Soyburgers laced with neurotoxins
Cory Doctorow

The search for truth goes on: yesterday morning [i.e., 4/13], I blogged a study from the Cornucopia Institute on the use of the neurotoxin hexane in production of soyburgers, which sparked a controversy n the comment thread about the science, focusing mostly on the question of whether any of the volatile hexane would still be present after the burgers made it to your shelf. For the record: I’m dubious about this objection, since in the absence of a study to the contrary, I think it makes sense to assume that the substances you put into food during production are still present at consumption. And of course, the release of hexane into the environment as part of the production of these “healthy alternatives” undermines the whole cause of improving health.

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The Financial Terrorists Who Destroyed Our Economy Will Pay Zero in Taxes — and Get $33 Billion in Refunds
By David DeGraw, Amped Status
Posted on April 18, 2010, Printed on April 19, 2010

Journalist David DeGraw has put together a devastating report detailing how Wall Street continues to pillage the economy with the government’s help. “The staggering level of theft continues unabated,” writes DeGraw.

“Our future is going up in flames and our government isn’t even making the slightest effort to put out the fire.

In fact, they are purposely pouring gasoline all over it.” DeGraw’sinvestigation is a follow up to his previous report The Economic Elite Vs. The People of the United States of America — check that one out to get caught up. AlterNet will run in a series of articles based on DeGraw’s investigation. Here is part one.

The first thing people need to understand is that the economic crash wasn’t a crash for the people who caused it. In fact, these financial terrorists are now doing better than ever. In a recent report, titled “Social Inequality in America: Widening Income Disparities,” more evidence of the unprecedented transfer of wealth was revealed:

“As of late 2009, the number of billionaires soared from 793 to 1,011, and their total fortunes from $2.4 trillion to $3.6 trillionŠ. Despite the crisis, the list of billionaires has grown by 218 people and their aggregate capital has expanded by 50%. This may seem paradoxical, but only at first glance. This result was predictable, if we recall how governments all over the world have dealt with the economic crisis.”

The inequality of wealth in the United States between the economic top 0.5% and the remaining 99.5% of the population is now at an all-time high. The economic top 1% of the population now controls a record 70% of all financial assets. The point here is that while the economic crisis has been devastating for 99% of America, the Wall Street elite are awash in record breaking profits. The most profitable firm in Wall Street history, Goldman Sachs, just had their most profitable quarter in their 140-year history and Wall Street firms issued an all-time record breaking amount in bonuses.

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From Jeanne Theoharis:

Friends,

After Fahad Hashmi has spent nearly three years in solitary confinement, the case will finally go to trial on Wednesday April 28. Over the past two and a half years, we have built a movement to draw attention to the rights violations happening in his case and within the federal system as part of the War on Terror. Just in the past few weeks, two more great pieces have been published calling attention to these domestic rights abuses: Bill Quigley’s “Not Just Guantanamo” (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-quigley/not-just-guantanamo-us-to_b_524226.html) and William Fisher’s “Feel Safer Now?” (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-fisher/feel-safer-now_b_526675.html).

But we need your help more than ever in the coming weeks to help focus public attention as the case goes to trial. Things you can do:

> Attend a community meeting to prepare for the trial: Monday April 19 at 6:30 at the Center for Constitutional Rights, 666 Broadway, New York, NY.

> Join us for an important vigil on April 26. Two days before the trial begins, we will gather once again outside of MCC where Hashmi is being held to draw attention to the inhumane conditions of his confinement over the past three years. The vigil takes place from 6-7 outside MCC, 150 Park Row, in lower Manhattan.

> Come to the trial. Jury selection in the case begins Wednesday April 28 at 9:00 in Judge Preska’s court at 500 Pearl Street. We expect opening arguments to begin Thursday afternoon or Friday morning and the trial to last 2-3 weeks. Please come for at least one day of trial and join the grassroots effort “500@500″ to keep the courtroom full. Please circulate and post the attached flyer.

> Send an email to Attorney General Holder to show him we are watching this case and ask him to uphold Hashmi’s rights: http://www.educatorsforcivilliberties.org/liftthesam.html

Thank you for your continued commitment to these issues.

Jeanne Theoharis
Educators for Civil Liberties

What the whistleblower prosecution says about the Obama DOJ
By Glenn Greenwald

The more I think and read about the Obama DOJ’s prosecution of NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, the more I think this might actually be one of the worst steps the Obama administration has taken yet, if not the single worst step — and that’s obviously saying a lot. During the Bush years, in the wake of the NSA scandal, I used to write post after post about how warped and dangerous it was that the Bush DOJ was protecting the people who criminally spied on Americans (Bush, Cheney Michael Hayden) while simultaneously threatening to prosecute the whistle-blowers who exposed misconduct. But the Bush DOJ never actually followed through on those menacing threats; no NSA whistle-blowers were indicted during Bush’s term (though several were threatened). It took the election of Barack Obama for that to happen, as his handpicked Assistant Attorney General publicly boasted yesterday of the indictment against Drake.

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The Two-Guantanamo Solution
By Karen J. Greenberg

Intro by Tom Engelhardt:

It all began in Afghanistan (the War on Terror, of course). It was there as well that, in late 2001, the Bush administration first “took the gloves off,” a phrase its top officials then loved to use. So the first torture and abuse of prisoners, including the use of dogs to intimidate, took place there and only then migrated to Guantanamo in Cuba and Abu Ghraib in Iraq. By 2004, the U.S. was already operating approximately two dozen off-the-grid prisons in Afghanistan and a report in the British Guardian could speak of the U.S. prison system there as “the hub of a global network of detention centers.” It included a notorious CIA-run secret Afghan prison nicknamed “the Salt Pit.” The first killing of prisoners by Americans occurred at our prison at Bagram Air Base, the huge former Soviet base that became a focus of American military activities. One of the nastier spots on the planet for many years, Bagram was, as Karen Greenberg, author of The Least Worst Place, Guantanamo’s First 100 Days, has termed it, “the missing prison” (at a time when all attention was focused on Guantanamo). It remains George W. Bush’s unmentioned living legacy to Barack Obama.

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15 Mind-Blowing Facts About Wealth And Inequality In America
Gus Lubin | Apr. 9, 2010, 10:33 AM

The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. Cliché, sure, but it’s also more true than at any time since the Gilded Age.

The poor are getting poorer, wages are falling behind inflation, and social mobility is at an all-time low.

If you’re in that top 1%, life is grand.

Here’s 15 Mind-Blowing Charts About Wealth And Inequality In America:

Read more.

Some examples:

The last two decades were great… except for American workers

Republican tax cuts have significantly increased the gap

FDA Says Walnuts Are
Illegal Drugs
By William Faloon

Life Extension® has published 57 articles that describe the health benefits of walnuts.

Some of this same scientific data is featured on the website of Diamond Foods, Inc., a distributor of packaged walnuts.

The FDA has determined that walnuts sold by Diamond Foods cannot be legally marketed because the walnuts “are not generally recognized as safe and effective” for the medical conditions referenced on Diamond Foods’ website.

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Journalism’s Parasites
by: David Sirota, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

No matter how much this week’s Pulitzer Prize triumphalism hides it, the fact remains that journalism these days is “a disaster,” as Ted Koppel said recently. And unfortunately, retrospection dominates the news industry’s self-analysis. Like dazed tornado victims, most media experts focus on what happened and why, oh lord, why?

The queries are important, though just as critical are two prospective questions: 1) If, to butcher a Chinese aphorism, every crisis is an opportunity, then who is making an opportunity out of journalism’s current crisis and 2) are those opportunity-maximizers actually parasites destroying journalism for the long haul?

The answer to the initial question is three groups, starting with the Access Traders. These are reporters like The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza, Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter and NBC’s Chuck Todd, who, while covering politics for major media, are also signing separate contracts to write books chronicling White House gossip. Facing a crisis in audience share, these correspondents’ employers encourage the double-dip opportunities, hoping book exposure will result in residual attention. But the simultaneity is problematic: As the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz notes, hard-hitting stories in these reporters’ day jobs “might alienate potential (book) sources and flattering ones might loosen The dynamic’s deleterious effect on journalism is obvious.

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Does Goldman Sachs own Sen. Gillibrand?

“Sarah Palin’s Alaska”–on Discovery!?

• She accelerated Alaska’s cruel aerial wolf-hunting program while in office, introducing a $150 bounty for each slaughtered wolf’s forelimb.
• She made a personal appeal to Alaska voters to oppose a ballot measure that would have stopped the immense Pebble Mine operation from dumping cyanide and mining waste into streams that make their way to Bristol Bay, home to the largest sockeye salmon fishery in the world.
• When President Bush finally agreed to list the polar bear as a threatened species in 2008 because of global warming’s effects on its habitat, the governor sued to challenge the listing.
• Armed with her “Drill, Baby, Drill” catchphrase, Palin called for opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Cook Inlet to oil and gas drilling.