Economic Hit Men and the Next Drowning of New Orleans – Hurricane Bush Four Years Later, Part 2 by Greg Palast

by Greg Palast
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.gregpalast.com
August 27, 2009

For Crooks and Liars

This week only, our readers can download, free of charge, Greg Palast’s film, “Big Easy to Big Empty: The Untold Story of the Drowning of New Orleans.” Or donate and get a signed DVD. Watch the 1-minute trailer …

Big Easty to Big Empty Trailer Video

GregPalastOffice
August 25, 2009

Re-released this week, the DVD includes exclusive interviews by Palast of the heroes and the villains – the deep horror, the dark humor and the no-bullshit truth you won’t get on CNN.

more about “Big Easty to Big Empty Trailer Video“, posted with vodpod

Who put out the hit on van Heerden?

Ivor van Heerden is the professor at Louisiana State University’s Hurricane Center who warned the levees of New Orleans were ready to blow — months and years before Katrina did the job.

For being right, van Heerden was rewarded with … getting fired. [See Katrina, Four Years Later: Expert Fired Who Warned Levees Would Burst]

But I’ve been in this investigating game long enough to know that van Heerden’s job didn’t die of natural causes or academic issues. This was a hit. Some very powerful folks wanted him disappeared and silenced — for good.

So who done it?

Thom Hartmann: Should you get a flu shot? With Larrie Garrett

thomhartmann
August 27, 2009

more about “Thom Hartmann: Should you get a flu s…“, posted with vodpod

see

Fear, Intimidation & Media Disinformation: U.K Government is Planning Mass Graves in Case of H1N1 Swine Flu Pandemic by Michel Chossudovsky

H1N1-Mexican Flu-Swine Flu

An Interview With Col. Lawrence Wilkerson (Part One) by Andy Worthington

by Andy Worthington
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.andyworthington.co.uk
27 Aug. 2009

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson served in the US military for 31 years and was Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell from August 2002 until January 2005, two months after Powell’s resignation, when he left the State Department. He is now the chairman of the New America Foundation’s US-Cuba 21st Century Policy Initiative. In March, in a guest column for the Washington Note, he wrote an article criticizing some crucial aspects of the Bush administration’s detention policies in the “War on Terror,” which, as I noted at the time, “are not as widely known as they should be, and which echo some of the important issues that I’ve tried to raise in my book The Guantánamo Files and my subsequent writing.”

As Obama Golfs with UBS CEO Days After Firm Avoids Criminal Prosecution

Democracy Now!
August 27, 2009

As Obama Golfs with UBS CEO Days After Firm Avoids Criminal Prosecution, UBS Whistleblower Given 40-Month Jail Term

On the first day of his vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, President Obama spent five hours golfing with UBS executive Robert Wolf, an early financial backer of Obama’s presidential campaign. As the pair teed off, another UBS banker, Bradley Birkenfeld, had just been handed a forty-month prison sentence after pleading guilty to assisting a client evade taxes. It was the first sentence in a wider scandal that has seen UBS admit to helping wealthy Americans dodge their tax obligations. On his own initiative, Birkenfeld blew the whistle on UBS. His disclosure and cooperation with US authorities provided inside information into the bank’s conduct and sparked the massive federal investigation.

Cindy Sheehan Martha’s Vineyard Press Conference

Cindy Sheehan
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox Blog
Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox

peaceoftheaction
August 27, 2009

August 27, 2009 Oak Bluffs School Press Corp

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Senator Kennedy by Cindy Sheehan

Cindy Sheehan: Just Arrived (11 second video)

International People’s Declaration of Peace by Cindy Sheehan + Interview on MSNBC

Canadians talk to Americans about health care

http://www.therealnews.com

Transcript

While the debate over changes to the US health-care system continues, lobby groups are investing advertising dollars to get their point across. One such group, Conservatives for Patient’s Rights has released an advertisement outlining Canadian dissatisfaction with government run health care. The Real News Network invited Torontonians to respond.

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Pt 2

The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle by Gary Corseri

By Gary Corseri
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
August 27, 2009

Welcome to the Tipping Point! The End Times. The Bizarro Hall of Mirrors. The Funny Farm. The Monkey House.

order here

Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle
By Chris Hedges
Hardcover: 232 pages
Publisher: Nation Books (2009)
ISBN: 9781568584379

If you’re looking for one of those treacly Oprah books—The Secret, and its variants—avoid this one. Those books nourish like potato chips and leave most people more confused, more desperate, more thirsty for fantasies than before. No amount of wishing, earnest yearning, visualizing and New Age mysticism is going to get us out of the morass we’re in. In Empire of Illusion, Chris Hedges takes a sober look down our hall of distorting mirrors. The son of a minister, with a degree in theology from Harvard, a columnist for Truthdig.com, Hedges has worked as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. His books include War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning and American Fascists. He was part of the New York Times team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for the paper’s coverage of global terrorism. Here are some of the pertinent facts he contemplates:

• The top 1% of Americans now control more wealth than the bottom 90% combined.
• World-wide porn revenues, including in-room movies at hotels, sex clubs, and the Internet, topped $97 billion in 2006—more than that of Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo!, Apple, Netflixs, and EarthLink combined.