Recruiting stand-down ordered

Probe of Houston suicides prompts wide-ranging action
By Michelle Tan - Staff writerPosted : Wednesday Jan 28, 2009 11:44:38 EST

Army Secretary Pete Geren has ordered a stand-down of the Army’s entire recruiting force and a review of almost every aspect of the job is underway in the wake of a wide-ranging investigation of four suicides in the Houston Recruiting Battalion.
Poor command climate, failing personal relationships and long, stressful work days were factors in the suicides, the investigation found. The investigating officer noted a “threatening” environment in the battalion and that leaders may have tried to influence statements from witnesses.

The four recruiters who killed themselves were all combat veterans of Iraq or Afghanistan. The Army did not identify them.
The Army Inspector General’s office has been asked to conduct a command-wide assessment of Recruiting Command to determine if conditions uncovered in Houston exist elsewhere.
The one-day stand-down of all 7,000 active Army and 1,400 Army Reserve recruiters will be Feb. 13.

See entire story from Army Times

January 31st. Last Day of Public Comment on Marina Center Draft Environmental Impact Report

The property on the Old Town Eureka water front, known as the Balloon Tract, once ruled by trains, is set to become a glass and steel monument to local millionaire, Rob Arkley.

The Draft Environmental Impact Report is up for review and was the topic of a forum at the Warfinger Building here in Eureka last night. According to the Humboldt Herald, Ralph Foust spoke as a consultant to the Northcoast Environmental Center and said the project doesn't include enough housing. He questioned why the project proponents called the project "smart growth" when it lacks the live/work "integrated whole" aspects that characterize such development.

The public has until January 31st. to comment on the DEIR.

Arkley reportedly wants the anchor store to be a Home Depot. See Serving Suggestions for details.

Photo courtesy of balloontractwatch.org

PBS: NSA could have prevented 9/11 hijackings

The super-secretive National Security Agency has been quietly monitoring, decrypting, and interpreting foreign communications for decades, starting long before it came under criticism as a result of recent revelations about the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program. Now a forthcoming PBS documentary asks whether the NSA could have prevented 9/11 if it had been more willing to share its data with other agencies.Author James Bamford looked into the performance of the NSA in his 2008 book, The Shadow Factory, and found that it had been closely monitoring the 9/11 hijackers as they moved freely around the United States and communicated with Osama bin Laden's operations center in Yemen. The NSA had even tapped bin Laden's satellite phone, starting in 1996.

Click for entire story.

Climate Change Killing America's Trees at Ever Faster Rates

By Michael Wall at Wired.com

Trees in western North America are dying at faster and faster rates, and climate change is likely to blame.
The mounting deaths could fundamentally transform Western forests because tree reproduction hasn’t increased to offset losses, according to a new study published Thursday in Science. And new seedlings aren’t rising quickly enough to fill the gaps.
“If current trends continue, forests will become sparser over time,” co-author Philip van Mantgem, an ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, said in a press conference call. This would be a setback in the fight against global warming because thinner forests with small, young trees store less carbon, so more heat-trapping carbon dioxide would cycle into the atmosphere.
A large-scale transition to such threadbare woods would have other negative effects as well, van Mantgem said. Species that depend on big stands of old growth, such as marbled murrelets and spotted owls, would have much less room to roam. And the risk of catastrophic fires would go up with more dead, dry wood lying around to fuel it.
The evidence is mounting that warming and drought are changing ecosystems across western North America. Other studies have documented major tree die-offs and surging wildfires. Plant species have climbed uphill, and bark beetles are laying waste to ever-increasing tracts of woodland.
The new study “adds to the list,” said Michael Goulden, an ecologist at the University of California, Irvine who was not involved in the research. “Something large and important is happening to Western ecosystems, in correlation with climatic shifts.”
The research revealed that tree mortality rates in old-growth forests from southern British Columbia to Arizona have doubled every few decades over the past 50 years.

See entire story.

Free Speech T.V. Needs Your Help

See Story at The Humboldt Herald

Leonard Peltier Beaten In Prison

by Michael Borkson from Boston Indymedia 22 Jan 2009.

Native American political prisoner Leonard Peltier was badly beaten and injured by other inmates after being moved to a different prison in Pennsylvania. Here is an urgent call for action by Leonard's sister and the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee.

Forwarded on behalf of the Leonard Peltier Defense CommitteeURGENT! Leonard Peltier's Safety in Jeopardy!Dear LP Supporters,I am so OUTRAGED! My brother Leonard was severely beaten uponhis arrival at the Canaan Federal Penitentiary. When he wentinto population after his transfer, some inmates assaulted him.The severity of his injuries is that he suffered numerous blows tohis head and body, receiving a large bump on his head, possiblya concussion, and numerous bruises. Also, one of his fingersis swollen and discolored and he has pain in his chest andribcage. There was blood everywhere from his injuries.We feel that prison authorities at the prompting of the FBIorchestrated this attack and thus, we are greatly concerned abouthis safety. It may be that the attackers, whom Leonard did noteven know, were offered reduced sentences for carrying out thisheinous assault. Since Leonard is up for parole soon, this could bea conspiracy to discredit a model prisoner. He was placed in solitaryconfinement and only given one meal, this is generally done when youwon't name your attackers; incidentally being only given one mealseriously jeopardizes his health because of his diabetes. Prisonofficials refuse to release any info to the family, but they needto hear from his supporters to protect his safety, as does PresidentObama. His attorneys are trying to get calls into him now.

See entire letter including contact phone number for the prison.

See biography on Leonard Peltier

Prison will tell you to start here:

Federal Bureau of Prisons Inmate Locator 1-202-307-3126 or http://www.bop.gov/

You will need first and last name and age of prisoner.

Leonard Peltier (born September 12, 1944)

NSA Monitored All Communications

Were you spied on?
Kurt NimmoPrison Planet.comThursday, January 22, 2009
On January 21, former National Security Agency analyst Russell Tice appeared Keith Olbermann’s MSNBC show. Tice, who helped expose the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping in December 2005, told Olbermann government programs designed to spy on the American people are more extensive and far reaching than previously admitted. “The National Security Agency had access to all Americans’ communications — faxes, phone calls, and their computer communications,” Tice said. “It didn’t matter whether you were in Kansas, in the middle of the country, and you never made foreign communications at all. They monitored all communications.”
During the Bush administration, it was claimed the intercepts involved foreign communications and the intelligence gathered was integral to the conduct of the so-called global war on terrorism. In order to get around the warrant requirements of FISA, a bill authorizing the use of United States Armed Forces against those supposedly responsible for the attacks on September 11, 2001, was passed (Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists). The authorization granted Bush the authority to use all “necessary and appropriate force” against those whom he determined “planned, authorized, committed or aided” the September 11th attacks, or those who harbored said persons or groups. AUMF allowed the Bush administration to avoid FISA and Wiretap Act restrictions.
But according to Tice, the NSA program was not limited to alleged al-Qaeda members, as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales claimed at the time, but included “news organizations and reporters and journalists” in the United States. The data “was digitized and put on databases somewhere.” It was not simply journalists, however, the NSA spied on and likely continues to spy now.
See entire story including video from MSNBC.

This could explain why for months, every time I went to the RawStory web site, I would have computer problems. As anyone that listens to KGOE 1480 here in Eureka Ca. knows, that didn't stop me. Sometimes I had to use multiple computers to get one story.