POLICING BY THE MILITARY IN AMERICA, NOT JUST ABROAD:

My friend Kenny told me some disturbing news today. Of course after I got on the phone with him I started researching and gathering as much information as I could. What he told me was that the US would soon start bringing troops back from abroad so that they could police the US streets just in case people start wilding out over this whole economy mess we're in.....meaning making us a "police state". You can call them "Peace Keepers" if you will. If you don't know what that means go look it up, and I'll tell you now, it ain't a good thing. After discussing this with him in some detail, I can see how this could happen.....what I can't see is how we're letting it happen. You might not care NOW, but if it really goes down like that.....only GOD can save us.

NOTE: This next article was written in 2002 and you see the article I posted below this one that was written TODAY....maybe you should do some research on the Posse Comitatus Act, hmmmmmm?

Here's the article from 2002....

Current Laws Already Envision A Broad Domestic Role For The Military And Revising The Posse Comitatus Act Won't Change That Won't Change That


The 124-year-old Posse Comitatus Act criminalizes using the military to enforce domestic laws. Last week, The New York Times reported that the Department of Defense was reviewing - and considering revising - the Act in light of post-Sept. 11 homeland security concerns.
Civil libertarians and legal commentators expressed dismay at the idea. But in fact, the military has provided support to civil authorities for some time now, in and out of the law enforcement arena.

Moreover, it has done so entirely lawfully. That is because while the Posse Comitatus Act itself has not changed significantly, other laws have - in a way that drastically narrows the Act's scope.
The Posse Comitatus Act and Its Purpose

A "posse comitatus" is a group convened from the community to enforce domestic laws. (Think, for example, of the Western sheriff's posse.) The Posse Comitatus Act aims to preserve a wall of separation between the military and domestic police and policing. Congress originally enacted it in 1878 to stop federal troops from enforcing civilian laws in the South, and it has stood since then as a bulwark between military and civil authority.

Accordingly, the Act criminalizes the use of "any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws" - unless the use is authorized by Congress or the Constitution. Only domestic police, not military police, can generally enforce or carry out domestic laws, the Act warns.

Over our history, however, Congress has repeatedly blessed the use of the military for domestic purposes. As a result, the Posse Comitatus Act's exception for Congressionally-authorized domestic uses of the military has swallowed the rule against such use.

The Largest Exception - The National Guard

First, the Posse Comitatus statute only applies to the federal armed forces - not the National Guard, which belongs to the states. This distinction dates back to the original act in 1878, which was passed at the end of Reconstruction to appease Southern interests by forbidding the federal military from enforcing laws in the states.

One example of this is the National Guard's current mission to support the Border Patrol and Customs Service. Another example is the use of National Guard troops (instead of federal troops) in most natural disasters.

The Military Is Already Authorized to Support Domestic Law Enforcement

Title 10 is the part of the United States Code that covers the federal military. It authorizes the domestic use of military assets to support law enforcement in numerous areas. Most of the Title 10 exceptions allowing military involvement in domestic policing were carved out during the Reagan Presidency for the so-called "War on Drugs."

These exceptions allow the military to provide specialized support to domestic law enforcement agencies - particularly in areas where domestic law enforcement agencies don't have any capability. Those areas include long-range surveillance and intelligence capabilities. Vague phrases in the statute such as "training and advising civilian law enforcement officials" or "maintenance and operation of equipment" hint at other such areas.

Indeed, the only limit which remains on military personnel is a "restriction on direct participation by military personnel" in specific police actions - defined to include only "search, seizure, arrest, or other similar activity." (And even these activities can be performed if another law authorizes it.)

This leaves the field wide open for military support in other areas, such as the provision of information, use of military helicopters, surveillance capabilities, just to name a few.

Legally Authorized Categories of Military Support to Civilian Authorities

During the 1980s and 1990s, Congress further revised Title 10 to add more provisions for military support to civil authorities.

For example, one provision authorizes the Secretary of Defense to provide any information "collected during the normal course of military training or operations" to local, state and federal law enforcement. Presumably, this does not authorize the Department of Defense to purposely collect information for domestic law enforcement officials. Nevertheless, the section goes on to say that "the needs of civilian law enforcement officials for information shall, to the maximum extent practicable, be taken into account in the planning and execution of military training or operations."

Congress even added a special exception to this section for chemical and biological emergencies. It gives the military the authority to provide special assistance to local law enforcement in these areas.

A third provision authorizes the Defense Department to use military personnel to train federal, state and local law enforcement officials on the operation of military equipment and any other matters relevant to the purpose of this chapter. This authorizes everything from specialized training in chemical decontamination to more generalized training in tactics.

The next provision goes even further. It allows the military to provide personnel to operate equipment such as helicopters and other special items that may be used by law enforcement. Military personnel may use their equipment for several purposes, including "detection, monitoring, and communication of the movement of air and sea traffic." But they can only use it outside the United States and within 25 miles of the border.

Closer to the border, the military personnel would "hand off" these contacts to law enforcement for interdiction. This exception was clearly carved out to support the war on drugs, and the way incoming drug shipments were acquired and apprehended.

Finally, another provision authorizes the military to play an active role in "emergency situations involving chemical or biological weapons of mass destruction." Added in 1996 by Congress, this exception authorizes the military, in broad terms, to support the Justice Department.
Most of these provisions require a determination by the Secretary of Defense that such assistance is necessary. Some require a joint determination by the Secretary of Defense and Attorney General. None explicitly require the approval of Congress or the federal courts.

Thus, there are just two major constraints on these powers. First, the Secretary of Defense (and sometimes the Attorney General) must authorize such action. Second, military personnel cannot play a direct role in the enforcement of civil law.

No One Has Suggested Giving the Military Domestic Search and Arrest Power

Given that these laws are already on the books, one might wonder what is really at the heart of the current debate over the Posse Comitatus Act and, more generally, over the supposed future expansion of the military's role in domestic law enforcement.

The closest that our troops now come to that kind of domestic law enforcement is the work they do on the borders under the auspices of the Border Patrol and Customs Service. And even there, American soldiers operate with an extremely limited set of rules of engagement.

They provide manpower and other forms of support. But they leave the searching and arresting to the professional Border Patrol officers who have the legal authority to do so.
Giving the military search and arrest power would truly make America into a police state. But that option need not be debated, for it has not been seriously proposed.

An Enlargement of Current Military Powers Is What Is Really At Stake

What is being proposed is an enlargement of the types of powers we already see today. They include, as I have described above, the enhanced use of military intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities in coordination with domestic law enforcement authorities.

Some of these enhancements ought to be uncontroversial - for instance, few would complain about military authorities providing domestic police with enhanced information on terrorism threats from abroad. However, some may object to the use of sophisticated military-surveillance equipment inside our borders.

The debate over the military's role in American society is an important one, and these issues must be discussed in light of our present security concerns. But to have an effective debate, we must know the facts and law as they stand today. Our military has provided support to civil authorities for a long time, and it will continue to do so until Congress or the courts decide otherwise.

Will Wall Street's Meltdown Turn America Into a Police State?

Are you getting scared yet????


SOURCE

"Raw capitalism is dead." -- Henry Paulson, U.S. Treasury secretary

"Can't we just all go out and say things are OK?" -- President Bush, to congressional leaders during bailout negotiations

I'm not much of an Army Times reader, but after reading that a brigade was shipping from Iraq in October to serve as "an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks" in the homeland right before the election, my antennae perked up. Same as they did when I read that an electoral college doomsday scenario exists in which Dick Cheney casts the deciding vote that gives McCain-Palin the White House.

That is, if Cheney and Bush don't take it for themselves. That may sound like fantasy, but don't kill the messenger. They are all strands of the Gordian knot the Bush administration has tied around the neck of the American people for the last two presidential terms, best represented today by the failed bailout of banks, brokers and other complicit parties that have since jacked the American people out of trillions. And while the Army Times revelation or election doomsday may turn out to be paranoia rather than prescience, the evidence just isn't there.

Like I said: antennae.

They've come in handy as bullshit detectors since Bush stole the election from a flat-footed Al Gore and set about engineering the greatest transfer of public wealth into private hands in American history. If you factor in Monday's failed takeover, as well as the $5 trillion the American people now owe thanks to the "bailout" of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, not to mention the continuing hyper-expensive occupation of Iraq and so on, our citizenry is now so far in the hole that it's pointless griping about numbers. If you want one, use the figure put forth by Dennis Kucinich: half a quadrillion dollars. We have evolved past the point of economic or geopolitical reality and entered a phase of pure concept.

And all vectors of that phase point toward the conclusion that the proverbial shit has totally hit the fan -- head on, and all over again.

Meet the New Rome, Same as the Old Rome
"Franklin Roosevelt had to save capitalism from itself," Los Angeles Times business editor Tom Petruno told me as Washington Mutual and Wachovia became the latest banking dominoes to fall. "Is history repeating?"

Indeed, it is, as one could tell from the repetitive usage of loaded terms and phrases like "Great Depression," "meltdown," "apocalypse," "Armageddon" and more to describe the just-on-time cratering of the American economy. After the strange bedfellows in both parties torpedoed Bush, Bernanke and Paulson's so-called bailout, more than $1 trillion of market value in American equities disappeared in a single day. The Dow Jones average set a record for quickest suicide dive in a single day. Other indexes sunk to multiyear lows, wiping out years of value, and stocks across the board went negative like Ann Coulter. In fact, the only major stock that actually advanced on Monday was Campbell Soup.

Can there be a more fitting metaphor for the American economy stuck beneath the Bush administration's thumb?

But the reruns, and their loaded terminology, are merging: Bush himself is just another iteration of the infamous "New World Order" instituted by his father while trying to, what else, convince the American public that it needed to go to war against Saddam Hussein. The revisionism is transparent, befitting a government that cares nothing of what its people actually think. Jon Stewart of "The Daily Show" recently juxtaposed Bush's address on the financial cataclysm with his pre-invasion speech in 2003 and found -- surprise! -- they were exactly the same.

This is a long way of saying that this particularly frightening crux of historical geopolitics, fascism and environmental calamity has been a long time coming. Failing banks? Deregulation. Endless war? Homeland security. Total information awareness? Transparent government. Bankrupt economy? The fundamentals are strong.

"Here's my question," Petruno adds. "If this is remembered as Black September, will that end up being too gentle a reference to what actually happened to the American financial system this month? It is beyond comprehension for people who have been on Wall Street their entire lives. I can only imagine how absolutely stunned the American public must be. Stunned, and very afraid."

It should be. From a military brigade armed for action in the homeland in blatant transgression of Posse Comitatus to what ex-hedge funder and financial personality Jim Cramer recently called "financial terrorism," the United States is pushing forward back.

To start with, the bailout was obvious theft, but our situation is more precarious than you think. The hyperreal credit default swap market, which few understand although it is estimated to involve tens if not hundreds of global trillions, is faltering under the weight of its own Ponzi origins. The scenario significantly worsens once you factor in the given that countries like China and others who have denominated their loans in dollars are shouldering our exploding debt, along with oil-soaked sovereign wealth funds from nations whose civil liberties records suck ass. As I wrote last year on this clusterfuck, if the Chinese call in our debts and oil-producing countries decide to peg their petrodollars to the euro, you can more or less kiss the dollar goodbye. Which means the last thing you'll need to worry about is your stocks, retirement or credit cards. You will instead worry whether or not the cash you have on hand will be worth anything at all. That is the loaded gun that bankers, brokers and the White House is holding to the public's head, as I write. That trillion erased on Monday, as well as the trillions that have been lost and will be lost in the coming months, was nothing more than a hostage situation engineered by the Bush administration, the Federal Reserve and their partners in crime in finance, insurance and real estate business.

They don't call that sector FIRE for nothing. Fire destroys everything and leaves little in its catastrophic wake. Which raises the question: What's left to burn?

"I think our economic situation can get much worse," argues Danny Schechter, the veteran producer and author whose 2006 indie documentary "In Debt We Trust" covered this volatile territory long before CNN would. "Jobless claims are already at a seven-year high, but the government is worried about the reaction from Asia. We are living on other countries' money, and when that spigot gets cut off, we will be in deeper doo-doo. Part of the reason for the scale of the bailout is to show Asia and sovereign wealth funds that we will protect their interests."
But for how long? The Bush administration and Congress' disdain for the American people has been painfully obvious, so it's hard to believe they will call from sky-high Dubai to see how we are doing after making off with almost all of our money.

"It's a high-stakes gamble, which is why Paulson tried to do it quickly in a climate of shock and crisis," Shechter says. "He knew that the longer it takes, the more opposition it will attract. This plan, if eventually passed, will pre-empt the next president from doing anything about it, because there will be no money. They are wrecking the government by wrecking the economy first."

That shock doctrine, as Naomi Klein explained in her brilliant book of the same name, has foisted this same kind of disaster capitalism on country after country over the last century. Klein's book is littered with democracies that slept their way through coups and takeovers, entranced by one simulation or another. The United States was plugged into a matrix that onetime White House press secretary Ari Fleischer described as "an American way of life," adding without deceit that "it should be the goal of policy makers to protect the American way of life."

By destroying it? Mission accomplished.

"This is the September of surprise," Schechter concluded, "not a war on Iran but on America."

Civil War, the Rerun?

So, what's the next step for the shoe yet to drop? Perhaps the Army Times has the clues:

(The brigade) 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.

Like every move the Bush administration has ever made, from the Patriot Act to the occupation of Iraq and down to bankrupting the American economy, this maneuver is a solution in search of a problem that it seems destined to create. Look around you. Housing is over. Stocks are nosediving. The banks are gone. War is ceaseless. Civil liberties are disappearing. Nerds at the Federal Reserve and the Treasury are taking hostages. It is madness.

And mad people have a tendency to infect everyone around them. The difference is that when you go mad ... well, that's the question mark: What will happen?

Ask the late Iman Morales, who went crazy in Brooklyn on a ledge 10 feet above ground and was illegally tasered by New York police officers, eventually falling to his death, immobilized. A perfect metaphor for our economy, sure, but it's also the type of literal shock we might be awaiting, as the November election creeps nearer and shit begins to hit the fan with ferocity. Many of us so-called alternative journos are not conspiracy nuts, but realists. We look at galvanizing leaders like Barack Obama, America's next president, and compare his impact to that of Lincoln, Kennedy or King -- without forgetting that all three were eventually assassinated. We are the type of realists who live through two Bush presidents, both of whom configured a New World Order, with and without the approval of the American people and the world at large. The type of realists that notice that after 9/11, we couldn't fly to Vegas, but Osama bin Laden's family was flown out of the country on government charter.

And here is what we see today: Crowds protesting in the streets, the people's money wiped out thanks to the Bush administration's latest economic shock and awe. An army brigade matter-of-factly betraying Posse Comitatus for the purpose of crowd control. The public trust and wealth almost robbed cleanly with congressional approval.

In other words, we see another unfolding coup, which is to say, a rerun. And there is no telling what the future may hold, or whether or not we are connecting vectors that should remain solitary. But our math has worked just fine in the past -- better than Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson's math, that's for sure.

And we'd love to be wrong about what's coming. But unfortunately that isn't up to us, and it never has been: It's up to the Bush administration. And it has never failed to let us down.

MURDOCH DEFENDS FOX NEWS

Everybody knows how I feel about Fox News . *insert sarcasm here* "Uh yeah waiter....I'll have the Fox News well done with a side of mashed spin doctor & gravy...some propaganda with lemon peper sauce....and a diet coke. Oh and can I super size that?

Here's the article....

Rupert Murdoch may own 20th Century Fox, the Fox TV Network, MySpace, the London Times, and the New York Post, among other media properties, but it is his ownership of Fox News that has brought him the most public recognition, he suggests in an interview with Esquire magazine. "I can go into restaurants and a whole table will get up and clap if they recognize me because they love Fox News," he said. He called the cable news channel "a core asset in every sense, in terms of its popularity and in terms of its profit."

He turned aside claims that the channel is a mouthpiece of conservatives. "The thing that I am proudest of is that it is very, very fair," he said. He praised conservative commentator Bill O'Reilly for booking guests on both sides of controversies. "[MSNBC's] Keith Olbermann is trying to make a business out of destroying Bill O'Reilly. He's done certain things to Bill O'Reilly that I believe were way over the line. I think that's bad behavior. But it's okay for him to criticize Bill. And Bill shouldn't be so sensitive. He should ignore that."

Lies, damn lies & elections

THERE'S AN OLD saying that the truth is the first casualty of war.

Well, if that's true, then the 2008 presidential race must be World War III.

Phony Internet rumors, a candidate who was for a "Bridge to Nowhere" before she was against it, and some vicious TV ads with dubious claims — and we're only a week into the traditional fall campaign.

The rampant truth-stretching and smear campaigns have already dashed hopes that one of the most notable White House races in American history — pitting the would-be first African-American president against an ex-POW war hero — would also be one of the most honorable.

Here's a look at the volley of accusations. While distortions can and do occur on both sides, not all political lies are created equal, which is why we're awarding lipstick-pigs, one for a mild whopper and four for a big one, to the various half-and un-truths out there:

"Bridge to Nowhere." When John McCain shook up the race by picking Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, a key selling point was that she was "a maverick" who had acted to kill the so-called "Bridge to Nowhere," a massive bridge connecting Ketchikan, Alaska, to its airport on sparsely populated Gravina Island, costing federal taxpayers $223 million. She told the Republican convention: "I told Congress, thanks but no thanks on that bridge to nowhere."

Except that she had aggressively supported the bridge project when she was a candidate for governor in 2006, only killing the plan a year later when it became a national political hot potato for the GOP. And the money wasn't returned to the American taxpayers; she kept it for related road projects.

Lie rating: 3 lipstick-pigs.

The middle-class multimillionaire: Democrats were already working to portray the Republicans as the party of the rich when some felt McCain handed them a gift at August's Rick Warren values forum, when he seemed to say you weren't rich until you earned a whopping $5 million. Barack Obama got big applause at Denver's Invesco Field when he asked why the GOP standard-bearer would "define middle-class as someone making under $5 million a year."

Except that McCain was clearly joking when he made the remark. How can you tell? Well, for one thing, the audience laughed, and for another thing, McCain said when the yuks died down, "But seriously...." Obama isn't exactly known for his own sense of humor, but he should know a joke when he hears one.

Lie rating: 3 lipstick-pigs.

Special-needs funding: No candidate has burst onto the scene like Palin, and with so much that's being said about her, some of it is blatantly not true. Much of the false gossip has come from that underbelly of political talk, anonymous Internet posters and e-mails, but a couple untruths have been picked up and spread by bigwigs who should know better.

This week, CNN had to correct an on-air comment from a Democratic surrogate, Huffington Post political director Hillary Rosen, who said Palin — whose infant son has Down syndrome -- cut funding for special needs education in Alaska. But she didn't — she increased it, and Rosen was quoting from an Internet poster who misinterpreted raw budget data. Lie rating: 3 lipstick-pigs.

The sex-ed ad: While lies about Palin were coming from the bottom-down of the Internet, highly dubious claims about Obama were coming from the brain trust of the McCain campaign; especially with an ad that accused Obama of successfully backing sex education for kindergartners and wanting kids "learning about sex before learning to read."

The claim sent off lie meters around the country (PolitiFact called it "an absurd claim about a bill that never passed.") The bill in the Illinois state senate, which Obama voted for in committee but didn't pass, would have made it OK for younger schoolchildren to learn about predators and other age appropriate info. This ad is grade-A bacon.

Lie rating: 4 lipstick-pigs.

eBay to nowhere: One of Palin's biggest applause lines in St. Paul came when she discussed the fate of a state airplane that had become a symbol of government waste in Alaska. Declared the vice presidential nominee: "I put it on eBay."

It all depends on what you're definition of the word "put" is; the plane didn't sell through the online auction system and instead was sold through a conventional broker for less money than the state was seeking. That didn't stop McCain from telling a subsequent rally that Palin "sold" the plane on eBay.

Lie rating: 2 lipstick-pigs.

Banning books: Another Internet whopper regarding Palin is a widely circulated list of books that she supposed had banned from the town library of Wasilla, Alaska, shortly after she was elected mayor in 1996. The long list even includes Harry Potter books that hadn't been written yet.

No, Palin is not a psychic — the list is bogus. Palin never ordered any specific books banned in Wasilla, according to numerous news accounts, although it was reported in local media at the time that she did ask the librarian, whom she unsuccessfully sought to fire, what the general policy was on removing books. Lie rating: 2 lipstick-pigs.

Loophole loophole: Obama's speech in Denver was his first chance to lay out his policy plans for a broad audience, and one of his claims was that he would "pay for every dime" of his economic plan "by closing corporate loopholes and tax havens."

But impartial observers like Philadelphia-based Factcheck. org say the Obama statement was "wrong" on two counts. For one thing, a key part of his plan for closing the budget gap would be a higher tax rate on the wealthiest Americans such as families earning more than $250,000. Also, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center says that Obama's plan won't have "every dime" paid for and that it will increase the national debt, albeit not as much as McCain's plan.

Lie rating: 2 lipstick-pigs.

A taxing tale: A number of speakers at the Republican convention echoed a McCain TV ad that accused the Democratic standard-bearer of planning "painful tax increases on working American families."

As noted above, that's only true if their work brings in more than $250,000 for a family; Obama's tax proposal would also cut levies for more than 80 percent of American families, it has been estimated.

Lie rating: 2 lipstick-pigs.

Fact-check falsehoods: This week, the McCain campaign released an ad claiming that Factcheck.org found that the Obama campaign was making attacks on Palin that were "completely false" or "misleading."

In one of many surreal moments of this campaign, that forced Factcheck.org to come out with a new report flagging the McCain campaign for misquoting Factcheck.org. The actual statements involved Internet rumors about the Alaska governor, and had nothing to do with the Obama campaign.

Lie rating: 3 lipstick-pigs.

Fuzzy math: Here's another economic claim that Obama made in Denver, when he said that when Bill Clinton was president, "the average American family saw its income go up $7,500 instead of down $2,000 like it has under George Bush."

PolitiFact labels this statement as "half-true" because the numbers don't exactly add up; the Clinton number includes retirees while the Bush number does not. But the overall trend is correct; average income did decline under the current president.

Lie rating: 1 lipstick-pig. *

By WILL BUNCH
Philadelphia Daily News

bunchw@phillynews.com 215-854-2957

This Chick Right Here...

How many of you saw the interview Charlie Gibson had with Sara Palin last night? It's clear that this chick didn't know what the Bush Doctrine was and she tried to fake it on national TV as if she wouldn't be called on it. How can you call yourself a candidate for VP and not know what the Bush Doctrine is??? To bad her camp forgot to brief her on that ESPECIALLY since this was her first interview since it was announced that she was running for VP. If she didn't know she should have just asked Charlie to explain it to her, she couldn't have looked any crazier than she did by trying to fake it.....Lawd, some people. lol


Sarah Palin stumbles in TV interview

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, in her first interview since becoming the Republican vice-presidential candidate, has not been able to respond to a question about the Bush Doctrine.

Speaking at length with ABC interviewer, Charles Gibson, Palin was visibly stumped when she was asked by Gibson if she agreed with the Bush Doctrine.

Palin did not seem to know what Gibson was talking about.

Palin was clearly caught off guard when Gibson asked, "Do you agree with the Bush Doctrine?”

Seeking direction, and perhaps time to formulate her answer, Palin asked, "In what respect, Charlie?"

Initially unwilling to define the doctrine, Gibson said, "What do you interpret it to be?"

Palin asked, "His world view?"

Gibson said, "No, the Bush doctrine, enunciated September 2002, before the Iraq war."

Gibson finally informed her that it meant the right of "anticipatory self-defence."

The Bush Doctrine is a term used to describe several foreign policy principles of president George Bush, including the controversial policy of preventive war and the overthrowing of foreign regimes that represent a threat to the United States.

The Bush Doctrine was used to justify the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

Separately, Palin used the interview to reinforce the foreign policy of McCain, warning Russia away from aggression against its neighbours and generally supporting President Bush's approach to combating terrorism.

But she also put some distance between the Bush Administration and the McCain team. "There have been blunders along the way," she said.

Palin said the United States could not allow Iran to have nuclear weapons.

"As Americans, we do not have to stand for that," she said.

Big Bang experiment marred by suicide

WOW! .......That's all I can say....wow.

New Delhi - An Indian teenage girl killed herself because she feared that a massive experiment to re-create the birth of the Universe would herald the end of the world, reports said on Thursday.

Chayya Lal, 16, from the central state of Madhya Pradesh, committed suicide after watching television reports on how the particle-smashing test in Geneva could bring about doomsday, Indian newspapers reported.

She swallowed unidentified tablets on Tuesday and was rushed to hospital, but doctors were unable to save her.

Chayya's parents said she had spoken of her fears about the "Big Bang" experiment.

"Chayya had asked me a number of times whether the world would end as they were saying on television," her father Bihari told the Hindustan Times.

"We tried to divert her attention and told her not to worry about any great disaster," the Mail Today quoted him as saying.

The Mail said the local police inspector had raised doubts about the reasons for Chayya's death and had vowed to investigate.

The start of the underground test on Wednesday was hailed a success after the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) designed to expose the secrets of the cosmos swung into action.

Scientists behind the project had earlier dismissed fears that it could create either a "black hole" whose super-gravity would swallow the Earth, or a theoretical particle called a strangelet that would turn the planet to goo.

When the machine is fully operational, scientists hope to fleetingly replicate conditions at the "Big Bang" that created the Universe 13.7-billion years ago. - Sapa-AFP

Fabulously Observant: The 3 most important US Jews

SOURCE:

This month marks the 354th anniversary of the arrival of the first boatload of Jews to North America. To honor the birthday of the American Jewish community, I surveyed several dozen leading American Jewish historians about who they think are the three most important figures in American Jewish history. Twenty scholars responded, including perhaps the three leading figures in the field - Dr. Hasia Diner (New York University), Dr. Deborah Dash Moore (University of Michigan) and Dr. Jonathan Sarna (Brandeis University). Hebrew University's Dr. Eli Lederhendler and Tel Aviv University's Dr. Robert Rockaway participated, though the other major historian of American Jewry living in Israel, Kimmy Caplan of Bar-Ilan University, chose not to.

Interestingly, although 10 names were listed and 10 more were volunteered, it quickly became clear that American Jewish historians consider three men to be towering figures in the tales they tell.

Louis Brandeis was the most important American Jew. He was the first Jew appointed to the Supreme Court, and pioneered a uniquely American form of Zionism. Rockaway pointed out that Brandeis "made Zionism a respected American movement, and sold the idea to American Jews and non-Jews."

Prof. Lee Shai Weissbach of the University of Louisville said Brandeis's elevation to the Supreme Court "symbolized the opening of possibilities for Jews in American civic and political life." When Brandeis joined the court in 1916, anti-Semitism was so intense that one of his fellow justices refused to sit next to him for the official court photo.

For many years after Brandeis's appointment, particularly after Associate Justice Benjamin Cardozo retired and was replaced by Felix Frankfurter, there was a de facto "Jewish seat" on the Supreme Court. Frankfurter was replaced by Arthur Goldberg, who was replaced by Abe Fortas, after whom the tradition ceased. But both of president Bill Clinton's appointees, Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Stephen Breyer, are Jewish. In addition, president Ronald Reagan tried to appoint Judge Douglas Ginsburg, whose nomination was scotched because of accusations that he had smoked marijuana.

Two scholars offered important final descriptions of Brandeis: Dr. David Kaufman of the Hebrew Union College called him "the personification of American-Jewish synthesis," and Dr. Samuel Heilman of the City University of New York Graduate Center said Brandeis's involvement with the Supreme Court and American Zionism "put the lie to the dual-loyalty canard."

PERHAPS THE most important American Jew little-known to today's American Jews is Mordecai Kaplan. Kaufman called Kaplan "the key figure in the Americanization of Judaism." Jewish scholar and prolific author Jacob Neusner said Kaplan "thought through the issues of Judaism in a way that matched the American Jewish situation." University of Washington Prof. Noam Pianko praised Kaplan's "insights into the sociological basis of Jewish peoplehood."

Several key institutions in American Judaism which Kaplan pioneered endure. For example, Kaplan brought the bat mitzva to America, with his daughter Judith being the first to undergo that new rite of passage. He also helped innovate the Jewish community center movement, the so-called "shul with a pool" (the title of one of Kaufman's books). He imagined that a synagogue should be more than a place to pray - that it should be a place for the social, intellectual and recreational needs of Jews as well. Today's JCC's owe much to his ideas.

In addition, Kaplan's ideas became the keystone of today's Reconstructionist movement. The only major American Jewish movement in which God is not necessarily central, Reconstructionism emphasizes Kaplan's idea that Judaism is an "evolving religious civilization." Reconstructionism also experimented with the havura movement growing out of Kaplan's values.

Kaplan had an impact on every American Jewish religious movement - including Orthodoxy, as documented in Jeffrey Gurock and Jacob Schacter's A Modern Heretic and a Traditional Community. At least two generations of Conservative Judaism's teachers and rabbis were influenced by Kaplan's instruction at the Jewish Theological Seminary's rabbinical school and Teacher's Institute. And Reform Judaism adopted Kaplan's saying that Halacha should have "a vote but not a veto."

FINALLY, 19TH-century pioneer of Reform Judaism Isaac Mayer Wise came in third place. According to Rockaway, Wise "put Reform Judaism on the map" in the United States. Working from Cincinnati, he established Hebrew Union College, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (now the Union for Reform Judaism), and the Central Conference of American Rabbis. He trained hundreds of Reform rabbis, and in Rockaway's words, "made Reform the strongest Jewish religious movement in America."

The European-born Wise was one of the earliest American rabbis to push for family pews in the synagogue, a mixed choir and counting women in a minyan. He wrote a new prayer book entitled Minhag America (American custom), with the goal of uniting all American congregations. He was also an American Jewish press pioneer, publishing his own The Israelite (later The American Israelite) newspaper.

Come Study With Me

If you want some exciting topics to study come visit me on my 'Study Blog'! You can also look in the column to your left at the top and you'll see what Im studying . You can click this link to get there. http://mystudies1.wordpress.com/ Or click on one of the links at the top of the left column. See you there!

Sparkle

Large Hadron Collider starts and we're still here

Im really teed off about this event, not so much that man is yet again trying to play God, but because this is a slick way to try and debunk the whole "creation" theory....to say that God didn't create the heavens and earth, but that there was a big bang. Scientists will go to any length to theorize what they don't understand. They want to prove that we exist because of protons clashing together causing a huge cosmic blast and we evolved into the humans we are today. Here's one thing they'll NEVER be able to figure out though....where did these protons come from? I guess they just WERE. It amazes me how they don't want to give GOD/the creator credit for anything. I guess we humans follow suit in all great works of art. The creator never get's recognized for his work until he dies and with God that'll never happen. As long as man lives, he too will live...because we are him and HE is we. WE are the God particle they're so desperately searching for.

Aaaah well here's the article, read on:

LAST night, physicists near Geneva switched on the largest, most powerful scientific tool ever built and the world did not vanish down a black hole, as alarmists had predicted.

Instead, the $US8 billion ($9.9 billion) Large Hadron Collider (see illustration below) successfully sent the first beam of protons -- members of a group of subatomic particles called hadrons -- hurtling around a 27km circular tunnel running beneath Switzerland and France.

The event caused sighs of relief from more than 2000 scientists from 150 institutes in 45 countries, including Australia, who had waited 14 years for the moment.

But their relief had nothing to do with lurking black holes, said cosmologist and theoretical physicist Paul Davies with Arizona State University in Tempe.

"The black hole threat was time-wasting drivel. Even had black holes appeared they would have immediately disappeared," he said.

The point of yesterday's exercise was to begin callibrating the more than 10,000 powerful superconducting magnets and four enormous detectors comprising the collider, run by the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, or CERN

Once the collider is up and running scientists will use it to send proton beams around the collider in opposite directions at nearly the speed of light.

The ensuing collisions will smash the particles apart, helping physicists gain insights into the fundamental nature of matter.

"It's an exciting time because this new accelerator is providing us a window to a new regime of matter never studied before," said University of Sydney physicist Aldo Saavedra.

Along with scientists at Melbourne and Wollongong universities and WA industrial partner VEEM Engineering Group, Dr Saavedra has contributed to the development of the ATLAS detector which will be used to look for signs of new physics.

One of the first signs scientists hope to detect is proof of the Higgs boson, a subatomic particle first proposed in the mid-1960s by American physicist Peter Higgs.

The boson is central to the so-called Standard Model of particle physics as it explains how other particles gain mass.

But as Professor Davies says, the "goddamn" particle -- commonly known as the "God" particle -- has until now remained beyond the reach of technology.

"I am sure the 'Higgs' will be found, but if there's no 'Higgs' it would be really exciting because it would falsify the Standard Model and force a rethink," he said.

Professor Davies predicted that while confirming the Higgs boson could take two or three years, it may take mere months to detect "supersymmetry", the "bridge" between subatomic particles and fundamental forces like gravity, electromagnetism and weak and strong interaction.

Physicists also plan to use the collider to recreate conditions just billionths of a second after the Big Bang, which brought time and space into existence.

If so, they might unravel the mystery of the "dark stuff" making up over 95 per cent of the universe.

Astrophysicists believe the ordinary matter making up stars, galaxies, planets and the other stuff of space adds up to less than 5 per cent of the universe. The rest is "dark matter" and "dark energy"' about which little is known.

Unmanned US drone kills school children

Getting upset about school children being the victims of this horrible tragedy is understandable for a first reaction. But I want you to pay more attention to the fact that the drone that pointed it's self in the direction of the school and fired SEVEN GUIDED MISSILES was UNMANNED. On top of all this, the thing then positioned it's self to fire the house of Commander who just happend to have been a guerrilla during the war against Russia in Afghanistan. Unmanned huh? Yeah, okay....At least that's what they say.

HERE'S THE ARTICLE:


Seven guided missiles have been fired from US spy planes in North Waziristan, killing three persons and injuring 15 others, including women and children.

According to Pakistani sources, the guided missiles targeted a madrassa, or Muslim school, and the house of Afghan commander Jalaluddin Haqqani.

A drone operated by US-led forces in Afghanistan allegedly fired six to seven guided missiles at the madrassa in north Waziristan.

It then shot at the house of Commander Haqqani, who first surfaced as a guerrilla during the war against Russia in Afghanistan.

North and South Waziristan tribal regions are considered strongholds of the Pakistani Taliban.

Pakistan's tribal belt has witnessed a sharp increase in attacks by drones operated by the US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan over the past week.

More than 40 people have died in these attacks.

UPDATE:

It's amazing what you'll find when you questions things and start checking them out. "UNMANNED" my left butt cheek! Between these two articles SOMEBODY's lying.

Bush said to give orders allowing raids in Pakistan

WASHINGTON: President George W. Bush secretly approved orders in July that for the first time allow American Special Operations forces to carry out ground assaults inside Pakistan without the prior approval of the Pakistani government, according to senior American officials.

The classified orders signal a watershed for the Bush administration after nearly seven years of trying to work with Pakistan to combat the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and after months of high-level stalemate about how to challenge the militants' increasingly secure base in Pakistan's tribal areas.

American officials say that they will notify Pakistan when they conduct limited ground attacks like the Special Operations raid last Wednesday in a Pakistani village near the Afghanistan border, but that they will not ask for its permission.

"The situation in the tribal areas is not tolerable," said a senior American official who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on condition of anonymity because of the delicate nature of the missions. "We have to be more assertive. Orders have been issued."

The new orders reflect concern about safe havens for Al Qaeda and the Taliban inside Pakistan, as well as an American view that Pakistan lacks the will and ability to combat militants. They also illustrate lingering distrust of the Pakistani military and intelligence agencies and a belief that some American operations had been compromised once Pakistanis were advised of the details.

The Central Intelligence Agency has for several years fired missiles at militants inside Pakistan from remotely piloted Predator aircraft. But the new orders for the military's Special Operations forces relax firm restrictions on conducting raids on the soil of an important ally without its permission.

Pakistan's top army officer said Wednesday that his forces would not tolerate American incursions like the one that took place last week and that the army would defend the country's sovereignty "at all costs."

It was unclear precisely what legal authorities the United States has invoked to conduct even limited ground raids in a friendly country. A second senior American official said that the Pakistani government had privately assented to the general concept of limited ground assaults by Special Operations forces against significant militant targets, but that it did not approve each mission.

The official did not say which members of the government gave their approval.

Any new ground operations in Pakistan raise the prospect of American forces being killed or captured in the restive tribal areas — and a propaganda coup for Al Qaeda. Last week's raid also presents a major test for Pakistan's new president, Asif Ali Zardari, who supports more aggressive action by his army against the militants but cannot risk being viewed as an American lap dog, as was his predecessor, Pervez Musharraf.

The new orders were issued after months of debate inside the Bush administration about whether to authorize a ground campaign inside Pakistan. The debate, first reported by The New York Times in late June, at times pitted some officials at the State Department against parts of the Pentagon that advocated aggressive action against Qaeda and Taliban targets inside the tribal areas.

Details about last week's commando operation have emerged that indicate the mission was more intrusive than what had previously been known.

According to two American officials briefed on the raid, it involved more than two dozen members of the Navy Seals who spent several hours on the ground and killed about two dozen suspected Qaeda fighters in what now appears to have been a planned attack against militants who had been conducting attacks against an American forward operating base across the border in Afghanistan.

Supported by an AC-130 gunship, the Special Operations forces were whisked away by helicopters after completing the mission.

Although the senior American official who provided the most detailed description of the new presidential order would discuss it only on condition of anonymity, his account was corroborated by three other senior American officials from several government agencies, all of whom made clear that they support the more aggressive approach.

Pakistan's government has asserted that last week's raid achieved little except killing civilians and stoking anti-Americanism in the tribal areas.

"Unilateral action by the American forces does not help the war against terror because it only enrages public opinion," said Husain Haqqani, Pakistan's ambassador to Washington, during a speech on Friday. "In this particular incident, nothing was gained by the action of the troops."

As an alternative to American ground operations, some Pakistani officials have made clear that they prefer the CIA's Predator aircraft, operating from the skies, as a method of killing Qaeda operatives. The CIA for the most part has coordinated with Pakistan's government before and after it launches missiles from the drone. On Monday, a Predator strike in North Waziristan killed several Arab Qaeda operatives.

A new American command structure was put in place this year to better coordinate missions by the CIA and members of the Pentagon's Joint Special Operations Command, made up of the Army's Delta Force and the Navy Seals.

The move was intended to address frustration on the ground about different agencies operating under different marching orders. Under the arrangement, a senior CIA official based at Bagram air base in Afghanistan was put in charge of coordinating CIA and military activities in the border region.

Spokesmen for the White House, Defense Department and CIA declined to comment on Wednesday about the new orders. Some senior congressional officials have received briefings on the new authorities. A spokeswoman for Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who leads the Armed Services Committee, declined to comment.

American commanders in Afghanistan have complained bitterly that militants use sanctuaries in Pakistan to attack American troops in Afghanistan.

"I'm not convinced we're winning it in Afghanistan," Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday. "I am convinced we can."

Toward that goal, Mullen said he had ordered a comprehensive military strategy to address the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The commando raid last week and an increasing number of recent missile strikes are part of a more aggressive overall American campaign in the border region aimed at intensifying attacks on Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the waning months of the Bush administration, with less than two months to go before November elections.

State Department officials, as well as some within the National Security Council, have expressed concern about any Special Operations missions that could be carried out without the approval of the American ambassador in Islamabad.

The months-long delay in approving ground missions created intense frustration inside the military's Special Operations community, which believed that the Bush administration was holding back as the Qaeda safe haven inside Pakistan became more secure for militants.

The stepped-up campaign inside Pakistan comes at a time when American-Pakistani relations have been fraying, and when anger is increasing within American intelligence agencies about ties between Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, known as the ISI, and militants in the tribal areas.

Analysts at the CIA and other American spy and security agencies believe not only that the bombing of India's embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, in July by militants was aided by ISI operatives, but also that the highest levels of Pakistan's security apparatus — including the army chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani — had knowledge of the plot.

"It's very difficult to imagine he was not aware," a senior American official said of Kayani.

American intelligence agencies have said that senior Pakistani national security officials favor the use of militant groups to preserve Pakistan's influence in the region, as a hedge against India and Afghanistan.

In fact, some American intelligence analysts believe that ISI operatives did not mind when their role in the July bombing in Kabul became known. "They didn't cover their tracks very well," a senior Defense Department official said, "and I think the embassy bombing was the ISI drawing a line in the sand."