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NSA risking electrical overload. Officials say outage could leave Md.-based spy agency paralyzed

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‘Opens the door to never-ending war,’ says Lebanese government.

The U.S.-French “ceasefire” agreement is in reality a brazen demand that Lebanon and the Lebanese resistance surrender and accept the re-occupation of their country. It attempts to win at the negotiating table what the U.S.-Israel military alliance has been unable to win on the battlefield, despite their overwhelming superiority in weaponry.

The resolution is overwhelmingly biased against Lebanon. Among its noxious provisions.

The Lebanese resistance must halt all military operations, while Israel, which is occupying parts of southern Lebanon is only required to stop “offensive” operations.

Israel does not have to withdraw its troops from Lebanon.

Hezbollah and all resistance organizations must be disarmed. This provision would also disarm the Palestinian security forces that protect the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. The last time the Palestinian camps were unguarded in 1982, the massacres at Sabra and Shatila were carried out in a joint operation by Lebanese fascists and the Israeli army, despite U.S. “guarantees” of protection.

An international arms embargo would be placed on Lebanon. No mention is made of the massive U.S. arming of Israel.

Hezbollah is required to free captured Israeli prisoners unconditionally, but the resolution only “encourages the efforts aimed at settling the issue of the Lebanese prisoners in Israel.” The 9,800 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are not mentioned at all.

An international “peace-keeping” force will be deployed in southern Lebanon. The clear mission of the force would be to suppress the Lebanese resistance. No “peace-keepers” would be deployed on the Israeli side.

Just more neocon/ Zionist attempts at dominating the area, isn’t it? The resolution doesn’t even pretend to be fair and has already been ignored by all the involved parties. So one wonders why the US and France even bothered with this grotesque charade of pretending to want peace.

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To hear it from organizers of the recent protests against Israel’s offensives against Lebanon and Gaza, there is a familiar feeling in the air. Brian Becker, the national coordinator for the ANSWER Coalition, an antiwar umbrella group, has observed it while leafleting in the street. Leaders of Arab-American organizations such as the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) say it is reflected in the number of phone calls their offices have been receiving of late.

“It’s like the way things were right before the Iraq war,” Becker says. “Before the Iraq war we had huge support, and now we’re getting a similar response at the grassroots level.”

The upcoming nationwide protests against the Lebanon invasion this coming Saturday in D.C., L.A., and S.F. may be sizable and will certainly be noisy and angry. As well they should be. Nether World comments on the militancy of the London march this last Saturday, and I’ve noticed the same at the street corner demos we’ve had at the Israeli consultate. There’s a new edge to these protests. People are pissed off, and are coming together to stop the US/ Israeli war machine. We can do it. We must do it. Before the neocons invade Syria and Iran and create a conflagration in the entire Middle East.

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Front page, Sunday LA Times editorials

Why I quit the prison system
California’s last corrections chief on what the state needs to do next. Jeanne S. Woodford, Jeanne S. Woodford spent 28 years working in the California prisons and was the acting head of the state corrections department when she resigned in April.

Woodford was a sea change in the California prison system, which exists primarily for politicians to get elected by outdoing each other in gittin’ tough on crime, for contractors to get wealthy by building new prisons, and for the prison guard union to fatten itself through contributions and its guards with bloated raises.

Woodford wanted genuine rehab for prisoners, to get them off alcohol and drugs so they don’t return. Seems reasonable, doesn’t it? But she was blocked every step of the way and finally resigned.

What I saw behind bars
A former state legislator fought for new prisons … then he landed in one. Pat Nolan is a vice president of Prison Fellowship, the world’s largest outreach to prisoners and their families.

Rather than putting resources into bricks, mortar and barbed wire, the legislature should give prison staff the resources to prepare inmates to find honest work, support their families and be good members of the community.

Prison fix: call in the feds
California’s dysfunctional prisons need a judicial jump-start.
If I were a betting man, I’d give 5-1 odds that U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson will place the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation under his direct supervision within the next six months.

That’s what’s needed. Take control of the prisons away from the Schwarzeneggers and prison guards, and force reform. California prisons are among the most brutal in the nation and their Special Housing Units (SHUs) have been called torture by Amnesty International. The current system guarantees that inmates will keep returning to prison, which of course is precisely what the politicians, contractors, and prison guards want. They have a huge vested interest in insuring that genuine rehabilitation never happens - just another example of an economic system that puts profits and political gain above the interests of society as a whole.

[tags]prisons,Jeanne Woodford[/tags]

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The LA Times has a comprehensive five-part series on “the crisis in the oceans.” Garbage and pollution from man enters the oceans, creates toxic slime that kills fish and sickens any one near it. This is excellent reporting, enhanced by videos, photos, and graphics.

Part 1. A Primeval Tide of Toxins
Runoff from modern life is feeding an explosion of primitive organisms. This ‘rise of slime,’ as one scientist calls it, is killing larger species and sickening people.

Part 2. Sentinels Under Attack
Toxic algae that poison the brain have caused strandings and mass die-offs of marine mammals — barometers of the sea’s health.

Part 3. Dark Tides, Ill Winds
With sickening regularity, toxic algae blooms are invading coastal waters. They kill sea life and send poisons ashore on the breeze, forcing residents to flee.

Part 4. Plague of Plastic Chokes the Seas
On Midway Atoll, 40% of albatross chicks die, their bellies full of trash. Swirling masses of drifting debris pollute remote beaches and snare wildlife.

Part 5. A Chemical Imbalance
Growing seawater acidity threatens to wipe out coral, fish and other crucial species worldwide.

As long as the profit motive is allowed to reign supreme over the health of the planet, the destruction of the oceans will continue. 90% of the big fish are already gone. We don’t need environmental reform, we need a new economic system that doesn’t permit and encourage environmental catastrophe just so someone can make money.

[tags]polluted oceans[/tags]

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