WTF? Martial Law Training. Something wicked this way comes.

"Why is a U.S. Army brigade being assigned to the "Homeland"?
For the first time in 100 years, and contrary to a long-standing legal prohibition, an active duty military unit is permanently assigned inside the U.S.
Several bloggers today have pointed to this obviously disturbing article from Army Times, which announces that "beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the [1st Brigade Combat Team of the 3rd Infantry Division] will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North" -- "the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities." The article details:
They'll learn new skills, use some of the ones they acquired in the war zone and more than likely will not be shot at while doing any of it.
They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack. . . .
The 1st BCT's soldiers also will learn how to use "the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded," 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.
"It's a new modular package of nonlethal capabilities that they're fielding. They've been using pieces of it in Iraq, but this is the first time that these modules were consolidated and this package fielded, and because of this mission we’re undertaking we were the first to get it."
The package includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic; shields and batons; and, beanbag bullets.
"I was the first guy in the brigade to get Tasered," said Cloutier, describing the experience as "your worst muscle cramp ever -- times 10 throughout your whole body". . . .
The brigade will not change its name, but the force will be known for the next year as a CBRNE Consequence Management Response Force, or CCMRF (pronounced "sea-smurf").
For more than 100 years -- since the end of the Civil War -- deployment of the U.S. military inside the U.S. has been prohibited under The Posse Comitatus Act (the only exceptions being that the National Guard and Coast Guard are exempted, and use of the military on an emergency ad hoc basis is permitted, such as what happened after Hurricane Katrina). Though there have been some erosions of this prohibition over the last several decades (most perniciously to allow the use of the military to work with law enforcement agencies in the "War on Drugs"), the bright line ban on using the U.S. military as a standing law enforcement force inside the U.S. has been more or less honored -- until now. And as the Army Times notes, once this particular brigade completes its one-year assignment, "expectations are that another, as yet unnamed, active-duty brigade will take over and that the mission will be a permanent one."
After Hurricane Katrina, the Bush administration began openly agitating for what would be, in essence, a complete elimination of the key prohibitions of the Posse Comitatus Act in order to allow the President to deploy U.S. military forces inside the U.S. basically at will -- and, as usual, they were successful as a result of rapid bipartisan compliance with the Leader's demand (the same kind of compliance that is about to foist a bailout package on the nation). This April, 2007 article by James Bovard in The American Conservative detailed the now-familiar mechanics that led to the destruction of this particular long-standing democratic safeguard:
The Defense Authorization Act of 2006, passed on Sept. 30, empowers President George W. Bush to impose martial law in the event of a terrorist "incident," if he or other federal officials perceive a shortfall of "public order," or even in response to antiwar protests that get unruly as a result of government provocations. . . .
It only took a few paragraphs in a $500 billion, 591-page bill to raze one of the most important limits on federal power. Congress passed the Insurrection Act in 1807 to severely restrict the president's ability to deploy the military within the United States. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 tightened these restrictions, imposing a two-year prison sentence on anyone who used the military within the U.S. without the express permission of Congress. But there is a loophole: Posse Comitatus is waived if the president invokes the Insurrection Act.
Section 1076 of the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007 changed the name of the key provision in the statute book from "Insurrection Act" to "Enforcement of the Laws to Restore Public Order Act." The Insurrection Act of 1807 stated that the president could deploy troops within the United States only "to suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy." The new law expands the list to include “natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition" -- and such "condition" is not defined or limited. . . .
The story of how Section 1076 became law vivifies how expanding government power is almost always the correct answer in Washington. Some people have claimed the provision was slipped into the bill in the middle of the night. In reality, the administration clearly signaled its intent and almost no one in the media or Congress tried to stop it . . . .
Section 1076 was supported by both conservatives and liberals. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the ranking Democratic member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, co-wrote the provision along with committee chairman Sen. John Warner (R-Va.). Sen. Ted Kennedy openly endorsed it, and Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), then-chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, was an avid proponent. . . .
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, warned on Sept. 19 that "we certainly do not need to make it easier for Presidents to declare martial law," but his alarm got no response. Ten days later, he commented in the Congressional Record: "Using the military for law enforcement goes against one of the founding tenets of our democracy." Leahy further condemned the process, declaring that it "was just slipped in the defense bill as a rider with little study. Other congressional committees with jurisdiction over these matters had no chance to comment, let alone hold hearings on, these proposals."
As is typical, very few members of the media even mentioned any of this, let alone discussed it (and I failed to give this the attention it deserved at the time), but Congressional Quarterly's Jeff Stein wrote an excellent article at the time detailing the process and noted that "despite such a radical turn, the new law garnered little dissent, or even attention, on the Hill." Stein also noted that while "the blogosphere, of course, was all over it . . . a search of The Washington Post and New York Times archives, using the terms 'Insurrection Act,' 'martial law' and 'Congress,' came up empty."
Bovard and Stein both noted that every Governor -- including Republicans -- joined in Leahy's objections, as they perceived it as a threat from the Federal Government to what has long been the role of the National Guard. But those concerns were easily brushed aside by the bipartisan majorities in Congress, eager -- as always -- to grant the President this radical new power.
The decision this month to permanently deploy a U.S. Army brigade inside the U.S. for purely domestic law enforcement purposes is the fruit of the Congressional elimination of the long-standing prohibitions in Posse Comitatus (although there are credible signs that even before Congress acted, the Bush administration secretly decided it possessed the inherent power to violate the Act). It shouldn't take any efforts to explain why the permanent deployment of the U.S. military inside American cities, acting as the President's police force, is so disturbing. Bovard:
"Martial law" is a euphemism for military dictatorship. When foreign democracies are overthrown and a junta establishes martial law, Americans usually recognize that a fundamental change has occurred. . . . Section 1076 is Enabling Act-type legislation—something that purports to preserve law-and-order while formally empowering the president to rule by decree.
The historic importance of the Posse Comitatus prohibition was also well-analyzed here.
As the recent militarization of St. Paul during the GOP Convention made abundantly clear, our actual police forces are already quite militarized. Still, what possible rationale is there for permanently deploying the U.S. Army inside the United States -- under the command of the President -- for any purpose, let alone things such as "crowd control," other traditional law enforcement functions, and a seemingly unlimited array of other uses at the President's sole discretion? And where are all of the stalwart right-wing "small government conservatives" who spent the 1990s so vocally opposing every aspect of the growing federal police force? And would it be possible to get some explanation from the Government about what the rationale is for this unprecedented domestic military deployment (at least unprecedented since the Civil War), and why it is being undertaken now?
UPDATE: As this commenter notes, the 2008 National Defense Authorization Act somewhat limited the scope of the powers granted by the 2007 Act detailed above (mostly to address constitutional concerns by limiting the President's powers to deploy the military to suppress disorder that threatens constitutional rights), but President Bush, when signing that 2008 Act into law, issued a signing statement which, though vague, seems to declare that he does not recognize those new limitations.
UPDATE II: There's no need to start manufacturing all sorts of scare scenarios about Bush canceling elections or the imminent declaration of martial law or anything of that sort. None of that is going to happen with a single brigade and it's unlikely in the extreme that they'd be announcing these deployments if they had activated any such plans. The point is that the deployment is a very dangerous precedent, quite possibly illegal, and a radical abandonment of an important democratic safeguard. As always with first steps of this sort, the danger lies in how the power can be abused in the future."

WTF? Mad Court vs. Mad Cow - USDA fucks Creekstone Farms.

"A federal court has ruled in favor of the USDA in a long-standing dispute between the agency and a Kansas-based natural beef company that wants to test all of its meat for Mad Cow Disease. The USDA currently tests only a tiny percentage of U.S. beef cows for the fatal disease, unlike the EU or Japan, where basically all cows are tested at slaughter for the disease. The USDA's controversial and dangerous policy, an obvious attempt to cover up the fact that the routine practice of feeding slaughterhouse waste, blood, and manure to animals on non-organic farms has spread Mad Cow Disease a to many cows in the USA, has caused a number of major foreign nations to ban U.S. beef imports.
In an effort to re-establish trade, Creekstone Farms, a natural beef producer, (which does not feed slaughterhouse waste to its animals) responded to the loss of its foreign markets in Japan and Korea by asking the USDA if the company, itself, could pay to have all of its meat tested for BSE (Mad Cow Disease), thereby assuring leery foreign buyers of the meat's safety. In an outrageous move, the USDA threatened the company and its CEO with fines and imprisonment if they were to begin testing the safety of their beef. Creekstone took the USDA to court, claiming food manufacturers should have the right to invest in testing to make sure their food is safe. But a DC Court of Appeals recently ruled against Creekstone, saying the USDA has "broad powers' in interpreting how to enforce food safety laws." Full Story.

Mad Cow Cover-up: Original U.S. "Mad Cow" wasn't even a Downer

WTF? Artists! Congress is fucking with copyright law! Act NOW!

Democrat Patrick Leahy(VT) has joined with other Republican Greedheads to introduce legislation that will limit your ability to protect your work in a blatant attempt to decimate copyright law that has worked brilliantly for decades. The bills limit the remedies in a civil action brought for infringement of copyright of an 'orphan work' as defined "as any copyrighted work whose author any infringer says he is unable to locate with what the infringer himself decides has been a "reasonably diligent search." In a radical departure from existing copyright law and business practice, the U.S. Copyright Office has proposed that Congress grant such infringers freedom to ignore the rights of the author and use the work for any purpose, including commercial usage."
Basically, all your past, present and future work will be up grabs if anyone who uses it says they tried to find you but couldn't.
Read, Repost, Take Action, Tell your friends>


Oppose the Orphan Works Act of 2008
"By now many of you are already informed about the proposed Orphan Works Act being introduced to the U.S. house and senate. For those unaware, this legislation, if enacted, can effectively undermine and dismantle your existing copyright protection.

Currently, copyright is granted the moment a work is created. This new Orphan Works legislation proposes a change in U.S. copyright that would (indirectly) require artists, illustrators, photographers, and any creative individual to actively maintain and defend their copyright by registering each and every work with privatized registrars. Failure to do so would leave everything you’ve ever created as an artist up for grabs by anyone who wanted to copy, reproduce, create derivative works of, or flat out steal your work since the act defines an “orphan work” as any work where the author is unidentifiable or unlocatable, and applies to both published and unpublished works, U.S. and foreign, regardless of age.

This is completely contradictory with international copyright standards and is ethically, logistically, and financially bonkers.

The two bills are S.2913, the Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act of 2008 and H.R.5889, the Orphan Works Act of 2008. Markup of the Bentley bill is this Thursday, May 15, and it’s not too late to voice your concerns.

Taking action to prevent this from happening is not only vital, but incredibly easy. U.S. citizens, simply fill out one of these templates provided by the Illustrators Partnership and your opposition will automatically be e-mailed to your members of Congress.

Non-U.S. citizens can simply FAX these letters to the various U.S. agencies’ numbers provided.

This affects all of us, so I encourage you to educate yourself with the facts. For more information, I’d recommend listening to this eye-opening interview (MP3) with Illustrator Brad Holland, who describes in detail the effect this legislation will have on artists.

The Illustrators’ Partnership of America has plenty more information on the Oprhan Works Act, how it affects you, and what you can do to fight it."

More Info; How the Orphan Works Bills Affects Visual Artists - CapWiz.com
S.2913 - Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act of 2008 (Reported in Senate) - Full Text HERE
H.R.5889 - Orphan Works Act of 2008 (Introduced in House) - Full Text HERE
Other;
Write your Congressman/woman HERE
Write your Senator HERE
OR Start your own Free Petition @ PetitionOnline.com
AND More @ GoPetition.com
"Sine labore nihil"

WTF? Black Hole Factory opens this Month! For Real! READ This!
"In the 27-kilometer-long circular tunnel that held its predecessor, the CERN LHC will be the most powerful particle accelerator in the world. It will smash fundamental particles into one another at energies like those of the first trillionth of a second after the Big Bang, when the temperature of the Universe was about ten thousand trillion degrees Centigrade."
There is a high probability that micro black holes (MBHs) will be produced in the LHC. A reasonable estimation of the probability that theories with (4+d) dimensions are valid could be more than 60%. The CERN study indicates in this case a copious production of MBHs at the LHC. One micro black hole could be produced every second. The CERN study indicates that MBHs present no danger because they will evaporate with Hawking evaporation. [Ref. 1] However, Hawking evaporation has never been tested. In several surveys, physicists have estimated a non trivial probability that Hawking evaporation will not work. My estimate of its risk of Hawking evaporation failure is 20%, or perhaps as much as 30%" Source Here.
From the CERN Website they admit to black holes: "Black holes lose matter through the emission of energy via a process discovered by Stephen Hawking. Any black hole that cannot attract matter, such as those that might be produced at the LHC, will shrink, evaporate and disappear. The smaller the black hole, the faster it vanishes. If microscopic black holes were to be found at the LHC, they would exist only for a fleeting moment. They would be so short-lived that the only way they could be detected would be by detecting the products of their decay."
"So what's the problem? In theory (according to Hawking) any Black Hole created would evaporate in Femtoseconds, not having the chance to accrete any mass, and being essentially harmless, although this is comforting in theory, It has never been proven, and in fact has been questioned before. The problem is that although most people in the physics community believe in Hawkings Radiation, it has no basis in observation. In 2003 Adam D. Helfer Published a paper concerning Hawking's Radiation coming to the conclusion that Hawking's Radiation may in fact be incorrect, and that a Black Hole would not lose mass in such a way. ( For the full text of this document go here Paper By Adam D. Helfer on Hawking Radiation.)" CERN website HERE.
"The main purpose of this facility is to produce antimatter and black holes. If CERN’s antimatter factory were to blow up today it would only affect the regions bordering France and Switzerland. But if CERN were to produce just one stable black hole, it could destroy the world. Surprisingly, the United States of America, through the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy, will be funding over $1 Billion Dollars towards this French experiment into creating potentially devastating black holes.
These black holes, the densest matter in the universe, will plummet to the very core of the earth, then, slowly at first, growing one particle, one quark at a time, but at an ever accelerating rate. Scientists have estimated that a stable black hole at the center of the earth could consume not only France but the whole planet in the very short time span of between 4 minutes and 30 seconds and 7 minutes." Source Here.
Um, does risking the Earth, AND wasting so much money and energy when there are real problems to be solved, to satisfy some physicists' curiosity seem worth it to you?!?
Here's a perfect quote from a giddy physicist on CNN
(another Repeater, not Reporter, "news" outlet) Fri.May 9, 2008; "We're essentially guaranteed that there's going to be something surprising," Arkani-Hamed said of the Large Hadron Collider, which will operate inside a 17-mile circular tunnel." Understatement of the Eternity?
Here's another from National Geographic: "If all goes right, matter will be transformed by the violent collisions into wads of energy, which will in turn condense back into various intriguing types of particles, some of them never seen before. That's the essence of experimental particle physics: You smash stuff together and see what other stuff comes out."
More From National Geographic; "It sounds scary, and it is. Building the LHC in a tunnel was a prudent move. The particle beam could drill a hole in just about anything, although the most likely victim would be the apparatus itself. One minor calamity has already happened: A magnet all but jumped out of its skin during a test in March 2007. Since then 24 magnets have been retrofitted to fix a design flaw. The people running the LHC aren't in a rush to talk about all the things that can go wrong, perhaps because the public has a way of worrying that mad scientists will accidentally create a black hole that devours the Earth."(Stupid Public.)
Talking to physicists; "CMS was built at the surface and will be lowered in several large chunks down through a shaft into a cavern along the tunnel. Tactlessly, I asked Dave Barney, one of the CMS scientists, what would happen if something went wrong and a part was dropped. You know, splat. "That won't happen," he said fiercely. "That's the worst thing imaginable." I realized that I was treading on delicate territory whenever I asked what kinds of things could go wrong with the LHC. " Source: National Geographic
And in a story in the International Journal of High-Energy Physics from a few years ago some physicists lost some atoms in a collider experiment. Did they make a black hole that's now growing like a tumor at the center of the Earth and decide not to mention it to the rest of us?!?
CERN Courier - Apr 30, 2001 Supernova is confined to the laboratory.
"Progress in the Bose-Einstein condensate domain comes from Colorado, where rubidium-85 atoms were confined in a condensed form at 3 nK within an atomic trap. In a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) - a relatively newly discovered state of matter - thousands, or sometimes millions, of identical atoms act as one.
By varying the magnetic fields it is possible to change the interaction between the atoms from mildly repulsive to mildly attractive, resulting in an implosion and subsequent explosion of BEC atoms. This sequence is similar to the series of events in a stellar supernova, but at an energy scale some 75 orders of magnitude as small.
The nova effect, like its stellar counterpart, leads either to an outward-going shell or to collimated jets and a residue. Half of the BEC atoms apparently disappear, because they are not present in the remnant or the expanding gas shell. The novel atomic physics behind this "Bosenova" phenomenon is as yet unknown." Source.
This all sounds like a BAD idea. We need to be asking some Questions.
Read, Repost, Take Action, Tell your friends>
Links;
Large Hadron Collider [LHC] legal defense fund.
LHCconcerns.com
SaneScience.org
"France builds Doomsday Machine..."
Potential for Danger in Particle Collider Experiments.
Wikipedia.org
More to come...

WTF? U.S. Health Care system killing Us! 18,000+ per year! The World Health Organization ranks the US health care system 37th in the world.
18,000 Americans die each year because they cannot afford health care, according to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. Many more get sick or become sicker. More Below.

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"This is a tale of pay or die that recurs again and again all over our country and only in our country in the entire western world.
Advised by her physician to go to M.D. Anderson for urgent treatment of her leukemia, Mrs. Kelly was told she had to pay $105,000 up front before being admitted. The hospital declared her limited insurance unacceptable.
Sitting in the business office with seriously advanced cancer, she asked herself – “Are they going to send me home?” “Am I going to die?”
Time out from her torment for a moment. M.D. Anderson started this upfront payment demand in 2005 because of a spike in its bad debt load.
The Journal explains – “The bad debt is driven by a larger number of Americans who are uninsured or who don’t have enough insurance to cover costs if catastrophe strikes. Even among those with adequate insurance, deductibles and co-payments are growing so big that insured patients also have trouble paying hospitals.”
It isn’t as if non-profit hospitals like M.D. Anderson are hurting. Look at this finding in an Ohio State University study: net income per bed at non-profit hospitals tripled to $146,273 in 2005 from $50,669 in 2000. And you also may have noticed the huge pay packages awarded hospital executives.
M.D. Anderson, exempt from taxation, recipient of funds from large government programs and research grants has cash, investments and endowment totaling $1.9 billion, with net income of $310 million last year, the Journal reports.
Back to the 52 year old, Lisa Kelly. She and her husband returned with a check for $45,000. After a blood test and biopsy, the hospital oncologist urged admittance quickly. Then the hospital demanded an additional $60,000-$45,000 just for the lab tests and $15,000 for part of the cost of the treatment.
To shorten the story, she received chemotherapy for over a year. Often her appointment was “blocked” until she made another payment.
In a particularly grotesque incident, she was hooked up to a chemotherapy pump, but the nurses were not allowed to change the chemo bag until Mr. Kelly made another payment.
She endured other indignities and overcharges. Reporter Martinez cites $360 for blood tests that insurers pay $20 or less for and up to $120 for saline pouches that cost less than $2 retail.
Imagine anything like Mrs. Kelly’s predicament and pressures occurring in Canada, Belgium, Germany, Italy, France, Switzerland, Holland, England or any other western country. It would never happen.
These countries have universal single payer health insurance. No one dies because they cannot afford health care. In America, 18,000 Americans die each year because they cannot afford health care, according to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. Many more get sick or become sicker.
None of these countries spend more than 11% of their GDP on healthcare. The U.S. spends over 16% of its GDP on health care and does not cover 47 million people and tens of millions are under covered.
In the U.S. the drug companies charge their highest prices in the world, even though we, the taxpayers, subsidized them in large ways. In other countries like Mexico and Canada, they cannot get away with such drug price gouging, with a pay or die ultimatum.
In the U.S., computerized billing fraud and abuse cost over $200 billion last year, according to the GAO arm of Congress. In other counties, single payer prevents such looting.
In other countries, administrative expenses of their single payer system are about a third of what the Aetna’s and other insurers rack up.
In other western countries, medical outcomes for children and adults and paid family leave are far superior to that of the U.S. The World Health Organization ranks the US health care system 37th in the world.
When apologists in Washington hear these statistics, they say “but we have the best medical research centers in the world, like M.D. Anderson.”
Clearly much is wrong with the nature of pricing health care.
Like other hospitals, M.D. Anderson is caught in a macabre spider’s web of cost allocations mixing treatment costs with research budgets, cash reserves, and just plain accounting gimmicks that burden patients. (Documents from Mrs. Kelly’s case are available at http://online.wsj.com today.)
When a friend showed the Journal’s article to a Dutch visitor, the latter blurted in anger – “you are a nation of sheep.” Not a very flattering description of “the land of the free, home of the brave.”
Someday, soon maybe, Americans will finally band together and say “enough already,” we’re going for full Medicare for all- without loopholes for corporate profiteers and purveyors of waste and fraud.
Last month after being in remission, Lisa Kelly’s leukemia has come back." The Sorry State of Health Care in the United States
By Ralph Nader
HealthCare-Now.org Petition
Infant mortality rate worldwide graph HERE! U.S. #37!
VoteNader.org HERE!

WTF? BurgerKing Pro-Slavery VP sets new Lameness Standard!
Burger King vice-president Stephen Grover hid behind Daughter's email address.
Read, Repost, Take Action, Tell your friends>
"BY AMY BENNETT WILLIAMS
awilliams@news-press.com
As the Coalition of Immokalee Workers prepares to deliver more than 60,000 petitions to Burger King headquarters in Miami today, the daughter of Burger King's vice-president Stephen Grover confirmed her father is responsible for online postings vilifying the coalition.
The Immokalee-based group is asking Burger King to improve tomato harvesters' working conditions and pay a penny more a pound for tomatoes, which could add about $20 to a daily wage of $50, workers say.
McDonald's and Yum! Brands, the world's biggest fast-food chain and restaurant company, respectively, have agreed to the raise. Yum! signed on in 2005; McDonald's in 2007. So far, Burger King has refused, while publicly saying it wants to work with the coalition to improve labor conditions.
Yet often during the past year, when articles or videos about the coalition were posted on YouTube and various Internet news sites, someone using the online names activist2008 or surfxaholic36 would attach comments coalition member Greg Asbed has called "libelous."
This one, from surfxaholic36, is representative: "The CIW is an attack organization lining the leaders pockets ... They make up issues and collect money from dupes that believe their story. To (sic) bad the people protesting don't have a clue regarding the facts. A bunch of fools!"
A father's posts;
Although Shannon Grover also uses the name surfxaholic36 - mostly on social networking sites - she said the anti-coalition posts are her father's alone. "I don't really know much about the coalition and Burger King stuff," she said, reached by phone at the family's Miramar home Friday. "That was my dad. My dad used to go online with that name and write about them."
Asked if she'd ever written about the coalition online, she was adamant: "No, that was my Dad. That was him."
Steven Grover did not return calls to his home or office, nor did Burger King spokesman Keva Silversmith respond to calls and a request to speak to Burger King CEO John Chidsey.
"This is truly disturbing," said coalition member Gerardo Reyes. "It's one thing to imagine that there's some kind of anonymous Internet stalker out there obsessively tracking every story about the CIW, posting these vicious lies about us and calling us things like 'the lowest form of life' and 'blood suckers,'" Reyes said. "I mean, we're a farmworker community fighting slavery and trying to get a fair wage for the work we do."
The bigger question, Reyes said, is this: "When you realize the person posting those things is actually Burger King's vice president in charge of the ethical operation of the company's supply chain, it really makes you wonder just how high up does this whole thing go? Does Burger King, as a company, approve of this sort of behavior? If not, we'd expect to see some changes now that this has come to light.""
Tell BurgerKing they suck and to fire Dbag Stephen Grover HERE!
OxFamAmerica.org AntiSlavery Petition HERE!

WTF? Genetic modification CUTS the productivity of crops!

Stop Monsanto HERE!
Published on Sunday, April 20, 2008 by The Independent/ UK
Exposed: The Great GM Crops Myth
By Geoffrey Lean
Genetic modification actually cuts the productivity of crops, an authoritative new study shows, undermining repeated claims that a switch to the controversial technology is needed to solve the growing world food crisis.
The study - carried out over the past three years at the University of Kansas in the US grain belt - has found that GM soya produces about 10 per cent less food than its conventional equivalent, contradicting assertions by advocates of the technology that it increases yields.
Professor Barney Gordon, of the university's department of agronomy, said he started the research - reported in the journal Better Crops - because many farmers who had changed over to the GM crop had "noticed that yields are not as high as expected even under optimal conditions".
He added: "People were asking the question 'how come I don't get as high a yield as I used to?'" He grew a Monsanto GM soybean and an almost identical conventional variety in the same field.
The modified crop produced only 70 bushels of grain per acre, compared with 77 bushels from the non-GM one.
The GM crop - engineered to resist Monsanto's own weedkiller, Roundup - recovered only when he added extra manganese, leading to suggestions that the modification hindered the crop's take-up of the essential element from the soil.
Even with the addition it brought the GM soya's yield to equal that of the conventional one, rather than surpassing it.
The new study confirms earlier research at the University of Nebraska, which found that another Monsanto GM soya produced 6 per cent less than its closest conventional relative, and 11 per cent less than the best non-GM soya available.
The Nebraska study suggested that two factors are at work. First, it takes time to modify a plant and, while this is being done, better conventional ones are being developed. This is acknowledged even by the fervently pro-GM US Department of Agriculture, which has admitted that the time lag could lead to a "decrease" in yields. But the fact that GM crops did worse than their near-identical non-GM counterparts suggest that a second factor is also at work, and that the very process of modification depresses productivity.
The new Kansas study both confirms this and suggests how it is happening. A similar situation seems to have happened with GM cotton in the US, where the total US crop declined even as GM technology took over. Monsanto said yesterday that it was surprised by the extent of the decline found by the Kansas study, but not by the fact that the yields had dropped. It said that the soya had not been engineered to increase yields, and that it was now developing one that would. Critics doubt whether the company will achieve this, saying that it requires more complex modification.
And Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington - and who was one of the first to predict the current food crisis - said that the physiology of plants was now reaching the limits of the productivity that could be achieved. A former champion crop grower himself, he drew the comparison with human runners. Since Roger Bannister ran the first four-minute mile more than 50 years ago, the best time has improved only modestly . "Despite all the advances in training, no one contemplates a three-minute mile."
Last week the biggest study of its kind ever conducted - the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development - concluded that GM was not the answer to world hunger.
Professor Bob Watson, the director of the study and chief scientist at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, when asked if GM could solve world hunger, said: "The simple answer is no."
C 2008 The Independent
Stop Monsanto HERE!

WTF? Filed 1040 yet? See how your Tax $ are really spent.
"What you pay (or don’t pay) by April 15, 2008, goes to the federal funds portion of the budget. The government practice of combining trust and federal funds began during the Vietnam War, thus making the human needs portion of the budget seem larger and the military portion smaller." Full article: WarResisters.org
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Democrats.com The Aggressive Progressives
U.S. National Debt Clock
Contacting Congress (& Other US Policymakers)

The national debt today:

$9,570,815,479,552

Your share of the national debt is:

$31,902

National Debt Clocks HERE

WTF? Survey? Take Action instead! Petitions and Letters HERE

You want Change? Make it happen! Let them know you're out there.
Besides, you'll feel more good in less time than a survey takes.
Read, Repost, Take Action, Tell your friends>


Human Rights;
Save Darfur @ SaveDarfur.org
Help end the Media Blackout @ FreeTibet.org
Action galore @ OxFamAmerica.org
Legalize Marijuana @ Norml.org
Petition to Impeach Bush & Cheney @ Democrats.com
Environment;
Many petitions to Protect your Food @ OrganicConsumers.org
31 Environmental & Wildlife Protection Petitions @ SierraClub.org
19 Major Environmental Issues @ GreenPeace.org
12 Environmental @ Natural Resources Defense Council's Action Center
Action galore @ OxFamAmerica.org
Wildlife;
31 Environmental & Wildlife Protection Petitions @ SierraClub.org
26 Wildlife Protection Petitions @ Defenders of Wildlife.org
10 Petition Letters @ Int'l Fund for Animal Welfare
Save Puppies, Bears, Horses and Seals @ Humane Society U.S.
Support a National Wolf Recovery Plan @ Defenders.org
Stop the needless Yellowstone Bison slaughter @ Defenders of Wildlife.org
Other;
Write your Congressman/woman HERE
Write your Senator HERE
OR Start your own Free Petition @ PetitionOnline.com
AND More @ GoPetition.com
"Sine labore nihil"

WTF? Stop Yellowstone Bison slaughter! Park's pop. now 1,536

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More Info Below.
"A diverse coalition of tribal, conservation, hunting, animal welfare and wildlife groups, an outfitting business, and concerned citizens have filed an emergency rule making petition with the U.S. Department of the Interior seeking to stop the National Park Service from slaughtering wild bison inhabiting Yellowstone National Park and adjoining lands on the Gallatin National Forest in Montana. This winter, Yellowstone National Park and the State of Montana have engaged in an unprecedented slaughter or removal of more than 1,700 bison that have migrated to their winter range near and beyond park borders. One-third of the entire bison herd has been wiped out with 1,422 bison trapped and shipped to slaughterhouses on order from officials in the National Park Service and the Montana Department of Livestock under Governor Brian Schweitzer." BuffaloFieldCampaign.org
We're trying to have a civilization here and if we can't save the animals we definitely can't save ourselves.
More Info:
More Videos @ buffalofieldcampaign.org
Petition HERE!
Write Here!
National Resources Defense Council
Defenders of Wildlife
Buffalo Field Campaign.org
"Adopt a Wildlife Acre Program" around Yellowstone.
International Fund for Animal Welfare.org
PETA.org
Humane Society.org
Gallatin Wildlife Association.org
"Wildlife Adoption Center".

WTF? 275,000 Baby Seals being killed in Canada NOW! Day 18.

"Canada's annual commercial seal hunt is a cruel and unethical practice that produces a product nobody needs. 98% of the animals killed in the past two years have been baby seals between 2 weeks to 3 months old. And despite the potentially devastating effects of global warming to harp seal breeding grounds, the Canadian government has raised the annual seal hunt quotas to the highest levels in history." Full Article.
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International Fund for Animal Welfare.org
PETA.org
Humane Society.org
We're trying to have a civilization here and if we can't save the animals we definitely can't save ourselves.

WTF? Your $ to Bear Stearns Bailout Bonanza by Ralph Nader.

Bailout Bonanza
By Ralph Nader
Is there a larger, more exploited, defenseless group of undifferentiated Americans than the 133 million individual federal income taxpayers? Their dollars are used to subsidize organized corporate interests, giveaway taxpayer assets like minerals under the public lands, and bail out speculative, self-enriching corporations and their crooked bosses.
As large corporations, and their trade associations, complete their takeover of the federal government—a process that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt called fascism in 1938—the corporations become the government. Just look at the recent headlines in the business press. Article after article features abuses and over-runs by companies contracting with the Department of Defense and other agencies. The enormous volumes of waste, fraud and poor delivery affecting the Iraq war-occupation now only produces ho hum newspaper and television stories. Recently, the student loan scandals, exorbitant burdens on students graduating from college imposed on them by companies with influence in Washington, like Sallie Mae, whose government guarantees make a mockery of capitalism, have riled members of Congress to some modest action.
Once again this year, the big boys on Wall Street stretched the envelope of risk and greed and ran down to Washington, D.C. to be bailed out by the accommodating Federal Reserve. Chairman Ben Bernanke testified before the Senate that he had no choice but to take on about $30 billion of Bear Stearns obligations or there could be a run on other big banks.
Where was the Federal Reserve when this credit, debt and risk spree was building during the past five years?
There is no penalty for failure—whether on Wall Street or in Washington, D.C. for misusing or wasting the taxpayers’ monies. When the heads of Citigroup and Merrill Lynch were asked to leave their positions recently as CEOs after tanking their companies’ shares, they could barely avoid tripping over the many millions of dollars they were taking with them through the exit door. Among many perverse incentives operating within these Wall Street firms, there are rewards for failure—big bucks rubber-stamped by the look-the-other-way, well paid Boards of Directors.
Back in 1971 and 1980 respectively, the White House proposed a $250 million loan guarantee for Lockheed corp., and a $1.5 billion loan guarantee for Chrysler with the government taking back warrants that it later sold for a profit. There was intense debate and discussion at public hearings in the House and the Senate before they authorized the guarantees.
Now federal agency bailouts of big business, even Mexican oligarchs, rarely seek Congressional approval. Just have the Executive Branch do what it wants. No public hearings. Midnight bailouts without transcripts.
I asked a powerful Senator: “What are the discernable legal limits on the Federal Reserve’s bailout authority and how much total risk can the Federal Reserve heap on the taxpayers?” “Can they go to a trillion dollars?” He did not know.
Shifting deficits, debts and unfair burdens to individual taxpayers while the rich and powerful become either tax escapees or big time welfare recipients keep pushing a limitless envelope on today’s and tomorrow’s taxpayers.
The New York Times’ prize-winning reporter David Cay Johnston, has written two books “Perfectly Legal” and just recently, the best seller “Free Lunch” that document these megatrends of corporate socialism—privatizing corporate profits and socializing corporate losses on the backs of individual taxpayers.
What can be done about these gigantic runaway sprees?
First, pass legislation that broadens individual taxpayers’ right to sue in federal court against waste, fraud and abuse, including those receivers of bailouts—the reckless, avaricious corporations who have Uncle Sam in their back pockets. Second, have a voluntary checkoff on the 1040 tax return inviting individual taxpayers to join their own taxpayer defense organization. Such a group would have millions of small dues paying members and an on-the-spot skillful watchdog group in our national capital.
Finally, place our public elections off the private auction block and have them funded by well promoted voluntary checkoffs on the tax returns together with a certain amount of free radio and television time for ballot-qualified candidates seeking federal office.
These and other proposals, such as giving shareholders more power to restrain their top executives, will give taxpayers some grip on the wide-open spigot of taxpayer dollars delivered to the misfits of the giant corporate world.
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WTF? Ads say; "Hydrogen cars make only water!" Magic or BS?

Hydrogen = H2O - the O and water's everywhere but to get that H you need electricity you have to make somehow.
"Renewable resources (solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, biomass, and waste) currently provide nearly 12 percent of the Nation's electricity supply. Almost 10 of this 12 percent is provided by hydroelectric(dammed rivers) resources alone. Biomass and municipal solid waste (MSW) together contribute more than 1 percent. All other renewable resources, including geothermal, wind, and solar, together provide less than 1 percent of the total." Source: NYCStreets.
PLUS "Critics note, however, that hydrogen is simply an energy carrier—and not a particularly good one, effectively delivering less than 25 percent of the electricity required to produce it from water as energy to move wheels." Source: Scientific American.
Your tax $ at work for the Auto industry when they should be in Wind and Solar initiatives.
So... 88% Bullsh*t + 12% Magic = Hardly a lie at all.
They think we're stupid! Are we?
Read, Repost, Take Action, Tell your friends>



"Ready for the world when the world is ready."...
We're ready... ready for BMW to go f*ck itself!

WTF? Not for nothing but isn't a BoyToy a Woman!?!

24 years ago Madonna releases "Like a Virgin" and in the video for the title song she wears a belt buckle that says "Boy Toy", the ironic(virgin vs. not a virgin) meaning aside being that SHE is a plaything for a MAN and not the other way around. Check it out.
Madonna on Madonna in Time5/27/85; BOY TOY. "About four years ago, I used to live in the East Village. I used to love hanging out at the Roxy with all the break dancers and graffiti artists and the deejays. Everybody had a tag name they would write on the wall like "Whiz Kid" or "Hi-Fi." The thing was to see how much you could "throw up" (get your name up) everywhere. It was a very territorial thing. One day I just thought of BOY TOY, and when I threw it up on a wall, everybody said they thought it was funny too. They understood the humor of it. I can see how the rest of the world thinks I'm saying "Play with me" and "I'm available to anyone." Once again, it's a tongue-in-cheek statement, the opposite of what it says. I had BOY TOY made into a belt buckle. Then I started doing stuff outside New York City and I kept wearing the Boy Toy belt, forgetting that no one outside of the Roxy was going to get it. I don't wear it any more because it's just become ridiculous. I think it's funny but not too many other people do." Source.
"It's a tag name given to me when I first arrived in New York...it's not for the women of the world, only for myself... It's a statement for innocent sexuality... BOY TOY is a joke." Source.
Now you might think, 'Who gives a sh*t!' and I don't blame you but here's the thing... it's a detail of the big picture that shows exactly how f*cked we are and how we got that way. They don't get it. "Boy Toy", it's cute, it rhymes and literally it works as a 'Boy who is a Toy' but it's Wrong! It's a 'Toy for a Boy'! Remember!?! Too young? Too old? OK but think about it... how often have you been subjected to some ignorant NewsInfotainer spouting some backwards sense bullsh*t. Stupid, lazy, lame, Media that Repeats, not Reports! Investigative journalism is as long gone as my mind. There are a few dedicated motherf*ckers out there still fighting the good fight but no Corporate Media MegaInfotainmentOutlet is remotely interested in telling us about it. Best to keep the masses amused, not informed.
Oh, we got it, then forgot it, like we do, with everything; wars, economies, politicians, name it. It's how we roll.
God is in the details. Remember to remember...
"Like a Virgin" Video. It's hard to see but it's there...

WTF? US debt nearing $10Trillion(13 0's) You owe $31,136.69+
"There was a time when the cash the U.S. government needed for its daily operations was kept in a Treasury Department vault, across the street from the White House. But there isn't a safe in the world big enough to do that anymore, because the national debt is growing at nearly $1 million a minute." Full Article.
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The national debt today:

$9,570,815,479,552

Your share of the national debt is:

$31,902

National Debt Clocks HERE

WTF? % & Total Prisoners USA #1. Land of the Free? China #2.
"For the first time in the nation’s history, more than one in 100 American adults are behind bars, according to a new report. Nationwide, the prison population grew by 25,000 last year, bringing it to almost 1.6 million, after three decades of growth that has seen the prison population nearly triple. Another 723,000 people are in local jails." New York Times.
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Full Article @ New York Times.com
More Info @ DrugScience.org
More Info & Take Action @ Norml.org