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Coming: Big Austerity Cuts
by Stephen Lendman
The congressional August Budget Control Act of 2011 established the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction - aka Supercommittee.
Doing so was extralegal. The Constitution's Article 1, Section 8 explains congressional powers. None of them include supercommittee authority to resolve America's debt crisis.
Article 1, Section 8, Sub-section 18 lets Congress "make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution (of its other listed Powers), and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department Officer thereof."
Cellphonemania: Why is the U.S. Justice Department in this Image?
By Katherine Smith
U.S. Sues to Stop AT&T Deal – A Surprisingly Swift Move or Disinformation?
The Justice Department’s lawsuit is most likely Disinformation … deliberately misleading information announced publicly or leaked by a government, intelligence agency or other entity for the purpose of influencing opinions or perceptions.
The antitrust action to block AT&T Inc.’s proposed $39 billion takeover of T-Mobile USA is intended to sow confusion and deceive the public about why everyone young, old, rich, poor, black, white, brown, yellow, and red … in just about every country has a cell phone. Worldwide cell phone subscriptions exceed 4.6 billion.
The government claims the combination of the second and fourth-largest cell phone companies in the U.S. would harm competition and likely raise prices for consumers.
Notice the words “likely raise prices for consumers.” [7]
AT&T has already been caught red-handed lowering prices in the face of increased demand. According to the U.S. government:
“The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released the GAO-10-77 that reported — despite reduced competition — as the $150 billion industry was consolidated by AT&T Inc, Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel Corp and T-Mobile USA Inc. the price of wireless phone services declined each year from ‘99 to ‘08, consolidated.
And while the GAO study reported that Wireless Industry consolidation has made it more difficult for small and regional carriers to be competitive, it found that at the same time the biggest carriers offered more services for similar or lower prices while all of the time they keep improving the coverage.” Cell Phone Plans Get Cheaper wirelessguide.org/August 26, 2010
Is this a Ubiquitous Tin Foil Hat Conspiracy? [8]
Social Opposition in the Age of Internet: Desktop “Militants” and Public Intellectuals
James Petras
Introduction
The relation of information technology (IT) and more specifically the internet, to politics is a central issue facing contemporary social movements. Like many previous scientific advances the IT innovations have a dual purpose: on the one hand, it has accelerated the global flow of capital, especially financial capital and facilitated imperialist ‘globalization’. On the other hand the internet has served to provide alternative critical sources of analysis as well as easy communication to mobilize popular movements.
The IT industry has created a new class of billionaires, from Silicon Valley in California to Bangalore, India. They have played a central role in the expansion of economic colonialism via their monopoly control in diverse spheres of information flows and entertainment.
Bad Moon Rising Over Great Sirte Bay
by FRANKLIN LAMB
Sirte, Libya
“Everyone Says We are Rich. Then Why Do We Feel So Poor?”
h his sandaled feet comfortably dug into the sand of a chilly Mediterranean beach and huddled next to a camp fire with a congenial and bright group of still heavily armed “NATO rebels,” is learning that the past eight months’ experiences for many Libyans who fought with or for NATO were rather different from what the western mainstream media portrayed. And what many of us who spent last summer in the Western Libya Gadhafi stronghold were inclined to believe about them.
America's Student Loan Debt Bondage
by Stephen Lendman
Higher education today isn't like it used to be. US students face crisis conditions. Washington and lenders wage financial war on them. In addition, dozens of budget-strapped states cut funds to public colleges and universities. Students are directly impacted by sharp tuition hikes (double-digit at some schools) and less financial aid. As a result, many thousands are entirely shut out. Others relying on student loans face permanent debt bondage. By end of 2011, student loan debt will top $1 trillion. It already exceeds credit card indebtedness. Moreover, in the past year alone, students borrowed over $100 billion, double the amount a decade ago adjusted for inflation.
America's Media War on OWS
Stephen Lendman
Early reporting was scant, dismissive, and offensive. Much still belittles, denigrates and marginalizes a significant movement.
Fox News claims protesters don't pay taxes or know what they want, are supported by Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei and Hugo Chavez, and represent the lunatic left wing.
Bill O'Reilly quipped, "Do we have all kinds of crackheads down there." He added that Zuccotti Park is "dirty and filthy. There's rats running all over. There's dope all over the place. They're having sex outside at night and all of this stuff."
Fox News reporter Charles Gasparino accused protesters of embracing "communism and there is no doubt about it."
PA must end security coordination with Israel now
By Khalid Amayreh
The apartheid Israeli regime decided last week to freeze the transfer of tax and customs revenue levied by Israel on behalf of the Palestinian Authority (PA).
The illegal and immoral measure, which Israel resorts to rather routinely, is intended to bully the Ramallah leadership to capitulate to Zionist whims and blackmailing tactics.
Israel never stopped threatening to strangulate the PA economically and financially if the latter didn't succumb to the Israeli will.
Super Committee Deadlock: Heads They Win, Tails We Lose
Ellen Brown
It is no great surprise that with only days to go, the congressional “super committee,” given the herculean task of carving an additional $1.2 trillion out of the federal budget, has failed to reach agreement. Why should six Republicans and six Democrats with diametrically opposed views agree in a few weeks, when Congress couldn’t shake hands on it after months of wrangling, despite the guillotine blade of a federal default hanging over their heads?
Will the UN insist on Fair Trials for Ex-Regime Loyalists in Libya?
by FRANKLIN LAMB
Benghazi, Libya
Ashraf al-Hujuj
An affable gentleman, “Mahmoud” ushered this observer into the Benghazi People’s Court (Mahkamat al-Sha’b) and showed me the freshly painted courtroom where on December 19, 2006, the current NTC leader and long term CIA favorite, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, twice upheld death sentences by firing squad against a Palestinian doctor, Ashraf al-Hujuj, and five Bulgarian nurses Kristiyana Valtcheva, Nasya Nenova, Valentina Siropulo, Valya Chervenyashka, and Snezhana Dimitrova. The death sentences were requested by the Libyan prosecutor in his opening statement four months earlier, in the final appeal in the fake HIV show trial case # 607/2003 held at the criminal court in Benghazi.
The appellate judge in the case was none other than the current head of the NATO-installed Libyan National Transition Council (NTC) Mustafa Abdul Jalil, whose formal legal education consisted of sitting in on some Sharia law classes. Following his appellate decision in the case, and for other services rendered to the former regime, Jalil was rewarded with the post of Minister of Justice. He served loyally in that position until American associates encouraged the intensely ambitious Minister to resign on February 24, 2011, the day he joined the Benghazi based uprising, as “leader.”
Do Border Collies have ESP?
By Robert Singer
Last year Bart and I went to a lecture at the UCLA Law School. We purchased a parking permit and entered the parking structure P2 at level 5 and found a parking place on level 7. We exited the parking structure on level 1 and headed up Charles E. Young Drive East (CEYE) to Dodd Hall.
After the presentation we had lunch at the Lu Valle Student Commons where a student of Professor Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs and Steel) made the mistake of admiring Bart. She was familiar with Diamond’s answer to "Yali's 'Cargo' Question: Why they are so rich and we are so poor?” She liked my answer much better: “We” are so rich and "they" are so poor, because we in the East-West civilizations came from feudal societies and they in the North-South were “Caste.” Consumerism is anti-thetical to the Caste System because it requires a focus on pleasure and a conviction that it is right to seek the satisfaction of selfish desires in this life. The Question of Questions.
Bart and I exited the commons at the rear and found ourselves on Charles E. Young Drive West. Not sure of the way back, I looked down and told Bart to “find the car!” [1]
Here is a map of Charles E. Young, the campus, and the parking structure.
Click here to read the entire UCLA adventure and how I incorrectly came to the conclusion that Bart and his nephew, Jeddy, used their cognitive map: a powerful memory of landmarks to demonstrate, the sensu Tolman defintion of novel short-cutting to “find the car!”
The dogs weren’t taking a novel, or any kind of, short cut back to the parking garage.
They found the car based on dead reckoning. [2]
I agree with Andrew Bennett, “the cognitive map, the sensu Tolman, O’Keefe and Nadel defintion of novel short-cutting is no longer a useful hypothesis for elucidating the spatial behaviour of animals, and that use of the term should be avoided.” [3]
Bart, Jeddy, Reilly use an extra-normal sensory perception of changes in the earth's magnetic field to “find the car!”
On October 27, 2011, I went on a hike with my three dogs and a woman writer friend (WWF). The hike confirmed that my dogs don’t take short cuts but at the same time the hike supported study about a “heretofore undiscovered magnetic telepathic mechanism” dogs may be using to “find the car!”
A British psychologist study together with numerous accounts confirmed that dogs and even cats are capable of traveling long distances to find their way home [as opposed to find the car, which would be much harder] was, according to researchers, not conclusive.
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