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1)Postal Service Employees Rally to End Manufactured Crisis
Wednesday 28 September 2011
by: Rose Aguilar, Truthout | Report
http://www.truth-out.org/postal-service-employees-protest-manufactured-crisis-aims-target-unions-and-privatize-service/131721

2)Corporatizing the Post Office
by RUSSELL MOKHIBER
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/09/27/corporatizing-the-post-office/

Stop the Conspiracy Theories, Al Qaeda Tells Iranian Leader
By J. DAVID GOODMAN

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during his speech to the United Nations last week. There were many empty chairs as some delegations walked out over his conspiratorial and anti-Western comments.Emmanuel Dunand/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesPresident Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during his speech to the United Nations last week. There were many empty chairs as some delegations walked out over his conspiratorial comments.

Al Qaeda has a message for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran: enough with the conspiracy theories about Sept. 11.

The latest issue of the terror group’s English-language magazine, Inspire,lashed out at the Iranian president for indulging in the claim that the American government — and not Al Qaeda — was responsible for the attack. It was a claim Mr. Ahmadinejad repeated during his address to the United Nations General Assembly last week, when he suggested that the killing of Osama bin Laden was part of a dark conspiracy to conceal the real perpetrators of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

“The Iranian government has professed on the tongue of its president Ahmadinejad that it does not believe Al Qaeda was behind 9/11 but rather, the U.S. government,” read an article in the magazine published under the byline Abu Suhail. “So we may ask the question: why would Iran ascribe to such a ridiculous belief that stands in the face of all logic and evidence?”

Read more.

Gas Drilling Documentary, Hailed as “Indie” and “Balanced,” Is Anything but
Wednesday 28 September 2011
by: Steve Horn, AlterNet [3] | Report

“Haynesville” is making the indie film circuit, but its director is actually an oil and gas man in disguise.

This weekend, the Texas Tribune [4] will play host to the Texas Tribune Festival [5]. According to the festival’s website [5], the convening is designed “to bring together the state’s most prominent thinkers, politicians and public servants for a weekend of debate, discussion and dialogue on the subjects that matter most to all Texans.”

Near the top of the agenda will be a slate of policy discussions pertaining to energy and the environment [6], include the screening of a documentary about natural gas drilling (no, not Gasland [7]). Texas is home to both the Eagle Ford and Barnett Shale basins, as well as a sliver of the Haynesville Shale, under all of which sits vast amounts of natural gas. The Haynesville Shale [8], mostly located in the northwest corner of Louisiana, as well as bit of southwest Arkansas and east Texas, underlies an area of about 9,000 square miles and possesses some 250 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas. It is the largest natural gas field in the United States.

The festival’s sponsors [9] include some of the most powerful players in the natural gas arena: Apache Corporation, BP, El Paso Corp, Energy Future Holdings Corp, and America’s Natural Gas Alliance [10] (ANGA) — the largest natural gas industry lobbying consortium in the United States. ANGA spent over $3 million lobbying the U.S. Congress in 2010 and has already spent over $1 million lobbying Congress in 2011, according to OpenSecrets.org [11].

Read more.

Massachusetts man charged in plot to blow up Pentagon
By TIM MAK | 9/28/11 4:30 PM EDT Updated: 9/28/11 5:11 PM EDT

Undercover FBI agents arrested a U.S. citizen Wednesday in connection with a plot to attack the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol using large, remote-controlled aircraft filled with C-4 plastic explosives.

Rezwan Ferdaus, 26, was also charged with attempting to provide material support to Al Qaeda, in order to carry out attacks on U.S. soldiers overseas, the Justice Department announced in a news release. Ferdaus was arrested in Framingham, Mass.

Ferdaus, a Northeastern University graduate with a degree in physics, began planning to commit a terrorist act in early 2010, according to the DoJ. He allegedly supplied mobile phones — modified to act as a trigger for an improvised electrical device — to undercover FBI agents who he believed to be members of Al Qaeda.

Told the devices would be used to kill Americans stationed overseas, he responded, “That was exactly what I wanted.” The DoJ said Ferdaus, who thought his detonation devices had been used to kill Americans, was anxious to know whether they had worked, and how many Americans were killed.

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“Rep. Pscholka said the law would depend on co-workers who report violations by their colleagues.”

Michigan bill would jail teachers who send political emails
By Eric W. Dolan
Wednesday, September 28th, 2011 — 5:13 pm

The Republican-led Michigan House of Representatives is considering legislation that would prohibit public employees, such as teachers, from sending a political message using a publicly-owned email service.

Violating the law would result in a $10,000 fine for an organization, and a $1,000 fine and one-year imprisonment for an individual.

The House Oversight, Reform and Ethics Committee adopted the bill, HB 4052, by a 4 to 2 vote along party lines last week. It was first introduced by Republican state Rep. Al Pscholka in January, shortly after he was sworn in to his first term in service to the 79th House District.

Read more.

September 27, 2011
Even Those Cleared of Crimes Can Stay on F.B.I.’s Watch List
By CHARLIE SAVAGE

WASHINGTON — The Federal Bureau of Investigation is permitted to include people on the government’s terrorist watch list even if they have been acquitted of terrorism-related offenses or the charges are dropped, according to newly released documents.

The files, released by the F.B.I. under the Freedom of Information Act, disclose how the police are instructed to react if they encounter a person on the list. They lay out, for the first time in public view, the legal standard that national security officials must meet in order to add a name to the list. And they shed new light on how names are vetted for possible removal from the list.

Inclusion on the watch list can keep terrorism suspects off planes, block noncitizens from entering the country and subject people to delays and greater scrutiny at airports, border crossings and traffic stops.

Read more.

President Of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Says Death Penalty Is About Affirming The Sanctity Of Life
By Zaid Jilani on Sep 23, 2011 at 5:00 pm

This week marked the execution of Georgia death row inmate Troy Davis, whose case was considered by many to bedeeply flawed. Davis’ execution has served as a wake-up call to the inequities and dangers of capital punishment in the United States.

Yet one influential religious leader appears to have been unphased by the global uproar over Davis’ death and critical examinations of the death penalty. Mohler argued in a Sept. 22 podcast that the death penalty is actually pro-life in a way, because it is intended to “affirm the value [and] sanctity of every single human life“:

A Southern Baptist seminary president says that according to the Bible,capital punishment is pro-life. “The death penalty is not about retribution,” Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said in a podcast Sept. 22. “It is first of all about underlining the importance of every single human life.”

Read more.

>From Ellen LaVan Schindler:

Because of its position on Lake Michigan, at the mouth of the Black River, South Haven has always been a port city. During settlement, major ship lines stopped there, both passenger and freight. In the early 1900s South Haven became a resort town, sometimes referred to as “The Catskills of the Midwest.” South Haven is a major regional tourist draw because of its recreational harbor and beaches. It is the western terminus of the Kal-Haven Trail, popular with bicyclists and snowmobilers. Nearby are Van Buren State Park and the Van Buren Trail State Park.

Noted botanist Liberty Hyde Bailey was born in South Haven. His childhood home was presented to the city in the 1930s, and is now a museum