Ever hear of a Fusion Center?

They are run by the Department of Homeland Security and are locally based across the country.

One member of the press corps, however, brought up the fact that marijuana legalization is a serious subject to many people, particularly with Mexico right now, and when Gibbs didn't really respond, the reporter asked him to explain "Why?" "Why he feels that way about legalizing marijuana?"

Here was Gibbs' response:

"Uh, he, he does not think that, uh, uh, that that is uh, uh, [pause] he opposes it, he doesn't think that that's the, the right plan for America."

Apparently that is the new U.S. Government position on why marijuana should be illegal.

Wow.

It's fascinating that he couldn't come up with anything other than the equivalent of... "because."

The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan asked for an emergency hearing today on behalf of an Escanaba woman sentenced to 30 days in jail because she is too poor to reimburse the court for her son’s stay in a juvenile detention facility.

Jews- the people who happen to identify themselves as Jews. Jews are not a race, they do not follow a single belief system either. I made myself a rule. I categorically refrain from dealing with “the Jews” as a collective or an ethnic group. Instead I restrict myself to criticism of Jewish politics, Jewish ideology and Jewish identity.

There has been talk in the Western Press the past week of President Obama’s intention to keep the embargo on Cuba. There has been no talk of the continuing embargo on the Gaza Strip. America is as much responsible for that embargo as the one on Cuba.

An American solider was blinded in one eye and three others required medical evacuation out of Iraq in a series of laser "friendly fire" incidents, the U.S. military has disclosed. These injuries to be the result of the misuse of green laser dazzlers.

Five people suspected of terrorist offences are being questioned by police today in connection with an alleged plot to target the G20 summit.

Three men and two women have been arrested under the Terrorism Act in Plymouth over the last three days after officers uncovered a cache of weapons and suspected extremist material during a house search.

They are being questioned over claims they planned to target the meeting of the world's most powerful political leaders in London later this week.

Last week, a Spanish court agreed to consider “opening a criminal case against six former Bush administration officials…over allegations they gave legal cover for torture at Guantanamo Bay.” Former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Doug Feith said the charges “make no sense,” adding, “they criticize me for promoting a controversial position that I never advocated.” Gonzalo Boye, one of the lawyers filing the complaint, responded to Feith, saying, “If they [Bush officials] are innocent, they shouldn’t be afraid” to come to court:

For more than a year, the U.S. Federal Reserve System has been increasingly acting as the world's central bank, injecting hundreds of billions of dollars into foreign government treasuries in an effort to increase liquidity in those countries.

The foreign central banks have used the U.S. currency to bail out financial institutions within their borders. The Fed program links its balance sheet directly to the fates of foreign central banks at a time when they're on the ropes.

For a few fleeting, horrifying moments this past week the fault lines that underlie the global economic crisis erupted into plain view. With deft and quick effort leaders in Washington, Europe and Asia papered over the fissures and fears largely subsided. But the shock of plain truths which resulted in violent currency movements are the latest reminder that the 21st century economic order will bear little resemblance to the world we now know.

Thanks in part to a quarter-million-dollar bounty on the head of the writer of the worm, offered by Microsoft, security researchers are aggressively digging into the worm's code as they attempt to engineer a cure or find the writer before the deadline. What's known so far is that on April 1, all infected computers will come under the control of a master machine located somewhere across the web, at which point anything's possible. Will the zombie machines become denial of service attack pawns, steal personal information, wipe hard drives, or simply manifest more traditional malware pop-ups and extortion-like come-ons designed to sell you phony security software? No one knows.

In the basement of the sprawling whitewashed classical complex, 70 senior politicians and their advisers heard that prising open to increased scrutiny the secretive and corrupt world of tax havens - where trillions of dollars are stashed far from the reaches of the tax man - was akin to an evil Big Brother conspiracy that would smash civil liberties and hamper world economic growth.

Thousands of police officers who patrolled the route between the Embankment and a closing rally in Hyde Park seemed surprised at how peaceful and calm the mood of the marchers were given advanced warnings that the trade-union-backed march could be hijacked by anarchist groups and others seeking a violent clash with the police to mark what authorities believe could be a "summer of rage".

In a 600-word post, Brad questioned the credibility of an online petition on Smith's website, urging the administration of President Barack Obama to require labeling of biotech foods. He called the petition "sheer political theater" and prodded the activist for purportedly being a yogic flying instructor.

More than 30 comments followed in the next few weeks. On one level, the exchange was just another online debate about GMOs. But this one was notable because of who initiated and hosted it: Monsanto Co.

Many of these governments have honed their Internet strategies beyond censorship and are employing more subtle (and harder to detect) ways of controlling dissent, often by planting their own messages on the Web and presenting them as independent opinion.

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: ARE THERE ACTORS WHOSE POLITICAL OPINIONS DISTURB YOU SO MUCH YOU WON'T SEE THEIR MOVIES?

O'Reilly: Just Sean Penn.

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: SOMEONE WILL READ THAT AND ACCUSE YOU OF ENCOURAGING A NEW BLACKLIST ERA.

The Israeli military has moved to deflect a mounting barrage of criticism over the deaths of hundreds of civilians during its 22-day offensive in Gaza.

The public relations drive by the Israeli Defence Force has been given impetus by allegations made by some soldiers that permissive rules of engagement failed to protect civilians.

I was wrong. I had been saying that it would be naïve to take too seriously presidential candidate Barack Obama’s rhetoric regarding the need to escalate the war in Afghanistan. I kept thinking to myself that when he got briefed on the history of Afghanistan and the oft-proven ability of Afghan "militants" to drive out foreign invaders – from Alexander the Great to the Persians, the Mongolians, the Indians, the British, and the Russians – he would be sure to understand why they call mountainous Afghanistan the "graveyard of empires."

One 11 News viewer in Carroll County e-mailed to say she "spotted a large fireball in the western sky. It started out being about star brightness, then increasingly got brighter and greener. As it got green, it had an orange sparkling tail...We saw it go almost all the way to the ground before losing sight of it in the trees."

A WBALTV.com visitor who was in Durham, N.C., wrote the following: "I remember seeing something greenish and changing colors. It was leaving a trail (not sure of the color). I never saw it hit the ground either because it faded, got covered by trees, or burnt out."

Concern that the Obama administration could impose a new ban on some semiautomatic weapons is driving worried gun owners to stockpile ammunition and cartridge reloading components at such a rate that manufacturers can't meet demand.

The road passes a shimmering green mountain pasture, then dips steeply to a new US-built bridge. Across the languid Panj river is Afghanistan and the dusty northern town of Kunduz. On this side is Tajikistan, Afghanistan's impoverished Central Asian neighbour.

It is here, at what used to be the far boundary of the Soviet empire, that the US and Nato are planning a new operation. Soon, Nato trucks loaded with non-military supplies will start rolling into Afghanistan along this northern route, avoiding Pakistan's perilous tribal areas and the ambush-prone Khyber Pass.

Long considered the realm of "conspiracy buffs" The New York Times, citing anonymous "American government officials," have belatedly "discovered" that Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency (ISI) is aiding the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

In a memo e-mailed this week to Pentagon staff members, the Defense Department's office of security review noted that "this administration prefers to avoid using the term 'Long War' or 'Global War on Terror' [GWOT.] Please use 'Overseas Contingency Operation.' "

The right-wing opposition once again erred - Confident in the idea that the world crisis and the fall in oil prices would finally bled dry the revolution and put an end to Chavez.

Chavez said in a recent speech: "To the opposition: pray that the great world crisis of capitalism, the great world capitalist economic crisis, doesn't reach here with the intensity that you are wishing for.

"Why? Because Carlos Andres Perez [a former social democratic president who, in 1989, implemented harsh anti-poor neoliberal policies that resulted in the Caracazo uprising] is not the person heading this government. Hugo Chavez is.

Courtesy of [WAITING FOR PERMISSION TO USE NAME] here is a sign you can print up and give to the homeless people in your area. Nothing will open up wallets faster than a good laugh, so you'll be helping these victims of Wall Street.

Many on what passes for a left in the United States have been led to believe that Barack Obama is a "Mr. Smith-goes- to-Washington" character eager and ready to struggle against entrenched corporate and financial interests. A considerable number of so-called "left liberals" make curious bedfellows with right-wing noisemakers (including dangerous reactionary nut-jobs like Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Bernard Goldberg) in fantasizing that a leftist has taken up residence in the White House. But, as Harper's Magazine president John R. MacArthur notes, this "is an absurd reading of Obama," who MacArthur rightly describes as "a moderate with far too much respect for the global financial class" and as "surely the unleft, unradical, president."

21% of Israeli exporters have been directly affected by the boycott movement since the beginning of 2009. So reports today (29 March) The Marker, a Hebrew-language economic newspaper.

Saturday's killing is the fourth of a prominent Chechen since September, when Mr Yamadayev's brother Ruslan was shot dead while driving in central Moscow.

The Chechen leader has denied any involvement in the killings.

The Khmer Rouge regime's prison chief finally stood trial on Monday for Cambodia's "Killing Fields" atrocities, accused of overseeing the torture and execution of 15,000 people three decades ago.

Washington: The White House says neither GM nor Chrysler submitted acceptable plans to receive more bailout money, setting the stage for a crisis in Detroit and putting in motion what could be the final two months of two American auto giants.

“Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, owner of the DailyKos website, now admits that he spent six months in the employ of the US Central Intelligence Agency in 2001,” writes Holland. “In a one-hour interview on June 2, 2006 at the Commonwealth Club, Moulitsas, also known as ‘Kos,’ admitted that he was a CIA employee and would have ‘no problem working for them’ in the present.”

Luke Rudkowski, along with fellow We Are Change members Manny and Anthony, were all arrested on Saturday night for asking Bloomberg a question about 9/11 first responders outside the Hilton Hotel on Sixth Avenue.

They followed orders by police to stay in one designated area and yet were arrested for trespassing and were later hit with the charge of “impersonating a journalist,” despite having Infowars press credentials.

On the edge of Delhi they're building the new India.

In just a decade an entire new city, Gurgaon, has risen above the dusty plain.

April is almost here. The day after tomorrow is April Fools Day. I hope we don’t get fooled again… as the song goes, more or less. There are great stinking piles of excrement all over the place. The world has become a marsh of hog lagoons and you’ve got to watch your step. The problem is, when people are watching their step they tend to notice shit; pun intended. That’s not good for the people who put it there and nothing will take the mind off of the smell quite as well as the smell of blood.

Today the nonprofit Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) published documents online showing that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) killed 95 percent of the adoptable pets in its care during 2008. Despite years of public outrage over its euthanasia program, the animal rights group kills an average of 5.8 pets every day at its Norfolk, VA headquarters.

Obama's defense spending is higher than Bush's

Spanish judges have agreed to consider charging six former US officials with providing legal justification for alleged torture at Guantanamo Bay.

Human rights lawyers brought the case against the six, who all served under former President George W Bush.

“Obama Years Ago Helped Fund Carbon Program He Is Now Pushing Through Congress” is a FOXNews story by Ed Barnes. In short, “While on the board of a Chicago-based charity, Barack Obama helped fund a carbon trading exchange that will likely play a critical role in the cap-and-trade carbon reduction program he is now trying to push through Congress as president.”

President Obama has promised to run an administration of unprecedented openness. And in some respects, such as the ground rules for spending stimulus funds, he has. But in the most important area of all, the financial rescue, the administration is making trillion dollar decisions relying on the Federal Reserve and a small Wall Street club of advisors, with no transparency or public accountability.

Washington Post blogger Greg Sargent noted last week that “President Obama’s announcement of an escalation in the American presence in Afghanistan is being met with mostly silence – and even some support – from the most influential liberal groups who opposed the Iraq War. ... MoveOn.org … declined to make any public statement about Obama’s Afghan policies in response to my queries. An official close to the group confirmed to me that MoveOn wouldn’t be saying anything in the near term. ... Nor will we hear anything from Americans United for Change, which ran $600,000 worth of TV ads against the Iraq War in the summer of 2007.

GM CEO Rick Wagoner will be resigning at President Barack Obama's behest, US media reported Sunday just hours before Obama was to unveil an auto industry rescue package.

Goodbye, Chrysler.

At least that's the message from the White House, whose newly released plan for the automakers includes financing for just 30 days, after which point the Administration will leave the firm in the hands of the banks and an Italian company that's proposed a partnership.

The Greek Jewish community said Friday it was “shocked” after neo-Nazi militant Kostas Plevris, who wrote a book denying the Holocaust and containing offensive references to Jews, was acquitted by an Appeals court in Athens.

They were labelled law breakers, fined $50,000 and left emotionally and financially drained.

But seven years after the Sheahans bulldozed trees to make a fire break — an act that got them dragged before a magistrate and penalised — they feel vindicated. Their house is one of the few in Reedy Creek, Victoria, still standing.

Since the attacks on September 11th, 2001, which many have called a "false-flag operation", meaning elements within the Federal Government carried out the attacks while blaming it on its enemies, there has yet to be a massive Internet attack which would, no doubt, cripple the global infrastructure, especially in these unstable times. But could one be in the works in order to usher in complete worldwide government control of the Internet?

Trying to buy health insurance on your own and have gallstones? You'll automatically be denied coverage. Rheumatoid arthritis? Automatic denial. Severe acne? Probably denied.

What's more, you can discover that if you lie to an insurer about your medical history and drug use, you will be rejected because data-mining companies sell information to insurers about your health, including detailed usage of prescription drugs.

Job losses across the financial services industry are gathering pace, research shows today.

Gordon Brown faced huge embarrassment on the eve of the G20 summit as it was revealed that Britain is heading for the top of Europe’s borrowing league.

The figures – which came as the first world leaders began arriving in London – mean Britain’s chairmanship of the meeting is likely to be overshadowed by the dire position of its public finances.

The suspect, identified as 45-year-old Robert Stewart, faces eight counts of murder and one count of felony assault on a police officer, she said.

Stewart was not an employee of the nursing home -- the Pine Lake Health and Rehab Center -- and he did not appear to have been related to any of the patients, Krueger said.

"There is still more to be uncovered as far as his purpose in being there," she said.

But if there is one scientist who knows more about sea levels than anyone else in the world it is the Swedish geologist and physicist Nils-Axel Mörner, formerly chairman of the INQUA International Commission on Sea Level Change. And the uncompromising verdict of Dr Mörner, who for 35 years has been using every known scientific method to study sea levels all over the globe, is that all this talk about the sea rising is nothing but a colossal scare story.

Although the Canadian researchers said most of the computers behind the spying were in China, they cautioned against concluding that China's government was involved.

Ronald Deibert, a member of the research group and an associate professor of political science at Munk, said: "This could well be the CIA or the Russians. It's a murky realm that we're lifting the lid on."

A gunman opened fire at a North Carolina nursing home Sunday, killing six and wounding at least two others, police said.

McKenzie said the man wasn't a patient at the nursing home but didn't offer further details on what the gunman's motive might have been.

Tristan–38 years old and of Oakland, California–was shot by Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) on March 13th while peacefully protesting against the “separation wall” deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice in the Palestinian West Bank village of Bi’ilin. Israel was ordered to halt building the wall and compensate Palestinians for land illegally annexed. The wall–longer and taller than the infamous Berlin wall–zigzagged into Palestinian lands, thus preventing farmers and villagers from reaching their farms, hospitals, and schools.

It is at least as insulting and humiliating as some Jews were forced or duped to play music to SS, Gestapo and Wehrmacht soldiers during the Second World War. In both cases, the act was meant to humiliate the victims and rob them of the last visages of human dignity.

And now, Jews in Israel are doing the same thing to Palestinians, Nazism’s vicarious victims.

Unlike any other nation, Palestine has nothing positive to celebrate at this point in time. There are two ‘major holidays’ on the Palestinian calendar, the first being The Nakba, a commemoration of the day Palestine was literally wiped off the map by the zionists….

George Santayana once famously said, “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” But what about those who don’t just ignore history, but who hire and take counsel from those who committed historic follies in the past?

Back in November 1999, Congress passed legislation pushed by then Sen. Phil Gramm (R-TX), rescinding the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act. The measure, backed by the Clinton administration, and overwhelmingly passed by the Senate (90-8) and the House (362-57), opened the way for banks to merge with investment banks and insurance companies, and led directly to the current financial cataclysm.

The Bush administration -especially Dick Cheney - loved and protected the MEK because the MEK ginned up information to justify threatening to attack Iran. The Post notes that “U.S. officials credit the MEK with providing information about Iran’s nuclear program.”

The Post neglects to mention that MEK’s allegations turned out to be crap and were debunked by a National Intelligence Estimate in late 2007.

The best reason for wanting my colleagues to survive is that serious reporters and broadcasters offer a guarantee that what they say is true. If they stray, their editors impose journalistic standards and insist on objectivity.

Under pressure from U.S. drones many Pashtuns in Pakistan will move from the areas in the tribal lands into the cities and will eventually fight the Pakistani government there. Recent days already saw deadly clashes between internally displaced persons and the police. With the fighting brought into major cities, the Pakistani government will lose even more legitimation.

This weekend's pitifully small peace demonstration in the nation's capitol reveals a near-totally demobilized U.S. Left mired in such timidity and delusion, activists fear to mention Barack Obama's name when denouncing the wars he so aggressively prosecutes. "The new president, who makes no secret of his intention to continue the previous administration's war of terror, escaped serious scrutiny and the condemnation he deserves." Forgetting that power concedes nothing without a demand, the Left shrinks from making real demands of the actual president in power.

Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh is best known for breaking the shocking My Lai massacre story during the Vietnam war, in which hundreds of unarmed civilians in a Vietnamese village were slaughtered by U.S. soldiers in March 1968. His courageous reporting on this sad chapter in history won him a Pulitzer Prize. In recent years, his incisive coverage of the Abu Ghraib abuses and torture has also been widely followed and respected.

In his first official visit to Latin America, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said Saturday the White House wants the region to play a more active role in organizations such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund and ruled out lifting the embargo on Cuba.

So what is the peace process to which the media refers? What are the prospects for a viable two-state solution that are being so passionately discussed?

Equally confusing is the fact that some Western leaders and diplomats maintain a wait-and-see position, hoping that Netanyahu will respect and maintain this non-existent peace process.

The reason for the name swapping? One World Trade Center is more marketable, said Steve Sigmund, a spokesman for the Port Authority.

The subject has been dubbed net neutrality, but that`s an entirely too bland term for what is going on. What is at stake is whether you and I can have the same kind of high-speed, equal-service access to the Internet that Big Business has, or whether giant telecommunications companies like Time Warner, AT&T, Comcast and Verizon will get away with creating a tiered, or multilevel system of Internet speeds so that certain providers can buy a fast lane ahead of you and me. It would be like a rich guy having a lane all to himself on a six-lane highway because he paid for it. You would get the lane you could afford. Net neutrality, on the other hand, would mean no special privileges for Big Money. It would mean equal access and equal service.

Are the oil companies conspiring to keep
us addicted to fossil fuels?

No doubt.

But Al Gore never talks about that, does he?

Instead he talks about carbon taxes which keeps
the oil companies in business - and further impoverishes
an already struggling world population.

Here's the real story on Al Gore and the so called
global warming menace:

A senior Spanish judge has ordered prosecutors to investigate whether key Bush aides should be charged with crimes over the Guantanamo Bay detention center, a lawyer said Sunday.

While promising “A New Way Forward” (not so coincidentally the working title of the 2007 escalation in Iraq), it seems that all roads lead to Pakistan. The government will be getting billions in new aid, the US is committing itself to fight militants in the area (above and beyond the repeated drone attacks). They’re not even ruling out sending ground troops.

So Afghanistan has its new strategy, which is its old strategy with more guys. But maybe the real story here is that President Obama has made the equivalent of a de facto declaration of war against Pakistan’s border regions.

France has warned that the Gaza Strip cannot remain an 'open-air prison' forever, urging Israel to lift the blockade on the territory.

The unexplained illness has farmers deeply worried. Hildegard and Josef Kirmeier, from the Bavarian town of Wurmsham, have already lost five calves. "Perhaps the soy we add to the feed is genetically modified," Kirmeier speculates. Or could a vaccination be causing the problem?

Many farmers blame the "blood sweating" on a controversial vaccine against bluetongue disease, which became mandatory for cattle in Germany in April of last year.

Their strategy to create political, financial, and social chaos that would result in revolution blended Alinsky concepts with their more aggressive efforts at bringing about a change in U.S. government. To achieve their revolutionary change, Cloward and Piven sought to use a cadre of aggressive organizers assisted by friendly news media to force a re-distribution of the nation's wealth.

Bubbles, they keep forming everywhere you look, and most are created and busted by the Federal Reserve. The latest bubbles to burst included the housing market, crude oil prices, and commodities except gold. The Fed has had it's hand in making and breaking all these bubbles. The USA passes laws to curb demand or increase demand in particular markets. The next "Great bubble in the making is US Treasury bonds" also propelled by the Fed, in recent news the Fed announced they would be buying a trillion dollars in treasurys over the next 3 months, This will go down as the biggest bubble of all time when its over. All in all, who's side do you think the "Fed" is on we will see.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has no plans for a "substantive" meeting with Iranian officials at a conference on Afghanistan in the Hague next week, the State Department said on Thursday.

"No substantive meetings are planned with Iranian officials at this time," said State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid when asked if Clinton planned to have a meeting with Iranian officials on the sidelines of the conference on Tuesday.

Despite his immense popularity around the world, Mr. Obama will confront resentment over American-style capitalism and resistance to his economic prescriptions when he lands in London on Tuesday for the Group of 20 summit meeting of industrial and emerging market nations plus the European Union.