743 QuickLinks

Thursday, August 21, 2008
Made Man: How Cindy Hensley invented John McCain
McCain was a relative nobody when he married Cindy Hensley--a middle-aged divorcé working a mid-level job in a far-off bureaucracy. It was the Hensleys who would breathe life into his prospects and provide a springboard for his ascent. Their ambitions burned every bit as brightly as his did. Except that, unlike McCain, they'd long since hidden their motives from public view.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Senior House Democrat Wants Ban on U.S. Oil Exports
The head of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming is calling on the White House to halt all exports of U.S. oil. "Sending America's vital energy resources overseas during our time of need should stop," wrote Edward J. Markey , D-Mass., to President Bush on Tuesday. The US exported 1.806 million barrels a day in May.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008
John McCain aide's dual roles intersect
Randy Scheunemann operated for years deep inside Republican foreign policy circles, a burly, bearded lobbyist with powerful patrons, neoconservative credentials and little public profile. Georgia's pro-Western government in Tbilisi has paid $830,000 to Scheunemann's two-member lobbying firm, Orion Strategies, since 2004, according to records at the Justice Department's foreign agents registration office.

Monday, August 18, 2008
City defends 'secret jail' built for DNC
DENVER - Activist groups say the converted warehouse poses a threat to civil liberties. The city maintains the facility is needed in case of mass arrests during the Democratic National Convention. The makeshift holding center, dubbed "Gitmo on the Platte" by activists, is located on city-owned property near Steele Street and 38th Ave. New security cameras guard the exterior, chain-link fences and barbed wire form cells inside.

Monday, August 18, 2008
Six Questions about the Anthrax Case
The anthrax in those envelopes was from our own military bio-weapons labs. Why did the administration, the FBI, and the media assume that only a single individual was responsible?

Monday, August 18, 2008
McCain: No Net Neutrality
While many of McCain's proposals mirror his Democratic opponent Barack Obama's technology policy, a McCain presidency would sharply differ from an Obama presidency on the issue of network neutrality, which would mandate that broadband service providers treat all network traffic in a nondiscriminatory manner. "John McCain does not believe in prescriptive regulation like net neutrality," the policy statement declared.

Monday, August 18, 2008
Social Origins of the American Corporate Predator State
(2 comments) The predatory nature of contemporary US governance is linked to corporations, and it is also a uniquely American phenomenon. It's origins clearly trace back to the military–industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned about in his final televised address to the nation on January 17, 1961. That complex has captured politics and corrupted the business of government, including of course the conduct of national security

Monday, August 18, 2008
Israel to treat Gaza peace boats 'like pirates'
Peace activists planning to land two boats on Gaza's shores are no better than "pirates" and will be turned back by the Israeli navy, officials have warned. On board are about 40 protesters campaigning against Israel's economic sanctions on the Palestinian territory, including an 84-year-old Holocaust survivor and Lauren Booth, sister-in-law of Tony Blair, who is the international special envoy to the Middle East.

Monday, August 18, 2008
It's starting in Canada (video)
(4 comments) After 10,000 plus years of safe, effective, affordable botanical medicine, the federal governments of various countries have decided, with the "encouragement" of the white collar criminals in the pharmaceutical industry and government, to "protect" the Canadian public from herbs and food supplements. 70% of currently available natural health products will be removed from the market.

Friday, August 15, 2008
Under the Abbaya: Female Producers in Saudi Arabia
Amy Teuteberg just got back from her first "No Reservations" road trip, and the number one question from friends, family and co-workers isn't about the food, the shoot, or how it was to work with Tony. "It's about what I had to wear. Of course, the question is less about the garment, than how far I had to go to conform."

Friday, August 15, 2008
Blowback From Bear-Baiting
Reveling in his status as an intimate of George Bush, Dick Cheney and John McCain, and America's lone democratic ally in the Caucasus, Saakashvili thought he could get away with a lightning coup and present the world with a fait accompli. Georgia started this fight -- Russia finished it. People who start wars don't get to decide how and when they end.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Investigating the Pentagon's pundits
In April the New York Times reported on the Pentagon military analyst program, a concerted effort by the U.S. DOD to cultivate retired military officers as "message force multipliers" or "surrogates" spouting Bush administration talking points on Iraq and other hot-button issues. The Pentagon publicly posted the documents and the Center for Media and Democracy has converted them so that they can be searched by keyword.

Monday, August 11, 2008
Where, oh where, are the issues?
(2 comments) As the two political party conventions approach and the never ending 2008 Presidential campaign drones on and on, both candidates for the top job in the land continue to avoid dealing with any of the real issues that face America. More than anything, the choices we face is November highlight a failure in the system. The political system that controls the electoral process in America does more damage than good. It has failed us

Monday, August 11, 2008
Did McCain Plagiarize His Speech on the Georgia Crisis?
A Wikipedia editor emailed Political Wire to point out some similarities between Sen. John McCain's speech today on the crisis in Georgia and the Wikipedia article on the country Georgia. Given the closeness of the words and sentence structure, most would consider parts of McCain's speech to be derived directly from Wikipedia.

Monday, August 11, 2008
Ron Paul Affirms: Iran Attack Plan Has 'Green Light'
(3 comments) Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) has warned millions of radio listeners that the United States is heading into an illegal attack on Iran, stating his amazement at members of Congress who have openly voiced support for a criminal nuclear strike. "That is my sense because the Democratic leaders in the House are proposing no resistance whatsoever, Paul said.

Sunday, August 10, 2008
The day before 9/11
(6 comments) 25%+ of all Pentagon money is unaccounted for. The Pentagon receives the lion's share of the US tax payer's dollars. 36% goes to current military expenses. 18% goes to what's called "past military" which includes veteran's pensions and medical benefits. At least 25% - and some estimates are much higher - goes down a rat hole unaccounted for and never to been seen again.

Saturday, August 9, 2008
A race between education and disaster
(1 comments) Orwell feared those who would ban books. Huxley feared that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would drown in a sea of irrelevancy.

Saturday, August 9, 2008
Tape: Top CIA official confesses order to forge Iraq-9/11 letter came on White House stationery
A forged letter linking Saddam Hussein to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks was ordered on White House stationery and probably came from the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, according to a new transcript of a conversation with the Central Intelligence Agency's former Deputy Chief of Clandestine Operations Robert Richer.

Friday, August 8, 2008
Why Climate Activists Welcome Peak Oil
Peak oil kicks the discussion into overdrive and adds more economic weight to the necessity of addressing Climate Change. Consider future supply scenarios for coal: if, as studies indicate, world coal production will start falling within two decades, this means coal will soon become much more expensive and new coal power plants become a bad bet for financial reasons. And renewable energy sources and conservation look much more

Thursday, August 7, 2008
Air Force Wants to Bail Out the Coal Industry
Careful deliberation and thoughtful debate have been cast aside as the Air Force has set itself on a fast-track mission to bail out the coal industry. Coal producers have been unsuccessful in prior efforts to cultivate such a market. Climate change worries prompted Congress last year to turn back an attempt to mandate the use of coal-based synthetic fuels. The Air Force is trying to steer the nation's energy policy toward coal

Thursday, August 7, 2008
McCain's Deep Involvement Shipping 8600 Ohio Jobs Overseas- video
McCain and his campaign manager helped make a deal that gave control of DHL jobs to a foreign corporation.

Wednesday, August 6, 2008
'Fakeproof' e-passport is cloned in minutes
New microchipped passports designed to be foolproof against identity theft can be cloned and manipulated in minutes and accepted as genuine by the computer software recommended for use at international airports. Tests for The Times exposed security flaws in the microchips introduced to protect against terrorism and organised crime.

Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Hiroshima Day reality check- video
Take a minute to reflect on just how absurd it is for America to maintain 10,000 nuclear bombs. Defense experts say that many simply aren't needed, and by reducing the nuclear arsenal our country could save $14 billion dollars -- more than enough to save the lives of six million kids who die of starvation in impoverished nations each year.

Wednesday, August 6, 2008
The Audacity of Contempt
Take gas prices, the most pressing issue on the minds of Americans. Offer a blatant ploy that in fact won't help - but will profit Big Oil. Pocket over a million in contributions from oil executives and use the money to put up an ad promising to take on Big Oil. Call it the audacity of contempt. Sen. John McCain seems intent on proving that it is possible to scorn Americans into voting for him.

Wednesday, August 6, 2008
McCain's questionable contributions
This list of McCain's questionable donors continues to rise: Alice Rocchio, a Hess office manager, and Pasquale Rocchio, an Amtrak train foreman, together donated $57,000 to the RNC. How did so many donors with everyday jobs manage to be able to fork over contributions of $2300-$4600, in a time when the economy is in a recession, and people are trying to find ways to save as much as they can?

Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Neocon Flap Highlights Jewish Divide
(1 comments) A mushrooming media controversy pitting neocons against a prominent Jewish-American political commentator could mark a new stage in the growing battle over who speaks for the U.S. Jewish community on foreign policy issues, particularly regarding the Middle East. TIME columnist Joe Klein's accusations that Jewish neocons, who played a visible role in the drive to war in Iraq and have since pushed for a military attack on Iran

Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Anthrax Attack on U.S. Congress Covered Up by FBI, Expert Says
from Dec 2006: Although only a "handful" of scientists had the ability to perpetrate the crime, the culprit, or culprits, among them may never be identified as the FBI ordered the destruction of the anthrax culture collection at Ames, Ia., from which the Ft. Detrick lab got its pathogens, the authority said. This action made it impossible "to pin-point precisely where, when, and from whom these bio-agents had originated."

Monday, August 4, 2008
Jean C. Duley... tell us again...
More background on the anthrax case, many do-not-computes, and comments from a doctor friend of Ivins. This whole thing smells.

Sunday, August 3, 2008
Karadzic protected by US until he broke 'deal'
Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic was protected by the United States until a CIA phone bug caught him breaking the terms of his "deal", the Serb newspaper Blic reported Saturday, quoting a US intelligence source. "Karadzic, indicted for genocide and war crimes, was under US protection until 2000, when the CIA intercepted his telephone conversation that proved he chaired a meeting of his old political party."

Sunday, August 3, 2008
Israel fears scathing U.S. report on its West Bank policies
The United States security coordinator for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, retired general James Jones, is preparing an extremely critical report of Israel's policies in the territories and its attitude toward the Palestinian Authority's security services. The harsh criticisms in the executive summary are reportedly upsetting the Bush administration with some senior U.S. officials demanding that it not be published.

Sunday, August 3, 2008
CIA Veteran Rips Agency, Tests Limits of Right to Publish
(1 comments) A 25-year veteran of the CIA's clandestine service has written a scathing -and unauthorized- account of the spy agency's management. Jones presents a withering portrait of the CIA as suffering from a timid, self-serving bureaucracy that has stifled initiative and failed to recruit meaningful spies. The CIA has also misled Congress on its spending, he maintains, diverting billions $$ to expansion of offices inside the US.

Friday, August 1, 2008
Dr. Bryant Welch: Torture, Political Manipulation and the American Psych. Assn.
(2 comments) How did the APA form such an obviously close connection to the military? And why did the APA governance-the Board of Directors and the Council of Representatives-go along with the military interests? Since the early 1980's APA has had a unique relationship with Hawaii Senator Daniel Inouye, for much of that time Chair of the Subcommittee on Defense for the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Friday, August 1, 2008
Mukasey Calls On Congress to Subvert Constitution
(6 comments) In an enormous executive branch power grab, Attorney General Michael Mukasey called on Congress today to authorize indefinite detention through a new declaration of armed conflict. Mukasey also proposed that Congress subvert the right of habeas corpus with procedures that will hide the Bush admin's past wrongdoing - an action that would undermine the constitutional guarantee of due process and conceal systematic torture

Friday, August 1, 2008
No Justice at Bush's Justice Dept.
The forced resignation of 12 U.S. attorneys last year was so heavy handed and obviously White House engineered that it brought screams of protest from congressional Democrats and even Republicans and ultimately was the leading cause of Alberto Gonzales' resignation as attorney general. Even more important, the furor over the U.S. attorneys also has resulted in continuing allegations about the politicization of the entire DOJ

Friday, August 1, 2008
When Extremists Attack - by Joe Klein
I have now been called antisemitic and intellectually unstable and other silly things by the folks over at the Commentary blog. They want Time Magazine to fire or silence me. This is happening because I said something that is palpably true, but unspoken in polite society: There is a small group of Jewish neoconservatives who unsuccessfully tried to get Netanyahu to attack Saddam Hussein in the 1990s, and then got Bush to do it

Thursday, July 31, 2008
US oil firms seek drilling access, but exports soar
While the U.S. oil industry want access to more federal lands to help reduce reliance on foreign suppliers, American-based companies are shipping record amounts of gasoline and diesel fuel to other countries. A record 1.6 million barrels a day in U.S. refined petroleum products were exported during the first four months of this year, up 33 percent from 1.2 million barrels a day over the same period in 2007.

Thursday, July 31, 2008
Pakistani General Who Wired $100,000 to Atta Met with a "Senior Representative from the Joint Chiefs of Staff" Right Bef
(2 comments) In response to a Freedom of Information Act Request, the government has disclosed documents confirming that Pakistani ISI General Ahmed -the guy who wired $100,000 to lead hijacker Atta -met with a "Senior Representative from the Joint Chiefs of Staff", Centcom Commander General Tommy Franks, the Director of the DIA, and others in the week before 9/11. We're not supposed to think this means anything.

Thursday, July 31, 2008
McCain refuses to fire molester aide
For weeks, John McCain has resisted calls to dump one of his leading religious representatives who critics say is an inappropriate surrogate because of links to allegations of sexual impropriety with a teenage student.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Librarians want to turn us all into privacy fiends
(Fine by me!) "Law enforcement agencies at every level are exploiting fears about terrorism and child safety to encourage lawmakers to strip away statutory privacy protections for library records," says the ALA. People have all sorts of behaviors for which they want "privacy," even if these behaviors aren't "secret." When someone heads off to the bathroom, for instance, and closes the door, their behavior isn't a "secret"

Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Most Bank Sites Insecure, Says Recent Study
Online banking makes life easier, at least for those of us comfortable with the idea of transacting money from the home or office. A University of Michigan study released last week suggests that, of 214 financial institutions' websites, every one had design flaws and over three-quarters contained at least one flaw that could potentially put customers at risk.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Let's give "Blue Dogs" the boot- Greenwald
Few positions generate overwhelming agreement across the ideological spectrum. One notable exception to this rule is the issue of whether the current U.S. Congress is doing a poor job. That question produces a remarkable consensus that is close to unanimous. The Democratic-led Congress is actually more unpopular among Democrats than among Republicans

Thursday, July 24, 2008
The U.S. Economy Is Socialism for the Rich
Free market capitalism in the United States is by no means "free." It's time we recognize this and move past the destructive neoliberal agenda. The hyper-consumerist culture of the United States has led to predatory lending and credit schemes that have put millions of people on the brink of bankruptcy.

Thursday, July 24, 2008
Attack of the Global Pirate Bankers
In the last thirty years, fueled by the globalization of financial services, lousy lending, capital flight and mind-boggling corruption, a relatively small number of major banks, law firms, accounting firms, asset managers, insurance companies and hedge funds have come to launder and conceal at least $10 trillion to $15 trillion of private untaxed anonymous cross-border wealth.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Energy Speculation Bill on Hold
Democrats and Republicans traded salvos over the blame for high gasoline prices Tuesday, but substantive progress on energy legislation eluded lawmakers as a bill to curb oil speculation stalled in the Senate. The GOP wants to drill, the Dems want to conserve- and nobody talks about all the oil we EXPORT!

Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Half a Million Plastic Coffins?
You don't buy 500,000 plastic coffins "just in case something happens," you buy them because you know something is going to happen. These air tight seal containers would be perfect to bury victims of plague or biological warfare in, wouldn't they? Apparently the Government is expecting a half million people to die relatively soon.

Monday, July 21, 2008
Drilling for Export
Faulty assumption: Oil produced here stays here. A record 1.6 million barrels a day in U.S. refined petroleum products were EXPORTED during the first four months of this year, up 33 percent from 1.2 million barrels a day over the same period in 2007. Shipments this February topped 1.8 million barrels a day for the first time during any month. And President Clinton lifted the ban on export of ANWR Alaskan oil in 1995.

Sunday, July 20, 2008
William Astore: Generation Warfighters
In WWI and WWII, the Germans were the best soldiers because they had trained and fought the most, because their societies were geared, mentally and in most other ways, for war, because they celebrated and valued feats of arms above all other contributions one could make to society and culture. Leaders always expected them to prevail. The mentality was: "We're number one. How can we possibly lose? (sound familiar?)

Saturday, July 19, 2008
More Evidence Madrid Bombing was a False Flag Op
(3 comments) It is revealed that the man accused of supplying the dynamite used in the March 2004 Madrid train bombings was an informant who had the private telephone number of the head of Spain's Civil Guard bomb squad. Emilio Suarez Trashorras, a miner with access to explosives, as well as an associate named Rafa Zouhier both regularly informed for the Spanish police, telling them about drug shipments.

Saturday, July 19, 2008
Political harmony v. the rule of law: an easy choice for the political establishment
(1 comments) Former Congressman Harold Ford argued that Bush officials shouldn't be held accountable for crimes they committed while in office, and then insisted that Democrats shouldn't be expected to defend civil liberties and Constitutional rights because -- as one observer summarized Ford's point -- "the Constitution doesn't poll very well."

Friday, July 18, 2008
Dr. Judith Rodin: The Post-Social Contract Generation
Almost half of America's youngest workers believe the nation's best days may have come and gone. Ninety percent say the social contract is broken and 87 percent - the largest portion in any age group - are calling out for a new one.

Friday, July 18, 2008
Israel May Start Nuclear War- NYT
(2 comments) Benny Morris, a Professor of Middle Eastern history at Ben Gurion University, claims Israel will most certainly attack Iran within the next 4 to 7 months, and if conventional weapons are unsuccessful to knock out Iran's nuclear program, than Israel will escalate to the use of nuclear weapons.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Phil Gramm's Porn Stash
Before Gramm joined the Christian Coalition's Ralph Reed to call for the defunding of the NEA, before he attacked an opponent for taking money from a gay rights group, and before he was interviewed by the white supremacist Southern Partisan magazine, Gramm was an avidly active investor in soft-core pornography movies.

Friday, July 11, 2008
They Rob You With a Fountain Pen
Under the conservative hand of Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve sat idly by as bankers had their predators' ball. Now the banks are in trouble. They are scrambling to sell off assets, raise new capital, and unload the lousy paper. The bankers and investors are walking away with millions of dollars in private profits. And now we're getting the bill

Thursday, July 10, 2008
This is How the World Ends
(5 comments) "What makes this such a terrifying book is it isn't based on theoretical mathematics. Rapid increases in greenhouse gases have shut down the ocean conveyor several times before, resulting in severe climate change and mass extinction. If Ward's analysis is correct, we know what caused it and we know how to make it not happen again. The question is: can we save us from ourselves?"

Thursday, July 10, 2008
How McCain Campaign Adviser Phil Gramm Helped Create the Subprime Mortgage Crisis
(1 comments) In the midst the chaos of the 2000 election aftermath, Senator Phil Gramm slipped into a must-pass spending bill a 268-page bill that totally deregulated credit "swaps" - a market that's now about four times the size of Wall Street - and turned a large part of the economy into a secret casino where the stakes are high, rules are almost non-existent, and the high-rollers' gambling debts are paid by the rest of us.

Thursday, July 10, 2008
StrangeBedfellows
Strangebedfellows is a unique and diverse left--right coalition which has come together to put a stop to the eradication of civil liberties in America. It includes Ron Paul supporters, leading bloggers from the left (Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com, Jane Hamsher of firedoglake.com) and many more who share the view that warrantless surveillance, telecom immunity and other such outrages of the lawless surveillance state MUST END

Thursday, July 10, 2008
THE PERILS OF PLAYING NICE
(1 comments) Global warming is an emergency, and "for emergency situations we need emergency action," UN's Ban Ki-Moon told the world in November 2007. Why, then, has climate policy moved in such a painfully slow manner? How can the impasse be resolved between what needs doing quickly, based on the science, and what seems a "reasonable" thing to do? In all these examples, we see reluctance to go beyond the bounds of perceived acceptabilit

Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Roll Call Vote- Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
See how your Senators voted. Three amendments concerning immunizing telecommunication companies from lawsuits for handing over their records to federal investigators were defeated. One amendment would have stripped the immunity provision, while two others would have delayed granting immunity until it was determined necessary. They trashed the Constitution.

Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Take Action: Tell Your Senators to Say NO to the FISA Amendments Act
On July 9, the Senate will vote on whether to expand the government's surveillance powers to allow warrantless surveillance of Americans and give immunity to telecommunications companies that helped the Bush administration engage in illegal surveillance in the past. Please tell your senators to vote NO on this legislation. The FISA Amendments Act of 2008 (H.R. 6304) is based on flawed rationales rejected last week in Fed Court

Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Special Report on Weapons Technology
A Microwave ray gun that controls crowds with noise; "smart" bombs dropped by stealth bombers, coupled with space-based sensors and precision satellite navigation. The US has embraced Full Spectrum Dominance, the belief that superior technology in all fields guarantees victory, though critics disagree.

Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Pentagon Refuses EPA's Pollution Cleanup Orders
(2 comments) The nation's worst polluter, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), is refusing to sign enforcement agreements with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that require DOD to clean up polluted sites nationwide. The military bases covered by EPA's enforcement orders may endanger public drinking water supplies as a result of the military dumping toxic pollutants at the sites.

Monday, July 7, 2008
Gaza: When You Shoot the Messenger
The assault of IPS Gaza correspondent Mohammed Omer has left Israeli security personnel with a lot of explaining to do. And they are not doing a very good job of it. Omer was returning from Europe where he had addressed European parliamentarians on the situation on the ground in Gaza. Omar told IPS he was verbally abused, strip-searched at gunpoint and physically beaten. He was later hospitalised with broken ribs and trauma.

Monday, July 7, 2008
CHINA: 'Within a Generation Beijing Will Cease to Exist'
Few in the Chinese capital are aware of the price their city would pay for staging the world's first 'green Olympics' in August. The fabulous capital of Chinese emperors and the epitome of modern China's ambitions is being driven to extinction by its chronic lack of water. And the Olympic games are expediting the city's slow demise, according to experts. "Within a generation this city would cease to exist," says Dai Qing

Saturday, July 5, 2008
Invading the Middle East: An interview with Juan Cole
Americans more or less conducted a social revolution when they conquered Iraq, of empowering their Shi'a and Kurdish allies, and of allowing them to run roughshod over the Sunni Arab former ruling class. It would be as though a foreign country conquered the United States and put Latinos and African Americans in charge and told people in Connecticut that henceforth they're unemployed and they might get to be janitors

Saturday, July 5, 2008
Secret report: biofuel caused food crisis
World Bank study delivers blow to plant energy drive. Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% - far more than previously estimated - according to a confidential World Bank report. The figure emphatically contradicts the US government's claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food-price rises.

Friday, July 4, 2008
How dare they rip the Fourth Amendment?
(3 comments) Next week the U.S. Senate will vote on an extension of FISA, with a few small amendments intended to immunize telecommunications corporations that assisted our government in the warrantless and illegal wiretapping it has grown to love. How can any senator on either side of the aisle vote for this law that does nothing to enhance our security and everything to diminish our rights as a free people?

Friday, July 4, 2008
Getting All Our Lemmings in a Row
The G8 is an exclusive club that includes Canada, England, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, and the U.S. Since 2005, the G8 has been systematically putting together the pieces of its CO2-burial plan, which will be endorsed again at next week's meeting in Japan. Burying carbon dioxide in the ground is called "carbon capture and storage", or CCS for short, is being promoted as a "silver bullet" but is untested

Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Blind Whistling Phreaks and the FBI's Historical Reliance on Phone Tap Criminality
37 years ago Joe Engressia, a blind telephonic hacking pioneer with perfect pitch and a high IQ, seized control over phone systems by whistling dual-tone, multi-frequency pitches into telephone receivers. The FBI viewed Engressia as a real threat. The FBI ran warrantless wiretaps as Hoover saw fit and with the phone company's compliance.

Wednesday, July 2, 2008
African Dictatorships and Double Standards
(2 comments) The Bush administration has justifiably criticized the Zimbabwean regime of liberator-turned-dictator Robert Mugabe. But the United States currently provides economic aid and security assistance to such repressive African regimes as Swaziland, Congo, Cameroon, Togo, Chad, Cote d'Ivoire, Rwanda, Gabon, Egypt, and Tunisia. None of these countries holds free elections, and all have severely suppressed their political opposition.

Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Don't Wait for World War III- by Justin Raimondo
The drumbeat for war with Iran is getting louder. Determined to ensure their success, the neoconservatives inside the administration, and their supporters in Israel, have launched a three-front campaign to provoke a confrontation with Tehran. We must defeat the Lobby on the issue of Senate Resolution 580 (in the House, Cong. Res. 362). A new war in the Middle East is the last thing Americans want. Call your rep today!

Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Not Your Grandma's Depression
American society is sliding into a greater depression than the one Grandma lived through. On the technical side, there has been unending controversy as to whether we're gripped by inflation or deflation. Food and gasoline prices are rising faster than the rivers of Iowa. But the prices of assets, like houses, stocks, jet-skis, and GMC Yukons are cratering as America into Yard Sale Nation.

Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Medicare meltdown? See how your senator voted!
Thirty-nine senators left town for their Fourth of July picnics knowing that the most vulnerable Americans are at risk because of the Senate's inability to act to stop drastic payment cuts for health care services. See how your senators voted. When you see them this weekend, thank those who stood up for physicians and patients by voting "yes" on H.R. 6331. Urge "No" voters to support H.R. 6331!

Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Surrogate Silliness
ENOUGH ALREADY! The country's at war, the economy is struggling, oil prices are surging. The Republican and Democratic presidential candidates have dramatically different approaches to all this and more. And we've just concluded Day Three of the latest surrogate pseudo-drama:

Wednesday, July 2, 2008
US Torture Tactics at Guantánamo Inspired by Communist China
In 2002 military trainers at Guantánamo based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of "coercive management techniques" for possible use on prisoners, including "sleep deprivation," "prolonged constraint," and "exposure." What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean W

Tuesday, July 1, 2008
DNI to Oversee All Security Clearance Policy
Consolidating power: The Director of National Intelligence will oversee security clearance investigations and related policies on access to classified information for all federal agencies, according to an executive order issued yesterday by President Bush. The move appears to significantly augment the authority of the DNI since it extends his reach to personnel policies and security clearances that are unrelated to intelligenc

Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Feingold on FISA- video
I teased some of my colleagues and said we can celebrate the Constitution on July 4th and maybe when we come back you'll decide not to tear it up. -Russ Feingold on FISA

Tuesday, July 1, 2008
McCain's Long Strange Trip South of the Border
Our economy has been battered on multiple fronts, including the loss of 3.4 million manufacturing jobs. The current trade strategy has not only contributed to the offshoring of jobs, but helped harm the lives of workers abroad. NAFTA in particular has disrupted the agricultural economy in Mexico, displacing peasant labor and driving illegal immigration. McCain decides to campaign across the border where the jobs are being sent

Tuesday, July 1, 2008
McCain's Secret, Questionable Record
(1 comments) Some of the unreleased pages in McCain's Navy file may not reflect well upon his qualifications for the presidency. From day one in the Navy, McCain screwed-up again and again, only to be forgiven because his father and grandfather were four-star admirals. McCain's sense of entitlement to privileged treatment bears an eerie resemblance to George W. Bush's.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008
How Ignorant Are We?
The study by the new McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum found that 22 percent of Americans could name all five Simpson family members, compared with just 1 in 1,000 people who could name all five First Amendment freedoms.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008
'The US is Not a Republic Anymore'
(1 comments) We no longer have a country. We don't have a republic any more. During the last 7 or 8 years of the Bush regime, they've got rid of the Bill of Rights, they've got rid of habeas corpus. They have got rid of one of the nicest gifts that England ever left us when they went away and we ceased to be colonies - the Magna Carta - from the 12th century. All of our law and due process of law is based on that. And Bush got rid of it.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Col. Hackworth(Jan. 25, 2000): Is McCain's "war hero" status the creation of a very slick publicity campaign?
In McCain's own words just four days after being captured, he admits he violated the U.S. Code of Conduct by telling his captors "O.K, I'll give you military information if you will take me to the hospital." A Vietnam vet detractor says, "He received the nation's third highest award, the Silver Star, for treason. He provided aid and comfort to the enemy!"

Monday, June 30, 2008
Bush's top general quashed torture dissent
New evidence shows that despite warnings from across the military, former Gen. Richard Myers shut down legal scrutiny of brutal interrogation tactics. "He did play a much more central role" than previously known, Jonathan Turley said. "The minute the military lawyers expressed concern, they were shut down."

Monday, June 30, 2008
Israelis Assault Award Winning IPS Journalist
(2 comments) Mohammed Omer, the Gaza correspondent of IPS, and joint winner of the 2008 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, was strip-searched at gunpoint, assaulted and abused by Israeli security officials Thursday as he tried to return home to Gaza. Every cavity of his body was searched as one of the investigators pinned him down on the floor, placing his boot on Omer's neck. Omer began vomiting, and fainted.

Monday, June 30, 2008
How the "Dear Leader" Blackmailed Bush
After seven years of nonstop belligerence and saber rattling, the Bush administration has given North Korea everything it has demanded. In return, the US gets nothing. The UN's nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, will not get access to Kim Jong-il's nuclear stockpile or its "Top-Secret" file on weapons programs or be allowed to conduct surprise "go anywhere, see anything" inspections. Kim will continue to develop his long-range ballis

Monday, June 30, 2008
Iraq fails to sign contracts with global oil majors
Iraq said on Monday it has failed to sign technical support agreements with global oil majors which were aimed at helping boost the war-torn country's oil production. Iraq is negotiating with Shell, BP, ExxonMobil, Chevron and Total, and a consortium of other smaller oil companies, Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani said at press briefing. "We did not finalise any agreement with them because they wanted a share of the oil,"

Monday, June 30, 2008
AIPAC tries to Intimidate Congressional Candidates
(2 comments) Darcy Burner said she got a call from people affiliated with the conservative Jewish political group AIPAC who told her to distance herself from the new pro-peace group J Street, which they said is full of radical leftists who believe in capitulation to the forces of the Arab world who would overrun and destroy Israel. Like most conservative arguments, it is utter nonsense backed up by a political threat designed to suppress

Sunday, June 29, 2008
Home-grown veg ruined by toxic fertiliser
Gardeners across Britain are reaping a bitter harvest of rotten potatoes, withered salads and deformed tomatoes after an industrial herbicide tainted their soil. The affected gardens and allotments have been contaminated by manure originating from farms where the hormone-based herbicide aminopyralid, made by Dow AgroSciences, has been sprayed on fields.

Sunday, June 29, 2008
Iran-Contra's 'Lost Chapter'
(2 comments) As historians ponder George W. Bush's disastrous presidency, they may wonder how Republicans perfected a propaganda system that could fool tens of millions of Americans, intimidate Democrats, and transform the vaunted Washington press corps from watchdogs to lapdogs. Now revealed, the Reagan administration built a domestic covert propaganda apparatus managed by a CIA propaganda and disinformation specialist.

Sunday, June 29, 2008
Community Solar Power
(1 comments) A community in Canada has an unusual form of solar power that can provide over 90% of the annual heating and hot water needs for the homes, despite being situated in a cold Alberta location where winter temperatures can reach -33 degrees C (-27 F). Combined together, the 52 home community is able to collect and store enough energy from the sun during the summer that the ground storage temperatures reach 80 degrees C (176 F).

Friday, June 27, 2008
Ending 10 000 Years of Conflict between Agriculture and Nature
Organic agriculture is not enough; we must replace annual with perennial crops. Humans now directly manage 27 percent of the Earth's surface area, harvesting more than 40 percent of the planet's biological productivity for our own uses. Yet food production per person is on the decline, and agriculture worldwide is doing more than ever to worsen the global ecological crisis.

Thursday, June 26, 2008
Why The Right Isn't Future-Ready
Authoritarians tend to be ideologues -it's virtually impossible for them to envision any alternative future besides the one that fulfills the eschatology of the ideology they've chosen. There will always be oil. There will always be glaciers. Jesus is coming Real Soon Now. And we will always be at war with Oceania. Ideologies are boxes; and once you're stuck in one, no other reality is possible.

Thursday, June 26, 2008
Mike Davis: Welcome to the Next Epoch
Farewell to the Holocene. Our world, our old world that we have inhabited for the last 12,000 years, has ended, even if no newspaper in North America or Europe has yet printed its scientific obituary.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Hoyer hails FISA bill as "a significant victory for the Democratic Party"
(2 comments) Democrats achieved a "significant victory" because -- by giving Republicans everything they demanded -- Republicans are no longer able to criticize Democrats on this issue. What a shrewd strategy: "if we comply with all their demands, then they can't criticize us for anything." That's the Democratic Party's plan for winning, according to Hoyer.

Monday, June 23, 2008
Time magazine uncritically prints Nancy Pelosi's "justifications" for the FISA "compromise"
The article has only one purpose -- to depict the spying "compromise" as a brilliant and heroic centrist masterstroke by Nancy Pelosi to protect us from Terrorists. It must be a decent and reasonable compromise if both the extremes on the Right and Left are angry about it -- except the whole premise is patently false. The Right isn't attacking the bill at all; they're ecstatic about it.

Monday, June 23, 2008
The Hedonists of Power
Washington has become Versailles. We are ruled, entertained and informed by courtiers. The popular media are courtiers. The Democrats, like the Republicans, are courtiers. Our pundits and experts are courtiers. We are captivated by the hollow stagecraft of political theater as we are ruthlessly stripped of power. It is smoke and mirrors, tricks and con games. We are being had.

Sunday, June 22, 2008
Can You Pass The Israel-Palestine Quiz?
In the spirit of Senator Daniel Moynihan of New York, who used to remind people that "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts," this quiz was designed and may lead some to reexamine their misconceived opinions.

Sunday, June 22, 2008
The Best Farmland in the U.S. Is Flooded; Most Americans Are Too Stupid to Panic
(7 comments) While the food supply situation has skated along a knife edge so far this year, with higher prices and many countries experiencing food riots, widespread famine did not take hold. Now, this growing season, when yields need to be at record levels to avert disaster, what do we find? Floods or droughts in several of the breadbaskets of the world.

Friday, June 20, 2008
If 42 days detention was wrong, how about 548?
A new directive allowing EU states to detain immigrants for 18 months makes Britain's new anti-terrorism laws seem liberal. Members of the European Parliament backed the so-called 'return directive', which allows the 27 EU member states to hold undocumented migrants in detention centres for up to 18 months and to ban them from re-entering EU territory for five years. The draft law allows children to be detained, too.

Friday, June 20, 2008
Safe Toys, Edible Food, Smart Globalization
The stories are painfully familiar. A million pounds of Chinese seafood sold in the U.S with carcinogens and antibiotics not approved for use in the U.S. Half a million pounds of cantaloupes consumed from Mexico and Costa Rica with salmonella contagion. Even cats and dogs aren't safe. Melamine, a nitrogen-rich chemical used to make fertilizer and plastic, made its way into 60 million cans and pouches of pet food. Now tomatoes

Friday, June 20, 2008
Roll Call Votes for FISA Capitulation- Corp shills triumph
(2 comments) H R 6304 FISA Amendments Act of 2008 YEAS 293 NAYS 129

Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Anything for a Bath, Anything for Fuel
Gaza is on the brink, and Israel is keeping it that way. The girl, about 16, is wandering about Jebaliya refugee camp, picking up anything she thinks can burn. She cannot find enough bits of wood, so she gathers plastic bags, old notebooks and even a pair of broken plastic sandals. "I want to heat some water," she said. "I want a bath."

Wednesday, June 18, 2008
 US Special Forces counterinsurgency manual leaked
(2 comments) From Wikileaks: How to covertly train paramilitaries, censor the press, ban unions, employ terrorists, conduct warrantless searches, suspend habeas corpus, conceal breaches of the Geneva Convention and make the population love it. The leaked manual, which has been verified with military sources, is the official US Special Forces doctrine for Foreign Internal Defense or FID.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008
The Incredible Story of Youssef Nada
Under the cover of the "war against terror", the United States and the EU have granted unlimited powers to secret services and police. Emergency measures which were introduced on a provisional basis in 2001, outside any judiciary control, have become permanent. Since September 2001, at least 80,000 people, mainly Muslim, have been kidnapped, kept in secret prisons, and tortured by CIA and FBI agents.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008
America's Foreign Policy Bubble
(3 comments) We Americans think we live in the greatest country on earth. We think this because we never go anywhere else to test this proposition, except to places like Club Med or on cruises to the Caribbean (talk about bubbles!). Because we're the greatest country on earth, we have the right to disregard the opinions of other countries, which aren't as great as we are. In this perfect bubble, our self-regard builds on itself, higher and

Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Why Are Corporate Journalists So Afraid of Questioning Authority? - Ritter
(3 comments) Even after a former Bush spokesman says the press caved in on Iraq, the media are in total denial about their role in the invasion. Network executives either did, or didn't, pressure their producers and reporters when it came to covering and framing stories. Surely an investigative reporter can get to the bottom of this one?

Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Brendan Calling - Steny Hoyer's Offices Lied to Me Today
After working so hard to defeat the GOP on FISA and succeeding, watching Steny conspire to throw everyone under the bus was too much, so I called his office. They told me the article was false, that no deal was pending. After more research, I called the office back. "Why was I given misinformation about FISA?" "Well," the guy began, and began stammering and hemming and hawing his way through a bunch of non sequitors

Tuesday, June 17, 2008
ACLU: Tell Congress to Reject a Sham Spying "Compromise"
(1 comments) A sham spying "compromise" could be rammed through both the Senate and House this week. It's moving that fast. If we don't stop this, telecom companies that broke the law by supplying mountains of personal information to the government without a warrant will be let off the hook.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Lab rat, guinea pig, disposable hero
Mentally distressed veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan are being recruited for government tests on pharmaceutical drugs linked to suicide and other violent side effects. Veterans Administration doctors waited more than three months before warning veterans about the possible serious side effects, including suicide and neuropsychiatric behavior.

Monday, June 16, 2008
Gambling with science
Determined to defeat lawsuits over addiction, the casino industry is funding research at a Harvard-affiliated lab.The NCRG is a wing of the casinos' main trade group, the American Gaming Association, which has committed a total of $22 million to the center. To ethicists and casino critics, that relationship is a cautionary tale of science getting too close to industry.

Monday, June 16, 2008
Bush Pledges on Iraq Bases Pact Were a Ruse
Two key pledges made by the George W. Bush administration on military bases in its negotiations with the government of Iraq have now been revealed as carefully-worded ruses aimed at concealing U.S. negotiating aims from both U.S. citizens and Iraqis who would object to them if they were made clear. The real significance of the draft's wording on access to military bases was that it contained no time limit on access or use

Monday, June 16, 2008
Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act - How did your Senators vote?
(1 comments) Thursday afternoon, the Senate was blocked from moving forward with a bipartisan bill (the Baucus-Snowe-Smith-Rockefeller bill) that would have improved Medicare and protected Medicare recipients from skyrocketing premiums. With a looming deadline for Congress to act on Medicare, the next few weeks are going to be critical in the campaign to Keep Medicare Fair.

Monday, June 16, 2008
Why Aren't We Shouting the Battle Cry of Freedom?
(2 comments) Freedom is, quite simply, the most popular political principle in America. After years of warrantless wiretapping, illegal imprisonments, and torture, we should all be saying the F-word with regularity. I mean freedom. Why do progressives seem allergic to this word? Why aren't we shouting the battle cry of freedom??

Monday, June 16, 2008
When McCain Drops Out - Steve Rosenbaum
(9 comments) When the Republicans choose their candidate on September 4th, there is a very real chance that they could throw the election into an unexpected chaos as they pull a genuine September Surprise. I think there is every reason to believe John McCain won't be the nominee. Ok, let me say that again. McCain will not be the Republican candidate in November.

Sunday, June 15, 2008
British debate highlights the cravenness and complicity of congressional Democratic "leaders"
The intense and escalating political dispute in Britain over civil liberties is interesting in its own right, but it also vividly illustrates how craven and barren our own political system -- and the U.S. Democratic Party -- have become. As the Democratic Party prepares this week to endorse the Bush administration's illegal spying program and immunize telecoms which deliberately broke our surveillance laws for years

Saturday, June 14, 2008
How Speculators Are Causing the Cost of Living to Skyrocket
(1 comments) After investing in high-tech stocks and real estate loans for years, legions of speculators have now discovered commodities like oil and gas, wheat and rice. Their billions are pushing prices up to astronomical levels -- with serious consequences for ordinary people's quality of life and the global economy. What really changed the market were the big pension and investment funds.

Friday, June 13, 2008
Republicans Block Senate Debate on Medicare Physician Payment Bill
After Senate Republicans defeated Democrats' effort to bring up a Medicare bill for debate Thursday, Democratic leaders conceded that they will have to negotiate with the GOP on a compromise. The bill (S 3101), by Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus , D-Mont., is aimed at reversing a 10.6 percent cut in physician payments under Medicare that is scheduled to take effect July 1. Doctors say the cut is unaffordable

Friday, June 13, 2008
Conservatism vs. authoritarianism: The British vs. the U.S. right
British conservatives largely oppose a policy merely to allow the Government to detain terrorist suspects for 42 days with no charges, our "conservatives" react with fury over the U.S. Supreme Court's rejection of the President's claimed authority to hold such suspects in Guantanamo for 6 years -- really indefinitely -- without providing them any meaningful process at all.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008
On the Economy Debate, The Gloves Come Off
Despite ritual boosterism, soothing rhetoric and quiet prayers by Wall Street pundits, the economy is foul and likely to get much worse. We've lost jobs for five months in a row. Gas, food, health care costs are soaring. For workers, the mess is worse than the stagflation of the 1970s. Why are we in this mess? Obama put the blame for this directly on the Bush-McCain economic strategy- a "worn dogma" that has failed

Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Both McCain, Obama exaggerating Iran's nuclear program
Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., say that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. The U.S. intelligence community, however, thinks that Iran halted an effort to build a nuclear warhead in mid-2003, and the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency, which is investigating the program, has found no evidence to date of an active Iranian nuclear-weapons project.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008
NYT circulates fear-mongering claims on FISA debate
The New York Times' Eric Lichtblau had a long, prominent article Tuesday on the pending debate over FISA and telecom amnesty- headlined: "Return to Old Spy Rules Is Seen as Deadline Nears"- that features (and endorses) virtually every blatant falsehood that has distorted these spying issues from the beginning. Democrats control the agenda in Congress. They determine what bills are voted on. All they have to do is

Wednesday, June 11, 2008
You Know Something's Happening
(1 comments) The progressive tries to game a rigged system to work in the people's interest. He's a true Sisyphus. His chance of getting that stone over the top and achieving a permanent state of popular political control is slim to none. The populist wants to fundamentally change the system, eliminate that insuperable mountain, that is, de-privatize it, so that it operates in the interest of the general Welfare. It currently does not

Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Diverting a Diet Drug
How did a controversial product become the first weight-loss drug to be available without a prescription?

Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Stop Trashing the Climate
Stop Trashing the Climate provides compelling evidence that preventing waste and expanding reuse, recycling, and composting programs - that is, aiming for zero waste - is one of the fastest, cheapest, and most effective strategies available for combating climate change. This report documents the link between climate change and unsustainable patterns of consumption and wasting, and dispels myths about landfills and incineration

Tuesday, June 10, 2008
BBC uncovers lost Iraq billions
A BBC investigation estimates that around $23bn may have been lost, stolen or just not properly accounted for in Iraq. A US gagging order is preventing discussion of the allegations. While George Bush remains in the White House, it is unlikely the gagging orders will be lifted.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Fearing Escalation, Pentagon Fought Cheney Plan
Pentagon officials firmly opposed a proposal by Vice President Dick Cheney last summer for airstrikes against Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) bases by insisting that the administration would have to make clear decisions about how far the United States would go in escalating the conflict with Iran, according to a former George W. Bush admin. official, J. Scott Carpenter.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Armed revolution in Latin America is over, says Chavez
The armed revolutionary has no place in modern Latin America, the Venezuelan President has declared. Catching his critics off guard, Hugo Chavez called on the Marxist rebel army in neighbouring Colombia to lay down its arms and release its hostages, declaring that guerrilla armies are now "out of place".

Monday, June 9, 2008
More Food Summits, But Less to Eat
The inability to manage the current food crisis is an illustration of the failure of three decades of market deregulation in agriculture.

Sunday, June 8, 2008
US Economy is a National Security Crisis: 'US Needs to Raise $6 Trillion and It is Simple,'
(1 comments) China, Russia, India and Saudi Arabia basically own the United States. Our economy is the real target of terrorists and this is our potential downfall," says Wm Glynn. His solution is ... a 10% solution. "If we are to prevent another Great Depression we need to pass one simple law: All pension plans, endowments, 401(k)s etc will be required to allocate 10% to buy back U.S. debt. (I'm not convinced)

Saturday, June 7, 2008
Two governments- the public and the deep (video)
(2 comments) UC Berkeley professor emeritus Peter Dale Scott points out that there are really two governments, the public government and the deep government. The public government is aboveboard, well intentioned, and accountable. Then there's the deep one...the one that really runs things.

Friday, June 6, 2008
Three Fixes For Our Lobbyist Problem
(2 comments) Lobbyists are influential because, as the main providers of policy information and expertise to policymakers, they increasingly define the terms of political debate. Even if we funded all elections publicly and banned lobbyists from running campaigns, they would still play a major role in the legislative processes for a simple reason: They know a lot of stuff. Increasingly, it is even lobbyists who are drafting the laws.

Friday, June 6, 2008
US issues threat to Iraq's $50bn foreign reserves in military deal
(2 comments) The US is holding hostage some $50bn (£25bn) of Iraq's money in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to pressure the Iraqi government into signing an agreement seen by many Iraqis as prolonging the US occupation indefinitely, according to information leaked to The Independent. The threat by the American side underlines the personal commitment of President George Bush to pushing the new pact through by 31 July.

Friday, June 6, 2008
Intellectual Violence
(5 comments) We're living in a society which is being controlled and dominated by people who have no respect for others. Our laws are quickly being changed from things that protect our God given right to exercise our free will without encumbrance from power and privilege, into things which give all permission to the power elite to encumber us and prevent us from living in freedom. The lie is that it done to secure us, but we are not secure

Friday, June 6, 2008
The Global Crisis: Food, Water and Fuel
(11 comments) The provision of food, water and fuel is a precondition of civilized society: they are necessary factors for the survival of the human species. In recent years, the prices of these three variables has increased dramatically at the global level, with devastating economic and social consequences. These three essential goods or commodities are under the control of a small number of global corporations and financial institutions

Thursday, June 5, 2008
Israel's Influence on US Foreign Policy (video)
Former U.S. Marine Corps officer and UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter talks about the unique influence that the Israel war lobby has on the U.S. news media and U.S. foreign policy. To talk of "Israel", "Jews" and even "Zionists" as the problem is ignorant and counterproductive. It is the Israeli war party and their supporters in the US that is the problem.

Thursday, June 5, 2008
Militarizing Your Cyberspace
The Air Force has now set up its own Cyber Command, redefined the Internet as just more "air space" fit for "cyber-craft," and launched its own Bush-style preemptive strike on the other military services for budgetary control of the same. A massive $30 billion cyberspace boondoggle will provide the Air Force with the ability to fry any computer on Earth.

Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Climate Change- effects on agriculture, land and water resources
The report finds that climate change is already affecting U.S. water resources, agriculture, land resources, and biodiversity, and will continue to do so. Specific findings include: risk of crop failures, reduced productivity of livestock and dairy animals, increases in the size and frequency of forest fires, insect outbreaks and tree mortality, and a trend toward reduced mountain snowpack in the western US.

Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Ban GMOs Now
(1 comments) Dr. Mae-Wan Ho warns that further indulgence in GMOs will severely damage our chances of surviving the food crisis and global warming; organic agriculture and localised food systems are the way forward. The biotech industry's aggressive campaign of disinformation and manipulation of science did nothing to obscure the signs that the dream would soon turn into nightmare.

Wednesday, June 4, 2008
The Health Care Entitlement That Must Not Be Named
The 2nd biggest health care entitlement isn't Medicaid, it's the $200+ billion tax break for employer-sponsored health insurance. The health insurance tax break costs around $30 billion more than Medicaid and, if my recollection is correct, is increasing at a faster rate than either Medicaid or Medicare. It's also, unlike Medicare or Medicaid, a regressive tax subsidy that provides more benefits for the wealthy.

Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Globalization death watch, Part I
Globalization was built on cheap oil. As that era draws to a close, so will the current phase of global integration, whether Thomas Friedman, Wal-Mart, and all those involved in intercontinental trade like it or not. The current transportation infrastructure is based on cars, trucks, airplanes, and cargo ships, which together consume about 70% of the gasoline used in the US. Cargo shipping costs have nearly tripled since 2000

Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Why Working Assets Opposes Lieberman Warner on Climate Change
Lieberman Warner doesn't provide for what scientists say we need - 80 percent reductions by 2050. And it rewards polluters by giving away rather than auctioning emissions credits. One of the reasons that many companies like the cap and trade system is that setting it up is a fundamentally political act, subject to all the good and bad that is decision making in D.C- all to ensure that someone else has to pay the tax.

Monday, June 2, 2008
The Corporate State and the Subversion of Democracy
America, the country of my birth, the country of my father, my father's father, stretching back to the generations of my family that were here for the country's founding, is so diminished as to be nearly unrecognizable. If we do not muster the courage to challenge those in the Democratic and Republican parties who herd us towards the corporate state, we will have squandered our integrity when we need it most.

Saturday, May 31, 2008
Interview with former "Donahue" producer and MSNBC pundit Jeff Cohen
(1 comments) Glenn Grennwalk interviewed Jeff Cohen, the former producer of the MSNBC show Donahue, which was canceled weeks before the invasion of Iraq despite being that network's highest rated show because, as a leaked NBC memorandum revealed, that network did not want to host an anti-war commentator- not even a single one. Cohen's comments reveal corporate and political pressures at MSNBC at that time to promote only pro-war/pro-Bush

Saturday, May 31, 2008
'US bribing Iraqi MPs to sign deal"
(1 comments) Sources in Iraq's parliament told Press TV on Thursday that Washington has offered three-million dollars in bribe to the lawmakers who sign the "framework accord." Under the agreement, the US would be allowed to set up at least 13 permanent military bases in Iraq and US citizens would be granted immunity from legal prosecution.

Friday, May 30, 2008
McCain's scary economic advisor
Not only is former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm a shill for special interests, his deregulation policies helped spur the mortgage crisis, among other financial disasters. Gramm is promoting the agenda of those who subsidize him, as he has done ever since he entered politics as a servant of oil interests in his home state. He took hundreds of thousands of dollars from energy and financial interests as a congressman and senator

Friday, May 30, 2008
WTC7 "It was a controlled demolition" (video)
Dutch demolition expert Danny Jowenko was shown video of the collapse of WTC 7 by a Dutch television crew which captured his first reactions to images of the collapse. Viewing the video, he had no doubt that was brought down by a controlled demolition. (video is there, even tho it says "removed".)

Friday, May 30, 2008
Truths for a new world of them and us
For all its tacit recognition that power has been flowing eastwards, the west still wants to imagine things as they used to be. In this world of them and us, "they" are accused by Democratic contenders in the US presidential contest of stealing "our" jobs. Now, you hear Europeans say, "they" are driving up international commodity prices by burning "our" fuel and eating "our" food.

Thursday, May 29, 2008
Where Is the Outrage? By Robert Scheer
(8 comments) Are we Americans truly savages or merely tone-deaf in matters of morality, and therefore more guilty of terminal indifference than venality? It's a question demanding an answer in response to the publication of the detailed 370-page report on U.S. complicity in torture, issued last week by the Justice Department's inspector general.

Thursday, May 29, 2008
Iraq War May Have Increased Energy Costs Worldwide by a Staggering $6 Trillion
(1 comments) The Iraq War means oil costs three times more than it should. How are our lives going to change with oil heading toward $200 a barrel?

Thursday, May 29, 2008
MP paid big price for speaking out in Harper's Ottawa
(1 comments) Welcome to Mr. Harper's Ottawa. This is a world in which a member of Parliament, sent by the people to represent them, is cowed and threatened by an unelected staffer. It's a place where a political party can silence internal debate and, in a hasty few moments, overthrow the results of an election. It's where Harper MPs are told they need permission from the PMO to speak to reporters

Thursday, May 29, 2008
LifeLock, identity-protection firm, fails to protect CEO's I.D.
(2 comments) For two years, LifeLock has run ads on TV, radio, newspapers, and billboards that broadcast Davis's most intimate details. After putting his SSN on the air, CEO Davis was himself defrauded. A man in Texas used Davis's numbers to obtain a $500 payday loan.

Thursday, May 29, 2008
FCC Wants Free Broadband Service, Plus Content Filtering
The Federal Communications Commission is looking for a bidder to provide free broadband service in the 1.9 GHz-2.1 GHz bands, agency Chair Kevin Martin told reporters on Friday. The data will have to download at a minimum of 768 kilobits, Martin said, provided at a "pretty aggressive" build out schedule: Half the United States population must be able to access it after four years, and 95% in ten years.

Thursday, May 29, 2008
Eighteen years of work destroyed in less than four hours
(3 comments) "They came at four in the morning, with two bulldozers, and they left before 8am. I own this chicken farm with my three brothers, and we worked day and night for 18 years to build up our business. The Israelis destroyed everything in less then four hours." Nasser Jaber's chicken farm was bulldozed by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) ten days ago. He still looks stunned. Wearily he guides us round the ruins

Thursday, May 29, 2008
Memo To Corporate Media: Anyone Can Dress Up As An Arab Terrorist & Fake An Al-Qaeda Tape
Nearly four years after Benjamin Vanderford hoodwinked the global media by manufacturing a fake Al-Qaeda beheading tape, America's corporate press whores are once again gearing up to fearmonger about the prospect of mushroom clouds over American cities by instantly ascribing gospel status to a dubious "Al-Qaeda fan" Internet videotape that encourages the use of WMD in a terrorist attack.

Thursday, May 29, 2008
The Stupidity of Dignity
How did the United States, the world's scientific powerhouse, reach a point at which it grapples with the ethical challenges of twenty-first-century biomedicine using Bible stories, Catholic doctrine, and woolly rabbinical allegory?

Thursday, May 29, 2008
Senate Restricting Public Access to Contractor Data
(1 comments) The U.S. Senate is moving to restrict public access to a new contractor misconduct database, part of a new proposal being spearheaded by the Project on Government Oversight and Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO).

Thursday, May 29, 2008
The Tar Sands, Downstream: Cancer, and the BC connection
The backyard of the tiny community of Fort Chipewyan, Alberta contains the second largest reserve of petroleum in the world. The tar sands development is Canada's fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions, the cause of rapid pollution of the Athabasca river basin, the reason for strip mining of thousands of square kilometres of boreal forest; a huge consumer of natural gas, and the likely cause of alarming cancer rate

Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Will We See the End of Empire in Our Time? by Richard C. Cook
I believe we have had two Americas. One started with the imperialist state which Alexander Hamilton tried to put into place in the 1790s with the First Bank of the United States. Thomas Jefferson overthrew this early expression of empire in the Civic Revolution of 1800 and created a strong and free America which lasted until 1913 in spite of the convulsion of the Civil War.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Army Intelligence Analyst Buswell, 'The 9/11 NCO,' Speaks Out
I simply said, 'If the Pentagon were hit by a plane, there would be a 190-foot wingspan impact on the building, which there was not. There would be two large engine holes in the building, which there was not. There'd be tail wreckage, bodies and debris everywhere, but there wasn't. Compare the impact hole at either World Trade Center tower to the impact hole at the Pentagon. There it was just a 16-foot hole

Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Network news anchors praise the job they did in the run-up to the war- Greenwald
The three network news anchors appeared jointly on The Today Show and were forced by McClellan's book to address whether the media failed in its duties in the run-up to the war- the first time, to my knowledge, that this topic has ever been broached by network news journalists. (They think they did a fine job pandering and propagandizing the war).

Wednesday, May 28, 2008
USDA axes the sole national survey to chart pesticide use
(1 comments) Comprehensive information about what chemicals are sprayed on food crops just got much harder to come by. The USDS recently announced that they will no longer conduct and publish annual national surveys of "which states apply the most pesticides and where bug and weed killers are most heavily sprayed to help cotton, grapes and oranges grow." The report is used extensively by farmers, environmental advocates, chemical companies

Wednesday, May 28, 2008
New Teen Health Worry: Energy in a Can
Heavy consumption of caffeinated energy drinks may be a predictor of risky behavior by teens. In addition, teens and young adults are mixing alcohol and energy drinks, which can increase the risks associated with alcohol consumption. Some dangerous disease connections are also being reported.

Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Death Squad in Delaware: The Case of the Murdered Marine
(3 comments) Derek J. Hale, a retired Marine Sergeant who served two tours in Iraq and was decorated before his combat-related medical discharge in January 2006, was murdered by a heavily armed 8–12-member undercover police team in Wilmington, Delaware last November 6. He had come to Wilmington from his home in Manassas, Virginia to participate in a Toys for Tots event.

Tuesday, May 27, 2008
US will be forced to soften: Francis Fukuyama
(2 comments) THE US can no longer assume it has hegemony over world affairs and will have to change its approach dramatically to emphasise soft power, diplomacy and regional security co-operation, according to American scholar Francis Fukuyama. "The US, despite its predominant position, is not going to be able to restructure the world as it chooses."

Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Germany calls for ban on oil speculation
German leaders are to propose a worldwide ban on oil trading by speculators, blaming the latest spike in crude prices on manipulation by hedge funds. It is the most drastic proposal to date amid escalating calls from Europe, the US and Asia for controls on market forces, underscoring the profound shift in the political climate since the credit crunch began. India has already suspended futures trading of five commodities.

Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Those who kept silent
Bystander guilt. That is what FBI and Justice Department officials have on their conscience and what John Ashcroft, the former attorney general, and FBI Director Robert Mueller should be haunted by every day. The long-awaited report from the Justice Department inspector general on abusive detainee interrogations says that the FBI should be credited for its "professionalism" --But that was not enough.

Monday, May 26, 2008
How telecoms are attempting to buy amnesty from Congress
Just in the first three months of 2008, recent lobbyist disclosure statements reveal that AT&T, Verizon and Comcast spent a combined total of almost $13 million on lobbyists. They're set to spend more than $50 million on lobbying this year. This, of course, is what leads to having these corporations literally write our nation's laws and get so close to having such an extraordinarily corrupt gift- retroactive immunity

Monday, May 26, 2008
Roger Stone on Chris Matthews
Friends who are friends of Chris Matthews tell me that despite the withering profile in the NY Times Magazine by Mark Leibovich that Chris continues to ponder and is likely to make a race against Sen. Arlen Specter, who is receiving treatment for his recently returned cancer. (One ego-mad pol-watcher's take on another....)

Monday, May 26, 2008
Weather warfare
(1 comments) Rarely acknowledged in the debate on global climate change, the world's weather can now be modified as part of a new generation of sophisticated electromagnetic weapons. Both the US and Russia have developed capabilities to manipulate the climate for military use. Air Force documents suggest HAARP is an integral part of the militarisation of space.

Monday, May 26, 2008
Movie damns Monsanto's deadly sins
The story starts in the White House, where Monsanto often got its way by exerting influence over policymakers via the "revolving door". One example is Michael Taylor, who worked for Monsanto as an attorney before being appointed as deputy commissioner of the FDA in 1991. While at the FDA, Taylor made crucial decisions that led to the approval of GE foods and crops. Then he returned to Monsanto, as VP for public policy.

Sunday, May 25, 2008
How and why the threat of bioterrorism has been so greatly exaggerated
William R. Clark, professor and chair emeritus of immunology at UCLA, has been a research scientist for 30 years and has written a string of books for the general public. His latest, Bracing for Armageddon?, examines the science and politics of bioterrorism in the United States. Although the United States will have spent $50 billion on defense against bioterrorism, Clark argues that we have more to fear from natural pandemics.

Sunday, May 25, 2008
End of the Bush-Clinton Era?
This period – roughly marked by George H.W. Bush's rise as Vice President and then President from 1981 to 1993, Bill Clinton's embattled two terms, and then eight years under George W. Bush – represented an extraordinary period of lost opportunities for the nation as its global power peaked and began a rapid descent. Notable for its bitter partisanship, mindless jingoism and willful historical amnesia, this era saw the United

Sunday, May 25, 2008
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.- How the news media fails us (video)
(8 comments) The US news media is fascinated by the Kennedys. Fascinated with smearing them, fascinating with sensationalizing them, fascinated with the process of making them disappear. How often have you seen Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on mainstream TV news? Not very often. This video shows why.

Saturday, May 24, 2008
Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy by Murray N. Rothbard
(1 comments) Afterword By Justin Raimondo: As Rothbard explains in his economic writings, the key is in understanding that money is a commodity, like any other, and thus subject to the laws of the market. A government-granted monopoly in this, the very lifeblood of the economic system, is a recipe for inflation, a debased currency – and the creation of a permanent plutocracy whose power is virtually unlimited.

Saturday, May 24, 2008
Message to Military Personnel: Bring the War Home
WE HAVE FAILED YOU The ongoing United States invasion of Iraq has cost the lives of more than 4,000 American soldiers and 1.2 million Iraqis. The Democratic-majority U.S. Senate has just passed $165 billion "to fund the war in Iraq until President Bush's successor takes over." Congress will provide another seven month's funding to sustain the bloody, miserable, and prolonged occupation of Mesopotamia.

Saturday, May 24, 2008
Nation's Leading Moral Issues
It is a moral issue that the United States- the world's one and only military superpower- spends half of its federal budget on warfare, weaponry and on maintaining a spectacular, historically unprecedented "empire of bases"- including more than 720 military installations located in nearly every nation on Earth- while billions of world citizens (including millions in the imperial "homeland") live in conditions of deprivation.

Saturday, May 24, 2008
Economic Exploitation and Empire
Key to enforcement of US economic exploitation of people outside the US is the use and threat of military force. The dominance of the military in US public life and the US economy is also key to the economic exploitation of Americans. Our largest export is weapons, and our largest and longest public investment is in killing. With corporations no longer paying significant taxes, half of every tax dollar is for death and destruc

Friday, May 23, 2008
Vast cracks appear in Arctic ice
Dramatic evidence of the break-up of the Arctic ice-cap has emerged from research during an expedition by the Canadian military. Scientists travelling with the troops found major new fractures during an assessment of the state of giant ice shelves in Canada's far north. The team found a network of cracks that stretched for more than 10 miles (16km) on Ward Hunt, the area's largest shelf.

Friday, May 23, 2008
Israeli pilots threatened to blast Blair's jet out of sky
(4 comments) Tony Blair came within moments of being killed when two Israeli fighter aircraft threatened to shoot down a private jet taking him to a Middle East conference in the belief that it might have been staging a terrorist attack. The warplanes were scrambled to intercept after the jet pilot failed to contact air traffic control.

Friday, May 23, 2008
Shouldn't Chemicals Be Proven Safe for Kids Before Marketing?
(2 comments) Currently, U.S. chemicals law is so toothless that the U.S. EPA was unable to ban asbestos under its provisions, even though asbestos is perhaps the most potent cancer-causing substance ever introduced into commerce and kills about 10,000 people per year. Time for a new law.

Thursday, May 22, 2008
Government Insider: Bush Authorized 911 Attacks
(5 comments) Stanley Hilton was a senior advisor to Sen Bob Dole (R) and has personally known Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz for decades. This courageous man has risked his professional reputation, and possibly his life, to get this information out to people. The following is from his latest visit to Alex Jones' radio show.

Thursday, May 22, 2008
A new compound fights drug-resistant bacteria
Sifting through South African soil samples, scientists at Merck Research Laboratories found a new compound called platensimycin. It is effective against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and other multiple-drug-resistant bacteria, thus representing an entirely new class of antibiotic.

Thursday, May 22, 2008
We'll go no more a-Rove-ing
Rove's merger of politics and policy was an effort to forge a total one-party state. While he is acclaimed as a political strategist, his true innovation was in governing. He sought to subordinate the entire federal government to his goal of creating a permanent Republican majority. Every department and agency has been subject to an intense and thorough politicization. Rove's ambitious plan was nearly a proto-Sovietization.

Thursday, May 22, 2008
Bush uses food crisis aid package to promote genetically modified crops
(1 comments) The Bush administration has added a controversial ingredient to the $770-million aid package it recently proposed to ease the world food crisis: language that would promote the use of genetically modified crops in food-deprived countries. The value or detriment of genetically modified, or bioengineered, food is an intensely disputed issue in the U.S. and in Europe, where many countries have banned foods made from GMO

Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Budget Hero - setting federal budget priorities (video)
If you ever wanted to control where your tax dollars go, here's your chance to decide.

Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Reuters/Zogby Poll: Obama Opens Double-digit Lead Over McCain in National Test
Obama does well among his Democratic base, winning 79% support – an indication that the party faithful may be coming together behind his campaign as a bruising nomination campaign nears the end. He also does well among non-aligned voters, as independents favor him over McCain by a 48% to 32% margin.

Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Hologram Man: The Sad, Weird Twilight of George Bush
It must be a soul-crushing gig, pretending to care; of constantly being forced, simply for official reasons of state, to pantomime concern about human life, about the death of innocent people, about the education of children, about the hunger of the poor- to even act like you're paying attention to other people at all -when in your heart you know that you're only the designated front-man for a criminal business-syndicate.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Little girls gone wild
(4 comments) Now companies sell padded bras to 6-year-olds. Isn't it time to stop marketing grown-up sexuality to little kids? Some clothes project sexual symbols. And we know what they are: fishnet hose and stilettos and corsets. They're almost clichés of sexuality. But when you see them on a very young child, there's that sexual overtone- the kinds of clothing that they're being encouraged to wear are really associated with sex work

Tuesday, May 20, 2008
With Friends Like These- Uri Avnery
(1 comments) Lately we are flooded with friends. The Great of the Earth, past and present, come here to flatter us, to fawn on us, to grovel at our feet. Not one of them had a word of criticism. No occupation. No settlements. No Gaza blockade. No daily killings. Just a wonderful, peace-loving state that the bad, bad terrorists want to throw into the sea. Not one of the guests stood up to warn us against going on with the present policy.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008
The Conservative Case for Barack Obama
For conservatives to hope the election of yet another Republican will set things right is surely in vain. To believe that President John McCain will reduce the scope and intrusiveness of federal authority, cut the imperial presidency down to size, and put the government on a pay-as-you-go basis is to succumb to a great delusion. The Republican establishment may maintain the pretense of opposing Big Government, but pretense it

Monday, May 19, 2008
Max Keiser: Post Traumatic Oil Price Disorder
Here's the deal folks, oil is priced in dollars, and to bail out the U.S. banking system America's central bank is flooding the market with record amounts of dollars. What happens when too many dollars chase too few barrels of oil? Well, believe it or not, the price of oil goes up.

Monday, May 19, 2008
Better Secrecy for Open Source Intel Collectors Urged
U.S. intelligence employees who are collecting open source intelligence online should do more to ensure that they are not identified as intelligence personnel, the House Armed Services Committee said in its new report on the 2009 Defense Authorization Act. Failure to conceal the identity of open source intelligence collectors could conceivably lead to spoofing, disinformation or other forms of compromise.

Monday, May 19, 2008
Linguist gives students lesson in free thinking
(1 comments) Via speakerphone from his office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, linguistics professor Noam Chomsky told Dundee-Crown High School students that a two-tiered educational system exists: While the elite attend schools that promote critical, independent thought, the masses attend schools that train students to pass tests and follow orders.

Monday, May 19, 2008
Controlled Unclassified Information
The Bush admin. has a problem. Sometimes you're running the government but, inconveniently, it's not the government of Burma and so you need to be accountable to voters, etc. Under the circumstances, it helps if you can keep all your conduct secret. But that's hard to do purely through abuse of the classification process. Why not invent a new form of secret information? Good idea! Let's call it "Controlled Unclassified Inform

Monday, May 19, 2008
Thousands killed by US's Korean ally
Grave by mass grave, South Korea is unearthing the skeletons and buried truths of a cold-blooded slaughter from early in the Korean War, when this nation's U.S.-backed regime killed untold thousands of leftists and hapless peasants in a summer of terror in 1950. With U.S. military officers sometimes present, the southern army and police emptied South Korean prisons, lined up detainees and shot them in the head

Sunday, May 18, 2008
Bolivia under siege - US-funded autonomy movements threaten to tear the country apart
Bolivia is facing a new crisis, which many Latin Americans believe is caused by the United States. On one hand is a proposed new progressive constitution, which gives significant rights to the native majority; on the other is an up swelling of separatist movements, which the Bolivian government calls the Kosovo strategy - an American a