October 20, 2015

Anderson Cooper Offers No Apology for Slandering Bernie Sanders

Anderson Cooper Offers No Apology for Slandering Bernie Sanders

By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
19 October 15


Who was the richest person in CNN’s Democratic presidential debate?

The richest person in the Democratic presidential candidate debate on October 10 was not a candidate. The richest person on that Las Vegas stage was CNN moderator and Vanderbilt heir Anderson Cooper, whose $100 million net worth ($100,000,000) is greater than all the candidates’ worth combined (about $84,000,000). In a very real, if unspoken sense, this “debate” was more like an exclusive club interview with Cooper vetting the applicants for their class credentials.

These class aspects of the debate went unmentioned. In American politics, class issues have traditionally gone unmentioned. The tacit understanding is that if you have the bad taste to ask, then you have no class. If you have class, you will have the right opinions. This year is different because of Bernie Sanders, part of whose popular appeal is that he is so clearly the scion of no great wealth and even less pretension. Sanders is calling for a social revolution against the ruling class of millionaires and billionaires, yet even he did not publicly object to having multi-millionaire Anderson Cooper of the One Per Cent running the show. Sanders likely understands that his best chance to win is not to confront the rich, but to surround them with everyone else whose net worth is more like his ($700,000) or less.

Net worth is notoriously hard to pin down with any accuracy, but ballpark figures are good enough at the highest levels, even if the numbers usually come from the candidates themselves. In a candidates’ net worth listing published October 13, the Democrats were evaluated as follows (with an alternative set of estimates in parenthesis):

Hillary Clinton: $45 million ($31.2 herself, with Bill $111 million)

Lincoln Chaffee: $32 million ($31.9 million, mostly his wife’s trust)

Jim Webb: $6 million ($4.6 million)

Bernie Sanders: $700,000 ($528,014)

Martin O’Malley: $-0- ($256,000)

.....(snip).....

Cooper’s life of wealth illuminates his gift as a glib carnival barker

Like most debate moderators, Anderson Cooper seemed most interested in promoting a food fight among the candidates. While he had snark for everyone, his most provocative and least conscionable jibes were saved for Sanders, served up with class-based relish. .....................(more)

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/33022-focus-anderson-cooper-offers-no-apology-for-slandering-bernie-sanders

October 20, 2015

Light 'em if ya got 'em, eh?

With the Liberal Party's electoral victory in Canada, the US's northern neighbors could soon undertake an enormous change in drug policy: marijuana legalization.

The policy was a big part of the Liberals' campaign: "We will legalize, regulate, and restrict access to marijuana. Canada's current system of marijuana prohibition does not work. It does not prevent young people from using marijuana and too many Canadians end up with criminal records for possessing small amounts of the drug."

If marijuana were legalized in Canada, it would be a first among developed nations. In the US, four states and Washington, DC, have legalized pot, but it's still illegal at the federal level. The only other country to fully legalize marijuana is the tiny developing nation of Uruguay. And although some countries — the Netherlands and Spain, in particular — have relaxed enforcement of their marijuana laws, none in the developed world have outright legalized it. .................(more)

http://www.vox.com/2015/10/20/9573497/canada-marijuana-legalization-justin-trudeau

October 20, 2015

Monsanto Solicited Academics to Bolster Pro-GMO Propaganda Using Taxpayer Dollars

Monsanto Solicited Academics to Bolster Pro-GMO Propaganda Using Taxpayer Dollars

Tuesday, 20 October 2015 00:00
By Katherine Paul, AlterNet | News Analysis


The Monsanto public relations machine has done a stellar job in recent years of reducing the GMO debate to one that pits "pro-science advocates" against "anti-science climate-denier types" - with Monsanto portrayed as being squarely planted in the pro-science camp.

But that well-oiled machine may be starting to sputter.

Turns out that Monsanto executive solicited pro-GMO articles from university researchers, and passed the "research" off as independent science which the biotech giant then used to prop up its image and further its agenda.

We know this, thanks to thousands of pages of emails obtained by U.S. Right to Know (USRTK) under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). And because a host of news outlets-including the New York Times, the Boston Globe, Bloomberg, the StarPhoenix and others - are now running with the story.

For anyone who has paid attention, this latest scandal should come as no surprise. As Steven Druker writes in his book Altered Genes, Twisted Truth, "For more than 30 years, hundreds (if not thousands) of biotech advocates within scientific institutions, government bureaus, and corporate offices throughout the world have systematically compromised science and contorted the facts to foster the growth of genetic engineering, and get the foods it produces, onto our dinner plates." .............(more)

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/33296-how-monsanto-solicited-academics-to-bolster-their-pro-gmo-propaganda-using-taxpayer-dollars

October 20, 2015

ACLU Files New Appeal in Drone Lawsuit

(The Intercept) The Central Intelligence Agency is under renewed legal pressure to release “thousands” of records pertaining to its international drone war, following an appeal filed Monday by the American Civil Liberties in Washington, D.C. The motion comes just days after The Intercept published an eight-part series based on cache of secret documents detailing the U.S. military’s parallel reliance on unmanned airstrikes in the war on terror.

While The Intercept’s series, The Drone Papers, offered new insights into the Pentagon’s drone missions in Yemen, Somalia, and Afghanistan, the CIA’s covert drone war has largely remained an official black hole. In the absence of verifiable facts and documentary evidence regarding the agency’s operations, the task of mapping and understanding a central component of modern American warfare has fallen on journalists and legal organizations.

The ACLU’s Monday filing marks the latest chapter in one such effort — a five-year legal battle with the U.S. government over the CIA’s program that began with a 2010 freedom of information request calling for a release of official documents detailing when, where, and against whom the U.S. considers itself authorized to conduct drone strikes, as well as information illustrating how the attacks are consistent with international law.

Following the request, the CIA initially refused to confirm whether its drone program existed. The ACLU challenged that defense, noting that numerous U.S. officials had publicly confirmed its existence. In March 2013, a lower court ruling siding with the CIA was reversed by a unanimous 3-0 decision in favor of the ACLU. ....................(more)

https://theintercept.com/2015/10/19/aclu-drone-lawsuit/

October 20, 2015

Margaret Atwood on our real-life dystopia: “What really worries me is creeping dictatorship”

(Salon) The down-on-their-luck protagonists of Margaret Atwood’s new novel “The Heart Goes Last” become fed up with living out of their car, so they move to a for-profit prison. It’s the near future, shortly after a new financial collapse, and Positron/Consilience — a gated community and a jail all in one — offers Charmaine and Stan the security of a comfortable middle-class existence, every other month; the inhabitants take turns being jailers living in houses and prisoners in cells.

This being a Margaret Atwood novel, things don’t work out quite the way poor Stan and Charmaine hope, but the author of the dystopias “The Handmaid’s Tale” and the Maddaddam trilogy (“Oryx and Crake,” “The Year of the Flood” and 2013’s “Maddaddam”) insists she has just tweaked what’s already happening in the world, including forced labor in prisons and the erosion of civil liberties — what she sees as the “creeping dictatorship” at home in Canada under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who’s up for election on Monday.

On the phone from a Brooklyn hotel, the ever-outspoken Atwood spoke with Salon about dystopias, robot sex and beer — in fiction and reality.

.....(snip).....

In the Maddaddam books, a pandemic wipes out so much of humanity; you carefully set out the details, whereas in “The Heart Goes Last,” the reason for society’s collapse is rather vague.

I think we pretty much do know what it was — it’s the same thing that happened in 2008, so it’s a financial collapse rather than a physical (one). People did end up on their front lawns and living in their cars, and that is apparently ongoing.

Do you see Positron/Consilience as a logical extension of current for-profit prisons?

The problem with for-profit prisons is that you need an endless supply of prisoners to make it profitable, so there’s no incentive to make it such that criminality is actually reduced. Ultimately you want more criminality; at the very least, you want to be able to define criminality in such a way that enough people get put in prison so you can make a profit out of them. There’s also a clause in the U.S. constitution that says you can’t use slave labor — except when convicted criminals are involved. So all of that is going on right now; (the book offers) just a little twist on it. .....................(more)

http://www.salon.com/2015/10/17/margaret_atwood_on_our_real_life_dystopia_what_really_worries_me_is_creeping_dictatorship/

October 20, 2015

Trump, Carson and anti-PC crowd bed down with white supremacists, women haters, race baiters

(Salon) Some of those waging war against college-campus political correctness have good intentions and productive things to say; the trouble is that they also attract ideological bedfellows who fuel some of the nastiest vitriol in U.S. politics. Apart from those with genuine interest in the mental and intellectual well-being of college students, a good chunk of the culture-wars front of the anti-P.C. campaign belongs to an unsavory mélange of white supremacists who fear a minority majority and a multiculturalist “agenda,” and “pick-up artists” and “men’s rights activists” who view educators with ordinary human sensitivities as “cucks” and “wimps.”

This theater of the anti-P.C. crusade doesn’t make it into the New York Times, but it rages on social media and online message boards parallel to the sanitized forms it takes when uttered by Donald Trump or President Obama. Thus, the anti-P.C. position manifests in two very different ways and in two very different segments of U.S. political culture: it’s respectable politics, even politically correct to be against political correctness; but it’s also a signal to bigots and misogynists that the real problem all along has been man-hating “feminazis” and white-hating people of color and heterophobic gays and their wussy (“wussy” is a euphemism) liberal enablers. This is why it’s so crucial for the serious critics of campus political correctness not to oversell their positions by portraying a world in which society’s least powerful are suddenly the oppressor class. It’s sensible to critique the excesses of political correctness, but dangerous to feed anger with distortion.

The reality remains that censure and censorship are still primarily the tools of the powerful, not the marginalized, and not exclusively the “SJWs” of the left. Recent events in the P.C. culture wars reflect as much. In Philadelphia, for example, an adjunct professor was suspended by her college for participating in a protest against police with other #blacklivesmatter activists. At Duke University, a Christian student refused to read a too-graphic graphic novel assigned in class because he believes viewing explicit sexual images is immoral.

And at Wesleyan University, where left-leaning student activists did attempt to defund the college newspaper because they found its coverage of the #blacklivesmatter movement insensitive, the University administration and the newspaper editorial staff affirmed the importance of free speech and ruled against the demands of the protesters even as they acknowledged the importance of the protesters’ concerns. Indeed, the conduct of the Wesleyan administration and the newspaper editorial staff in responding to the protesters is an outstanding model for how to be sensitive and amicable while ultimately upholding free speech. ...............(more)

http://www.salon.com/2015/10/20/cucks_wimps_and_feminazis_trump_carson_and_anti_pc_crowd_bed_down_with_white_supremacists_women_haters_race_baiters/

October 20, 2015

Did the U.S. Just Quash a UN Report Calling for Drug Decriminalization?

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) appeared set to call on governments to end the criminalization of drug use and possession, according to DPA Honorary Board Member Richard Branson -- but in a dramatic turn of events withdrew its briefing paper under pressure from at least one country, according to the BBC.

The UN document, printed on formal UNODC letterhead with no mention of it being a draft, was apparently released this past Friday with an embargo. Confidential sources say that when a journalist violated that embargo, the UNODC decided to walk back the report, apparently under pressure from the U.S. government.

Considering that the American public and leaders such as President Obama are now calling for major drug policy reforms that reduce the role of criminalization in drug policy, it would be remarkable -- and some might say, hypocritical -- for the U.S. to play an active behind-the-scenes role in suppressing this document.

Yet it's encouraging that such a powerful statement about the need to decriminalize drug use and possession made it this far in the UN process. Hopefully the UNODC will eventually move forward and release this document, which reflects growing recognition that global drug control policies must reflect not just the punitive provisions of international drug control treaties but also the UN's health and human rights mandates. ...............(more)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jag-davies/did-the-us-just-quash-a-u_b_8332566.html

October 20, 2015

John Kiriakou: The Sad Fate of America’s Whistleblowers

The Sad Fate of America’s Whistleblowers

Posted on Oct 19, 2015
By John Kiriakou


What is it about whistleblowers that the powers that be can’t stand?

When I blew the whistle on the CIA’s illegal torture program, I was derided in many quarters as a traitor. My detractors in the government attacked me for violating my secrecy agreement, even as they ignored the oath we’d all taken to protect and defend the Constitution.

All of this happened despite the fact that the torture I helped expose is illegal in the United States. Torture also violates a number of international laws and treaties to which our country is signatory — some of which the United States itself was the driving force in drafting.

I was charged with three counts of espionage, all of which were eventually dropped when I took a plea to a lesser count. I had to choose between spending up to 30 months in prison and rolling the dice to risk a 45-year sentence. With five kids, and three of them under the age of 10, I took the plea.

Tom Drake — the NSA whistleblower who went through the agency’s chain of command to report its illegal program to spy on American citizens — was thanked for his honesty and hard work by being charged with 10 felonies, including five counts of espionage. The government eventually dropped the charges, but not before Drake had suffered terrible financial, professional, and personal distress. .....................(more)

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_sad_fate_of_americas_whistleblowers_20151019

October 20, 2015

We’re Flirting With Another Recession

We’re Flirting With Another Recession
by Harry Dent • October 19, 2015

[font size="3"]Meaning, it might already be here.[/font]

Back in May, we were about to go to the printer with the June issue of Boom & Bust when I put on the brakes. My team wasn’t happy to hear it since these things take time to put together. But I didn’t have a choice. I had found compelling evidence to suggest that we were not just looking at another recession, but already possibly back in one.

So, we took a close look at how we’d been flirting with recession over the first half of the year, while economists kept spouting that we had reached escape velocity. Now, after a bit of reprieve during the summer, it looks to be happening again.

We recently got the worst nonfarm payroll jobs report in months as only 142,000 jobs were created last month, with August revised almost 40,000 jobs lower. Plus, labor force participation hit a new low at 62.4%. Overall, we’ve averaged 198,000 jobs per month in 2015, compared with 260,000 jobs in 2014.

For this reason and others, I have reason to believe we’re once again falling into a recession.

What makes the jobs report so concerning is that it’s a lagging indicator – meaning, it’s following a particular trend that’s already started. It supports the possibility that recession is already here. ............(more)

http://wolfstreet.com/2015/10/19/were-flirting-with-another-recession/

October 20, 2015

Oh Canada, I knew you'd come to your senses and oust the doughboy.

I might go across the river to windsor tonight to celebrate with you!