vrijdag 24 augustus 2012

OpEdNews


'By Paul Craig Roberts
America's Descent into Poverty
The Clinton sell-outs to Big Money essentially abolished Aid to Families with Dependent Children. But this sell-out of struggling Americans was not enough to satisfy the Republican Party. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan want to cut or abolish every program that cushions poverty-stricken Americans from starvation and homelessness.

America has done an excellent job of portraying itself as the bastion of human rights, freedom and democracy. However, there is only one problem with that wondrous self-assessment; it is simply not the case as it has become very evident that, based on this nation's hubristic actions around the world and it continued repressive actions domestically, it has forfeited the right to that distinction.
lately I've been mad about Mad Men, scrambling through episodes with a strange intrigue of looking through a portal to a time when lady secretaries were totally subordinate to their suited bosses. Gawking and groping women was par for the corporate course,

People who are prisoners of their brand of fundamentalism hate freedom, particularly inner freedom. Behind closed minds, they peer through their cell windows, viewing with fury the peace and harmony of free people strolling in the park.
Ban Ki Moon the Sec'y Gen'l of the U.N. is going to Iran next week to attend the summit mtg. of the 120 nation non aligned movement over U.S. and Israeli objections. Israeli PM Netanyahu says "Your visit will grant legitimacy to a regime that is the greatest threat to world peace &security". But that's shear propaganda. It is the U.S. and Israeli policy's & actions that pose the greatest threats to world peace & security.
By Bob Burnett
Karl Rove's Monstrous Second Act: The Romneyan
In the 2000 Presidential campaign, Karl Rove created The Dubya . Now the evil genius of Republican politics is back with his second monster, The Romneyan . Will Rove's creation win again?
By Nina Moliver
Nationalize the Fossil Fuel Industry
The only thing the scientists have gotten wrong so far about global heating is the timetable. All of the model predictions have been underestimates. The fossil fuel industry presents a clear and present danger to national and world security, to human civilization, and to life on earth. To end this rapid feedback loop, we need to bring the assets of the fossil fuel industry under social control.
By Elizabeth Murray
The Human Cost of War on Iran
As Israel threatens to bomb Iran, U.S. pundits are again pontificating about the necessity of war and opining about military tactics. Left out of their frame is the certainty of mass human suffering, a reality forgotten since the days of the Vietnam War.

This is a titanic battle between NATO-GCC and BRICS members Russia and China. At stake is nothing less than the rule of international law, which has been steadily going down the drain since at least Agent Orange being sprayed all over Vietnam, through Dubya's invasion of Iraq in 2003, and with the Libyan "humanitarian bombing" reaching an abysmal low.
San Bernardino and other counties are drowning in debt from a crisis created when Wall Street's real estate securitization bubble burst. By using eminent domain, they can clean up the destruction of their land title records and 400 years of real property law. And by setting up their own banks, counties and other municipalities can use their own capital and revenues to generate credit for local purposes.
We have established the link between global warming and devastating earthquakes that have ravaged the earth over the past eight years.

Sustainable Energy for All is a call to action to safeguard our collective future. All stakeholders must work together in order to achieve a broad-based transformation of the world's energy systems over the next twenty years.
Kanzi the bonobo continues to impress. Not content with learning sign language or making up "words" for things like banana or juice, he now seems capable of making stone tools on a par with the efforts of early humans. Eviatar Nevo of the University of Haifa in Israel and his colleagues sealed food inside a log to mimic marrow locked inside long bones, and watched Kanzi, a 30-year-old male bonobo chimp, try to extract it. While a companion bonobo attempted the problem a handful of times, and succeeded only by smashing the log on the ground, Kanzi took a longer and arguably more sophisticated approach. Both had been taught to knap flint flakes in the 1990s, holding a stone core in one hand and using another as a hammer. Kanzi used the tools he created to come at the log in a variety of ways: inserting sticks into seams in the log, throwing projectiles at it, and employing stone flints...
A clever musical tribute to Todd Akin by the Raging Grannies, 'Using Creative and Humorous Protests for Political Education.' The Grannies are totally non-violent, believe in only peaceful protest (with lots of laughter), work for the 'many not the few' and 'see our work as the spreading green branches of a great tree, rising up to provide shelter and nourishment for those who will come after us.'http://raginggrannies.net and http://raginggrannies.org
I don't want to waste another second thinking about Todd Akin, and his theory that you can't get pregnant unless your eggs are asking for it. Here's the only thing you need to know about Todd Akin and human anatomy: he's an a**hole. What I want to talk about is how it's not a coincidence that the party of fundamentalism is also the party of fantasy. When I say religion is a mental illness, this is what I mean: it corrodes your mental faculties to the point where you can believe in tiny ninja warriors who hide in vaginas and lie in wait for bad people's sperm.
So far, most of the discussion of Paul Ryan, the presumptive Republican nominee for vice president, has focused on his budget proposals. But Mr. Ryan is a man of many ideas, which would ordinarily be a good thing. In his case, however, most of those ideas appear to come from works of fiction, specifically Ayn Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged." He is deadly serious about cutting taxes on the rich and slashing aid to the poor, very much in line with Rand's worship of the successful and contempt for "moochers."
By Mark Sashine
The Pussies, The War On Women And My Childhood Encounter With A Patented Demagogue
Patented demagogues should not be trusted. They steal your soul. That's what they are for. Here, in the US they are paid big money for that. Be prepared.
By Bob Patterson
Got Tourist Attractions?
Did the tourists in San Francisco miss seeing Elvis Christ earlier this week?
Yiannis Makridakis writes about the devastation caused by the current wildfires on the island of Chios where he lives. In the past 6 days, wildfires have destroyed 80% of the pine and mastic forests in Chios. The fires still rages on.

By Curt Day
Will Our Apathy Make Russia Our Future
How the Russian punk rock group p*ssy Riot is protesting is not the issue. What they are protesting is. And the conditions they find abhorrent could occur here if we remain apathetic.
To vote or not to is on the minds of many Americans, but if you choose not to vote because you don't like the candidates or their policies, you are choosing to accelerate the country's demise into fascism. The consequences of not voicing your opinion has serious side-effects. Choose wisely.

An ultimate judgment in this case rests in the hands of Israeli courts. There is little, other than diplomatic pressure, that the U.S. can do to support the Corries. But the fact that President Obama, during his reelection campaign, is willing to signal to the Corries that, regardless of the outcome of the Tuesday ruling, an Obama government will continue to support their family's quest for justice.
Has there ever been a more brazen display of a foreign government dragging a more powerful nation into a war not of its own choosing? I'm talking about the almost comical efforts by the Israelis to goad Washington into attacking Iran: the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu has done everything and then some to put pressure on the Obama administration to act.
By Walter Uhler
The Tide Begins to Turn on the Sandusky Scandal
With the counteroffensive launched by former Penn State President Graham Spanier and his laywers yesterday, the tide has begun to turn in the Sandusky scandal. John Ziegler's hilarious animation -- which deserves to go viral -- shows just how absurd Freeh's allegation of a cover-up by Paterno et. al. actually is.
Mitt Romney's offshore financial holdings are coming under new scrutiny following the publication of internal audits and private letters related to his $250m fortune.

S. Brian Wilson, gave his legs and part of his skull for peace.
By Linn Washington
Secret Scheme To Sabotage Abu-Jamal's Appeal Rights
The formal resentencing of Mumia Abu-Jamal from death row to life-without-parole contained secrecy that both violated court rules and potentially sabotaged his future appeal rights.
By Stephen Lendman
War of Words on Iran
If words could kill, imperial Washington long ago would have returned Iran to its nightmarish Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi days.
Update: A message on the auction house's website on Thursday afternoon says the land sale of Pe' Sla has been cancelled at the owners' direction. The auction house said they had no comment.

After the release of two boats in mid-June, the Israeli government still has seven boats impounded in Haifa harbor: six passenger boats -- "Spirit of Humanity," "Challenger 1," "Irene," "Dignite-Al Karama," "Tahrir," and "Saoirse," and one cargo ship: "Rachel Corrie."

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An overview of the documentary "Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry" and a Q & A with the director Alison Klayman.

No joke. A little innovative thinking and economic calculation, and someone has come up with a model in Niagara Falls that could restore the U.S. economy and every economy influenced by it, not to mention the natural environment and what's left of our miserable souls.

Saving a Failed System
Combining 17 dissimilar countries under one monetary/fiscal system assured disaster waiting to happen. One size fits all rules don't work. Euro expert Bernard Connolly knew it before the euro's 1998 introduction.
You have to wonder if Isaac causes serious damage, will this crop of compassionate conservatives make pithy comments to the victims of this storm as they did when Katrina battered New Orleans? Will Tom Delay crawl out of his hidey-hole to ask the now-homeless children if they're having fun in their new shelters, because it's like "going to camp"?

Why Veterans For Peace Will be Protesting the RNC and DNC
Veterans For Peace knows that both the Republican and Democratic parties are responsible for the deaths of millions of people and the squandering of billions of dollars in illegal, immoral wars of aggression. Veterans For Peace President, Leah Bolger, explains why VFP members will be protesting at both political conventions.
Romney can't have it both ways, and can't keep hiding his tax records. They prove whether he is either a) a tax cheat or b) a brutal vulture capitalist, says TCBH! journalist Dave Lindorff

Are People Being Thrown Into Psychiatric Wards For Their Political Views?
Are we going to slide into Soviet levels of psychiatric detention of political dissidents? Unless the spread of psychiatric detention without due process of law is checked, the mere belief that the government is interfering with your liberty may become grounds for locking you away.
we largely ignore the effect of extreme inequality that is, in the long run, the most destructive: the way it makes those at the top of the social pyramid worse.

I have a theory about why right wingers have such a seemingly brain-dead response to the lies and BS that the super-pacs put out there.

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When Empathy Is Greater Than Real World Wisdom
At 12 years old, Rachel Corrie wrote powerful and insightful poem on the homeless. Only, what started as a description of the homeless became an indictment on the rest of us.
It wasn't a coat hanger. It was a wire. The theory was that by inserting the wire through the cervix, moving it around a bit and then removing it, an infection would result and the pregnancy would be aborted. It worked. It was March 1967.

The Milky Way is a fairly typical galaxy on its own, but when paired with its close neighbours - the Magellanic Clouds - it is very rare, and could have been one of a kind, until a survey of our local Universe found another two examples just like us. Astronomer Dr Aaron Robotham, jointly from the University of Western Australia node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) and the University of St Andrews in Scotland, searched for groups of galaxies similar to ours in the most detailed map of the local Universe yet, the Galaxy and Mass Assembly survey (GAMA). "We've never found another galaxy system like the Milky Way before, which is not surprising considering how hard they are to spot! It's only recently become possible to do the type of analysis that lets us find similar groups," says Dr Robotham.
Exploding stars called Type 1a supernova are ideal for measuring cosmic distance because they are bright enough to spot across the Universe and have relatively the same luminosity everywhere. Although astronomers have many theories about the kinds of star systems involved in these explosions (or progenitor systems), no one has ever directly observed one--until now... According to Dilday, it is not unusual for a star to undergo nova eruptions more than once. In fact, a "recurrent nova" system called RS Ophiuchi exists within our own Milky Way Galaxy. Located about 5,000 light years away, the system is close enough that astronomers can tell that it consists of a compact white dwarf star (the corpse of a sun-like star) orbiting a red giant. Material being blown off the red giant star in a stellar wind lands on the white dwarf.
Published on May 16, 2012 by journeymanpictures Beneath the lush green hills of Guatemala lie one hundred thousand corpses, the victims of a genocide funded by the US Government. Around a newly discovered mass grave crowd the weeping relatives of Guatemala's lost generation of Mayan Indians. 20 years ago these Mayan men, women and children were condemned as communist guerrillas and massacred. Until now these killings have been blamed on insurgents and vigilantes. But the army-issue bullets being extracted from these skulls by US forensic archaeologists tell a different story. The 400 newly discovered massacre sites are the handiwork of the Guatemalan Army, but they did not act alone -- the CIA told them how to do it.
On the basis that there was zero reason to detain a retired Marine and commit him to a medical facility for psychiatric evaluation, a Virginia judge has demanded that Brandon Raub be released from custody immediately. Raub, 26, had his home visited one week earlier by FBI, Secret Service and local law enforcement agents who expressed concern over a series of Facebook posts he had made on his public social networking profile. They detained him without charge and admitted him to a local hospital for evaluation.
The commanding officer of a Florida-based warship was removed from the post during an overseas deployment after several female crew members alleged that he sexually harassed women aboard ship, a Navy report shows. Cmdr. Derick Armstrong was relieved of command in May, about six months after his promotion to the top job aboard the guided-missile destroyer USS The Sullivans. Armstrong is among a dozen commanding officers removed so far this year.
Ryan's position opposing abortion even in cases of rape, and his attempts to define cytoblasts as legal "persons' (which would outlaw all termination of pregnancies and some forms of birth control) came under scrutiny when Republican Todd Akin, running for the Senate in Missouri, provoked a furor.
As evidence grows of human rights abuses and war crimes being committed on both sides in Syria's civil war, the United States is sticking publicly with its decision to provide only nonlethal equipment to the rebels fighting the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. The large majority of civilian deaths and human rights abuses are coming at the hands of government forces and militias, but evidence of summary executions and other abuses at the hands of rebel forces is also growing. Overall, an environment is mounting of tit-for-tat violence and rising atrocities.
Today, this global surveillance system continues to grow. It now collects so much digital detritus -- e-mails, calls, text messages, cellphone location data and a catalog of computer viruses -- that the N.S.A. is building a 1-million-square-foot facility in the Utah desert to store and process it. What's missing, however, is a reliable way of keeping track of who sees what, and who watches whom.
The gold standard has returned to mainstream U.S. politics for the first time in 30 years, with a "gold commission" set to become part of official Republican party policy. Drafts of the party platform, which it will adopt at a convention in Tampa Bay, Florida, next week, call for an audit of Federal Reserve monetary policy and a commission to look at restoring the link between the dollar and gold.
Elizabeth Warren is the kind of person Massachusetts has always liked to send to the U.S. Senate. She would instantly become a national leader, which appeals in a state that has sent to Washington Democrats such as John and Edward Kennedy and Republicans such as Henry Cabot Lodge and Edward Brooke. The Harvard Law School professor who warned of abuses in the financial system long before the economic crisis should draw suburban liberals who admire her seriousness as well as lunch-bucket Democrats who appreciate her populism.
Mitt Romney's campaign Thursday criticized President Barack Obama for military budget cuts that Romney's running mate Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) voted for, and implied that government spending is a useful economic stimulus -- at least if it's defense spending. The attack was launched in a press release that coincided with Ryan speaking at a roundtable discussion on defense in Fayetteville, N.C.
Study: Romney Floundering with Women Voters
The findings from this recent poll among women voters in battleground states provide strong evidence that Mitt Romney's record and views on women's health issues have a measurable and dramatic impact--not only on women voters' perceptions of him on key attributes, but also on their likelihood to vote for him in November. Consistent with recent public polling from battleground states, these findings demonstrate that President Obama starts with a solid lead among women voters. But notably, this advantage increases considerably when women voters learn more about Mitt Romney's record and positions, particularly his support for overturning Roe v. Wade and his pledge to eliminate funding for Planned Parenthood's preventive health services. These positions cost Romney on specific measures where he already is vulnerable, such as being "out of touch" ...
Back in 2010, this company sent out a letter from its advisers to their investors. That letter warned of a coming fiscal catastrophe if the Republicans took control in the midterms. With an economy that is still highly dependent on fiscal support, the outcome of the midterm elections could lead to gridlock that would have major ramifications for the economy. An expiration of stimulus would be a significant fiscal drag." Hold on, Romney's financial advisers warned of gridlock? I say, GOOD CALL! The stimulus worked? That's not what the Romney campaign said. Not only does this statement fly in the face of Romney's stated positions, but more importantly, the rest of the letter vindicates President Obama's call for regulating Wall Street. "Regulation will improve liquidity and transparency" one slide on the adviser's power point read.

It was mid-July and I had come to Hilltop Public Solutions because Jessie Bradley, a partner with the consulting firm, appeared to run two social-welfare nonprofits out of its Washington, D.C., office. ProPublica was preparing a story about how such groups -- also known as 501(c)(4)s for their section of the tax code -- were pouring money into elections. The nonprofits run by Bradley, Economy Forward and the Citizens for Strength and Security Action Fund, or CSS Action Fund, had spent more than $3 million supporting Democrats in 2010, records showed....The IRS says that citizens who are rejected from seeing tax returns or applications should write to complain about the offending nonprofit, which can be fined $20 a day, up to $10,000 maximum, as long as the failure continues. ProPublica is considering filing a complaint...
Wanted: Negotiating Text of Trans-Pacific Partnership. Reward Offered.
At this very moment, the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP)--a trade agreement that could affect the health and welfare of billions of people worldwide--is being negotiated behind closed doors. While 600 corporate lobbyists have access to the text, the press, the public, and even members of the US Congress are being kept in the dark. But we don't have to stand meekly by as corporate cronies decide our futures. Concerned citizens from around the world are pooling together their resources as a reward to WikiLeaks if it makes the negotiating text of the TPP public. Our pledge, as individuals, is to donate this money to WikiLeaks should it leak the document we seek. As WikiLeaks likes to say, information wants to be free. The negotiating text for the TPP wants to be free. Someone just needs to release it.
Learn the biology of your body, according to conservative male lawmakers... Remember the birds and the bees? The miracle of birth? Forget everything you knew. Turns out there's a lot more to birthin' babies than you might have learned in your godless socialist public-school health class. From this weekend's assertion by Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) that women can't conceive babies during a "legitimate rape" to Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) saying Monday that he didn't know of any pregnancies caused by incest or statutory rape, conservative male lawmakers targeting reproductive rights have always held, shall we say, minority views on the biology of all things uterine. Did you know about women's natural stress-induced spermicides? Have you ever seen "God's little protective shield" in a vagina? That's because they don't exist--but these legislators don't know that...

Mitt Romney's $250 million fortune is largely a black hole: Aside from the meager and vague disclosures he has filed under federal and Massachusetts laws, and the two years of partial tax returns (one filed and another provisional) he has released, there is almost no data on precisely what his vast holdings consist of, or what vehicles he has used to escape taxes on his income. Gawker has obtained a massive cache of confidential financial documents that shed a great deal of light on those finances, and on the tax-dodging tricks available to the hyper-rich that he has used to keep his effective tax rate at roughly 13% over the last decade. Today, we are publishing more than 950 pages of internal audits, financial statements, and private investor letters for 21 cryptically named entities in which Romney had invested--at minimum--more than $10 million as of 2011 (that number is based...
"For the last year or so, I've been spending time with unlikely friends: a loose group of West Bank Palestinians and Jewish settlers, most of them neighbors, living within a few miles of each other. The mainstreams of these two populations seem like they are in almost constant conflict -- last week, settlers are suspected of throwing into a Palestinian taxi a fire bomb that wounded six people, including two children. Meanwhile, members of this small group of friends have met, responding to such acts of violence, and also planning longer term projects." This is a great story! It reminded me of an article I wrote for OEN a couple of years back. I've long believed that the 2-State solution is a geopolitical impossibility and that these two peoples must learn to live in one land.


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"Israel is burning children alive"

Khalissee @Kahlissee "Israel is burning children alive" "You are destroying this country shame on all of you" Ex U.S. ...