frank Vanore, a police spokesman.

“The information that I received is that when they confronted him, at some point he produced a gun, and what that caused them to do, with their training, was to fire,” he said.

Vanore said he could not comment on whether Anderson had been tossing the gun to officers when he was shot.

“The investigation will determine that. It’s something we always look at,” he said. “That’s why we have the district attorney, Internal Affairs, and, in this case, Homicide.”

But Vanore said it was important to keep in mind that the officers had been responding to a report of a man firing a weapon.

“This wasn’t someone they walked up to on the street,” he said. “As he turns with a gun, they’re already armed with this information. . . . Whether it’s leveled, thrown, or whatever, they have to take a position to defend themselves.”

By standard procedure, the officers who fired will be assigned to desk duty during the investigation.

Officers drove Anderson to the hospital in a police wagon, which is common practice when police believe they can get treatment quicker that way, Vanore said.

“We do that with trauma all the time,” he said.

Jessie Whitaker, who lives a few doors down, said, “Everybody was hollering, ‘Take him to the hospital. Take him to the hospital.’ ”

Whitaker, 86, has lived on the block for 65 years and watched Anderson grow up in his parents’ home, which he inherited.

“He takes care of his family. He worked every day,” Whitaker said. “He was a very respectable young man.”

After gardening in his small front lawn, where pink roses are blooming, Anderson often walked to her house and offered to plant extra flowers in her yard, she said.

Whitaker said many neighbors, drawn out by gunshots and sirens, watched from their porches and sidewalks as the confrontation with police unfolded.

“No one went to sleep last night,” said Tina Williams.

Neighbors said Anderson’s wife had been standing at the edge of the porch, between the officers and her husband. The bullets whizzed past her, knocking him back through the doorway.

“If she would have moved, she would have been shot,” Williams said. She said the couple had two children and two grandchildren.

Williams said she could understand if the officers said they had been alarmed by Anderson’s tossing of the gun.

“But I’m not going to go with he had the gun in his hand and he was going to use it,” she said. “The gun never got above his knees.”

Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer

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HR 1966 has cleared the House and now faces the Senate as S.909, the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act (officially, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act). The bill is expected to sail through the Senate as it did in the House. It will provide federal assistance to the states, local jurisdictions, and Indian tribes to prosecute hate crimes, and for “other purposes.” It creates special protective status based on race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability.

S.909 is a direct violation of the First Amendment. It allows the federal government to prosecute people involved in “hate speech” transmitted over television, radio, and the internet. The House version of the bill states:

Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce [radio, TV, internet] any communication, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both. (HR 1966, SEC 3, Sec. 881a)

In other words, if a talk show host engages in “hostile” speech against a person or persons of the above mentioned federally protected group that talk show host will face federal prosecution and the prospect of a two year prison term.

According to Alan Potash, director of the Anti-Defamation League for the Plains States, “freedom of speech does not extend to racist groups.”

The ADL played an instrumental role in passing the Hate Crimes Prevention Act. “ADL has long been in the forefront of national and state efforts to deter and counteract hate-motivated criminal activity. Hate crime statutes are necessary because the failure to recognize and effectively address this unique type of crime could cause an isolated incident to explode into widespread community tension,” the ADL website states.

In the wake of a series of crimes the corporate media and the ADL have linked to “white supremacists” (the killing of police officers in Pittsburgh and the attack by James von Brunn on the Holocaust museum in Washington), the ADL and its partners on the so-called left have engaged in an orchestrated campaign to demonize groups and individuals that are not racist or separatist.

The Department of Homeland Security drafted a template for this persecution with its report on “rightwing extremism.” The DHS and police agencies around the country have linked pro-life, states’ rights and anti-illegal immigration activism and support for the Second Amendment to racist thought crime as defined by the ADL and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

During a speech delivered at the Anti-Defamation League National Leadership Conference in Washington, DHS secretary Janet Napolitano admitted the agency enjoys a special relationship with the ADL. Napolitano said the ADL and DHS “have had some good partnerships” and said the agency has placed its employees in the ADL’s “advanced training school to educate us on the tactics used by extremists and terrorists.”

After the white supremacist Richard Poplawski allegedly killed three police officers in Pittsburgh, the ADL attempted to link radio talk show host Alex Jones to the crime. “One of Poplawski’s favorite places for such conspiracy theories was the Web site of the right-wing conspiracy radio talk show host Alex Jones. Poplawski visited the site, Infowars, frequently, shared links to it with others, and sometimes even posted to it,” the ADL wrote in an article on Poplawski.

California Democrat Rep. Linda Sánchez introduced the Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act in April, a bill so egregious it earned the title the “Censorship Act of 2009.” On May 6, Sánchez wrote for the Huffington Post: “The Supreme Court recognizes that in some instances words can be harmful. For example, you cannot falsely yell ‘FIRE’ in a crowded theater. If you say it even once you can be held liable. Yet, you can repeatedly emotionally abuse someone with words, pictures, and false impressions online and get away scot-free.”

Sánchez’s bill contains the following language:

Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both…

As law professor and blogger Eugene Volokh noted on April 30, the bill will allow the government to go after bloggers and internet journalists engaged in speech that may result in “emotional distress.”

The ADL is also involved in making sure the Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act is passed and used against its enemies. “Whether cyberbullying is related to identity-based group membership, however, or more universal characteristics such as appearance or social status, online social cruelty can produce devastating consequences for the targets and may be a precursor to more destructive behavior, including involvement in hate groups and bias-related violence,” the ADL writes on its website.

HR 1966, S.909, the Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act and other such legislation will be used to shut down, prosecute, imprison, and thus silence the opposition. HR 1966 covers television and radio, while the Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act addresses the internet.

The DHS — at the behest of the ADL — has accomplished its essential work of demonizing constitutionalists and patriot groups and individuals as domestic terrorists. Corporate media propaganda continues to deliver the message that opposition to illegal immigration, abortion, and support for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights is “extremism” that will result in the murder of late term abortion doctors, police officers, and security guards.

Source: Prison Planet

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An armed man who was killed by an undercover Lakewood officer was shot twice in the back, according to an autopsy report.

Eugene Paul Velarde, 25, was shot after he fled a liquor store at West First Avenue and Sheridan Boulevard on June 10.

Police said Velarde entered the store with a pistol and made threats.

A short time later, two Lakewood Police Department plainclothes officers driving an unmarked Nissan Pathfinder tried to pull over Velarde, who was driving a minivan, but Velarde rammed the sport utility vehicle, police said.

Velarde ran from the crash and was shot twice by a pursuing officer.

Investigators found a pistol near Velarde, but they have not said whether he fired any shots at the officers, who have not been identified.

Velarde had several drugs in his blood system, according to the autopsy report, including cocaine, opiates and amphetamine.

According to the autopsy, Velarde was shot twice in the right side of the back from an “intermediate” distance.

The fatal shooting happened in Denver, just across the Lakewood line, and is being investigated by Denver police.

Lakewood police declined comment, deferring to Denver investigators. Denver police declined further comment citing the ongoing investigation.

Source: Denver Post

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Product piracy causes billions worth of damage worldwide. A combination of visible and invisible copy protection is really effective against this. Explosive embossing is an economical procedure and can be used for mass-produced goods.

The holographic structure on the frisbee glistens colorfully. It is unique to this batch and makes the product forgery-proof. Explosives are used to emboss the original pattern into the injection moulding tool. This method can be used to give copy protection to industrial goods, and also mass-produced goods such as DVDs or medical pills and tablets. The patented technology was developed by Günter Helferich of the Fraunhofer Institute for Chemical Technology ICT in Pfinztal. He will receive one of the 2009 Joseph von Fraunhofer prizes for developing an explosive embossing method for the holographic nano-structuring of steel surfaces, as a protection against plagiarism. The necessity for this is obvious – forged products account for approximately 10 per cent of total world trade volume. This not only destroys jobs – approximately 70,000 per year in Germany, according to the German Chamber of Industry and Commerce – but is also relevant to the question of product liability.

Explosive embossing makes it possible to imprint structures directly onto metal surfaces. This method can even be used to transfer the structures of soft holographic embossing templates – nickel shims – into mould inserts for injection moulding. Moulds structured in this way enable plastic products to be produced for the mass market with a clearly visible hologram as a copy protection. This can be done during the production process of the original and without an additional production step. All components can be clearly identified by the ‘fingerprint’ moulded into the plastic. In addition, the use of conventional galvanic baths or etching baths can be reduced.

“The procedure is simple to describe,” says Günter Helferich. “For the structuring, the metal surface to be worked on is covered with the object that is to be imprinted, the original structure. A thin film of explosive material is placed on this. When this is detonated the structure of the original is imprinted, accurate in every detail, onto the metal. The shock wave causes an additional increase in the hardness of the embossed metal.” Achieving this result was not quite so simple – it depends on the combination of many parameters, the type of explosive material and the type of metal, the detonator position and the plugging of the explosive material – just to name a few. The explosive embossing of holographic structure templates cannot be copied – even if identical templates are used. Forgers of products will never be able to carry out a “complex” procedure such as embossing by means of detonation with complete accuracy of detail, making it the ideal piracy protection.

Source: Science Daily

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