The countdown clock and the last chance for “The Founder’s Legacy” of patriotic Americans willing to lay it all on the line for a new Republic, has hit 0:00. Rebellion is no longer an option, a late night “what if” discussion around a bottle of good wine and snacks. It is now the mandated response of oath keeping citizens and Constitutional defending men and women who have heard Paul Revere in 2010. That “watchman,” who made the most famous call to prepare for rebellion in the history of the world, has come again, through all of us who have been riding across our land for several years and warned of the arrival of this most critical moment.
Amid signs of increasing desperation in the nine-year US war in Afghanistan, Washington has simultaneously launched a major offensive against the country’s second-largest city, Kandahar, and stepped up its attacks in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), escalating the bloodshed on both sides of the border.
Figures released Tuesday by the US Census Bureau reveal sharply worsening conditions for tens of millions of Americans under the impact of the economic crisis and the accumulation of vast wealth by a relative handful. Some of the figures, for particular states and regions, are simply staggering. Michigan residents experienced a 6.2 percent decrease in median income in the course of one year, from 2008 to 2009, while Illinois has suffered a 24 percent increase in poverty in the past decade. More than 36 percent of Detroit’s population officially lives in poverty.
Pre-trial military hearings began September 27 into atrocities committed by US Army soldiers over the past year in Kandahar, Afghanistan. In all, twelve soldiers face 76 charges, including murder, assault, dismembering corpses, filing false reports, drug abuse, and other crimes. Five of the soldiers were arrested in June for targeting civilians at random while out on patrol, killing them, then covering up the crimes by planting weapons on the victims, falsifying paperwork, and lying to superior officers.
Forbes study shows Denmark remains best country to do business in while Ireland takes sixth place from UK. Forbes's annual ranking of the Best Countries for Business has seen the US and UK fall to ninth and tenth place respectively. Denmark is still the best country in the world to do business, according to a Forbes report, but the US has dropped from second to ninth place, while Hong Kong has gone the other way. The UK has fallen from sixth to tenth place, replaced by Ireland, in Forbes's fifth annual ranking of the Best Countries for Business.
The Great Recession may have ended in June 2009, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, but U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner isn't buying it. And neither are recently revealed foreclosure and eviction scams at GMAC Mortgage, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and other too-big-to-fail financial firms swimming in both American taxpayer cash and the Federal Reserve Bank's divine intervention.
It's up to people outside Washington to build the struggles that will make a difference. "I'VE BEEN out of work since April, but there were a lot of people in line with me who were out longer than that," Larry Smizer told the Chicago Tribune as he stood alongside thousands of workers who lined up at 8 a.m. for a chance at one of the 400 jobs at a Chicago-area Ford plant this summer.
"Sometimes, for a day or two we don't even have bread, nor flour to make bread. There's a store nearby that, when we are truly desperate, lets us take a bag of bread or something simple, on credit. I owe them a lot of money for the food I've brought from them, but I still can't pay them."
09/28/10
The U.S. army attack on three houses in Falluja in the early morning of September 15 requires an explanation from various parties. The U.S. is required to explain the reason it deployed helicopter gunships in attacking a civilian target inside an Iraqi city after the withdrawal of its combat troops. The troops staying behind were supposed to be only engaged in training and offering of advice.
2009 was a year of accelerating economic pain and loss, according to US Census data released today. Although the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) tells us that the "Great Recession" officially ended in December of 2009, the labor force of the US shrank by more than 130,000 from 2008 to 2009. The median family income - a better measure than average income because it reflects the exact middle of income distribution - decreased by $2,254 or 3.5 percent. The median income for all workers in the US fell from $29,868 in 2008 to $28,365 in 2009 - a 5 percent decline.
A rescue worker takes a break from finding survivors following the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. (Photo: Photographer's Mate 2nd Class Jim Watson / US Navy)
A new AFL-CIO report shows that more than 13,000 of the truly heroic firefighters, police, and other rescuers who were the first to rush to the scene of the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City on September 11, 2001, are still being treated for the serious injuries they received.
More than a fifth of the world's plant species faces the threat of extinction, a trend with potentially catastrophic effects for life on Earth, according to research released on Wednesday. But a separate study cautioned that extinction of mammals had been overestimated and suggested some mammal species thought to have been wiped out may yet be rediscovered.
Senate blocks bill to punish firms that export jobs overseas The Senate on Tuesday blocked tax legislation that would have punished U.S. firms that export jobs. But the political symbolism of trying to save American jobs, not passing a bill, was the Democrats' closing argument on the economy in the waning weeks of the congressional elections.
Tim Berners-Lee, the man credited with inventing the world wide web, warned Tuesday of the "blight" of new laws being introduced across the globe allowing people to be cut off from the Internet. "There's been a rash of laws trying to give governments and Internet service providers (ISPs) the right and the duty to disconnect people," he told a conference on web science at the Royal Society in London.
As consensus grows regarding the futility of US national security policy, concerns arise over Barack Obama's strategy. In possibly the most dramatic mea culpa in Presidential history, Bill Clinton, newly appointed as UN Special Envoy for Haiti, admitted to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the US policy of compelling poor developing countries to buy US agricultural products at subsidised prices, which destroyed local agricultural sectors, was a disaster.
After squandering his first year in office catering to Wall Street, Obama suddenly attempted to shift course. It took a rebellion by Massachusetts’s voters in January 2010 to get him to pay full attention to the failures of his economic program. In the bluest of blue states, the voters who had given Obama a 26 percent plurality in the presidential election the year before spurned his personal entreaty to send another Democrat to fill the seat left vacant by the death of Sen. Ted Kennedy. The message was understood by Obama, who the very next day fundamentally altered his administration’s response to the economic meltdown. Or so it seemed for the moment.
The recession seems to be socking Americans in the heart as well as the wallet: Marriages have hit an all-time low while pleas for food stamps have reached a record high and the gap between rich and poor has grown to its widest ever. The long recession technically ended in mid-2009, economists say, but U.S. Census data released Tuesday show the painful, lingering effects. The annual survey covers all of last year, when unemployment skyrocketed to 10 percent, and the jobless rate is still a stubbornly high 9.6 percent.
Friday’s raids hit three U employees and a former student. The two sides of Washington Avenue South in front of the Minneapolis FBI headquarters were in stark contrast Monday evening. On one sidewalk stood a group of about 200 chanting protestors denouncing a string of FBI raids and grand jury subpoenas, including three against University of Minnesota employees and one against a former student.
Some bacteria in the Gulf of Mexico love eating oil as much as they like infecting humans. … One of the more pressing questions involves Vibrio… vulnificus… this year there is a likely possibility, scientists say, that Vibrio growth could be further spurred, directly or indirectly, in response to the oil and the organic flotsam it has left behind.
The unrelenting diplomatic and geopolitical standoff between Iran and the United States is often blamed on the Iranian government for its “confrontational” foreign policies, or its “unwillingness” to enter into a dialogue with the United States. Little known, however, is the fact that during the past decade or so, Iran has offered a number of times to negotiate with the United States without ever getting a positive response from the U.S.
Corporal Jeremy Morlock told investigators his sergeant randomly picked out Afghan civilians to be killed. (ABC) Video: US soldiers accused over Afghanistan 'kill team' (ABC News) Video: US soldiers face charges over killings (7pm TV News NSW) Related Story: US army opens hearing into Afghan killings In what is being described as one of the worst crime cases out of Afghanistan, five US soldiers have been accused of the premeditated murder of three randomly selected civilians. The five soldiers, who were stationed in the country's south, are accused of forming their own "kill team". Prosecutors say the soldiers kept body parts of their victims and three of the accused men have confessed.
A report examining the state of human rights of people of African descent in the United States was presented to the U.N. Human Rights Council today. The U.N. Working Group on the Rights of People of African Descent reported that, while the U.S. government has taken some steps to promote the rights of people of African descent, much more needs to be done to bring the U.S. into compliance with international treaty obligations.
U.S. chief executive officers' view of the economy darkened in the third quarter, with top executives saying they were less willing to hire new workers as they fear sales growth will slow. The change in mood reported in a Business Roundtable survey on Tuesday bodes poorly for the tepid U.S. economic recovery, which as been held back by stubbornly high unemployment. The news was not entirely grim, though -- more CEOs expect to boost their capital spending over the next six months, a trend that reflects both strong corporate balance sheets and a desire to lift productivity.
Suicide rates for middle-aged people are edging up — particularly for white men without college degrees — and a combination of poor health and a poor economy may be driving it, U.S. researchers said on Monday. Middle-aged people usually have a relatively low risk for suicide as they seek to support their families, but baby boomers are bucking this trend, sociologists Julie Phillips of Rutgers University in New Jersey and Ellen Idler of Emory University in Atlanta found.
A music festival will be held in London on October 12th and 13th dedicated to highlighting the plight of Palestinians and help raise aid for the Gaza Strip. The event, dubbed
'Jazza Music Festival' , will feature singer-songwriter
Sarah Gillespie, London-based Israeli-born saxophonist
Gilad Atzmon, with the participation of other leading artists and performers such as the Mercury Prize nominated 'Unthanks' sisters.
http://www.middle-east-online.com:80/english/culture/?id=4154009/27/10
RTAmerica | The FBI raided the homes of a number of anti-war activists in Chicago and Minneapolis. The Activists are planning demonstrations against the FBI. Is this a sign of a growing American police state? Former Reagan official Paul Craig Roberts argued that the US government is establishing in the mind of the public that anyone who criticizes the War on Terror is aligned with terrorists. He further argued that under the rubric of terror the government has stripped American's of their civil liberties.
Israeli settlers say they will slowly resume building new Jewish homes in West Bank settlements — just hours after a construction ban that helped jump-start Mideast peace talks expired. Mayor Oded Revivi in the Efrat settlement said on Monday that banks and developers are reluctant to get into commitments, fearing construction will be stopped again.
Every generation or so, a major secular shift takes place that shakes up the existing paradigm. It happens in industry, finance, literature, sports, manufacturing, technology, entertainment, travel, communication, etc.
The largest number of bank failures in nearly 20 years has eliminated jobs, accelerated a drought in lending and left the industry's survivors with more power to squeeze customers. After a Collapse, End of a Dream For Ms. Hodgson, A New, Poorer, Start Some 279 banks have collapsed since Sept. 25, 2008, when Washington Mutual Inc. became the biggest bank failure on record. That dwarfed the 1984 demise of Continental Illinois, which had only one-seventh of WaMu's assets. The failures of the past two years shattered the pace of the prior six-year period, when only three dozen banks died.
Europe’s central banks have all but halted sales of their gold reserves, ending a run of large disposals each year for more than a decade. The central banks of the euro zone plus Sweden and Switzerland are bound by the Central Bank Gold Agreement, which caps their collective sales.
A nation under one umbrella, one of the major themes shown by students of Mahatma Gandhi Memorial School during the Mahatma Fiji Day celebrations held at the school in Nabua yesterday. Picture: JONE LUVENITOGA
If the current rate of progress in the field of hunting exoplanets is any indication, then the world will be presented the first Earth-like extrasolar planet by no later than May 2011, a new analysis shows
What better way to remember Tony Curtis (who died last night at the age of 85) than by looking back on some of his best moments on screen? His career spanned six decades and yielded some classic American films — none the least of which is the great Billy Wilder comedy Some Like It Hot. Curtis played a musician who runs from the mob by disguising himself as woman in a traveling all-female band. In the clip below, Curtis and costar Jack Lemmon wobble on high heels and drool over Marilyn Monroe.
US slaughter intensifies in Afghanistan 
