Rare Library of Congress colour photographs of the Great Depression

Rare Library of Congress colour photographs of the Great Depression | Mail Online

It was an era that defined a generation. The Great Depression marked the bitter and abrupt end to the post-World War 1 bubble that left America giddy with promise in the 1920s. Near the end of the 1930s the country was beginning to recover from the crash, but many in small towns and rural areas were still poverty-stricken. These rare photographs are some of the few documenting those iconic years in colour. The photographs and captions are the property of the Library of Congress and were included in a 2006 exhibit Bound for Glory: America in Color. The images, by photographers of the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information, shed a bleak new light on a world now gone with the wind.

What was he thinking as this picture was taken? A young boy in Cinncinnati, Ohio, in 1942 or 1943

Full plates: Homesteader and his children eating barbeque at the New Mexico Fair in Pie Town, New Mexico, October, 1940

Peace: Boys fishing in a bayou in Schriever, Louisiana, June, 1940

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Left, a woman cradles a young child at the Bayou Bourbeau plantation, a Farm Security Administration cooperative in the vicinity of Natchitoches, Louisiana, August, 1940. Right, a welder making boilers for a ship at the Combustion Engineering Company in Chattanooga, Tennessee, June, 1942

Left, Mike Evans, a welder, at the rip tracks at Proviso yard of the Chicago and Northwest Railway Company, in Chicago, Illinois, April 1943. Right, a shepherd with his horse and dog on Gravelly Range Madison County, Montana, August 1942

A woman's work is never done: Mrs Viola Sievers, one of the wipers at the roundhouse, giving a giant 'H' class locomotive a bath of live steam in Clinton, Iowa, April 1943

Part of the South Water Street freight depot of the Illinois Central Railroad in Chicago, Illinois, May 1943

Having a chat: Women workers employed as wipers in the roundhouse having lunch in their rest room at the Chicago and Northwest Railway Company in Clinton, Iowa, April 1943

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Left, farmers planting corn along a river in north-eastern Tennessee, May 1940. Right, boys hauling crates of peaches from the orchard to the shipping shed in Delta County, Colorado, September 1940

Like a hobbit house: Garden adjacent to the dugout home of homesteader Jack Whinery, in Pie Town, New Mexico, September 1940

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Steal of a deal: Left, the Grand Grocery Company in Lincoln, Nebraska, 1942. Right, the Faro Caudill family eating dinner in their dugout in Pie Town, New Mexico, October 1940

Distributing surplus commodities in St Johns, Arizona, October 1940

Shasta dam under construction in California, June 1942

An African American's tenant's home beside the Mississippi River levee near Lake Providence, Louisiana, June 1940

Rough men stand ready: M-4 tank crews of the United States in Fort Knox, Kentucky, June 1942

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Faro and Doris Caudill, homesteaders, in Pie Town, New Mexico, October 1940. Right, a woman working on a 'Vengeance' dive bomber in Tennessee, February 1943

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Flying away: A marine glider at Page Field in Parris Island, South Carolina, May 1942, left. Right, servicing an A-20 bomber. Langley Field, Virginia, July 1942

Facing life head on: Jack Whinery, homesteader, and his family in Pie Town, New Mexico, October 1940

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Air Force One Executes Missed Approach in Connecticut with President Obama On Board

Air Force One Executes Missed Approach in Connecticut with President Obama On Board - Political Punch

ABC News’ Lisa Stark (@lisastark) reports: Air Force One executed a missed approach on its first attempt to land today at Bradley Field in Connecticut, circling the airport before making a successful landing on the second try.

The FAA said visibility was “below the minimum,” meaning the pilots couldn’t see the runway from the altitude required for landing due to thick cloud cover. They were coming in to Runway 6 on instrument approach.

Weather at the field at the time was overcast with visibility of 1.5 miles and cloud ceiling 300 feet to 1000 feet variable.

Sources said the attempt was not a touch-and-go or dramatic maneuver that would have caught attention from those on the ground.

“A missed approach is ‘called’ by the pilot in command of an aircraft or the aircraft crew at any point in the approach to an airport on aninstrument approach,” an aviation expert told ABC News.

“It simply means that the pilot was uncomfortable completing the approach due to visibility, cloud ceiling, or any number of reasons. The radar controller simply ‘vectors’ the aircraft back around for another approach,” he said. “It is a way of being safe rather than completing an approach that is not deemed to be a good one. Happens all the time, even for commercial and military flights.”

Members of the press on board Air Force One said they didn’t notice anything abnormal occurred.

Assistant White House press secretary Nick Shapiro confirmed the go-around, adding it only briefly delayed the president.

"They circled around and landed safely a few minutes later, at 10:05 a.m.," Shapiro said. "The pilot was in the process of landing, but due to weather the pilot decided to circle around and then landed the plane. This is a standard and safe procedure.”

White House Blacklists Newspaper Over Romney Editorial

White House Blacklists Newspaper Over Romney Editorial

Hillary Chabot
Boston Herald
Wednesday, May 18, 2011

The White House Press Office has refused to give the Boston Herald full access to President Obama’s Boston fund-raiser today, in e-mails objecting to the newspaper’s front page placement of a Mitt Romney op-ed, saying pool reporters are chosen based on whether they cover the news “fairly.”

“I tend to consider the degree to which papers have demonstrated to covering the White House regularly and fairly in determining local pool reporters,” White House spokesman Matt Lehrich wrote in response to a Herald request for full access to the presidential visit.

“My point about the op-ed was not that you ran it but that it was the full front page, which excluded any coverage of the visit of a sitting US President to Boston. I think that raises a fair question about whether the paper is unbiased in its coverage of the President’s visits,” Lehrich wrote.

But Lehrich said the Herald wasn’t purposefully barred from the press pool, saying local pool duty by the Boston Globe was arranged earlier with the White House Correspondents Association. And Lehrich insisted the Herald may yet be allowed into Obama events.

Full story here.

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Wednesday Morning Commoncents with Jay 05/18 by 98 5 WVER VE RADIO | Blog Talk Radio

Wednesday Morning Commoncents with Jay 05/18 by 98 5 WVER VE RADIO | Blog Talk Radio

China accuses EU of political games on trade

EUobserver / China accuses EU of political games on trade

ANDREW RETTMAN

13.05.2011 @ 13:42 CET

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - A senior Chinese official has accused her EU counterpart of being disingenuous about trade protectionism.

Speaking at a press conference in Budapest on Thursday (12 May), Chinese deputy foreign miniser Fu Ying said the EU is refusing to grant China 'market economy status' for political reasons.

Fu (r) and Ashton on the EU foreign relations chief's trip to China last year

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"If you go through the technical criteria, you will realise that some of the EU members are [themselves] not meeting the criteria, and China is not applying for EU membership," she quipped. "And that's why we say it's not technical, it's political."

"Looking back at the history of our relationship, the EU places a lot of criteria on China and many of them are resolved and new concerns are placed and we work on it and it's resolved. That's why I joke that EU concerns are like a moving film that changes all the time, and the Chinese concern is like a still painting that is hanging on the wall."

China asked the EU in 2003 to formally classify it as an open market economy, but there is little prospect of recognition before 2016, when the Union will be forced to make the move under a World Trade Organisation agreement.

The status quo makes it easier for EU companies to restrict Chinese imports by invoking anti-dumping laws, measures which impose tariffs on goods on grounds that the Chinese state is giving its producers unfair support.

Fu also said the EU should remove its arms embargo on China, a set of sanctions imposed in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen square massacre.

"China is going to grow into one of the largest consumer markets in the world," she said. "If the EU countries could remove the restrictions on exports of high technologies that would very much help boost EU exports to China."

Her remarks on market economy status flatly contradicted David O'Sullivan, a top official in the European External Action Service (EEAS).

"It is somehow considered as a sort of judgment on the nature of the country, it is in fact a rather specific and almost technical issue about how you calculate margins in anti-dumping cases," he said, sitting alongside Fu in Budapest.

"We have criteria by which we measure to which extent there are distortions in the economy which mean you cannot consider it as a normal market system for the purposes of anti-dumping."

He noted there is no chance that all 27 EU countries will agree to lift the arms ban in the foreseeable future. But he pointed to security issues rather than human rights abuses as the main reason.

US terror case to implicate Pakistan ISI

PressTV - US terror case to implicate Pakistan ISI

Pakistani-Canadian Tahawwur Rana is set to stand trial in Chicago over his alleged role in the 2008 Mumbai attack amid rumors that federal prosecutors may attempt to tie the incident to the Pakistani government.

The court case against the 50-year-old Chicago businessman is believed to implicate Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in the terrorist attack and yet another crack on the wall of trust between the two allies in the US-declared “war on terror,” according to the Canadian daily Ottawa Citizen.

Rana is accused of helping his childhood friend David Coleman Headley to scout targets for the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) for the Mumbai attack that killed 166 people, including six Americans.

Headley, a Pakistani-American, is the key US government witness that pleaded guilty last year to laying the groundwork for the Mumbai attack by LeT.

Headley, however, has decided to avoid a possible death sentence by agreeing to cooperate with US officials and testify against Rana. He told interrogators that the ISI provided training and funds for the attack against arch-rival India.

The trial is set to pit Rana against Headley, who is expected to say that Rana contributed to his plot by allowing him to use his Chicago-based First World Immigration Service, with offices in Toronto and New York, to cover up his terrorist activities.
Moreover, Headley is expected to testify that ISI was directly involved in planning the attack, provided training and funds to the terrorist group LeT and that an ISI officer gave him USD 25,000 to begin surveillance for the attacks.

US to deploy troops if Pak nukes come under threat

US to deploy troops if Pak nukes come under threat - PakTribune

LONDON: US troops will be deployed in Pakistan if the nation�s nuclear installations come under threat from terrorists out to avenge the killing of Osama bin Laden, the Sunday Express can reveal on Sunday.

The plan, which would be activated without President Asif Ali Zardari�s consent, provoked an angry reaction from Pakistan officials last night. Barack Obama would order troops to parachute in to protect key nuclear missile sites. These include the air force�s central Sargodha HQ, home base for nuclear-capable F-16 combat aircraft and at least 80 ballistic missiles.

A US source told the Sunday Express: �The plan is green lit and the president has already shown he is wiling to deploy troops in Pakistan if he feels it is important for national security.� However, news of the plan has further increased tension between the US and Pakistan with relations already at an all-time low after the Operation Geronimo raid by the US Navy Seal special forces team that killed bin Laden at the house where he had been hiding in Abbottabad, near to a Pakistan military academy.

An angry Pakistani official said: �Pakistan has an elaborate command and control structure and is fully capable of defending its strategic assets under any circumstances and does not need any assistance from any country, including the US, to safeguard its nuclear installations.�

The plan reflects growing concern over reprisals for the al-Qaeda terror leader�s death. More than 80 people were killed and 140 injured when two Taliban suicide bombers struck at a military academy in the north-western town of Charsadda on Friday.

Alex Neill, of the Royal United Services Institute, said: �The United States places its own national security issues above all other sovereignty issues and trust in Pakistan�s abilities are extremely low.�

�If Obama can persuade congress that placing US troops at the installations is necessary to protect US citizens from possible nuclear attack, then that�s what he will do.� The Pentagon on Saturday refused to deny the existence of the plan, with a spokesman saying only: �We are confident that Pakistan has taken appropriate steps towards securing its nuclear arsenal.�

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China is Pakistan's 'best friend': Gilani

PressTV - China is Pakistan's 'best friend': Gilani

Pakistan's Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani

Pakistan's Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani has hailed China as his country's best friend, as relations between Islamabad and Washington remain strained.

"We are proud to have China as our best and most trusted friend, and China will always find Pakistan standing beside it at all times," Gilani said on Tuesday as he began his visit to China, AFP reported.

"We appreciate that in all difficult circumstances, China stood with Pakistan. Therefore, we call China a true friend and a time-tested and all-weather friend," he added.

Gilani's remarks come as Pakistan has come under severe criticisms from the US over allegations of protecting al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who was allegedly killed by the US special forces on May 1.

Islamabad has voiced outrage at the “unilateral action” the United States carried out without Pakistan's permission, saying the attack has violated the country's sovereignty.

US Senator John Kerry, who has just returned from a visit to Pakistan, said US lawmakers have threatened to cut billions of dollars in aid to the South Asian country. Kerry has demanded Pakistan to do more to fight terrorism.

Meanwhile, China's foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said on Tuesday that “Pakistan has made very important contributions in international counter-terrorism cooperation.”

China is the main arms supplier to Pakistan. The two sides are expected to sign a series of cooperation agreements during Gilani's visit to China.

MA/AKM/HRF

Westwood explosion: Electrical explosion near UCLA jolts Westwood

Westwood explosion: Electrical explosion near UCLA jolts Westwood - latimes.com

By Kurt Streeter, Los Angeles Times

May 18, 2011

An underground electrical transformer vault exploded Tuesday in Westwood near UCLA, sending smoke and a plume of flame shooting up from the street and propelling a manhole cover into the back of a Metro bus, Los Angeles city fire officials said.

The bus driver was taken to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center and treated for a "stress reaction,"Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokesman Marc Littman said.

None of the 25 passengers on board were injured, even though the back of the bus was passing over the manhole when the cover blew, shattering the vehicle's rear windows.

The blast, which occurred near Westwood Boulevard and Weyburn Avenue about 9:30 a.m., temporarily halted traffic. The bus was southbound on Westwood, Metro said.

Residents and workers in the densely packed area said they were startled as nearby windows either shattered or shook as lights flickered. The Department of Water and Power said that a junction box failure triggered the explosion and that an investigation is being conducted into what caused the failure.

Elaine Schmidt, a UCLA spokeswoman who works in a building on the block where the blast took place, said it "felt like a large truck had landed on top of the building."

"We heard this big boom," Schmidt said, noting that she looked out a window and saw a "big plume of fire and brown smoke coming from the street."

Schmidt said she could see the damaged bus and parts from it strewn about. She said she also saw the bus driver, who ran from his vehicle and put up traffic cones around the area to stop traffic.

"He looked pretty shook up," Schmidt said. "It was remarkable because he was probably deafened by the explosion."

Windows at the Bank of America branch on Westwood Boulevard were blown out, said Schmidt, whose office is in the building that houses the bank. She added that the explosion caused many workers in the building to quickly file from their offices, some of them concerned that a terrorist attack might have taken place.

Joyce Croker, a manager at the UCLA Extension offices a few blocks away, said the explosion sounded like a "really loud crack that we actually thought was a lightning strike."

UCLA officials said the blast also interrupted power at the campus for a short time, and that emergency generators took over until power was restored.

kurt.streeter@latimes.com

“Engineering Change” in Atlanta

“Engineering Change” in Atlanta

One of the most promising regional events in the history ofAE911Truth is almost upon us. On Saturday, May 21, Richard Gage, AIA, will join with former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, WeAreChangefounder Luke Rudkowski and others for “Engineering Change: A Blueprint for 9/11 Truth” at the First Iconium Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia.

This bold event, sponsored byWeAreChange Atlanta, and the Atlanta AE911Truth Action Group, will be among the rare moments when a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives stands shoulder to shoulder with AE911Truth. As one of few legislators who challenged the Bush administration about the official 9/11 narrative, McKinney will speak about her struggles as a lawmaker and Presidential candidate to expose the truth.
“When I asked McKinney to join us at this event, she said that she would love to participate,” said Camron Wilshire, an activist with WeAreChange Atlanta. “She has been supportive from the beginning, and now it is beautiful to have her fully involved as the movement blossoms.”

Gage has a similar enthusiasm for the upcoming symposium, which he expressed during his interview on the May 9 edition of "Just Peace”, a radio show on that airs on Radio Free Georgia (WRFG):

WeAreChange Atlanta handed out flyers, placed lawn signs, and created a magnificent mural to promote this unique event

“I eagerly anticipate the opportunity to provide the explosive evidence to the people of Atlanta along with Cynthia and Luke. This is quite a combination of information and inspiration coming together for 9/11 Truth.”This gathering should help bridge the gaps between scientific analysis, social activism and government accountability.”

After seeing the 9/11: Blueprint for Truth DVD, many people ask, “What can I do to make a difference?” That is an area in which Rudkowski has excelled. He will follow up on Gage’s enlightening presentation by describing the valiant efforts in which he and thousands of other activists from the network of WeAreChange groups are engaged around the world.

Mikie Smith, an AE911Truth presenter who helped organize this summit, sees great potential in the public partnership between WeAreChange and AE911Truth. “Once people understand the technical truths behind 9/11, we need them to mobilize and get active in their communities,” he explained, “and that’s why the duo of Gage and Rudkowski are so effective together on the road.”

Making a special appearance by live video feed will be April Gallop, a survivor of the 9/11 Pentagon attack. She will provide an update on her recent lawsuit, which was the first to bring the scientific evidence from the destruction of the WTC skyscrapers into a court of law.

This special presentation wouldn’t be complete without musical renditions by Eva James, Afua Richardson and other talented artists

The passionate speeches and informative evidence will also be accompanied by an ensemble of performing artists. Songstresses Afua Richardson and Alexa will provide a musical introduction, andEva James will bring her own vocal talents to inspire those in attendance. The event will close out with a performance by the Ebenezer Baptist Radical Praise Choir, which hails from the church that Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once led.

If you would like to lend your support to this effort, you can donate toWeAreChange Atlanta, whose members have gone to great lengths to make this event possible. You can also join the Presenter team at AE911Truth, which helps educate audiences around the world with meetings like these.

With your help, this gathering can motivate more political leaders, technical professionals and average citizens to take a stand for the truth. We look forward to seeing you there!