Settlers move furniture out of Jerusalem home
Israeli settlers ransacked the home of a Palestinian family in occupied East Jerusalem's Old City early Sunday tossing furniture into the street. Homeowner Mazin Qirrish said Israeli police provided protection to the settlers as his family and neighbors tried to the prevent the evacuation of their home. The family's troubles began 14 September as settlers announced their plan to move in, claiming ownership. An Israeli court recently ruled in favor of the settlers...
American Science’s Racist History Still Haunts the World
Early in America’s crusade to spread the wonders of modern medicine, a group of researchers in Guatemala did something unspeakable in the name of science. Documentation of the project is just now coming to light, more than 60 years later, and it reads like a horror novel: Hundreds of men systematically infected with syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases in an effort, endorsed by both the U.S. and Guatemalan governments, to research the effectiveness of drug treatment.
When Did Teachers Become Bums?
When did teachers become bums? When did it become okay to vilify an entire occupation — three million college educated professionals working as hard as anyone to make the world a better place? It wasn’t that long ago that teachers occupied a quasi-secular-sainthood. It was the underpaid, overworked teachers who guided, inspired, succored, and cajoled every one of us to find in ourselves that bigger person we all long to be.
Torture Victim Sues Obama Administration Over `Kafkaesque Nightmare'
In a first for a former Guantánamo captive freed by a federal judge, a Syrian man now living in Europe is suing the U.S. government for damages from what he calls a ``Kafkaesque nightmare.'' Abdul Razak al JankoThe 44-page lawsuit by Abdul Razak al Janko, 32, described a decade-long odyssey of detention -- first in Taliban-era Afghanistan, where he was tortured as an alleged pro-American Israeli spy, and later in U.S. military prisons that ignored or misdiagnosed his history as a torture
White House staff exodus exposes Obama to charges of disarray
More senior staff including defence secretary Robert Gates, and senior advisor David Axelrod, leave their jobs. More senior White House staff are to leave in the next few months, adding to the high exit rate from President Barack Obama's administration. Political analysts attribute the attrition rate to exhaustion, but Republican opponents blame disarray inside the White House, with an insular team responsible for too many policy failures.
How Hank Paulson's Inaction Helped Goldman Sachs
Henry Paulson has received widespread acclaim for his bare-knuckled decision-making as the treasury secretary at the peak of the 2008 financial crisis, but former federal regulators say he missed multiple chances to contain the disaster.
Major shift: California leans toward marijuana legalization
A new Field Poll highlighted Sunday in The San Francisco Chronicle (whose site has crashed as of this writing) suggests that the tide has turned in favor of medical marijuana legalization. "In a dramatic shift of sentiment, nearly half of California's likely voters now want to legalize marijuana use in the state, according to a new Field Poll," the site's authors write.
Currency wars are necessary if all else fails
The overwhelming fact of the global currency system is that America needs a much weaker dollar to bring its economy back into kilter and avoid slow ruin, yet the rest of the world cannot easily handle the consequences of such a wrenching adjustment. There is not enough demand to go around.
Prisoners Protest by Self-Mutilation
ASTANA, KAZAKHSTAN - Horrific protests that have seen hundreds of inmates slice their stomachs open over conditions in jails in Kazakhstan are set to continue as the UN accuses the Central Asian country of trying to mask the real state of its prison system. Convicts have said that torture, beatings and rapes are common in prisons and that the only option left to them to highlight their plight to the outside world is brutal self-mutilation.
Afghan War, Afghan Holocaust & Afghan Genocide 9th Anniversary - 4.9 million dead, 3.2 million refugees
The Afghan War has now entered its 10th year. It has become the longest US war. As of 7 October 2010, the 9th Anniversary of the US invasion of Afghanistan, the human cost of the Afghan War has been estimated as about 4.9 million violent deaths or non-violent avoidable deaths from Occupier-imposed deprivation.
Drunken diplomacy: new settlements
Barack Obama should demand an end to settlement expansions in the West Bank, putting Israel on the road to redemption. "Disappointed." That's the best the US could do. The Israeli government ends a 10-month suspension on settlement construction - it was, in fact only a partial freeze, but that's another story - and cement and bulldozers immediately start to spread across the West Bank. Did anyone really expect better?
Cuba's changes: what would Che say?
Cubans who previously worked for the state will be encouraged to take up farming under new economic policies. It is hard to imagine what Che Guevara, the legendary communist revolutionary, would make of Cuba's plan to lay off 500,000 state workers by 2011 as the island moves closer to a market economy.
A huge setback for, if not the end of, the American nuclear renaissance
A cascade of insurmountable obstacles now stand in the path of development of the widely trumpeted new generation of nuclear power generating plants in the US despite generous federal loan guarantees offered by Obama’s Department of Energy.
MUSIC AND TONES RISE FOR GAZA BY LAUREN BOOTH
Until now, it' been a real source of pride amongst Israel's support network that big name musicians have felt 'safe' to appear at Zionist fund raisers. Even whilst Israel commits ever more stomach churning war crimes in Palestine and -as we saw in May with the attack on the Freedom Flotilla - in international waters. Aappearing at events to raise issues related to justice in Palestine was seen as a sure fire way of artists being branded anti semitic- leading to (so artists were lead to believe) falls in record sales and trouble s booking tour venues. But, as Gilad Atzmon has aptly named his latest CD ' the tide has changed.'
GILAD ATZMON: WAGNER AGAIN
Oi vey, an Israeli orchestra plans to play the music of this meshigine Wagner, whom Hitler loved so much. Wagner’s music is considered taboo in Israel, it is years since he made it to top 40’s in the Jewish state. Wagner also held views that are far from being popular amongst Jews. He once wrote that Jews were only capable of producing money-making music and not works of art. I guess that Israelis do not like meshiges with an astute reading of the socio-economy of the show business.
