Status check on Brazil's specialized police units trying to supplant illicit drug governance in the favelas. Per an upcoming law, these units will be in place for 25 years. “Many communities previously relied on the drug gangs for services from water to wireless internet, and critics have pointed out that the state has been slow to replace them.”
Phi Beta Iota: The program has been successful in applying ruthless pervasive special violence to displace the drug gangs and insert permanent police presence. The program has FAILED in two respects: it has not been accompanied by the rapid provision of normal services from water to wireless; and it has not provided for the education of the people, something that requires call centers and free cell access to the Internet (they don't have the time to sit in a classroom for N years).
In their own words:
“People in the favela don't believe in themselves. What is really needed in the long term is more education.”
The memorandum “Collateral Damage: U.S. Covert Operations and the Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001” has been circulating for years on the Internet, studiously ignored by most. It was previously posted as a journal item on this website. Since then, the public has learned a great deal more about both gold and greed, and the memorandum is once again circulating.
This is by no means the complete story, and there are some leaps of imagination and speculation that must be deeply investigated or discounted. Central to appreciating the magnitude of the government cover-up is the FACT that MONTHS before 9/11 Dick Cheney set in motion the national counter-terrorism exercise that gave him complete control on “the day” of 9/11.
What is clear is that there is a great deal more investigation to be done, and that a truth and reconciliation commission should be created in time to put Dick Cheney and the others on the stand before they either die a natural death or are assassinated by foreign governments righteously angry over what has been done to them by American children playing with fire.
Here are a few extracts that today have a greater likelihood of being appreciated for their substance.
Yes, we are watching something melt down. But I'd argue the thing that's dying is not business itself, but a financial parasite — a speculative marketplace that no longer funds business but instead seeks to extract value from healthy commerce. More a funds vampire than an infuser of needed capital, the investment industry has been exposed as a drag on business. The future of commerce looks bright to me because it may be unencumbered by the weight of this non-productive capital.
. . . . . . .
Once we accept the fact that the money and banks we have grown accustomed to using are not the only ways to generate capital, we liberate ourselves and our businesses from a finance industry that has enjoyed a monopoly over our commerce for much too long. They have not only abused our trust through corrupt self-dealing, but abused their privilege through systemic usury. Businesses are only obligated to support their employees, owners, and customers — not an entire finance industry.
Wow. Henry Blodget has discovered and pulled out incredible stuff from a document filed with the SEC by a former senior employee at Moody's, one of the big-3 securities ratings agencies.
Moody's is partly owned by a company in which I've owned stock for many years: Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. Buffett has consistently defended Moody's (and the sleazy Goldman Sachs, another big BRK investment) with feel-good non-answers to serious questions. I'm increasingly disenchanted with Buffett, and that's one of the main reasons why.
A former senior analyst at Moody's has gone public with his story of how one of the country's most important rating agencies is corrupted to the core.
The analyst, William J. Harrington, worked for Moody's for 11 years, from 1999 until his resignation last year.
From 2006 to 2010, Harrington was a Senior Vice President in the derivative products group, which was responsible for producing many of the disastrous ratings Moody's issued during the housing bubble.
Harrington has made his story public in the form of a 78-page “comment” to the SEC's proposed rules about rating agency reform, which he submitted to the agency on August 8th. The comment is a scathing indictment of Moody's processes, conflicts of interests, and management, and it will likely make Harrington a star witness at any future litigation or hearings on this topic.
A sobering Japanese bookend to the stunning Sprey-Cockburn report which documented Fukushima's increased infant death rates in some cities in the United States (distributed on 16 Aug). Yet another nail in the claim that we can evolve a safe carbon-free economy in the near term. Given the low power density of green technologies, like wind and solar, going carbon-free or moving away from fire — i.e., the invention that launched millions of years human cultural evolution — in the next 30-100 years necessarily involves a huge expansion in nuclear power, because is the only high power-density, non-carbon solution available over the foreseeable future).
Japanese doctors warn of public health problems caused by Fukushima radiation.
by Dahr Jamail
Scientists and doctors are calling for a new national policy in Japan that mandates the testing of food, soil, water, and the air for radioactivity still being emitted from Fukushima's heavily damaged Daiichi nuclear power plant.
“How much radioactive materials have been released from the plant?” asked Dr Tatsuhiko Kodama, a professor at the Research Centre for Advanced Science and Technology and Director of the University of Tokyo's Radioisotope Centre, in a July 27 speech to the Committee of Health, Labour and Welfare at Japan's House of Representatives.
Read more….
Phi Beta Iota: We do not agree with Brother Spinney's conclusion. Infinite free energy is available now, particularly in countries such as Chile where a wide variety of solar, geo-thermal, and oceanic forms can be deployed. We have lacked both political will and scientific imagination, as well as the essential focus on distributed self-sufficiency. The “central” generation paradigm is corrupt and will not scale.
The interplay of chance with necessity means that no one can predict the future evolutionary pathway in Libya or the US role in Libya, but Ted Galen Carpenter of the libertarian CATO Inst. provides a thoughtful lens for thinking about potential ramifications of NATO's precipitate intervention in Libya.
Key issues discussed:
De facto or de jure partition vs a unification that sows the seeds of future conflict?
How to replenish empty Libyan treasury and repair infrastructure (including restoring oil production capability)?
Will US get sucked into another NATO stabilization, peacekeeping, nation-building mission?
After weeks of very little movement either militarily or diplomatically in Libya, there are apparent developments on both fronts in recent days. Rebel forces, aided by NATO’s air support, finally appear to be advancing into western Libya and cutting off supply lines to Tripoli, the long-time stronghold of support for Muammar Qaddafi. And reports are swirling about secret negotiations that might provide a peaceful exit from the country for the aging dictator.
Those developments underscore that U.S. and NATO officials urgently need to consider what strategy they intend to pursue if Qaddafi’s more-than-four-decade hold on power finally comes to an end. That is more crucial for the leaders of the European members of the alliance, since Libya is located on Europe’s Mediterranean flank, but because the Obama administration unwisely chose to involve the United States in Libya’s internecine conflict by launching air strikes, it has become a pertinent issue for Washington as well.
The outlook for a post-Qaddafi Libya is midpoint between sobering and depressing. It is possible that the warring parties will accept a de facto division of the country between the eastern and western tribes, although a formal agreement to that effect is unlikely. Even an informal partition would more accurately reflect the demographics, politics, and history of that territory than an insistence on keeping Libya intact.
Phi Beta Iota: A serious world power would heed the wisdom of Ambassador Mark Palmer, and have Undersecretaries for Peace at both foreign affairs and defense, with two strategies: one for dictators that agree to a five year non-violent exit strategy, and another for those that do not. What is happening in the Middle East today is a direct representation of the fact that there are no serious world powers in being today.
(Susan Lindauer) Here’s breaking News from a confidential source inside Tripoli. And it’s nothing like what CNN is broadcasting… Pay attention to live reports from Zawia.
First, today the power went out in all of Tripoli today. As a gift to the Muslim community for their 17th day of Ramadan, NATO bombed a power plant and six high voltage sub stations. Apparently they believed the Libyans would have no ability to repair this, and so, in their “humanitarian effort to protect civilians,” they tried to cut power to 2 million innocent people during the holy month of Ramadan and the hottest month of the year in this desert country. Well, NATO sorely underestimated these resilient people. They had the power back in 6 hours! You know, there is NO fighting in Tripoli, never has been, no fighting on the outskirts never has been. So, NATO has been continually bombing a peaceful city, destroying the infrastructure, killing and constantly terrorizing civilians.
Second, the media outside is trying to win this war by completely flipping the truth upside down. Ghadafi is stronger than ever. Today, people gathered in two areas of Tripoli where people said NATO was planning on bombing. Hundreds of thousands of people waving green flags, chanted (Allah, Muammar, Libya, Wah bes) (God and Muammar makes Libya complete). Dancing and daring NATO to come and hit them.
These people are so pissed at NATO that they would all lay down their lives before they let “The NATO” win as they say. A young woman from the Foreign Minister’s office named Sana spoke with us tonight. She said the people are so used to NATO now that they are beginning to name their worthless pets after NATO.
Sana said that the Western news media is showing old pictures of Zawia in an attempt to show bunches of rebels there. So a few people went and waved a green flag at the over pass that the media was showing on the news. And guess what? The group was never on camera, because it was not a live shot.
She also told us that the Libyans are now in complete solidarity behind the legitimate government and Ghadafi. She said all the Libyan people have offered to have Ghadafi come and sleep at their homes, he should switch homes every night, all Libyans are prepared to die for Ghadafi. She said, Ghadafi should run for president in the US, because the US is so divided and people are so disgusted with their government there. The unity of Libya behind Ghadafi is unmatched for any leader world wide, she thinks the American people need someone to unite them, not to divide them.
Spoke with the Electronic army, they say there are small pockets of rebels they liken to gangs in Misurata and the Libyan army is the middle of the city cleaning them out. Most of them are running away.
Dr Moussa Ibrahim stated yesterday that Oil Companies of the aggressor nations are trying frantically to open avenues of communication with any and every minister trying to garner favor and regain their once lucrative contracts. You won’t see that in the Western news, even though this release was given to all the journalists here in Tripoli.
That is all for now.
Phi Beta Iota: NATO attacks against Tripoli are an atrocity–commanders and pilots should be held accountable for obeying blatantly illegal orders.
