The Peoples Voice News

Conservationists lose fight to protect Moscow forest from road

Fierce dispute has showcased Russia's gravest social ill: the abuse of power and the dangers of trying to expose it. The new Moscow to St Petersburg highway will be built through an ancient forest outside the capital as planned, a top official confirmed today, despite environmentalists' outrage over the issue. The controversy over the Khimki oak forest is not just about irreplaceable trees. The fierce dispute has showcased Russia's gravest social ill: the abuse of power and the dangers associated with trying to expose it.

Workers jump to their deaths as fire engulfs factory making clothes for Gap

At least 27 die and more than 100 are injured in blaze at Bangladesh manufacturing plant.
Dozens of workers jumped to their deaths and more than 100 were injured when a fire swept through a Bangladeshi factory that makes clothes for high street retailer Gap today.

Russia's National Zombie

All authoritarian regimes come to an end at some point. In Russia they tend to implode. The Putin regime is displaying many of the signs of impending collapse. Andrei Piontkovsky wonders whether the destruction of statehood can be avoided this time.

Judge with GOP Ties Strikes Down Key Healthcare Provision on Insurance Mandates Healthcare-law

A federal judge in Virginia has ruled the government cannot force Americans to purchase mandatory health insurance or face penalties. The ruling came in a lawsuit filed by the state of Virginia, one of two dozen challenging the law in federal courts nationwide. The debate over the law is expected to end up before the Supreme Court. The judge in the case, Judge Henry Hudson, is the part-owner of Campaign Solutions, a Republican consulting firm that has worked to oppose healthcare reform. [includes rush transcript]

A Criminal Defense Lawyer's Advice - You are Right to Remain Silent: Just Shut Up!

After 35 years of practicing law in the trenches of state and federal courts, I have narrowed my advice for all my clients down to one, simple, direct sentence: "Shut Up." No kidding. Really. Just shut up. Living in Florida, I have come to love deep-sea fishing. Enter my law office, and on my walls, above my desk, staring and glaring at my clients, is a stuffed, six-foot steel blue Marlin. Below the fish is a plaque that reads: "Behold the beautiful, majestic Marlin. He would not be here if he had not opened his mouth."

Why I'm Posting Bail Money for Julian Assange

Yesterday, in the Westminster Magistrates Court in London, the lawyers for WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange presented to the judge a document from me stating that I have put up $20,000 of my own money to help bail Mr. Assange out of jail.

...And Justice For Few

Poor defendants on death row, immigrants in unfair deportation proceedings, torture victims, domestic violence survivors and victims of racial discrimination - all these groups are consistently being denied access to justice while those responsible for the abuses are protected, according to a new report by the American Civil Liberties Union.

FBI Entraps Another Useful “Homegrown” Idiot to Push the Fake War On Terror

Scary Muslims donning turbans and satellite phones have not attacked the United States since September 11, 2001, when a gaggle of cave dwellers magically commandeered the laws of physics and made NORAD stand down. Antonio Martinez: Another pathetic patsy set-up by the FBI to promote the non-existent homegrown terror threat. Instead, the government and the military-industrial-intelligence complex has engaged in a series of small attacks and would-be attacks in order to keep the global war on manufactured terror chugging along.

12/13/10

Ending aid to Israel

If the Obama administration wants to advance peace, it should attach strict conditions on aid to Israel. MJ Rosenberg. The Obama administration has abandoned its feckless effort to induce Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to accept a 90-day settlement freeze designed to kick start peace negotiations — and save Israel from suicidal settlement expansion. Any doubt that the settlements could be Israel's death warrant should have been eliminated by the recent fire that consumed northern Israel. The Minister of the Interior, an ultra-Orthodox 18th-century man - and 21st century political hack - named Eli Yishai chose funnelling resources to settlements rather than investing in firefighting equipment.

How to Support Julian Assange & Wikileaks

This post is intended to provide a list of the practical things can do to try to ensure fair legal treatment for Julian Assange and protect free speech and the Wikileaks project. If you’re organising an event in support of Assange or Wikileaks, or have some other practical resources to share, please leave the details in comments and I will add them to the list.

Losing Our Moral Compass in Pursuit of Profit, Efficiency

Recently, on a cold morning with a little snow fooling around in the bright air, I was chilled by this sentence in an AP news story: "The idea isn't to just raise revenue, economists say, but finally to turn Americans into frugal health-care consumers by having them face the full costs of their medical decisions ("Tax Break on Employer Health Plans Targeted" Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, AP 11/29/10) Oh, of course -- all Americans should face the full costs of their decisions to have broken bones, heart attacks, or sick children, right?ldren, right?

Obama Lashes Out Amid Calls to Free Assange

Barack Obama has made his strongest condemnation yet of WikiLeaks, as supporters of Julian Assange demonstrated for his release. [WikiLeaks supporters wear masks of the "Anonymous" internet activists and an Assange mask, left, at a rally in Malaga, Spain. (REUTERS/John Nazca)]WikiLeaks supporters wear masks of the "Anonymous" internet activists and an Assange mask, left, at a rally in Malaga, Spain. (REUTERS/John Nazca) In a call to the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the US President ''expressed his regrets for the deplorable action by WikiLeaks'', the White House said. The comments, and similar statements in a call to his Mexican counterpart, Felipe Calderon, were Mr Obama's most forceful yet against the website, whose disclosure of a trove of secret US diplomatic cables has won it international condemnation and praise.

A Secretive Banking Elite Rules Trading in Derivatives

On the third Wednesday of every month, the nine members of an elite Wall Street society gather in Midtown Manhattan. The men share a common goal: to protect the interests of big banks in the vast market for derivatives, one of the most profitable — and controversial — fields in finance. They also share a common secret: The details of their meetings, even their identities, have been

European values: liberty or tyranny

Are the rise of right-wing parties and the increasing crackdowns on immigrants antithetical to European values? France's decision to deport ethnic Roma and repatriate them to Romania resulted in protests across Europe. In recent months, Europe has witnessed mass deportations and crackdowns on religious and ethnic minorities. With the burka ban in France and parts of Italy, the anti-Roma movements in France and Hungary and police surveillance cameras set up in predominately Muslim neighbourhoods in the UK, the continent seems to be experiencing a shift in ideology that is centred less on notions of liberty and inclusion and more on protectionism and exclusion.

12/11/10

The Largest Welfare Check Ever Written The Rise of the Wall Street Ruling Class

Who rules America? Sociologists and political scientists have debated this question since C. Wright Mills published his 1956 book The Power Elite. Writing in the 1950s, Mills argued that the United States was ruled by a triangle of power between the federal government, large corporations, and the military industrial complex (with many people moving between these sectors). Robert McNamara went from CEO of Ford Motor Company to Secretary of Defense under the Kennedy-Johnson administrations (modern examples include Dick Cheney, Henry Paulson, Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, etc). Since the late 1960s, sociologist G. William Domhoff has revised, updated, and increased the sophistication of power elite theory. If we look at the composition of cabinet-level and other White House appoints since the Reagan administration, it is clear that there is a significant movement between Wall Street and the Federal Reserve Bank and Treasury Department. But why? The answers are found in the social and economic crises of the 1960s and 1970s.

Did PM Netanyahu get a Lethal Dose of DU?

Early December 2, 2010 deadly fires were set in Israel’s remaining forest. Before it was all said and done at least 42 people were dead - burned to death in the fire, three prisons, a hospital and a university evacuated.

The Blog of War: WikiLeaks Exposes Business-as-Usual, and a New Battle Ensues

In an ideal world, the WikiLeaks revelations would have ended two wars. Documenting patterns of cavalier abuse and untold brutality in Iraq and Afghanistan might have sparked public outrage sufficient to undermine the capacity to continue these campaigns. Instead we’ve seen the war machine dig in even deeper, extending drawdown deadlines and expanding fronts to adjacent locales. Rather than being in retreat over the WikiLeaks data dump, the Pentagon seems to have become emboldened by the simple fact that a significant portion of its dirty laundry has been aired publicly, and the neighbors have barely uttered a murmur of discontent at the sight.

Phone Companies' $100 Billion Rip-off -- Where Is That Hidden $6 a Month Going in Our Phone Bills?

The phone companies are soaking all of us for a good chunk of money every month, and they're allowed to conceal it in the fine print of your monthly bill. Next time you open your phone bill, check out the numerous anonymous charges listed on it. In particular, note the one identified as the "FCC Line Charge" or the "Federal Subscriber Line Charge" (SLC). Ask yourself two questions: What is it for and why am I paying it?

Haiti: a nation in trouble - Video

Still struggling to recover from January's devastating earthquake and a recent cholera outbreak, Haiti is now experiencing turmoil and unrest after its deeply controversial presidential election. The troubled country held its presidential polls on November 28, and the initial results were announced on Tuesday. Mirlande Manigat, the former first lady, took first place with 31 per cent. Government-backed candidate Jude Celestin got 22.5 per cent, and Michel Martelly finished third with 21.8 per cent - eliminating him from the run-off scheduled for next month.

Madoff son found dead in New York

Bernard Madoff is serving a 150-year prison term in North Carolina for swindling a long list of investors. The elder son of jailed financier Bernard Madoff has been found dead in New York in an apparent suicide. Mark Madoff, 46, was found hanging in his apartment in Manhattan’s SoHo district, a law enforcement official said on Saturday. A family member notified police. Mark and his brother, Andrew, were under investigation but hadn't faced any criminal charges in the massive Ponzi scheme that led to their father's jailing.

The Greater Traitor

As an Irish-American, I ask myself, Which of the two is the greater Judas to his nation: the Irish prime minister, Brian Cowen, or the American president, Barack Obama? Both of them are carrying out the same mission– plunging the bulk of the citizenry of their nations into debt peonage, so that bankers and the rich can prosper. There’s no need to choOse, though in terms of sheer magnitude of the disaster, Obama would carry the prize. No one has described his sellout on taxes last week better than Michael Hudson who turned in an acrid resume of Obama’s “compromise” on this site last Wednesday. The highlights:

UPDATED: Iceland Earthquakes; 9/11 and HAARP's Induction Magnetometer - Videos

"It isn't just conspiracy theorists who are concerned about HAARP. The European Union called the project a global concern and passed a resolution calling for more information on its health and environmental risks. Despite those concerns, officials at HAARP insist the project is nothing more sinister than a radio science research facility."