by Richard C. Cook
Dandelion Salad
January 20, 2008
It is not quite true that the U.S. economy is heading into a recession, even though President Bush and most other politicians seem to be discovering it for the first time. It’s like the famous scene in Casablanca where Louis, the Prefect of Police, shuts down Rick’s nightclub while pocketing his winnings for the night, because, “I am shocked, shocked to learn that gambling is going on in this establishment!”
by Andrew Gavin Marshall
featured writer
Dandelion Salad
January 20, 2008
Many have now heard rumblings of the “amero”, a proposed North American currency to replace the Canadian loonie, dollar and peso. However, most of the mentions of this concept, when discussed in the mainstream media tend to focus on suggesting that talk of an “amero”, and in effect, the accompanying North American Union, is nothing but a conspiracy theory created by deluded xenophobes afraid of immigration and globalization. The Boston Globe recently wrote such a story, titled, “The Amero Conspiracy”, which stated, “The SPP [Security and Prosperity Partnership] does exist, and its tri-national task forces continue to meet, but its members consider it a way for the United States, Canada, and Mexico to collaborate on issues such as customs, environmental and safety regulations, narcotics smuggling, and terrorism. The amero, on the other hand, appears to be purely theoretical.”1
By Franklin Lamb in Beirut and Ann El Khoury in Sydney
20/01/08 “ICH”
The Zionist Targeting of Lebanon’s Dr. Ibrahim Mousawi
You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?
— Joseph Welch to Senator Joseph McCarthy, April 1954
A humanitarian crisis is underway as the Gaza Strip’s only power plant began to shut down on Sunday, and the tiny coastal territory entered its third full day without shipments of vital food and fuel supplies due to Israel’s punitive sanctions.
The Gaza Strip’s power plant has completely shut down on Sunday because it no longer has the fuel needed to keep running. One of the plant’s two electricity-generating turbines had already shut down by noon.
This will drastically reduce output to 25 or 30 megawatts, down from the 65 megawatts the plant produces under normal conditions. By Sunday evening the plant will shut down completely, leaving large swaths of the Gaza Strip in darkness.
Omar Kittaneh, the head of the Palestine Energy Authority in Ramallah, confirmed that by tonight, the one remaining operating turbine will be powered down, and the Gaza power plant will no longer be generating any electricity at all.
“We have asked the Israeli government to reverse its decision and to supply fuel to operate the power plant”, Dr. Kittaneh said. “We have talked to the Israeli humanitarian coordination in their Ministry of Energy [National Infrastructure]. We say this is totally Israel’s responsibility, and that reducing the fuel supplies until the plant had to shut down will affect not only the electrical system but the water supply, and the entire infrastructure in Gaza – everything.”
After months of increasingly harsh sanctions, Israel imposed a total closure on the Strip’s border crossings, even preventing the delivery of humanitarian aid. The Israeli government says the closure is punishment for an ongoing barrage of Palestinian homemade projectiles fired from the Gaza Strip.
“Famine”
180 fuel stations have shut down after Gaza residents to buy gas for cooking.
A Palestinian economist Hasan Abu Ramadan said the current humanitarian disaster in the Gaza Strip will be deepened by the blockade on fuel and food supplies. He warned that Gaza Strip could go from a situation of deep poverty to all out famine, disease, and malnutrition.
Abu Ramadan said that more than 80% of the Strip’s 1.5 million residents have been surviving with the help of food aid from international organizations such as UNRWA for Palestinian refugees.
International condemnation
Most international actors in the region believe there already is a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, including the UN’s Emergency Relief Coordinator, the Undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs John Holmes, who said at a press conference at UNHQ in New York on Friday that “This kind of action against the people in Gaza cannot be justified, even by those rocket attacks”.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon expressed particular concern, in a statement issued later on Friday through his spokesperson, about the “decision by Israel to close the crossing points in between Gaza and Israel used for the delivery of humanitarian assistance. Such action cuts off the population from much-needed fuel supplies used to pump water and generate electricity to homes and hospitals”.
The UN Human Rights Council’s Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied territories, John Dugard, also issued a much sharper statement on Friday, saying that Israel must have foreseen the loss of life and injury to many nearby civilians when it targeted the Ministry of Interior building in Gaza City.
This, and the killings of other Palestinians during the week, plus the closures, “raise very serious questions about Israel’s respect for international law and its Commitment to the peace process”, Dugard said. He said it violates the strict prohibition on collective punishment contained in the Fourth Geneva Convention, and one of the basic principles of international humanitarian law: that military action must distinguish between military targets and civilian targets.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
see
Democracy Now!
20 min 39 sec – Nov 27, 2007
Professor of linguistics, at MIT, Noam Chomsky speaking at Boston’s historic Old South Church, October 27, 2007.
Chomsky says U.S. backing of continued Israeli occupation and annexation of Palestinian land is the biggest obstacle to peace.
This is from conference The Apartheid Paradigm in Palestine/Israel: Issues of Justice and Equality. The video was broadcasted by Democracy Now! on November 27, 2007.
Transcript: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/27/1547221
run time: 44:55 min
Ed Hammond director of The Sunshine Project (www.sunshine-project.org) speaking at the forum Biotech Research & the Law before the Seattle Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild at the University of Washington Law School November 29, 2007.
Added: January 19, 2008
see
“Doomsday Seed Vault” in the Arctic by F. William Engdahl (GMO)
America The Beautiful’s Germ Warfare Rash By Sherwood Ross
Pentagon Poised To Resume Open Air Weapons Testing by Sherwood Ross
Plague of bioweapons accidents afflicts the US by Debora MacKenzie
commentary by Glen Ford
A Black Agenda Radio
Wednesday, 16 January 2008
The “hope-la” and “change-la” emanating from the Obama and Clinton campaigns turned sour as Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday approached. The two front-running candidates and their corporate media-megaphones found themselves on shaky ground when the subject turned to the actual history of MLK and his antagonist/ally, President Lyndon Johnson. The vapidity of the debate revealed, once again, the shallowness of American political discourse, which has been stripped bare of relevance to past, present or future realities. Fortunately, Dr. King left a voluminous record of his own political analyses. Rather than allow them to blather further, the candidates should be tested on the question: What would Dr. King do? All but one would fail.
“What would Dr. King do?”
The corporate media-mangled Barack Obama/Hillary Clinton “debate” over the relative contributions of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and President Lyndon Johnson coincides with the birthday of the actual Martin Luther King. Since the corporate media is totally incapable of covering or even tolerating the raising of any issues of substance, and because both Obama and Clinton avoid real issues, real facts, and real history like the plague, we urge that thinking voters put the candidates to the Martin Luther King Test. What would Dr. King do, if he were alive?
…
The only candidate who would pass the Martin Luther King Test is Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich, whose platform for peace, truly universal health care, a living wage, and an end to corporate domination of American life harkens back to that “shining moment” in the Sixties that King mentioned, when there were “hopes” and “new beginnings.” But the corporate media has caused the Kucinich campaign to disappear from coverage and televised debate.
continued… plus audio link
h/t: Dennis 4 President
FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
see
What you may not know about Dr. Martin Luther King + Rev. Yearwood on MLK’s dream (videos)
Obama’s Dubious Praise for Reagan By Robert Parry
Dream versus Nightmare: Pick One – An Open Letter to Barack Obama by The Other Katherine Harris
Kucinich Wins Presidential Endorsement From Key Mexican American Organization
Dennis Kucinich: Soul Meets Body (video)
By Robert Parry
Consortium News
January 19, 2008
Sen. Barack Obama prides himself in transcending the old ideological chasms that have divided the American electorate for decades, so much so that he recently cited Republican icon Ronald Reagan as a leader who “changed the trajectory of America.”
We need to get together to impeach these bastards from office. Get informed!
January 20, 2008
see
Open Letter To Leno, Maher & G.E. From Your Anti-Censorship “Disruptors”
Randi Rhodes: Wexler: Impeach Cheney interview
Wexler calls for Cheney’s impeachment (video; Spanish subtitles)
The Sunday Times
by Chris Gourlay, Jonathan Calvert and Joe Lauria
January 20, 2008
The FBI has been accused of covering up a file detailing government dealings with a network stealing nuclear secrets
THE FBI has been accused of covering up a key case file detailing evidence against corrupt government officials and their dealings with a network stealing nuclear secrets.
The assertion follows allegations made in The Sunday Times two weeks ago by Sibel Edmonds, an FBI whistleblower, who worked on the agency’s investigation of the network.
Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator, listened into hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agency’s Washington field office.
She says the FBI was investigating a Turkish and Israeli-run network that paid high-ranking American officials to steal nuclear weapons secrets. These were then sold on the international black market to countries such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
see
Nukes, Spooks, And The Specter of 9/11 By Justin Raimondo
Sibel Edmonds, Turkey & the Bomb – A Real 9/11 Cover-Up? by Dave Lindorff
For sale: West’s deadly nuclear secrets
America’s Road to Tyranny By Vincent L. Guarisco
FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds Will Now Tell All – and Face Charges if Necessary By Brad Friedman
Nukes Over America: Just a Stupid Mistake. Sure It Is By Dave Lindorff
See: SC Democratic Primary Results 01.26.08
by Rob Kall
http://www.opednews.com
January 20, 2008 at 07:53:47
Hillary Clinton defeated Obama in Nevada, in a close race, pulling 51% to Obama’s 45%. Among Nevada Democratic voters, 59% were women, and the 68% of them were over 45– both demographics that favored Clinton.
John Edwards pulled 4% of the vote.
While Clinton grabbed the psychological “win” she actually won one less electoral vote. Obama got 13 to Hillary’s 12 and the Obama camp claimed that Obama “won” the all important delegate count race.
Clinton won with women and Latinos– with Latinos choosing Clinton three to one over Obama.
***
Romney was a clear, huge winner in Nevada yesterday, with 52% of the vote, helped by one of the largest populations of Mormons in any state outside of Utah.
Ron Paul won a solid second place finish with 14% ahead of John McCain, with 13%, and with Huckabee and Thompson each with 8% and Giuliani with 4%. Paul doubled Giuliani’s votes.
52% of Republican voters were male.
***
John McCain won the GOP race in South Carolina with 33%, followed by Huckabee with 30%, Thompson 16%, Romney out of the “medals” in 4th place, with 15%, Paul with 4%, Giuliani with 2%.
McCain got 19 delegates (exceeding the 18 Romney won in NV,) Huckabee got 5 and the rest got none.
Crooksandliars.com reports that McCain won with a little more than half the votes he had in 2000, and that the Republican turnout was 100,000 less than it was in 2000. Not exactly what we’d call enthusiasm for candidates.
In 2000 McCain took 237,888 votes in South Carolina. Tonight he has just over half those number of votes with 134,474 as I write this. Republican turnout will be well below where it was in 2000. More than 100,000 votes short. With five Republican primaries, Rudy Giuliani has half the number of votes of Ron Paul.
Got that? The guy the corpstream MSM give all the attention to– Rudy Giuiliani– has accumulated half the votes of Ron Paul. Do you think that will change the amount of coverage Paul will be getting?
The next hot action will be in SC next weekend for the Dem primary, and in Florida on January 29th. The latest poll puts Hillary Clinton far ahead of Obama in Florida. Based on her performance in Nevada, pulling the Latino vote three to one over Obama, Florida is hers to lose.
Rob Kall is executive editor and publisher of OpEdNews.com, President of Futurehealth, Inc, inventor and organizer of several conferences, including StoryCon, the Summit Meeting on the Art, Science and Application of Story and The Winter Brain Meeting on neurofeedback, biofeedback, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology. He is a frequent Speaker on Politics, Impeachment, The art, science and power of story, heroes and the hero’s journey, Positive Psychology, Stress, Biofeedback and a wide range of subjects. See more of his articles here and, older ones, here.
To learn more about me and OpEdNews.com, check out this article. A few declarations. -While I’m registered as a Democrat, I consider myself to be a dynamic critic of the Democratic party, just as, well, not quite as much, but almost as much as I am a critic of republicans. My articles express my personal opinion, not the opinion of this website.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
see
SC Democratic Primary Results 01.26.08
E-Voting Train Wreck 2008: The Horry County, SC Disaster h/t: Dennis Kucinich (the ORIGINAL UNOFFICIAL Page)
by Sherwood Ross
Global Research, January 19, 2008
“In the last six years, Washington has stepped up its sales and transfers of high-technology weapons, military training, and other military assistance to governments regardless of their respect for human rights, democratic principles, or nonproliferation,” according to a report in the current(Jan.-Feb.) “Arms Control Today,” published online by the Arms Control Association (ACA). “All that matters is that they have pledged their assistance in the global war on terrorism.”
You read it right. The Bush regime has been using 9/11 as an excuse for the reckless sale of weapons around the globe, working $16.9 billion in new arms deals in 2006, 41.9 percent of the world’s total. This compares to runners-up Russia, $8.7 billion, and Great Britain, $3.1 billion, writes Rachel Stohl, a senior analyst at the Center for Defense Information(CDI), which tracks such data.
Despots once banned from getting U.S. weapons and training are being showered with both. “By providing military assistance with a disregard for human rights(HR) conditions, the U.S. is not only giving up the opportunity to use military assistance as leverage to improve (HR conditions), but is also rewarding abusive governments for their unconscionable actions,” Stohl writes.
Noting that U.S. aid is growing “at the same time as human rights conditions are worsening,” Stohl cites the example of Ethiopia, “which is carrying out a brutal counterinsurgency campaign within its own borders” and Nepal, whose security forces “opened fire on peaceful strikers and anti-government demonstrations.” Bush is also funneling millions into Uzbekistan, where thousands of Muslims have been imprisoned without due process and many tortured to death.
One headline-making scandal, of course, is the $10 billion in taxpayer’s money Bush has funneled to the Pakistan military since 9/11, where General Pervez Musharraf has habitually disappeared his political foes, and recently invoked emergency rule, suspended the constitution and jailed thousands. Bush okayed the multi-billion dollar sale to Musharraf of F-16 jet fighters that can pack nuclear warheads, just as he okayed their sale earlier to India, escalating the capability of these long-time antagonists to inflict dreadful atrocities if they go to war.
Since 2001, CDI has tracked skyrocketing U.S. military aid to the following 25 countries that “have a unique role in the ‘war on terror’ through the strategic services they provide the U.S.”: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Bahrain, Oman, Yemen, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Algeria, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya.
CDI documented U.S. aid in foreign military, and direct commercial, sales to the 25 soared 400% over the five years prior to 9/11. This despite a 2006 U.S. State Department finding of “serious,” “grave,” or “significant” abuses committed by them against their own citizens.
CDI summarizes, “the U.S. is sending unprecedented levels of military assistance to countries that it simultaneously criticizes for lack of respect for human rights and, in some cases, for questionable democratic processes.”
According to reporter Stohl, what the U.S. is billing as “counterterrorism training” often is nothing more than “counterinsurgency training.” This results, she says, in the U.S. “involving itself in internal conflicts around the world and is in practice encouraging countries to continue their internal struggles that predate September 11, 2001.”
President Bush is just back from the Middle East where he preached the virtues of “democracy.” His arms sales, though, betray his forked tongue.
Sherwood Ross is a Miami-based writer who covers military and political topics. Reach him at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com
The CRG grants permission to cross-post original Global Research articles on community internet sites as long as the text & title are not modified. The source and the author’s copyright must be displayed. For publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: crgeditor@yahoo.com
www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of “fair use” in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than “fair use” you must request permission from the copyright owner.
For media inquiries: crgeditor@yahoo.com
© Copyright Sherwood Ross, Global Research, 2008
The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7850
Campaign ’08: vote now
If the election were today, who would you vote for?
21.7%
Hillary Clinton(4253 responses)
John Edwards(2309 responses)
Rudy Giuliani(342 responses)
Mike Huckabee(488 responses)
Dennis Kucinich(598 responses)
John McCain(834 responses)
Barack Obama(4390 responses)
Ron Paul(5546 responses)
Mitt Romney(657 responses)
Fred Thompson(207 responses)
19624 total responses
h/t: C.H.A.R.A. & Ron Paul 2008
***
Here’s another one:
h/t: Lorie, Tina www.Dennis4President.com & Winged Ladye, www.Dennis4President.com
see
Dennis Kucinich Can Win by Lo (lots of polls, surveys, etc.)
Feel free to repost but be polite and include a link back to the blog post please. ~ Lo
‘I want to continue peaceful process with Russia’: Ron Paul
Ron Paul, 2008 U.S. Republican presidential hopeful, is critical of America’s current policy towards Russia. He commented to RT on his political views.
Added: January 20, 2008
see
What you may not know about Dr. Martin Luther King
http://warongreed.org/dreams.php
Today we honor Dr. King’s birthday. We all know him because of his historic impact on civil rights, but many don’t realize that later in life he fought just as passionately for the rights of workers and against the entrenched institutions of injustice.
“Equality means dignity. And dignity demands a job and a paycheck that lasts through the week.”
The War on Greed is exactly this kind of fight. The livelihoods of families have been directly attacked by the actions of buyout billionaires like Henry Kravis putting Wall Street’s special interests ahead of his 800,000 employees… and pocketing $51,000 an hour in the process.
The first step must be taxing these buyout billionaires at a fair tax rate. It will not solve all the problems, but it is a strong and forceful beginning. With the presidential campaigns underway, it is the perfect time to force this issue into the campaigns the way we did with Wal-Mart and Iraq for Sale.
As our friend Rev. Yearwood, leader of the Hip Hop Caucus, has said: “We are facing a lunch counter moment for the 21st century.”
Please join us at our virtual lunch counter by signing the petition to presidential candidates demanding they pledge to close the loopholes and tax the tax dodgers. Buyout billionaires are a menace to our economy. People are hurting, badly, and we must take beginning steps to bring the issue of corporate greed and economic equality to the nation’s attention.
War on Greed: Rev. Yearwood on MLK’s dream
see
How the private equity buyout industry works (videos)
Robert Greenwald fights for the dream (video)
Robert Greenwald discusses the War on Greed + Winner of the contest (videos) (updated)
Dandelion Salad 