The Treasury Dept.'s mortgage relief program isn't just failing, it's actively funneling money from homeowners to bankers, and Treasury likes it that way. The Treasury Department's plan to help struggling homeowners has been failing miserably for months. The program is poorly designed, has been poorly implemented and only a tiny percentage of borrowers eligible for help have actually received any meaningful assistance. The initiative lowers monthly payments for borrowers, but fails to reduce their overall debt burden, often increasing that burden, funneling money to banks that borrowers could have saved by simply renting a different home. But according to recent startling admissions from top Treasury officials, the mortgage plan was actually not really about helping borrowers at all. Instead, it was simply one element of a broader effort to pump money into big banks and shield them from losses on bad loans. That's right: Treasury openly admitted that its only serious program purporting to help ordinary citizens was actually a cynical move to help Wall Street megabanks.

Karen Armstrong, founder of the Charter for Compassion, discusses recent controversy over the planned building of a mosque and Islamic community center two blocks from the former site of the World Trade Center. She argues that it's important to "make room for the other," and concludes that the center could serve to "make peace at the site of tragedy."

AFP: 9/11 families, others rally in favor of NYC mosque. "I lost a 23-year-old son, a paramedic who gave his life saving Americans and their values," Talat Hamdani said, and supporting the Islamic center and mosque "has nothing to do with religion. It has to do with standing up for our human rights, including freedom of religion."

Zero Party Politics: An Arab democracy, with a Muslim Prime Minister and a Christian President, allowed the building of a synagogue, squarely in the center of their “Ground Zero” in the heart and pride of downtown Beirut.

Vandalism to a Madera Islamic center and signs found on the property are being investigated as a hate crime, the Madera County Sheriff's Department said today. A brick was thrown through a window Friday and three signs were found at Masjid Madera, 16634 Road 26, during two other incidences since Aug. 18, said Erica Stuart, Sheriff's Department spokeswoman. Two of the signs were found on the center's property Tuesday afternoon.

The signs read “No Temple for the God of terrorism at Ground Zero. ANB,” “Wake up America, the Enemy is here. ANB” and “American Nationalist Brotherhood.”

AWIP: Fascist Lynch Mob at Ground Zero
AWIP: Cab Driver Stabbed By Passenger Who Asked "Are You Muslim?" -Video
Daily Mail: New York cab driver stabbed after saying he was Muslim -PHOTOS.
AWIP: Gaffney: The Left and Islamists are Working in Concert in Ways That are 'Advancing the Takedown of America' -Video

Key Karzai Aide Arrested in Corruption Inquiry Is C.I.A. Informant. 26 Aug 2010. The aide to President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan at the center of a politically sensitive corruption investigation is being paid by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to Afghan and American officials. Mohammed Zia Salehi, the chief of administration for the National Security Council, appears to have been on the payroll for many years, according to officials in Kabul and Washington... Other prominent Afghans who American officials have said were on the C.I.A.'s payroll include the president’s half brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, suspected by investigators of playing a role in Afghanistan’s booming opium trade. Earlier this year, American officials did not press Mr. Karzai to remove his brother from his post as the chairman of the Kandahar provincial council.

Five soldiers accused of killing civilians in Afghanistan are now facing additional charges of conspiracy to commit premeditated murder — a plot that allegedly began when one soldier discussed how easy it would be to "toss a grenade" at Afghan civilians, The Seattle Times reported Wednesday. The five soldiers were charged with murder in June for the deaths of three Afghan civilians in Kandahar Province this year. According to charging summaries newly released by the Army, additional allegations of conspiracy have since been filed against those soldiers, and seven others have been charged in connection with the conspiracy or with attempting to cover it up. Some platoon members told investigators that Army Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs began joking with other soldiers last December about how easy it would be to "toss a grenade" at Afghan civilians and kill them, the newspaper said. One soldier responded that it was a stupid idea, and another believed Gibbs was "feeling out the platoon." But eventually, Gibbs formed what one called a "kill team" to randomly execute Afghan civilians while on patrol, the documents said. No motive was discussed. Gibbs has denied any involvement in the killings.

Seattle Times: Stryker soldiers allegedly plotted to kill Afghan civilians. In one of the most serious war-crimes cases to emerge from the Afghanistan war, five soldiers from a Stryker infantry brigade based at Joint Base Lewis- McChord are now charged with murder for their alleged roles in the random killings of three Afghan civilians.

A media report says that an Afghan soldier killed two US-led soldiers in a shoot-out when they tried to remove an Afghan woman's veil by force. An exchange of fire between two Spanish soldiers and an Afghan police trainee left all three killed in northwestern Afghanistan's Badghis Province on Wednesday. Informed sources told the Pashtun language Benava website on Thursday that the deadly incident took place after soldiers were disrespectful to the women and insulted Afghans' cultural and Islamic values. Thousands of Afghan protesters subsequently staged a rally outside a Spanish base in the region. The protesters also called on the Afghan government to send Spanish troops to their country.

I was arrested with felony charges for expressing protest against acts of injustice against a neighbor. After cops felt her up during the traffic stop and illegally began to search her vehicle against her will, I expressed myself and got arrested. After the video, they illegally trespassed and searched my vehicle, finding one of my many legal firearms and held me 24 hours on a felony charge that was dropped the next day.

Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn't violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway — and no reasonable expectation that the government isn't tracking your movements. That is the bizarre — and scary — rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants — with no need for a search warrant.

Inmates of the Pitchess Detention Center, watch your step. If you get out of line, you may get blasted with an invisible heat ray. The jail’s energy weapon is a small-scale version of the Active Denial System, the experimental crowd control device that the U.S. military brought to Afghanistan — and then quickly shipped back home, after questions mounted about the wisdom of blasting locals with a beam that momentarily puts them in agony. The pain weapon seemed at odds with the military’s efforts to appear more humane and measured in the eyes of the Afghan populace. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department not only found those concerns overblown; they used the military’s long-standing reluctance to zap Afghans as fodder for the plan to zap Pitchess’ prisoners. “I already had contacts at [Active Denial maker] Raytheon who were reeling from the short-sided, self-serving cowardice of people who were more interested in saving face than saving lives, and leveraged it right into getting it into our jails,” former LASD Cmdr. Charles “Sid” Heal tells Danger Room.

American Science & Engineering, a company based in Billerica, Massachusetts, has sold U.S. and foreign government agencies more than 500 backscatter x-ray scanners mounted in vans that can be driven past neighboring vehicles to see their contents, Joe Reiss, a vice president of marketing at the company told me in an interview. While the biggest buyer of AS&E’s machines over the last seven years has been the Department of Defense operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, Reiss says law enforcement agencies have also deployed the vans to search for vehicle-based bombs in the U.S. News of the mobile scanners has alarmed civil libertarians who worry the technology could be used to violate people's privacy without legal justification.

"If they are in fact being used on public streets, that would be a major violation of the Constitution," writes Jay Stanley of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty program. "In fact, it's hard to believe that any counsel at any government agency would sign off on allowing these vans to be used in that way. The use of this technology constitutes a search, and under the Fourth Amendment, a search can only be carried out with a warrant. There are exceptions to that, but none of them would apply if this technology is being used on public streets."

The number of babies born with severe deformities and children developing leukaemia is rising dramatically in parts of Iraq. US forces used depleted uranium weapons to attack the city, which locals say has left them with this devastating legacy. One report even says the number of such illnesses in Falluja is higher than that recorded after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. See some of the deformed and desperately ill children, and meets some of the people battling against the odds to rebuild their lives, and their city.

A two-hour long multiple attack against Iraq’s fragile security forces took place in major cities throughout Iraq, leaving no region untouched. At least 92 Iraqis were killed and 379 more were wounded in the apparently coordinated attacks. Although security personnel were the focus of the violence, many civilians were caught up in the mayhem as well. The bloodiest attacks took place in relatively quiet Kut and in the capital. Meanwhile, a member of the Iraqiya list, which won the most seats in parliament, called for an emergency session to discuss today’s development. A similar day of violence in Baghdad last August was dubbed "Bloody Wednesday." Today’s attacks may have left less casualties in their wake, but the reach of the attacks — from Basra to Ninewa to Diyala and Anbar, with Baghdad in the middle — was astounding by any measure.

Credit: iStockphoto

[11 November 1999] The mathematical equation that ushered in the atomic age was discovered by an unknown Italian dilettante two years before Albert Einstein used it in developing the theory of relativity, it was claimed yesterday.

Olinto De Pretto, an industrialist from Vicenza, published the equation E=mc2 in a scientific magazine, Atte, in 1903, said Umberto Bartocci, a mathematical historian. Einstein allegedly used De Pretto's insight in a major paper published in 1905, but De Pretto was never acclaimed, said Professor Bartocci of the University of Perugia. De Pretto had stumbled on the equation, but not the theory of relativity, while speculating about ether in the life of the universe, said Prof Bartocci. It was republished in 1904 by Veneto's Royal Science Institute, but the equation's significance was not understood.

A Swiss Italian named Michele Besso alerted Einstein to the research and in 1905 Einstein published his own work, said Prof Bartocci. It took years for his breakthrough to be grasped. When the penny finally dropped, De Pretto's contribution was overlooked while Einstein went on to become the century's most famous scientist. De Pretto died in 1921.

In a study released this spring, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute named Koch Industries one of the top ten air polluters in the United States. And Greenpeace issued a report identifying the company as a “kingpin of climate science denial.” The report showed that, from 2005 to 2008, the Kochs vastly outdid ExxonMobil in giving money to organizations fighting legislation related to climate change, underwriting a huge network of foundations, think tanks, and political front groups. Indeed, the brothers have funded opposition campaigns against so many Obama Administration policies—from health-care reform to the economic-stimulus program—that, in political circles, their ideological network is known as the Kochtopus.

Xymphora: The Koch brothers, [...] are evil like comic book villains. [They are] funding the media trick called the 'Tea Party'. + here.

Perhaps you understood that the Anti-Defamation League exists to promote tolerance. According to its website, the ADL “fights anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry in the U.S. and abroad through information, education, legislation, and advocacy.” Its mission statement, adopted in 1913 in the anxious months following the scapegoating of Leo Frank, states that “its ultimate purpose is to secure justice and fair treatment to all citizens alike and to put an end forever to unjust and unfair discrimination against and ridicule of any sect or body of citizens.” The ADL has had a long and noble history of championing justice and equality before the law in America. But it’s becoming increasingly difficult to reconcile the ADL’s lofty goals and proud history with the conduct of its long-serving national director, Abe Foxman. Echoing the language used by opponents of the Civil Rights movement in the early sixties, he recently spoke against the proposal to establish an Islamic cultural center at 51 Park Row, on the site of a Burlington Coat factory. Survivors of the events of 9/11, Foxman argued, are entitled “to positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted.” So Foxman placed himself—and the ADL—firmly on the side of bigotry and intolerance.

Be afraid everybody.... be very afraid. PNAC wingnut Frank Gaffney has uncovered a secret plot by the "left" and the "Islamists" to wage a "stealth jihad" on the United States. We all want us to be just like Saudi Arabia or Iran and governed by Sharia law. Here's the latest on Gaffney and his fellow PNAC fear mongers and this trumped up "ground zero mosque" nonsense.

THIS ↑ trickles down to...

...THIS ↓

A city cab driver is in the hospital after being stabbed by a passenger who allegedly asked if he was Muslim, police tell NY1. Investigators with the New York City Police Department say it all began Monday night when a 21-year-old man hailed a cab at 24th Street and Second Avenue in Manhattan. Police say the passenger asked the driver,

"Are you Muslim?" When the driver said yes the passenger pulled a knife and slashed him in the throat, arm and lip.

The 43-year-old driver was able to lock the passenger in the back of the cab and call 911. Both the driver and the passenger were taken to Bellevue Hospital. As of late Tuesday, no charges had been filed.

AWIP: How Muslims are treated in America -MUST See Video

Many have sought refuge on the threatened embankment in Thatta

Thousands of Pakistanis are fleeing their homes in southern coastal areas as floods sweep down from the north.

Some 200,000 people have been evacuated in the Thatta area of Sindh province, where dozens of villages are submerged. In the north, workers have begun clearing up as the floods recede. The UN has appealed for more helicopters to reach 800,000 people who are cut off. Doctors in many areas are struggling to cope with the spread of water-borne diseases such as diarrhoea and cholera. Five million Pakistanis have no shelter, and urgently need tents or plastic sheeting to protect them from the sun. The UN says more than 17 million people have been affected by the floods, and about 1.2 million homes have been destroyed. The vast body of flood-water that has swept the length of Pakistan is now threatening previously unaffected communities in Sindh province, at the country's southern tip. Overnight, the authorities have been organising a mass evacuation from the town of Thatta - near the mouth of the Indus delta - and surrounding villages. At the moment, all that stands between locals and the vast weight of water is an embankment which has started to crack in places. If it bursts, the whole area could be submerged.