Drones Coming to a Sky Near You — Your Neighborhood is Considered a Battlefield

Drones Cleared for Domestic Use Across the U.S.

November 29, 2011

RT.com - What do you know about drones? You know drones — those robotic, unmanned planes that fire missiles for the American military across Afghanistan, Pakistan and anywhere else the United States needs to get away with murder.

Well if you don’t know too much, don’t worry, that’ll change soon. The Federal Aviation Administration is looking into rules that will bring the controversial aircraft into the country, creating an United States airspace buzzing with tiny, robot planes to look over every inch of American soil — and maybe more.

An article published Tuesday in the Los Angeles Times reveals that new drone planes could be coming domestically quite soon, as both law enforcement and the agricultural sector are seeing benefits in keeping an arsenal of unmanned planes ready to patrol the skies. For farmers, drones could bring a new method of pumping pesticides into fields of crops from above; for the cops, the aircraft could conduct surveillance over suspected criminals (think police chopper but remote controlled). The Times reports that utility companies see a benefit in drones as well, giving them a new set of eyes to monitor oil, gas and water pipelines.

But with missile-equipped drones causing thousands of deaths overseas, the installation of a drone program stateside could be detrimental to America as the government all but deems the country fit as a warfront.

"It's going to happen," Dan Elwell, vice president of civil aviation at the Aerospace Industries Association, tells the Times. "Now it's about figuring out how to safely assimilate the technology into national airspace."

According to the Department of Homeland Security’s website, the government has already been using drones domestically for several years, but remains mostly mum on their missions, other than that they are regularly used for "support of disaster relief efforts."

In July, however, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Michael Kostelnik, currently with the US Customs and Border Protection UAV program, told a congressional subcommittee that a third drone was being added to an arsenal of two that already fly over Texas to patrol the US/Mexico Border.

“On any given day there could be three or more (unmanned) aircraft in Texas,” said Kostelnik.

As the FAA investigates legislation to govern drones domestically for a variety of reasons, the US Air Force says that it will train more drone pilots than fighter and bomber pilots combined, reports National Public Radio. Though the military has not explicitly stated that they intend on flying Predator drones — the kind equipped with Hellfire missiles — through American airspace, it will soon have the manpower to up their robot game. Strangely enough, the US Senate is currently considering a provision to the National Defense Authorization Act which would make America a battlefield of itself, which RT reported on Monday.

Earlier this year, RT also revealed that the military is investing $23 billion into new drone crafts, and that the US has added bases to fly the planes in and out of across the world. A friendly fire strike gone disastrous in April killed two American troops mistaken as Taliban insurgents, and a September strike in Yemen killed two American citizens alleged to have ties to al-Qaeda. Following that strike, Republican Congressman Ron Paul told an audience during a televised GOP debate that “now we know American citizens are vulnerable to assassination.” A passing of the National Defense Authorization Act’s latest provision this week, coupled with a reinforced drone arsenal, could create such executions to be carried out stateside, by-the-books.

So far the FAA has issued 266 testing permits to allow for civilian drones in the United States, but the Times reports that the aircraft aren’t flying in large numbers yet, as the agency says that the crafts do not have the proper technology to keep them from crashing into each other as they start to soar in growing numbers. Small drones are being manufactured in the thousands, however, and AeroVironment Inc. has created a drone helicopter for police monitoring and intends on sending 18,000 of them to law enforcement agencies once the crafts have clearance. Those drones, reports the Times, weigh barely five pounds and could be controlled by a tablet computer.

"This is a tool that many law enforcement agencies never imagined they could have,” Steven Gitlin of the aerospace company tells the Times.

As the realm of drone-filled skies becomes a reality, Americans could be experiencing a police state that they never could have imagined, either.

AeroVironment’s planes are being manufactured particularly for law enforcement purposes and could create an eye-in-the-sky small enough to fit in the trunk of a car that'd monitor every action from high in the air — undetectable to the naked eye yet all knowing of every move.

"By definition, small drones are easy to conceal and fly without getting a lot of attention," John Villasenor, a UCLA professor and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution's Center for Technology Innovation, adds to the Times.

Also getting less attention are the programs used to create the crafts itself. A recent report in Wired.com’s Danger Room reveals that the US military has been keeping members of the press off of drone bases in increasing numbers as of late, keeping the progress of the program overseas highly unreported.

“The change in guidance wasn’t a light switch that turned off all public access to information about [remotely piloted aircraft],” Lt. Col. Tadd Sholtis, spokesman at Air Combat Command, tells Danger Room. “It was a recognition of the sensitive nature of the mission and the risks involved in unrestricted media access to an operational unit.”

The US government has repeatedly dismissed claims that put drone attacks in alarming numbers contrary to their own count, responsible for a shocking toll of deaths; though reporting overseas has unearthed figures that would frighten most people living under skies patrolled by drones.

According to a report this year from Britain’s Bureau of Investigative Journalism, US drone strikes have killed nearly 400 civilians in Pakistan alone, and that the CIA has launched 291 attacks by the report’s publishing in August — eight percent more than the Central Intelligence Agency had admitted to. Casualties in all, adds the UK’s Bureau, are at least 40 percent higher than what the US has reported.

Standing up for his research, Bureau Editor Iain Overton tells CNN that "All of our sources are credible and transparent, and where contradictory information exists, we make that clear.”

"It is unfortunate that instead of engaging with our work, the CIA sees fit to smear it,” adds Overton.

Pentagon spokesperson George Little reported to the press this October that the US launched nearly 150 airstrikes with drones over Libya in just the few months of NATO involvement in the oust of Muammar Gaddafi.

With drones coming to a sky near you — and your neighborhood soon being considered a battlefield — the number of strikes could increase and come a little too close to home. Literally.

"Most Americans still see drone aircraft in the realm of science fiction," author Peter W. Singer tells the Times. "But the technology is here. And it isn't going away. It will increasingly play a role in our lives. The real question is: How do we deal with it?"

With lawmakers pushing for drones to dominate our skies, American civilians aren’t left with many options to deal with it than just that — deal with it.

Both sides of the aisle have shown support for drones.

GOP presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman said earlier this month that “an expanded drone program is something that would serve our national interests” and that it “must be done.” The Bureau of Investigative Journalism report earlier this year calculated that President Obama has been in office for around 236 drone strikes against Pakistan — or one for every four days in office.

Foreign policy aside, politicians have shown support for bringing drones to America. Now that the FAA has given it the go ahead, it is only a matter of time before the robotic whizzing of robotic crafts being a regular occurrence.

“We know that there are Predator drones being flown for practice every day because we're seeing them; we're preparing these young people to fly missions in these war zones that we have,” Texas Governor Rick Perry said in New Hampshire earlier this year. “But some of those, they have all the equipment, they're obviously unarmed, they've got the downward-looking radar, they've got the ability to do night work and through clouds.”

“Why not be flying those missions and using (that) real-time information to help our law enforcement?” asked Perry.

Last year the Obama administration got behind a $600 million border security bill that will bring two more drones to the US/Mexico border. Congress approved it in 2010.

By this summer, the Customs and Border Protection had six drones in their arsenal to monitor their border. For those not in Texas, Arizona or anywhere near the southwest US, however, you could expect to see those numbers increase. Be sure to wave if you see them, too.

“You have a lot of police chiefs and sheriffs that would love to have this information,” Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, said of the technology earlier this year.

“Technology is part of the long-term solution to securing the border,” Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, said in a letter to Congress earlier this year.

Say good-bye to long-term. Drones are here and they are only going to get smaller, stealthier and greater in numbers.

Smile, you’re on drone-craft camera.

Read More...

Police Are Treating Americans Like Military Threats and Enemies of the State: Police Are Suppose to Protect, and the Federal Government is Suppose to Serve, Rather Than Lord Over Us

Why Police Are Treating Americans Like Military Threats

November 27, 2011

William Hogeland - Why is the armed might of the state, (necessary in waging war against foreign enemies) being applied to domestic policing of local communities and peaceful protests?

“Is this still my country?”

In the past few days, those and similarly poignant Twitter posts have appealed to fundamental American values in objecting to the notorious U.C. Davis event, where police pepper-sprayed seated protesters, and to cities generally cracking down on the Occupy movement. The crackdowns have brought a military level of combativeness to what many Americans — even those not in sympathy with the protesters — would normally see as a police, not a military matter.

Police, not military. The distinction may seem academic, even absurd, when police are bringing rifles, helmets, armor, and helicopters to evict unarmed protesters.

But it’s an old and critical distinction in American law and ideology and in republican thought as a whole.

The 17th-century English liberty writers, on whose ideas much of America’s founding ethos was based, believed that turning the armed might of the state, (necessary in waging war against foreign enemies), to domestic policing of local communities tends to concentrate power in top-down executive action and vitiate treasured things like judiciary process, individual liberty, representative government, and free speech.

Constabulary and judiciary matters, high Whigs came to think, should never be handled by what they condemned as “standing armies.” It’s true, on the other hand, that keeping public order, not just aiding in prosecutions, is a duty of local police. When concerted crowd violence occurs against people and property, policing may be expected to be pretty violent too, and distinctions between combat and policing sometimes naturally blur.

But where protest is peaceful — maybe loud, maybe deliberately annoying, combative in its rhetoric, even possibly illegal, yet not actually violent or dangerous — treating it the way a state normally treats an outside military threat will give many Americans, across a broad political spectrum, a gut problem.

We’ve seen military hardware and tactics used in the Occupy crackdowns. We’ve seen them in post-9/11 federal funding in the states and municipalities for homeland security. We’ve seen them in the aptly named “war on drugs.” And anyone who has watched shows like “Cops” has seen — and may by now take for granted — techniques and technologies of military-style police raids on homes, raids that in more upscale neighborhoods might amount to nothing more than knocking on a door and serving a warrant. A Twitter post from Joy Reid, of the blog the Reid Report, put it this way last week:

“Disconnect: liberals see a suddenly ‘militarized,’ possibly federalized police force. Black people see ‘the usual.’”

The police behavior at U.C. Davis — manifestly not “rogue-cop,” a trained, planned exercise — reveals the cool military thinking behind the operation. Pepper-spraying looked surgical, preemptive, even robotic. The strategic directive must have been to conserve police effort and maintain police maneuverability at virtually any cost. Such efficiencies and capabilities would be important in a riot; they’re not important when hoping to evict unarmed, seated protesters.

It’s not as if officers have been resorting to battle gear under otherwise unmanageable pressure or initiating violence only as a last resort. They’ve been arriving in battle gear. They’ve been construing noncompliance as potential attack. They’ve moved preemptively to disable attack where none existed, not just trying to evict but seemingly hoping to inspire fear, to punish and defeat.

The mood these operations convey is that failure to achieve police objectives must result in something awful for the body politic. In reality, leaving citizens sitting around a park or campus a few more days, even possibly illegally, might be frustrating for police and others; it’s hardly the end of the world. Sometimes taking a few deep breaths is the only thing to do. But military training, tactics, and weaponry seem to inspire the idea in civic strategists that failure to achieve an objective is tantamount to fatal defeat by a hostile enemy. Intolerable. Not an option.

That mentality tends to place American governments at enmity with their dissident citizens — and vice versa. The fact that much militarizing of police, over the past twenty years, has federal sources raises endlessly complicated questions that reflect strangely on the histories of American federalism and government suppression.

A horrific theme of the Civil Rights Movement was police violence, and many Americans have branded on their brains the watercannons, clubs, dogs, fists, and boots used against nonviolent protesters in the 1950s; police involved were generally state and local.

Then in 1957 federal troops — the 101st Airborne Paratroopers — entered Little Rock, Arkansas, with fixed bayonets, to enforce federal law by ensuring the entry of African American students to state school there; states-rights advocates talked about federal overreaching and police state, the end of liberty.

Then again, in the 1960s and ’70s the federal government, via its law-enforcement arm the FBI, carried out a covert war — involving assassination, it’s fairly uncontroversial to say — on the militant activist group the Black Panthers, who it’s fairly uncontroversial to say were not always peaceful protesters.

Responding now to police efforts against demonstrators, liberals and leftists have begun raising anew the issue of inappropriate police militarization and violence. Yet it’s the libertarian right that has done much of the reporting and research on the issue in recent decades (Democracy Now! is among left-liberal institutions that have also covered the issue for many years).

The current state of heightened awareness means there’s a possibly interesting opportunity for people of varying backgrounds and politics to begin a new conversation. That conversation would involve some very strange bedfellows — and might spark new enmities. The Salon columnist Joan Walsh’s suggestion last weekend on Twitter that if police violence has federal sources, then President Obama bears some responsibility set off a torrent of invective violent even by Twitter standards.

James Madison may offer some long-range perspective. During the 1787 Constitutional Convention, arguing for forming a nation instead of retaining the confederation of states, he said that force applied to citizens collectively rather than individually ceases to be law enforcement and becomes war; groups so treated will seize the opportunity to dissolve all compacts by which they might otherwise have been bound. Madison’s argued against militarism in favor not of anarchy but of a higher kind of law and order.

And in 1794, Secretary of State Edmund Randolph, advising President Washington (to no avail) to eschew military adventure against the so-called Whiskey Rebels, and to use prosecutions instead, argued passionately that the real strength of government always lies not in coercion but in the affection of the people. Randolph was facing an actual insurrection, with threat of secession, not a peaceful protest; there were federal crimes involved. Still he advised against a military operation. The loathing of military suppression as a substitute for due process of law, going back to our first administration, runs deep in the American psyche.

But it’s worth remembering that equally strong feelings have always run the other way.

Long before events known as the Whiskey Rebellion had risen to any kind of crisis, Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury, was urging Washington to bring military force against citizens somewhere in the country; otherwise, Hamilton believed, authority would always be in question. When Washington did so, he ignored habeas corpus and nearly every individual right set out in the new Bill of Rights, federalizing militias to bring overwhelming force to shock and awe innocent citizens of an entire region of the country. In his book Crisis and Command, John Yoo, author of the notorious “torture memo,” has defended the George W. Bush administration’s tactics in dealing with suspected terrorists by citing precedent — not wrongly — in Washington’s behavior in the 1790s.

“Is this still my country?” That’s been a question from day one, asked by Americans of widely diverging views in response to government crackdowns on protest. Objecting to military violence against protesting citizens may be inherently American. The urge to crack down can look inherently American too.

William Hogeland is the author of the narrative histories ‘Declaration’ and ‘The Whiskey Rebellion’ and a collection of essays, ‘Inventing American History.’

Read more here, here and here.

Iranian Students Storm British Embassy in Tehran

Hundreds of university students and academics staged a protest gathering in front of the British embassy. Chanting the slogans of “Down with Britain, Down with US and Israel”, they called for the expulsion of the British ambassador from Iran. The protest gathering came only days after the British government imposed sanctions on Iranian financial institutions and banking system under the pretext of deviation in Iran's nuclear program; a claim, which has been repeatedly rejected by Iran. Meanwhile, on Sunday the Iranian Parliament passed a bill to downgrade diplomatic ties with Britain; the bill was turned into a law when it was endorsed by the Guardian Council a day after. Under the Parliament's bill the British ambassador should leave Tehran in less than two weeks. During the protest, students tried to storm the British embassy. But police stopped them and controlled the situation. The gathering took place on the anniversary of the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist Majid Shariari. A similar protest gathering was also held in front of the Qolhak garden a large estate, settled by the British embassy staff in Tehran. Protestors vowed that they would continue such protest gatherings if Britain does not change its hostile attitude toward the Iranian nation. - PressTV

Iranian Students Storm British Embassy in Tehran

November 29, 2011

Associated Press - Hard-line Iranian students stormed British diplomatic sites in Tehran on Tuesday, bringing down the Union Jack flag, burning an embassy vehicle and throwing documents from windows in scenes reminiscent of the seizing of the U.S. Embassy compound in 1979.

The mob surged past riot police into the British Embassy complex -- which they pelted with petrol bombs and stones -- two days after Iran's parliament approved a bill that reduces diplomatic relations with Britain following London's support of recently upgraded Western sanctions on Tehran over its disputed nuclear program. Flames shot out of a sport utility vehicle parked outside the brick building.

Demonstrators outside the embassy also burned British flags and clashed with police as the rally, which had been organized by student groups at universities and seminaries.

Less than two hours later, police appeared to regain control of the site. But the official IRNA news agency said about 300 protesters entered the British ambassador's residence in another part of the city and replaced British flags with Iranian ones. The British Foreign Office harshly denounced the melee and said Iran has a "clear duty" under international law to protect diplomats and offices.

"We are outraged by this," said the statement. "It is utterly unacceptable and we condemn it."

It said a "significant number" of protesters entered the compound and caused vandalism, but gave no other details on damage or whether diplomatic staff was inside the embassy, although the storming occurred after business hours.

In Washington, the White House issued a statement strongly condemning the attacks and saying Iran has an obligation to protect foreign embassies. The U.S. broke off diplomatic relations with Iran during the embassy siege in 1980.

The semiofficial Mehr news agency said embassy staff had left the compound before the mobs entered, but it also said those who occupied the area had taken six staff as hostages. It did not give their nationalities and the report was later removed from the website without elaboration.

The protesters broke through after clashing with anti-riot police and chanting for its takeover.

"Death to England," some cried in the first significant assault of a foreign diplomatic area in Iran in years. More protesters poured into the compound as police tried to clear the site.

Smoke rose from some areas of the embassy grounds and the British flag was replaced with a banner in the name of 7th century Shiite saint, Imam Hussein. Occupiers also tore down picture of Queen Elizabeth II.

The occupier called for the closure of the embassy calling it a "spy den" -- the same phrase used after militants stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution and held 52 hostages for 444 days. In the early moments of the siege, protesters tossed out papers from the compound and hauled down the U.S. flag. Washington and Tehran have no diplomatic relations since then.

The rally outside the British Embassy -- on a main street in Tehran downtown -- included protesters carrying photographs of nuclear scientist Majid Shahriari, who was killed last year in an attack that Iran blamed on Israeli and British spy services.

State TV reported that another group of hard-line students gathered at the gate of British ambassador's residence in northern Tehran, at the same time.

Britain's Foreign Office said it was in contact with embassy officials. Officials were still checking on the well-being of workers and diplomats, a spokeswoman said on condition of anonymity in line with standing policy.

It also warned its citizens in Iran to "stay inside and keep a low profile."

Tensions with Britain date back to the 19th century when the Persian monarchy gave huge industrial concessions to London, which later included significant control over Iran's oil industry.
But they have become increasingly strained as the West accuses Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons -- a charge Tehran denies.

In recent years, Iran was angered by Britain's decision in 2007 honor author Salman Rushdie with a knighthood.

Rushdie went into hiding after Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini issued a 1989 fatwa, or religious edict, ordering Muslims to kill the author because his novel "The Satanic Verses" allegedly insulted Islam.

The decision shortly after Iran detained 15 British sailors and marines in March 2007 for allegedly entering the country's territorial waters in the Gulf -- a claim Britain denies. The 15 were released after nearly two weeks in captivity.

In 2006, angry mobs burned the Danish flag and attacked Danish and other Western embassies in Tehran in protest to the reprinting of a cartoon deemed insulting of the Prophet Muhammad in the Nordic country's newspapers.

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Judge Says Citibank's $285 Million Settlement with SEC is 'Neither Reasonable, Nor Fair, Nor Adequate, Nor in the Public Interest'

NYC Judge Rejects $285M SEC-Citigroup Agreement

November 28, 2011

CBS/AP - A federal judge on Monday struck down a $285 million settlement that Citigroup reached with the Securities and Exchange Commission, saying he couldn't tell whether the deal was fair and criticizing regulators for shielding the public from the details of what the firm did wrong.

U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff said the public has a right to know what happens in cases that touch on "the transparency of financial markets whose gyrations have so depressed our economy and debilitated our lives." In such cases, the SEC has a responsibility to ensure that the truth emerges, he wrote.

Rakoff said he had spent hours trying to assess the settlement but concluded that he had not been given "any proven or admitted facts upon which to exercise even a modest degree of independent judgment." He called the settlement "neither fair, nor reasonable, nor adequate, nor in the public interest."

The SEC had accused the bank of betting against a complex mortgage investment in 2007 -- making $160 million in the process -- while investors lost millions. The settlement would have imposed penalties on Citigroup even as it allowed the company to deny allegations that it misled investors.

The SEC allowed the consent judgment settling the case to be filed the same day it filed its lawsuit against Citigroup, the judge noted.

"It is harder to discern from the limited information before the court what the SEC is getting from this settlement other than a quick headline," the judge wrote.

"In much of the world, propaganda reigns, and truth is confined to secretive, fearful whispers," Rakoff said. "Even in our nation, apologists for suppressing or obscuring the truth may always be found. But the SEC, of all agencies, has a duty, inherent in its statutory mission, to see that the truth emerges; and if it fails to do so, this court must not, in the name of deference or convenience, grant judicial enforcement to the agency's contrivances."

CBS Radio News senior legal analyst Andrew Cohen reports the rejection doesn't necessarily mean the deal is dead. But it does mean that both sides will have to offer more information, and Citibank may have admit to more than it was previously willing to admit.

Cohen says this is bad news for Citigroup, which now has to prepare for trial -- Rakoff set a date for July 18 -- or figure out settlement language that satisfies this judge, and it is bad news for the SEC, which will have to work harder in this case and in similar white-collar cases to secure settlements that can withstand judicial scrutiny.

Citi said it was reviewing the decision and declined to comment.

SEC Enforcement Director Robert Khuzami said in a statement Monday that Rakoff made too much out of the fact that Citigroup was not required to admit any wrongful conduct in the deal. Khuzami said forcing Citigroup to give up its profits and the imposition of financial penalties and mandatory business reforms outweigh the absence of an admission.

In the civil lawsuit filed last month, the SEC said Citigroup Inc. traders discussed the possibility of buying financial instruments to essentially bet on the failure of the mortgage assets. Rating agencies downgraded most of the investments just as many troubled homeowners stopped paying their mortgages in late 2007. That pushed the investment into default and cost its buyers' -- hedge funds and investment managers -- several hundred million dollars in losses.

Earlier this month, Rakoff staged a hearing in which he asked lawyers on both sides to defend the settlement.

At the hearing, Rakoff questioned whether freeing Citigroup of any admission of liability could undermine private claims by investors who stand to recover only $95 million in penalties on total losses of $700 million.

This wasn't the first time that the judge struck down an SEC settlement with a bank, and he has made no secret of his disdain for settlements between the government agency and banks for paltry sums and no admission of guilt.

"The SEC's longstanding policy -- hallowed by history, but not by reason -- of allowing defendants to enter into consent judgments without admitting or denying the underlying allegations, deprives the court of even the most minimal assurance that the substantial injunctive relief it is being asked to impose has any basis in fact," he wrote in Monday's decision.

In 2009, Rakoff rejected a $33 million settlement between the SEC and Bank of America Corp. calling it a breach of "justice and morality." The deal was over civil charges accusing the bank of misleading shareholders when it acquired Merrill Lynch during the height of the financial crisis in 2008 by failing to disclose it was paying up to $5.8 billion in bonuses to employees even as it recorded a $27.6 billion yearly loss.

In February 2010, he approved an amended settlement for over four times the original amount, but was caustic in his comments about the $150 million pact, calling it "half-baked justice at best." He said the court approved it "while shaking its head."

Citigroup's $285 million would represent the largest amount to be paid by a Wall Street firm accused of misleading investors since Goldman Sachs & Co. agreed to pay $550 million to settle similar charges last year. JPMorgan Chase & Co. resolved similar charges in June and paid $153.6 million.

All the cases have involved complex investments called collateralized debt obligations. Those are securities that are backed by pools of other assets, such as mortgages.

Rakoff's ruling Monday was the latest in a series of setbacks for the SEC under the leadership of Chairman Mary Schapiro. Rakoff has said he doesn't believe the agency has been sufficiently tough in its enforcement deals with Wall Street banks over their conduct prior to the financial crisis.

The SEC told Rakoff recently that $285 million was a fair penalty, which will go to investors harmed by Citigroup's conduct, and that it was close to what the agency would have won in a trial.

Judge Blocks Citigroup-SEC Settlement

November 29, 2011

Reuters - A federal judge angrily threw out Citigroup Inc's proposed $285 million settlement over the sale of toxic mortgage debt, excoriating the top U.S. market regulator over how it reaches corporate fraud settlements.

U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan said that in agreeing to the settlement, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission appeared uninterested in actually learning what Citigroup did wrong. He also said the regulator erred by asking him to ignore the interests of the public.

"An application of judicial power that does not rest on facts is worse than mindless, it is inherently dangerous," Rakoff wrote in an opinion dated Monday.

"In any case like this that touches on the transparency of financial markets whose gyrations have so depressed our economy and debilitated our lives, there is an overriding public interest in knowing the truth," he added.

Rakoff called the settlement "neither reasonable, nor fair, nor adequate, nor in the public interest," and said it was hard to tell whether by settling the SEC was getting more than "a quick headline." He set a trial date of July 16, 2012.

Monday's decision throws into question the SEC's policies toward settlements with publicly traded companies, at a time when the regulator is trying to burnish its reputation for tough enforcement amid skeptics in Congress and elsewhere.

Many SEC cases against Wall Street banks and investment firms are settled out of court, without any admission or denial of wrongdoing. The absence of agreed-upon facts can make it harder for shareholders, bondholders and others to bring their own civil lawsuits against those same defendants.

THORN

Both the SEC and Citigroup on Monday maintained that the settlement was reasonable.

[...]

In its complaint, the SEC accused Citigroup of selling a $1 billion mortgage-linked collateralized debt obligation, Class V Funding III, in 2007 as the housing market was beginning to collapse, and then betting against the transaction.

The SEC said the CDO caused more than $700 million of investor losses. One Citigroup employee, director Brian Stoker, was charged by the SEC, and is contesting those charges.

[...]

'POCKET CHANGE'

Rakoff called the Citigroup accord too lenient, and noted that the bank was charged only with negligence. Private investors cannot bring securities claims based on negligence.

"If the allegations of the complaint are true, this is a very good deal for Citigroup; and, even if they are untrue, it is a mild and modest cost of doing business," the judge wrote.

The settlement would have required the third-largest U.S. bank to give up $160 million of alleged ill-gotten profit, plus $30 million of interest.

It also would have imposed a $95 million fine for the alleged negligence, less than one-fifth what Goldman Sachs Group Inc paid last year in a $550 million SEC settlement over a different CDO.

Rakoff called the $95 million fine "pocket change" for Citigroup and said investors were being "short-changed."

Khuzami said the regulator will review the ruling and "take those steps that best serve the interests of investors."

In striking down the SEC's $33 million settlement with Bank of America over Merrill, Rakoff said it unfairly punished shareholders. He later approved a $150 million accord.

Citigroup shares closed 6 percent higher at $25.05 on Monday. Stocks rose broadly on optimism that leaders in Europe might take steps to address the region's debt crisis.

The case is SEC v Citigroup Global Markets Inc, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 11-07387.

China to Become Vaccine-Producing Power

China Prepares for Big Entry into Vaccine Market

November 29, 2011

AP - The world should get ready for a new Made in China product — vaccines.

China's vaccine makers are gearing up over the next few years to push exports in a move that should lower costs of lifesaving immunizations for the world's poor and provide major new competition for the big Western pharmaceutical companies.

However, it may take some time before some parts of the world are ready to embrace Chinese products when safety is as sensitive an issue as it is with vaccines — especially given the food, drug and other scandals the country has seen.

Still, China's entry into this market will be a "game changer," said Nina Schwalbe, head of policy at the GAVI Alliance, which buys vaccines for 50 million children a year worldwide.

"We are really enthusiastic about the potential entry of Chinese vaccine manufacturers," she said.

China's vaccine-making prowess captured world attention in 2009 when one of its companies developed the first effective vaccine against swine flu — in just 87 days — as the new virus swept the globe. In the past, new vaccine developments had usually been won by the U.S. and Europe.

Then, this past March the World Health Organization announced that China's drug safety authority meets international standards for vaccine regulation. It opened the doors for Chinese vaccines to be submitted for WHO approval so they can be bought by U.N. agencies and the GAVI Alliance.

"China is a vaccine-producing power" with more than 30 companies that have an annual production capacity of nearly 1 billion doses — the largest in the world, the country's State Food and Drug Administration told The Associated Press.

But more needs to be done to build confidence in Chinese vaccines overseas, said Helen Yang of Sinovac, the NASDAQ-listed Chinese biotech firm that rapidly developed the H1N1 swine flu vaccine.

"We think the main obstacle is that we have the name of 'made in China' still. That is an issue."

China's food and drug safety record in recent years hardly inspires confidence: in 2007, Chinese cough syrup killed 93 people in Central America; one year later, contaminated blood thinner led to dozens of deaths in the United States while tainted milk powder poisoned hundreds of thousands of Chinese babies and killed six.

The government has since imposed more regulations, stricter inspections and heavier punishments for violators. Perhaps because of that, regulators routinely crack down on counterfeit and substandard drugmaking.

While welcoming WHO's approval of China's drug safety authority, one expert said it takes more than a regulatory agency to keep drugmakers from cutting corners or producing fakes.

"In the U.S., we have supporting institutions such as the market economy, democracy, media monitoring, civil society, as well as a well-developed business ethics code, but these are all still pretty much absent in China," said Yanzhong Huang, a China health expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. "For China, the challenge is much greater in building a strong, robust regulative capacity."

Last year, a Chinese newspaper report linked improperly stored vaccines to four children's deaths in northern Shanxi province, raising nationwide concern. The Health Ministry said the vaccines did not cause the deaths, but some remained skeptical.

Meanwhile, Chinese researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine earlier this year that a pandemic flu vaccine given to 90 million people in 2009 was safe.

WHO's medical officer for immunization, Dr. Yvan Hutin, said WHO's approval of the Chinese drug regulatory agency is not "a blank check." Each vaccine will be evaluated rigorously, with WHO and Chinese inspectors given access to vaccine plants on top of other safety checks, he said.

Vaccines have historically been a touchy subject in the Western world, rife with safety concerns and conspiracy theories. Worries about vaccine safety resurfaced in the late 1990s triggered by debate over a claimed association between the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella and autism. The claim was later discredited.

For China, the next few years will be crucial, as biotech companies upgrade their facilities and improve procedures to meet the safety and quality standards — a process that is expected to be costly and challenging. Then they will submit vaccines to the U.N. health agency for approval, which could take a couple of years.

First up is likely to be a homegrown vaccine for Japanese encephalitis, a mosquito-borne disease that can cause seizures, paralysis and death. The vaccine has been used for two decades in China with fewer side effects than other versions. Its manufacturer expects WHO approval for it in about a year. Also in the works are vaccines for polio and diseases that are the top two killers of children — pneumonia and rotavirus, which causes diarrhea.

Vaccines also are a significant part of a $300 million partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for the development of new health and farming products for poor countries.

China's entry into this field is important because one child dies every 20 seconds from vaccine-preventable diseases each year. UNICEF, the children's agency and the world's biggest buyer of vaccines, has been in talks with Chinese companies, said its supply director Shanelle Hall. The fund provides vaccines to nearly 60 percent of the world's children, and last year spent about $757 million.

Worldwide, vaccine sales last year grew 14 percent to $25.3 billion, according to healthcare market research firm Kalorama Information, as drugmakers which face intensifying competition from generic drugs now see vaccines as key areas of growth, particularly in Latin America, China and India.

China's vaccine makers, some of whom already export in small amounts, are confident they will soon become big players in the field.

"I personally predict that in the next five to 10 years, China will become a very important vaccine manufacture base in the world," said Wu Yonglin, vice president of the state-owned China National Biotec Group, the country's largest biological products maker that has been producing China's encephalitis vaccine since 1989.

CNBG will invest more than 10 billion yuan ($1.5 billion) between now and 2015 to improve its facilities and systems to meet WHO requirements, Wu said. The company also intends to submit vaccines to fight rotavirus, which kills half a million kids annually, and polio for WHO approval.

Smaller, private companies are also positioning themselves for the global market.

Sinovac is now testing a new vaccine for enterovirus 71, which causes severe hand, foot and mouth disease among children in China and other Asian countries. It is also preparing for clinical trials on a pneumococcal vaccine Yang says could rival Pfizer's Prevnar, which was the top-selling vaccine worldwide last year with sales of about $3.7 billion.

Pneumococcal disease causes meningitis, pneumonia and ear infection.

"In the short term, everyone sees the exporting opportunities, because outside of China the entire vaccine market still seems to be monopolized by a few Big Pharma (companies)," Yang said.

The entry of Chinese companies is expected to further pressure Western pharmaceutical companies to lower prices. Earlier this year, UNICEF's move to publicize what drugmakers charge it for vaccines showed that Western drugmakers often charged the agency double what companies in India and Indonesia do.

The aid group Doctors Without Borders criticized the vaccine body GAVI for spending hundreds of millions of dollars on anti-pneumonia vaccines from Western companies, saying it could put its buying power to even better use by fostering competition from emerging manufacturers like those in China.

GAVI's Schwalbe said the vaccine body has to buy what is available and negotiates hard for steep discounts.

"We need to buy vaccines now to save children's lives now. We can't wait."

Fitch Warns It Will Downgrade U.S. Credit Rating If No Budget Deal in 2013

Fitch Warns of U.S. Downgrade If No Budget Deal in 2013

November 29, 2011

Reuters - Fitch Ratings gave the United States until 2013 to come up with a "credible plan" to tackle its ballooning budget deficit or risk a downgrade of the country's coveted AAA rating.

The ratings agency on Monday revised to negative from stable the outlook on the U.S. credit rating after a special congressional committee failed last week to agree on at least $1.2 trillion in deficit-reduction measures.

The committee failure made it unlikely that any meaningful deficit plan will be adopted next year, increasing the fiscal burden on the next administration that will be elected in late 2012, Fitch said.

"The negative outlook reflects Fitch's declining confidence that timely fiscal measures necessary to place U.S. public finances on a sustainable path and secure the U.S. AAA sovereign rating will be forthcoming," the ratings agency said in a statement, adding that the chance of a downgrade is "slightly greater than 50 percent" now.

The news had little market impact, as a negative outlook from Fitch was widely expected.

"What it shows is that Fitch is putting the U.S. on warning that this cannot go on forever," said Michael Yoshikami, chief investment strategist at YCMNET Advisors in Walnut Creek, California.

"The markets already assumed this was going to happen. It would be different if it was a downgrade but a negative outlook is not the end of the world."

Like Moody's Investors Service, which also has a negative outlook on the U.S. Aaa rating, Fitch does not expect meaningful deficit-reduction measures in 2012, when presidential elections should exacerbate political divisions in Washington.

Rival agency Standard & Poor's cut the U.S. rating to AA-plus in an unprecedented decision on August 5, citing concerns about the government's budget deficit and rising debt burden. It maintains a negative outlook on the credit.

KICKING THE CAN

The so-called "Super Committee" of six Democrats and six Republicans was seen by Fitch as the last chance of an agreement before elections.

Last week, however, its members announced they were unable to agree on a deficit reduction plan, setting in motion automatic cuts worth $1.2 trillion over 10 years. The cuts are designed to be split evenly between domestic and military programs.

Both S&P and Moody's said on November 21 the committee's failure would have no immediate impact on their ratings.

However, Moody's on November 23 warned the United States that its rating could be in jeopardy if lawmakers backtrack on the automatic cuts of $1.2 trillion due to take effect starting in 2013.

In a statement issued after Fitch's decision, the U.S. Treasury said "Fitch's action is a reminder of the need for Congress to reduce the country's long-term deficit in a balanced manner and to avoid efforts that would undo the $1.2 trillion in automatic cuts negotiated last summer."

Fitch is now willing to give the new government that will take office in January 2013 several months to come up with a "sound" deficit reduction plan, top credit analyst David Riley told Reuters in an interview.

"Once we move to the second half (of 2013) and it looks as if a deal can't be done, then the (negative) outlook would likely result in a downgrade," Riley said.

Until then, there is little change of a "material adverse shock" that would trigger an early downgrade of the U.S. rating, he said, playing down concerns about the economic impact of the euro-zone debt crisis.

"If we had a relatively short downturn because, for example, the crisis in Europe got much worse and there was a spillover effect to the U.S. but we thought that it ultimately would prove to be temporary for the U.S. ... then that wouldn't necessarily lead us to change the rating."

Middle East and Africa Regime Changes Planned 20 Years Ago

Bible prophecy describes the battle of Armageddon as a coalition of nations that will almost certainly include China and Russia and several Muslim nations of the Middle East. Every day, the evidence mounts that China will be tightly leagued with Russia and many of the Islamic nations in a powerful anti-Israel political and military alliance from which the 200-million-man army described in the book of Revelation (Rev. 9:16) will ultimately come. - The Sixth Trumpet War of Revelation 9

Neocons Planned Regime Change Throughout Middle East, Africa 20 Years Ago

November 28, 2011

Washington’s Blog - I’ve repeatedly documented that the Neocons planned regime change in Iraq, Libya, Iran, Syria and a host of other countries right after 9/11 … if not before.

And that Obama is implementing these same plans – just with a “kindler, gentler” face.

Glenn Greenwald provides further documentation that the various Middle Eastern and North African wars were planned before 9/11:

General Wesley Clark … said the aim of this plot [to "destroy the governments in ... Iraq, ... Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran”] was this: “They wanted us to destabilize the Middle East, turn it upside down, make it under our control.” He then recounted a conversation he had had ten years earlier with Paul Wolfowitz — back in1991 — in which the then-number-3-Pentagon-official, after criticizing Bush 41 for not toppling Saddam, told Clark: “But one thing we did learn [from the Persian Gulf War] is that we can use our military in the region – in the Middle East – and the Soviets won’t stop us. And we’ve got about 5 or 10 years to clean up those old Soviet regimes – Syria, Iran [sic], Iraq – before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us.” Clark said he was shocked by Wolfowitz’s desires because, as Clark put it: “the purpose of the military is to start wars and change governments? It’s not to deter conflicts?”

[I]n the aftermath of military-caused regime change in Iraq and Libya … with concerted regime change efforts now underway aimed at Syria and Iran, with active andescalating proxy fighting in Somalia, with a modest military deployment to SouthSudan, and the active use of drones in six — count ‘em: six — different Muslim countries, it is worth asking whether the neocon dream as laid out by Clark is dead or is being actively pursued and fulfilled, albeit with means more subtle and multilateral than full-on military invasions (it’s worth remembering that neocons specialized in dressing up their wars in humanitarian packaging: Saddam’s rape rooms! Gassed his own people!). As Jonathan Schwarz … put it about the supposedly contentious national security factions:

As far as I can tell, there’s barely any difference in goals within the foreign policy establishment. They just disagree on the best methods to achieve the goals. My guess is that everyone agrees we have to continue defending the mideast from outside interference (I love that Hillary line), and the [Democrats] just think that best path is four overt wars and three covert actions, while the neocons want to jump straight to seven wars.

***

The neocon end as Clark reported them — regime change in those seven countries — seems as vibrant as ever. It’s just striking to listen to Clark describe those 7 countries in which the neocons plotted to have regime change back in 2001, and then compare that to what the U.S. Government did and continues to do since then with regard to those precise countries.

Note: The so-called “war on terror” has also weakened our national security and created many more terrorists than it has killed, imprisoned or otherwise stopped. It is also destroying our economy.

The Bill Of Rights Has Been Destroyed By The Patriot Act In The Name Of The War On Terror

Feds Charge Man as Enemy Combatant Supporting Terrorism for Uploading Youtube Video

Feds Charge Man As Enemy Combatant Supporting Terrorism For Uploading YouTube Video, Subjecting Him To Permanent Imprisonment, Torture, And Lethal Beatings Without A Trial

September 2, 2011
Alexander Higgins Blog

Take freedom of speech and other personal liberties — including protections against cruel and unusual punishment, right to face your accuser, and right to trial by jury — and throw them right out the window. All for the crime of uploading a YouTube.

That is what a 24-year-old Virginia man, Jubair Ahmad, faces as the feds charge him with providing support for terrorism for allegedly uploading a propaganda video.

The crime comes with the dubious distinction that the accused are treated as if they are actually terrorists or as the U.S. government labels them “enemies combatants”.

With the declaration of being an enemy combatant, the rights and protections engraved into the Constitution with the full force of our founding father’s very own flesh and blood are instantly nullified.

That’s right. The Department of Justice of the great United States of America has charged a Jubair Ahmad, a 24-year-old Woodbridge, Virginia man, of providing support for terrorism because he allegedly uploaded a propaganda video to YouTube.

The accusation alone instantly classifies the man as an ‘enemy combatant’ and ‘clear and present danger’. Such persons who are a ‘threat to national security’ have absolutely no rights. 

To make matters worse, businesses and nations aren’t allowed to do business with such so-called ‘terrorists’ or they will be declared a terrorist themselves.

That means a lawyer who takes up his case can be charge with providing support for terrorism. 

That is if the United States government even decides to honor habeas corpus and give the man a trial in the first place.

Our beloved supreme court has ruled that ‘enemy combatants’ can be abducted, tortured, assassinated, and even detained for ever without a trial because the constitution does not apply to them.

Even worse, the lucky few who are released after being declared innocent have no right to legal recourse because revealing the details of their detention and torture is also a threat to national security.

This is what the ‘war on terror’ has escalated to, which we have been brainwashed by our government is necessary to protect our liberties from our enemies.

The video in question reportedly showed the leader of a group designated as a terrorist organization, along with other purported “jihadi martyrs,” and clips of armored trucks exploding from the detonation of IEDs.

The Feds claim that by uploading the propaganda video, the man has committed the crime of providing support to terrorists organization, which qualifies the man to have all constitutional rights to be suspended and to be detained indefinitely without trial.

As we have seen in past cases, the suspension of the constitutional “inalienable rights” for the so-called enemy combatants allows the executive branch of the federal government, including the military and CIA, to become the judge, jury and executioner in such cases. 

Of course without the constitutional right to the protection against cruel and unusual punishment the feds are now free to beat and torture the man to death, as they have done in past cases.

To reinforce their charges, the feds further allege Ahmad received ‘religious training’ from the ‘Lashkar-e-Taiba’ ‘terrorist group’ when he was a teenager while he still lived in Pakistan before moving to the United States. The State Department claims the group operates in the disputed Kashmir territory along the Pakistan and India border.

MSNBC reports:

Virginian accused of making YouTube terror video

Federal officials allege he trained with militants behind Mumbai attack


A Virginia man who came to the US from Pakistan has been charged with supporting Lashkar-e-Taiba, the radical Islamist terrorist group behind the 2008 shooting attack in Mumbai, India. 

Justice Department officials said Friday that Jubair Ahmad, 24, of Woodbridge, received religious training from the terrorist group as a teenager in Pakistan and later attended one of its training camps. 

He came to the United States in 2007 with his family. He’s been under investigation for two years, ever since the FBI got a tip that he might be connected to the group, the officials said. 

Court documents say that last fall, he produced and uploaded a propaganda video to YouTube on behalf of of the group, showing its leader and purporting to show “jihadi martyrs” and armored trucks exploding after having been hit by improvised explosive devices. Investigators say when asked about the video, Jubair falsely denied having anything to do with it. 

The State Department has designated Lashkar-e-Taiba as a terrorist group. It is among nearly a dozen rebel groups operating in the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir. 

[...]
Source: MSNBC

New E-Mails Rock the Global Warming Debate

"We need to get some broad based support,
to capture the public's imagination...
So we have to offer up scary scenarios,
make simplified, dramatic statements
and make little mention of any doubts...
Each of us has to decide what the right balance
is between being effective and being honest."
- Prof. Stephen Schneider,
Stanford Professor of Climatology,
lead author of many IPCC reports

"We've got to ride this global warming issue.
Even if the theory of global warming is wrong,
we will be doing the right thing in terms of
economic and environmental policy."
- Timothy Wirth,
President of the UN Foundation

Climategate 2.0: New E-Mails Rock the Global Warming Debate

November 23, 2011

Forbes - A new batch of 5,000 emails among scientists central to the assertion that humans are causing a global warming crisis were anonymously released to the public yesterday, igniting a new firestorm of controversy nearly two years to the day after similar emails ignited the Climategate scandal.

Three themes are emerging from the newly released emails:

1. prominent scientists central to the global warming debate are taking measures to conceal rather than disseminate underlying data and discussions;
   


2. these scientists view global warming as a political “cause” rather than a balanced scientific inquiry; and
   


3. many of these scientists frankly admit to each other that much of the science is weak and dependent on deliberate manipulation of facts and data.

Regarding scientific transparency, a defining characteristic of science is the open sharing of scientific data, theories and procedures so that independent parties, and especially skeptics of a particular theory or hypothesis, can replicate and validate asserted experiments or observations. Emails between Climategate scientists, however, show a concerted effort to hide rather than disseminate underlying evidence and procedures.

“I’ve been told that IPCC is above national FOI [Freedom of Information] Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 would be to delete all emails at the end of the process,” writes Phil Jones, a scientist working with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in a newly released email.

“Any work we have done in the past is done on the back of the research grants we get – and has to be well hidden,” Jones writes in another newly released email. “I’ve discussed this with the main funder (U.S. Dept of Energy) in the past and they are happy about not releasing the original station data.”

The original Climategate emails contained similar evidence of destroying information and data that the public would naturally assume would be available according to freedom of information principles.

“Mike, can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith [Briffa] re AR4 [UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 4th Assessment]?”

Jones wrote to Penn State University scientist Michael Mann in an email released in Climategate 1.0.

“Keith will do likewise. … We will be getting Caspar [Ammann] to do likewise. I see that CA [the Climate Audit Web site] claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper!!”

The new emails also reveal the scientists’ attempts to politicize the debate and advance predetermined outcomes.

“The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guid[e] what’s included and what is left out” of IPCC reports, writes Jonathan Overpeck, coordinating lead author for the IPCC’s most recent climate assessment.

“I gave up on [Georgia Institute of Technology climate professor] Judith Curry a while ago. I don’t know what she thinks she’s doing, but its not helping the cause,” wrote Mann in another newly released email.

74 Earthquakes have Hit Oklahoma and 93 have Hit Arkansas in 2011

Oklahoma's neighboring state, Arkansas, also has experienced a swarm of earthquakes. From September 20, 2010 through December 13, 2010, Guy, a community north of Little Rock, experienced an almost constant shaking from 487 measurable earthquakes. The largest, a 4.0, hit on October 11, 2010. This area also experienced a massive fish kill and 5,000 bird deaths in late December 2010. A 4.3 magnitude earthquake hit Oklahoma on December 13, 2010, and in Arkansas a 4.1 magnitude and a 4.7 magnitude quake hit on February 18, 2011 and February 28, 2011, respectively. So far during 2011, 74 earthquakes have hit Oklahoma and 93 have hit Arkansas. It is important to note that there are two nuclear power units in Arkansas, which are located on Lake Dardanelle in Russellville, near the Arkansas River. [Source]

For a complete list of earthquake activity in this area, see Recent Earthquakes in Central US. Here are the quakes in Oklahoma during 2011 that were 4.0 magnitude or higher:

• 4.7 - 2011/11/07 Sparks, OK
• 4.0 - 2011/11/06 Johnson, OK
• 5.6 - 2011/11/05 Sparks, OK
• 4.7 - 2011/11/05 Sparks, OK

6th Earthquake in 4 Days Recorded in Oklahoma

November 27, 2011

AP - Another small earthquake has been reported in Oklahoma.

The U.S. Geological Survey says a 3.2 magnitude quake struck just before 6 a.m. Sunday about 27 miles northeast of Oklahoma City. The Logan County Sheriff's Office says no damage was reported

On Saturday, a 2.4 magnitude tremor was recorded at about 7 a.m. about 50 miles northeast of Oklahoma City near Sparks.

Sunday's earthquake is the sixth in the area since Thursday, when a 3.7 magnitude quake was recorded near Prague. Three more were recorded Friday.

A 5.6 magnitude quake, the strongest ever recorded in Oklahoma, shook the state Nov. 5. That quake damaged dozens of homes, buckled a highway and caused other damage.

Geologists say earthquakes with magnitudes of 2.5 to 3.0 are generally the smallest felt by humans.

Oklahoma Shaken Up after Earthquakes

Residents in central Oklahoma tend to damaged homes after experiencing the largest quake in state history, magnitude 5.6. Some are worried the Wilzetta fault may be becoming more active.

November 6, 2011

Los Angeles Times - Central Oklahoma was recovering Sunday after a swarm of weekend earthquakes, including the largest in state history, buckled a highway, damaged several homes and left residents worried they may be living on an increasingly active fault.

Mary Reneau, 68, saw her home of 25 years, a two-story brick ranch house six miles northwest of Prague, Okla., battered by the quakes.

"There isn't a room in the house that hasn't sustained damage," Reneau said. "It looks like a bomb fell."

She said she had never felt an earthquake as intense during all her years in central Oklahoma, where she and her husband run a custom hay-baling business on their 440-acre ranch.

The largest in the latest round, a magnitude 5.6, occurred at 10:53 p.m. CDT Saturday, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The quake caused major damage to at least five homes, according to Aaron Bennett, a Lincoln County emergency management dispatcher. One man reportedly was injured when he tripped and hit his head while attempting to flee his home.

U.S. Highway 62 buckled in at least two places during the quake, but road crews repaired the damage overnight Saturday, Bennett said.

The quake damaged a 40-foot spire at St. Gregory University in Shawnee and ruptured a water pipe in Chandler, dispatchers said.

The temblor was felt as far away as Chicago, Omaha and Austin, Texas.

Paul Caruso, a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Golden, Colo., said there was no link between Saturday's earthquakes and one that struck Virginia in August with a magnitude of 5.8. He also said there was no indication that the Earth was shaking more than it had in the past.

"There's no statistical inference that seismic activity is increasing. We've just had a lot more quakes in the news because they have occurred where people live," Caruso said.

Reneau said she had noticed an increase in earthquakes during the last two years, and wondered whether it might be connected to oil and gas exploration in the area.

"There's been a lot of drilling," she said.

In August, a research seismologist published a study noting a swarm of earthquakes in January in an area of south-central Oklahoma with active hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a form of natural gas and oil drilling using pressurized water and other materials.

The researcher at the Oklahoma Geological Survey at the University of Oklahoma in Norman noted 50 small earthquakes, ranging in magnitude from 1.0 to 2.8, had occurred within about two miles of Eola Field, a fracking operation in southern Garvin County.

Oklahoma Earthquakes Stronger Than Fracking Tremors, Experts Say

November 7, 2011

Huffington Post - Thousands of times every day, drilling deep underground causes the earth to tremble. But don't blame the surprise flurry of earthquakes in Oklahoma on man's thirst for oil and gas, experts say.

The weekend quakes were far stronger than the puny tremors from drilling – especially the controversial practice of hydraulic fracturing. The weekend quakes didn't have the mark of man. They were a force of nature.

Hydraulic fracturing, called fracking, involves injecting millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals deep underground to break up rock. While that may sound like it could cause an earthquake, experts say the process doesn't pack nearly the punch of even a moderate earthquake.

The magnitude-5.6 quake that rocked Oklahoma three miles underground had the power of 3,800 tons of TNT, which is nearly 2,000 times stronger than the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

The typical energy released in tremors triggered by fracking, "is the equivalent to a gallon of milk falling off the kitchen counter," said Stanford University geophysicist Mark Zoback.

In Oklahoma, home to 185,000 drilling wells and hundreds of injection wells, the question of man-made seismic activity comes up quickly. But so far, federal, state and academic experts say readings show that the Oklahoma quakes were natural, following the lines of a long-known fault.

"There's a fault there," said U.S. Geological Survey seismologist Paul Earle. "You can have an earthquake that size anywhere east of the Rockies. You don't need a huge fault to produce an earthquake that big. It's uncommon, but not unexpected."

But there's a reason people ask if the quakes are man-made rather than from the shifting of the Earth's crusts.

In the past, earthquakes have been linked to energy exploration and production, including from injections of enormous amounts of drilling wastewater or injections of water for geothermal power, experts said. They point to recent earthquakes in the magnitude 3 and 4 range – not big enough to cause much damage, but big enough to be felt – in Arkansas, Texas, California, England, Germany and Switzerland. And back in the 1960s, two Denver quakes in the 5.0 range were traced to deep injection of wastewater.

Still, scientists would like to know if human activity can trigger a larger event. The National Academy of Sciences is studying the seismic effects of energy drilling and mining and will issue a report next spring.

"This is an area of active research," said Rowena Lohman, a Cornell University seismologist. "We're all concerned about this."

One issue is that areas that are prone to earthquakes are also places where oil and gas flow along fractures, experts said. In some studies, scientists have taken earthquake data and, like detectives, tracked its causes to deep injections of lots of liquid under high pressure, such as ones that peaked at magnitude 3.3 at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport in 2008 and 2009, said USGS geophysicist William Ellsworth. The Switzerland quake was in the city, Basel, so it did cause damage, he and others said.

"How big an earthquake might we trigger? That is an open question at this point," Ellsworth said. "We do know we can trigger magnitude 5 earthquakes."

When lots of liquid is injected into the ground it changes the stress and pressure in a place that probably already was a fault, said Oklahoma Geological Survey seismologist Austin Holland.

Putting the liquid in is similar to injecting water between two adjacent bricks, it allows them to slide more easily and "the water under pressure is helping push the bricks apart ever so slightly," Holland said.

Holland, who has documented some of the biggest shaking associated with fracking, compared a man-made earthquake to a mosquito bite.

"It's really quite inconsequential," he said.

Hydraulic fracturing has been practiced for decades but it has grown rapidly in recent years as drillers have learned to combine it with horizontal drilling to tap enormous reserves of natural gas and oil in the United States.

About 5 million gallons of fluid is used to fracture a typical well. That's typically not nearly enough weight and pressure to cause more than a tiny tremor.

Earlier this year, Holland wrote a report about a different flurry of Oklahoma quakes last January – the strongest a 2.8 magnitude – that seemed to occur with hydraulic fracturing. Holland said it was a 50-50 chance that the gas drilling technique caused the tremors.

That is the largest tremor associated with fracking in the scientific literature, experts say. And the strongest of this weekend's natural quakes, magnitude-5.6, released nearly 16,000 times the energy of the worst from that January flurry.

An industry-funded study into a 2.3-magnitude tremor in June near a fracking site in England linked the drilling activity to the quake, but it was a "worst case scenario" of fluid injection into the exact wrong place in a fault, said German geologist Stefan Baisch, lead author of the study.

But wastewater from hundreds of wells is often collected and disposed of deep underground through so-called injection wells. In Lincoln County, Okla., where the recent earthquakes hit, there are approximately 1,982 active oil and gas wells, according to Matt Skinner, spokesman for the state agency that oversees oil and gas production. There are 181 injection wells.

These wells pump wastewater often much deeper underground, all day and all night, for years. The weight and pressure from all of this fluid has been known to cause relatively large earthquakes, including recently in Arkansas, home to another large shale gas field.

After a swarm of small earthquakes hit north-central Arkansas near a formation called the Fayetteville Shale, the state issued a temporary moratorium last year on new injection wells. The state found that three wells were operating near an unknown fault and were likely contributing to earthquakes. The state shut those wells and banned future ones near the fault.

Oil and gas production can lead to tremors another way: When drillers suck all the oil from underground and leave nothing to fill the gap for where the oil was, the emptying reservoir can collapse. If this happens at all, it usually happens slowly over decades. It triggered a series of earthquakes in Los Angeles county in the 1930s, according to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Now, water is injected into depleting wells to maintain pressure. The water also helps keep oil flowing.

Read More...

Ohio Puts 200-Pound 8-Year-Old in Foster Care, Marking the First Time the State has Taken a Child from a Parent for a Strictly Weight-Related Issue

An Ohio third-grader who weighs more than 200 pounds has been taken from his family and placed into foster care after county social workers said his mother wasn't doing enough to control his weight. The Plain Dealer reports (article below) that the Cleveland 8-year-old is considered severely obese and at risk for such diseases as diabetes and hypertension. The case is the first state officials can recall of a child being put in foster care strictly for a weight-related issue. Lawyers for the mother say the county overreached when authorities took the boy last week. They say the medical problems he is at risk for do not yet pose an imminent danger. A spokeswoman says the county removed the child because caseworkers saw his mother's inability to reduce his weight as medical neglect. - 200-pound Cleveland Third-grader Placed in Foster Care, AP, November 27, 2011

Cleveland, Ohio, Places Obese Third-grader in Foster Care

November 26, 2011

The Plain Dealer - An 8-year-old Cleveland Heights boy was taken from his family and placed in foster care last month after county case workers said his mother wasn't doing enough to control his weight.

At more than 200 pounds, the third-grader is considered severely obese and at risk for developing such diseases as diabetes and hypertension.

But even though the state health department estimates more than 12 percent of third-graders statewide are severely obese -- that could mean 1,380 in Cuyahoga County alone -- this is the first time anyone in the county or the state can recall a child being taken from a parent for a strictly weight-related issue.

The case plays into an emerging national debate that has some urging social-service agencies to step in when parents have failed to address a weight problem.

Others suggest there's hypocrisy in a government that would advocate taking children away for being overweight while saying it's OK to advertise unhealthy food and put toys in fast-food kids' meals.

Cuyahoga County does not have a specific policy on dealing with obese children. It removed the boy because case workers considered this mother's inability to get her son's weight down a form of medical neglect, said Mary Louise Madigan, a spokeswoman for the Department of Children and Family Services.

They said that the child's weight gain was caused by his environment and that the mother wasn't following doctor's orders -- which she disputes.

"This child's problem was so severe that we had to take custody," Madigan said. The agency worked with the mother for more than a year before asking Juvenile Court for custody of the child, she said.

Lawyers for the mother, a substitute elementary school teacher who is also taking vocational school classes, think the county has overreached in this case by arguing that medical conditions the boy is at risk for -- but doesn't yet have -- pose an imminent danger to his health.

They question whether the emotional impact of being yanked from his family, school and friends was also considered.

"I think we would concede that some intervention is appropriate," Juvenile Public Defender Sam Amata said. "But what risk became imminent? When did it become an immediate problem?"

Children are ordinarily removed from their homes for physical abuse, neglect or undernourishment.

Amata said that in his decades as a public defender, he has seen children left in homes with parents who have severe drug problems or who have beaten their children, with the reasoning that there isn't an immediate danger to the child.

In this case, Amata said, other than having a weight problem, the boy was a normal elementary school student who was on the honor roll and participated in school activities.

Records show the child's only current medical problem, sleep apnea, is being treated and that he wears a machine nightly that helps and monitors his breathing.

"They are trying to make it seem like I am unfit, like I don't love my child," the boy's mother said.

"Of course I love him. Of course I want him to lose weight. It's a lifestyle change, and they are trying to make it seem like I am not embracing that. It is very hard, but I am trying."

The mother and the boy are not named in this story because The Plain Dealer does not generally identify those involved in abuse cases.

The mother said that social workers took her son from his school on Oct. 19 and told her she could see him only once a week for two hours. The boy is living in a foster home.

Next month, the two sides will debate the case in front of a Juvenile Court magistrate, who will decide what is in the boy's best interest. A trial is set on the child's 9th birthday.

Rainbow hospital program for kids, families

County workers were alerted to the child's weight in early 2010 after his mother took him to a hospital for breathing problems. He was diagnosed with sleep apnea, which can be weight-related, and was given the breathing machine. Social workers began to monitor him under what the county calls protective supervision.

Last year, the boy lost weight but in recent months began to gain it back rapidly. That's when the county moved to take the child, records show.

The mother said that when she found out that other kids and a sibling might be giving her son extra food, she tried to put a stop to it and explain to him that he could eat only certain foods.

She tried to follow the recommendations of the doctors, such as getting him a bike and encouraging him to get exercise.

The mother wonders what role genetics plays in the boy's condition -- both she and his father and some other family members are overweight, she said. However, she also has a 16-year-old son who is tall and thin.

The mother agreed to enroll the child in a special Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital program called Healthy Kids, Healthy Weight.

That program has evaluated more than 900 overweight and obese children from the ages of 4 to 8 since 2005. A team of specialty doctors, nutritionists, psychologists and others treat the children and work to educate families about creating healthy eating habits.

Dr. Naveen Uli, a pediatric endocrinologist and co-director of the program, said he is seeing more children who are quickly developing diseases that in the past were seen only in adults, like Type 2 diabetes and hypertension. These can affect a person's health, life span and health care costs, he said.

But he said interventions need to be targeted, if possible, for the whole family.

Uli said many families in the program have found it difficult to relearn how to eat, to read and translate confusing food labels and to make the healthy choices. Not all families complete the intense 12-week program, or they are unwilling or unable to grasp the seriousness of the threat, he said.

There is no policy on whether to report obese children to the county if they do not complete the program, but doctors can call if they think the child is at risk.

Uli said most of the children don't require immediate medical intervention but instead need help to prevent them from getting diseases like diabetes.

Uli said that in most cases, he thinks that keeping the family unit intact is better. But if that doesn't work, other interventions have to be derived, he said.

Debate emerges nationally on best ways to intervene

That is precisely what is at the core of a debate that is emerging nationally in the discussions about childhood obesity.

Earlier this year, Dr. David Ludwig, Harvard University professor and pediatric obesity expert, urged children's services agencies to intervene in severe cases when parents have failed to address a weight problem that leads to imminent health risks.

Ludwig, the co-author of an article that appeared in the Journal of American Medical Association this summer, said other interventions should be tried first and that children should be removed only as a last resort.

The article cited the example of a 12-year-old patient of Ludwig's who weighed 400 pounds and had developed diabetes, cholesterol problems, high blood pressure and sleep apnea -- conditions that could kill her before the age of 30.

But others question whether a future risk is enough to separate a child from a family.

Arthur Caplan, a professor of bioethics and medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania, said that before a trend of removing children takes hold, the broader public-policy issue needs to be explored.

"A 218-pound 8-year-old is a time bomb," Caplan acknowledged. "But the government cannot raise these children. A third of kids are fat. We aren't going to move them all to foster care. We can't afford it, and I'm not sure there are enough foster parents to do it. "

He said he is worried that the families with the fewest resources, which are often minorities, will end up being ones with their children removed.

Caplan said one could get ethical whiplash in a world where one arm of government is so concerned about a child's weight that it removes him from his home, while another branch of government argues that french fries and tomato paste on pizza should be counted as servings of vegetables.

"It's completely hypocritical, or to put it another way, a schizophrenic stance," he said.

"It's OK to threaten to take a kid away or charge someone more for insurance," he said. "But it's also OK to advertise unhealthy food and put toys in kids' meals."

In the Cleveland Heights case, county workers believed that disconnecting the boy from his family, at least temporarily, might help. And he has lost a few pounds in the last month.

But now lawyers for the mother say they've been told that the foster mother who has the child in a neighboring suburb is having trouble keeping up with all of his appointments.

There was even a discussion about getting the foster mother additional help or moving the child again, this time to a foster home with a personal trainer, Amata said.

"I wonder why they didn't offer the mother that kind of extra help," Amata said.

State Should Take Obese Children Away from Parents, Say Some Docs

July 14, 2011

Agence France-Presse - The government should have the right to remove severely obese children from their parents’ home and place them in foster care, two US doctors argued in a controversial editorial.

“State intervention may serve the best interests of many children with life-threatening obesity, comprising the only realistic way to control harmful behaviors,” wrote Lindsey Murtagh of the Harvard School of Public Health and David Ludwig of Children’s Hospital in Boston.

“In severe instances of childhood obesity, removal from the home may be justifiable from a legal standpoint because of imminent health risks and the parents’ chronic failure to address medical problems.”

Some two million children in the United States are considered severely obese with a body mass index at or above the 99th percentile, the doctors wrote.

“Obesity of this magnitude can cause immediate and potentially irreversible consequences, most notably type 2 diabetes,” they said.

Child abuse laws have long addressed situations in which children are starved or neglected, but “only a handful of states, including California, Indiana, Iowa, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, and Texas, have legal precedent for applying this framework to overnourishment and severe obesity.”

Murtagh, who is also a lawyer by training, and Ludwig said that while it may be an undesirable option, placing a child in temporary foster care could allow better habits to take root and avoid the risks of weight loss surgery.

“Although removal of the child from the home can cause families great emotional pain, this option lacks the physical risks of bariatric surgery.”

The opinion piece in the Journal of the American Medical Association made waves in the medical community and US media, and JAMA issued a statement pointing out that the piece did not reflect the institution’s view.

“This commentary does not reflect policy or opinion of the American Medical Association (AMA) or JAMA. The content of this commentary is solely the responsibility of the authors,” it said.

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