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Nun Faces up to 30 Years for Breaking Into Weapons Complex, Embarrassing the Feds

by RochelleQuinter Posted on January 15, 2014

Mother Jones

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Nestled behind a forested ridgeline on the outskirts of Knoxville, Tennessee, is the sprawling Y-12 National Security Complex, America’s “Fort Knox” of weapons grade uranium. The complex’s security cameras and machine gun nests are designed to repel an attack by the world’s most feared terrorist organizations, but they were no match for Sister Megan Rice, an 83-year-old Catholic nun armed with nothing more than a hammer and bolt cutters.

In the dark morning hours of July 28, 2012, Rice and two fellow anti-war activists bushwhacked up to the edge of Y-12, cut through three separate security fences, and sprayed peace slogans and human blood (see below) on the wall of a building that is said to hold enough weapons-grade uranium to obliterate human civilization several times over. They remained inside Y-12 for more than an hour before they were detected.

“The security breach,” as the Department of Energy’s Inspector General later described it, exposed “troubling displays of ineptitude” at what is supposed to be “one of the most secure facilities in the United States.” At a February hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, multiple members of Congress thanked Rice for exposing the site’s gaping vulnerabilities. But that didn’t deter federal prosecutors from throwing the book at Rice and her accomplices: Greg Boertje-Obed, a 57-year-old carpenter, and Michael Walli, a 63-year-old Vietnam veteran. They now sit in Georgia’s Irwin County Detention Center, awaiting a January 28 sentencing hearing where a federal judge could put them in prison for up to 30 years.

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Nun Faces up to 30 Years for Breaking Into Weapons Complex, Embarrassing the Feds

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Quote of the Day: The War Party Is Working Hard to Make Iran Look Like a Victim

by Gabrielle Hartzog Posted on January 15, 2014

Mother Jones

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Jeffrey Goldberg:

It would be quite an achievement to allow Iran, the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism, to play the role of injured party in this drama. But the Senate is poised to do just that.

Goldberg is talking about the possibility that the Senate will pass a sanctions bill against Iran just as the Iranians have finally agreed to come to the table and negotiate an agreement to dismantle their nuclear program. As Goldberg says, this makes sense only if you’re hellbent on a military strike against Iran and flatly eager to sabotage anything that might lead to a peaceful settlement. It’s hard to believe that this is the position of the entire Republican Party as well as a pretty good chunk of the Democratic Party, but apparently it is. It’s especially hard to believe given the realities of what it would accomplish:

While it could set back (though not destroy) Iran’s nuclear program, it could also lead to the complete collapse of whatever sanctions remained in place. In addition, it could unify the Iranian people behind their country’s unelected leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — a particularly perverse outcome. And in some ways, an attack would justify Iran’s paranoia and pursuit of nuclear weapons: After all, the regime could somewhat plausibly argue, post-attack, that it needs to defend itself against further aggression. A military campaign should be considered only when everything else has failed, and Iran is at the very cusp of gaining a deliverable nuclear weapon.

….So why support negotiations? First: They just might work. I haven’t met many experts who put the chance of success at zero. Second: If the U.S. decides one day that it must destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities, it must do so with broad international support. The only way to build that support is to absolutely exhaust all other options. Which means pursuing, in a time-limited, sober-minded, but earnest and assiduous way, a peaceful settlement.

This is exactly right. As it happens, I doubt that we’ll be able to reach a final deal with the Iranians. In the end, I think Iran’s hawks have too much influence and just won’t be willing to give up their nuclear ambitions. What we’ll do then is anyone’s guess. But as Goldberg says, even if you’re a hawk who favors a military strike, surely you’re also in favor of demonstrating to the world that we did everything humanly possible to avoid it. What possible reason could you have for feeling differently?

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Quote of the Day: The War Party Is Working Hard to Make Iran Look Like a Victim

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Real-Life "Lone Survivor" Marcus Luttrell Really Hates the Liberal Media

by Keith44Mvbrhqr Posted on January 14, 2014

Mother Jones

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Journalist Jake Tapper has taken some heat for an interview that aired on CNN last Friday. The segment focused on the new war film Lone Survivor, and Tapper, who was interviewing actor Mark Wahlberg and former Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell (the real-life lone survivor who co-wrote the movie’s source material), raised serious questions about the planning and command-level decisions that led to the failed mission in Afghanistan depicted in the movie. At one point, when Tapper asked about the “senseless” deaths of American military personnel during the 2005 operation, Luttrell got mad at Tapper and accused him of implying that his brothers-in-arms “died for nothing.”

Subsequently, Tapper, who is well-known for his support for US servicemembers, met with the expected conservative outrage. Fox News personality Megyn Kelly hosted a segment that ran with the chyron, “some in media suggesting Navy SEALs in ‘Lone Survivor’ died for nothing.” The right-wing crusade to portray MSMers as liberal Blame-America Firsters who don’t appreciate or back the US military is nothing new. But perhaps one reason Tapper’s interview with Luttrell was so tense is that Luttrell has an intense distrust of the media and seems to view them, as is common in certain quarters, as the liberal media.

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Real-Life "Lone Survivor" Marcus Luttrell Really Hates the Liberal Media

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New Memo: Kissinger Gave the "Green Light" for Argentina’s Dirty War

by WinifredTrimm Posted on January 14, 2014

Mother Jones

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Only a few months ago, Henry Kissinger was dancing with Stephen Colbert in a funny bit on the latter’s Comedy Central show. But for years, the former secretary of state has sidestepped judgment for his complicity in horrific human rights abuses abroad, and a new memo has emerged that provides clear evidence that in 1976 Kissinger gave Argentina’s neo-fascist military junta the “green light” for the dirty war it was conducting against civilian and militant leftists that resulted in the disappearance—that is, deaths—of an estimated 30,000 people.

In April 1977, Patt Derian, a onetime civil rights activist whom President Jimmy Carter had recently appointed assistant secretary of state for human rights, met with the US ambassador in Buenos Aires, Robert Hill. A memo recording that conversation has been unearthed by Martin Edwin Andersen, who in 1987 first reported that Kissinger had told the Argentine generals to proceed with their terror campaign against leftists (whom the junta routinely referred to as “terrorists”). The memo notes that Hill told Derian about a meeting Kissinger held with Argentine Foreign Minister Cesar Augusto Guzzetti the previous June. What the two men discussed was revealed in 2004 when the National Security Archive obtained and released the secret memorandum of conversation for that get-together. Guzzetti, according to that document, told Kissinger, “our main problem in Argentina is terrorism.” Kissinger replied, “If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly. But you must get back quickly to normal procedures.” In other words, go ahead with your killing crusade against the leftists.

The new document shows that Kissinger was even more explicit in encouraging the Argentine junta. The memo recounts Hill describing the Kissinger-Guzzetti discussion this way:

The Argentines were very worried that Kissinger would lecture to them on human rights. Guzzetti and Kissinger had a very long breakfast but the Secretary did not raise the subject. Finally Guzzetti did. Kissinger asked how long will it take you (the Argentines) to clean up the problem. Guzzetti replied that it would be done by the end of the year. Kissinger approved.

In other words, Ambassador Hill explained, Kissinger gave the Argentines the green light.

That’s a damning statement: a US ambassador saying a secretary of state had egged on a repressive regime that was engaged in a killing spree.

In August 1976, according to the new memo, Hill discussed “the matter personally with Kissinger, on the way back to Washington from a Bohemian Grove meeting in San Francisco.” Kissinger, Hill told Derian, confirmed the Guzzetti conversation and informed Hill that he wanted Argentina “to finish its terrorist problem before year end.” Kissinger was concerned about new human rights laws passed by the Congress requiring the White House to certify a government was not violating human rights before providing US aid. He was hoping the Argentine generals could wrap up their murderous eradication of the left before the law took effect.

Hill indicated to Derian, according to the new memo, that he believed that Kissinger’s message to Guzzetti had prompted the Argentine junta to intensify its dirty war. When he returned to Buenos Aires, the memo notes, Hill “saw that the terrorist death toll had climbed steeply.” And the memo reports, “Ambassador Hill said he would tell all of this to the Congress if he were put on the stand under oath. ‘I’m not going to lie,’ the Ambassador declared.”

Hill, who died in 1978, never did testify that Kissinger had urged on the Argentine generals, and the Carter administration reversed policy and made human rights a priority in its relations with Argentina and other nations. As for Kissinger, he skated—and he has been skating ever since, dodging responsibility for dirty deeds in Chile, Bangladesh, East Timor, Cambodia, and elsewhere. Kissinger watchers have known for years that he at least implicitly (though privately) endorsed the Argentine dirty war, but this new memo makes clear he was an enabler for an endeavor that entailed the torture, disappearance, and murder of tens of thousands of people. Next time you see him dancing on television, don’t laugh.

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New Memo: Kissinger Gave the "Green Light" for Argentina’s Dirty War

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We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for January 14, 2014

by Curtis Tangredi Posted on January 14, 2014

Mother Jones

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Marines assigned to Reconnaissance Platoon, Battalion Landing Team 1/4, 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) conduct live fire training aboard the USS Boxer (LHD 4) at sea Jan. 8, 2014. The 13th MEU is deployed with the Boxer Amphibious Ready Group as a theater reserve and crisis response force throughout the U.S. 5th Fleet area of responsibility. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. David Gonzalez/Released)

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We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for January 14, 2014

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GOP Senate Candidate Complained of Lack of Muslim Movie Villains

by FrankieN17 Posted on January 14, 2014

Mother Jones

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Political correctness is keeping Hollywood from properly stigmatizing Muslims—so said Mississippi Republican Senate candidate Chris McDaniel. He issued this complaint during a 2006 episode of Right Side Radio, a syndicated show McDaniel hosted for three years before being elected to the state Senate in 2007.

“It’s funny how the movies have portrayed themselves lately and how the video games have portrayed themselves lately,” McDaniel said in the segment. “There’s one person that cannot be a villain in Hollywood, ever. One group that cannot be villains. Who is that? Cohost: The Muslims. Yeah, isn’t that neat? They’ll go out of their way to find some Russian white guy that’s just nuts, and he’s the terrorist, which I’ve never seen that. But the Muslims, they’ve just disappeared from Hollywood’s radar.”

“I think the true enemy is Ron Howard and Andy Griffith,” he joked. (The remarks were first reported by a local politics blog, Dark Horse Mississippi.)

McDaniel didn’t have it quite right. Islamic extremists played the roles of terrorists in seasons two, four, and five of the television show 24; the Showtime series Sleeper Cell; and a variety of movies, including Syriana, The Kingdom, Rules of Engagement, The Siege, True Lies, and Zero Dark Thirty. The Muslim-as-villain has been such a long-standing stereotype that a 1998 New York Times story reported on the difficulties Arab American actors faced in obtaining roles beyond that as hijackers.

Other audio clips unearthed by Dark Horse Mississippi feature McDaniel warning about the dangers of the “homosexual agenda” and describing a grand plan by Democrats to make “homosexual marriage and polygamy completely legal in all 50 states.” Speaking before the 2006 election, McDaniel rattled off a “parade of horribles” that would come to pass if Democrats (“the party of sex on demand”) took control of Congress; these included “new social taxes, new social programs,” and “new hate crime laws for homosexuals.”

In another episode of his radio show, McDaniel mocked San Francisco lawmakers who had decried an ad campaign depicting a white woman wrestling a black woman, under the slogan “White is coming.”

“They’re elite,” he said of the city’s residents, before taking a shot at the city’s LGBT community. “Right next to gender misidentification is IQ, I suppose. That’s gonna get me in trouble.”

Last week, Mother Jones reported on a promotional clip from Right Side Radio in which McDaniel blamed rising gun violence on hip-hop. As he put it, “It’s a problem of a culture that values prison more than college; a culture that values rap and destruction of community values more than it does poetry; a culture that can’t stand education.”

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GOP Senate Candidate Complained of Lack of Muslim Movie Villains

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12 Horror Stories Show Why Wednesday’s Big Supreme Court Abortion Case Matters

by CallieEomyavt Posted on January 14, 2014

Mother Jones

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Liam Lowney does not talk about his sister, Shannon Elizabeth Lowney, without first gushing about her personality. She was bright and intelligent, a talented student and passionate musician with an “infectious smile,” he says. Only then will he discuss how she died: On December 30, 1994, as she worked the front desk at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Brookline, Massachusetts, a man named John C. Salvi entered and riddled her face with bullets.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in McCullen v. Coakley, a case in which anti-abortion-rights activists are challenging a Massachusetts law—passed partially in response to Lowney’s murder—that bans protests within 35 feet of an entrance to an abortion clinic. The petitioners claim the law violates their First Amendment rights. Eleanor McCullen, the lead challenger, is a septuagenarian grandmother whose refrigerator is barely visible beneath all the baby photos that she says were sent to her by women she encountered outside clinics and persuaded not to proceed with an abortion.

But Massachusetts’s buffer zone was not created in response to peaceful protesters like those waged by McCullen and others. It was written in response to people like Salvi and those protesters who have used physical force to block women from obtaining abortions. Even after Republican Gov. Paul Cellucci signed a modest buffer zone into law in 2000, Massachusetts’s abortion clinics were swamped by protesters who physically barred women from entering. Yet lawyers for McCullen aren’t merely asking the court to strike down the extended 35-foot buffer zone, which Massachusetts established in 2007; they are asking the justices to ban all buffer zones outside abortion clinics.

Attorneys for the ACLU, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case, concede that buffer zones do impinge on free speech, but they contend this is necessary to protect the competing constitutional right to obtain an abortion. To prove that point, the ACLU compiled police reports, oral testimonies, and written statements that describe how difficult it had become in Massachusetts to obtain or provide an abortion before the 35-foot buffer zone was implemented in 2007. The following excerpts offer a glimpse of the pandemonium that often reigned outside Massachusetts’s clinics before this law was enacted.

Gail Kaplan, a patient escort at the Boston Planned Parenthood clinic, speaking to the Massachusetts Legislature in 2007:

The protestors are moving closer and closer to the main door. They scream and block the way for the patients to get into the clinic. We fill out police reports almost every week regarding the way they encroach upon the door, but nothing has changed…They’re getting so close that patients are terrified to even walk into the clinic.

I have often been spit upon while escorting a patient into the clinic since they got so close to me while shouting their protests…When it rains, they bring these huge umbrellas and try to knock the escorts out of the way.

Michael T. Baniukiewicz, head of security for Planned Parenthood facilities in Massachusetts, in a sworn 2007 affidavit:

I have observed two regular protesters standing by the PPLM-Boston garage entrance in Boston Police hats and jerseys…I saw them wearing Brookline Police hats and jerseys while standing near the entrance to the parking lot in front of Women’s Health Services.

They carried clipboards and had patients write on clipboards. These patients appeared to be frightened and upset when they learned that they were not police. Patients informed me that they had provided their names, addresses, and telephone numbers.

Baniukiewicz, in a 2007 deposition:

They place four of their protesters, especially on Saturdays, right on the curbstone of the buffer zone, so when people try to park there to let a patient out, they can’t get out.

On a weekly basis…they probably have at least one or two women who leave because they’re afraid to enter the parking lot because they block the parking lot entranceway.

The safety issue is scary…The protesters will look to start a fight, and obviously that’s keeping people from entering the building.

Vanessa B. in a harassment incident report filed with Boston police, December 5, 1998:

One person was carrying a fake baby doll and was yelling, “It’s alive. You see what you’re doing!” Another person had a tape recorder and was playing a tape with a child crying, “Mommy, Mommy”…Bad enough I was scared coming here, afraid I might get shot…They made me scared, but they are not running me away because I have rights too.

Karen Caponi, a nurse practitioner and director of the Worcester Planned Parenthood clinic, speaking to the Massachusetts state Legislature in 1999:

One of our of physicians has been threatened with “I’m watching you” and “You won’t be smiling for long.”

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12 Horror Stories Show Why Wednesday’s Big Supreme Court Abortion Case Matters

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Europe Going Wobbly on Carbon Emission Goals?

by cur07jqm Posted on January 13, 2014

Mother Jones

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Speaking of carbon emissions, the Financial Times reports that high energy prices are “undermining support” in Europe for rules that mandate increased use of renewable energy sources:

European commissioners are considering scrapping the targets for 2030 in a move that would please big utility companies but infuriate environmental groups….A proposed compromise, at the heart of discussions over the 2030 package, envisages that a renewables target, of up to 27 per cent, would be non-binding.

….This compromise for 2030, if accepted in the face of German opposition, would represent a significant change from the EU’s 2020 targets, which included binding goals that EU states should cut overall greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent from 1990 levels and derive 20 per cent of their power from renewables.

A long, grinding economic downturn cuts energy usage in the short run, but reduces tolerance for higher energy prices in the long run. That’s what we’re seeing happen here.

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Europe Going Wobbly on Carbon Emission Goals?

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How the West Virginia Spill Exposes Our Lax Chemical Laws

by ElouiseR69 Posted on January 13, 2014

Mother Jones

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The West Virginia chemical spill that left some 300,000 people without access to water has exposed a gaping hole in the country’s chemical regulatory system, according to environmental experts.

Much the state remains under a drinking-water advisory after the spill last week into the Elk River near a water treatment facility. As much as 7,500 gallons of the chemical 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, which is used in the washing of coal, leaked from a tank owned by a company called Freedom Industries.

A rush on bottled water ensued, leading to empty store shelves and emergency water delivery operations. According to news reports, 10 people were hospitalized following the leak, but none in serious condition.

The spill and ensuing drinking water shortage have drawn attention to a very lax system governing the use of chemicals, according to Richard Denison, a senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund who specializes in chemical regulation. “Here we have a situation where we suddenly have a spill of a chemical, and little or no information is available on that chemical,” says Denison.

An empty West Virginia store shelf Foo Conner/Flickr

The problem is not necessarily that 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, or MCHM, is highly toxic. Rather, Denison says, the problem is that not a great deal about its toxicity is known. Denison has managed to track down a description of one 1990 study, conducted by manufacturer Eastman Chemical, which identified a highly lethal dose, in rats, of 825 milligrams per kilogram of body weight. But how that applies to humans at much lower doses in water isn’t necessarily clear.

In response to the crisis, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Environmental Protection Agency have determined that a level of 1 part per million in water is safe. The drinking water advisory is now slowly being lifted on an area-by-area basis.

So why do we know so little? All of this traces back to the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act, or TSCA, the law under which the Environmental Protection Agency regulates the production of chemicals. According to EPA spokeswoman Alisha Johnson, MCHM is one of a large group of chemicals that were already in use when the law was passed, and so were “grandfathered” under it. This situation “provided EPA with very limited ability to require testing on those existing chemicals to determine if they are safe,” she says.

There are more than 60,000 such grandfathered chemicals, according to Johnson. A leak involving any of them into water could trigger to a similar situation of uncertainty—meaning that this spill has served to underscore a major gap in how we regulate chemicals.

“What we have now is a situation where because our system, our policies, and regulations don’t require this information be developed, we’re left scrambling when something like this happens,” says Denison.

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How the West Virginia Spill Exposes Our Lax Chemical Laws

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Elizabeth Warren’s New Bill Could Save Taxpayers Billions

by daria_korzeniewska@o2.pl Posted on January 13, 2014

Mother Jones

Last week, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) introduced a bill with Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) that aims to make government settlements with corporations more transparent and fair. It could end up saving taxpayers billions of dollars.

When banks and other corporations are accused of breaking the law, the government often settles cases instead of going to trial. In the wake of the financial crisis, for example, the Department of Justice (DoJ), and government banking watchdogs have settled cases against banks that helped tank the economy. Regulatory agencies have argued that settlements are adequate tools to enforce the law, but Warren has protested. She notes that many settlements are tax-deductible. Other deals are confidential, meaning the public has no idea whether the terms of the agreement are fair.

Warren’s bill would discourage tax-deductible settlements by forcing federal agencies to explain why certain settlements are confidential, and to publicly disclose the terms of non-confidential agreements so that taxpayers can see how much settlement tax-deductibility is costing them.

For a sense of how much Americans could save if Warren and Coburn’s legislation passes, just take a look at how much taxpayers lost in each of these settlements over the past decade:

JPMorgan Chase

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon Steve Jurvetson/Flickr

In October, JPMorgan reached a record-breaking $13 billion settlement with the DoJ over the dicy financial products that it created and sold in the run up to the financial crisis. But JPMorgan will be allowed to soften the blow by claiming up to $4 billion in tax deductions from the settlement.

Fresenius Medical Care Holdings

rangizzz/Shutterstock

In 2000, the health care company Fresenius Medical Care Holdings entered into a $486 million settlement agreement with the federal government over allegations that it defrauded Medicare and other federal healthcare programs. Last year, a court allowed Fesenius to write off $50 million of that settlement payment.

BP

BP/Facebook

BP, the company responsible for the massive 2010 Gulf oil spill, entered into a settlement that year with the federal government that set up a $20 billion clean up fund. BP was able to deduct $10 billion of that settlement.

HSBC

Michael Fleshman/Flickr

Last year, the banking giant HSBC settled charges that it turned a blind eye to billions of dollars of money laundering by entering into a $1.9 billion settlement with the federal government. The DoJ has not yet disclosed whether the settlement is tax-deductible, but if it is, taxpayers will lose $700 million.

Exxon

Paulo Ordoveza/Flickr

Exxon got a $576 million tax deduction on its $1.1 billion Alaska oil spill settlement, which saved the oil giant half of the cost of the deal.

Marsh & McLennan

Marsh & McLennan

In 2005, the insurance brokerage firm Marsh & McLennan reached an $850 million settlement with New York state regulators over bid-rigging and conflicts of interest. The firm was eligible for up to a $298 million tax write-off, according to calculations by Francisco Enriquez, an expert on corporate taxation at US Public Interest Research Group, a consumer advocacy organization.

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Elizabeth Warren’s New Bill Could Save Taxpayers Billions

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