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rob kall
 Latest Headlines
Just as the military/security complex pressured President John F. Kennedy to start a war with the Soviet Union over the Cuban missile crisis while the US still had the nuclear advantage, Hillary is now moving China into the role of Emmanuel Goldstein. Hate has to be mobilized, before Washington can move the ignorant patriotic masses to war. The United States, the flagship of the Anglo-American empire, is listing and the BRICS are building a new world order. Republicans in the House of Representatives have proposed a radical anti-whistleblower bill (the Grimm bill) that, if passed, will completely undermine the ability of corporate whistleblowers to expose fraud and violations of securities laws. By Rob Kall
Time for De-Billionairization?
Should the US lead the world in making it illegal and impossible to be a billionaire? Should a limit of $500 or $200 or $100 million be set as a limit to the wealth someone might possess? Mr Assange was given the Sydney Peace Medal at a ceremony at the Frontline Club in central London today. The Sydney Peace Foundation said that it was making the award to recognise Mr in recognition of the need "for greater transparency and accountability of governments". One of my regrets in life is losing the chance to debate Mitt Romney and whip his ass. Mitt Romney's great strength is he looks, sounds, and acts presidential. Mitt Romney is the perfect candidate for people uncomfortable that their president is black. Mitt is their great white hope. By Danny Schechter
WAS TONY KUSHNER MEANT TO BECOME THE NEXT HELEN THOMAS?
The City University of New York voted to Reinstate A n Honorary Degree for Pulitzer Prize Winning Playwright Tony Kushner in a slap at a prominet conservative backer of Israel. Was Kushner intended to become the next Helen Thomas. News Dissector Danny Schechter examines the controversy. By earl ofari hutchinson
Why the GOP Can't Get Rid of its Clowns
GOP strategists and analysts sounded desperate even panicked when they implore Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels to toss his hat in the presidential rink. Their panic to get Daniels in the race has less to do with any special magic that they think he'll bring to a campaign to oust president Obama then their mounting horror at how the best known potential GOP presidential candidates have turned the party into a three ring circus. You're probably aware that yesterday, Sat. 7th May 2011, the US government released "new" videos of 'bin Laden' that they claimed were part of the haul from the 'compound' in Pakistan, which, by the way, is very conveniently scheduled for destruction. The problem is, these videos do not feature Osama bin Laden The racist sub-text of the neo-liberal political agenda succeeded in creating acceptance of mass incarceration while simultaneously creating the laws and industries to police, prosecute, cage and control millions of people--almost all poor people and people of color. Despite heightened safety concerns about earthquake impacts on nuclear facilities--and new questions about its seismic analyses--the Energy Department has rejected a recommendation by a federal safety oversight board that the department establish clear requirements for its site operating contractors to prevent potential offsite radiation doses from worst-case accidents from exceeding 25 rems, the level now set by a non-binding DOE guideline. Though Palin is descending in public esteem faster than she rose, her lasting impact is undeniable -- she makes mendacity respectable, spawning dozens of really dumb liars. Find out why. By Daniel Geery
The Foundation of Religion Fractured, shaky, and exposed
Note from submitter, Daniel Geery: This article was written by a friend of mine, Deana Jensen, who died last year in her early nineties. She wrote the piece in her early seventies and self-published it as a pamphlet, titled "Godwho: Why I am Not a Mormon." By Tom Engelhardt
Tomgram: Robert Lipsyte, No Pro Football? No Problem.
In his patented fashion, Lipsyte then takes us on a Mr. Toad's wild ride through the larger American issues that the NFL labor dispute reflects (even if in sports-cartoonish fashion), including: "the current attacks on unions across the country... racism, classism, sexism, recreational violence, and the health-care gap. No wonder football seems to have replaced baseball as the national pastime." Allison's sister, Laurel Krause demands President Obama & General Holder immediately open an impartial investigation into the new evidence in the Kent State Tape. One would think, right here in the intellectual, political and military power center of the mightiest nation in the world, policy debates would be taking place to see how we can make our country better, stronger and more prosperous. In reality, any policy discussed at this conference, much like in previous years, will focus on how to influence more Americans into supporting and protecting Israel. Yes, it's that time of the season, when the zaniest and most disturbing of the side-show freaks lurch out of their boxcars, toss their pointy-hats into the GOP center ring and declare their respective candidacies for the Presidency of the United States. According to the Guardian UK, the Osama bin Laden mission was agreed to in secret 10 years ago by both US and Pakistan. US forces were given permission to conduct a unilateral raid inside Pakistan if they knew where bin Laden was hiding, officials say,and then Pakistan would wax indignant. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-professed mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, who has been held at Guantanamo since 2006, told interrogators that al-Qaeda will detonate a nuclear device if Osama bin Laden were captured or killed, according to classified files released by the WikiLeaks website. In the name of holistic justice and planetary rebellion, I am an earthling. UN tear-gassed & shot dead Haitians accusing UN of bringing cholera killing people. Corporate media reported UN's side of story, called Haiti grievers "insurgents" demonstrating against UN to destabilize Haiti for political reasons. When world experts said cholera strain was South Asian, not Haitian, UN investigated itself & admit it brought cholera to vulnerable Haiti, but is not responsible for lives lost. Haitians disagree. By David Swanson
Harvey Wasserman on How We'll Survive and Win
I'm speaking with Harvey Wasserman, long time wonderful activist, author, author among other of wonderful books of "Solartopia," and Harvey, you were emailing me yesterday a little bit about success stories.
Latest Articles
The Focus on Peace trip to New York City for The Seventh Annual Brooklyn Peace Fair 2011 was a great success. From our table we got a large number of fliers and other literature out. Our message was well received by most attendees and fellow exhibitors. I was interviewed on camera twice. What are two things that Martha Stewart, Walmart and Exxon have in common? 1. They've all been caught doing highly unethical business acts that were borderline despicable and in some cases found to be illegal.... Murder without Corpse
Without a cadaver or even the flimsy evidence of a photoshopped photograph, what is there to this sensational murder, really? Nothing but words from the CIA and the White House. Though they lied to us about Jessica Lynch's "rescue" and Pat Tillman's murder, we are to believe them this time because they have suddenly decided to speak the truth. Honestly. Imagine al-Awlaki feeling the honor of having come to the attention of the president of the most powerful nation in history, the arrogant exceptionally wealthy superpower of the world in which half of the humanity it dominates struggles to survive and a billion souls suffer chronic hunger, disease and short life, held. In Yemen held in awe for being considered important and influential. A counterproductive air strike maybe? Memo To The President / From Dick Cheney
From deep inside his self imposed Bunker, Dick "Darth Vader' Cheney emails President Obama with advice on walking on the dark side and useful counsel regarding lies, deceptions and end game strategies . In a world of growing deceit and political manipulation ~ quite often only satire is capable of disseminating the truth . Wake up, America, we're obviously still being bamboozled : Allen L Roland
 Best News Links from the Web
Charles Koch hires himself a pair of trusty profs at Florida State, and if the faculty don't like it, they can lump it
Under the agreement with the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, however, faculty only retain the illusion of control. The contract specifies that an advisory committee appointed by Koch decides which candidates should be considered. The foundation can also withdraw its funding if it's not happy with the faculty's choice or if the hires don't meet "objectives" set by Koch during annual evaluations.Jennifer Washburn, who has reviewed dozens of contracts between universities and donors, called the Koch agreement with FSU "truly shocking." Said Washburn, author of University Inc., a book on industry's ties to academia: "This is an egregious example of a public university being willing to sell itself for next to nothing." NM Federal Judge Judith Herrera will hand down a decision soon regarding whether or not to allow continuing funding of a $6B new plutonium facility at Los Alamos Labs without an applicable environmental impact statement. Local residents are alarmed, budget committees skeptical, and the Los Alamos Study Group, with its coterie of skilled lawyers, charges the DOE and NNSA with being in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act. Calls Mount to Push U.S. Troop Presence in Iraq Past 2011
Amid high-level U.S. congressional delegations to evaluate developments in Iraq, a growing number of voices here, from both the Barack Obama administration and members of Congress, are concerned about a complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from the country by December 2011 - a deadline set forth in the supposedly inviolable Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between the U.S. and Iraqi governments back in 2008. Financial end to empire?
The US will be unable to maintain its preeminent role in the global order. The empire will wither. Is that such a bad thing? For those who think that "unitary global rule" is a failed experiment, the peaceful erosion of US power is the best possible outcome. The longer congress drags its feet, the better it is for everyone. Rapporteur of National Security and Foreign Policy Commission of Iran's Parliament (Majlis), Kazem Jalali, told Fars News Agency on Tuesday that there will be no way for the Zionist regime [of Israel] to escape if it commits the slightest aggression against the Iranian soil. "Zionists themselves know well that Iran's reaction will be unpredictable and strongly harsh," he pointed out. Senate Democrats push to end tax breaks for big oil companies to cut deficit
Senate Democrats announced a plan Tuesday to eliminate federal tax breaks to the five biggest oil companies and use those savings, estimated at $21 billion over the next 10 years, to help cut the deficit. Facing pressure from cash-strapped voters to do something about surging gas prices, Democrats want to put a spotlight on highly profitable oil companies and to cut off taxpayer subsidies to the firms. Lawmakers threaten to subpoena White House budget official
California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa, who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Missouri Republican Rep. Sam Graves, the head of the House Small Business Committee, invited Jack Lew, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, to testify. Lew wrote the chairmen last week that the order was "still moving through the standard review and feedback process," and he declined to testify. U.S. commander: Bin Laden's death doesn't end Afghan war
Osama bin Laden's death hasn't changed the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan, and it must continue, the U.S. commander in charge of the country's east said Tuesday. "One man does not make the war on terror," Maj. Gen. John Campbell told reporters via videoconference from Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan. The Obama administration launched a drone strike in Yemen last week in an attempt to assassinate a U.S.-born Muslim cleric who has never been convicted of a crime. Anwar al-Awlaki survived the attack, but two suspected members of al-Qaeda died. It was reported to be the first U.S. drone strike in Yemen in nine years. "It's illegal to kill a U.S. citizen in Yemen, outside of armed conflict, without any due process," says Maria LaHood of the Center for Constitutional Rights. The attempted assassination of al-Awlaki comes just days after U.S. special forces executed Osama bin Laden and NATO planes bombed Libyan leader Col. Muammar Gaddafi's compound, killing his son and three grandchildren. In a previous blog I mentioned Julie Sirrs, a military analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), who traveled to Afghanistan and met with Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah Massoud. Sirrs claimed, "The Taliban's brutal regime was being kept in power significantly by bin Laden's money, plus the narcotics trade, while [Massoud's] resistance was surviving on a shoestring. With even a little aid to the Afghan resistance, we could have pushed the Taliban out of power. She claimed the US government and the oil company Unocal wanted the Taliban to achieve the necessary "political stability to enable a trans-Afghanistan pipeline." She also stated, "The State Department didn't want to have anything to do with Afghan resistance, or even, politically, to reveal that there was any viable (alternative) he Associated Press and other news organizations have officially taken the position that President Barack Obama should release visual proof of Osama bin Laden's death, claiming that without this level of transparency the White House is essentially deciding what is and is not newsworthy. It wasn't the Wahhabist tradition of Islam that outlawed slavery, or gave the world the Geneva Conventions, or the United Nations Charter, or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It wasn't Oriental despotism which outlawed the use of torture, or declared that all human-beings -- even convicted criminals and prisoners-of-war -- possess an absolute right to be treated with dignity. These were the hard-won achievements of Christian conscience and enlightenment reason. And Osama Bin Laden made us throw them all away. A statement purporting to come from a son of Osama bin Laden denounced the al Qaeda leader's killing as "criminal" and said his burial at sea had humiliated the family, an online monitoring service said. The statement, attributed to Omar bin Laden, bin Laden's fourth eldest son, said the al Qaeda chief's children reserved the right to take legal action in the United States and internationally to "determine the true fate of our vanished father." Does an Al Qaeda anthrax operative own four pharmacies in New York City? That frightening possibility is raised in one of the 700-plus Guantanamo detainee assessments released recently by WikiLeaks and other sources. It took a while for all the details to emerge, but it appears the crash happened for one really surprising reason: The air on ground was much hotter than anticipated. That, combined with the high walls of the compound, created an air vortex that sucked the air right out from under the chopper. A mission that should have started with the U.S. Navy Seals rappelling into the yard instead began with a hard thud. NATO launches new precision strikes against Gadhafi forces
Early on Tuesday, Nato forces carried out some of their heaviest strikes on the capital, Tripoli, for weeks, attacking targets said to include part of Col Gaddafi's leadership compound. The strike was made as Nato announced that rebel forces had taken control over much of Misurata, a move which has forced Gaddafi's troops to use artillery and rockets at longer range and indiscriminately. Half or more of those surveyed said they had killed the enemy, and 75 percent-80 percent described the death or wounding of a buddy. Half also said that an improvised explosive device detonated within 55 yards while they were on foot patrol. The study's researchers also found evidence of physical wear-and-tear with a third of the force experiencing chronic pain. Those Libyan "Freedom Fighters": The Fix is On
So the head of the opposition movement is on the CIA payroll, and the first order of business of the insurgent regime is to create a central bank that takes orders from international finance capital. Doesn't look real good for "freedom" in Libya, does it? Looks pretty damn good for the banksters, though. If the attempt to overthrow of Qaddafi had anything to do with genuine freedom, it's a safe bet the U.S. government would have had nothing to do with it. Put not your faith in princes. As he prepares for a Republican presidential primary run -- he said Monday that he would formally declare his intentions on Wednesday -- Mr. Gingrich is presenting himself as a family man who has embraced Catholicism and found God, with his wife as a kind of character witness. Depending on one's point of view, she is a reminder of his complicated past, or his secret political weapon. Turns out, having a community organizer in the White House Situation Room was not a bad thing. Perhaps better than a senator who was afraid to offend an ally. And surely better than a governor who couldn't even finish her one job with actual responsibilities. The man who walked out of the Situation Room with the words "We got him" showed that he had learned, somewhere, that patience can pay off.
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