Deputy Israeli chief of staff, Gaby Ashkenazi said that an earthquake was in store for Lebanon later this year, when the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) names Hezbollah figures in connection with the 2005 murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.

Scientists have found signs of an oil-and-dispersant mix under the shells of tiny blue crab larvae in the Gulf of Mexico, the first clear indication that the unprecedented use of dispersants in the BP oil spill has broken up the oil into toxic droplets so tiny that they can easily enter the foodchain.

Marine biologists started finding orange blobs under the translucent shells of crab larvae in May, and have continued to find them "in almost all" of the larvae they collect, all the way from Grand Isle, Louisiana, to Pensacola, Fla. -- more than 300 miles of coastline -- said Harriet Perry, a biologist with the University of Southern Mississippi's Gulf Coast Research Laboratory.

And now, a team of researchers from Tulane University using infrared spectrometry to determine the chemical makeup of the blobs has detected the signature for Corexit, the dispersant BP used so widely in the Deepwater Horizon.

"It does appear that there is a Corexit sort of fingerprint in the blob samples that we ran," Erin Gray, a Tulane biologist, told the Huffington Post Thursday. Two independent tests are being run to confirm those findings, "so don't say that we're 100 percent sure yet," Gray said.

The Obama administration is seeking to make it easier for the FBI to compel companies to turn over records of an individual's Internet activity without a court order if agents deem the information relevant to a terrorism or intelligence investigation.

The administration wants to add just four words -- "electronic communication transactional records" -- to a list of items that the law says the FBI may demand without a judge's approval. Government lawyers say this category of information includes the addresses to which an Internet user sends e-mail; the times and dates e-mail was sent and received; and possibly a user's browser history. It does not include, the lawyers hasten to point out, the "content" of e-mail or other Internet communication.

Below is a repost of an article published on Americans for Safe Access website: www.safeaccessnow.org in November of 2003. The article describes how cannabinoids, the active components of marijuana, inhibit tumor growth in laboratory animals and also kill cancer cells. Then it finishes off by saying that the US government has known for more than 35 years and that the media which would normally go crazy about a cancer cure story like this, doesn’t at all and in fact seem to be burying the story rather than promote it in any way. I for one am amazed at the government’s stance on marijuana and their failed war on drugs, which is more like a war on it’s own country. I guess too many people get rich off of the war on drugs.

A new study published in Nature Reviews-Cancer provides an historic and detailed explanation about how THC and natural cannabinoids counteract cancer, but preserve normal cells.

The study by Manuel Guzmán of Madrid Spain found that cannabinoids, the active components of marijuana, inhibit tumor growth in laboratory animals. They do so by modulating key cell-signalling pathways, thereby inducing direct growth arrest and death of tumor cells, as well as by inhibiting the growth of blood vessels that supply the tumor.

The Guzman study is very important according to Dr. Ethan Russo , a neurologist and world authority on medical cannabis: “Cancer occurs because cells become immortalized; they fail to heed normal signals to turn off growth. A normal function of remodelling in the body requires that cells die on cue. This is called apoptosis, or programmed cell death. That process fails to work in tumors. THC promotes its reappearance so that gliomas, leukemias, melanomas and other cell types will in fact heed the signals, stop dividing, and die.”

War is highly corrosive to democratic values hollowing a nation’s wealth, its institutions, and its legislatures. Leaders who are supposed to lead are diminished to pathetic sycophants, pandering to the grand subterfuge. Where the instigators of this war, most prominently the USA, measure losses in terms of lives lost and money spent we are far from recognizing the damage done on the home front, not physical damage to cities and populations but the damage done to our democratic institutions, to the trust and the credibility of government, to the social contract with citizens. This despicable war has proven us to be our own worst enemy inflicting far greater damage on ourselves than any coterie of terrorists could do in ten life times.

Harper’s Ottawa is a blighted political landscape where not so honorable members loiter in the halls of power lacking courage and conviction, oblivious to their misdeeds.

The career of John McCain offers a textbook case confirming how war is waged on the U.S. by way of deception—with the help of senior lawmakers.

Despite the constancy of his treasonous conduct, McCain seeks a fifth term in the U.S. Senate.

Reflect for a moment on our national experience since he was profiled, politically packaged and placed in the House in 1982. The “package” was then relocated to the Senate in 1986 on the retirement of Arizonan Barry Goldwater.

With McCain’s enthusiastic backing, our military was deployed to wage war abroad based on assurances from political leaders who were deceived to lead us to war. If not treason, what dare we call the conduct of those who enabled that fraud?

Veterans Today

It is unfortunate that the US was unable to use the window of opportunity that it had in the immediate aftermath of the removal of the Taleban Government in late 2001. It could have brought in a truly broad-based Afghan government and invested in the development of the country. Instead, it continued its military actions and brought corrupt and criminal elements into power in Kabul.
Before the West invaded Afghanistan my country had no suicide bombers, no jihad and no Talebanisation

There is now a general recognition that the war in Afghanistan cannot be won militarily. All the Taleban have to do to win is not to lose. The Americans won’t stay and everybody knows that.

The Democrats' Gordian Knot: Obamacare Org Chart Unveiled
By Bryan Myrick
This story really needs no narrative -- the chart painstakingly put together by House Republicans on the Joint Economic Committee speaks for itself. Resembling a bowl of undercooked spaghetti noodles in which healthcare providers, private insurers, and consumers are challenged to find the beginning and end of any given strand along a process chain, the byzantine maze of bureaucratic gateways promises to fluster Americans trying to make everyday healthcare decisions for themselves and their family members.
If you dare, you can also click on the image to download the PDF file and view the chart in greater detail.

The United States Constitution gives the federal government the authority to do quite a few things. Meddling in our children’s education isn’t one of them. But that hasn’t stopped them from spending another $4.35 billion in stimulus money under the guise of reforming K-12 public education...

The latest version of the CLEAR Act is slated for a floor vote in the House this week as Democrats look for ways to use the Gulf oil spill as a means to pass elements of their unpopular energy agenda.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) stripped out authorization for an independent investigation into the Gulf disaster.

US Congress rejects pullout of troops from Pakistan
By Anwar Iqbal
Thursday, 29 Jul, 2010
The measure, moved in the House of Representatives, was sponsored by two anti-war Republican congressmen — Dennis Kucinich (Ohio) and Ron Paul (Texas) — and was in reaction to reports that the US was running a secret war in Pakistan.
The lawmakers argued that any war effort not approved by Congress violated the War Powers Act. It was voted down 38-372. Thirty-two Democrats and six Republicans voted for the measure. Four congressmen voted “present”, three Democrats and one Republican.

Since 1999, the VA has allowed Prudential to send survivors “checkbooks” tied to its Alliance Account. In 2009 alone, the families of U.S. soldiers and veterans were supposed to be paid death benefits totaling $1 billion immediately, according to their insurance policies. They weren’t.

Prudential’s VA policies promise either a lump sum payout or 36 monthly payments. About 90 percent of survivors, including Lohman, choose to receive the full amount upfront. When they do, they don’t get a check; they get a “checkbook.”

Cindy Lohman tried to use one of the “checks” to buy a bed, and the salesman rejected it. That happened again this year, she says, when she went to a Target store to purchase a camera on Armed Forces Day, May 15.

Wurtz, 62, said he had believed that the Alliance Account money went into a bank. After he learned that the payouts actually stayed in Prudential’s general fund, Wurtz says, he asked Prudential how much money the insurance company made from these accounts and how many dollars it held in retained assets.

“Uncle Sam is ripping off their own,” Wurtz says. “My wife would get the money, and they would blood-suck some of it out of her.”

It took Wurtz, who’s been working with insurers for most of his career, more than a decade to understand how retained-asset accounts work. Companies like MetLife and Prudential have never told millions of Americans with insurance policies that when they die, the insurer plans to hold their family’s money in its own account to make investment gains from the death benefit.

documentary which examines the tendency of forces within contemporary Judaism to exploit the Holocaust for political ends, we never see the man behind the camera, Israeli Jew Yoav Shamir. One imagines, however, that this fellow had his poker face honed to perfection, because he was able to pull off a terrifically effective undercover job.

I asked the IPPNW member aboard the Mavi Marmora, how he, as a practicing psychiatrist, would evaluate the mental state of the Israeli leadership, he quipped that he was merely a psychotherapist, and did not deal with cases of grave psychosis.

The Obama-Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill, a miserable excuse for real Wall Street reform, is now about to gain final approval in the Senate. This wretched bill is now supported by the New England liberal (meaning Wall Street) Republican clique including Olympia Snow, Susan Collins, and Scott Brown, who are joined by the notoriously corrupt reactionary Democrat, Ben Nelson of Nebraska. This bill will create a multitude of new regulations and a number of large new bureaucracies, but it is utterly devoid of any bright-line prohibitions against the causes of the financial panic which struck the United States in 2008, and which continues to the present day in the form of a world economic depression.

In his testimony before Congress last week, Ben Bernanke lifted the Fed’s skirt and gave us a glimpse of the disasters now sweeping through the U.S. economy.

But there are four bombshells he did NOT talk about:

america-hijacked.com

By Gerd Appenzeller
Indiscretions like those currently from WikiLeaks and the newspapers that reprinted portions of the text therefore have but one goal in mind: to make the truth known.

Translated By Ron Argentati

Edited by Gheanna Emelia

Germany – der Tagesspiegel – Original Article (German)

From Vietnam to Afghanistan: You can’t wage war against the truth. And you shouldn’t, because it’s not truth that’s endangering national security.

Control of Jerusalem–The Brilliant United Nations Speech by Prof.Walid Khalidi

July 29, 2010
Shirley Sherrod, Quit While You're Ahead
By Larry Elder
But what about the rest of Shirley Sherrod's NAACP speech?
She made this observation about those who opposed ObamaCare: "I haven't seen such mean-spirited people as I've seen lately over this issue of health care. Some of the racism we thought was buried. Didn't it surface? (Audience responds approvingly.) Now, we endured eight years of the Bushes, and we didn't do the stuff these Republicans are doing because you have a black president."
So the self-proclaimed colorblind woman attributes legitimate opposition to the government takeover of health care ... to racism.

Obama to make $85 million from BP disaster
Submitted by admin on June 18, 2010 – 8:00
But according to this FSB report the largest seller of BP stock in the weeks before this disaster occurred was the American investment company known as Vanguard who through two of their financial arms (Vanguard Windsor II Investor and Vanguard Windsor Investor) unloaded over 1.5 million shares of BP stock saving their investors hundreds of millions of dollars, chief among them President Obama.
For though little known by the American people, their President Obama holds all of his wealth in just two Vanguard funds, ...which the FSB estimates will earn Obama nearly $8.5 million a year and which over 10 years will equal the staggering sum of $85 million.

10,688 lakh tonnes of food grains rotting in godowns across India
2010-07-28 16:51:44
Heaps of food grains are rotting in Food Corporation of India (FCI) godowns across the country due to apathetic attitude of the authorities concerned, reveals a right to information (RTI) query.
'The FCI godowns have enough space to store food grains properly. Yet the grains are rotting in open spaces on their premises while millions are starving. It's a national shame,' said Dev Ashish Bhattacharya, who filed the RTI application on January 6, 2010.

If it wasn't bad enough that the Toronto police lied to the public about a new 'security law' - passed down by the Government of Ontario - giving them new policing powers during the G20 Summit only to have to later admit that no such law ever existed.

Now, Toronto police are backtracking on another statement they made claiming that rubber bullets were not fired into the crowd outside the Eastern Avenue Detention Centre on Sunday June 27, 2010.

Ashurst: A Border Manifesto
You could ask, “So what does this have to do with us living north of the border fence?” Plenty! The situation on the border isn’t just about a few workers walking north. It has everything to do with big business. Billions of dollars are being made trafficking humans, drugs, and contraband across the International Boundary. The Sinaloa Cartel, headed by Chapo Guzman and others, is reaping huge profits doing business along the border. The average coyote charges $1500 - $2500 to guide an illegal alien north to find work; usually abandoning them a short distance north of the line. A young man willing to pack dope north can make more than a construction worker or a teacher in the U.S. and only work a day or two a week.

Kalamazoo River oil spill
A Michigan environmental disaster

Articles, videos, local pictures.
*************
Note that volunteers ignorantly are NOT protecting themselves from the oil.

If you think corporations have too much influence in politics, just wait. In January, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that giant corporations can pour money directly into elections. They can spend billions on attack ads and robocalls to support or oppose candidates, all the while avoiding disclosure.

Could it be that a most explicit Palestinian calling of Israel’s bluff would create the understanding needed in America to free up President Obama (after the mid-term elections in November, of course) to take on and defeat the Zionist lobby, for the sake of peace in the Middle East and best protecting America’s own real interests in the region and the wider Muslim world?

In the words of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is credited with masterminding the 9/11 attacks, their purpose was to focus "the American people ... on the atrocities that America is committing by supporting Israel against the Palestinian people …."

We call this legislation the Establishment Protection Act because that is exactly what it is intended to do. Politicians will do anything they can to avoid being held accountable to their constituents for their actions during the legislative season. Any organization that challenges the status quo will come under greater scrutiny than those that endorse the status quo—and that will make donors to such groups targets for harassment and intimidation.

A number of prisoners sitting in the prisons of the Israeli occupation said that the food served to them is not fit to eat or for human use or consumption because of its poor processing, dirtiness, very small quantity, and bad kind.

Is Israel a strategic asset or liability for the United States?

Interesting question. We must thank the Nixon Center for asking it. In my view, there are many reasons for Americans to wish the Jewish state well. Under current circumstances, strategic advantage for the United States is not one of them. If we were to reverse the question, however, and to ask whether the United States is a strategic asset or liability for Israel, there would be no doubt about the answer.

Though one would have expected that the massive release of some 92,000 classified documents Sunday underscoring just how poorly the war is going would have changed some minds, the Obama Administration has gotten its way once again, with the House of Representatives approving the $59 billion emergency funding bill to keep the war going by a 308-114 vote.

Special to My Catbird Seat

Defenders of Israel right or wrong continue to assert that the absence of peace is all the fault of the Palestinians.

I missed this. After the Israelis came out with their lame investigation saying that they would indict several officers and soldiers in four cases arising from the Gaza conflict of ’08-’09, a fairminded South African columnist, Allister Sparks, published an important piece a few days ago, calling on South African rabbis to apologize to Judge Richard Goldstone for slamming Goldstone’s report last year.

Far from being the effect of the ‘invisible hand of the market’, the crisis of the euro is the product of a strategy carefully designed by Christina Rohmer and the White House Council of Economic Advisers. It is a matter of saving the American economy by forcing the European capitals to take refuge behind the US, and ultimately placing the Euro Zone economies under US control via the IMF and the European Union.

Chemical benzene could post health hazard for humans and wildlife alike in Kalamazoo River oil spill
Updated: Tuesday, July 27, 2010, 4:52 PM
Kathy Jessup | Kalamazoo Gazette
LANSING — State environmental experts are advising the public to stay clear of a 15-miles stretch of the Kalamazoo River contaminated by 840,000 gallons of crude oil from a ruptured pipeline Monday near Marshall.
Officials said Tuesday that high levels of benzene, a potentially harmful chemical released from the oil, could pose a health hazard to humans who come in contact with the water or breath in the fumes.
Wildlife experts also are warning the public not to handle wildlife coated with the oil, saying improper treatment could be harmful to the animals and humans.

BP Gulf Oil Spill Seeps Mapped In Google Earth – Feds Explanation Of Sea Floor Leaks Don’t Add Up
Posted by Alexander Higgins - July 26, 2010 at 7:13 pm -
Here is the smoking gun that proves either the newly found leaks aren’t coming from the Rigel Well or they are but only developed after BP capped the leaking well.
Consider this view of the Rigel Well and the BP Well in the Google Earth model.

Killing the children of a leader in order to pressure him, the rabbi continues, is also permissible. In general, according to the book, it is okay to kill children if they “stand in the way – children are often doing this.” “ There is justification in harming infants if it is clear that they will grow up to harm us. Under such circumstances the blow can be directed at them and not only by targeting adults.”

(NaturalNews) Johnny Concepcion is 42 years old. After divorcing his wife, she was found stabbed to death in their home, suffering at least 15 stab wounds. Concepcion reportedly confessed to his friends that he killed his wife, and he soon found himself the subject of a city-wide manhunt in New York City. On the run from authorities, Concepcion decided to kill himself by drinking a container of rat poison.

Experts: Health Hazards in Gulf Warrant Evacuations
Thursday 22 July 2010
by: Rose Aguilar, t r u t h o u t | Report
When Louisiana residents ask marine toxicologist and community activist Riki Ott what she would do if she lived in the Gulf with children, she tells them she would leave immediately. "It's that bad. We need to start talking about who's going to pay for evacuations."
Kaufman and Ott both say the media need to follow the money. The reason why the EPA is covering this up, they say, is because the cost to BP would be astronomical. "The dispersants hide the oil," said Ott. "If you put dispersants in the water, you don't know how much oil was really spilled. Oil fines are based on how much oil was spilled, so it's all about money.""

Hundreds of millions of U.S. tax dollars in deductible contributions are funneled into occupied territory through American charities to fund the enterprise that is killing the very peace process the United States aims to champion.
charities in the business of subsidizing colonization have made efforts to disguise their contributions.

The tens of thousands of classified military documents posted on the Internet Sunday confirm what critics of the war in Afghanistan already knew or suspected: We are wading deeper into a long-running, morally ambiguous conflict that has virtually no chance of ending well.

Osama bin Laden 'hiding in Pakistan': Admiral Mullen
2010-07-25 13:20:00
US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen has supported US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's statement about the presence of Osama Bin Laden and other top Al-Qaida leadership in Pakistan.
Addressing media at the US embassy in Islamabad, he said: "I believe Osama is here in Pakistan."
"They are hiding in a very secure place and it is very difficult to trace them," The Daily Times quoted Admiral Mullen, as saying.
He claimed that the tribal belt on Pakistan's western border had become the "global headquarters" for Al Qaeda.

Netanyahu talked about the Arabs like any colonizer talking about the colonized. He ignored the existence of the Palestinian people and reduced them and their history and civilizations to being ‘Iranian agents’.

OVER 200,000 AMERICAN JEWS TRAINED AND ONLY 4,000 SERVE

According to the Department of Defense, only 4000 Jews serve in the American military. Over 200,000 American Jews have been trained at US expense by the IDF in Israel but only a handful defend Israel in the current wars in the military of the country of their birth, the United States of America. 40% of the world’s Jews live in Israel. 40% of the world’s Jews live in the United States with 2.2 million residing in New York City alone. If any nation has been the homeland of the Jews, it has been the United States.

For: My Catbird Seat
Humanity and Humanity, is the first of a series of poems written and narrated by Richard Falk

Richard Falk, author of Human Rights Horizons, The Pursuit of Justice in a Globalizing World, delivers a profound message that needs to be heard. He evokes and reminds us of the fundamental principles of humanity. In so doing, he awakens our spirit of compassion and guides us towards a kinder, gentler world.

Poetry, such as this, based upon the leveling and humbling of humanity, is not going to be popular with the Western Press in this day and age, regardless of its merit as art.

It is unfortunate, but Ezra Pound was right in his Cantico del Sole.

Continue Reading

As over-leveraged investment houses began to fail in September 2008, the leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties, of major corporations, and opinion leaders stretching from the National Review magazine (and the Wall Street Journal) on the right to the Nation magazine on the left, agreed that spending some $700 billion to buy the investors' "toxic assets" was the only alternative to the U.S. economy's "systemic collapse." In this, President George W. Bush and his would-be Republican successor John McCain agreed with the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama. Many, if not most, people around them also agreed upon the eventual commitment of some 10 trillion nonexistent dollars in ways unprecedented in America.

What is America doing in Iraq and Afghanistan? It’s called “nation building.” What business is it of America to be building other’s nations? It’s really none of their business. It’s nothing more than the arrogance of power.

We must clarify ourselves loudly that we are against Israel because Israel is evil and criminal, not because it is Jewish. This is not a propaganda message on our part, this is the truth, first because this is the right thing to do, and second, because fighting racism with racism is a lost cause.

Israeli plans to “bring Jews to eastern Jerusalem at any cost. We must settle tens of thousands of Jews in a brief time. Jews will agree to settle in eastern Jerusalem even in shacks. We cannot await the construction of orderly neighborhoods. The essential thing is that Jews will be there.”
In large numbers they’re displacing Palestinians, destroying their homes, seizing their land, and fulfilling Ben-Gurion’s dream to make Israel exclusively Jewish, Jerusalem its capital.

Salem-News.Com

We hope the impact will lead to a comprehensive understanding of the war in Afghanistan and modern warfare in general. - Wikileaks

(SALEM, Ore.) – WikiLeaks has done it again; over 90,000 documents from the war in Afghanistan have been released to the public. Wikileaks called, The Afghan War Diary (AWD), “An extraordinary compendium of over 91,000 reports covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010.

“The reports, while written by soldiers and intelligence officers mainly describing lethal military actions involving the United States military, also include intelligence information, reports of meetings with political figures, and related detail.”

Latest Tweets
* Sun, 25 Jul 2010 21:50:42 wikileaks: WikiLeaks' "war logs" are online. NYT: nyti.ms/dacIql Guardian: bit.ly/dlNzWx Der Spiegel: bit.ly/bpjIZk
Afghanistan war logs: Massive leak of secret files exposes truth of occupation
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/25/afghanistan-war-logs-milit...
* Sun, 25 Jul 2010 21:22:55 wikileaks: Afghan war logs: massive leak of secret files exposes hundreds of abuses bit.ly/9KJWfq
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,708314,00.html

Palestine Information Center – 22/07/2010

DAMASCUS: Khaled Mishaal, the head of Hamas’s political bureau, has explained Wednesday that his Movement follows firm and well-studied strategies in dealing with the Israeli occupation, the internal Palestinian social fabric, and the international community.

On the Edge from Friday, July 23rd with Alex Jones to talk about the surveillance state now being reported in Mainstream Media.

THREE pickup trucks pulled up outside George Norris’s home in Spring, Texas. Six armed police in flak jackets jumped out. Thinking they must have come to the wrong place, Mr Norris opened his front door, and was startled to be shoved against a wall and frisked for weapons. He was forced into a chair for four hours while officers ransacked his house. They pulled out drawers, rifled through papers, dumped things on the floor and eventually loaded 37 boxes of Mr Norris’s possessions onto their pickups. They refused to tell him what he had done wrong. “It wasn’t fun, I can tell you that,” he recalls.

This gigantic level of borrowing and spending is unsustainable by any measure, by any means. The only real reason Fedzilla would do such a thing would be that those currently in charge want to destroy America and turn us into a Third World nation.

Activist Post

It has been reported that 46 states are on the verge of bankruptcy. And since states are Constitutionally mandated to balance their budgets, and do not possess the ability to print money, they're finding themselves in a critically weakened position to challenge the Federal Government.

In our republic, states have sovereignty to create and enforce their own laws as long as they don't violate the U.S. Constitution. The Tenth Amendment gives states the freedom from Federal laws and regulations if they deem them to be unconstitutional.

The man is clever. Like an illusionist, he has diverted their attention by offering them his private life as a spectacle and in posing in celebrity magazines, to the point of making them overlook his political history.

Let the sense of this article be fully understood: it is not to reproach Mr Sarkozy with his links of family, friends and professional contacts, but to reproach him with having hidden his links from the French people who believed that they were electing a free man.

To understand how a man in whom all agree they see an agent of the United States and Israel has been able to become the head of the Gaullist party, then the President of the French Republic, one must go back in time. Far back. We must follow a long digression during which we shall introduce the protagonists who are today taking their revenge.

By Juan Cole

July 24, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- The move is reminiscent of the 1998 letter the Project for a New American Century signatories sent to President Clinton, putting pressure on him to initiate war on Iraq. They did maneuver him into pulling out UN weapons inspectors and bombing Iraq. The US removal of the inspectors made the West blind as to the lack of Iraqi weapons programs, since their absence could no longer be certified. In turn, Iraq’s opaqueness as a result of the Clinton actions allowed the Bill Kristol crowd and the rest of the Israel, war industry and oil lobbies to propagandize America into the fruitless and ruinous Iraq War. Now they are repeating this pattern with regard to Iran.

Censored Gulf news: US health and refugee humanitarian crisis. Day 100
July 24, 10:23 PMHuman Rights ExaminerDeborah Dupre'
Dr. Riki Ott, toxicologist and humanitarian, has advised that three tough choices exist for Gulf Coast residents: 1) Leave, 2) Stay and wear a respirator, or 3) Become painfully il. EPA whistleblower, Hugh Kaufman explained this week that the "dispersant," Corexit, is meant to cause internal bleeding and IntelHub reports today, on Day 100 of the catastrophe, that evidence of acid rain and human suffering due to chemicals has become so clear, it is logically impossible to discredit it, yet a media black-out continues, enforced by black ops.

By Stuart Littlewood

Israelis wanted for war crimes can sleep easier thanks to their friends and admirers in the British Establishment.

Yes, our brand-new coalition government intends providing a safe haven for the vilest of criminals.

Monday, July 12, 2010
BP OIL MASTERS AND THE ART OF MASTERFUL DECEPTION
By Fahim A. Knight-El
This is what most Americans do not understand, BP functions as a sovereign government, it translate to mean that big oil answers to no one, but to their invisible Dynastic family bosses. The United States Congress and President Obama are deceptively giving the American people the impression that BP is answerable to the laws, rules, regulations and enactments of the United States Government (this is the furthest thing from the truth). BP makes the damn rules and their invisible tycoons are all sovereign and above all nations jurisprudence systems, what part of that doesn’t you understand?

By Steven Zhou — “The Canadian Charger“

With the recent formation of The Emergency Committee for Israel, the neoconservative and Likudnik characters on the American right have stepped up their anti-Iranian lobbying efforts. Among other things, they have again brought up how a nuclear Iran would pose an “imminent threat” that would tear the region apart.

This renewed exaggeration of an Iranian threat to Israel comes at a time when Israel is clearly being shown to be a strategic liability to the U.S., a fact the Israel Lobby has so far concealed with great success.

By Tomás Rosa Bueno (Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran)

EPA Whistleblower Says Federal Government Covering Up Lethality Of Corexit And Lying About BP Gulf Oil Spill Water Samples To Save BP Billions
Alexander Higgins - July 24, 2010 at 5:29 pm
HUGH KAUFMAN: Well, not only do you have airplanes flying and dropping them on the Gulf region, like Agent Orange in Vietnam, but a large amount of it is being shot into the water column at 5,000 feet to disperse the oil as it gushers out. And so, you have spread, according to the Associated Press, over perhaps over 44,000 square miles, an oil and dispersant mix. And what’s happened is, that makes it impossible to skim the oil out of the water....

Former Pennsylvania judge Michael Conahan has pleaded guilty to a racketeering conspiracy charge for helping put juvenile defendants behind bars in exchange for bribes.

He is accused along with former judge Mark Ciavarella of taking $2.8m (£1.8m) from a profit-making detention centres. Mr Ciavarella denies wrongdoing.

When a national police association accuses its government of what amounts to treason it is time to sit up and pay attention.

Michael O'Boyce, President of the Garda Representative Association (GRA), said at its annual conference in Limerick, at the end of April, 2010, that the Irish Government had been 'corrupted' and had been 'bought' by developers and bankers. (A garda is an Irish policeman, gardaí in the plural.)

Mr. O'Boyce, speaking on behalf of the country's 11,000 gardaí, charged government ministers with sacrificing the country to protect 'wealthy cronies' who had bankrolled the leading government party, Fianna Fáil. Such criticism of a serving government by its police force is unprecedented in Irish history and extremely rare in any western democracy.

Life on the border — the ranchers
by Hugh Holub on Jul.23, 2010
Arizona Cattle Grower’s Association
Restore Our Border (ROB) Security Plan
The U.S./Mexico border in southern Arizona has become a lawless region. Criminals, bandits and an international organized crime unit are operating with impunity in the region. Their trades are burglary, home invasion, drug smuggling, human smuggling, murder, extortion and kidnapping rackets. These organized crime units have been terrorizing northern Mexico for 20 years and have been terrorizing Southern Arizona for at least 10 years. These entities are extremely violent and dangerous and they have now succeeded in creating terror in Southern Arizona as they have in Northern Mexico.

Stuart Littlewood reviews Norman Finkelstein’s book, This Time We Went Too Far, which “pulls together the facts surrounding Israel's blitzkrieg on Gaza” and “plots the long lead-up and the reverberating aftermath”. Painstakingly researched and written in an easy-flowing style, it is “a valuable working document for anyone engaged in the struggle or just wishing to learn the truth”.

By Stephen M. Walt – Foreign Policy

Via Ben Smith at Politico, we learn that the usual suspects have started yet another organization whose objective is to promote a hard-right, Likudnik agenda in the Middle East. The new group apparently intends to go after anyone who thinks U.S. Middle East policy has been less than totally successful in recent years, and who is willing to think for themselves (and U.S. interests), instead of reflexively echoing the positions favored by AIPAC and other groups in the “status quo” lobby.

WASHINGTON (AFP) – A year and a half after President Barack Obama breathed new life into global talks on a climate treaty, the United States is back in a familiar role -- the holdout.

The Senate's decision Thursday to shelve legislation on climate change is certain to cast a long shadow over December's meeting in Cancun, Mexico that will work on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.

Obama's Democratic allies acknowledged they lacked votes to approve the first-ever US plan restricting carbon emissions blamed for global warming. The task is unlikely to get easier soon, with Democrats facing tight congressional elections in November.

by Aijaz Zaka Syed

I sometimes wonder if Shakespeare had India and Pakistan’s leaders in mind when he wrote those immortal lines in As You Like It: “All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts.”

No matter who is in power in Delhi or Islamabad, the script of the carefully choreographed diplomatic spectacle never seems to change. From their famous encounter at Tashkent to the tense handshakes at Simla and Agra, and from Vajpayee’s historic bus trip to Lahore to the bitterness of Kargil, the more the narrative changes, the more it remains the same.

As the two-year investigation into the alleged wrongdoings of Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) which I’ve already written about here and here comes to an end, the soon-to-be dis-Honorable (I hope, but I’m not holding my breath) Rangel wants young Americans to become slaves of the State. He has sponsored H.R. 5741 which proposes:

“To require all persons in the United States between the ages of 18 and 42 to perform national service, either as a member of the uniformed services or in civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security, to authorize the induction of persons in the uniformed services during wartime to meet end-strength requirements of the uniformed services, and for other purposes.”

Vilsack Must Keep Black Farmers on their Land
By Cynthia McKinney
July 22, 2010
"Unfortunately however, Secretary Vilsack has also thrown Black Farmers under the bus. To date, despite abundant headlines to the contrary, Black Farmers, including the named plaintiffs in Pigford v. Glickman (1997), Lucious Abrams and Cecil Brewington have not even had a meeting with USDA, to settle their discrimination claim. Others who did receive settlements were then harassed by the Internal Revenue Service and had their bank accounts frozen and their Social Security payments offset by any government payments, including stimulus payments.
"Claimants got paid, but actual farmers did not.

By Alex Kane — Desertpeace

With “peace talks” between the Palestinian Authority and Israel seeming more and more like a dead end, many people around the world, including dissident Jewish voices, are turning to grassroots activism to pressure Israel to end the ongoing occupation of the Palestinian territories.

Recently, Jewish Voice for Peace launched a campaign to pressure TIAA-CREF, one of the largest financial services in the U.S., to divest from companies that profit off of the Israeli occupation. Yesterday, the Olympia Food Co-Op, located in the hometown of Rachel Corrie, the American peace activist killed by an Israeli bulldozer, announced a decision to boycott Israeli goods at their two locations.

“In Palestine our home was stolen and in Lebanon I cannot own one. Worse than this, it bothers me and my family that Zionists can now sell my land in Palestine to foreigners while as a Palestinian in Lebanon I cannot buy a temporary home” — Darwish [A school teacher in South Lebanon]

Shatila Palestinian Refugee Camp, Beirut

“Some members of Parliament prefer that the camps explode and then they will insist that “Palestinian security problems must be resolved before Parliament can consider giving them civils rights”—meaning several more years of delay.That would be a disaster for all concerned.” — Ahmad’, Resident of Al-Buss refugee camp, Tyre, Lebanon

“For those who use the Bible to support Israel need to differentiate between God promise and Balfour promise, because the occupation is the result of a promise given to the Israelis by Lord Balfour and not by God.” Archbishop Theodosios

Much like Rocky Balboa, the famed Philly underdog, Alex Snitker keeps getting knocked to the mat, but always comes up swinging. The former U.S. Marine and Libertarian U.S. Senate candidate who crashed a media-sponsored candidate forum in Sarasota last month has now set his sights on the man who he feels has wronged him, and the voting public...

Frank Luntz
He warns of a dangerous slide in the public opinion of the only country considered pro-Israeli, the U.S. Israel misses simple opportunities to change world public opinion, he writes, and the consequences are significant.

Parishes try to stop Coast Guard from moving protections
Friday, July 23, 2010 10:40 AM CDT
SLIDELL (AP) — Simmering distrust on the oil-coated Louisiana coast boiled over Thursday as local officials in coastal parishes mounted an effort to stop the Coast Guard from moving protective boom and other oil spill response equipment out of the way of Tropical Storm Bonnie.
"Nungesser said the parishes feared that if the boom was removed it would not be sent back."
"‘‘The Coast Guard has not stood up and made BP do anything unless we rant and rave,’’ said Nungesser, a frequent critic of the response to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico."
"Nungesser called the boom movement ‘‘a failed attempt by the Coast Guard to help BP smuggle assets out of here unnoticed.”"

ROBBING YOU BLIND ALIVE AND DEAD
By Jon Christian Ryter
July 7, 2010
That is the fear of the 57% of the people who refuse to sign donor cards. Just because a doctor says you're clinically dead does not mean you're clinically dead. The AMA criteria for determining when death occurs said Dunlap was dead. At that point, the hospital can legally extract body parts from the organ donor. Zach Dunlap and others like them who are viewed as brain dead when they merely suffered a trauma which made it appear they were brain dead, would die when their organs were harvested. Had the organ-harvest team cracked Zach Dunlap open and began removing his organs, they would have killed a living person who died feeling the pain of being butchered like livestock.

Stuart Littlewood views the UK Conservative-led coalition government’s decision to make it harder to prosecute Israeli war criminals under universal jurisdiction.

Joe Sestak Would Die for Israel
July 20, 2010
"It turns out that Sestak is a J-Street guy and that he has some strong Jewish support as the Exponent article linked to above makes clear.
So, in this critical Senate race, we have the Republican who talks like William Kristol on one side, and on the other, we have a guy who says he would die for Israel. This is called freedom of choice."
"3. Did I mention that Sestak is an obvious war monger against Iran? How about that he has been to Israel 8 times and that he is “a staunch supporter of Israel”? Just wanted to let you know."

By Daniel McCarthy
07/23/2010

To understand the course the Founders intended the republic to follow, one must look to the Constitution, certainly -- but not just to the Constitution. There are, Fein argues, four "Charter Documents" that encapsulate our political tradition. The first two are obvious: the Declaration of Independence announced Americans' right to self-government, and the Constitution established the rule of law within a federal framework. But to discover the Founders' wisdom in foreign policy, one must look to two other Charter Documents: George Washington's Farewell Address and the speech before Congress that Secretary of State John Quincy Adams delivered on July 4, 1821.

Unless the U.S. Congress acts, there is going to be a massive wave of tax increases in 2011. In fact, some are already calling 2011 the year of the tax increase. A whole host of tax cuts that Congress established between 2001 and 2003 are set to expire in January unless Congress chooses to renew them. But with Democrats firmly in control of both houses that appears to be extremely unlikely. These tax increases are going to affect every single American (at least those who actually pay taxes). But this will be just the first wave of tax increases. Another huge slate of tax increases passed in the health care reform law is scheduled to go into effect by 2019. So Americans that are already infuriated by our tax system are only going to become more frustrated in the years ahead.

M.K. Haneen Zoabi
The Knesset is the worst we’ve ever had. The guards and the workers who’ve been around the Knesset for 30 years said it’s never been this racist before. I think when you have a government led by the likes of [Foreign Minister] Avigdor Lieberman it means that the extremists are not the margins of the Knesset, they are the mainstream.

Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban
Is it not odd that the two most important generals in the American army are more realistic and more keen on ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq than the politicians who are supposed, by nature, to be against wars and more capable of ending them?

Prof. William Cook
The State of Israel has just passed a “loyalty oath” required of all prospective citizens living in Israel illegally to swear allegiance to a “Jewish democratic state. Arab Israelis as they are called, to obfuscate the reality of their Palestinian heritage, do not have equality before the law nor do they have access to all the benefits of their fellow citizens who are members of the Judaic faith

P U L S E -
The rising non-violent movement in Palestine: Mustafa Barghouti

An address by Mustafa Barghouti in Canada. Born in Jerusalem,Dr Barghouti is a leader of the Palestinian National Initiative founded in 2002 and a member of Palestinian Legislative Council as well as a former Minister of Information in the unity government in 2007. The full transcript from these Real News Network clips appears over the fold. Also check out Dr Barghouti’s excellent 2008 address to the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) National Convention.

The Transcript:

- Snopes.com toes the militarists’ line -

Snopes.com, officially known as the Urban Legends Reference Pages, has since its humble inception in 1995 come to be regarded as one of the most trusted debunkers of conspiracy theories on the internet. Described by one of its many fans – it apparently has over 6 million visitors per month – as “the grand-daddy of all fact-checking sites,” Snopes is downright cavalier, however, in its attitude to facts surrounding Israel’s role in the 9/11 attacks.

The Congressmen who defeated Arlen Spectar is under attack for signing the letter asking for an end to the Gaza blockade. Watch this horrific ad that is all over Pennsylvania TV network.

Thursday, July 22, 2010
Censorship of blogs continues
This time it's Incogman ....
This blog has been archived or suspended for a violation of our Terms of Service.
Now I know that some will say "good riddance" or it was a "hasbara nest" or "racist" or a "psyops operation" or whatever. I've even taken flack for linking him on my blog roll. The bottom line is that no one was ever forced to go there and freedom always means taking or leaving whatever you please.

So far this year, Lockheed Martin’s PAC has already surpassed the contributions it made in election cycles over the past decade.

Maidhc O'Cathail
Snopes purports to debunk a claim that “four thousand Israelis employed by companies housed in the World Trade Center stayed home from work on September 11, warned in advance of the impending attack on the World Trade Center.”

This note comes courtesy of my friend David Sirota out in Colorado. This is a classic example of how the Senate works. If the public understood better how rigged this game is, and how few issues are actually left to an honest vote in the legislature, I'm pretty sure the pitchfork factor would be twice even what it is now.

By Khalid Amayreh
Arab Knesset member, Hanin Zubi, scoffed at Israel's notion of democracy, calling it "a joke". "How can democracy be practised or even survive in a fascist environment?" The Knesset, Zubi said, "is becoming a fascist Jewish club, which is why it is difficult for free voices to be heard."

Obama plans a race war
Andrew Bolt
Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 09:19am
Video
Barack Obama appeals to two races to help fight the males of a third:
In the video message to his supporters, Obama said his administration’s success depends on the outcome of this fall’s elections and warned that if Republicans regain control of Congress, they could “undo all that we have accomplished.”
“This year, the stakes are higher than ever,” he said, according to a transcript of his remarks provided by Democratic officials. “It will be up to each of you to make sure that young people, African Americans, Latinos and women who powered our victory in 2008 stand together once again...”

Special for My Catbird Seat

“The Gaza invasion marked the climax of Israel’s descent into barbarism”

Quite simply, this is a cracker of a book and very timely.

In explaining how Israel’s war on Gaza in 2008/9 was not the defensive action it is always painted, Norman Finkelstein recalls the 1947 UN partition of historic Palestine and remembers how, in 1957, US President Eisenhower forced Israel to withdraw from Gaza by threatening sanctions and in the 1967 war Israel re-occupied it.

The book then takes us through the warm-up for the 2008/9 war and the subsequent whitewash.

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