WARNING NOTICE. The latest printer update for HP OfficeJeg J4680 All-In-One immediately decommissions perfectly good, full, and genuine HP print cartgriges as being “incompatible” with your printer. It FORCES you to go buy a new one and start fresh.
Recommendation if this happens to you: pull the cartridge that has been incorrectly blocked, go buy an exact replacement, and work with the store to do an instant switch out. Staples etc loses nothing, and they can return it to HP for full credit. We need to FLOOD HP with the fruits of their ineptitude.
There really ought to be a quality control center outside of HP, they have lacked integrity on printer cartridges for over a decade. Generally when HP says your cartridge is low, you still have a third of the ink left.
There is now a petition for a Wall Street Sales Tax online at: http://wh.gov/ARGi
The petition was initiated by the United Front Against Austerity. It has started off strong, and we want to keep the momentum building, so the more it's shared, the better. Thank you!
We've got until April 10 to get 100,000 signatures. Twitter people, can you put this in front of people like Robert Reich, Dean Baker and others to ask them to mobilize their networks?
Getting an official White House response would be huge, but this is also a way to push the concept in front of more people.
CHARGE!!!!!!
Phi Beta Iota: Wall Street transactions (both stock and currency) are among the most numerous in the economy, and they are tax free. The Tobin Tax and the Automated Payment Transaction Tax both call for the widening of the economic revenue “pie” beyond income taxes — indeed, an honest Congress and an honest Executive could eliminate all income taxes by applying either of these taxes (a fraction of a penny) across the economy starting with the financial transactions — including the shadow banks (hedge funds) — that are now completely outside the revenue stream. The FACT that the US Government has been BORROWING $1 trillion a year since 1980 in order to fund BOTH a grossly over-extended entitlements program and a grossly under-performing national security corporate welfare program, should be — but is not — a major public grievance.
It is with great pleasure that I can introduce you to the International Civil Society Network on Infrastructures for Peace (I4P). The network and website are launched today: www.I4Pinternational.org
Many countries lack capacities and structures to deal adequately with on-going and potential violent conflict. This has emerged as a central obstacle to the attainment of equitable and sustainable development. In recent years, the number of conflicts has been increasing once again. We need comprehensive, inclusive and long-term approaches to peacebuilding, which involves the main stakeholders. Infrastructures for Peace and Local Peace Committees can be important pillars to counter these dangerous developments or substantially reduce their impact.
These months, several interesting articles on I4P are released: in the new Peacebuilding Journal, the Berghof-Handbook Dialogue Series on Peace Infrastructures, in Pensamiento Propio and soon a whole issue on this topic of the Journal of Peacebuilding and Development. Our website will tell you how to find the articles on I4P.
Several local peacebuilding NGOs and practitioners felt the need to exchange experiences and best practices about this approach and make I4P more recognised:the network was born and counts now some seventy members. We have established an Interim Steering Committee with members from three continents.
I invite you to see our website and join our network if you are interested.
>Watching Danny Schechter's documentary, “WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception,” a term stood out for me: the era of post-journalism. And I could see immediately that it's an accurate term that should be adopted by academia—-just as the terms, postmodern, neocolonialism, and neoconservatism have been—-because the tradition of journalists speaking truth to power died a long time ago. Business interests are a conflict of interest that contemporary journalism has not been able to rise above. Or as jazz legend Mose Allison once said in his song: Everybody Cryin' Mercy: “Everybody's cryin' justice . . . just as long as there's business first.”
So I entered the term: post journalism era into the Google search engine and I only came up with one decent link: an article by Russ Baker from his website: WhoWhatWhy.com.
Here are the first two sentences of his article: “The Washington Post has great reporters, but as a journalistic institution, it has been strikingly sympathetic to the ruling establishment. Over the decades, reporters there have complained repeatedly about how their efforts to break out of an emerging consensus have been stymied, overtly or more subtly.”
I also did a dot edu Google search and came up with zero hits for the term post-journalism era. I think this is a term that desperately needs to be coined and spread far and wide, especially in academica. In fact it should have been coined a century ago. But better late than never.
Last year, DC District Judge Richard W. Roberts ordered the U.S. Trade Representative to disclose a classified document to a FOIA requester because, he said, the classification of the document was not properly supported. That ruling in Center for International Environmental Law v. Office of the U.S. Trade Representative was a startling judicial rebuff to executive classification authority of a sort that had not been seen in many years, and the government quickly appealed.
In oral arguments in the DC District Appeals Court last month, government attorneys all but declared that a court has no power to overrule an executive branch classification decision. The transcript of that February 21 hearing has just become available.
Judge Roberts’ “substitution of [his] judgment about likely harm to foreign relations [that could ensue from disclosure] fails to give the deference that’s due to the Executive in this sensitive area of foreign relations and national security, and is entirely inconsistent with this Court’s consistent case law over many decades that emphasizes the need for such deference,” argued H. Thomas Byron, III, on behalf of the U.S. Trade Representative.
Circuit Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh asked Mr. Byron whether there were any circumstances in which a court could reject a classification claim.
“When do you think a Court could ever disagree with the Executive’s determination in this kind of case?” Judge Kavanaugh asked.
Mr. Byron that if the agency’s declarations in support of classification are logical and plausible, then the agency is entitled to judicial deference.
“Isn’t that going to cover 100 percent of the cases?” Judge Kavanaugh asked.
“I certainly think, Judge Kavanaugh, that the Executive would not submit a declaration that was not logical or plausible,” Mr. Byron replied.
Then he went even further and suggested that the executive branch has exclusive constitutional authority over classification policy.
Judge Kavanaugh was inquiring how the government would respond to an argument made in an amicus brief filed by media organizations contending that Congress had mandated judicial review of classification when it amended the FOIA in 1974 in order to enable Courts to review executive classification judgments. Not only that, but when President Ford vetoed the measure, Congress overrode the veto.
Mr. Byron said, “The question is whether those changes [i.e. the 1974 amendments] altered the constitutionally required deference to the Executive in this area under the Separation of Powers Doctrine,” suggesting that the congressional override of President Ford’s veto was meaningless and without effect.
“That’s interesting,” said Judge Kavanaugh. “You don’t think Congress could put the courts in the position of second guessing” the executive?
“Well, when it comes to predictive judgments about harm to national security and foreign relations I think that’s a very difficult question,” Mr. Byron said.
“I agree,” Judge Kavanaugh replied.
Cogent arguments to the contrary were made by attorney Martin Wagner on behalf of the Center for International Environmental Law at the hearing and can be found in the transcript. An account of the hearing from the Reporters Committee on Freedom of the Press is here.
WARNING NOTICE. The latest printer update for HP OfficeJeg J4680 All-In-One immediately decommissions perfectly good, full, and genuine HP print cartgriges as being “incompatible” with your printer. It FORCES you to go buy a new one and start fresh.
