Undernews For April 7, 2009

THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW
611 Pennsylvania Ave SE #381
Washington DC 20003
202-423-7884
Editor: Sam Smith

7 April 2009

HEADLINES

OBAMA SAY U.S. IS NOT AT WAR WITH ISLAM (EXCEPT IN IRAQ, PALESTINE, IRAN, SYRIA, PAKISTAN AND AFGHANISTAN)

POPULAR VOTE CAMPAIGN 20% THERE

ANOTHER GOVERNMENT FUNDED FUSION CENTER

BAD MOUTHING DEMOCRACY

SOME CUTS IN MAJOR WEAPONS BUT DEFENSE SPENDING CONTINUES TO RISE

RED CROSS SAYS MEDICAL WORKERS HELPED IN CIA TORTURE

WHY IS ONCE CRIMINAL USURY NOW COMMON PRACTICE?

WORD

All notes, bonds, contracts, etc, for more than six per cent. Interest, are void; and every person charging or taking, directly or indirectly, more than six per cent interest, shall forfeit treble the amount so lent or contracted - 18th century law of the state of Maryland.

PAGE ONE MUST

ANOTHER GOVERNMENT FUNDED FUSION CENTER BAD MOUTHING DEMOCRACY

ACLU - A recently published "terrorism threat assessment" from a Virginia fusion center says the state's universities and colleges are "nodes for radicalization" and encourages law enforcement to monitor First Amendment-protected activities of educational and religious foundations as terrorism threats. The document also characterizes the "diversity" surrounding a Virginia military base and the state's "historically black" colleges as possible threats. The March 2009 document claims there are currently at least fifty active "terrorist and extremist" groups in Virginia.

The federal government has facilitated the growth of a network of fusion centers since 9/11 to expand information collection and sharing practices among law enforcement agencies, the private sector and the intelligence community. There are currently 70 fusion centers in the United States.

"If we are to believe this exaggerated threat assessment, Virginia's learning and religious institutions must be hotbeds of terrorist activity," said Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. "This document and its authors have displayed a fundamental disregard for our constitutional rights of free expression and association. Unfortunately, it's not the first time we've seen such an indifference to these basic rights from local fusion centers. . .

The Virginia threat assessment comes on the heels of two recently publicized and troubling documents from Texas and Missouri fusion centers. From directing local police to investigate non-violent political activists and religious groups in Texas to advocating surveillance of third-party presidential candidate supporters in Missouri, there have been repeated and persistent disclosures of troubling memos and reports from local fusions centers. Last week, the ACLU sent letters to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties urging investigations into five troubling incidents, several of which have stemmed from DHS-funded fusion centers.

"There is an appalling lack of oversight at these fusion centers and they are becoming - as the ACLU has repeatedly warned - a breeding ground for overzealous police intelligence activities," said Michael German, ACLU Policy Counsel and former FBI Agent. "The Virginia threat assessment isn't just disturbing for encouraging police to treat education and religious practices with suspicion, it's bad law enforcement. Lawmakers from all levels of government need to enact legislation to protect against these spying activities that threaten our democracy while doing nothing to improve security."

In 2007, the ACLU released a report entitled, "What's Wrong With Fusion Centers?" which was updated last year. The report identifies specific concerns with fusion centers, including their ambiguous lines of authority, the troubling role of private corporations, the participation of the military, the use of data mining and the excessive secrecy surrounding the centers.

HOW BILLIONAIRES ARE FORCING THEIR EDUCATION STRATEGY

Education Change - [In an article in Sage, Janelle Scott] explains the billionaires' strategy to push charter schools onto communities and how they are maneuvering their immense foundation-giving to achieve this result. . .

The foundation-giving programs of today require an important trade-off from the local communities: namely, the relinquishment of interest and power over their own public schools to the public education notions of a few immensely wealthy oligarchs. . .

Scott describes the flow of money to these organizations with the intent to have them work as a network in unison to further the billionaires' goal. Very few of the donations go directly to individual schools and their students, but just enough to make them look a lot better than their traditional school neighbors. The majority of the dollars go toward advocacy, propaganda, and the building of a national pro-charter school structure. . .

I was especially interested to learn that one of the official techniques used to push charter schools, and described in a 2004 Philanthropy Roundtable donors guide, is "the sponsorship of efforts that put parents of color out front instead of 'rich, white Republicans.' " . . This general strategy may also explain why a deeply-in-debt-to-the-IRS Al Sharpton was persuaded to join the pro-charter force.

SOME CUTS IN MAJOR WEAPONS BUT DEFENSE SPENDING CONTINUES TO RISE

Antiwar - Secretary of Defense Robert Gates unveiled the U.S.' much-anticipated new military budget, which aims to reorient the armed forces toward irregular and counterinsurgency warfare while proposing cuts in several major weapons programs.. . .

The changes proposed by the new budget - while significant - are far from marking a fundamental reshaping of the U.S. defense establishment, some defense analysts caution.

"They're calling it a fundamental shift, and that's both true and false," said Miriam Pemberton, a research fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. "It's true because their budget proposes the most ambitious set of cuts to well-entrenched weapons systems since the early 1990s."

"It's false, though, because this budget perpetuates the upward trajectory of defense spending, it's higher than any of the Bush budgets that preceded it, and it increases funding for some programs that I think are a mistake," Pemberton continued.

The $534 billion budget for fiscal year 2010 - which does not take into account the "emergency supplemental" appropriations that pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - marks a slight increase over the Bush administration's budget for the previous year.

RED CROSS SAYS MEDICAL WORKERS HELPED IN CIA TORTURE: PANETTA SAYS NO ONE WILL BE PUNISHED

NY Times - Medical personnel were deeply involved in the abusive interrogation of terrorist suspects held overseas by the Central Intelligence Agency, including torture, and their participation was a "gross breach of medical ethics," a long-secret report by the International Committee of the Red Cross concluded.

Based on statements by 14 prisoners who belonged to Al Qaeda and were moved to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in late 2006, Red Cross investigators concluded that medical professionals working for the C.I.A. monitored prisoners undergoing waterboarding, apparently to make sure they did not drown. Medical workers were also present when guards confined prisoners in small boxes, shackled their arms to the ceiling, kept them in frigid cells and slammed them repeatedly into walls, the report said.

Facilitating such practices, which the Red Cross described as torture, was a violation of medical ethics even if the medical workers' intentions had been to prevent death or permanent injury, the report said. But it found that the medical professionals' role was primarily to support the interrogators, not to protect the prisoners, and that the professionals had "condoned and participated in ill treatment.". . .

Mark Mansfield, a C.I.A. spokesman, said that because of the Red Cross's confidentiality policy, he would not comment on the report. He said that President Obama had prohibited all government interrogators from using techniques apart from the noncoercive methods in the Army Field Manual, and that the new C.I.A. director, Leon E. Panetta, "has taken decisive steps to ensure that the C.I.A. abides by the president's executive orders."

Mr. Mansfield added, however, that Mr. Panetta "has stated repeatedly that no one who took actions based on legal guidance from the Department of Justice at the time should be investigated, let alone punished." . . .

In its 40-page report, the Red Cross roundly condemned the C.I.A. detention program not only for using torture and other cruel treatment, but also for holding prisoners without notice to governments or families.

RECOVERED HISTORY: WHITE ONLY LIBERATION OF PARIS

BBC - Papers unearthed by the BBC reveal that British and American commanders ensured that the liberation of Paris on 25 August 1944 was seen as a "whites only" victory. . . The BBC's Document program has seen evidence that black colonial soldiers - who made up around two-thirds of Free French forces - were deliberately removed from the unit that led the Allied advance into the French capital. By the time France fell in June 1940, 17,000 of its black, mainly West African colonial troops, known as the Tirailleurs Senegalais, lay dead. Many of them were simply shot where they stood soon after surrendering to German troops who often regarded them as sub-human savages.

The leader of the Free French forces, Charles de Gaulle, made it clear that he wanted his Frenchmen to lead the liberation of Paris. . . Allied High Command agreed, but only on one condition: De Gaulle's division must not contain any black soldiers.

In January 1944 Eisenhower's Chief of Staff, Major General Walter Bedell Smith, was to write in a memo stamped, "confidential": "It is more desirable that the division mentioned above consist of white personnel. . .

Given the fact that Britain did not segregate its forces and had a large and valued Indian army, one might have expected London to object to such a racist policy.

Yet this does not appear to have been the case. . .

For France's West African Tirailleurs Senegalais, there was little to celebrate. Despite forming 65% of Free French Forces and dying in large numbers for France, they were to have no heroes' welcome in Paris.

WHY IS ONCE CRIMINAL USURY NOW COMMON PRACTICE?

Brett Weiss, Maryland Bankruptcy Blog - Usury is defined in Webster's as, "the lending or practice of lending money at an exorbitant interest." All states, including Maryland, have laws prohibiting usury-in Maryland, the default rate of interest is 6%, and most loans cannot exceed 24%. So how is it that many credit cards have annual rates of 30% or more? How is it that payday loans and tax refund loans have interest rates over 300%?

The answer lies in the federal National Bank Act and a series of Supreme Court decisions.

The National Bank Act, first adopted in 1863, provides for the establishment and regulation of national banks. For more than 100 years, that law was interpreted to require that even national banks can only charge interest at the rate allowed by the state in which its customer is located. In 1978, the Supreme Court changed everything. In Marquette National Bank v. First of Omaha Corp., it ruled that a national bank can charge its customers, no matter where they are located, interest at the rate allowed by the state in which it is located. Even though the customers in Marquette were located in Minnesota, the fact that the bank was centered in Nebraska allowed it to charge its Minnesota customers the higher Nebraska interest rate.

Shortly after Marquette was decided, North Dakota pretty much repealed its usury statutes. National Banks descended like a horde of locusts on that state, establishing their main offices there. CitiBank was the first, and others followed its lead. North Dakota's interest rate cap-or the lack of an interest rate cap-became the de facto national interest rate on credit cards. Ever wonder why so many of your credit card payments are sent to North Dakota? This is why.

The practical effect of Marquette was to repeal every state's usury laws insofar as they deal with national banks. And any lender that wants to charge exorbitant interest and still follow the letter need only form a national bank, and the sky's the limit.

STUPID JOURNALISM TRICKS: THE CONSPIRACY THEORY CARD

Progressive Review - The other day, Politico ran a typically sneering article about the Bilderberg Group. As usual, anyone who shows the slightest interest in the hyper secret meeting of some of the most powerful people in the world is a "conspiracy theorist."

This is smug, childish, mindless establishment journalism at its worst. By any traditional standard of journalism, a secret meeting of some of the most important people in the world is news. How you handle that news is certainly debatable but to ignore it completely is simply incompetence.

Consider this. The recent G-20 conference produced over 10,000 news stories. The next Bilderberg event, about 150 - none in the conventional media according to a Google scan.

Yet how newsworthy was the G20 conference? Robert Kuttner put it well when he wrote:

"Since they began at Rambouillet, France, in 1975, these annual economic summits have been treated as momentous events, but they are memorable mostly for being forgettable. Only very infrequently, as in the 1999 Cologne summit's embrace of debt relief for the third world, do they produce lasting achievements. This Group of 20 meeting was notable only because the club of seven leading democracies plus Russia was expanded to include emerging world powers such as India, China, and Brazil. . . But the 2009 summit, whose extensive press clippings will soon be fish wrap, succeeded mainly because it managed not to fail."

Of course, nothing much may happen at this year's Bilderberg conference - to be held perhaps in Greece in either May or June (only conspiracy theorists care where or when). On the other hand, Belgian viscount and current Bilderberg-chairman Etienne Davignon pointed out to the EU Observer that the Euro was created in part by the Bilderberg Group in the 1990s, certainly more newsworthy than anything the G20 crowd has been up to lately.

One of the reasons Bilderberg is so heavily censored by the archaic media is the number of publishers and owners who attend. The Washington Post, the New York Times, LA Times and all major networks' ABC, CBS and NBC have participated. All participants are sworn to secrecy.

Bilderberg denies its existence, and all the resorts at which they hold their meetings require their employees to lie and deny they are present.

Among those reportedly present in 2007 were Donald Graham, chairman and chief executive officer of the Washington Post, Richard N. Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Henry Kissinger, David Rockefeller, John Vinocur, senior correspondent of the International Herald Tribune, Paul Gigot, editor of the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, Nicholas Beytout, editor-in-chief of Le Figaro, George David, chairman of Coca-Cola, Martin Feldstein, president and chief executive officer of the National Bureau of Economic Research, Timothy F. Geithner, president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Vernon Jordan, senior managing director of Lazard Freres & Co., and Anatole Kaletsky, editor at large of the Times of London.

Any journalists who don't think such a crowd, meeting at a secret place at a secret time for secret reasons, is not worth covering deserves to have their press pass cancelled.

Kenneth P. Vogel, Politico - The highest levels of the Obama administration are infested with members of a shadowy, elitist cabal intent on installing a one-world government that subverts the will of the American people.

It sounds crazy, but that's what a group of very persistent conspiracy theorists insists, and they point to President Obama's nominee for Health and Human Services Secretary, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, as the latest piece of evidence supporting their claims.

It turns out that Sebelius - like top administration economists Timothy Geithner, Larry Summers and Paul Volcker, as well as leading Obama diplomats Richard Holbrooke and Dennis Ross - is a Bilderberger. That is, she is someone who has participated in the annual invitation-only conference held by an elite international organization known as the Bilderberg group. . .

It is precisely that exclusive roster of globally influential figures that has captured the interest of an international network of conspiracists, who for decades have viewed the Bilderberg conference as a devious corporate-globalist scheme.

The fulminating is aggravated by Obama's preference for surrounding himself with well-credentialed, well-connected, and well-traveled elites. His personnel choices have touched a populist, even paranoid nerve among those who are convinced powerful elites and secret societies are moving the planet toward a new world order.

Their worldview, characterized by a deep and angry suspicion of the ruling class rather than any prevailing partisan or ideological affiliation, is widely articulated on overnight AM radio shows and a collection of Internet websites. . .

THE THINKER'S GUIDE TO CONSPIRACY THEORIES

Sam Smith

- A conspiracy does not have to be illegal; it can merely be wrongful or harmful.

- The term 'conspiracy theory' was invented by elite media and politicians to denigrate questions or critical presumptions about events about which important facts remain unrevealed.

- The intelligent response to such events is to remain agnostic, skeptical, and curious. Theories may be suggested - just as they are every day about less complex and more open matters on news broadcasts and op ed pages - but such theories should not stray too far from available evidence.
Conversely, as long as serious anomalies remain, dismissing questions and doubts as a "conspiracy theory" is a highly unintelligent response. It is also ironic as those ridiculing the questions and doubts typically consider themselves intellectually superior to the doubters. But they aren't because they stopped thinking the moment someone in power told them a superficially plausible answer. To ridicule those still with doubts about such matters is intellectually dishonest.

- There is the further irony that many who ridicule doubts about the official version of events were typically trained at elite colleges where, in political science and history, theories often take precedent over facts and in which substantive decisions affecting politics and history are presumed to be the work of a small number of wise men (sic). They are trained, in effect, to trust in (1) theories and (2) benign confederacies. Most major media political coverage is based on the great man theory of history. This pattern can be found in everything from Skull & Bones to the Washington Post editorial board to the Council on Foreign Relations. You might even call them conspiracy theorists.

- Other fields - such as social history or anthropology - posit that change for better or evil can come as cultural change or choices and not just as the decisions of "great men." This is why one of the biggest stories in modern American history was never well covered: the declining birth rate. No great men decided it should happen.

- Homicide detectives and investigative reporters, among others, are inductive thinkers who start with evidence rather than with theories and aren't happy when the evidence is weak, conflicting or lacking. They keep working the case until a solid answer appears. This is alien to the well-educated newspaper editor who has been trained to trust official answers and conventional theories.

- The unresolved major event is largely a modern phenomenon that coincides with the collapse of America's constitutional government and the decline of its culture. Beginning with the Kennedy assassination, the number of inadequately explained major events has been mounting steadily and with them a steady decline in the trust between he people and their government. The refusal of American elites to take these doubts seriously has been a major disservice to the republic.

- You don't need a conspiracy to lie, do something illegal or to be stupid.

RECOVERED HISTORY: OPERATION SAFEHAVEN

Sam Smith

I have recently found that it is highly likely that my father was involved in Operation Safehaven, a secret World War II project aimed at recovering stolen and horded Nazi gold, art and other valuables. In the course of my research I came across some fascinating information, not the least of which being an OSS summary that stated that Safehaven's purpose was "above all, to deny Germany the capacity to start another war." The CIA report below calls this purpose its "overriding goal."

The Safehaven operation was started by the Foreign Economic Administration. But, while inventing the project, the FEA apparently soon found itself over its head and called on the OSS for help. In the classic government tradition the two agencies apparently alternately cooperated and competed. The State Department and Treasury helped to make it even more complicated.

From a 1997 report of the CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence by Stuart Eizenstat

The overriding goal of SAFEHAVEN was to make it impossible for Germany to start another war. Its immediate goals were to force those neutrals trading with Nazi Germany into compliance with the regulations imposed by the Allied economic blockade and to identify the points of clandestine German economic penetration. Implementation of SAFEHAVEN depended on action in four major areas:

- To restrict German economic penetration outside the borders of the Reich.

- To prevent Germany from sequestering assets in neutral countries.

- To ensure that German assets would be available for postwar reparations and the rebuilding of Europe.

- To prevent the escape of those members of the Nazi ruling elite who had already been marked down for war crimes trials. . .

It is quite clear that SAFEHAVEN planners had a good idea of what they wanted to achieve, but it also is apparent that they did not have the slightest idea of how to do it. Although it was evident from the outset that SAFEHAVEN would be primarily an intelligence-gathering problem, it does not appear to have occurred to anyone to consult the intelligence services, which were excluded from the planning and implementation of SAFEHAVEN until the end of November 1944. Bureaucratic rivalries predominated. Indeed, SAFEHAVEN was nearly destroyed by internecine quarrels among the FEA, State, and Treasury, each of which wanted to control the program and to exclude the other two from any participation. .

The decision was finally taken to invite the formal participation of the OSS. Once the OSS was brought into the SAFEHAVEN fold, all the advantages of a centralized intelligence organization were brought to bear. .

The unique character of SAFEHAVEN, which was both an attempt to prevent the postwar German economic penetration of foreign economies and an intelligence-gathering operation, meant that the OSS counterintelligence branch, X-2, also had an important role to play. SAFEHAVEN thus emerged as a joint [Strategic Intelligence]/X-2 operation shortly after its inception, especially in the key OSS outposts in Switzerland, Spain, and Portugal, with X-2 not infrequently playing the dominant role. .

The Importance of Switzerland

In Nazi Europe, neutral Switzerland carried out business as usual, providing the international banking channels that facilitated the transfer of gold, currencies, and commodities between nations. Always heavily dependent on Swiss cooperation to pay for imports, the Reich became even more so as the ultimate defeat of the National Socialist regime became obvious and neutrals grew more wary of cooperating with the Axis belligerents. . .

In this critical situation, the Swiss banks acted as clearinghouses whereby German gold--much of which was looted from occupied countries--could be converted to a more suitable medium of exchange. An intercepted Swiss diplomatic cable shows how, allegedly without inquiring as to its origin, the Swiss National Bank helped the German Reichsbank convert some $15 million in (probably) looted Dutch gold into liquid assets. . .

Fortuitously, the restoration of access to Switzerland through France in November 1944 made it possible for the first X-2 operative in Switzerland to enter the country by the end of the year. By January 1945, X-2 was up and running in Switzerland, and by April it was able to provide OSS Washington with an extensive summary of Nazi gold and currency transfers arranged via Switzerland through most of the war. . .

Sweden

Despite its liberal democratic traditions, Sweden was Nazi Germany's largest trading partner during the war and almost the sole source of high-grade iron ore and precision ball bearings for the German war machine. . .

By April 1945, X-2, using [strategic intelligence] sources as well as its own, was able to document German transactions converting Swedish Kronar 100,000,000 (about $25 million) in gold and currency into German goods (chiefly chemicals, drugs, and textiles) stored in Swedish warehouses. .

With the end of the war in Europe, first the OSS and then the SSU began to shift resources away from support of the SAFEHAVEN program into other areas, especially collection against the Soviet Union. Efforts by FEA and State Department representatives in Europe to revitalize SAFEHAVEN ran up against the stone wall of budgetary limitations. . .

HOW THE SCHOOL AUTOCRATS ARE HURTING PUBLIC EDUCATION

Joseph Mugivan, Testimony to NYC City Council - I have been a teacher in New York City for 15 years. I have worked with all grade levels of elementary and intermediate education, as well as with special education.

As education in the schools changed at the beginning of the millennium, the educational system under mayoral control has become more centralized. Prior to this period, teachers developed lesson plans which were approved and monitored independently by the administration of the schools at the local level. Principals and administrators had the independence to use their own professional experience, as educators, to determine the best direction for the students of their school.

In the new millennium, under centralized mayoral control, principals are required to attend to the needs of a new bureaucracy. They responded to their new leaders who offered market-driven programs. These new leaders had little knowledge of how to raise reading and math scores, or to understand how children learn. Some had no experience in education at all.

Interesting and creative learning experiences became suspect, as administrators in schools were assessed by their seniors with visits to their schools and classrooms. The new leaders focused on "instruction" and control with less concern about learning.

Due to this deficiency, teachers were judged primarily by the arbitrary aesthetics of their bulletin boards and classroom walls. Focus was placed on new and untested programs, which usurped the time and creativity needed to meet the necessary state standards.

Prior to these new changes, teachers had the time and encouragement to conform to city and state curricula, and to deliver these mandates in ways that were effective for the students.

Projects were created which incorporated literacy development throughout the entire curriculum, using content knowledge within the resources available, such as text books, library books, field trips, audio visual systems, public presentations, etc. All of the mandated content was processed by the students through writing. . .

With the advent of mayoral control, the teacher's time became monopolized for many months by constant individualized reading assessment with market-force programs that interfered with classroom work. . . These time-consuming new assessments were not related to the state curriculum. .

The current centralized structure of education encourages fear, control and anger, resulting in the loss of highly qualified and educated teachers, alienation of administrators and student violence within the schools. These are obstacles to effectively meeting the state educational curriculum and providing a nourishing and supportive learning environment.

POPULAR VOTE CAMPAIGN 20% THERE

Washington Times - National Popular Vote, a California-based group formed in 2006, has won commitments from four states to award their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote. Those four states - Maryland, New Jersey, Illinois and Hawaii - have 50 electoral votes among them.

The goal is for states with a total of 270 electoral votes to enter into a compact in which they agree to give their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote.

Since presidential candidates need 270 electoral votes for victory, such a compact would ensure that the candidate earning the most votes nationwide would win the election, and the Electoral College would be made irrelevant. Campaigning would become radically different. The most obvious change is that there would be no advantage to getting 51 percent in a given state, thus no "battleground states."

The new system wouldn't kick in until the target is reached, said John Koza, chairman of National Popular Vote and the designer of the plan. "We have 20 percent of the electoral votes we need," said Mr. Koza. "The whole idea of the bill is that no state can do this alone. It only goes into effect when we have 270 electoral votes."

At this rate, however, the system could be implemented in time for the 2016 presidential race. Nearly every state has introduced National Popular Vote legislation this year, and seven have passed bills in one chamber.

OBAMA SAY U.S. IS NOT AT WAR WITH ISLAM (EXCEPT IN IRAQ, PALESTINE, IRAN, SYRIA, PAKISTAN AND AFGHANISTAN)

As seems to fit a pattern with Obama, his statement on Islam is both significant yet fraught with reservations and contradictions. Significant because it represents a major shift in tone from the Bush regime an hope for further changes in the future. But despite his declaration of non-war with Islam we remain at war in Iraq. We are at war against Iran and Syria (an embargo is an act of war). We are funding Israel's occupation of Palestine. And we are escalating our war in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

CRASH TALK

Robert Kuttner, American Prospect - The Obama stimulus package is spending $787 billion over two years, about 2.5 percent of gross domestic product. The economy is now shrinking at the rate of at least 6 percent per year. In the Great Depression, despite FDR's large public-works programs, the unemployment rate never dropped below 14 percent until we mobilized for war. During World War II, government spending finally expanded to a scale adequate to end the Depression, and unemployment melted away. It should not take a war to realize that we have vast unmet public needs that can rendezvous with adequate public outlay.

Peninsula, Qatar - Iran and Venezuela opened a joint to develop economic projects, Iranian state television reported. The Tehran-based Iran-Venezuela bank, which was inaugurated by visiting Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has an initial capital of $200m with each country providing half. . . Chavez, who arrived in Tehran on Wednesday for an official visit, accused the United States and Britain of being "the most guilty" for the international economic crisis because of the financial model they had imposed. "The values of capitalism are in crisis and capitalism has to end," the television quoted Chavez as saying at the inauguration ceremony. "We must take a transitional path to a new model that we call socialism."

Marisol Bello, USA Today - A small but growing number of cash-strapped communities are printing their own money. . . The systems generally work like this: Businesses and individuals form a network to print currency. Shoppers buy it at a discount - say, 95 cents for $1 value - and spend the full value at stores that accept the currency.

Michael Mandel, Business Week - I added up the various lists provided by AIG by country, and the results were quite revealing. About $44 billion went to counterparties headquartered in the U.S., such as Goldman Sachs and states such as California and Virginia. But as I expected, the majority of the funds-$58 billion-went to banks headquartered outside the U.S. The big winners were French and German banks, which pulled in $19 billion and $17 billion respectively. To put these numbers in perspective, remember that the U.S. fiscal stimulus bill passed in February provided only $27.5 billion for highway and bridge construction. In effect, the U.S. Treasury and Fed have been bailing out the rest of the world, to a massive degree.

BREVITAS

OLDER ARCTIC SEA ICE DECLINING

OBAMALAND

Politico - Thomas E. Donilon, Obama's deputy national security adviser, was paid $3.9 million by the power law firm O'Melveny & Myers to represent clients including two firms that received federal bailout funds: Citigroup and Goldman Sachs.

JUSTICE & CIVIL LIBERTIES

LA Times - Red dots on the map above supplied by the FBI mark the locations of hundreds of bodies and human remains discovered along highways over the past three decades. The growing database includes more than 500 female victims, most of whom were killed and their bodies dumped at truck stops, motels and other spots along popular trucking routes crisscrossing the U.S. The FBI suspects that serial killers working as long-haul truckers are responsible for the slayings of hundreds of prostitutes, hitchhikers and stranded motorists whose bodies have been dumped near highways over the last three decades. Federal authorities first made the connection about five years ago while helping police link a trucker to a string of unsolved killings along Interstate 40 in Oklahoma and several other states. After that, the FBI launched the Highway Serial Killings Initiative to track suspicious slayings and suspect truckers.

Robert Verkaik, Independent - The mobile calls, emails and website visits of every person in Britain will be stored for a year under sweeping new powers. Privacy campaigners warned last night that the information would be used by the government to create a giant "Big Brother" super-database containing a map of everyone's private life. The new powers will, for the first time, place a legal duty on internet companies to store private information, including email traffic and website browsing histories. Although the new retention powers will not permit the storage of the content of emails or phone calls it will show details such as IP addresses, date, time and user telephone numbers. Under the terms of the EU directive, the Home Office has written to leading internet service providers and phone companies offering to compensate them for the costs incurred in retaining the data for a year. Phil Booth of the civil rights campaign group, NOID, said: "Inch by inch, the Government's plans to map and monitor everyone's communications are creeping into place. Today it's retention of data, soon it'll be a giant database to suck it all up. And unless we speak out and stop this, what used to be private - details of your relationships and personal interests - will end up in the ever-widening control of the stalker state."

Torrent Freak - Radiohead, the band that made millions of dollars by giving away their music for free, has very little to complain about when it comes to piracy. On the contrary, in a landmark file-sharing case, Radiohead has responded positively to a request to testify against the RIAA. Last month, Radiohead expressed its growing discomfort with record labels that abuse copyrights for their own benefit. In an attempt to take a stand against the labels, the band and several other well known artists formed the Featured Artists Coalition, a lobby group that aims to end the extortion-like practices of record labels and allow artists to gain more control over their own work. In addition, the artists are unhappy with the fact that the labels, represented by lobby groups such as the RIAA and IFPI, are pushing for anti-piracy legislation without consulting the artists they claim to represent. Fans are unnecessarily portrayed as criminals according to some. Now, in the case of Boston University student Joel Tenenbaum versus the RIAA, Radiohead has indicated that they will testify against the RIAA.

THE YOUNG

Don Perl - The most notable incident occurred toward the end of the presentation when a teacher from his seat in the front row posed this question: "These young teachers are going to be told to follow orders. Administrators are going to say, 'You do as you're told.' Then there are no questions asked. They must simply follow orders." I took a moment to swallow my wrath, and then said, "We have a code of ethics as professionals, and if an administrator asks us to do something to violate our code of ethics we can simply request that he/she sign this simple statement that acknowledges that the teacher is being told to violate a professional code of ethics which accentuates the importance of the individual child in the educational process." The questioner, with more than thirty years experience in the field, put his head down and mumbled, "I never thought of that." Let us shout it out that high stakes standardized testing violates our professional code of ethics. . . . and let us be sure to add the importance of young teachers organizing to speak as one voice on issues of ethics. None of these young professionals should have to be alone.

MID EAST

Age, Australia - Israel's new foreign minister has rejected a key accord on the establishment of a separate Palestinian state, igniting an international row on his first day in the job. . . Avigdor Lieberman said the incoming coalition government would drop a 2007 declaration adopted by the previous government. "It has no validity," Mr Lieberman said. "The Israeli government never ratified Annapolis (the US city where the declaration was adopted), nor did parliament." He promised to honor only the US-initiated "road map" of 2002, which is in stalemate amid accusations from both sides. "Those who think that through concessions they will gain respect and peace are wrong," Mr Lieberman said. "It is the other way around; it will lead to more wars." Ehud Olmert, the former Israeli prime minister, committed Israel to pursue "the goal of two states, Israel and Palestine" within a fixed timetable at the Annapolis conference convened by then US president George Bush. Its deadline expired at the end of last year, while Israel was waging its offensive in the Gaza Strip.

WAR DEPARTMENT

Gary Brecher, eXiled Online - The Chinese military has developed a ballistic missile, Dong Feng 21, specifically designed to kill U.S. aircraft carriers: "Because the missile employs a complex guidance system, low radar signature and a maneuverability that makes its flight path unpredictable, the odds that it can evade tracking systems to reach its target are increased. It is estimated that the missile can travel at Mach 10 and reach its maximum range of 2,000 kilometers in less than 12 minutes." That's the U.S. Naval Institute talking. . .

SUSTAIN YOURSELF

Checkout your neighborhood's walkability by entering your address at Walk Score. It will show how close you are to various services and how high your 'hood ranks.

THE MIX

Vermont is the first state whose legislature has approved gay marriage. It did so by overriding the governor's veto. Vermont was also the first state to approve civil unions. There are three other sttes with gay marriage, but all thanks to court decisions.

SCAMS

Dan, Consumerist - This past weekend I went to use the local ATM to get some cash money. When I walked up to the ATM something struck me as funny…I couldn't quite put my finger on it but the card reader didn't look right, like it wasn't completely attached. I grabbed and pulled at the card reader and, lo and behold, it came off. It was actually a card skimmer attached to the ATM over that actual card reader. On the back there is a battery, flash memory card, and a mini USB port - it was set up so that ATM cards would first go through the skimmer and then into the ATM itself so you'd never know the difference. . .

SCHOOLS

Education Change - It hasn't been a good week for NYC Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and the Education Equality Project he co-founded (under suspicious circumstances) with Al Sharpton. (EEP is the "test the students, silence the parents, close the schools, blame the teachers, ignore the socio-economic factors" wing of education reform.) - They held a conference this week - their biggest ever platform for the EEP, according to the pre-conference fanfare - that didn't seem to go over very well. Arne Duncan was met with boos when he announced his support of Mayor Bloomberg's control of NYC public schools. Al Sharpton himself backed away from supporting Klein's boss. A Q&A session featured critiques of Klein's claims of improvement and calls for his dismissal. See New York City Public School Parents for a good summary and web roundup about the event.

FURTHERMORE. . .

Wallet Pop - In 1980, J.D. Powers and Associates estimates that more than 35% of all cars sold had a stick shift. By 2005, that number had dropped to 6%. 2008 was the last year that any manufacturer of full-size trucks offered a manual transmission.

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