by Ralph Nader
Wednesday, July 30. 2008
Montgomery, Alabama – The Troy University Rosa Parks Museum is located on the side of the old Empire Theatre where this courageous African-American woman declined to “move to the back of the bus” in 1955.
Month: July 2008
The All-Seeing Public Eye, Part 1: Why Isn’t Mainstream Media Enough? (video no longer available)
[Sorry the video and links are no longer available, Derek deleted his blog and youtube channel.]
by Derek Wallace
http://organicreform.blogspot.com
July 29, 2008
The U.S. Economy and Bad Government Policies by Rodrigue Tremblay
by Rodrigue Tremblay
Friday, August 1, 2008
“I think the [US financial] system is basically sound, I truly do.”
George W. Bush, July 15, 2008
“Since 1951, the budget of the Department of Defense each year exceeds the net profits of all U.S. corporations. So, in finance capital terms, that means that the management of that budget controls the largest single block of finance capital resources.”
Seymour Melman (1917–2004)
“The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.”
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), (September 1932)
The NYT: Making Nuclear Extermination Respectable
by Prof. James Petras
Global Research
July 30, 2008
On July 18, 2008 The New York Times published an article by Israeli-Jewish historian, Professor Benny Morris, advocating an Israeli nuclear-genocidal attack on Iran with the likelihood of killing 70 million Iranians – 12 times the number of Jewish victims in the Nazi holocaust:
“Iran ’s leaders would do well to rethink their gamble and suspend their nuclear program. Barring this, the best they could hope for is that Israel ’s conventional air assault will destroy their nuclear facilities. To be sure, this would mean thousands of Iranian casualties and international humiliation. But the alternative is an Iran turned into a nuclear wasteland.”
Morris is a frequent lecturer and consultant to the Israeli political and military establishment and has unique access to Israeli strategic military planners. Morris’ advocacy and public support of the massive, brutal expulsion of all Palestinians is on public record. Yet his genocidal views have not precluded his receiving numerous academic awards. His writings and views are published in Israel ’s leading newspapers and journals. Morris’ views are not the idle ranting of a marginal psychopath, as witnessed by the recent publication of his latest op-ed article in the New York Times.
What does the publication by the New York Times of an article, which calls for the nuclear incineration of 70 million Iranians and the contamination of the better part of a billion people in the Middle East, Asia and Europe, tell us about US politics and culture? For it is the NYT, which informs the ‘educated classes’ in the US, its Sunday supplements, literary and editorial pages and which serves as the ‘moral conscience’ of important sectors of the cultural, economic and political elite.
The New York Times provides a certain respectability to mass murder, which Morris’ views otherwise would not possess if say, they were published in the neo-conservative weeklies or monthlies. The fact that the NYT considers the prospect of an Israeli mass extermination of millions of Iranians part of the policy debate in the Middle East reveals the degree to which Zionofascism has infected the ‘higher’ cultural and journalist circles of the United States. Truth to say, this is the logical outgrowth of the Times public endorsement of Israel ’s economic blockade to starve 1.4 million Palestinians in Gaza ; the Times’ cover-up of Israeli-Zionist-AIPAC influence in launching the US invasion of Iraq leading to over one million murdered Iraqi citizens.
The Times sets the tone for the entire New York cultural scene, which privileges Israeli interests, to the point of assimilating into the US political discourse not only its routine violations of international law, but its threats, indeed promises, to scorch vast areas of the earth in pursuit of its regional supremacy. The willingness of the NYT to publish an Israeli genocide-ethnocide advocate tells us about the strength of the ties between a purportedly ‘liberal establishment’ pro-Israel publication and the totalitarian Israeli right: It is as if to say that for the liberal pro-Israel establishment, the nonJewish Nazis are off limits, but the views and policies of Judeo-fascists need careful consideration and possible implementation.
Morris’ New York Times ‘nuclear-extermination’ article did not provoke any opposition from the 52 Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations (PMAJO) because, in its daily information bulletin, Daily Alert, it has frequently published articles by Israeli and US Zionists advocating an Israeli and/or US nuclear attack on Iran . In other words, Morris’ totalitarian views are part of the cultural matrix deeply embedded in the Zionist organizational networks and its extensive ‘reach’ in US cultural and political circles. What the Times did in publishing Morris’ lunacy has taken genocidal discourse out of the limited circulation of Zionist influentials and into the mainstream of millions of American readers.
Apart from a handful of writers (Gentile and Jewish) publishing in marginal web sites, there was no political or moral condemnation from the entire literary, political and journalistic world of this affront to our humanity. No attempt was made to link Morris’ totalitarian genocidal policies to Israel ’s public official threats and preparations for nuclear war. There is no anti-nuclear campaign led by our most influential public intellectuals to repudiate the state ( Israel ) and its public intellectuals who prepare a nuclear war with the potential to exterminate more than ten times the number of Jews slaughtered by the Nazis.
A nuclear incineration of the nation of Iran is the Israeli counterpart of Hitler’s gas chambers and ovens writ large. Extermination is the last stage of Zionism: Informed by the doctrine of rule the Middle East or ruin the air and land of the world. That is the explicit message of Benny Morris (and his official Israeli sponsors), who like Hitler, issues ultimatums to the Iranians, ‘surrender or be destroyed’ and who threatens the US, join us in bombing Iran or face a world ecological and economic catastrophe.
That Morris is utterly, starkly and clinically insane is beyond question. That the New York Times in publishing his genocidal ravings provides new signs of how power and wealth has contributed to the degeneration of Jewish intellectual and cultural life in the US . To comprehend the dimensions of this decay we need only compare the brilliant tragic-romantic German-Jewish writer, Walter Benjamin, desperately fleeing the advance of totalitarian Nazi terror to the Israeli-Jewish writer, Benny Morris’ criminal advocacy of Zionist nuclear terror published in the New York Times.
The question of Zionist power in America is not merely a question of a ‘lobby’ influencing Congressional and White House decisions concerning foreign aid to Israel . What is at stake today are the related questions of the advocacy of a nuclear war in which 70 million Iranians face extermination and the complicity of the US mass media in providing a platform, nay a certain political respectability for mass murder and global contamination. Unlike the Nazi past, we cannot claim, as the good Germans did, that ‘we did not know’ or ‘we weren’t notified’, because it was written by an eminent Israeli academic and was published in the New York Times.
Professor Petras latest book is Zionism, Militarism And the Decline of U.S Power (Clarity Press Atlanta ), August 2008
© Copyright James Petras, Global Research, 2008
The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9711
see
If Iran is Attacking It Might Really be Israel By Philip Giraldi
Plain Facts About Iran’s Military By Eric Margolis
Call on AP to retract false reporting on Iran
The possibility of a retaliatory attack by Iran on US bases in the region
Does a leopard change its spots? By William Bowles
Method In The Madness – Why They Want To Attack Iran
War, war, war or jaw, jaw, jaw? by William Bowles
Protect our health and environment by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (GMO)
Washington, Jul 30, 2008
Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) introduced three bills designed to protect consumers, defend farmers’ rights, and increase food safety yesterday. The bills collectively create a comprehensive framework to regulate genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
“We have a responsibility to put the public health and the environment before profits. These bills spell out common sense precautions.”
The three bills are titled, respectively, H.R. 6636, The Genetically Engineered Food Right to Know Act, H.R. 6635, The Genetically Engineered Safety Act, and H.R. 6637, The Genetically Engineered Farmer Protection Act.
H.R. 6636, The Genetically Engineered Food Right To Know Act, would require mandatory labeling of all foods that contain or are produced with genetically modified material. A legal framework to ensure labeling accuracy without significant economic hardship would also be established.
H.R. 6635, The Genetically Engineered Safety Act, would require that genetically engineered foods follow a food safety review process to prevent contamination of food supplies by pharmaceutical and industrial crops. This Act would also require that the FDA screen all genetically engineered foods to ensure they are safe for human consumption.
H.R. 6637, The Genetically Engineered Farmer Protection Act, places liability from the impacts of genetically engineered organisms on the biotechnology companies that created the GMOs, and protects farmers from law suits by biotechnology companies
“We are eating genetically engineered foods every day. Farmers are sowing genetically engineered seeds every day. Yet, we have never studied the long term effects of genetically modified organisms on our health, our children or our environment. Congress must take steps to maximize the benefit and minimize the risks of biotechnology.”
Congressman Kucinich has used his position as Chairman of the Subcommittee on Domestic Policy to examine food safety issues and the rights of farmers. A Subcommittee hearing held by Rep. Kucinich in March examined the impact on farmers caused by contamination of conventional crops by genetically engineered plants significantly influenced these bills.
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
The World According to Monsanto – A documentary that Americans won’t ever see (video)
Dennis Kucinich Responds to Nancy Pelosi’s Statements
Congress Probes How New Sports Stadiums Turn Public Money into Private Profit
Time for Action Against Monsanto By Siv O’Neall
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert Resignation Announcement
http://cspanjunkie.org/
July 30, 2007 C-SPAN
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Defeated in Iraq? By Mike Whitney
By Mike Whitney
07/30/08 “ICH”
Look for it at the pawn shops, the homeless shelters, and the growing number of empty sub-divisions
The United States did not invade Iraq to “stop the violence”. That was never the goal. So, it’s foolish to say that the surge achieved its objective. It hasn’t. Nor has the surge “created the space for a political solution”; another meaningless slogan regurgitated endlessly by the Bush troupe. The political agenda in Iraq has failed utterly. We know that because the Shiite-led government has asked the US to leave “as soon as possible” and for the Bush administration to set a “timetable for withdrawal”. Not a “time horizon” as the administration-spinmiesters like to say; a Timetable, which means a fixed time when the United States must leave. So, if the Iraqi government has asked the US to leave; where is the “political solution” the surge was supposed to create? There isn’t one. The mission has failed; it’s as plain as day. This is not an arguable point.
What the surge really proves is that ethnic cleansing works. Baghdad was a city of roughly 65% Sunnis. Now it is nearly 75% Shiites. Most of the million or so Iraqis who have been killed in the conflict, and most of the 4 million who are either internally displaced or have become refugees, are probably Sunnis. This is an important point and one that Americans should understand. The surge was created to disguise what was really taking place on the ground; ethnic cleansing on a massive scale. No one disputes this. The Sunnis have been effectively purged from the capital. That’s not a “political solution”. It is a war crime.
More important, the United States military has helped the Shiites win their war against the Sunnis. The Shiites control Baghdad now; the Sunnis will never get it back. That is why they are moving on to the next phase of their strategy, which is to demand that the foreign troops leave. So, at least in one respect the surge has worked; it has helped the Shiites and their allies in Tehran win the war. Bush has helped to strengthen Ahmadinejad. Was that the objective?
The Shiites have no experience running the government. That’s always been the Sunnis role dating back hundreds of years. That does not mean they are incapable of leadership, it simply means that the Bush administration decided to break with traditional imperial policy to pursue their colonial ambitions. Normally, imperial powers choose to remove just a few hundred of the top political leaders and leave the existing system in place so the society keeps functioning with as little disruption as possible.
Not Bush. Bush chose to raze the country to the ground; rip-apart the social fabric, destroy the critical infrastructure, and spread chaos far and wide. Now, as author Nir Rosen says, “Iraq no longer exists”. By conceding control of the government to the Shiites, Bush has not established democracy, but anarchy and sectarian hatred. The idea of creating a “Shiite Crescent” in the Middle East is part of a wacky theory cooked up in a Washington think-tank. Imagine if the Russians invaded the United States and decided that the quickest path to political stability was to wipe out the government, disband the bureaucracy, and appoint inexperienced people from the poorer sections of the inner-cities and barrios to run the country. This is the level of stupidity in the Bush administration. The strategy has cost the lives of over a million Iraqis. That’s a high price for stupidity.
There was never the slightest chance that the US would succeed in establishing strategic outposts in the heart of the Arab world. It was doomed from the get-go. The Bush administration points to the temporary lull in the violence as a sign of progress, but they are mistaken. They’re using the wrong yardstick. The Iraqi resistance has achieved what every guerrilla army hopes to achieve; they have undermined their enemy’s ability to wage war. The US is facing growing resistance to its imperial policies around the world, but it can’t address those problems because its army is tied down in Iraq. This is quickly becoming one of the main areas of disagreement in the 2008 political campaign. The world is drifting away from the United States and it isn’t coming back whether Obama or McCain are elected. The superpower model of global government is on its way out.
The real way to measure success or failure in Iraq is to look at the US fiscal budget which has suddenly skyrocketed to nearly $500 billion. This is mainly due to the exorbitant costs of prosecuting an open-ended conflict in the Middle East. The American consumer is not confused by the surge rhetoric; he knows we are losing. He’s not blind. He sees evidence of defeat every time he pulls up to a gas-pump. Tell me: Is $4 dollar per gallon gas a sign of victory or defeat? This isn’t rocket science.
Once again, the individual battles and skirmishes in Iraq are meaningless; what matters is that America’s ability to wage war has been greatly undermined. By the end of 2009, the troops will begin to withdraw or they will be left to fight with sling-shots and bows-and-arrows. The housing market is collapsing, the financial system is in meltdown phase, and the country is facing the greatest funding crisis in its 230 year history. Don’t look for proof of America’s defeat in Iraq. Look for it at home. Look for it at the pawn shops, the homeless shelters, and the growing number of empty sub-divisions which have turned into ghost towns. This is where one can see the true costs of the war; a war that was lost before the first bomb was dropped.
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.
Congress Probes How New Sports Stadiums Turn Public Money into Private Profit
Democracy Now!
July 30, 2008
Field of Schemes: Congress Probes How New Sports Stadiums Turn Public Money into Private Profit
A congressional committee is investigating whether New York City and the New York Yankees wildly inflated the value of the site for the team’s new stadium to float nearly $1 billion in tax-free bonds.
Guests:
Rep. Dennis Kucinich, chair of the Domestic Policy Subcommittee of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee
Bettina Damiani, Project Director of Good Jobs New York
Neil deMause, Author of Field of Schemes: How the Great Stadium Swindle Turns Public Money into Private Profit. His website is Field of Schemes
see
Dennis Kucinich Responds to Nancy Pelosi’s Statements
Dennis Kucinich on Democracy Now responding to the statements that Nancy Pelosi made on The View about impeachment.
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Democracy Now!
July 30, 2008
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Defends Her Opposition to Impeachment: “If Somebody Had a Crime that the President Had Committed, That Would Be a Different Story.”
On Monday, Rep. Pelosi appeared on ABC’s The View and suggested impeachment is off the table because there is no evidence President Bush has committed any criminal acts. We ask Rep. Dennis Kucinich for a response. Kucinich recently introduced a single article of impeachment against President Bush. The article accuses Bush of deceiving Congress to authorize the invasion of Iraq.
see
The surge means CHARGE! by Bruce Gagnon
Impeachment Petition Deadline Wednesday at Midnight (Action Alert)
Take Action – Sign the Petition for Impeachment
Countdown: The In-House Network + Judiciary Hearing + Worst
Kucinich Testifies on Abuses of Executive Power (text)
Hearing on Limits of Executive Power: Vincent Bugliosi
Mosaic News – 7/29/08: World News from the Middle East
Warning
.
This video may contain images depicting the reality and horror of war/violence and should only be viewed by a mature audience.
For more: http://www.linktv.org/originalseries
“Non-Aligned Movement Holds Summit in Tehran,” Al Jazeera TV, Qatar
“Israel And Syria: Peace Talks in Turkey,” Dubai TV, UAE
“Syria Calls for Ending the State of War with Israel,” LBC TV, Lebanon
“Somali Oppostion Splits,” Al-Alam TV, Iran
“Asian Wokers Strike in Kuwait,” Al Arabiya TV, UAE
“Operation in Diala Province,” Al Jazeera English, Qatar
“Contractor’s Fraud in Iraq,” New TV, Lebanon
“Israel to Form New Government,” IBA TV, Lebanon
“Mourning Youssef Chahine,” Abu Dhabi TV, UAE
Produced for Link TV by Jamal Dajani.
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There’s Something About Mary: Unmasking a Gun Lobby Mole
By James Ridgeway, Daniel Schulman, and David Corn
http://www.motherjones.com/
July 30, 2008
This is the story of two Marys. Both are in their early 60s, heavyset, with curly reddish hair. But for years they have worked on opposite ends of the same issues. Mary McFate is an advocate of environmental causes and a prominent activist within the gun control movement. For more than a decade, she volunteered for various gun violence prevention organizations, serving on the boards of anti-gun outfits, helping state groups coordinate their activities, lobbying in Washington for gun control legislation, and regularly attending strategy and organizing meetings.
Mary Lou Sapone, by contrast, is a self-described “research consultant,” who for decades has covertly infiltrated citizens groups for private security firms hired by corporations that are targeted by activist campaigns. For some time, Sapone also worked for the National Rifle Association.
But these two Marys share a lot in common—a Mother Jones investigation has found that McFate and Sapone are, in fact, the same person. And this discovery has caused the leaders of gun violence prevention organizations to conclude that for years they have been penetrated—at the highest levels—by the NRA or other pro-gun parties. “It raises the question,” says Paul Helmke, the president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, “of what did she find out and what did they want her to find out.”
Murder In The Cathedral, by Gaither Stewart
by Gaither Stewart
Featured Writer, Dandelion Salad
July 30, 2008
Murder In The Cathedral
or
How the Sainthood of the Archbishop Became the Epiphany of the King
The worldwide influence of the Roman Catholic Church emanates from the Holy See, the Church’s central government headed by the Pope, physically located within the territory of the Vatican State inside the city of Rome with a population of 821. The Holy See has diplomatic relations with world nations which maintain two separate embassies in Rome: one to Italy and one to the Holy See! Now why the hell, one wonders, should Argentina or the USA, China or Gabon maintain diplomatic relations with a church? Likewise the Holy See has embassies around the world, the nunciatures, while from day to day, from year to year, insists on meddling in Italy’s and world affairs. After his election as Pope in 2006, one of the first acts of Benedict XVI was a triumphant cortege through the streets of “Italy”, just across the Tiber River from the Vatican.
Don Siegelman Discusses Karl Rove’s Political Witch Hunt
Watch more at http://www.theyoungturks.com.
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House panel votes to cite Rove for contempt
Mukasey Senate Hearing: Siegelman & Rove; Torture
Atty Gen Mukasey testifies before the House Judiciary Ctte
RNN: Palestinian right of return
Aijaz Ahmad: What would a rational US foreign policy look like? Pt 9
House panel votes to cite Rove for contempt
It’s from AP so just a link to their post below. Lo
AP
h/t: CLG
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Dandelion Salad 