Obama’s new military commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus, made clear in Senate testimony Tuesday that the war would last well beyond July 2011 and that he would lead an intensification of military violence against the Afghan people.
By Jonathan Cook, AlterNet, June 30, 2010
As Israel this week declared the “easing” of the four-year blockade of Gaza, an official explained the new guiding principle: “Civilian goods for civilian people.” The severe and apparently arbitrary restrictions on foodstuffs entering the enclave – coriander bad, cinnamon good – will finally end, we are told. Gaza’s 1.5 million inhabitants will have all the coriander they want.
This “adjustment”, as the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu termed it, is aimed solely at damage limitation. With Israel responsible for killing nine civilians aboard a Gaza-bound aid flotilla three weeks ago, the world has finally begun to wonder what purpose the siege serves. Did those nine really need to die to stop coriander, chocolate and children’s toys from reaching Gaza? And, as Israel awaits other flotillas, will more need to be executed to enforce the policy?
Faced with this unwelcome scrutiny, Israel – as well as the United States and the European states that have been complicit in the siege – desperately wants to deflect attention away from demands for the blockade to be lifted entirely. Instead it prefers to argue that the more liberal blockade for Gaza will distinguish effectively between a necessary “security” measures and an unfair “civilian” blockade. Israel has cast itself as the surgeon who, faced with Siamese twins, is mastering the miraculous operation needed to decouple them.
By Ed Hightower , 30 June 2010
For the past several months, a recall crisis has been developing at the Johnson & Johnson company over serious quality control problems in over-the-counter medicines. Since last September, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has received hundreds of complaints concerning Johnson & Johnson medicines, which have involved seven fatalities.
The recalls have centered on such well-known brands as Tylenol, Motrin, Benadryl and Zyrtec, as well as children’s version of some of these products, which possibly contain metal particles and chemicals used to treat plywood.
The most recent product recalls began in December 2009 when McNeil Consumer Healthcare, a division of Johnson & Johnson, received consumer complaints of “an unusual moldy, musty or mildew-like odor that, in a small number of cases, was associated with temporary and non-serious gastrointestinal events. These include nausea, stomach pain, vomiting, or diarrhea,” in Tylenol brand arthritis medicines.
On January 15, 2010, McNeil issued a press release announcing the recall of several other medicines, including Motrin products, Benadryl Allergy Ultratabs, Rolaids antacid tablets and Simply Sleep products. The press release states that the unpleasant odor comes from trace amounts of a chemical called 2,4,6-tribromoanisole (TBA), a derivative of a pesticide and fire-retardant used in the manufacture of packaging materials.
By steved On June 29, 2010
What PCs and Macs Have in Common
Profiting from the worst war on the planet that no one in America knows anything about by purchasing “conflicts minerals” from the Congo for their products:
From Nicholas Kristoff in February:
[S]o far the brutal war here in eastern Congo has not only lasted longer than the Holocaust but also appears to have claimed more lives. A peer- reviewed study put the Congo war’s death toll at 5.4 million as of April 2007 and rising at 45,000 a month. That would leave the total today, after a dozen years, at 6.9 million.What those numbers don’t capture is the way Congo has become the world capital of rape, torture and mutilation …
“Sometimes I don’t know what I am doing here,” Dr. Mukwege said despairingly. “There is no medical solution.” The paramount need, he says, is not for more humanitarian aid for Congo, but for a much more vigorous international effort to end the war itself.
That means putting pressure on neighboring Rwanda, a country so widely admired for its good governance at home that it tends to get a pass for its possible role in war crimes next door. We also need pressure on the Congolese president, Joseph Kabila, to arrest Gen. Jean Bosco Ntaganda, wanted by the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges. And, as recommended by an advocacy organization called the Enough Project, we need a U.S.-brokered effort to monitor the minerals trade from Congo so that warlords can no longer buy guns by exporting gold, tin or coltan.
And you thought Goldman Sachs and BP were evil corporations. Who knew that Intell, Blackbery, Dell, IBM, Gateway, HP, Sony, AT&T, Motorola, LG, Panasonic, Samsung, Nintendo, etc., including Steve Jobs and Apple, are providing the funds these barbaric militias and warlords need to continue to fuel the slaughter and rape of thousands of Africans.
Sharron Angle: Rape, Incest Part of God’s Plan — Opposes Abortion No Matter What
By Tana Ganeva, AlterNet, June 30, 2010
For most of her campaign for U.S. Senate, Nevada GOP nominee Sharron Angle’s election strategy has consisted of avoiding reporters so she doesn’t get tricked into saying things publicly. Last night’s interview on Jon Ralston’s “Face to Face” is one of the few times since winning the GOP nomination that Angle has braved a media outlet that was not a wingnut blog or Fox News.
Fortunately, Angle has already said enough crazy shit to hobble spin efforts designed to paint her as less extremist for the general election. In a January interview with conservative talk show host David Manders, Angle explained her views on abortion. As with most responsible policy positions, the inspiration for Angle’s stance comes from God (clearly, the Old Testament God who is really into incest and rape):
MANDERS: I too am pro-life, but I’m also pro-choice. Do you understand what I say when I mean that?
ANGLE: Well, I’m pro-responsible choice. There’s choice to abstain, choice to use contraceptives … there’s all kinds of good choice….
MANDERS: Is there any reason at all for an abortion?
ANGLE: Not in my book.
MANDERS: So, in other words, rape and incest would not be something?
ANGLE: You know, I’m a Christian, and I believe that God has a plan and a purpose for each one of our lives and that he can intercede in all kinds of situations and we need to have a little faith in many things.
Angle, whose rival for the GOP nomination was felled by the chickens-for-checkups scandal, is a particularly radical example of the ultraconservatives who have parlayed popularity with the Tea Party into GOP nominations. For six years in the 1990s Angle belonged to the Independent American Party — the Nevada affiliate of the fringe Constitution Party, whose platform advocates a return of “American jurisprudence to its Biblical foundations.” In a 1992 petition to get the IAP on the Nevada state ballot, signed by Angle and obtained by Talking Points Memo, the group calls for the federal government to cut foreign aid and welfare and “stop the financing of the New World Order.” The IAP also published a virulently anti-gay newspaper insert that accused LGBT people of advocating for pedophilia and incest and claimed that HIV can be transmitted through water.
Unmanned Drones – Targeted Killing vs. “Collateral Murder”
By Thalif Deen
June 30, 2010 “IPS” — UNITED NATIONS – When a Pakistani-U.S. national pleaded guilty last week to a failed attempt to detonate explosives packed in a vehicle in the heart of New York City, he admitted that one of the reasons he targeted the busy Times Square neighbourhood was to “injure and kill” as many people as possible.
The presiding judge, Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum, asked the suspect, Faisal Shahzad, 30, whether he was conscious of the fact he would have killed dozens of civilians, including women and children.
“Well, the (U.S.) drone-hits in Afghanistan and Iraq don’t see children; they don’t see anybody. They kill women, they kill children. They kill everybody. And it’s war,” he said, at his arraignment last week.
Describing himself as a “Muslim soldier”, Shahzad also told the judge one of the reasons for his abortive act of terrorism was his anger at the U.S. military for recklessly using drones, which have claimed the lives of scores of innocent civilians, along with suspected insurgents, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen and in the tribal areas of Pakistan.
The United States calls the inadvertent killing of civilians “collateral damage” while critics describe it as “collateral murder”.
A New York Times columnist last week quoted the outgoing U.S. military commander in Kabul, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, as defining the “insurgent math” in Afghanistan: for each innocent you kill, you make 10 enemies.
But whether they needlessly kill civilians or not, the remote-controlled drones, being guided mostly by computers located at the far-away headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Langley, Virginia, are the weapons of the future, say military analysts.
by Jean Casella and James Ridgeway, JUNE 22 2010
Since late last night, when we published our post about Albert Woodfox’s appeal, several readers have written to us about the grim legacy of the AEDPA–the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. That’s because the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals cited the AEDPA extensively in ruling that Woodfox’s conviction should not be overturned, and he should not receive a new trial. Under the “heightened deferential standards of review” demanded by the AEDPA, the Fifth Circuit said, the state court can be wrong or unjust in its conduct, as long as it isn’t “unreasonable.” An “unreasonable application of federal law,” it said, ”is different from an incorrect or erroneous application of the law.”
While the consequences may be especially grim for Woodfox, who has spent 38 years in solitary confinement at Angola prison, he is no different from thousands of other prisoners who have felt the effects of the AEDPA since it was passed fourteen years ago. Nothing in the USA-PATRIOT Act, or any other measures passed under George W. Bush, surpasses this Clinton-era law when it comes to restricting the rights of rank-and-file U.S. prisoners to challenge unjust treatment, either in the courts or in prison itself.
Back in February, we ran two posts related in one way or another to this subject. Since little has changed since then(notwithstanding an occassional show of mercy from the Supreme Court), we are re-running both posts here, more or less in full.
BP: Beyond Prosecution
By Josh Harkinson, Wed Jun. 30, 2010
On May 1, less than two weeks after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell announced that he would “ensure that BP and other liable parties take full financial responsibility” for the unfolding disaster. Yet even as Caldwell prepares to go after the oil company for billions in damages, his hands are tied. He says the case could cost as much as $100 million over several years. That’s money his state, which is facing a $320 million budget deficit, not to mention the economic imact of the spill, just doesn’t have.
As any lawyer who advertises on late-night TV could tell you, there’s an easy solution to that problem. Forty-eight states allow their attorneys general to hire private attorneys on a contingency basis. In other words, if outside lawyers help the state win a big civil case, they get a cut of the cash. This tactic can be a win-win for states, particularly when deployed against well-funded adversaries, since it comes with few financial risks and the potential for big rewards. In the 1990s, private attorneys suing tobacco companies on contingency won billions of dollars on behalf of state governments (while pocketing as much as a quarter of the settlements).
But that approach is a non-starter in Louisiana, one of two states that bar their AGs from pursuing contingency lawsuits. (The other is Wisconsin.) Just last week, an effort to greenlight a contingency case against BP failed in the state legislature. So did a proposal to tax the company and another that would have allowed Louisianans to sue it for punitive damages. These bills’ deaths underscores just how much influence the oil and gas industry wields in the state even as it faces the worst environmetal disaster in its history. The contingency bill’s demise “is devastating for the state of Louisiana,” writes Attorney General Caldwell in an email to Mother Jones. He adds that he’ll still prosecute BP as best he can. “We will continue to fight for the state even if all we have is a slingshot and a stone.”
Drug Pushers in Academia
By James Ridgeway, Jun. 28, 2010
The pharmaceutical industry has wormed its way into the hearts and minds of the medical professions in any number of ways—wining and dining doctors, sending them off to vacation in splendid spas, and even buying their names to put on industry-written articles promoting different drugs.
One little known facet of this drugster-doctor relationship is Big Pharma’s role in continuing medical education (CME) programs, which are important in keeping medical professionals informed and up to date on the fast developing profession. Of the $2 billion or so spent on these programs every year, nearly half comes from the drug business, which not-so-subtly uses the education programs to push new drugs.
Last week, a conference at Georgetown University called “Prescription for Conflict” pulled together experts from academia, government, and industry to discuss the question: Should industry fund continuing medical education? The main instigator here is a former colleague of mine named Adriane Fugh-Berman, a doctor and teacher at Georgetown University Medical School. Fugh-Berman long ago became the nemesis of Big Pharma with a stream of articles and talks questioning the different aspects of liaison between the drugsters and the medical profession. I worked with her helping to set up PharmedOut.org, a website that seeks to educate the public on these liaisons, in part through exposes, both written and on video.
Hey EPA: How Are Those Dispersant Tests Going?
A month later, the agency’s quest for a “tough on oil, gentle on the ocean” dispersant continues.
By Kate Sheppard and David Corn, Jun. 23, 2010
During a conference call with reporters on May 24, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, fielding questions about the use of toxic dispersants to break up the oil from the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico, made a clear promise: “We will conduct our own tests to determine the least toxic, most effective dispersant available in the volumes necessary for a crisis of this magnitude.” Jackson said that she was “not satisfied that BP has done an extensive enough analysis of other dispersant options.”
But a month later those tests have not been completed, according to the EPA. In the meantime, the total amount of Corexit—the brand of dispersant chosen by BP and approved by the Coast Guard—that has been dumped into the Gulf has reached more than 1.4 million gallons.
By Bill Berkowitz, AlterNet, June 30, 2010
If you’ve been following the debate over population growth, you’re probably familiar with the argument that it is economically unfeasible for the earth to sustain an unlimited population. You might subscribe to that argument, or you might believe that it isn’t so much a problem of population growth but rather of the inequitable worldwide distribution of resources. Or you might see the two as interrelated.
In recent years, a new wrinkle has been introduced into the debate; a concept called “demographic winter.”
Unlike the term “nuclear winter,” “demographic winter” is relatively new and lesser known. Demographer Philip Longman, a researcher at the New America Foundation, says, “The ongoing global decline in human birthrates is the single most powerful force affecting the fate of nations and the future of society in the 21st century.”
Declining birth rates — and aging populations — is a phenomenon that is of concern to countries around the globe. Conservatives have taken to using “demographic winter” as a catchphrase for turning the discussion into another battle in the culture war. For many on the Right, demographic winter describes a future of economic catastrophes, the decline of Western Civilization, and the destruction of the “natural” family. Embedded within the concept is an argument for a return to adherence to “natural law,” which one conservative writer pointed out “reflects the will of Him whom the Founders referred to obliquely in the Declaration of Independence as ‘Nature’s God.’”
For many conservatives, demographic winter — or “birth dearth” as it is sometimes called — is the ultimate culture war battle, rooted in the rise of feminism, legalized abortion, the acceptance of homosexuality, illegal immigration, and the growth of minority populations. All of this is supposedly the result of a multi-decade campaign by liberals to undermine “natural law” and the “natural” family.
According to Devin Burghart, vice president of the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, an organization that has long tracked and exposed right-wing movements, “Demographic winter is a relatively new phrase that describes the old alarmist ‘birth dearth’ concept — the idea that we’re facing declining birthrates which is supposed to portend all sorts of cataclysmic events.”
“One particular strand of dearthers,” Burghart told AlterNet, “led by folks like Pat Buchanan, focus particularly on the supposed danger of declining birthrates among white people in the United States and Europe, which they argue is leading us toward the impending demise of Western Civilization. Buchanan details the argument in his 2002 book, Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil our Country and Civilization. The concept melds nativism and Islamophobia together with the Christian Right’s infatuation with procreation and heterosexuality.”
SOURCE: ‘Liberals Unite’ Facebook group
Reagan Introduced Deregulation!
This Benefits the Top 1% Solely!
GOP Can’t Alter the Fact That They’ve Traditionally Aided Top !% Solely! as the article “Rand Paul Feels Sorry For Barton, While Limbaugh Doubles Down On Barton’s ‘Shakedown’ Claims” delineates.
The article notes “While Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) has been mostly lampooned for apologizing to BP for the White House’s alleged “shakedown” of the company to create a $20 billion escrow fund, some conservatives have been willing to defend the congressman.
Today, Kentucky Republican Senate nominee Rand Paul — the tea party darling who has himself faced criticism for defending BP — offered his sympathies to Barton, saying he knows “what it is like to be piled on.” While Paul stopped short of endorsing Barton’s point of view, he suggested that the criticism of Barton was “over the top,” and said that Barton “should be given the chance to explain himself”.
Governments Moving to Cut Spending, in Echo of 1930s
By DAVID LEONHARDT, June 29, 2010
The world’s rich countries are now conducting a dangerous experiment. They are repeating an economic policy out of the 1930s — starting to cut spending and raise taxes before a recovery is assured — and hoping today’s situation is different enough to assure a different outcome.
In effect, policy makers are betting that the private sector can make up for the withdrawal of stimulus over the next couple of years. If they’re right, they will have made a head start on closing their enormous budget deficits. If they’re wrong, they may set off a vicious new cycle, in which public spending cuts weaken the world economy and beget new private spending cuts.
On Tuesday, pessimism seemed the better bet. Stocks fell around the world, over worries about economic growth.
Longer term, though, it’s still impossible to know which prediction will turn out to be right. You can find good evidence to support either one.
The private sector in many rich countries has continued to grow at a fairly good clip in recent months. In the United States, wages, total hours worked, industrial production and corporate profits have all risen significantly. And unlike in the 1930s, developing countries are now big enough that their growth can lift other countries’ economies.
By Dave Holmes
Today humanity faces a global crisis stemming from the incredible rapacity of the capitalist system.
In the first place, there is catastrophic climate change which threatens to end life on our planet, then there is endemic war and conflict, mass poverty in the Third World and neoliberalism’s ever more ruthless assault on working people everywhere.
The only way out is the abolition of capitalism and its replacement by socialism.
And the only means to do this is anti-imperialist revolutions in the Third World and proletarian socialist revolutions in the advanced capitalist countries.
Meet Kagan’s Astroturf Military Attackers
Adam Weinstein, Tue Jun. 29, 2010
When witnesses are called before the Senate Judiciary Committee to discuss Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan this week, the minority party will deploy a heavy military offensive against her: Republican senators plan to call three former officers who will likely testify that Kagan is a pro-gay, anti-troops, anti-American extremist who barred military recruiters from campus when she was the dean of Harvard Law School.
All lean, clean-cut, and articulate, the three men look to be part of America’s best and brightest. But these witnesses aren’t typical rank-and-file soldiers: They’re paid professional conservative activists.
(NOTE: Even if it was ok to spank a child in any school, it would be wise that the teacher pick on only the smaller, weaker, less liked children, because the bigger, more popular ones are more likely to take a swing at the teacher, knife or shoot them. So….what we would have is teachers bullying the weak….talk about stupid people used a stupid book, the bible, the do something stupid)
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Bill to Ban Corporal Punishment in Schools Hits Washington
Paddling Targets Minorities, Children With Disabilities, U.S. Reps. Carolyn McCarthy and Bobby Scott Say
While the idea of taking a paddle to a student’s backside may seem archaic, even barbaric, it’s still a well-regarded form of discipline in some corners of the country, mostly in the South.
U.S. Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., said she’s hoping to get her bill folded into a larger education package that could be debated later this year. She told ABCNews.com that she sees corporal punishment as a school safety issue that breeds more problems than it solves.
“We know that children that are paddled end up being more aggressive,” she said. “They learned that conflict is handled by striking out and hitting.”
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RELATED:
In 2002-03 school year, over 300,000 students received blows from paddles in this country. Some of the paddles have holes cut in them for more sting. 70% of the 300,000 reside in:
“While the American Academy of Pediatrics have come out against the practice, James C. Dobson, the child psychologist , author and founder of Focus on the Family, supports it.” – Corporal Punishment Returning? – Most states have outlawed physical punishment but some schools are returning to it.
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“American teachers who use corporal punishment are almost alone in the world. Among developed countries, only Canada and Australia allow paddling, and entire provinces in both those nations have abolished it; even England, home of the fabled stern, switch-carrying headmaster, abolished corporal punishment six years ago. China, Japan, South Africa, and the Soviet Union–none of them known for their lax school discipline–have all banned corporal punishment……. According to historian Philip Greven, some believers are convinced that God provided the buttocks as a strategic body part for punishment because of their ample cushion and sensitive nerve endings” (http://www.customessaymeister.com/customessays/Issues/5275.htm)
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World Corporal Punishment Research - 3,000 pages of factual documentation and resources on corporal punishment around the world, updated from time to timeThe next update is scheduled for 14 July 2010
Protestant Fundamentalism and Support of Corporal Punishment
Spy Vs…Lawyer?
By Nick Baumann and Daniel Schulman
The CIA probably doesn’t want you to know this, but unmasking its covert operatives isn’t as hard as you’d think. Just ask John Sifton. During a six-year stint at Human Rights Watch, the attorney and investigator was hot on the trail of the CIA and some of its most sensitive Bush-era counterterrorism programs, including extraordinary rendition, secret Eastern European detention sites, and the legally dubious and brutal methods used to extract information from detainees. “Even deep-cover CIA officers are real people, with mortgages and credit reports,” Sifton once told CQ Politics. For researchers with a trained eye for the hallmarks of a CIA alias, there are obvious giveaways: “A brand new Social Security number, a single P.O. box in Reston, Virginia. You disregard those and focus on the real persons who lie behind, and you can find them.”
National Security Adviser says there’s ‘dozens of U.S. persons who are in different parts of the world, and they are very concerning.’
When it was confirmed last winter by then-Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair that the Obama administration had authorized the assassination of American citizens working with terrorist groups overseas, it appeared that no more than three Americans were being targeted in this manner.
In an interview last week with the Washington Times, however, Deputy White House National Security Adviser for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism John O. Brennan suggested the number might actually amount to “dozens.”
By johncole On June 29, 2010
This post first appeared on Balloon Juice.
You have this:
Leverage is back on Wall Street—and this time it’s the bankers who have it.Firms are adding jobs for the first time in two years, rebuilding businesses cut during the financial crisis and offering guaranteed payouts to lure top bankers. In New York, 6,800 financial-industry positions were added from the end of February through May, the largest three-month increase since 2008, according to the New York State Department of Labor.
Morgan Stanley and Citigroup Inc. are among banks that are hiring to replenish their ranks, while Nomura Holdings Inc. and Jefferies Group Inc. have been recruiting talent from larger firms in a bid to increase their standing on Wall Street.
I think it is time to break out the foam fingers again, everyone! USA! USA!
By Asit Das
After sixty years of independence, our society has reached a crisis stage where the entire country is sold to the corporate interests by our rulers; therefore it is imperative that feminists, socialists, communists and ecologists should unite together resisting the corporate interests and to struggle for an egalitarian, sustainable and democratic India…
June 29, 2010 – 10:55am ET
Conservatives Imposing Sado-Economic Austerity on U.S. The Republican minority in the United States Senate is determined to impose severe fiscal austerity on the country, at a time when doing so is certain to create more drastic hardship and push the economy back into another deep recession.
On The Question Of Israel’s “Right To Exist”
And On Israel’s Racism
By Denis G. Rancourt
Did Nazi Germany have a “right to exist”? Germany exists today and its criminal behaviour has been stopped. It has no nuclear weapons and its security arises from its respect for international law and for its neighbours. Its internal security arises from respecting human rights. I wish the same for Israel. The right of return is a human right……
(NOTE: TAX TAX TAX TAX……they should be returned to the tax rate they were at before Reagan started the destruction of the middle class. They lied and said if there taxes were cut, there would be a “trickle down effect”…to the workers of America, but all the greedy bastards did was move jobs out of the country.)
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Bad News for Billionaires — and a Chihuahua or Two
By Sam Pizzigati, June 27, 2010
Progressives in the U.S. Senate have introduced a potent package of estate tax reforms that would, if enacted, start seriously trimming America’s most super-sized hoards of private wealth.
Back a hundred summers ago in 1910, former President Theodore Roosevelt — a Republican — called for “a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes,” a new tax levy that would increase “rapidly in amount with the size of the estate.”
Last week, four U.S. senators — three Democrats and an independent — introduced legislation that would subject big fortunes, before heirs can grab them, to an estate tax levy that would rapidly rise with the size of the estate.
Teddy Roosevelt would most certainly approve. Will a majority in today’s United States Senate?
By all logic — and cold-blooded political calculation — the newly introduced Responsible Estate Tax Act ought to fly through the Senate. Seldom, if ever, has a piece of progressive tax legislation had so much going for it.
Start with the budget math. Great Recession America is now going through the worst public services budget squeeze since the Great Depression. Teachers, cops, and firefighters are losing jobs. Libraries and parks are closing. Roads and bridges are crumbling.
States and local governments — and millions of jobless Americans — need federal help. The new Responsible Estate Tax Act, introduced by Bernie Sanders of Vermont and co-sponsored by Tom Harkin of Iowa, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, and Sherrod Brown of Ohio, would help provide it.
Under the bill, all estates over $3.5 million, or $7 million for couples, would face a federal estate tax, just as they did under the federal estate tax in effect last year. But this estate tax, unlike last year’s, would be steeply “graduated,” with the tax rate rising as an estate’s value increases.
Count Your Days For An Impending Economic Collapse
By Devinder Sharma, 29 June, 2010
G-20 refuses to pick up the broken pieces of a fraudulent pyramid of growth….
By Stephen Lendman
Under McChrystal, it was death squad terror, mostly against civilians, what he was trained to do as head of the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), what Seymour Hersh called an “executive assassination wing” post-9/11, what Rolling Stone writer Michael Hastings called “a handpicked collection of killers, spies, geniuses, patriots, political operators and outright maniacs,” Petraeus perhaps mandated to escalate with greater than ever counterinsurgency (COIN)…
By Naomi Klein, 29 June, 2010
How else can we interpret the G20’s final communiqué, which includes not even a measly tax on banks or financial transactions, yet instructs governments to slash their deficits in half by 2013. This is a huge and shocking cut, and we should be very clear who will pay the price….
Traveling With ‘The Family’: Secretive Evangelical Group Bankrolled Overseas Trips For Members Of Congress, Newspaper Says
June 28th, 2010, By Sandhya Bathija
The infamous evangelical Christian organization, “The Family” is making headlines again.
According to Roll Call newspaper, several members of Congress have accepted just over $101,000 worth of free international travel from The Family, also known as the Fellowship Foundation. The group footed the bill for 13 foreign trips, ostensibly so congressmen could meet and pray with political leaders in other countries.
As you may recall, last summer, it came out that several members of Congress were caught up in sex scandals while visiting or living at The Family’s Capitol Hill house, the so-called “C St. House.”
U.S. Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), while a resident of the house, admitted that he had an inappropriate relationship with the wife of an aide.
Soon after, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, who was a frequent visitor to the house while a member of Congress admitted he had an adulterous affair with a woman in Argentina.
Then, the estranged wife of former U.S. Rep. Charles “Chip” Pickering, Jr. (R-Miss.) filed an alienation-of-affection lawsuit against a woman she claims had an affair with Pickering while he was living at the house.
To add fuel to the fire, D.C. officials had considered this residence a church and deemed it tax exempt. (Following all the media attention, tax officials in the city of Washington took a second look and delivered The Family a tax bill of $10,234 for 2010).
RICHARD ESKOW
Afghanistan or Social Security? Boehner Says We Have to Choose
Peace activists and progressives are the only people that I’ve heard connect war spending in Afghanistan and Pakistan with our financial security at home – until now, that is. Yesterday House Minority Leader John Boehner made the connection explicit, telling reporters and editors for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that we need to cut Social Security benefits to pay for the AfPak military effort.
A Father’s Mission
by Richard Engel Chief foreign correspondent, updated 6/27/2010 7:14:32 PM ET
This report aired Dateline NBC Sunday, June 27, 7 p.m./6 C. Watch more Web-only videos, including surviving soldiers describing the battle, here .
DAVE BROSTROM: When you send your son off to war, you expect that they will get everything that this great country can provide to protect them.
CARLENE CROSS: This situation was pure recklessness. You just have to say, “This is wrong.”
KURT ZWILLING: Bad things happen in war. But our boys are not cannon fodder. The United States has to protect these men. And, in this case, it was not done……
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