U.S. budget deficit triples to $957 billion for year
The U.S. federal budget deficit rose to a record $956.8 billion in the first six months of the fiscal year after the government stepped up spending to cope with a recession that has depressed tax receipts, the Treasury Department reported Friday.
I was alarmed at the recent opinion brief you posted on your website advocating the outlawing of so-called “assault rifles”.
Lawyers, judges bitter at Obama Guantanamo delays
Lawyers and judges working on Guantanamo Bay legal cases are showing signs of exasperation at President Barack Obama's administration, which they accuse of slowing federal judicial procedures for detainees.
Pirates foil skipper's 'escape bid'
The US skipper held hostage on a lifeboat by Somali pirates reportedly dived overboard to escape, but was recaptured soon after.
Antarctic Sea Ice Up Over 43% Since 1980, Where Is The Media?
Sea ice at Antarctica is up over 43% since 1980 and we hear nothing in the news, yet Arctic ice is down less than 7% and they're all over it! We've been waiting for the main stream media to pick up on the increase of Antarctic ice but so far they're been totally absent. Guess its doesn't fit the plan.
US court allows apartheid cases
A US court has ruled that victims of South Africa's apartheid-era government can sue General Motors, IBM and other corporations accused of complicity in human rights abuses.
Reporter's recording confiscated at veterans event
A Washington D.C.-based radio reporter says his audio storage device was inappropriately confiscated Tuesday by Veterans Affairs officials after he interviewed a patient at a VA Medical Center forum.
Blogger Gets 10 Years for Insulting Thai Monarchy
Suwicha Thakhor's nightmare in a Thai jail is set to continue after a court delivered a harsh verdict this week that contained a unequivocal message - the Internet in this country is being policed with the aim of limiting free expression.
Somali Pirates Send More Ships to Area of Standoff with US
Maritime officials in east Africa say Somali pirates are sending several hijacked ships carrying dozens of hostages to the site of a standoff with the U.S. Navy over American captive Richard Phillips.
Homeland Security Secretary Can’t Say If Illegal Aliens Will Get Stimulus Money
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on Thursday could not say whether $100-million in additional funding for a program that helps hungry and homeless people throughout the United States would be used to provide services to people who are in the country illegally.
Scramble to find the Easter bomb factory
A desperate search was under way last night for the terrorist bomb factory from which a suspected al-Qaeda cell planned to launch a devastating attack in Manchester.
Diagnostic Abuse of Veterans
By Stephen Soldz
Michael de Yoanna and Mark Benjamin in Salon have just published the first of a three-part series on pressure from the military to not diagnose soldiers with PTSD.
Lies and Innuendo in the Ian Tomlinson Case
The American tourist who captured on video what may have been the second assault on Ian Tomlinson by the Police, has done us a great favour.
The Theft of a Nation
By Stewart Dougherty
Is it plausible that an entire economy could be looted for a decade without regulators, politicians, or banking insiders knowing or doing anything about it?
Obama’s Got a Secret
By Scott Horton
President Obama not only steps into the shoes of his predecessor, he actually has his Justice Department make still more preposterous arguments in which they insist they are above accountability to the law. Their new mantra is “sovereign immunity,” by which they lose consciousness of the annoying detail that, in America, the people and not the President hold sovereignty.
Hope Abandoned: Obama Protects and Promotes CIA Torture Mavens
By Chris Floyd
It was obvious from the moment that Barack Obama appointed Leon Panetta to head the CIA that there was going to be no serious investigation -- much less prosecution -- of the high crimes of torture committed by the agency at the order of the Bush White House. Panetta, a Clinton retread (who actually began his career in the Nixon administration), has always been a bland, feckless, obedient servant of the Establishment; he has no outside power base, no pull, no heft, no popularity -- nothing that would enable him to grab hold of the CIA with both hands and clean that fetid, blood-encrusted house. And of course, it was precisely this kind of powerless figure that Barack Obama wanted in the post.
Nullification Reconsidered
By Clyde Wilson
With the destructive evil of centralized power becoming every day more evident and 10th Amendment resolutions appearing in various State capitals, publication this month of the second volume of Professor W. Kirk Wood’s magisterial three-volume Nullification: A Constitutional History, 1776–1833 is serendipitous.
For the first time in a half century and long past due, serious people are beginning to search for ways that the famous "checks and balances" of the American constitutional order might be invoked against a regime which recognizes no limits to its power. Such a search leads naturally to a new look at accepted history and "law." Prof. Wood, whose knowledge of the primary documents of early American history is astounding and incomparable, has marshaled overwhelming evidence on the matter.
60 drone hits kill 14 al-Qaeda men, 687 civilians
Of the 60 cross-border predator strikes carried out by the Afghanistan-based American drones in Pakistan between January 14, 2006 and April 8, 2009, only 10 were able to hit their actual targets, killing 14 wanted al-Qaeda leaders, besides perishing 687 innocent Pakistani civilians. The success percentage of the US predator strikes thus comes to not more than six per cent.
U.S. military concedes Afghan civilian casualties
The U.S. military has conceded that a raid this week by troops under its command in Afghanistan killed a group of civilians who were defending their home, not militants as it had earlier reported.
Obama's New World Order
By Stephen Lendman
What's true for Iceland holds everywhere, including the developed world, the idea being to enrich finance capitalism through state-sponsored debt bondage and neo-feudal impoverishment.
Obama Talks About Chemtrails To Stop Warming
President Barack Obama is considering a radical plan to tackle global warming by firing pollution particles into the stratosphere to deflect some of the sun’s heat.
Banks aren't reselling many foreclosed homes
A vast "shadow inventory" of foreclosed homes that banks are holding off the market could wreak havoc with the already battered real estate sector, industry observers say.
Court Docs Suggest Detainees Tortured Before CIA Received Legal OK
CIA Director Leon Panetta has emerged as one of the chief apologists for the agency’s involvement in the Bush administration’s sadistic interrogations practices, stating that agency officials who participated in the systematic torture of “war on terror” prisoners should not be subject to any investigation, let alone prosecution, because they were following legal advice provided by the Justice Department.
GM Pensions May Be ‘Garbage’ With $16 Billion at Risk
Den Black, a retired General Motors Corp. engineering executive, says he’s worried and angry. The government-supported automaker is going bankrupt, he says, and he’s sure some of his retirement pay will go down with it.
Suicide truck bomb kills 5 U.S. troops
Under a hail of gunfire, a suicide bomber charged a checkpoint in northern Iraq on Friday, detonating a truck laden with explosives and killing five U.S. troops and two Iraqi policemen.
Be Careful What You Wish For
By Peter Schiff
Apart from the obvious financial distress that the current economic crisis has inflicted on most Americans, perhaps one of the more irksome byproducts of the meltdown has been the inescapability of clueless economic blather. It’s bad enough when so-called economists serve up the same Keynesian nonsense that has led us down the current cul-de-sac in the first place. At least those people have some incidental knowledge, however deeply flawed, of basic economic concepts. It’s far worse when political pundits, whose understanding of economics typically comes from Treasury Department talking points, hold forth as if they really know what is going on.
I.O.U.S.A.: Byte-Sized - The 30 Minute Version
By now, you may have heard about our acclaimed documentary I.O.U.S.A., a film that boldly examines the rapidly growing national debt and its consequences for the United States and its citizens. The film has been a huge hit, getting rave reviews from Roger Ebert and others.
Pirates with U.S. hostage vow to fight if attacked
Somali pirates holding an American on a drifting lifeboat vowed on Friday to fight any attack by U.S. naval forces and reportedly recaptured their hostage when he jumped overboard to escape.
Inside the Fed's Trillion-Dollar Decision: Crisis Outweighed Inflation Fears
Worries about a prolonged economic slump and a lack of progress in thawing frozen credit markets persuaded Federal Reserve leaders last month to inject more than a trillion dollars into the economy, according to meeting minutes released yesterday.
How Many Democrats Will Stand Up Against Obama's Bloated Military Budget?
By Jeremy Scahill,
Much of the media attention this week on President Obama’s new military budget has put forward a false narrative wherein Obama is somehow taking his socialist/pacifist sledgehammer to the Pentagon’s war machine and blasting it to smithereens. Republicans have charged that Obama is endangering the country’s security, while the Democratic leadership has hailed it as the dawn of a new era in responsible spending priorities. Part of this narrative portrays Defense Secretary Robert Gates as standing up to the war industry, particularly military contractors.
The reality is that all of this is false.
Banks asked to keep quiet on stress tests
The U.S. Treasury Department is asking banks not to mention the regulatory "stress tests" as part of their first-quarter earnings results, according to a source familiar with government discussions.
Police incompetence and corruption?
Sections of the the media can be very effective at revealing the faults of the police, the security services, and the criminal justice system, particularly in the UK.
Who’s behind ‘peaceful’ Moldovans’ outrage?
A Romanian national involved in organizing riots in the Moldovan capital, Chisinau, has been detained, says the country's Prosecutor General’s Office. Further investigations continue into who instigated the protests.
Oath Keepers Orders We Will NOT Obey Full Length Video
We will NOT obey orders to disarm the American people. We will NOT obey orders to conduct warrantless searches of the American people. We will NOT obey orders to detain American citizens as unlawful enemy combatants or to subject them to military tribunal. We will NOT obey orders to impose martial law or a state of emergency on a state.
Internet Rankings are Massively Gamed
Alexa is the most popular free website ranking service. It has been described as "a Nielson rating for the popularity of the website you are visiting."
Fed says plan now to avert inflation
The United States economy will skid more deeply into recession in coming months, Federal Reserve policy-makers warned on Thursday, but it is time to start planning how to wind down spending to avert an inflationary surge.
Sabotage attacks knock out phone service
Vandals cut fiber-optic cable lines belonging to AT&T at two locations early today, knocking out phones and access to 911 emergency services to thousands of residential customers and businesses in southern Santa Clara County, in Santa Cruz and San Benito counties and along the Peninsula, authorities said.
Anti-US protests held in Baghdad
Tens of thousands of followers of anti-US Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr are protesting in Baghdad against the presence of US troops in Iraq.
Gun buy-back program launched in Los Angeles
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Thursday kicked off a gun buy-back program urging Angelenos to turn in their guns to police departments in exchange for gift cards.
Angelenos who turn in their guns -- regardless of whether the firearm has been used in a crime -- will receive a gift certificate, Villaraigosa said.
American Sovereignty in Danger
By Bob Bauman
I happen to hold to the old fashioned notion that America's national
sovereignty is the foundation of our freedom as a people and of our individual liberty.
In the conclusion Wednesday night to the show "Devil's Advocate" on Dutch public broadcaster Nederland 2, the jury of two men and three women, along with the studio audience, ruled there was no proof bin Laden was the mastermind behind the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001.
Murder Trumps Torture Says Bugliosi
By Michael Collins
The legendary Los Angeles County prosecutor and top selling true crime author, Vincent Bugliosi, continues to make the case that he argued in detail in his New York Times best seller, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder. His crime, according to the esteemed former prosecutor: deliberately deceiving the United States into an illegal war that resulted in the deaths of 4,200 U.S. soldiers and more than 1,000,000 Iraqi civilians.
The IMF Rules the World
By Michael Hudson
Debtor countries must borrow a trillion from the IMF not to revive their own faltering economies, not to pursue counter-cyclical policies to restore market demand (that is only for creditor nations), but to pass on the IMF `aid` to the poisonous banks that have made the irresponsible toxic
Darkness Renewed: Terror as a Tool of Empire
By Chris Floyd
Here's a purely hypothetical scenario. Let's say you were a dedicated imperial militarist who believed that your country's security, prestige and financial interests could best be served by war and the ever-present threat of war. Let's say you had some really hot and juicy operations going on, endless deadly conflicts that were pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into your war machine and entrenching national policy even more deeply in the militarist philosophy — the machtpolitik – that you believe in.
Global Financial Collapse - Part 1
n Argentine opinion on the Global Financial Crisis, describing the whole Global Financial System as one vast Ponzi Scheme. Like a pyramid, it has four sides and is a predictable model. The four sides are: (1) Artificially control the supply of public State-issued Currency, (2) Artificially impose Banking Money as the primary source of funding in the economy, (3) Promote doing everything by Debt and (4) Erect complex channels that allow privatizing profits when the Model is in expansion mode and socialize losses when the model goes into contraction mode.
Almost half of French approve of locking up bosses
Almost half of French people believe it is acceptable for workers facing layoffs to lock up their bosses, according to an opinion poll published on Tuesday.
Staff at French plants run by Sony, 3M and Caterpillar have held managers inside the factories overnight, in three separate incidents, to demand better layoff terms -- a new form of labor action dubbed "bossnapping" by the media.
An Asset Bubble for the History Books
By Bob Chapman
Many of you may recall that there was a tulip mania in Holland in the 1630's that has become synonymous with asset bubbles. Just to give you an idea of how over-the-top this mania became, the price for a single tulip bulb at one point during this mania was in the tens of thousands of dollars in terms of today's prices.
Bolivian President on Hunger Strike
Bolivian President Evo Morales declared Monday he is on a hunger strike with leaders of social organizations as a protest of obstacles in Congress to the approval of a temporary electoral law.
Fusion Center Freak Out: ACLU Uneasy With Big Brother's National Listening Party
While there have been a handful of congressional hearings on fusion centers as well as local efforts to ensure the centers comply with Freedom of Information Act requests, specific instances of abuse have been largely glossed over by the government and ignored by the media.
Obama seeks another $83 billion for Iraq, Afghanistan
The Obama administration will ask Congress for another $83.4 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through the end of September, Democratic congressional sources said Thursday.
Selling off America's manufacturing might, a factory at a time
Any given week, the guts of a whole factory are auctioned off. Its contents are sold piece by piece and taken away for scrap or antiques or resale to foreign companies. Men with blowtorches and trucks haul off tool-and-die machines, aluminum siding, hoists, drinking fountains, salt and pepper shakers, anything that might be of some value. It is the removal of the country's mechanical heart right before your eyes. It is breathtaking.
CIA says shuttering detention "black sites"
The CIA will decommission the infamous "black sites" where terrorism suspects were interrogated with harsh techniques that included waterboarding, agency director Leon Panetta said on Thursday.
Red Cross says doctors helped CIA "torture"
Health workers violated medical ethics when they helped interrogate terrorism suspects who were tortured at secret CIA prisons overseas, the International Committee of the Red Cross said.
Obama's obscene remarks in Iraq
By Christopher Dowd
It is hard to know where to begin on Obama's remarks in Iraq yesterday during a visit described unnecessarily by our press as a "surprise" since that is the only sort of visit a US President can make to Iraq. What is more appalling? The casual obscenity of a US President calling upon a nation that the US has been beating, brutalizing, and raping (that is when not using like a pawn in geo political games) for decades to "take responsibility for itself" or the fact that he has absolutely no idea of how much like a criminal sociopath he sounds when making such remarks?
Georgia rubbishes Saakashvili terrorist plot claim
A Georgian presidential spokesman dismissed on Thursday allegations that President Mikheil Saakashvili had planned a terrorist act in which his wife would die to ensure he won January 2008 elections.
The Disappeared
What happened to terror suspects Washington turned over to foreign governments?
Is Leon Panetta Covering Up Torture?
Why doesn’t Leon Panetta want the CIA investigated or prosecuted for torture allegations? Maybe because some of the men implicated, John Sifton reports, are the ones advising him.
Six years on, huge protest marks Baghdad's fall
Tens of thousands of followers of anti-American Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr thronged Baghdad on Thursday to mark the sixth anniversary of the city's fall to U.S. troops, and to demand they leave immediately.
Richard Clarke: Disconnect electrical grid from internet
The Wall Street Journal reported that spies from Russia and China have penetrated the United States power grid. The intruders havent sought to damage the power grid or other key infrastructure, but officials warned they could try during a crisis or war, the report said.
Former Terrorism Czar Richard Clarke told ABCs Diane Sawyer that the U.S. should consider disconnecting the power grid from the internet to decrease the likelihood of attack.
The Global Coup d'Etat
The term "New World Order" refers to the advent of a Totalitarian World Government. The current push towards achieving this nirvana has at it's core, a powerful and secretive group known as the Illuminati, which has been conspiring to take control of the the world for millennia.
Dennis Ross sidelined at State over his foreign agent status with Israel
Former pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) director Dennis Ross, named by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as her special envoy for Iran, has been sidelined at the State Department by Clinton’s special envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke, according to informed sources at the State Department.
Two more reasons to dump Larry Summers
By Jerry Mazza
Given how my article Eight reasons to dump Larry Summers riled up, chagrined and angered readers at Summers, I thought it only fair to add the last two reasons to dump Summers that have now surfaced and make it an even 10. After all, as per Wall Street’s golden rule, more is more. And more like greed is good. I think.
Daniel McGowan - Another "War on Terrorism" Victim
By Stephen Lendman
Of so-called "eco-terrorism" in his case, a term believed coined by Ron Arnold, executive director of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise (CDFE), a radical right wing group established on July 4, 1976 "to continue (the) Revolution of liberty, free enterprise and individual initiative....without hindrance by government."
Can Government Scientists Save the Planet by Nuking Yellowstone National Park to Halt Global Warming?
Of all the hare-brained ideas about climate change I've heard in the last few years, this one takes the grand prize: John Holdren, the new science advisor to President Obama, is actively considering radical geoengineering ideas in order to halt global warming. One such idea now being discussed with the Obama administration involves -- get this -- launching enormous amounts of pollution particles into Earth's upper atmosphere to block the sun's rays and "chill" the planet.
Drug Decriminalization in Portugal (Video)
In 2001, Portugal began a remarkable policy experiment, decriminalizing all drugs, including cocaine and heroin. Some predicted disastrous results—that drug addiction rates would soar and the country would become a haven for "drug tourists." Now that several years have passed, policy experts can study the results. In a new paper for the Cato Institute, attorney and author Glenn Greenwald closely examines the Portugal experiment and concludes that the doomsayers were wrong. There is now a widespread consensus in Portugal that decriminalization has been a success. The debate in Portugal has shifted rather dramatically to minor adjustments in the existing arrangement. There is no real debate about whether drugs should once again be criminalized.
Police v citizen: the Orwellian struggle
The death of Ian Tomlinson last week encapsulates many pernicious and alarming trends in policing. It came minutes after a brutally hefty push from a police officer, caught on dramatic video footage from the G20 protests. The officer sported the full Darth Vader regalia to which we have become desensitised, after a quarter of a century in which militaristic riot control has displaced the thin blue line of George Dixons linking arms to pacify the crowds at Grosvenor Square and other 1960s demos.
Politicized Accounting: No End to the Scams
The accounting profession might seem like the last place that you’d find serious political hanky-panky going on, and it’s probably not on very many people’s A-list of fun subjects to read about, but the Financial Accounting Standards Board, a quasi-governmental body that has statutory authority to regulate and establish the rules by which public companies, including banks, do their books, has just caved in to pressure from those banks and from the large number of members of Congress who pocket huge piles of campaign swag and perks from those banks and other public companies, and gravely undermined the integrity of corporate balance sheets.
Also on Obama's plate: an immigration bill
While acknowledging that the recession makes the political battle more difficult, President Barack Obama plans to begin addressing America's immigration system this year, including looking for a path for illegal immigrants to become legal, a senior administration official said Wednesday.
Pentagon preps for economic warfare
The Pentagon sponsored a first-of-its-kind war game last month focused not on bullets and bombs but on how hostile nations might seek to cripple the U.S. economy, a scenario made all the more real by the global financial crisis.
More States Look to Raise Taxes
A free fall in tax revenue is driving more state lawmakers to turn to broad-based tax increases in a bid to close widening budget gaps.
US to join nuclear talks with Tehran
The Obama administration yesterday agreed to join regular, direct talks with Iran concerning its nuclear program along with five other countries, a major policy shift from previous administrations that have rejected face-to-face negotiations with Iranians.
US outlines secretive international piracy deal
The world's major economic powers are considering whether to involve internet service providers (ISPs) in fighting copyright infringement and how to stop pirated material crossing borders, according to documents released by the US Government.
French lawmakers reject Internet piracy bill
French lawmakers on Thursday rejected a tough new Internet piracy bill that would cut off illegal downloaders, in a surprise setback for President Nicolas Sarkozy's government.
The Hijacking of Our Movement and the Next Wave of Patriots
Like many of you I get the sense that our movement is being hijacked. Over the last couple of years, as our numbers grew and our influence increased, I’ve often wondered how the establishment would try to take down our movement.
