another example of the government protecting people who don’t want to be protected…..

Raw milk lovers upset over Amish arrest

BY MATTHEW LYSIAK
DAILY NEWS WRITER

Thursday, May 1st 2008, 4:00 AM

It’s the milk spill that crossed state lines.

Brooklyn raw milk enthusiasts are crying over the loss of their supplier - a horse and buggy-driving Amish farmer from Pennsylvania.

Mark Nolt of New Line, Pa., was arrested and shut down last Friday for selling the contraband.

“Oh God. My heart is pounding. I can’t believe what a God—- police state this is,” said one Brooklyn customer who made monthly pickups of raw dairy products from Nolt that the farmer had dropped off in Manhattan by workers.

“I gave him $100 last week for a huge delivery of stuff, including raw cream that I planned on using to make cream puffs,” she said.

The Brooklyn outcry came after six Pennsylvania state troopers raided Nolt’s farm and confiscated his illegal dairy.

“They swooped in on Friday morning like a bunch of Vikings, handcuffed me and stole $30,000 worth of my milk, cheese and butter,” Nolt told the Daily News.

Nolt is a devout Mennonite who sells raw dairy products at his farm and has them transported by truck to customers in Delaware and across New York City, where the raw goods are illegal.

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Gasoline May Soon Cost a Sawbuck

Big New Shock at the Pump Forecast by Two Analysts

Get ready for another economic shock of major proportions — a virtual doubling of prices at the gas pump to as much as $10 a gallon.

Gas at that price range would make diesel even more expensive, which would make trucking/shipping almost prohibitive.  And then there’s chemical fertilizer and “all the marvelous ways/they’re using plastics nowadays,” as Tom Lehrer used to sing….like, “the American way of life is not negotiable”?  OK, then we’ll just cancel it outright….

WE CAN SURVIVE BUT CAN WE COMMUNICATE?

By Carolyn Baker and Sally Erickson

The distance between us is holy ground

To be traversed feet bare,

Arms raised in joyous dance

So that it is crossed.

And the tracks of our pilgrimage shine in the

darkness

To light our coming together

In a bright and steady light.

Raphael Jesus Gonzales

****

When we think of preparing our minds, bodies, hearts, and living situations for collapse, the focus is often on our individual or household living situations.  Equally important is our need to develop a circle of trusting, mutually interdependent relationships. The culture we live in is based on hierarchies of control and influence.  Work relationships, kept in place largely by paychecks and ordered by project managers and bosses, are the most common experience most of us have of being part of an organized group. We have little experience outside of those hierarchies. Even more rare in our hyper-independent culture is to depend on others for mutual aid, support and comfort. So, for most people, it likely feels overwhelming to consider how to build a wider circle of people based on mutuality, as part of preparation for the ongoing collapse of basic life support systems.

Shortages Threaten Farmers’ Key Tool: Fertilizer

….Some dealers in the Midwest ran out of fertilizer last fall, and they continue to restrict sales this spring because of a limited supply.

“If you want 10,000 tons, they’ll sell you 5,000 today, maybe 3,000,” said W. Scott Tinsman Jr., a fertilizer dealer in Davenport, Iowa. “The rubber band is stretched really far.”

Fertilizer companies are confident the shortage will be solved eventually, noting that they plan to build scores of new factories. But that will probably create fresh problems in the long run as the world grows more dependent on fossil fuels to produce chemical fertilizers. Intensified use of such fertilizers is certain to mean greater pollution of waterways, too.

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from the good grey New York Times:

In a New Climate Model, Short-Term Cooling in a Warmer World

The authors stressed that the pause in warming represented only a temporary blunting of the centuries of rising temperatures that scientists have projected if carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases continue accumulating in the atmosphere.

“We’re learning that internal climate variability is important and can mask the effects of human-induced global change,” said the paper’s lead author, Noel Keenlyside of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in Kiel, Germany. “In the end this gives more confidence in the long-term projections.”

from PR Watch:

The Pentagon military analyst program unveiled in last week’s exposé by David Barstow in the New York Times was not just unethical but illegal. It violates, for starters, specific restrictions that Congress has been placing in its annual appropriation bills every year since 1951. According to those restrictions, “No part of any appropriation contained in this or any other Act shall be used for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States not heretofore authorized by the Congress.”

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And the MSM echoes Cheney, saying “So?”:

Ted Rall tells it like it is:

….”The high-level discussions about these ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ were so detailed, [Bush Administration] sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed–down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic. These top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top Al Qaeda suspects–whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding, sources told ABC news.”

Bush knew.

Not only did he know, he personally approved it. He likes torture.

“Yes, I’m aware our national security team met on this issue,” he confirmed. “And I approved.”

When the U.S. signs a treaty, its provisions carry the full force of U.S. law. One such treaty is the U.N. Convention Against Torture, of which the U.S. is a core signatory. As Philippe Sands writes in his new book “Torture Team:” Parties to the… Convention are required to investigate any person who is alleged to have committed torture. If appropriate, they must then prosecute–or extradite the person to a place where he will be prosecuted. The Torture Convention… criminalizes any act that constitutes complicity or participation in torture. Complicity or participation could certainly be extended not only to the politicians and but also the lawyers involved…”

George W. Bush has publicly confessed that he ordered torture, thus violating the Convention Against Torture. He, Cheney, Rumseld, Rice and the other Principals must therefore be arrested and, unlike the thousands of detainees kidnapped by the U.S. since 9/11, arraigned and placed on trial.

Because the torture ordered by Bush and his cabinet directly resulted in death, they must additionally be charged with several counts of murder. Fifteen U.S. soldiers have been charged with the murders of two detainees at the U.S. airbase at Bagram, Afghanistan in 2002. They were following orders issued by their Commander-in-Chief and his Principals.

***

There is, however, a person who could begin holding Bush and the others accountable for their crimes.

She is Cathy L. Lanier, the 39-year-old chief of D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department. Chief Lanier, take note: you have probable cause to arrest a self-confessed serial torturer and mass murderer within the borders of the District of Columbia. He resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Go get him.

History is calling, Chief Lanier. Your city, and your country, needs you.

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Max Keiser: Your ’stimulus’ check will cost you more than it’s worth

By Max Keiser
Huffington Post
Sunday, April 27, 2008

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-keiser/why-you-shouldnt-spend-yo_b_988…

I’ll explain two reasons why you Americans should not spend your economic stimulus check: the first applies to people who work regular jobs for wages, the second applies to people who work in investment banks for bonuses.

If you work for wages (or live on a pension), consider this: If every American said “No, thank you” to President Bush’s stimulus check and refused to cash them, the value of the dollars in your pocket right now, in terms of their purchasing power would go up by a factor greater than the face value ($600) of the stimulus check. In other words, if you didn’t spend these checks, you’d be the richer for it.

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War Crimes Start at the Top

Professor John Yoo Should be Dismissed From Boalt Law School–And Prosecuted

By CARLOS VILLARREAL

War crimes start at the top. The torture and deaths at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo; the humiliation of Iraqi and Afghani detainees in the field; extraordinary rendition; the indiscriminate killing by rifles and cluster bombs; these are becoming the new norms of war for which the leaders in the United States are responsible. And as with the war crimes of the past, the spilling of blood began with the spilling of ink. The most culpable are not the young foot soldiers in fatigues holding a naked prisoner with a dog leash; they are the men and women in suits who craft the policies.

John Yoo is one of those men in suits, and it is disgraceful that he is paid by the people of California to shape the law and young minds at one of our most distinguished law schools. As an organization, the National Lawyers Guild released a press release in April stating that Yoo ought to be tried as a war criminal and dismissed by the University of California Berkeley - Boalt Hall, where he is currently a law professor.

****

There is precedent for criminal liability against attorneys in circumstances not unlike the Yoo case. Philippe Sands, among others, has recently revisited the Nuremberg case of United States v. Altstoetter in a scathing two-part story in Vanity Fair called “The Green Light.” Sands writes that the case “had been prosecuted by the Allies to establish the principle that lawyers and judges in the Nazi regime bore a particular responsibility for the regime’s crimes.” The principal defendant in that case was imprisoned for five years, primarily for performing as an attorney - giving legal advice (or more accurately legal cover) for the “disappearing” of political opponents of the Nazi regime.

John Yoo created a legal framework that would allow torture; and just like the lawyerly work that led to convictions in Altstoetter, it wasn’t done as a purely academic or philosophical exercise. He created this framework to enable torturers; to give cover and help set in motion policies that would directly lead to the pain, suffering and death of prisoners held by the United States against accepted international law. This is why Yoo ought to be dismissed by Boalt, disbarred, and prosecuted for war crimes.

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only five years for Yoo?  That’s a slap on the wrist!  And, speaking of war criminals:

…Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has publicly claimed that the torture of prisoners does not violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishment.” Scalia’s comment came during an interview with Lesley Stahl on CBS’s 60 Minutes.

Justice Scalia: I don’t like torture. I’m—although defining it is going to be a nice trick. But, I mean, who’s in favor of it? Nobody. And we have a law against torture. But if the—everything that is hateful and odious is not covered by some provision of the Constitution.

Lesley Stahl: If someone’s in custody, as in Abu Ghraib, and they are brutalized by a law enforcement person, if you listen to the expression, ‘cruel and unusual punishment,’ doesn’t that apply?

Justice Scalia: “No, no.”

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more on the American legal climate:

Lawyers fear feds eavesdrop on talks with terror suspects

By PHILIP SHENON

The New York Times

PORTLAND — Thomas Nelson, an Oregon lawyer, has lived in a state of perpetual jet lag for two years. Every few weeks, he flies from Portland to the Middle East to meet with a high-profile Saudi client who cannot enter the United States because he faces charges here of financing terrorism.

Nelson says he does not dare to phone this client or e-mail him because of what many prominent criminal-defense lawyers say is a well-founded fear that all of their contacts are being monitored by the U.S. government.

Because he is constantly shifting time zones to see his client face to face, “I just don’t sleep normally anymore,” Nelson said. “But I don’t have a choice. It’s very clear to me that anything I say to my client or to other lawyers in this case is being recorded.”

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guilty until proven guilty, eh?

North Pole Could Be Ice Free in 2008

By CATHERINE BRAHIC

April 27, 2008 —

You know when climate change is biting hard when instead of a vast expanse of snow the North Pole is a vast expanse of water. This year, for the first time, Arctic scientists are preparing for that possibility.

“The set-up for this summer is disturbing,” says Mark Serreze, of the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). A number of factors have this year led to most of the Arctic ice being thin and vulnerable as it enters its summer melting season.

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Meanwhile, there is a new fishery of sorts opening in the Arctic, thanks to sea ice receding from the north coast of Alaska that is making way for new fish hangouts. Salmon, among other fish, are beginning to show up north of the Bering Strait as they migrate in search of cooler waters that are disappearing in the more southern parts of the ocean. The catch: commercial fishing boats will follow, unless all fishing north of the Bering Strait is banned as proposed by scientists, environmentalists and even the fishing industry itself.

“We don’t know the full scope and effect as sea ice recedes and climate changes,” says David Benton, executive director of the Marine Conservation Alliance, a Juneau, Alaska–based industry group. “We need to close the Arctic until we understand what the effects are going to be in the environment.”

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