Monday, September 30, 2013

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - The Beginning

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt "The Beginning" provides exclusive information about the creative process behind the game.

Key developers are inviting you on a journey into Geralt's world, where you'll fall in love with the breathtaking vistas and experience the atmosphere that helped us shape some of the locations in the game.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Debut Gameplay Trailer

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Debut Gameplay gives you an exclusive sneak peek into the vast and gritty world of Geralt of Rivia, the witcher. Experience a realm where morality is not a simple choice between good and evil and where every decision ripples through the one hundred hours of gameplay CD Projekt RED has hand-crafted to meet the needs of the RPG fan.

 

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt features:

- Vast, living, open world full of meticulously created quests and Points of Interest, 35 times bigger than the one in The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings

- Genre-defining story set in a universe created by the acclaimed writer Andrzej Sapkowski

- Redesigned combat mechanic that merges a fluid and highly responsive skirmish system with the precision of a dedicated fighting game

And many, many more...

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt will premiere on Xbox One, Playstation 4 and PC in 2014.

Follow us:
https://www.facebook.com/thewitcher
https://twitter.com/witchergame
http://thewitcher.com/

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Killing Monsters Cinematic Trailer

'Left Behind' video game creator faces U.S. SEC fraud charges


WASHINGTON
Wed Sep 25, 2013 3:27 P.M. EDT


(Reuters) - The creator of a video game based on the popular Christian "Left Behind" novel series and his friend have been charged with scheming to inflate the company's revenue by nearly 1,300 percent, U.S. regulators announced Wednesday.

Left Behind Games Inc Chief Executive and Chief Financial Officer Troy Lyndon issued nearly 2 billion shares to his friend Ronald Zaucha, purportedly as compensation for consulting services, the Securities and Exchange Commission's complaint alleges.

The real reason for issuing the stock was so Zaucha could sell millions of unregistered shares in the marketplace and then kick back the proceeds and use other "sham purchases" to help bolster the struggling company's books, the SEC said.

The SEC's lawsuit was filed late on Tuesday in a federal court in Hawaii, where Lyndon and Zaucha both reside. The SEC suspended the company's stock Wednesday.

The complaint charges both men with fraud, and the SEC said its probe is continuing.

The charges come roughly two weeks after the company announced in an SEC filing that its public accountant Malone Bailey had resigned after previously expressing "substantial doubt" about the company's ability to continue.

Last year, in March 2012, Lyndon filed a voluntary petition for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, the SEC said.
Lyndon, of Honolulu, said he only learned of the charges early Wednesday morning after a press inquiry from Reuters and that he believes the government is discriminating against him.

"I'm just a video game guy. If any violation occurred, it would never have been intentional - and certainly, never fraudulent. My attorney told me that any person that earned shares could use them for any purpose," he said.

"For more than two years, I've asked SEC to explain how and if I have violated any rule, so that I could self-report it. As I see it, the government has systematically and intentionally conspired to dismantle Left Behind Games and the facts are both true and hard to believe - worthy of a Ron Howard film or John Grisham novel."

A more detailed statement from Lyndon can be found at www.troylyndon.com/govt

Efforts to reach Zaucha were unsuccessful.

According to the SEC's allegations, Lyndon and Zaucha made a "last ditch" effort to save the struggling company in 2009.

After issuing 1.7 billion shares in stock, the SEC said Zaucha sold most of it for $4.6 million, roughly $3.3 million of which was later kicked back to the company in a variety of ways.

One such example, the SEC said, was when in December 2010 Zaucha formed a company and used the stock sale proceeds to buy $1.38 million in obsolete Left Behind Games inventory.

Zaucha's company then gave most of the products away to churches and religious groups, while Left Behind went on to recognize the transaction as revenue.

The SEC also said Zaucha never truly performed any real consulting services to the company, and he was also allowed to keep more than $1 million of the stock sale proceeds that he used for personal expenses, including buying property in California and Hawaii.

According to his online biography, Lyndon was the "original team lead developer" of the first 3D versions of the John Madden Football video game, among others.

Reuters could not immediately independently verify those details.

He started working on development of religious video games in 2002, and took Left Behind Games public in 2006, he says.

"Although government regulations have resulted in the loss of nearly 50 percent of America's public companies over the past 15 years, Left Behind Games continues to operate and has products in more than 500 retail locations throughout the USA," he wrote on his website.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; editing by Andrew Hay)

Lab Tests on French Wines Find Pesticide Residue in Every Bottle





The levels were below the European Union’s maximum residue limits, according to the group, UFC-Que Choisir. However, there are no EU toxicity limits for bottled wine, only for wine grapes before fermentation.

Bloomberg reported on Sept. 25 that the group tested wines from various regions across France, ranging from a $2.20 bottle of generic red to a $20.25 bottle of Chateauneuf-du-Pape. Wine producers only use 3.7 percent of France’s farmland but account for 20 percent of the country’s pesticide use, UFC-Que Choisir noted.

“By drinking a glass of wine, you have every chance of unknowingly swallowing a few micrograms of these pesticide residues,” UFC-Que Choisir wrote. “No wine today escapes the pollution by plant-protection products applied to the vines.”

The lab tests even found residues of an insecticide and a fungicide not allowed in the EU, the group said. Wines produced from grapes from “conventional” agriculture on average contained four pesticides, mainly fungicides, while for wine from organic grapes residues mostly consisted of one to two pesticides.

The highest pesticide count was found in a bottle of 2010 Bordeaux, with 14 chemicals detected, followed by 2012 Bordeaux with traces of 13 products, the group reported.

UFC-Que Choisir indicated that climate has a great effect on whether, and to what degree, French wine grapes suffer from diseases and bug infestations.

“Weather conditions, particularly rainfall, have a direct impact on diseases of vines and attacks by parasites,” they wrote. “The warm and dry weather of Provence and the Rhone valley partly explains why the wines from these regions are significantly less loaded with pesticides than their cousins from Champagne and particularly Bordeaux.”

GOP's rejection of the Affordable Care Act shows hypocrisy

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Sunday, September 29, 2013

George Zimmerman's Mother-in-Law Files Police Report Claiming He Stole Her Furniture, TV

By Selena Hill | First Posted: Sep 27, 2013 04:57 PM EDT

As much as George Zimmerman tries to keep a low profile, he seems to have a knack for garnering negative publicity, to put it lightly. In the latest twist in the ongoing Zimmerman saga, his mother-in-law, Machelle Dean, filed a police report Friday claiming that he stole furniture and a television set from her house when she ordered him to leave.

George and his estranged wife Shellie were staying in Shellie's mother's house in Lake Mary, Florida during his murder trial. However, according to TMZ, Dean claims that Zimmerman left with her belongings when she ordered him to vacate the property by Thursday. When police arrived to the scene, they reportedly characterized it as a landlord-tenant dispute between Zimmerman and his in-laws.

The home is the same place where Lake Mary police were called to earlier in September after an altercation broke out between George and Shellie. In a 911 call, Shellie said that her husband threatened her and her father with a gun and punched her father in the nose. The theft report surfaced shortly after Shellie Zimmerman admitted that she now doubts her husband's innocence in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin after seeing another side of him during a domestic dispute earlier this month.

Shellie Zimmerman, speaking publicly for the first time since she told cops her husband threatened her with a gun on Sept. 9, told NBC's "Today," that the 29-year-old former volunteer neighborhood watch caption has changed dramatically after being acquitted for the murder of the unarmed teen.

"This person that I'm married to that I'm divorcing, I've kind of realized now that I don't know him," she said Thursday morning. "And I really don't know what he's capable of."

Shellie, who filed for divorce within two months of her husband's acquittal, revealed that she has "conflicted" feelings about the night when George fatally shot Martin. "I'm conflicted on that,'' said the 26-year-old nursing student. "I believe the evidence, but this revelation in my life has really helped me take the blinders off and start to see things differently."

In a follow up question, Lauer asked, "So you now doubt his innocence, at least the fact that he was acting in self-defense on the night that Trayvon Martin was killed?" Shellie responded: "I think anyone would doubt that innocence because I don't know the person that I've been married to. I have doubts, but I also believe the evidence."

Roast, grill, and fry this chicken – then toss it out

Posted by Jim Hightower


An old country saying notes: You can't make chicken salad out of chicken manure." However, President Obama's department of agriculture intends for us give it a try.

Chicken contaminated with chicken manure is one likely result to come from the ag department's dangerous and ridiculous determination to privatize poultry inspection in some 200 processing plants across the country. Currently, government inspectors – who're professionally-trained in food safety – are stationed along the processing lines in the factory operations of such giants as Tyson Foods. They examine the birds for diseases and visible defects, including – yes – contamination by feces.

But the Obamacans have a "modernization" plan to remove these skilled, independent inspectors and let corporations police their own lines with untrained company hirelings. In addition, the privatization scheme would allow the poultry plants to speed up their lines to an absurd 175-birds-per-minute! To justify this, USDA notes that it has been running a pilot project on privatization in 20 chicken factories since 1999.

Yes – but the "modernizers" did not mention that salmonella rates in the privatized plants were higher than those having government inspectors. Just as alarming, of the poultry operations that failed the most recent salmonella tests, a disproportionate share were using the spiffy self-policing model. Worse, government inspectors who observed the corporate-controlled system report that when the company inspectors tried to be thorough about safety or even tried to remove diseased birds from the line, they were yelled at, reprimanded, and shunned.

This senseless rush to privatize is literally sickening. For more information and clean food alternatives, go to Food & Water Watch at www.FoodAndWaterWatch.org.

"Changes to Poultry Rules Are Flawed, Report Says," The New York Times, September 5, 2013.

"Justification for Privatized Poultry Inspection Flawed, GAO Study Reveals," www.foodandwaterwatch.org, September 4, 2013.

"Obama Administration Caves to Poultry Industry By Proceeding With Privatized Inspection," www.foodandwaterwatch.org, April 10, 2013.

" USDA Plans to Expand Pilot Program that Leaves Meat Contaminated with Fecal Matter," www.portside.org, September 10, 2013.

Saturday, September 28, 2013

Friday, September 27, 2013

Sanders' Epic Senate Rant Shames 'Right-Wing Extremists' for Shutdown Threat

By David



Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on Friday tore into what he called "extreme right-wing Republicans" for threatening to shut down the government and default on the nation's debts if President Barack Obama's health care reform law was not defunded.

In a speech on the Senate floor, Sanders said that he welcomed a discussion about how to improve the health care law.

"But one thing is certain, you do not hold the American people hostage by threatening to shut down the government or for the first time in the history of our country not paying our bills and bringing this country and perhaps the entire world into a major financial crisis," he explained. "There was an election a year ago on this very issue - one of the major issues in the campaign - and the Republican candidate said, 'Let's defund Obamacare.' He lost the election! Republicans lost seats in the Senate, they lost seats in the House! And that's what democracy is about."

"What democracy is not about is a handful of members of the House of Representatives, extreme right-wing Republicans, saying, 'If we do not get our way, we are prepared to punish tens of millions of Americans. Yeah, we lost the election. Yeah, we lost seats in the House and Senate. But we are prepared to bring this government down. We are prepared to cause, perhaps, a major global financial crisis unless we get our way!'"

He continued: "Let us not tell men and women in the United States armed forces, who today are putting their lives on the line to defend us, that they're not going to get paid. Let us not tell police officers here in Washington and elsewhere, they may not get paid. Let's not tell working families, who take take their little kids into Head Start so they can then go out to work, that that program may be killed. Let's not tell senior citizens, who are on the Meals on Wheels program who can't leave their homes who depend upon a meal, let's not punish them because you've got small number of extreme right wingers who want to get their way at the expense of millions and millions of people."

Sanders pointed out that the current debate in Congress was "making us look like fools throughout the entire world because a handful of right wing extremists are so determined to try to destroy this president."

"There's a lot to be debating about, but one thing we should not be debating about is shutting down the United States government in order to achieve a narrow political goal."

Allen West Fired After Alleged Anti-Semitic Slur

By Wes Williams

Poor Allen West. The former Republican congressman from Florida just can’t seem to keep a job. According to BuzzFeed, West has left his job at Pajamas Media after an argument with a female staffer, during which he allegedly called her a “Jewish American princess.”

The BuzzFeed story says that West denied that he was fired, but he did not deny that an argument had taken place. When asked specifically if he had called the other employee a “Jewish American princess” West responded “There was an exchange, that’s all.”

West has a history of behavior similar to this alleged incident. In 2003 West, then a U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel serving in Iraq, was investigated following accusations that he abused an Iraqi prisoner. CNN reported on the incident on December 13, 2003.
The commanding general of the 4th Infantry Division on Friday accepted a U.S. military investigator’s recommendation and ordered administrative action against Lt. Col. Allen West, who was accused of using improper methods to force information out of an Iraqi detainee.
Following a military hearing, West was fined $5,000 over two months, according to West’s civilian attorney, Neal Puckett.
The punishment does not affect West’s eligibility for retirement and pension, Puckett said in a statement.
West, 42, will be assigned to the rear detachment of the 4th Infantry Division awaiting the processing of his retirement request, the statement said.
West admitted that he had lost his temper and that he had acted improperly. Had his commander, Major General Raymond Odierno, rejected the investigator’s recommendation West would have faced a court-martial and as much as 11 years in prison.

While a congressman, West went on an email tirade against fellow Floridian Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, following remarks she made on the floor of the House that he took far too personally. In the email he said
Look, Debbie, I understand that after I departed the House floor you directed your floor speech comments directly towards me. Let me make myself perfectly clear, you want a personal fight, I am happy to oblige. You are the most vile, unprofessional, and despicable member of the US House of Representatives. If you have something to say to me, stop being a coward and say it to my face, otherwise, shut the heck up. Focus on your own congressional district!
Always willing to play the victim, West displayed his utter lack of class after narrowly losing his re-election bid to Democrat Patrick Murphy. In typical fashion, West explained his loss not on a rejection of his combative, divisive nature, but by claiming that his opponent cheated in some unspecified way. West told radio host Mark Levin
I’m not going away just because of a congressional race where he seems to have to cheat to beat me.
Also worth noting is that the “fiscally responsible” West, who voted against Obamacare and supported the Paul Ryan budget plan that would slash the social safety net, was the fourth largest giver of taxpayer money to his staff after he lost to Murphy, according to the site Legistorm.com. West gave bonuses totaling $81,525 to staff members in the fourth quarter of 2012.

So what will Allen West do, now that he’s out of yet another job? Here are some ideas:
  • West likes to fight. He would be a perfect fit in the UFC
  • Monday Night Football. Oh, wait. That didn’t work out too well for fellow righty Dennis Miller. Scratch that.
  • Spokesperson for the NRA. Aren’t we all tired of Wayne LaPierre?
  • Replacement for Gordon Ramsey on “Hell’s Kitchen.”
  • If all else fails, it looks like Gilberton, Pennsylvania may be in need of a police chief.

George Zimmerman's Wife Doubts His Innocence

By , @iamsakuma

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy


Shellie Zimmerman said she cried tears of joy after her husband, George Zimmerman, was acquitted of second-degree murder in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. But after months of standing by her husband’s side—even lying under oath for him—Shellie Zimmerman says she now has her doubts that George Zimmerman acted in self-defense the night of Martin’s death.

“I think anyone would doubt that innocence,” she said, adding that recent ”revelations helped take the blinders off,” and that she no longer knows who her husband is.

“I have doubts,” she said. “But I also believe the evidence.” She said she did not believe her spouse profiled Martin

Shellie Zimmerman filed for divorce less than two months after her husband’s acquittal. “The marriage between the parties is irretrievably broken,” according to court documents outlining the divorce.

After sticking by him during the height of the trial, Shellie said that her husband’s behavior had changed dramatically. “He just kind of treated me like I was disposable,” she said with a faltering voice. “After standing by him, he kind of left, and I guess kind of went on a victory tour without me.”

Earlier this month, police in Lake Mary, Fla., responded to a 911 call made by Shellie Zimmerman, when she alleged that her spouse was arguing with her father, and that he had his hand on a gun. “I don’t know what he’s capable of,” she said in the 911 call. “I’m really, really scared.” However officers later said that George Zimmerman did not have a gun during the incident, and cops did not recover a firearm.

Despite the differing accounts, Shellie Zimmerman told the Today show’s Matt Lauer Thursday that she “absolutely” stood by her story. She described her husband’s actions that night, claiming George Zimmerman repeatedly threatened and advanced at her with a hand under his shirt, as if he were bearing a gun. ”Logically, I assumed he had a gun on him,” she said.

Shellie Zimmerman said her words in the 911 call were not meant to incite questions or doubts about her husband’s behavior that night, or the night he said he acted in self-defense in Martin’s death. She says she now regrets her decision to not press charges against her husband.

“In hindsight, I should have, and I really regret that,” she said.

Zimmerman was also entangled in her husband’s murder trial—in August she pleaded guilty to perjury charges for lying under oath while disclosing the family’s finances during a bail hearing earlier that year. Under a plea deal, she was sentenced to a year of probation and 100 hours community service.

In her interview with Lauer, Shellie Zimmerman said the charges against her confirmed that her credibility has been damaged. “I do have credibility issues,” she said. And though she left her husband’s innocence of self-defense in question, she said she believed that the justice system worked in his case.

“I respect the jury’s decision,” she said. “They saw more evidence than I’ve seen.”

Editor’s note: George Zimmerman has sued NBC Universal for defamation. The company strongly denies the allegation.

Thursday, September 26, 2013

California Raises Minimum Wage To $10/Hour

By Stuart Shapiro

Big news from the west coast about how California will raise the minimum wage, although gradually between now and 2016. Hopefully other states will follow suit. In fact, this should be national law.

California has become the first state in the nation to commit to raising the minimum wage to $10 per hour, with the increase to take place gradually through the start of 2016, under a bill Democratic Governor Jerry Brown signed into law on Wednesday.

The law raises minimum pay in the most populous U.S. state from its current rate of $8 per hour to $9 by July 2014, and $10 by January 2016, well above the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.

There is a fascinating experiment going on in this country.  Blue states are expanding marriage rights, increasing the minimum wage, and implementing The Affordable Health Care Act.  Red states are doing the opposite.  It will be very interesting to see what the country looks like in a decade when the states vary as much as they have at any time since the end of Jim Crow.

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Graham Offers Sanders Help 'Reforming' Tax Code in Exchange for Help 'Reforming Entitlements'

By Heather



I've generally been staying as far away as possible from CNN's new stinker of a show, which is the revival of Crossfire, but this Tuesday, the inclusion of Sen. Bernie Sanders as one of their panel members actually gave me a reason to sit through most of it.

Towards the end of the show, they spent some time arguing about the Senate filibuster rules and whether Republicans have been allowed to air their grievances over the Affordable Care Act or not, along with Ted Cruz and his stunt of a fake filibuster. Sen. Sanders took the opportunity to do what he does best, and advocate for working Americans out there, and the record income disparity and the fact that the Congress has done very little to get Americans back to work and rebuild our infrastructure.

So naturally, his fellow guest on the show, Sen. Lindsey Graham thought it was a perfect opportunity to make an offer to Sanders to "reform entitlements" in exchange for flattening the tax code. What a deal. Thankfully Sanders was there to remind the audience of just what Graham's "reforms" would mean for average Americans.
SANDERS: Let me just jump in and say I happen to think -- and by the way, Newt, when you were speaker, you ran a pretty tough ship there, as well, I recall.
But I happen to think that the rules in the Senate are pretty crazy. You or I could go down there and basically stop the entire United States government. One person could do that. Is that what democracy is about? I don't really think so.
But here's the point. Lindsey correctly says there are some bills that he thinks are not getting to the floor that might pass. Fair enough. But let me tell you something else. I happen to believe that the reason that Congress is now held in such contempt is the American people are hurting very badly. Middle class, in my view, is collapsing. Poverty numbers are at an all-time high, and the gap between the very, very rich and everybody else is growing wider.
JONES: And they blame Obama for that. Do you blame Obama for that?
SANDERS: No. I mean, it's a -- you know, it's a long-term trend.
JONES: Just checking. Just checking.
SANDERS: The bottom line is, what do the American people want, Lindsey? They want us to create jobs.
GRAHAM: Yes.
SANDERS: They want us to rebuild a crumbling infrastructure and create millions of jobs. They want us, in my view -- Newt, you quoted polls -- to raise the minimum wage substantially above where it is now. They want us to end these absurd loopholes that billionaires and corporations enjoy.
One out of four corporations doesn't pay a nickel in taxes. And Republicans are saying, "Oh, we have to cut 4 million people from Food Stamps."
GRAHAM: Bernie, if I -- if I was willing to flatten the tax code and take deductions away from the wealthy to pay down debt, would you reform entitlements by extending the age, based on the fact we're all living like Strom Thurmond?
SANDERS: Absolutely not. Not at a time where we have so much...
GRAHAM: That was a moment of bipartisanship that quickly passed.
SANDERS: Now let me ask you. Let me ask you.
GRAHAM: OK.
SANDERS: At a time when the top 1 percent own 38 percent of the wealth in America and the bottom 60 percent own all of 2.3 percent, will you work with me to ask the wealthy to start paying their fair share of taxes so we can deal with...?
GRAHAM: Here's what I will do. I will create a tax code that creates jobs for more Americans, because that's a good thing. But I would tell the wealthy people of this country, when it comes to Medicare, you're not going to get any more subsidies. When it comes to Social Security, you're going to have to take less, because we can't afford to give everybody what we promised.
If you will help me reform the tax code, I -- help me reform entitlements, I'll help you reform the tax code, because we're becoming Greece if we don't do this.
SANDERS: All right. But when you talk about reform entitlements, I understand.
GRAHAM: Yes.
SANDERS: Correct me if I'm wrong. You want to raise the entitlement age to Social Security?
GRAHAM: Over 30 years.
SANDERS: Over 30 years to 70 years.
GRAHAM: No. What I want to do is harmonize Medicare with Social Security: go from 65 to 67 over the next 30 years. And I want means testing for people in my income level, Newt's income level, Van's income level. Have to pay the actual costs.
SANDERS: But you also support the chain CPI.
GRAHAM: Yes, I do.
SANDERS: Which cut benefits -- let me talk. Which would cut $650 from Social Security benefits between the ages of 65 and 70. And make massive cuts for disabled vets.
GRAHAM: Well, no. What I'm trying to do is save the country from bankruptcy. And when the president of the United States, who I usually don't agree with, put CPI on the table, I thought it was a very courageous thing to do. And I am willing to flatten that tax code. I can go to the rich people in America and all the corporations, say, "We're going to take deductions off the table you now enjoy. Take that money back for the many, not just the few."
But if you don't help me reform the entitlements, there's no way to get there by taxing people.
SANDERS: I want everybody to understand, when Lindsey talks about reforming entitlements, what he means is cutting Social Security and cutting Medicare. I think that's a bad idea.
GINGRICH: OK. And I would say -- and we're about to run out of time. But I would say what you're talking about is going bankrupt, and that's a debate we want to invite you to come back.
GRAHAM: ... program. I've actually spent...
GINGRICH: We'll have you back on access for health care, which will be a great topic, the two of you. And we ought to come back and talk a little bit more about how do we solve this?
GRAHAM: Eighty million Baby Boomers are going to retire in the next 40 years. How do we replace them? We need rational immigration.
JONES: The first thing, maybe stop giving those subsidies...
GRAHAM: How do you save Medicare and Social Security with 80 million people coming into the system?
JONES: What about first of all, you supported $4 billion subsidies to oil company that don't need them. We've got -- we have a lot of conversations we need to have -- I'm going to give it back to you, Newt, to take us out of here.
GINGRICH: Kind of -- You almost agreed with him for a second. I was sitting back.
JONES: I changed my mind.
GINGRICH: Let me -- I want to thank Senator Sanders and Senator Graham.
Next, we "Ceasefire." Is there anything out of all this that the two of us can agree on?
I think Sanders did a good job here, but it would have been nice to see him push back harder when Graham pulled the "we're becoming Greece" card."

When Graham wants to address what's gone on with Wall Street and the banks and what they did with Greece and allowing them to mask their debt, maybe we can have an "honest conversation" about that as well, but I've seen no desire on the part of the likes of Graham or his fellow Republicans to do anything other than further deregulate financial markets and make those sort of problems worse and not better.

The fact that he continually brings up Greece to justify gutting our social safety nets is dishonest and disgusting, but that hasn't stopped him from doing it over, and over, and over, and over again.

Copyright As Censorship: Using The DMCA To Take Down Websites For Accurately Calling Out Racist Comments

By Mike Masnick

While some still believe that copyright can never be used to censor, we see it happen all the time. Here's just the latest example. The websites for both the Center for a Stateless Society and the Students for a Stateless Society have been taken down by Bluehost, an ISP with a history of taking down entire sites based on single DMCA claims (i.e.: don't ever use Bluehost as a hosting company). Why? Apparently because of a DMCA takedown notice sent by lawyer JD Obenberger on behalf of his client, Olivier Janssens (though, in the DMCA notice, Obenberger refers to him as Oliver, not Olivier).

What "copyright" did these sites violate? Well, it turns out that the sites were somewhat (reasonably) annoyed by comments by some members of Students for a Stateless Society in Belgium, and so they highlighted some comments which they felt were inappropriate, calling attention to the fact that these sorts of comments were inappropriate and at odds with the views and goals of the organization. One of those whose comments were called out was (you guessed it) Olivier Janssens. You can read the comments at the link above, which S4SS argued were Islamophobic, which they felt went against their basic principles, and then the group officially disassociated itself with the chapter to which Janssens and others belonged.

Then came the DMCA notice from Obenberger, which is really quite a thing to read. On my first read, I wondered if it was fake, because not only is it completely over the top, in it, Obenberger more or less admits that the takedown has little to do with copyright, but is to try to hide the (accurately reported) words of Janssens, and makes a statement that I still can't believe anyone has ever said in seriousness (bolded below):
I am the attorney for Oliver Janssens who is the victim of copyright infringement and a particularly dangerous violation of his right to privacy which affects his personal safety and security. In other words, what follows is not your typical DMCA letter about whose porn is being bootlegged by which pirate.

Your hosting customer, who operates http://s4ss.org, decided to embarrass Oliver Janssens in the worst and most effective way - by words out of his own mouth. Words of his own creation which, when reduced to the tangible medium of a FaceBook page, acquired a copyright recognized by the United States Copyright Act and international conventions concerning copyright. And because the words he wrote, in what he imagined to be a close discussion among like-minded persons in a FaceBook page, reflected heterodox social and political views about Muslims in Europe, its further publication on your servers presents certain practical dangers to the safety and well-being of Mr. Janssens, who lives and works in that part of Europe in which violence is so routinely applied by Islamic Extremists to those who oppose them, that it seldom makes the news here when its victims are nailed into coffins and buried.

Mr. Janssens participated in a harsh social/political discussion with several other per­sons in a FaceBook group and his comments may be understood as antagonistic to Muslims, at the risk of understatement. I'm sure that, if he could see how they would be published via your servers to the entire world, he'd pull them back. It is too late for regrets. But it is not too late to try to put a tourniquet on this bleeding by stopping the further illegal dissemination of his property.

I am writing this letter in an effort to reduce the chances that Mr. Janssens may become a target for violence and harassment. I am writing to you because, when Mr. Janssens appealed to the operator of the site, your hosting customer, with a request for a takedown of this material, his own private words written among friends, his own intellectual property, your customer operating the site told him to"pound sand" yesterday, on September 19.

He has not authorized anyone to repost his words, yet a user of your web hosting services, S4SS Admin, has posted them on the S4SS website, specifically on the web page indicated below. Further, Oliver Jannsens has not authorized the translation into English of the writings, which your hosting customer also publishes at the same page.

By providing hosting services to that site and its operator, you materially assist the infringement of the exclusive copyright that Mr. Janssens possesses in those words of his authorship, a copyright created under the Berne Convention and American law at the moment he typed them and pressed the Return Button. Should Mr. Janssens become the victim of an assault or murder traceable to this infringement, should he be harassed and ridiculed and run out of his employment or lose his terrified family, committed by a person who targeted him, the embarrassment to Bluehost/Hostmonster would be enormous. And the potential damages, should you disregard this request and demand under the DMCA, and should Mr. Janssens become the target of retaliation inflicted upon him in Europe by a religious zealot who read about him on the website in question, stagger the imagination.

*I would demand, on behalf of my client, that you 1) immediately terminate the hosting of these files, 2) delete their contents from your servers and all other media, 3) advise us of the identity of the uploader, and 4) inform the posters and your hosting client that their illegal conduct jeopardizes not only them, but you as well.
The letter seemed so preposterous that I emailed Obenberger asking for confirmation that he'd actually written and sent it, but as of publishing have received no reply (well over 24 hours since I emailed). Not only is that bolded line such an incredible statement -- saying that it's somehow unfair to actually quote the words someone said -- his further explanation appears to be a rather blatant admission that the takedown here was not for anything having to do with copyright at all, but some random, unsupported worry that Janssens' actual statements might reflect poorly on Janssens. Because they do.

Obenberger, by the way, claims to be a strong First Amendment defender. His website is littered with claims about his strong belief in free speech and the First Amendment, and how he goes to great lengths to protect that right. That's kind of funny as he's now taking down an entire site via an incredibly questionable DMCA claim. And there's a very good chance he knows that his DMCA notice is highly questionable. As the On Alliance blog points out, Obenberger himself has written about filing DMCA notices in which he goes into great detail, including noting that you shouldn't file a threat of a lawsuit if the copyright holder hasn't registered the copyright with the US government prior to the alleged infringement. Somehow that seems quite unlikely here, and yet he still sent the takedown.

While it's entirely possible (though quite a stretch) that Janssens could face the consequences of his words in a manner suggested by Obenberger, that's the nature of free speech. You are free to say what you want, but it does not make you free from the consequences of your speech. Furthermore, copyright has nothing to do with that. You don't get to claim that it's a copyright violation because someone's words might legitimately be used against them. That's the point in which the DMCA letter slips into admitting that this has nothing to do with copyright at all, but rather is an attempt to abuse the DMCA process to silence Students for a Stateless Society for calling out Janssens' statements.

Furthermore, even if there was a copyright issue here, this is about as slam dunk a fair use claim as you could possibly imagine. S4SS quoted a few brief snippets of a Facebook discussion to call certain people out on their statements. The idea that there's a legitimate copyright claim there is preposterous. At the very least the use was clearly fair use. It was used for commentary and criticism. It was not used for commercial purposes (at all). The nature of the "copyrighted work" (already a stretch) was some bigoted Facebook comments (which were unlikely to be registered prior to the alleged "infringement"). There is no market for the works, so the impact on the market was nil. Instead, it seems clear (and, Obenberger more or less admits this in the DMCA letter itself), the entire purpose was to censor the site that called out the statement of his client.

If anything, it makes you wonder if Obenberger and Janssens may have opened themselves up to a significant DMCA 512(f) issue in arguing that such obviously non-infringing content was infringing.

I asked folks associated with C4SS and S4SS for more details about this as well, and was forwarded Jenssen's original threat email demanding that the content be removed (before he got Obenberger involved), and it's equally ridiculous. It claims that "you do not have my permission to repost my opinions" and claims it's an "official cease and desist letter," and if they don't comply he'll sue. Of course, it's difficult to see how he has any grounds, whatsoever, to sue. Of course, S4SS has the right to repost his opinions, especially in the manner in which the organization did so.

After C4SS and S4SS published the bogus takedown notice again, Jenssen sent yet another email, though somewhat more conciliatory, saying that it wasn't his intention to have the entirety of both sites taken down, and that as an "anarchist-libertarian" he's "not exactly in support of copyright." Of course, he probably should have thought of that before hiring a lawyer to send a highly questionable DMCA takedown notice that is entirely hinged on copyright law. He does apologize for the takedown, and tries to explain his initial comments which got him into the mess in the first place, claiming that he went too far in his comments, believing (incorrectly) that it was a private group. Again, this isn't fully convincing, because he did make those comments.

And, of course, you have to wonder how apologetic he is, when after "apologizing" and giving his side of the story, he immediately adds the following:
If you continue this, I will have no other choice than to continue protecting my person by having it removed, and additionally I will also start pressing personal charges to the persons doing so (for endangering my life/family intentionally). I have a practically unlimited budget to do so, but obviously this is not what I want.
Again, I'm curious as to what legal basis there is to press charges against someone for quoting someone else accurately. That would make for an interesting lawsuit as well.

In the meantime, however, we've got a bogus DMCA notice that has completely taken down the sites of two organizations, and threats of further lawsuits, even from someone who claims he doesn't believe in copyright law. But, no, copyright could never possibly be used for censorship.

Ted Cruz's fake filibuster


Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Media ‘blinded’ by Ted Cruz’s Ivy League resume

By Evan Puschak

Sen. Ted Cruz launched into a fake filibuster Tuesday on the Senate floor to block a piece of House legislation that he himself supports. MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell called Cruz’s actions “the single stupidest legislative strategy in the history of the United States Senate.”


Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

In the Rewrite Tuesday, O’Donnell wondered why the Washington media resist calling Cruz “stupid,” despite the many erroneous things he says.

“Ted Cruz says things that are profoundly wrong all day long, and the Washington media does not hold it against him because they all believe that he is smart enough to know the truth and understand the truth but that he is simply lying about it,” O’Donnell said. “And the Washington media actually respects lying, respects political lying. They believe it is part of the game, because they believe governing–the thing they are supposed to be covering as reporters–is a game.”

O’Donnell argued that Cruz’s stellar resume as a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School serves as “academic armor” to blind the media.

“Many people think that because Ted Cruz was a good law student or a good lawyer he is therefore smart, smart at everything he does. They are wrong,” he said. “Being a good law student does not mean that you are a smart parent, for example. Or a smart driver, or a smart eater. Or a smart senator. Law school performance is a predictor of nothing–including your potential ability as a lawyer. And there are many high functioning lawyers who are absolutely terrible at everything else they do.”

The only real way to judge Cruz’s legislative intelligence is by his action as senator. By that measure, O’Donnell said Cruz is “the stupidest guy in the building.”

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Ted Cruz Is An Abject Moron


Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

How Stupid Is Ted Cruz?

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Ted Cruz Has Always Been Hated

By Josh Marshall














Well, it turns out Ted and I went to college together. And not just we happened to be at the same place at the same time. We were both at a pretty small part of a relatively small university. We both went to Princeton. I was one year ahead of him. But we were both in the same residential college, which basically meant a small cluster of dorms of freshmen and sophomores numbering four or five hundred students who all ate in the same dining hall.

My wife meanwhile was also in the same residential college and she was actually Ted's year - Class of 92. [In case you're wondering, no, my wife and I haven't been together for 25 years. We knew each other in college but only got together as a couple a dozen years later.] She totally remembered Ted and basically as a conceited and fairly nerdy jerk.

But the weird thing was I didn't remember him. And the context here is that I have a really good memory. If we meet after twenty years, I'm far more likely to remember you than vice-versa and I'll probably remember little details about you too. I don't forget a lot of stuff, especially people. But I didn't remember the name or the guy I was seeing on TV.

As it turned out, though, almost everyone I knew well in college remembered him really well. Vividly. And I knew I number of his friends. But for whatever reason I just didn't remember him. When I saw college pictures of him, I thought okay, yeah, I remember that guy but sort of in the way where you're not 100% sure you're not manufacturing the recollection.

I was curious. Was this just my wife who tends to be a get-along and go-along kind of person? So I started getting in touch with a lot of old friends and asking whether they remembered Ted. It was an experience really unlike I've ever had. Everybody I talked to - men and women, cool kids and nerds, conservative and liberal - started the conversation pretty much the same.

"Ted? Oh yeah, immense asshole." Sometimes "total raging asshole." Sometimes other variations on the theme. But you get the idea. Very common reaction.

But that wasn't all. Before retelling this or that anecdote, there was one other thing that everybody said, "A really, really smart dude."

Among other things, it was a mystery to me how and why this guy had made such a strong impression on so many people but I'd just missed or forgotten him. Here's a story about Ted's college years from last month in the Daily Beast. I remember the name and face of every other student mentioned. But not Ted. Maybe that's because I spent a lot of my sophomore year in kind of a fog. But it didn't stop me from getting to know lots of other people who arrived that year - like my future wife, for instance.

Here's the gist from that DB story ...
In addition to Mazin and Leitch, several fellow classmates who asked that their names not be used described the young Cruz with words like "abrasive," "intense," "strident," "crank," and "arrogant." Four independently offered the word "creepy," with some pointing to Cruz's habit of donning a paisley bathrobe and walking to the opposite end of their dorm's hallway where the female students lived.
...
While Cruz may have been disliked, and intensely so, by many of his classmates, he found a close and longtime friend in a gregarious, popular student from Jamaica named David Panton, who became Cruz's tag-team partner on Princeton's renowned debate squad, as well as his roommate for the remainder of their time at Princeton and when they both attended Harvard Law School.
But there's more to the story. Because my wife didn't just go to college with Ted. She also went to law school with him. They were both in the same class at Harvard Law School. And it was actually from Harvard where she seemed to have the strongest and most negative memories of him. So I started asking Harvard classmates about him too. Same stories. Let's call it AASS. Asshole, Arrogant, Super Smart.

The stories, well ... the stories. One of the best was one I heard early this year from a number of people. Here's the version I heard from an email back in February.
My friend [redacted] went to Harvard Law with Ted. [He] says that Ted shocked people when during the first week, he announced that he was creating a study group and only people with high GPA's from the Big Three Ivies could apply for admission. In short, Ted managed to come off as a pompous asshole at Harvard Law.
As my correspondent notes, Ted managed to distinguish himself as a arrogant a#@hole at Harvard Law School, which is an amazing accomplishment since the competition there for that description is intense. This is the story Jason Zengerle managed to confirm for his new article in GQ. And I'm glad he did. I've been wondering about how much of this to report out myself. But I felt like I had kind of a conflict of interest or maybe unfair advantage knowing so many of the people first hand.

At each stage, Ted did seem to collect a quite small but core group of friends/followers, mainly people who were deeply in tune with his politics (he was as right-wing on day one at college as he is today) and who took what most found to be his assholery as a form of take-no-prisoners conservative badassdom. Indeed, if you think this is an issue of whom I talked to, just like-minded people maybe, consider this: It perfectly mirrors what's happened over the last year in the Senate. Cruz has a small handful of followers in the Senate; but basically everyone else in his Republican caucus despises him.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Ted was a big, big deal in the hyper-competitive and - c'mon - somewhat ridiculous world of college debate. So again ... let's not even belabor it. "Ted?" "Unbelievable Asshole."

Over the last few months I did some poking around too in Ted's last past his late 20s. Unlike his college and law school years when I had tons of mutual acquaintances I could go to, here I had fewer.
But the gist was the same.

And this is why I've been saying since Ted Cruz replaced Michele Bachmann as the King of the Tea Partiers that the reaction to Cruz in the senate is simply the reaction Ted's gotten at least at every stage of his life since he arrived at college in 1988. An incredibly bright guy who's an arrogant jerk who basically everybody ends up hating.

Monday, September 23, 2013

Single Player Co-op

Requiring one player to independently control two characters, one with each hand, the recently released Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons (Steam/360/PS3) has been receiving high praise for its intertwining of emotional storytelling and gameplay.

"Brothers is a compellingly beautiful game, yet remarkably dark... it's a single-player co-op, executed sublimely." - Rock Paper Shotgun.

"The resulting journey is so singularly devoted to creating a specific tone and atmosphere that you won't likely be able to stop thinking about it until long after you've seen it through to the end." - Giant Bomb.

"We see so many games striving to be interactive movies, but Brothers is something more akin to poetry. Mechanics are stanzas, and together they pack more of an emotional wallop than some scripts achieve with thousands upon thousands of hollow words." - Polygon.

From developer Starbreeze, more known for gritty shooters like The Darkness and Syndicate, Brothers has been one of the surprises of the summer, drawing comparisons with Gone Home (GWJ article, clearly marked spoilers) and Total Biscuit calls it his favorite game of all time.

Giant Bomb's Patrick Klepek has a great (but spoilers filled) interview with Aramean-Swedish director Josef Fares who created the game.

Source

Buy a House, Make Your Payments, Then Discover You've Been Foreclosed On Without Your Knowledge

By David Dayen

This should never happen, but it did, thanks to the sordid mortgage servicing industry.

A few months ago, Ceith and Louise Sinclair of Altadena, California, were told that their home had been sold. It was the first time they’d heard that it was for sale.

Their mortgage servicer, Nationstar, foreclosed on them without their knowledge, and sold the house to an investment company. If it wasn’t for the Sinclairs going to a local ABC affiliate and describing their horror story, they would have been thrown out on the street, despite never missing a mortgage payment. It’s impossible to know how many homeowners who didn’t get the media to pick up their tale have dealt with a similar catastrophe, and eventually lost their home.

As finance writer Barry Ritholtz has explained, home purchases involve a series of precise safeguards, designed to protect property rights and prevent situations where borrowers who are perfect on their payments get evicted. “In a nation of laws, contract and property rights, there is no room for errors,” Ritholtz writes. “The only way these errors could have occurred is if several people involved in the process committed criminal fraud.”

Any observer of the mortgage industry since 2009 is no stranger to foreclosure fraud, and the fact that virtually nobody has paid the price for this crime. But the case of the Sinclairs involves a new player in that rotten game: Nationstar. Unheralded just a few years ago, the firm, owned by a private equity behemoth, has been buying up the rights to service mortgages, accepting monthly payments and distributing the proceeds to the owners of the loan, taking a little off the top for itself.

Nationstar has racked up an impressively horrible customer service record in its short life, failing to honor prior agreements with borrowers and pursuing illegal foreclosures. The fact that Nationstar and other corrupt companies like it are beginning to corner the market for mortgage servicing should trouble not only homeowners, but the regulators tasked with looking out for them. It didn’t seem possible that a broken mortgage servicing industry could get worse, but it has.

Nationstar is at the forefront of a massive shift in mortgage servicing. In the past few years, the largest servicers were arms of major banks, like JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Citi and Ally Bank. Those were the “big five” servicers sanctioned for an array of fraudulent conduct in the National Mortgage Settlement, which mandated specific standards for servicers to follow, like providing a single point of contact for customers and an end to “dual tracking,” when a servicer offers a trial modification to a borrower and pursues foreclosure at the same time.

The banks realized that they could sell the servicing rights and evade these standards, along with the higher labor costs associated with implementing them. What’s more, they would avoid new, higher capital requirements associated with holding servicing assets, allowing them to give bigger dividends to shareholders and bigger bonuses to executives.

So the big banks started selling off their servicing rights, not to other banks, but to specialty financial services firms like Green Tree, Nationstar, Walter Investment Management and Ocwen, all of whom are in kind of an arms race to become the biggest servicer.

Last October, Ocwen purchased the entire servicing portfolio of Ally Bank, covering about $329 billion in loans. Ocwen has also purchased part of JPMorgan Chase’s servicing, as well as a slice from OneWest Bank; it is attempting to dominate the market.

Nationstar acquired business from Bank of America and Aurora Bank in 2012, and more in 2013.

Wells Fargo is poised to sell some servicing rights as well, and Nationstar will surely bid for those rights. As of June 30 of this year, Nationstar has the right to collect on $318 billion worth of home loans—growing three-fold in under two years—and it will seek to add even more in the future. The company, majority owned by the private equity firm Fortress Investment Group, recently raised $1.1 billion in capital to buy up more servicing rights from banks around the country.

This means that homeowners victimized by big-bank servicers, who were supposed to get a commitment to honest treatment as part of the National Mortgage Settlement, instead got their servicing rights sold to companies no longer bound by the terms of that settlement. So homeowners lose all of their protections, and often have to start back at square one with their new servicer. For example, if a borrower was in process on a loan modification with their old servicer, the new servicer can choose to simply not recognize that modification, and demand the full monthly payment under threat of foreclosure. This is a very common practice.

What’s more, this new breed of non-bank servicers scooping up all these servicing rights has proven themselves as a bunch of cheats profiting off their customers. Green Tree Servicing has a terrible record of ripoffs. Ocwen has been sued in state court over its practices, including an innovative scam involving sending homeowners a check for $3.50, and claiming that cashing the check automatically enrolls the customer in an appliance insurance plan, which costs $54.95 a month.

Fitch, the credit rating agency, wrote in a research note in June that the growth of non-bank servicers “may pose challenges to a potential orderly transfer of servicing,” and that the involvement of private equity firms “raises questions” about the ultimate endgame for these servicers. In effect, servicing has shifted from big banks to private equity and hedge funds, and neither really have the customer’s needs in mind.

Nationstar is no different in the non-bank servicer space. While the company promised California that it would adhere to all settlement obligations on the servicing rights it purchases, the Sinclairs were subjected to familiar abuse. The family paid their mortgage on time since purchasing their home in 2003. Last year, they received a loan modification. But their servicer sold the rights to Nationstar, and Nationstar didn’t honor the modification. In June, the Sinclairs sent in their mortgage payment, and Nationstar sent it back in full. Then it sold the home. When questioned, Nationstar claimed the Sinclairs didn’t notarize one page of their modification, which turned out to be untrue.

It was a clear attempt to find an excuse to deny the modification and push the Sinclairs into foreclosure. Mortgage servicers actually make more money with foreclosures than with loan modifications, because of how their compensation structure works. Servicers load up various foreclosure fees on homeowners that they get to keep, and they get paid off first in a foreclosure sale.

A loan modification simply cuts their percentage balance on the loan.

This is not Nationstar’s only scam. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which recently started examining non-bank servicers, put out a report this summer on the illicit practices of these firms. CFPB found that servicers like Nationstar often failed to inform homeowners about the change in servicing rights when they are transferred, meaning that the homeowner kept paying the wrong servicer. This is a clever way to facilitate late fees; just don’t tell the customer where to send their money.

Servicers also delayed property taxes paid out of escrow accounts, making borrowers late on those taxes and triggering more delinquency fees; failed to refund insurance premiums and other fees due back to borrowers; did not communicate properly with borrowers in need of a loan modification; lost documents solicited from borrowers for that process and made it impossible to complete the applications; failed to even properly file documents associated with the transfer of servicing rights; and charged customers default fees “without adequately documenting the reasons for and amounts of the fees,” and neglected to waive certain fees or interest charges.

CFPB also found that non-bank servicers like Nationstar had no comprehensive compliance management system in place to ensure that they followed all applicable consumer protection laws. Many didn’t even have formal, written policies or independent auditors. They hadn’t been subject to any examination prior to CFPB, so this stands to reason.

Nationstar is being sued in New York’s Supreme Court for auctioning off non-performing loans that it would rather not service at a severe discount, shortchanging investors in the process. The company’s auction sales, made with an online auction company that its private equity parent firm has a “business affiliation” with, end up allowing Nationstar to recoup its take, with all the losses falling on the underlying loan owners. So Nationstar has managed to infuriate both sides of the mortgage deal, the lenders and the borrowers, with its unscrupulous practices.

Getting examiners inside these “specialty” companies is a start, and new servicer rules coming from CFPB in January would cover non-bank servicers as well. But no regulator has the resources to deal with such flagrant abuses. Mortgage servicing is a sewer, and it needs to be completely overhauled from the ground up. If Nationstar represents the future, then until it faces real penalties or an expulsion from the industry for its conduct, private property rights in America will have to be seen as theoretical. Just ask the Sinclairs.

David Dayen is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles, CA. Follow him on Twitter at @ddayen.

Sunday, September 22, 2013

I Will Gladly Knock Alex Jones The FUCK Out!

By David Sparks

Radio Host Alex Jones makes his living connecting seemingly unconnected events, and connecting them with his world view of a giant global oligarchical movement to enslave all souls.

But what Jones really does, is make it harder for people to question the possibility of actual conspiracies, because he has enabled the mainstream narrative to label all who don't buy the official line of conventional wisdom as kooks, through his hyperbolic baboonish behavior.

And since Jones claims that he likes to fight so much, I decided to offer him up the chance to the world to show what a tough guy he is in an old-fashioned boxing match.

Chinese Chicken, Food Safety, and the USDA

By rickpace1

Here’s a bit of news that might make you drop that chicken nugget midbite.

Just before the start of the long holiday weekend last Friday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture quietly announced that it was ending a ban on processed chicken imports from China. The kicker: These products can now be sold in the U.S. without a country-of-origin label.

For starters, just four Chinese processing plants will be allowed to export cooked chicken products to the U.S., as first reported by Politico. The plants in question passed USDA inspection in March.

Initially, these processors will only be allowed to export chicken products made from birds that were raised in the U.S. and Canada. Because of that, the poultry processors won’t be required to have a USDA inspector on site, as The New York Times notes, adding:

“And because the poultry will be processed, it will not require country-of-origin labeling. Nor will consumers eating chicken noodle soup from a can or chicken nuggets in a fast-food restaurant know if the chicken came from Chinese processing plants.”

Earlier in the week I reported on the concerns that small farmers have about the newly proposed FDA food safety regulations. Now I read the USDA allows CHINESE poultry processing plants to convert American or Canadian chickens (chickens raised 2,000 miles from the processor) and to market them WITHOUT country-of-origin labeling. The Chinese processor will also NOT need a poultry processing inspector on site.

Don’t get me wrong…I want all the people of the world to prosper and be healthy…and the Chinese are part of ‘all the people of the world’.

Call me crazy, but combining what I know about the new FDA proposed food safety regulations with what I know about this recent USDA ruling….I think the American political leaders on food and agriculture look like fools.

Again I’m going to go out on a political limb – but it does not appear that these policies are being driven by government decision-making in the public interest.

And there is more:

And, chicken lovers, brace yourselves: There’s more. A report suggests chicken inspections here in the U.S. might be poised to take a turn for the worse. The Government Accountability Office report said this week it has serious “questions about the validity” of the new procedures for inspecting poultry across the country.

Basically, these changes would replace many USDA inspectors on chicken processing lines with employees from the poultry companies themselves. The USDA has been piloting the new procedures, which will save money and significantly speed up processing lines, in 29 chicken plants. As The Washington Post , the plan is to roll out the new procedures eventually to “most of the country’s 239 chicken and 96 turkey plants.”

The problem? According to the GAO, the USDA did a poor job of evaluating the effectiveness of the pilot programs it has in place.

As a result, the report concludes, it’s hard to justify the USDA’s conclusions that the new procedures will do a better job than current approaches at cutting down on the number of dangerous bacteria like salmonella that pop up on the birds that will later end up on our dinner tables.


LOVELY!

Here is the NPR Report

Here is one of the many comments at the NPR Report (I find it too cynical, but the reference to food as ‘protein’ is totally valid commentary on our industrial food industry’s mechanistic view of what nourishes us.)

I think US-Based poultry producers are playing The Long Game here, looking for a quid pro quo from China hoping it will now open its doors to US produced chicken – it’s all about the money – Agra-producers of protein need to push the cheapest possible product out to the largest number of consumers, regardless of the ethical questions of how the animals are raised or slaughtered, regardless of the conditions of the workers who do the processing, and regardless of the safety of product that finds it’s way onto the tables of our families. It’s about a Machine that processes protein worldwide for mass consumption at the lowest possible unit cost. It’s about how Industry’s money subverts the safety process via purchased politicians. It’s going to happen, and there’s nothing you or I or anyone else can do about it.

Here is the USDA Ruling on the Chinese Processors.

And, by the way, I think there ARE things you and I can do about these food ethics issues!