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I enjoy writing about political/ economic events, and I am especially concerned about the US as a warlike nation. I would like to see this nation turn itself around from a conquering nation in both commerce and war to a nation of peace. I hope that we can build fair trade based on mutual interests, and respect other countries enough to allow them to make their own decisions.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011 Iraq War Deaths Exceed Vietnam War Numbers (1 comments)
More Gulf War Veterans have died than Vietnam Veterans. This probably is news to you. But the truth has been hidden by a technicality. So here is the truth.
The casualties in the Vietnam War were pretty simple to understand. If a soldier was dead from his combat tour, he was a war casualty. There are 58,195 names recorded on the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, DC.
Monday, June 6, 2011 Wall Street's Role in Narco-Trafficking By MIKE WHITNEY
This isn't foreign policy; it's another US occupation. And, guess who's raking in the big cashola on this sordid little scam? Wall Street. That's right, the big banks are getting their cut just like they always do. Take a look at this excerpt from an article by James Petras titled "How Drug Profits saved Capitalism" at Global Research. It's a great summary of the objectives that are shaping the policy:
Tuesday, April 26, 2011 Sex trafficking in the U.S. called "epidemic' By Chuck Neubauer
Sex trafficking is so widespread, said Nathan Wilson, founder of the Project Meridian Foundation in Arlington, which helps police identify traffickers and their victims, that "no country, no race, no religion, no class and no child is immune." He said 1.6 million children younger than 18 -- native and foreign-born -- have been caught up in this country's sex trade.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011 Exclusive: Loughner Friend Explains Alleged Gunman's Grudge Against Giffords-- By Nick Baumann
At 2:00 a.m. on Saturday--about eight hours before he allegedly killed six people and wounded 14, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), in Tucson--Jared Lee Loughner phoned an old and close friend with whom he had gone to high school and college. The friend, Bryce Tierney, was up late watching TV, but he didn't answer the call. When he later checked his voice mail, he heard a simple message from Loughner: "Hey man, it's Jared. Me and you had good times. Peace out. Later."
Thursday, September 23, 2010 Guns and Butter with Dr. Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff
This is a radio show about Project Censored's 2011 book. The book includes stories about 911 and the suspicious circumstances around 911.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010 The Gulf crisis: beautiful planet versus deadly profit system
The horror grows day by day as the cover-up by BP and its government co-conspirators is peeled away. It started with the deaths of the 11 workers who were victims of the April 20 explosion and now threatens whole cultures, both ecological and human -" the unique ways of life of fishers, shrimpers, and the Gulf's other inhabitants.
Sunday, June 20, 2010 Fault Lines with Avi Lewis - In Deep Water
AlJazeeraEnglish 17 June 2010 In the two months since the Deepwater Horizon explosion, millions of litres of oil have gushed out of BP's well into the water each day, slowly encroaching on the coastline. Fault Lines' Avi Lewis travels to the drill zone, and learns about the erosion in the wetlands from industry canals and pipelines, the health problems blamed on contaminated air and water from petrochemic
Tuesday, June 8, 2010 Huckabee piles on Thomas, even after demanding Palestinians leave
Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee appears to be ignoring that age-old advice, taking several moments during a recent Fox News broadcast to attack veteran White House reporter Helen Thomas over her opinion on the Israel-Palestine conflict -- in spite of his own remarkably similar comments on Palestinians.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010 The Case for Socialism
"The [Socialist] Party had 100,000 members and 1200 office-holders in 340 municipalities. Socialism was especially strong in the Southwest, among tenant farmers, railroad workers, coal miners, and lumberjacks. Oklahoma had 12,000 dues-paying members in 1914 and more than one hundred socialists in local office."
Wednesday, February 24, 2010 BBC News - US trade deficit widens as imports outpace exports
The US trade deficit rose to $40.2bn (£25.7bn) in December, official figures have shown, partly due to a 14.8% increase in oil imports.
The December deficit was 10% higher than in November and the largest for 12 months.
Saturday, January 30, 2010 Urgency and Opportunity in the Debate to Define "Change"
The panic among liberals was palpable on the eve of Scott Brown's insurgent victory to become Massachusetts' Republican junior senator. The general election was supposed to be a dull affair after the four way race for the Democratic Party's nomination. Yet in the final weeks of a truncated campaign, despite the holidays and wintery weather,
Saturday, January 30, 2010 Obama State of the Union: He got the ball rolling
In some ways last night's State of the Union address by President Obama was a virtuoso performance. There were stirring moments, memorable turns of phrase, humor, a defense of activist government, and proposals that will be welcomed, and surely help, millions of people in need.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010 Who Controls The Major U.S. Military Contractors?
The point is, control of American companies is rapidly being consolidated into a few foreign hands, and they are also doing so at "frantic" pace. Damn any of the promis
Wednesday, January 13, 2010 Blatantly Anti-Semitic Exchange on C-Span (1 comments)
Michael Scheuer, the former director of a CIA unit assigned to track down Osama Bin-Laden, calmly expressed the view that American soldiers are now dying in Iraq for the sake of Israelis. He further claimed that any debate of American support for Israel is squelched in the public sphere.
Thursday, January 7, 2010 McCain, Cantwell sponsor bank bill
wo senators, including Washington state Democrat Maria Cantwell, have called for breaking up large financial firms that perform both commercial and investment banking, adding a wrinkle to already difficult Senate talks on how to regulate Wall Street.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010 The Bible Vs. Modern Israel By Babu G. Ranganathan
Although the modern state of Israel, having been established, has the right to exist like any other nation, Israel must also respect the Palestinians' right to their land in the West Bank. But, Israel keeps building Jewish settlements in the West Bank. That is the main reason why the majority of Palestinians continue to support the radical organization Hamas.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009 Afghanistan - What is it all about?
al Telegraph) - If we listen to our leaders we are led to believe that when the Afghanistan war first started the main area of activity was in the Nangarhar Province in the north-eastern region of Afghanistan.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009 Honduras Military Coup Engineered By 2 US Companies?
I recently visited Central America. Everyone I talked with there was convinced that the military coup that had overthrown the democratically-elected president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, had been engineered by two US companies, with CIA support. And that the US and its new president were not standing up for democracy.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009 The Biggest Shift from North to South: 'Time to De-Grow' | CommonDreams.org
He calls for "abandoning the objective of growth for growth's sake, an insane objective, with disastrous consequences for the environment." The need for a 'de-growth' society stems from the certainty, he says, that the earth's resources and natural cycles cannot sustain the economic growth which is the essence of capitalism and modernity.
Monday, July 20, 2009 'Deal could bring international support for strike on Iran' | Iran news | Jerusalem Post (1 comments)
A deal taking shape between Israel and Western leaders will facilitate international support for an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities in exchange for concessions in peace negotiations with the Palestinians and Arab neighbors, The Times reported Thursday.
Sunday, July 19, 2009 Imminent Erosion of USDollar Seawall
The globe is losing patience with leadership and management of the USGovt ship at sea. They simply refuse to offer a credible solution to the primary keynote crack in the hull, falling housing prices and cratered mortgages, each of which work their destructive magic to wreck the banks. The home loan modifications are a farce, a travesty not designed to modify but rather to frame a series of loan forbearances.
Saturday, July 18, 2009 Solar Eclipse 2009
The longest Solar Eclipse of our time takes place in 5 days.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009 True unemployment rate already at 20% - Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money (1 comments)
Really, how hard is it to find a job? Was June's horrid numbers, in which 467,000 people lost their jobs compared to 345,000 in May, a one-time fluke? Or does it mean that all those Wall Street economists who believe the economic recovery is starting are dead wrong?
Friday, July 3, 2009 A List of Corporate Lobbying by Jill Richardson (3 comments)
Out of curiosity I decided to see who was spending the most on lobbying in America. And Oh My Goodness - NO WONDER our policy sucks. No wonder it's nearly impossible to pass health care reform that provides all Americans with affordable care, a global warming bill that doesn't suck, and the Employee Free Choice Act.
Thursday, July 2, 2009 Ignoring Propethic Predictors | CommonDreams.org
Obama chose the very Wall Streeters and Wall Street servants who were involved in, condoned, or profited from the speculative binges that led to the biggest government bailout scheme in world history. The President's explanation is that he wants experienced people who know how Wall Street works. Yeah, right! In reality, he wanted political cover.
Thursday, July 2, 2009 History of the Nationalization of Iranian Oil (3 comments)
This article describes how the oil industry was nationalized in Iran. Is this the real reason for the CIA intervention?
Tuesday, June 30, 2009 A Few Thoughts on the Coup in Honduras: Information Clearing House - ICH
There is a lot of great analysis circulating on the military coup against Manuel Zelaya in Honduras. I do not see a need to re-invent the wheel. However, a few key things jump out at me. First, we know that the coup was led by Gen. Romeo Vasquez, a graduate of the US Army School of the Americas.
Sunday, June 28, 2009 Iranian envoy: CIA involved in Neda's shooting? - CNN.com (2 comments)
The United States may have been behind the killing of Neda Agha-Soltan, the 26-year-old Iranian woman whose fatal videotaped shooting Saturday made her a symbol of opposition to the June 12 presidential election results, the country's ambassador to Mexico said Thursday.
Sunday, June 21, 2009 A History of CIA Atrocities
Article explains how the CIA works with Big American business to install puppet dictators.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009 Al Jazeera English - Focus - Why America is a bank-owned state
In my last column I introduced the idea that America's handling of the financial crisis, and in particular the way it has refused to deal with the banks, is more in keeping with how an "emerging" economy might behave and act.
So this week, I will say that America has become a bank-owned state, allowing its banking oligarchs to suffocate the economy so they can survive at any price.
Monday, June 15, 2009 Americans in Jerusalem 'Feel the Hate' for Obama | CommonDreams.org
A new video posted on the Internet featuring inebriated American Jewish youth in a Jerusalem bar spouting hate-filled sentiments has garnered massive exposure and caused a firestorm in the media and the Jewish world.
Friday, June 12, 2009 The Dalai Lama:"what Richard Gere won't tell you" (2 comments)
Tibet was a feudal society before the revolutionary changes that started in 1949. There were two main classes: the serfs and the aristocratic serf owners. The people lived like serfs in Europe's "Dark Ages," or like African slaves and sharecroppers of the U.S. South.
Friday, June 12, 2009 China Trashes Tibetan Environment for Cash
This is the first in-depth study of the impact of 41 years of Chinese rule on Tibet's environment. The study shows that Chinese policies have led to widespread environmental damage in the Tibetan Plateau; they have been of no benefit to the Tibetan people.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009 Navy Vet Honored, Foiled Israeli Attack | CommonDreams.org (1 comments)
The answer is Terry Halbardier, whose bravery and ingenuity as a 23-year-old Navy seaman spelled the difference between the murder of 34 of the USS Liberty crew and the intended massacre of all 294.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009 Princes Among Men | CommonDreams.org
Having gotten over $150 billion in bailout money, insurance giant AIG is now trying to take back millions they made the mistake of giving for health care for homeless children,
Tuesday, May 26, 2009 Narco News: U.S. Cocaine-Plane Invasion Spooking Latin America
Two Florida-based companies that have exported a total of at least 11 aircraft to Venezuelan buyers since 2003 are linked to four cocaine planes and what appears to be an elaborate covert intelligence operation, an ongoing Narco News investigation shows.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009 Sri Lanka's Silenced Dissenters Still Speak Volumes | CommonDreams.org
My sister, Dr Rajani Thiranagama, a prominent human rights activist in Sri Lanka, wrote this. A year later, in September 1989, she was gunned down by an LTTE assassin. This year is the 20th anniversary of her death.
Sunday, May 17, 2009 Haiti: the land where children eat mud - Times Online (1 comments)
Haiti is mired in historic debt and in danger of complete collapse. It is stricken by flood and famine, and kidnap, rape and child abuse are rife. So what is the West doing to rescue the 'nightmare republic'?
Tuesday, May 12, 2009 Bloated Empire and the Financial Crash | CommonDreams.org
A few - and only a few - prescient commentators have questioned whether the U.S. can sustain its informal global empire in the wake of the most severe economic crisis since World War II. And the simultaneous quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan are leading more and more opinion leaders and taxpayers to this question.
Monday, May 11, 2009 Afghan girl's burns show horror of chemical strike
Life as 8-year-old Razia knew it ended one March morning when a shell her father says was fired by Western troops exploded into their house, enveloping her head and neck in a blazing chemical.
Sunday, May 10, 2009 NASA - Deep Solar Minimum
: The sunspot cycle is behaving a little like the stock market. Just when you think it has hit bottom, it goes even lower.
2008 was a bear. There were no sunspots observed on 266 of the year's 366 days (73%). To find a year with more blank suns, you have to go all the way back to 1913, which had 311 spotless days: plot. Prompted by these numbers, some observers suggested that the solar cycle had hit bottom in 2008.
Saturday, May 9, 2009 "Gaza II' unfolding in the East
Due to Israel's military assistance to Sri Lanka, Palestinians reportedly began aiding the Tamils in the 1980s. It is also believed that Israel's Mossad recruited agents among Sri Lanka's large contingent of foreign workers in the Persian Gulf Arab states.
Friday, May 1, 2009 Johann Hari: Our Hunger for Cheap Meat Has Created Swine Flu
A swelling number of scientists believe swine flu has not happened by accident. No: they argue this global pandemic - and all the deaths we are about to see - is the direct result of our demand for cheap meat. So is the way we produce our food really making us sick as a pig?
Friday, May 1, 2009 Somalis say illegal fishing by foreign trawlers drove them to piracy (1 comments)
Eid related what amounts to the pirates' creation myth, in which overfishing by European and Asian trawlers drove Somalia's coastal communities to ruin and forced local fishermen to fight for their livelihoods.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009 Narco News: How "The NAFTA Flu" Exploded
Smithfield Farms Fled US Environmental Laws to Open a Gigantic Pig Farm in Mexico, and All We Got Was this Lousy Swine Flu
Tuesday, April 28, 2009 Swine Flu Crisis Lays Bare the Meat Industry's Monstrous Power
The Mexican swine flu, a genetic chimera probably conceived in the faecal mire of an industrial pigsty, suddenly threatens to give the whole world a fever. The initial outbreaks across North America reveal an infection already travelling at higher velocity than did the last official pandemic strain, the 1968 Hong Kong flu.
Monday, April 27, 2009 Where's My Change? | CommonDreams.org
Right afterward, President Obama told the press that "there has to be strong and reliable protections for consumers, protections that ban unfair rate increases and forbid abusive fees and penalties." This soaring rhetoric places a heavy burden on Mr. Obama to stand up to the giant power of the credit card bosses and their monetized allies on Capitol Hill.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009 Lessons on How to Guzzle Less Gas, From Europe and Japan (1 comments)
The sight of the presidential limo (a Cadillac known as "The Beast") performing a five-point turn last week in front of 10 Downing Street in London made it glaringly obvious why Europeans have come to prefer smaller cars that fit through their medieval cities. It may also symbolize how hard it will be for America to turn a corner on its energy policies.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009 US Jewish lobby challenged by 'pro-peace' rival - Telegraph (1 comments)
For the past 25 years, the influential and hawkish American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) has helped thwart every US presidential effort to deliver Middle East peace on terms it was unhappy with. The lobby's legendary stranglehold over US foreign policy is now receding with the rise of J Street, which describes itself as the "political arm of the pro-Israel, pro-peace movement".
Tuesday, April 21, 2009 Iran's leader sparks Western walkout at UN meeting (1 comments)
GENEVA Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused the West of using the Holocaust as a "pretext" for aggression against Palestinians, prompting walkouts Monday by every European Union country at a U.N. conference on racism.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009 Waste Not, Want Not | Mother Jones
Plastic water bottles, one after another-80 million of them get tossed every day. The ones I'm stomping down are being "recycled," but so what? In a country where almost everyone has access to clean drinking water, they define waste to begin with. In fact, once you start thinking about it, the category of "waste" begins to expand, until it includes an alarming percentage of our economy. Let's do s
Sunday, April 19, 2009 Banks Must Brace For New Losses
One must give a tip of the hat to the Wall Street conmen for engineering a reasonably robust stock rally. The Dow and S&P were led by financials. The Financial Times out of London claims 'no real money' was behind the stock rally of over 20%. They must mean huge short covering, enhanced by pressure tactics from Wall Street brokerages themselves.
Sunday, April 19, 2009 Bailout Indignation | CommonDreams.org
You might think that the reckless, avaricious, giant corporations, having shrunk the economy, cost millions of jobs and then demanded that taxpayers be dunned for years into the future for multi-trillion dollar bailouts, would show contrition, regret, or self-restraint of their power over Washington.
Saturday, April 18, 2009 World Politics Review | War Is Boring: U.S. Struggles to Adapt to China's Economic Strategy
A series of events in Washington in March and April highlighted the ways in which the U.S. is struggling to come to terms with a rising China, whose greatest strength -- even during a global recession -- is not military, but rather economic in nature. Therein, too, lies its greatest threat to U.S. interests.
Thursday, April 16, 2009 1,500 farmers commit mass suicide in India - Asia, World - The Independent (1 comments)
Bharatendu Prakash, from the Organic Farming Association of India, told the Press Association: "Farmers' suicides are increasing due to a vicious circle created by money lenders. They lure farmers to take money but when the crops fail, they are left with no option other than death."
Wednesday, April 15, 2009 Overfishing to Wipe out Bluefin Tuna in 3 Years: WWF | CommonDreams.org (2 comments)
MADRID - Overfishing will wipe out the breeding population of Atlantic bluefin tuna, one of the ocean's largest and fastest predators, in three years unless catches are dramatically reduced, conservation group WWF said on Tuesday.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009 World Will Not Meet 2C Warming Target, Climate Change Experts Agree | CommonDreams.org
Almost nine out of 10 climate scientists do not believe political efforts to restrict global warming to 2C will succeed, a Guardian poll reveals today. An average rise of 4-5C by the end of this century is more likely, they say, given soaring carbon emissions and political constraints.
Saturday, April 4, 2009 Why We Should Listen to the Protesters
Two global crises have collided, and we have a chance here, now, to solve them both with one mighty heave - but our leaders are letting this opportunity for greatness leach away. The protesters here in London were trying to sound an alarm now, at five minutes to ecological midnight.
Thursday, April 2, 2009 Inflation and Speculation: Ingredients for the Next Food Crisis? | CommonDreams.org
In March of 2008 the price of food commodities hit an all-time high, sending 100 million people into the ranks of the hungry, worldwide. Food price inflation got started with droughts, rising oil prices, and an increase in demand for grain (mostly coming from feedlots and biofuels plants). Then, as prices rose, investors-hungry in the aftermath of the housing bust-pounced on rising commodity futures, creating a "food bubble."
