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Ted Cruz accuses Harry Reid of ‘slander campaign’ against Koch brothers
Source: Washington Post
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tx.) on Tuesday called the repeated Democratic attacks on the Koch brothers “an embarrassment to this institution,” lashing out at Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid during a heated speech on the Senate floor.
“The majority leader has launched an unprecedented slander campaign against two private citizens,” Cruz said, describing Reid's regular broadsides of Charles and David Koch "reprehensible.”
In response, Reid spokesman Adam Jentleson said in a statement that "in one day, Senator Cruz called for deporting young people who have been in America all their lives, threatened to shut down the government and rushed to the defense of shadowy billionaires who are rigging our democracy to benefit the wealthy and powerful. It’s clear whose side he’s on.”
Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/09/09/ted-cruz-accuses-harry-reid-of-slander-campaign-against-koch-brothers/
Catastrophic Floods are the new normal in Pakistan
Catastrophic floods: the new normal in Pakistan
In Pakistan, where at least 207 people died in the past weeks' flooding, crippling and catastrophic floods have become the new normal. The past four consecutive monsoon seasons--2013, 2012, 2011, and 2010--have all seen top-five most expensive flood disasters in Pakistani history. The worst came in 2010, when the second heaviest monsoon rains of the past 50 years triggered rampaging floods that inundated one-fifth of the country, killing 1,985 people and causing a staggering $9.5 billion in damage--4% of the nation's GDP--according to the International Disaster Database, EM-DAT. Part of the reason for the increase in destructive flooding is due to poor flood control infrastructure, combined with a rising population and ineffective government policies.
Heavy monsoon rainfall events are increasing
A warming climate loads the dice in favor of heavier extreme precipitation events. This occurs because more water vapor can evaporate into a warmer atmosphere, increasing the chances of record heavy downpours. In a study published in Science in 2006, Goswami et al. found that the level of heavy rainfall activity in the monsoon over India had more than doubled in the 50 years since the 1950s, leading to an increased disaster potential from heavy flooding. Moderate and weak rain events decreased during those 50 years, leaving the total amount of rain deposited by the monsoon roughly constant. The authors commented, "These findings are in tune with model projections and some observations that indicate an increase in heavy rain events and a decrease in weak events under global warming scenarios." However, a 2011 study by Ghosh et al., "Lack of uniform trends but increasing spatial variability in observed Indian rainfall extremes", cautioned that the observed increase in heavy precipitation events in India had a very complicated pattern that was not easily quantified. In general, we should expect to see an increased number of disastrous monsoon floods in coming decades if the climate continues to warm as expected. Since the population continues to increase at a rapid rate in the region, death tolls from monsoon flooding disasters are likely to climb dramatically in coming decades. However, my greater concern for India is drought. The monsoon rains often fail during El Niño years, and more than 4.2 million people died in India due to droughts between 1900 - 2012. Up until the late 1960s, it was common for the failure of the monsoon rains to kill millions of people in India. The drought of 1965 - 1967 killed at least 1.5 million people. However, since the Green Revolution of the late 1960s--a government initiative to improve food self-sufficiency using new technology and high-yield grains--failure of the monsoon rains has not led to mass starvation in India. It is uncertain whether of not the Green Revolution can keep up with India's booming population, and the potential that climate change might bring more severe droughts. Climate models show a wide range of possibilities for the future of the Indian monsoon, and it is unclear at present what the future might hold. However, the fact that one of the worst droughts in India's history occurred in 2009 shows that serious droughts have to be a major concern for the future. The five worst Indian monsoons along with the rainfall deficits for the nation:
1) 1877, -33%
2) 1899, -29%
3) 1918, -25%
4) 1972, -24%
5) 2009, -22%
Figure 1. A temple is partially submerged in floodwaters in Jammu, India, Saturday, Sept. 6, 2014. (AP Photo/Channi Anand)
more
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2791
The Twenty-Eight Pages
BY LAWRENCE WRIGHT
President George W. Bush meets with Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi Ambassador to the United States, on August 27, 2002, at Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas.
On the bottom floor of the United States Capitol’s new underground visitors’ center, there is a secure room where the House Intelligence Committee maintains highly classified files. One of those files is titled “Finding, Discussion and Narrative Regarding Certain Sensitive National Security Matters.” It is twenty-eight pages long. In 2002, the Administration of George W. Bush excised those pages from the report of the Joint Congressional Inquiry into the 9/11 attacks. President Bush said then that publication of that section of the report would damage American intelligence operations, revealing “sources and methods that would make it harder for us to win the war on terror.”
“There’s nothing in it about national security,” Walter Jones, a Republican congressman from North Carolina who has read the missing pages, contends. “It’s about the Bush Administration and its relationship with the Saudis.” Stephen Lynch, a Massachusetts Democrat, told me that the document is “stunning in its clarity,” and that it offers direct evidence of complicity on the part of certain Saudi individuals and entities in Al Qaeda’s attack on America. “Those twenty-eight pages tell a story that has been completely removed from the 9/11 Report,” Lynch maintains. Another congressman who has read the document said that the evidence of Saudi government support for the 9/11 hijacking is “very disturbing,” and that “the real question is whether it was sanctioned at the royal-family level or beneath that, and whether these leads were followed through.” Now, in a rare example of bipartisanship, Jones and Lynch have co-sponsored a resolution requesting that the Obama Administration declassify the pages.
The Saudis have also publicly demanded that the material be released. “Twenty-eight blanked-out pages are being used by some to malign our country and our people,” Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who was the Saudi Ambassador to the United States at the time of the 9/11 attacks, has declared. “Saudi Arabia has nothing to hide. We can deal with questions in public, but we cannot respond to blank pages.”
The effort to declassify the document comes at a time when a lawsuit, brought ten years ago on behalf of the victims of the attacks and their families, along with the insurers who paid out claims, is advancing through the American court system. The suit targets Saudi charities, banks, and individuals. In 2005, the government of Saudi Arabia was dismissed from the suit on the ground of sovereign immunity, but in July the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the Kingdom as a defendant. The plaintiffs believe that the withheld twenty-eight pages will support their allegation that the 9/11 hijackers received direct assistance from Saudi government officials in the United States. According to representatives of the families of 9/11 victims, President Obama has twice promised to release the material but so far has failed to do so. “The redaction of the twenty-eight pages has become a coverup by two Presidents, and coverup implies complicity,” Sharon Premoli, who is co-chair of 9/11 Families United for Justice Against Terrorism, said. “The families and survivors have the right to know the whole truth about the brutal murder of three thousand loved ones and the injuries of thousands more.”
more
http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/twenty-eight-pages?src=mp
Profits Soar As Pentagon Leans on Private Corporations for Special Ops
New research shows how US Special Operations Command is outsourcing many of its most sensitive information activities, including interrogation, drone and psychological operations
by Jon Queally
Private military contractors are reaping billions of dollars in profitable rewards from the U.S. government's global network of clandestine counter-terrorism and other overseas operations, according to a new report that examines the high-levels of integration between for-profit corporations and the Pentagon's global military and surveillance apparatus.
The new report—titled US Special Operations Command Contracting: Data-Mining the Public Record—written by researcher Crofton Black and commissioned by the U.K.-based Remote Control Project, shows that "corporations are integrated into some of the most sensitive aspects" of operations conducted by the U.S. Special Operations Command (or USSOCOM). Those activities, according to the report include: flying drones and overseeing target acquisition, facilitating communications between forward operating locations and central command hubs, interrogating prisoners, translating captured material, and managing the flow of information between regional populations and the US military.
"[USSOCOM] is outsourcing many of its most sensitive information activities, including interrogation, drone and psychological operations," explained Black in a statement. "Remote warfare is increasingly being shaped by the private sector.”
And Caroline Donnellan, manager of the Remote Control project, said, “This report is distinctive in that it mines data from the generally classified world of US special operations. It reveals the extent to which remote control activity is expanding in all its facets, with corporations becoming more and more integrated into very sensitive elements of warfare. The report’s findings are of concern given the challenges remote warfare poses for effective investigation, transparency, accountability and oversight. This highlights the difficulties in assessing the impact and consequences of remote control activity.”
more
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/09/09/profits-soar-pentagon-leans-private-corporations-special-ops
'Ozzie and Harriet' house lists at $4.995 million
“The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” Nelson house in Hollywood Hills West is on the market at $4.995 million.
The East Coast-inspired traditional-style home doubled as a set for the family television show in the 1950s and '60s and as the Nelson’s home. Now the 1916 two-story house, set on a half-acre, has been remodeled with Kishani Perera-designed finishes.
Gone is Ozzie Nelson’s model train, which ran on a track near the ceiling in the pub room and had been passed down from homeowner to homeowner. But the light and bright updated interiors retain the Old Hollywood charm of the house, which includes a center hall, formal living and dining rooms, a media room, a den, five bedrooms and seven bathrooms.
The property sold last year for $3.025 million, public records show.
http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/hot-property/la-fi-hotprop-ozzie-and-harriet-20140908-story.html
Shots From an Incredible New Trove of Depression and World War II Photos
Between 1935 and 1944, the Farm Security Agency-Office of War Information dispatched photographers to all ends of the United States to document life during hard times and wartime. Many of their photos, taken by now-legendary photographers like Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans, have become iconic representations of America during the Depression and World War II. But most of the hundreds of thousands of negatives, collected in what became known as "The File," were never seen by the public.
No longer. Yale University's Photogrammar has just made more than 170,000 of the FSA-OWI photos easily accessible online. You can browse and search by photographer, location, date, or subject. Even a quick visit to the site turns up surprising, searing photos that feel like they should be in history books, on the cover of old LIFE magazines, or hanging in art galleries. Here are 10 that caught my eye as I looked through the massive collection—including one taken less than a block from the Mother Jones office in downtown San Francisco.
Riveter at a military aircraft factory. Fort Worth, Texas, 1942 Howard R. Hollem/FSA-OWI Collection
"Wife of Negro sharecropper." Lee County, Mississippi, 1935 Arthur Rothstein/FSA-OWI Collection
"Monday morning, December 8, 1941, after Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor." San Francisco, California, 1941 John Collier/FSA-OWI Collection
more
http://www.motherjones.com/media/2014/09/depression-world-war-ii-lange-photos
http://photogrammar.yale.edu
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