04/14/11
Egypt's Islamists: The Big Bad Wolf
Eric Walberg
Just as during the Cold War the communists were reviled by liberals (not to mention conservatives), so the Islamists are popularly reviled in our post-Cold War world as some kind of dour, terroristic bogeyman. And, just as in the Cold War liberals and conservatives alike used the communists to pull their irons out of the fire (Who won WWII?), so Western politicians left and right have manipulated Islamists to further their own ends (Who defeated the communists in Afghanistan?).
The revolution and the turmoil in the Arab world have their origins in the tortuous history of British and American domination of the Middle East. The implications for Egypt of its colonial past
Just as during the Cold War the communists were reviled by liberals (not to mention conservatives), so the Islamists are popularly reviled in our post-Cold War world as some kind of dour, terroristic bogeyman. And, just as in the Cold War liberals and conservatives alike used the communists to pull their irons out of the fire (Who won WWII?), so Western politicians left and right have manipulated Islamists to further their own ends (Who defeated the communists in Afghanistan?).
News
04/12/11
Obama to propose cuts in Medicare, Medicaid
White House aides have confirmed the President Obama will outline a deficit reduction plan Wednesday that will put his administration on record in favor of substantial new cuts in Medicare and Medicaid, the major federal programs underwriting health care for the elderly and the poor.
Apathetic Acceptance of Austerity Measures Will Enslave Us All
Whilst looking up the word ‘austerity’ in a few online dictionaries I came across those listed below which seemed to fit in with our current economic climate and the use of the word frequently in relation to government comments on the need for such ‘austerity’ in our current turbulent economic times.
UN expert "frustrated" with U.S. over leaks soldier
GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations investigator on torture on Monday accused the U.S. administration of blocking a one-on-one meeting he was seeking with detained "Wikileaks" soldier Bradley Manning.
Downplaying a nuclear danger
News about the the crippled Fukushima-Daiichi plant goes from bad to worse. IN A nuclear crisis that is becoming more and more serious all the time, Japan's Nuclear Safety Agency confirmed that radioactive iodine-131 in seawater samples taken near the crippled Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power complex--which was seriously damaged by the tsunami caused by an earthquake off the coast of Japan--is 4,385 times the level permitted by law.
War Clouds Back Over Gaza
After several days of intense violence, during which 19 Palestinians were killed and one Israeli wounded, a fragile calm has returned to Gaza. But political commentators argue that this could well be a precursor to Israel’s next war on the coastal territory.
Cell Phones and Cancer: the Risk is Real
An Interview with Devra Davis There is a book you ought to buy. It's called Disconnect: The Truth About Cell Phone Radiation, What the Industry Is Doing to Hide It, and How to Protect Your Family by Devra Davis (Dutton, 2010). Buy it from a book store – if you can find a book store that carries it. Davis said that when the book was published in September 2010, she traveled to San Francisco, a hot bed of calls for right to know legislation when it comes to cell phone radiation.
"They Are Afraid Their House Could Blow Up": Meet the Families Whose Lives Have Been Ruined by Gas Drilling - Photos
"We're not asking for a lot and now they're taking it all away. In a million years, I never would have thought that people could do this and get away with it."
Japan raises nuclear alert to highest level -Video
Nuclear watchdog raises severity of Fukushima crisis to maximum level but plays down comparisons to Chernobyl disaster. Japan's nuclear watchdog has raised the severity level of the crisis at its stricken nuclear power plant to 7 - the highest level
04/11/11
Terror Attack: Deadly metro blast shocks Belarus capital Minsk - Video
Belarus Prosecution office says Minsk subway blast was a terror attack, launches criminal investigation. Meanwhile, the death toll grows in Belarus after an explosion at a metro station. 11 people confirmed dead, 126 hospitalised.
Cornel West: Obama is ‘another black mascot’ of ‘Wall Street oligarchs’
Princeton professor and famed black intellectual Cornel West has long been a supporter of President Barack Obama, but he’s recently changed his tune. In an interview last week, he suggested that Obama has sold out and become “a puppet” of powerful interests, merely promising change and not delivering. West warned that this would trust the U.S. into a “democratic awakening” the likes of which the nation had not seen in decades. Appearing on an MSNBC panel recently, West remained outspoken.
House progressives offer budget plan: Tax the rich, end the wars, slash oil subsidies, invest in jobs
As the focus on Capitol Hill shifts to America's long-run fiscal woes, Congressional progressives are one step ahead of the White House and Democratic leaders in offering a counter-proposal to the House GOP approach.
Government by People Who Hate You
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan's (R-Wisconsin) budget plan would cut $5.8 trillion over the next decade by cutting programs like Medicare. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan put out a budget proposal last week that will leave the vast majority of future retirees without decent health care by ending Medicare as we know it. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis, most middle-income retirees would have to pay almost half of their income to purchase a Medicare equivalent insurance package by 2030. They would be paying much more than half of their income in later years.
Radiation risks from Fukushima 'no longer negligible'
The risks associated with iodine-131 contamination in Europe are no longer "negligible," according to CRIIRAD, a French research body on radioactivity. The NGO is advising pregnant women and infants against "risky behaviour," such as consuming fresh milk or vegetables with large leaves.
Why the United States Is Destroying Its Education System
A nation that destroys its systems of education, degrades its public information, guts its public libraries and turns its airwaves into vehicles for cheap, mindless amusement becomes deaf, dumb and blind. It prizes test scores above critical thinking and literacy. It celebrates rote vocational training and the singular, amoral skill of making money. It churns out stunted human products, lacking the capacity and vocabulary to challenge the assumptions and structures of the corporate state. It funnels them into a caste system of drones and systems managers. It transforms a democratic state into a feudal system of corporate masters and serfs.
U.S. Doesn't Count Civilians Killed by Drones
While Obama talks of saving civilians in Libya, information about innocents killed by U.S. drones is kept secret. April 11, 2011 "Salon" -- The big focus of the Obama administration in the last week has been, in President Obama's words, "to stop the violence against civilians." That's in Libya, of course, where Moammar Gadhafi was threatening to quell a rebellion based in Benghazi. In this context, it's particularly striking to read the news from the ACLU -- which has been waging a legal battle to wring information from the government about American drone strikes -- that the military doesn't even keep a tally of civilian deaths caused by drones:
FBI destroyed thousands of UFO reports, 1949 memo reveals
Agents routinely destroyed reports containing 'nothing of FBI interest' due to lack of filing space. The FBI was so overwhelmed with sightings of flying saucers in the 1940s that agents routinely destroyed reports because of lack of filing space, according to documents released by the organisation.
In the Shadow of Fukushima
The ongoing crisis at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is the first nuclear accident of the information age. Millions of consumers of TV, online and print media around the world have been getting a crash course in the arcane details of radioactivity.
How Nuclear Apologists Mislead the World Over Radiation
Soon after the Fukushima accident last month, I stated publicly that a nuclear event of this size and catastrophic potential could present a medical problem of very large dimensions. Events have proven this observation to be true despite the nuclear industry's campaign about the "minimal" health effects of so-called low-level radiation. That billions of its dollars are at stake if the Fukushima event causes the "nuclear renaissance" to slow down appears to be evident from the industry's attacks on its critics, even in the face of an unresolved and escalating disaster at the reactor complex at Fukushima.
How Obama's Cave in to GOP Extremists Will Devastate the Economy
Obama's failure to challenge the Right's economic mythology is both inexcusable, and a sign that the White House isn't prepared for the major battles to come.
04/10/11
Bradley Manning: top US legal scholars voice outrage at 'torture'
Obama professor among 250 experts who have signed letter condemning humiliation of alleged WikiLeaks source. More than 250 of America's most eminent legal scholars have signed a letter protesting against the treatment in military prison of the alleged WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning, contesting that his "degrading and inhumane conditions" are illegal, unconstitutional and could even amount to torture.
Beware the Ill Winds - Something Very Wicked This Way Comes
Shades of William Shakespeare, channeled right down through the centuries. For dramatic counterpoint nothing beats the dark imprecation cast by the three evil witches in Macbeth, as they boil up a foul decoction of eye of newt, forked snake's tongue and wool of bat, ensconced in the shadowy recesses of an unnamed cavern.
…..........
Double, double toil and trouble
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
…..........
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
(Macbeth, Act IV, Scene I)
…..........
Double, double toil and trouble
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
…..........
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
(Macbeth, Act IV, Scene I)
Industry’s war on nature: ‘What are the bees telling us?’
While industries continue to pollute the planet with their toxic chemicals, toxic waste and toxic spills, Earth’s pollinators sing a swan song that leaves no doubt as to the folly of modern civilization. Our ability to hear and appropriately respond to the crisis of declining pollinators will determine humanity’s survival.
EPA: New Radiation Highs in Little Rock Milk, Philadelphia Drinking Water
Milk from Little Rock and drinking water from Philadelphia contained the highest levels of Iodine-131 from Japan yet detected by the Environmental Protection Agency, according to data released by EPA Saturday.
Dirty Energy's Dirty Secrets
For years, "not in my backyard" has been the battle cry of residents in Cape Cod who stand opposed to an offshore wind farm in Nantucket Sound. The giant turbines will forever mar the beauty of the landscape, they say. Energy is ugly. Some forms more so than others, as nuclear near-meltdowns in Japan, the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, and deaths in a West Virginia Coal Mine explosion have driven home in the last year. Energy kills plants, plankton, and people. It imperils the environment, poisons the oceans, and is threatening to turn part of Japan, one of the most advanced nations on the planet, into a contaminated zone for decades to come.
04/09/11
Latin America Shakes Off the US Yoke
The current spat with Ecuador is symptomatic of Washington's failure to grasp that it no longer exercises regional hegemony. On Thursday, the United States expelled the ambassador from Ecuador, in retaliation for Wednesday's expulsion of the US ambassador from Ecuador. This now leaves the United States without ambassadorial relations in three South American countries – Bolivia and Venezuela being the other two – thus surpassing the Bush administration in its diplomatic problems in the region.
No Shutdown, But a Lot of Sellouts
If you had asked Franklin Roosevelt or Harry Truman or John Kennedy or Lyndon Johnson or Jimmy Carter or even Bill Clinton what Democrats would defend in a fight over the future of government, there's no real question that funding for housing, public transportation, community development programs and safe air travel would be high on the list.
Israeli Embassy in Cairo Under Siege
Demands: Embassy Closure and Withdrawal from The Camp David Accords in Wake of Renewed Attacks on Gaza. “Just when the Palestinians in Gaza thought they were facing this new Israeli attacks alone and with their backs against the wall, they found out they forgot, over the years, that they had brothers in Egypt who are willing not only to accompany them in their struggle against Israel but to protect their backs as well”
Obama hails deal to impose record cuts in social spending
A late-night agreement between the Obama administration and congressional Republicans is premised on the largest-ever one-year cut in domestic social spending. The Obama administration agreed to $2 billion more in social spending cuts in return for an agreement by the Republican House leadership on a stop-gap continuing resolution that will fund the federal government through next Thursday. President Obama, House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid also said they had reached a broader agreement to fund government operations through the end of the fiscal year, September 30, which is to be voted on by both houses of Congress next week.
Is America Becoming The Land Of The Part-Time Job?
Do you need a good job? If so, there are millions of other Americans that are just like you. Unfortunately, most of the jobs that are available in America today are either part-time jobs, temp jobs or are “independent contractor” jobs. The “full-time job with benefits” is a dying breed. There are so many desperate unemployed workers in America today that companies don’t have to roll out the red carpet anymore. Instead, they can just hire a horde of inexpensive part-timers and temps that they don’t have to give any benefits to.
The American Dream as We Know it Is Obsolete
Why progressives need to think beyond the mantra of creating a "middle class America." In an era of insecurity, we all want security. We want a decent home to call our own, healthcare to heal us when we are sick or old, education to improve our minds and job prospects, healthy food and clean water to nourish us, income to provide for all our needs and even some affordable luxuries, a career to give us social status and a sense of self-worth, and a pension for our golden years.
Clashes erupt around Cairo's Tahrir Square
Protesters retake iconic square, hours after security forces moved in to break up crowd demanding Mubarak's trial. Hundreds of protesters demanding that Hosni Mubarak, the former Egyptian president, be put on trial for alleged corruption, have retaken Cairo's iconic Tahrir Square, hours after security forces attempted to disperse them.
04/08/11
Nuclear Nightmare on the Great Lakes
The Great Lakes of North America make up 20% of the Earth's fresh surface water. Their dynamic ecosystems have been considered by many Native American tribes to function as the heart of the interconnected ecosystems that make up the North American continent known to many of the Indigenous peoples here as Turtle Island. The Great Lakes are known world wide for their biodiversity, beauty, fishing, and trade and shipping routes. These fragile and beautiful ecosystems along with the human populations that live along their shores are under constant threat from the Nuclear Industry that has been slowly and quietly irradiating the heart of the Turtle for decades.
The People's Budget: What a "Centrist" Budget Should Look Like
WASHINGTON - Just when it seemed that all of Washington had lost its values and its connection with the American people, a bolt of hope has arrived. It is the People's Budget put forward by the co-chairs of the 80-member Congressional Progressive Caucus. Their plan is humane, responsible, and most of all sensible, reflecting the true values of the American people and the real needs of the floundering economy. Unlike Paul Ryan's almost absurdly vicious attack on the poor and working class, the People's Budget would close the deficit by raising taxes on the rich, taming health care costs (including a public option), and ending the military spending on wars and wasteful weapons systems.
Fukushima: A 'nuclear sacrifice zone'
Some experts believe Japan's nuclear disaster could become worse than Chernobyl. Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant that was heavily damaged by the tsunami from the massive March 11 magnitude 9.0 earthquake continues to spread extremely high levels of radiation into the ocean, ground, and air. Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), the company that operates the plant, said on April 5 that radioactive iodine-131 readings taken from seawater near the water intake of the No. 2 reactor reached 7.5 million times the legal limit. The sample that yielded this reading was taken just before Tepco began releasing more than 11,000 tonnes of radioactive water into the sea.
04/07/11
The new Arctic: trade, science, politics
The opening of the Arctic to ship-passage will transform the region’s political as well as environmental landscape. Soon ships will be able to sail across an open Arctic Ocean during the summer months. The low humming of freight vessels will be a regular sound. The reduced presence of massive multi-year sea-ice is rapidly becoming a reality as the thicker and older ice is being exported from the region.
Insanity: Paul Ryan's Assault on Medicaid Would Cost the Private Sector 2 Million Jobs
According to an analysis released today by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), one provision of the budget proposal unveiled this week by Rep Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, would kill 2.1 million jobs over the next 5 years, the overwhelming majority of them in the private sector.
Japan: Risking generations of radiation
With engineers wrestling to control the damage at Japan's shaken nuclear plant, the public gauge if and when to panic. TEPCO said on Tuesday that it had found seawater with 7.5 million times the legal limit of radioactivity [EPA] With many foreigners - or gaijin - turning into flyjin and booking out of Japan as fast as their embassies and travel agents can negotiate flights, the locals have been left to make tough choices. To leave - but go where? - or to stay and deal with shortages of all manner (from food to fuel) in addition to the looming spectre of whatever is unfolding at the Daiichi nuclear reactors in Fukushima, damaged in the March 11 earthquake.
Quake-ravaged Japan rattled by new tremor
Tsunami warning lifted after 7.1 aftershock hits northeast coast of the country. Japanese authorities lifted the tsunami warning shortly after people were ordered to leave coastal areas [Reuters] Japan was rattled by a magnitude-7.1 aftershock nearly a month after a devastating earthquake and tsunami flattened the northeastern coast. Thursday's aftershock, the strongest since the day of the magnitude-9.0 quake, was a fresh blow to victims of that March 11 quake and subsequent tsunami that killed at least 25,000 people, tore apart hundreds of thousands of homes and sparked the ongoing crisis at a nuclear power plant. Al Jazeera's Marga Ortigas, reporting from Mizusawa in northeast Japan, said there were reports of injuries and gas leaks following the quake.
A Vortex of Death and Wealth
Whatever the strategic — and humanitarian — considerations behind NATO/U.S. intervention in Libya, a larger force utterly indifferent to both, and seldom sufficiently newsworthy to merit mention, unites tyrant and rescuer and keeps the world tangled in an endless cycle of hellish violence far beyond the scope of the conflict that generates it. I’m talking about the global arms trade, for which wars large and small, whatever their cause, whatever their “legitimacy,” are necessities without which the goods would not move. They’re also more than that, but not the sort of thing we salute or honor with granite statuary.
Justice for Gaza conflict victims: a response to Richard Goldstone
Palestinian human rights organisations express their concern about Goldstone's revised position. As Palestinian human rights organisations, we were surprised by your op-ed, Reconsidering the Goldstone report on Israel and war crimes. Your conclusions that "civilians were not intentionally targeted [by Israel] as a matter of policy‟ and that Israel has "to a significant degree‟ sufficiently self-investigated incidents potentially amounting to war crimes in Operation Cast Lead are of particular concern.
Past News
04/12/11
The Real Crime of M. Khodorkovsky
03/17/11
THEY DARE NOT SPEAK ITS NAME ...
03/02/11
The Silver Bullet And The Silver Shield
02/26/11
Arms Trafficking, Stolen Missiles, Soviet Submarines, Nuclear Detonations and 9/11
02/01/11
The New World Order Feudal Enslavement System
01/22/11
GRAINS-US soybeans, wheat at fresh 2-1/2 yr highs on supply worries
01/17/11
US Mint Reports Unprecedented Buying Spree Of Physical Silver
01/14/11
WAR on We The People: The Gulf Oil Attack by The Rothschild League of Investment Bankers - the GUlf oil disaster is WAR on we the people
Videos
04/14/11
Silver Liberation Army Official Communiqué No 2: Formal Declaration of War on Banker Occupation
SilverLibArmy
'My fellow human beings, do you want to help bring down the corrupt banking system and military industrial complex that has enslaved us for the past hundred years and is murdering us by the millions in wars for profit? Take your worthless paper money and buy as much silver as you can now!' - Ron Murphy";
'My fellow human beings, do you want to help bring down the corrupt banking system and military industrial complex that has enslaved us for the past hundred years and is murdering us by the millions in wars for profit? Take your worthless paper money and buy as much silver as you can now!' - Ron Murphy";
email: info@als-alexander.org, or interalex2@gmail.com
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