Is Lockheed Martin Shadowing You?

William D. Hartung: How a Giant Weapons Maker Became the New Big Brother (CBS News)

Have you noticed that Lockheed Martin, the giant weapons corporation, is shadowing you?  No?  Then you haven't been paying much attention.  Let me put it this way: If you have a life, Lockheed Martin is likely a part of it.

True, Lockheed Martin doesn't actually run the U.S. government, but sometimes it seems as if it might as well.  After all, it received $36 billion in government contracts in 2008 alone, more than any company in history.  It now does work for more than two dozen government agencies from the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy to the Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency.  It's involved in surveillance and information processing for the CIA, the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the National Security Agency (NSA), the Pentagon, the Census Bureau, and the Postal Service.

Oh, and Lockheed Martin has even helped train those friendly Transportation Security Administration agents who pat you down at the airport. Naturally, the company produces cluster bombs, designs nuclear weapons, and makes the F-35 Lightning (an overpriced, behind-schedule, underperforming combat aircraft that is slated to be bought by customers in more than a dozen countries) -- and when it comes to weaponry, that's just the start of a long list. In recent times, though, it's moved beyond anything usually associated with a weapons corporation and has been virtually running its own foreign policy, doing everything from hiring interrogators for U.S. overseas prisons (including at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and Abu Ghraib in Iraq) to managing a private intelligence network in Pakistan and helping write the Afghan constitution.

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No sex until government in Belgium

From the Dutch Daily News:

The Belgium negotiators are not allowed to have sex, until there is a new government in Belgium.

The Belgian Senator, Arleen Temmerman, announced this to all negotiators.

The senator's idea follows the example of Kenya. When the negotiations for a new government dragged on for a long time in 2009. The Women's movements in Kenya called the women of the negotiators to stop having sex.

"A week later, the document was on the table, " said Temmerman in the Belgian newspaper De Morgen.

In Belgium they are already negotiating for about 7 months to form a new government.

Recently one of Belgium's best-known actors, Benoit Poelvoorde, urged his fellow citizens not to shave again until the country finally forms a government.

Belgians went to polls in June last year but an inconclusive result has left them with a caretaker government.

'Howl' Trailer

Starring: James Franco, David Strathairn, Jon Hamm, Bob Balaban, Alessandro Nivola, Treat Williams.

http://www.sodapictures.com/howl/

The Howling Wilderness of Carbon Credits

By Chuck Spinney, The Atlantic

One of central causes of the financial meltdown was the lack of transparency in the complex derivatives, like bundled mortgages and credit default swaps.  Advocates of global warming would have us to believe that they can construct a transparent carbon emissions trading scheme that will provide market incentives to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.  

At the center of this trading scheme is the idea of a carbon credit, which is a generic term for any tradable certificate or permit representing the right to emit one ton of carbon or carbon dioxide equivalent. Think of a carbon credit as property in a free market economy -- Ayn Rand, meet Global Warming.

Excessive Carbon emissions (like smoke from a steel mill or a coal fired power plant) can, in theory, be offset by buying carbon credits.  But the calculations involved will make bundled mortgage derivatives look like second-grade arithmetic, and, as Terry Macalister reported in the Guardian on 4 Feb 2011, carbon credits are very vulnerable to fraud and theft, so traders are wary of them, to say the least [emphasis added]:

Attempts to end the chaos inside Europe's emissions trading scheme (ETS) stumbled today when the market reopened, only for minimal trading to take place.

Traders were said to be worried that business could remain polluted by the theft of carbon credits in Austria and elsewhere that forced a shutdown of the scheme on 19 January, at the estimated cost of £90m in lost business.

The European commission has called on national carbon registries to beef up their IT security systems, but has upset traders by declining to publicly reveal the minimum standards now required.

The ETS is seen as a vital tool in the fight against climate change and the fraud is a setback to attempts to sell the cap-and-trade scheme to the US, Australia and elsewhere. ....[cont.]

I asked my good friend Marshall Auerback, an expert on the machinations of Wall Street who has degrees in philosophy and law, if he could elaborate on this vulnerability.  He responded as follows:

And here's another story, which should make one VERY wary.  The person who developed the credit default swap, Blythe Masters from JP Morgan, is also behind the creation of this carbon capture program.  Leave it to Wall Street to find a way to extract an economic rent from pollution!

The Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS)  amounts to nothing more than a privatisation of the commons asset which we call the atmosphere. The ETS would create private property relations over public space.  In Europe, it's been a colossal failure. The EU introduced what was known as the Clean Development Mechanism, which was an offset system allowing polluters in Europe to invest in emissions-reduction infrastructure in poor and developing countries and then use the "offsets" to avoid undertaking more costly emission reductions in Europe.

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[ Regarding Blythe Masters, see How the Exxon Valdez Spill Created the Credit Default Swap and Keiser Report: Fiat Food ]

Human Rights Groups Announce Bush Indictment For Convention Against Signatory States

No Immunity For Former Presidents Under Law

Today, two torture victims were to have filed criminal complaints, with more than 2,500-pages of supporting material, in Geneva against former U.S. President George W. Bush, who was due to speak at an event there on 12 February. Swiss law requires the presence of the torturer on Swiss soil before a preliminary investigation can be opened. When Bush cancelled his trip to avoid prosecution, the human rights groups who prepared the complaints made it public and announced that the Bush Torture Indictment would be waiting wherever he travels next. The Indictment serves as the basis on which to prepare country-specific, plaintiff-specific indictments, with additional evidence and updated information. According to international law experts at the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the Berlin-based European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), former presidents do not enjoy special immunity under the Convention Against Torture (CAT).

“Waterboarding is torture, and Bush has admitted, without any sign of remorse, that he approved its use,” said Katherine Gallagher, Senior Staff Attorney at CCR and Vice President of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH). “The reach of the Convention Against Torture is wide – this case is prepared and will be waiting for him wherever he travels next. Torturers – even if they are former presidents of the United States – must be held to account and prosecuted. Impunity for Bush must end.”

While the U.S. has thus far failed to comply with its obligations under the Convention Against Torture to prosecute and punish those who commit torture, all other signatories, too, are obligated to prosecute or extradite for prosecution anyone present in their territory they have a reasonable basis for believing has committed torture. If the evidence warrants, as the Bush Torture Indictment contends it does, and the U.S. fails to request the extradition of Bush and others to face charges of torture there, CAT signatories must, under law, prosecute them for torture.

In a statement this weekend, the groups who organized the complaints said, “Whatever Bush or his hosts say, we have no doubt he cancelled his trip to avoid our case. The message from civil society is clear – If you’re a torturer, be careful in your travel plans.”

The complaints that had been scheduled to be filed on Monday asked that the General Prosecutor of the Canton of Geneva investigate allegations that men were tortured as part of the Bush administration’s well-documented torture program. Bush proudly recounted in his recently published memoir that when asked in 2002 to if it was permissible to waterboard a detainee – a recognized act of torture – he replied “damn right.”

Monday, 7 February, is the ninth anniversary of the day Bush decided the Geneva Conventions did not apply to ‘enemy combatants.’

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Bush Torture Indictment

Synopsis

On February 7, 2011, two torture victims were to have filed criminal complaints for torture against former president George W. Bush in Geneva, who was due to speak at an event there on February 12th. On the eve of the filing of the complaints, George Bush cancelled his trip. Swiss law requires the presence of the alleged torturer on Swiss soil before a preliminary investigation can be open. The complaints could not be filed after Bush cancelled, as the basis for jurisdiction no longer existed.

These two complaints are part of a larger effort to ensure accountability for torturers, including former U.S. officials. So on February 7, 2011, CCR publically released the "Preliminary Bush Torture Indictment." This document presents fundamental aspects of the case against George Bush for torture, and a preliminary legal analysis of his liability for torture and a response to some anticipated defenses. This document will be updated as developments warrant. The exhibit list contains references to more than 2,500 pages of supporting material.

Status

The Preliminary Bush Torture Indictment was prepared so that it could be used for individual victims to file cases against George Bush in any country where the Convention Against Torture provides jurisdiction.

Description

There is global support for the victims of torture under the Bush administration to seek justice and accountability. CCR worked with the Berlin-based European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights to prepare the case in Switzerland, and had support from the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH).

The individual complaints that were set to be filed in Geneva on February 7, 2011 were supported by a letter from more than 60 human rights organizations and prominent individuals calling for the prosecution of George W. Bush for torture, including former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Theo van Boven, UN Special Rapporteur on Independence of Judges and Lawyers, Leandro Despouy, and Nobel Peace Prize recipients Shirin Ebadi and Pérez Esquivel. A number of the human rights organizations which signed on are facing the on-going harms of the “counterterrorism” policies advanced under the Bush administration and then adopted or employed in their own countries.
Manfred Nowak, former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture (2004-2010), was to submit an expert opinion on the complaints concluding that the conduct to which both plaintiffs were subjected constitutes torture, that Switzerland had an obligation to open a preliminary investigation, and that George W. Bush enjoys no immunity.

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