Publictakeover's Weblog

Pipe Down

Here’s what Secretary of State Clinton and Canadian Foreign Minister Baird had to say about the Keystone XL Pipeline at a press conference two weeks ago:

SECRETARY CLINTON: We are reviewing TransCanada’s permit application for Keystone XL Pipeline to cross the U.S.-Canadian border. As you know, this includes analysis and assessment of multiple factors, as well as reviewing hundreds of thousands of comments that have been received during the public comment period. We are leaving no stone unturned in this process and we expect to make a decision on the permit before the end of this year.

FOREIGN MINISTER BAIRD: On the Keystone Pipeline, this is obviously tremendously important to the future prosperity of the Canadian economy. We had a good discussion about it, and I respect that the Secretary is the decider, so she listened respectfully. We’re pleased that there’s a – the recent announcement about the process, that there will be some public consultation, and obviously look forward to a decision on this. It is a very important project not just for our government, but I think for Canadians and the future of the Canadian economy.

It doesn’t seem as if they have any intention of delaying, let alone stopping the pipeline or the mining of the tar sands. This is the sixth day of arrests of nonviolent protesters at the White House over the permitting of this pipeline.

Even so, Bill McKibben wrote a hopeful account of his arrest in the action, citing the increase in publicity and activism resulting from it.

The New York Times printed an editorial against the Keystone XL, clearly setting forth the environmental dangers.

Then there’s this:

There’s no way the investors and their friends in the elected governments we’ve entrusted with oversight are going to let this get-rich-quick scheme get “blown up” for any reason, especially not environmental concerns.

This is more dire than coal, and possibly rates as the number one Global Security-Environment issue ever.

9/11, Secret Police and Foreign Policy

Obama Nominates CFR Member David Cohen to Treasury | Charting Stocks.

There’s been talk of his divisiveness,

Cohen’s tenure as head of CIA operations, the nation’s top spy, was so contentious that in 1997, The New York Times editorial page took the unusual step of calling for his ouster.

and questions about the ethics and constitutionality of his role at the NYPD.

While the expansion of the NYPD’s intelligence unit has been well known, many details about its clandestine operations, including the depth of its CIA ties, have not previously been reported.

The NYPD denied that it trolls ethnic neighborhoods and said it only follows leads. In a city that has repeatedly been targeted by terrorists, police make no apologies for pushing the envelope. NYPD intelligence operations have disrupted terrorist plots and put several would-be killers in prison.

“The New York Police Department is doing everything it can to make sure there’s not another 9/11 here and that more innocent New Yorkers are not killed by terrorists,” NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said. “And we have nothing to apologize for in that regard.”

According to AP reporters Matt Goldman and David Apuzzo, the NYPD began going into Pakistani neighborhoods in the big apple, and, at Cohen’s and Sanchez’s (another CIA veteran brought in to build the anti-terror task force at NYPD) direction, looked for ways of pressuring residents to become informants.

An arrest could be the leverage the police needed to persuade someone to become an informant.

Now it turns out Cohen’s CFR, too, of course. Author Chris Dickey writes, according to Stephen J. Garber, that David Cohen “retired from the CIA in 2000.”

The Council on Foreign Relations is … a lot of things, taking on some roles that exist only in the minds of conspiracy theorists. They’re a bipartisan think tank that formulates American foreign policy.

Is the SEC Covering Up Wall Street Crimes?

Matt Taibbi strikes again.

ALEC Exposed

Nice resource piece at

Center for Media and Democracy.

Probably the genesis of the Nation article last week.

I would be frightened at how dark the horizon looks for human consciousness and progress–especially in non-European countries–but it really isn’t anything new.

It’s just the cover-up of Satan’s self-worship and lust for power and control taken to newly expanded degrees of possessed minds and “strongholds.”

Mt 5:8

Debt Supercommittee | OpenSecrets

The Funders the Debt Supercommittee–that unelected body of autocrat usurpers–works for are exposed onOpenSecrets.org.

… and More Journalism …

The gulf between corporate consolidated media and the American people they supposedly inform has never been greater. Columbia Journalism Review, regularly reminds us of this fact, and the flawed policies of “consensus” politics in Washington.

We live in a time when media folk talk a great deal about engagement, yet there often is a disconnect between them and the broad public they supposedly serve.

Social Security and Medicare are too important to leave to the elites.

More Journalism

There’s an irony about modern journalism.

In spite of the collapse of print journalism in the U.S. and the laying-off of thousands of trained, professional journalists, there’s probably more high quality journalism being written now than ever before.

It’s being published on the internet, though, and most of the writers are being paid little or nothing for their work.

Journalism is also being read by a narrower range–if not just fewer–of readers. I never read David Brooks anymore. I wouldn’t even read the title of a piece by William Kristol.

But it’s a sword that cuts both ways. Truthdig is loaded with stellar journalists writing top notch stuff, like this piece by William Pfaff: Assassination as Foreign Policy.

Pfaff points out that,

…global domination is a political policy that cannot possibly succeed. The world is not open to domination by a single state. The effort to establish it will destroy the United States itself. The reasons are evident in history.

But who reads stuff like that? People like me. I’ve been trying to do something about it, off and on, since around 1970. Most of the writing is better today, but the audience isn’t. That’s the problem.

Halladay etc…

It’s hard to imagine a more importunate surprise than Roy Halladay blowing a lead in the ninth inning at home. It was one of those games that I didn’t even bother to watch the ninth, and then came back after the game was over to learn that the lead had changed sides.

Despite striking out 14 D-backs, Roy Halladay suffered a complete-game loss on Tuesday, giving up three runs, eight hits and a walk.

The good thing about being an ineffectual nobody is you have plenty of time and energy to snoop and critique everybody else.

Meanwhile, my phone didn’t recharge properly night before last. I was carrying it around yesterday in my pocket, but I didn’t realize that the battery was dead. So this morning I recharged it and saw seven missed calls and five voice mails, and everybody’s pissed off at me because I don’t return my phone calls.

But it gets to be too much.

Then I got on the phone with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation today. I was looking into whether or not any humanitarian requirements exist for CAFO permits in New York State.

I was told that there were no regulations about humanitarian treatment of animals promulgated by the Department of Environmental Protection.

So, who does enforce protection of animals? Are animals’ sensibilities and needs only important in as far as they can be exploited for food and profit by farmers, genetic engineers and mad scientists in the employ of corporate chiefs?

I have subsequently contacted the Humane Society of NY and USA, the NY Farm Bureau and the New York State Department of Agriculture Division of Agriculture and Markets with this question. Waiting on the edge of my seat for the answer.

I am going to follow up with the Northeast Dairy Producers and the Cornell University Cattle Health Assurance Program.

Cliff Lee is on the mound for the Phillies tonight. I doubt I’ll get to watch it, though. I have to go talk about speakers with Richard and Jerry, then pick up Lillian Rydell’s books and papers from her daughter. There are supposedly six cartons of books and three boxes of old papers. I’ll never be able to make room in my closet for them.

S&P Downgraded in Treasury Trade

According to Businessweek: S&P Downgraded in Treasury Trade After Upgrade for China.