Osama bin Laden dies in hail of American gunfire, his body is recovered for proof

Osama bin Laden, whose al-Qaida terrorist organization killed more than 3,000 people in the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001, is dead, U.S. President Barack Obama dramatically announced Sunday night.

 Full story  Graphics from BoingBoing

As It Stands: UFE: Dreaming of economic equality

By Dave Stancliff/For the Times-Standard

Posted: 05/01/2011 02:40:20 AM PDT

Once upon a time, some wealthy people in the Kingdom got together and said, “We need to be fair and share.” It was a beautiful kingdom stretching from sea to sea, a marvel and example of what a country should be.

A fantasy? Perhaps not. Let me introduce you to “United for a Fair Economy (UFE),” a national, independent, nonpartisan, 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Their goal is to close the growing wealth divide, to change the rules that tilt tax benefits toward the wealthy, and to spotlight the role of race in economic inequality.

Their mission is to raise awareness that concentrated wealth and power undermine the economy, corrupt democracy, deepen the racial divide, and tear communities apart. Talk about taking on “Mission Impossible.” The members of UFE believe in their vision of a global society where prosperity is shared.

 This is certainly a noble vision where corporations don't dominate our economy or the content of our mass culture. In their version of a better world, values, not profits alone, will guide economic decisions. But who are “they?” These visionaries? These Ivory Tower dreamers?

”They” are a collection of wealthy (you read that right) people who want to raise taxes on rich people like themselves. As strange as that may sound, it's on the level. To learn more about them, go to the website www.faireconomy.org.

Let me tell you about one of the members of UFE. His name is Eric Schoenberg. He inherited money and has a healthy portfolio from his days as an investment banker. Currently, he teaches a business class at Columbia University. Not exactly some kook who wants to endorse a social upheaval.

Schoenberg recently told AP that his income is usually “north of half a million a year.” He had a rough year last year and only made $200,000. His federal income tax bill was a little over $2,000. “I simply point out to people, 'Do you think this is reasonable, that someone in my circumstances should only be paying 1 percent of their income in tax?” he asked reporters.

Now that tax day has come and gone, both Democrats and Republicans are calling for tax laws to be changed. The whole issue will be campaign fodder for the 2012 presidential election as the two parties get entrenched in their ideological foxholes.

The Republicans have made their position clear when it comes to rich people paying more taxes. Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, remarked that nothing stopped rich people who wanted to write checks to the IRS from doing so.

Technically he's right, but obviously he missed the entire point.

Schoenberg asked, “Are we going to let people volunteer to build the road system? Are you going to let them volunteer to pay for education?”

Enter UFE. Can they make a difference? Our politicians are polarized by partisan politics and neither side shows signs of cooperating on meaningful issues.

Is the private sector set to become America's savior? Will financial equality settle upon the land and values replace greed if enough wealthy people help UFE and other nonprofits with the same idea? Is there actually a chance of racial equality in earning power? Will America's roads be repaired and education restored as priority number one in the land?

Sounds like a dream, eh? What are the chances groups like UFE will make a difference? It's hard for me to imagine generations of greed defeated by values in our society today. That's a sad statement to make, and I would love to be wrong and see a real shift in equality, both financially and racially, in the future.

As It Stands, Dom Helder Camara once said, “When we are dreaming alone, it is only a dream. When we are dreaming with others, it is the beginning of reality.”

 

How the U.S. saved a starving Soviet Russia: PBS film highlights Stanford scholar's research on the 1921-23 famine

Photo - An American Relief Administration transport column on the frozen Volga in Tsaritsyn, which is now Volgograd.

The world barely remembers the terrible famine in the Soviet Russia – or the American charity that relieved it. Historian Bertrand Patenaude tells how Herbert Hoover saved more lives than any person who has ever lived.

Corn grits, cocoa, condensed milk, white bread and sugar.

This was America's menu for the starving millions in Soviet Russia during the 1921-23 famine – one of the greatest human disasters in Europe since the Black Death. The famine relief was spearheaded by Herbert Hoover, whose biographers credited him with saving more lives than any person who has ever lived.

The story was featured in the PBS "American Experience" documentary, The Great Famine, which aired nationwide on April 11. However, I found a link here that shows it.

The film is based on Stanford researcher Bertrand Patenaude's The Big Show in Bololand: The American Relief Expedition to Soviet Russia in the Famine of 1921.

Photo Above - Shelters for orphaned and abandoned children multiplied across the famine zone during the fall and winter of 1921.

Photo Right - An ARA supply caravan on the frozen Volga River in the winter of 1922.    All Photos from the Hoover Institute Archives

A monumental display of ignorance: All statements involving Donald Tump…

After the U.S.-led military alliance ejected Saddam Hussein’s forces from Kuwait in 1991, the Kuwaitis "never paid us."

 

Kuwait paid $16 billion in war costs, U.S. paid $7 billion

 

"CNN did a poll recently where Obama and I are statistically tied."

 

One poll (misidentified) conducted before he delved into birth certificate issue

 

"Libya supplies the oil for China. We get no oil from Libya."

 

More to Europe than China

 

Says President Obama's "grandmother in Kenya said he was born in Kenya and she was there and witnessed the birth."

 

Keep listening to tape, there's an immediate correction

 

South Korea doesn't pay the United States for U.S. troops that protect their country.

 

South Korea pays nearly $700 million a year

 

You get this idea. Truth is “Trumped” in Donald’s world. Wanna read some more stupid statements? Go here.

‘People who boast of ancestry often have little else to sustain them’

“This sad little lizard told me that he was a Brontosaurus on his mother’s side. I did not laugh; people who boast of ancestry often have little else to sustain them.  Humoring them costs nothing and adds to happiness in a world in which happiness is in short supply.”  –Robert Heinlein

So why were the tornadoes in South so deadly?

Twister fatalities down radically in recent years, but this was unavoidable

“The bottom line: Massive tornadoes hit populated cities head-on. Forecasters had warned of an "insane" storm system for days, so it's unlikely that the tornadoes caught many by surprise. But with few basements in Dixie Alley, not many places were safe in the paths of tornadoes that had nearly 200-mph winds. Even solidly built houses were swept away. Many entire neighborhoods were completely obliterated.” Story Here.

Tornadoes are pictured moving through Mississippi, in this still image taken from video on April 27, 2011 and released on April 28. Tornadoes and violent storms ripped through seven Southern states, killing at least 295 people and causing billions of dollars of damage in some of the deadliest twisters in U.S. history. Mandatory Credit REUTERS/Image Courtesy of Tornado Videos.net/Discovery/Handout (UNITED STATES - Tags: ENVIRONMENT DISASTER IMAGES OF THE DAY) MUST COURTESY "TORNADOVIDEOS.NET/DISCOVERY CHANNEL'S STORM CHASERS"/NO USE AFTER 1600 GMT MAY 7, 2011. NO ARCHIVES. FOR EDITORIAL USE ONLY. NOT FOR SALE FOR MARKETING OR ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS. THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. IT IS DISTRIBUTED, EXACTLY AS RECEIVED BY REUTERS, AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS

It’s feeling a lot like the 1930s for America’s working class

Despite the fact that nearly everyone in the country was hurt to some degree by onset of the Depression, the 1930's was a period of exacerbated class conflict. One possible reason for this was the divergent responses which upper and lower class individuals had to the crisis. While many of the richest people in America lost money when the stock market crashed, the upper classes as a whole still retained much of the wealth which they had held before the Depression and in most cases did not suffer from unemployment. Perhaps as a way of displaying their continued prosperity in the face of nationwide suffering (or of trying to show up their social equals who may have been hit harder by the crash) many among the upper classes began to flaunt their wealth more than ever. Working class Americans, many of whom were thrown out of work by the Depression (which they often correctly blamed upon the reckless financial dealings of the upper classes) were shocked and angered by this ostentatious display of wealth.

The upper classes, on the other hand, began to resent their social inferiors (as they saw the lower classes) even more than ever, particularly after the institution of the a number of New Deal programs which were paid for out of taxes on those who still had an income. They often viewed such programs as hand outs, which, as can be seen in this magazine cover (right), were not something which the upper classes felt was their responsibility to provide.They were further angered by the actions of President Roosevelt, who catered to the mass of Americans while largely ignoring the interests of the upper classes. These factors served to heighten class tensions during a period when many Americans (both rich and poor) were already tense over their financial futures.Amid this tension, class conflicts often became very visible and even violent, especially in cases of worker strikes. New Deal regulations helped foster significant unionization and these unions would often run into conflict with company hired police forces. Such conflicts, like the Memorial Day Massacre in Chicago, often left people dead on both sides. Upper class Americans, sensitized by the Russian Revolution not two decades before, feared that a class war might be on the horizon as a number of workers joined the Communist party. While these violent conflicts never reached such a boiling point (thanks largely to the New Deal programs which many among the upper classes opposed) fears of this sort helped contribute to a general suspicion on both sides for the entire decade of the thirties.

Part III - A strange thing happened to me ‘in country’

Going back 41 years ago to this same week in April of 1970 - Part III of a 3-part series of posts                                                                                By Dave Stancliff 

One night I got drunk drinking Tiger Beer with some buddies, and found myself staggering towards the Song Ba River in the dark. Heck, I don’t know why I did that. Leaving the base camp alone was a stupid thing to do for several reasons.

Maybe I went to relieve myself. I was drunk. I don’t think I was going there for a swim. I clearly remember a young boy suddenly coming out of nowhere and startled the crap out of me! He stopped me from getting any closer to the river by pulling on my arm urgently and babbling something in Vietnamese or Montagnard. I really couldn’t make sense out of his excited babbling and I was feeling dizzier every moment. 
I tried to shake him off, and slipped and fell down on the muddy ground. Couldn’t seem to get back up.That was the last thing I recalled until I woke up the next morning with a splitting headache and still on the ground.

It was early, and the sun was slowly rising when a couple of my buddies came looking for me. After giving me a ration for being outside the camp perimeter, I told them about the kid.

“One of them, Crow, shook his head in wonder and pointed out to the river. “If you would have gone any further down that bank you would have slid right into rolls of razor sharp barbwire just beneath the waters edge!” 

There is nothing I could say that would explain that feeling of having dodged danger like that. I might have drown if I got tangled up in it while drunk. I looked for the kid the next day to thank him, but couldn’t find him.
I didn’t die because some nameless little boy took pity on a stupid grunt that night. It was one of the strangest things to happen to me during my time in country. This incident happened during the last week of April 1970. We got orders the same week that we were going to Cambodia! But that’s another story that may, or may not, be told another day.

Have you ever heard the original “Good Morning Vietnam?”

I enjoyed Robin William’s version, but let’s keep it real here!

I hope this little three-part series of posts helps you understand what it was like 41 years ago for a 19-year-old boy who had to become a man fast in a foreign land.

It helps me to share this part of my history and hopefully help people understand war is hell. For some soldiers like me with PTSD, the war never ended.

I live with tortured memories that still come unbidden. I manage to lead a somewhat normal life (what’s that anyway?) and I don’t fight my battles every day. Most of the time I’m diverted by my daily routines, and Vietnam and Cambodia stay far in my past. Another life. Another reality.

It’s the nights that sometimes get really bad during certain times of the year (like now), when the nightmares come in terrifying clarity. But medications have lessened them. Counselors call it an “Anniversary date” and attribute it to extremely bad times in a person’s life. Whatever.
I’m really not sure about that. I guess it really doesn’t matter what anyone calls it; this isn’t my best time of the year for me and that usually extends through June.

As It Stands, Thank you for reading this. It helps me to share sometimes.

Royal pain in the ass is over, Lakers win series, & it’s TGIF time

It’s finally over! The Royal Wedding show has come to an end and people can go back to dealing with the real world. I simply cannot see the fascination some people had with these royal jerks. The efforts to make this a “fairy tale” wedding has probably paid off for the merchandizers here and in England. By the way, did you bid on that Kate Middleton look alike jelly bean? I hear it sold for $800.00!

Meanwhile, my Lakers finished off the pesky Hornets and are now ready to face Dallas in the second round of the NBA playoffs.The Mavs eliminated the Blazers last night, and are now ready for the Lakers in what should be a tough series. (Photo - Andrew Bynum turned it on in Game 6, hitting for 18 points and 12 rebounds in the Lakers' win.)

And it’s Friday…people are looking forward to a nice weekend and an end to a long work week. Maybe that’s why Friday’s seem so special. My thoughts today are on those poor Americans suffering from the killer tornedos ripping through the Midwest. I’ve heard that there’s been over 300 casualties and will probably be more as searchers go through the ruins. It’s time for me to get on down the road…

Fake doctors make house calls and rob naïve residents in Turkey

Turkish police donned white coats and stethoscopes to disguise themselves as doctors, then knocked on people's doors to see how easily they would fall for a confidence scam.

The undercover police officers told residents of the southeastern city of Gaziantep they were screening for high blood pressure and handed out pills, according to Turkish media.

They were alarmed when residents at 86 out of 100 households visited on Tuesday swallowed the pills immediately.

Police later returned to warn residents to be more cautious.

The police pills were harmless placebos. But a local gang had been using the same technique to give people heavy sedatives and then burgle them.

Turkish police in other provinces have also used novel methods to test citizens' gullibility.

Officers in Adana in southern Turkey last week called at houses, announcing through the intercom: "I am a burglar, please open the door."

Police said they were stunned at the number of people who opened the door, the Radikal daily newspaper reported.

(Reporting by Ece Toksabay; editing by Alexandra Hudson and Andrew Heavens) Image source

Brazilian Police To Wear Glasses That Scans Faces To Find Criminals

What do you want to bet we already have these scan glasses in the states?

I figure if the technology is going to be used publicly in Brazil then it’s been around for a while. Sure, they talk about testing the glasses, but I’ll bet they got a guarantee when they bought them from...hey wait a minute! Who did invent these advanced specs? There’s no indication in the story where the Brazilian cops got these goodies.

“In technology that is lifted straight from Robocop, Brazilian cops will be outfitted with glasses that can scan faces in a crowd and automatically pick out criminals. The glasses use advanced facial recognition technology that can scan 400 faces a second at 50 yards away.

Facial profiling! The glasses scans 46,000 biometric points on a person’s face and compares it against a criminal database. When the glasses find a bad guy (it’s actually a camera attached to the glasses), a red light pops up inside the glasses and alerts the officer on what to do.

The goal is to start using these Robocop glasses in test runs at crowded events (think soccer games and concerts) so police will be familiar with the technology come 2014 (when Rio de Janeiro hosts the World Cup). A big concern about the World Cup being in Brazil was the security, and if you saw Robocop, you’ll know he handled his share of bad guys with ease.” Source