Unmasking October Surprise ‘Debunker’
October 30, 2011

By Robert Parry

In another blow to the crumbling cover-up surrounding Ronald Reagan’s secret dealings with Iran during the 1980 presidential campaign, a key “journalist” who “debunked” the October Surprise allegations in the early 1990s has now been identified by a recent study as a member of a right-wing “misinformation” network.

Entitled “Fear, Inc.,”the 129-page report by the Center for American Progress lists Steven Emerson as one of five “scholars” who act as “misinformation experts” to “generate the false facts and materials” that are then exploited by politicians and pundits to frighten Americans about the supposed threat posed by Muslims.

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Skeptic finds he now agrees global warming is real
APBy SETH BORENSTEIN – AP Science Writer | AP

WASHINGTON (AP) — A prominent physicist and skeptic of global warming spent two years trying to find out if mainstream climate scientists were wrong. In the end, he determined they were right: Temperatures really are rising rapidly.

The study of the world’s surface temperatures by Richard Mullerwas partially bankrolled by a foundation connected to global warming deniers. He pursued long-held skeptic theories in analyzing the data. He was spurred to action because of “Climategate,” a British scandal involving hacked emails of scientists.

Yet he found that the land is 1.6 degrees warmer than in the 1950s. Those numbers from Muller, who works at the University of California, Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, match those by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA.

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Former US chief prosecutor condemns ‘law-free zone’ of Guantánamo
Ten years on from its creation, calls are mounting from legal and human rights experts for closure of the ‘torture’ centre on Cuba
Ed Vulliamy in New York
The Observer, Saturday 29 October 2011

The former chief prosecutor for the US government at Guantánamo Bayhas accused the administration he served of operating a “law-free zone” there, on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the order to establish the detention camp on Cuba.

Retired air force colonel Morris Davis resigned in October 2007 in protest against interrogation methods at Guantánamo, and has made his remarks in the lead-up to 13 November, the anniversary of President George W Bush’s executive order setting up military commissions to try terrorist suspects.

Davis said that the methods of interrogation used on Guantánamo detainees – which he described as “torture” – were in breach of the US’s own statutes on torture, and added: “If torture is a crime, it should be prosecuted.”

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Tuesday, Oct 25, 2011 12:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time
Jay-Z’s hip-hop of distraction
The hip-hop superstar hypes a Brooklyn, N.Y., sports arena that failed to deliver on its jobs pledge
By Norman Oder

You can’t hustle a hustler, right? So Shawn Carter, aka hip-hop superstar Jay-Z, surely doesn’t mind fronting for two other world-class hustlers: Bruce Ratner, Brooklyn, N.Y’s most powerful developer, and New Jersey (to Brooklyn) Nets majority owner Mikhail Prokhorov, Russia’s second-richest man. The three men are partners in promoting the new Barclays Center sports arena now under construction in Brooklyn, the first building in the massive, controversial Atlantic Yards project.

While Brooklyn-born Carter owns a tiny fraction of the team, he’s become the face of the franchise, the Teflon-coated superstar employed by his partners to distract attention from the hardball politics, sweetheart deals and private profits behind the arena and the rest of the 16-tower project.

As Jay-Z, Carter will get to open the arena next fall with a string of concerts. ”Get All Access to Jay-Z,” proclaim widespread advertisements, pushing a ticket package that offers team home games and the right to purchase seats to other arena events. He’s even said to have a hand in designing the team uniforms and some of the luxury suites. These all help Carter take the Jay-Z brand to the proverbial next level. As he’s rapped, “I’m a business, man.”

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Apple’s Form 10-K Reveals Over $80 Billion In Cash
Apple Form 10k

The Huffington Post Ramona Emerson First Posted: 10/28/11 10:24 AM ET Updated: 10/28/11 03:29 PM ET

On Wednesday, Apple disclosed to the SEC as part of their Form 10-K filing, that they currently have $81,570,000,000 in cash, 13.2 million square feet of building space, and 60,400 full-time employees.

“This means that Apple pulled in $37.5 billion in cash profits in fiscal 2011. Not bad for a company that ‘missed’ industry estimates.”writes The Next Web.

During Apple’s earnings call in October, Tim Cook waved off Apple’s mountains of cash, saying they weren’t “burning a hole in our pocket” reports MacRumors. He went on to emphasize that Apple was in no rush to decide what to do with the money, and that he was not “religious about holding or not holding cash.” Apple’s CFO said that 66 percent of the cash was kept overseas for tax reasons.

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Hi friend,

Lately, Google has fallen short of its “Don’t be evil” corporate motto. Lobbyists for the tech giant are pushing for a sweetheart deal that would let it move all of the money from its offshore tax havens back to the United States — and pay hardly any taxes when it gets here.

But why should a company that recently reported $8.5 billion in profits be allowed to avoid its tax burden while the rest of us pay our share? Doesn’t that sound just a little bit evil?

Tell Google CEO Eric Schmidt to live up to his motto and stop avoiding taxes.

Overall, corporations have stashed more than $1 trillion offshore in order to avoid U.S. taxes, and tech companies, including Google, are some of the biggest offenders.

They argue this would help the economy, but the reality is, we’ve tried these so-called tax holidays before, and they don’t work. In 2004, instead of boosting the economy, the 15 companies that brought the most money back cut 21,000 jobs and gave their executives a 60% raise. Ever since, they’ve tried to sell Congress on another holiday.

Last year, the average American tax filer paid an extra $434 to cover the revenue shortfall — money that could feed a family of four for three weeks. And in this economy especially, we can ill afford to overlook this inequity.

Tell Eric Schmidt: Google should pay its fair share in taxes.

Sincerely,

Andre Delattre
U.S. PIRG Executive Director

P.S. Thanks for your support. Please feel free to share this message with your friends and family.

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I.

From Redeye in Alabama:

While everyone was focused on the police brutality directed to the Occupy Movement protesters in Oakland, California, the same stuff was happening right in our back yard in Nashville, Tennessee. Here is a run down thanks to the Tennessee Progressive Blogging Community.

From the Civil Rights Museum to arresting Occupy Nashville Folks in One Week.

Last night, a working member of the press was arrested covering the mass arrests at Occupy Nashville. I like to call this a “PR nightmare” which should be Gov. Bill Haslam and Bill Gibbons safe word right now.

Yet that’s what happened in the early morning hours, as Metro Night Court Judge Tom Nelson told the troopers who arrested 25 peaceful Occupy Nashville protesters at midnight on Legislative Plaza — along with Scene reporter Jonathan Meador, who was attempting to get off the plaza when he was cuffed and hauled off — that the curfew being enforced at the Capitol had no constitutional grounds whatsoever.

I find it to be amusing in a not so funny way our governor was in Memphis this week visiting the Civil Rights Museum.

A few things I’ve noticed is that political persuasion doesn’t mean beans right now when it come to the public outcry from Tennesseans. One thing that cannot be controlled is passion. I say it entirely too much but to quote Maya Angelou, it’s not what you say or what you do, it’s how you make people feel.

II.

BREAKING: Night Court Judge researches and rules that he can find no authority to charge Occupy Nashville with curfew violation

Around midnight Friday/Saturday, the Twitter stream reported that Tennessee Highway Patrol conducted another raid of Legislative Plaza to arrest Occupy Nashville protesters who refused to let last night’s raid deter them from returning to occupy the plaza in dutiful defiance of Governor Bill Haslam’s arbitrary 10pm nightly curfew. Several reports from on-site revealed that a Nashville Scene reporter, Jonathan Meador, was cuffed and taken away, too. When a fellow reporter inquired about the detainment of Meador a THP officer replied, “You want to be next?” One observer reported that while rounding up protesters, THP allowed well-dressed TPAC ticket-holders to pass through the plaza after the curfew was in effect.

Read more.

III.

Occupy Nashville: Vet Injured During 2nd Round of Arrests
http://guerillawomentn.blogspot.com/2011/10/occupy-nashville-vet-injured-during-2nd.html

Occupy Nashville: Cops Arrest Nashville Scene Reporter Along With 26 Protesters
http://guerillawomentn.blogspot.com/2011/10/occupy-nashville-cops-arrest-nashville.html

http://www.truth-out.org/rep-bishop-says-federal-control-public-lands-unconstitutional/1319736024

Representative Bishop Says Federal Control of Public Lands Is Unconstitutional
Thursday 27 October 2011
by: Scott Keyes and Lee Fang, ThinkProgress | Report

The House Resources Subcommittee on National Parks Chairman Rob Bishop (R-UT) made a startling claim at a Republican conference late last week: current federal control of public lands is unconstitutional.

Bishop was on a panel during the Western Republican Leadership Conference to discuss federal control of public lands in the West. After comparing the large tracts of public land that exist out West to the Soviet Union, Bishop told the conservative crowd, “I defy you to find anywhere in the Constitution where this is allowable.”

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America’s Exploding Pipe Dream
By CHARLES M. BLOW

We are slowly — and painfully — being forced to realize that we are no longer the America of our imaginations. Our greatness was not enshrined. Being a world leader is less about destiny than focused determination, and it is there that we have faltered.

We sold ourselves a pipe dream that everyone could get rich and no one would get hurt — a pipe dream that exploded like a pipe bomb when the already-rich grabbed for all the gold; when they used their fortunes to influence government and gain favors and protection; when everyone else was left to scrounge around their ankles in hopes that a few coins would fall.

We have not taken care of the least among us. We have allowed a revolting level of income inequality to develop. We have watched as millions of our fellow countrymen have fallen into poverty. And we have done a poor job of educating our children and now threaten to leave them a country that is a shell of its former self. We should be ashamed.

Read more.