With ever more people getting into the marijuana business, the pot market has become glutted. Prices are down. But two thousand dollars a pound still looks good to people fighting the economic downturn with outdoor agriculture. The “Green Rush” is on, and it’s been building for a decade now … Black is the color of the DEA. They wear black jump suits, drive black SUVs, and fly black helicopters. They had a whole squadron of little black choppers at the Ukiah airport a few weeks ago to train law enforcement personnel from all over in spotting and eradicating marijuana crops. The DEA also uses military choppers, and they had a big Blackhawk apparently working as flagship with the smaller choppers brought in for the training exercises. Some of the little black choppers are still around, as is a big CH 46, the one with the twin rotors and a tailgate that you can drive a Hummer into. It seems to be the mothership

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The War Logs

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/business/global/26bp.html?sq=bp&st=cse&scp=2&pagewanted=print

BP Is Expected to Replace Chief With American

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/world/europe/26britain.html?sq=lockerbie&st=cse&scp=1&pagewanted=print

Hearing on Lockerbie Sets Off More Finger-Pointing

Abuse of prisoners happened. But apparently, only at Abu Ghraib, not at Bagram, not at Gitmo, not at firebases where detainees died. And the names of those contractors? Their role in the abuse? The WaPo stops short of telling you, for example, that a CACI interrogator was the one instructing the grunts at Abu Ghraib to abuse detainees. The WaPo also doesn’t tell you the CACI contractors never paid any price for doing so. The WaPo doesn’t mention that DOD believed they had no way of holding contractors accountable for such things

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U.S. to Add to Sanctions on N. Korea

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/22/world/middleeast/22iran.html?sq=iran&st=cse&scp=2&pagewanted=print

Iran Now Says Nuclear Scientist Was Double Agent

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/22/world/europe/22germany.html?sq=merkel&st=cse&scp=2&pagewanted=print

Merkel Government Sees Steep Drop in Ratings

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/22/technology/22facebook.html?sq=facebook&st=cse&scp=2&pagewanted=print

Facebook Tops 500 Million Users

“…In suburbs across the nation, the intelligence community goes about its anonymous business. Its work isn’t seen, but its impact is surely felt….”….BS

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/secrets-next-door/

“…What started as a temporary fix in response to the terrorist attacks has turned into a dependency that calls into question whether the federal workforce includes too many people obligated to shareholders rather than the public interest — and whether the government is still in control of its most sensitive activities….”…BS

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/national-security-inc/print/

A Hidden World, Growing Beyond Control

Scientist Says U.S. Wanted to Swap Him for Hikers

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/19/world/middleeast/19abuse.html?sq=egypt&st=cse&scp=8&pagewanted=print

Death in Police Encounter Stirs Calls for Change in Egypt

Useful insights often must be seen through a glass darkly. But some can be pulled through the smoke and mirrors shrouding the wanderings of Iranian scientist Shahram Amiri, who is now back home in Iran after 14 months in the U.S. as guest of the CIA

as usual ex-CIA man McGovern is full of useful information about the inner bureaucratic workings in the morbidly energizer-bunny-like drumbeat for war with Iran – mab .. read more

[Iranian scientist Shahram] Amiri recorded a video in which claimed to have been kidnapped and held against his will, which was sent to Iran for broadcast. A central point of the video, however, was his claim that the real objective of the United States was to get him to say in a televised interview that he was an important figure in the nuclear programme and had brought “very important documents on a laptop with classified information on Iran’s military nuclear programme”. When that video was broadcast on Iranian state television Jun. 8, it was followed within hours by the posting of another video of Amiri seeming to deny his previous statements. The second video had obviously been produced by the CIA well in advance

looks to me like someone got clumsy .. weird stuff – mab .. read more

Sentence Is Sharply Increased for Lawyer Convicted of Aiding Terror

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/16/business/16regulate.html?sq=congress&st=cse&scp=2&pagewanted=print

Financial Overhaul Signals Shift on Deregulation

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/16/us/16spill.html?scp=2&sq=BP&st=cse

BP Says Oil Flow Has Stopped as Cap Is Tested

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/16/nyregion/16frisk.html?sq=paterson&st=cse&scp=2&pagewanted=print

Paterson to Sign Bill Limiting Retention of Street-Stop Data

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/16/nyregion/16mcmahon.html?sq=wrestling&st=cse&scp=2&pagewanted=print

A Senate Run Brings Wrestling Into Spotlight

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/16/us/politics/16arizona.html?sq=arizona&st=cse&scp=2&pagewanted=print

Debate Over Arizona Immigration Law Comes to U.S. Court

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/16/us/politics/16interrogation.html?sq=bush&st=cse&scp=2&pagewanted=print

Bush Aide Says Some C.I.A. Methods Unauthorized

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http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/15/citys-unemployment-rate-drops-to-9-5-percent/?pagemode=print

City’s Unemployment Rate Drops to 9.5 Percent

Last week, I interviewed Mother Jones’ Mac McClelland, who has been covering the BP oil spill in the Gulf since the first day it happened. She detailed how local police and federal officials work with BP to harass, impede, interrogate and even detain journalists who are covering the impact of the spill and the clean-up efforts

another story that should be huge scandal but isn’t – expect another Tiger Woods-style media frenzy coming to your cable tv set any day now – mab .. read more

The drums and tom-toms grew quiet. The last writhing dancers fell exhausted in the dust… With a primeval howl, a nation of 14 million people reverted to near savagery, plunged backward into the long night of chaos. Tribe turned upon tribe. Blacks turned upon Europeans..

evidently the Congo got Mobutu because The West needed, um .. cobalt! – Ooga booga ooga booga!! – mab .. read more

“…It is natural to rush to fit this story into a neat and familiar storyline. We all know the basics of spy stories, and both the United States and Russia seem to cling to old Cold War images of right and wrong. But maybe we call them “spy games’’ for a reason….”…BS

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/07/03/from_russia_with_love?mode=PF

“…The investigation into the 11 alleged foreign agents appears to have been a case study in counterintelligence. As a matter of technique, the FBI and the CIA generally weigh the opportunity of gaining valuable counterintelligence against the danger of allowing subjects of interest to continue operating, lest they obtain U.S. intelligence or manage to flee….”….BS

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/02/AR2010070205569_pf.html

Why would a 22-year-old Private [Manning] in Iraq have unfettered access to 250,000 pages of diplomatic cables so sensitive that they “could do serious damage to national security?” Why would he contact a total stranger [Lamo] .. in order to “quickly” confess to acts that he knew could send him to prison for a very long time, perhaps his whole life? And why would he choose to confess over the Internet, in an unsecured, international AOL IM chat? … This Manning detention is being used to depict WikiLeaks as a serious national security threat and associations with it as dangerous and subversive … There’s no reason to believe that’s true, but given the powers the U.S. Government claims — lawless detentions, renditions, assassinations even of American citizens — that’s the climate of intimidation that has been created. This latest incident is clearly being used to impede WikiLeaks’ vital function of checking powerful factions and imposing transparency, and for that reason alone, this is an extremely serious case that merits substantial scrutiny, along with genuine skepticism to understand what happened.

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The whistleblowing website WikiLeaks says it plans to release a secret military video of one of the deadliest US air strikes in Afghanistan in which scores of children are believed to have been killed. WikiLeaks announced the move in an email to supporters. It said it fears it is under attack after the US authorities said they were searching for the site’s founder, Julian Assange

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Feds Under Pressure To Open US Skies to Drones

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/15/nyregion/15budget.html?sq=albany&st=cse&scp=4&pagewanted=print

Another Emergency Bill Averts Albany Shutdown

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/15/us/15kennedy.html?scp=3&sq=kennedy&st=cse

F.B.I. Opens Kennedy File

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/15/nyregion/15daniels.html?sq=judge&st=cse&scp=5&pagewanted=print

Families in 9/11 Financing Case Ask to Have Judge Replaced

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/15/business/media/15newscorp.html?sq=online&st=cse&scp=5&pagewanted=print

News Corp. Prepares for Paid Online Content

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/15/movies/15credits.html?sq=cannibal&st=cse&scp=3&pagewanted=print

State Backing Films Says Cannibal Is Deal-Breaker

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/15/technology/15starbux.html?sq=starbucks&st=cse&scp=2&pagewanted=print

Aiming at Rivals, Starbucks Will Offer Free Wi-Fi

“…Kennedy’s FBI file, released yesterday, paints a vivid picture of the sometimes close, but often adversarial relationship that the Kennedy family had with the agency. Charged with protecting the Kennedys, the FBI also kept meticulous files on their political activities and their personal lives….”…BS

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2010/06/15/bureaus_file_on_ted_kennedy_was_personal_political?mode=PF