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Sinclair Lewis,
It Can’t Happen Here, 1935
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 | International: FBI Ignored Bush-Hussein Ties |
 By Robert Parry
The FBI has released reports on 20 interviews and five conversations conducted with Iraq’s deposed dictator Saddam Hussein before he was put to death, but none of the disclosed Q and A deals with the role of the Reagan administration in delivering key components for Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons in the 1980s.
Either those questions weren’t asked or they are still being hidden by the U.S. government. The contents of one interview on March 21, 2004, were almost entirely redacted for supposed national security reasons.
As the National Security Archive, a private non-profit group that obtained the documents under the Freedom of Information Act, wrote:
“Not included in these FBI reports are issues of particular interest to students of Iraq’s complicated relationship with the U.S. – the reported role of the CIA in facilitating the Ba’ath party’s rise to power, the uneasy alliance forged between Iraq and the U.S. during the Iran-Iraq war, and the precise nature of U.S. views regarding Iraq’s chemical weapons policy during that conflict, given its contemporaneous knowledge of their repeated use against Iranians and the Kurds.”
The gaps in the FBI reports also underscore the historical travesty that resulted from the Bush administration’s handling of Saddam Hussein after his capture on Dec. 13, 2003, near Tikrit, eight months after the U.S.-led invasion toppled his government.
Instead of being turned over to the international criminal court at The Hague, where he could have been thoroughly interrogated, Hussein was kept under tight U.S. control until he was handed over to his Iraqi enemies on Dec. 30, 2006, for a chaotic hanging. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Thursday, July 02 @ 20:49:40 EDT (2 reads)
(Read More... | 7668 bytes more | Comments? | International | Score: 0)
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| Opinion: U.S. Policy Toward Cuba Is Sadly Outdated |
 by Roger Burbach
U.S.-Cuba relations are once again front and center as the just ended meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, demonstrated.
Cuba, expelled from the OAS in 1962 at the height of the Cold War, was not be present at the gathering but the United States faced a virtually united front of Latin American nations demanding that Cuba be readmitted. Chilean Jose Miguel Insulza, the secretary general of the organization, declared, “I want to be clear: I want Cuba back in the Inter-American system…Cuba is a member of the OAS. Its flag is there.”
The Obama Administration is still sending contradictory signals about what it is up to. On April 20, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who leads the U.S. delegation to Tegucigalpa, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “Any effort to admit Cuba into the OAS is really in Cuba’s hands,” referring to past U.S. demands that Cuba change its political system.
Two days later, however, the United States proposed reopening discussions on immigration issues that had been suspended early in the Bush Administration. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Wednesday, July 01 @ 20:34:08 EDT (7 reads)
(Read More... | 4178 bytes more | Comments? | Opinion | Score: 0)
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| Other News: Thinking of you |
 Studies of blind reveal how we think about other people
Anne Trafton, News Office [MIT]
Human beings constantly make inferences about other people's state of mind, usually without even realizing they are doing it. Cognitive scientists call this ability "theory of mind," and until recently, not much has been known about the brain mechanisms underlying it.
A new paper by MIT neuroscientists suggests that the process does not involve actually imagining yourself in the other person's position, as some scientists have theorized. Instead, humans carry an abstract model of how other people's minds work, which they can apply to others' situations to predict how they feel, even if they have never had the same experience.
The study also offers evidence that theory of mind is seated in specific brain regions, even in the congenitally blind - people whose brains have never received any visual input, a major source of information about other people's state of mind. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Wednesday, July 01 @ 20:28:47 EDT (7 reads)
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| The News: The Chicago Model of Militarizing Schools |
 by: Brian Roa, t r u t h o u t | Perspective
For the past four years, I have observed the military occupation of the high school where I teach science. Currently, Chicago's Senn High School houses Rickover Naval Academy (RNA). I use the term "occupation" because part of our building was taken away despite student, parent, teacher and community opposition to RNA's opening.
Senn students are made to feel like second-class citizens inside their own school, due to inequalities. The facilities and resources are better on the RNA side. RNA students are allowed to walk on the Senn side, while Senn students cannot walk on the RNA side. RNA "disenrolls" students and we accept those students who get kicked out if they live within our attendance boundaries. This practice is against Chicago policy, but goes unchecked. All of these things maintain a two-tiered system within the same school building.
This phenomenon is not restricted to Senn. Chicago has more military academies and more students in JROTC than any other city in the US. As the tentacles of school militarization reach beyond Chicago, the process used in this city seems to serve as a model of expansion. There was a Marine Academy planned for Georgia's Dekalb County, which includes 10 percent of Atlanta. Fortunately, due to protest, the school has been postponed until 2010. Despite it being postponed, it is still useful to analyze the rhetoric used to rationalize the Marine Academy. Many of the lies and excuses used to justify school militarization in Chicago and Georgia may well be used in other cities as militarism grows. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Monday, June 29 @ 20:06:34 EDT (19 reads)
(Read More... | 9911 bytes more | Comments? | The News | Score: 0)
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| Opinion: Germany, 1939; America, 2009; And Perverted Science |
 By Sherwood Ross
It has become commonplace for Congress to ignore the public’s yearnings for peace and to support the Pentagon’s now habitual wars of aggression. Last November’s anti-war vote illustrates this disconnect between public opinion and public policy. War-weary Americans went to the polls believing they were voting for peace but President Obama has instead merely shifted the focus of military action from Iraq to Afghanistan while planning to maintain a major garrison of 50,000 troops in Iraq, hardly a “withdrawal.”
U.S. taxpayers---who already pay more for wars than the rest of the world combined---are not blood-thirsty. They didn’t want any war against Iraq to begin with and have long preferred diplomacy to conflict. In January, 2003, a CBS News/New York Times poll found 63% of Americans wanted President Bush to find a diplomatic solution to the Iraq crisis compared with just 31% who wanted to intervene militarily. This great cry for peace, not war, arose despite a shower of lies from the White House that Saddam Hussein threatened America with WMD. As for Afghanistan, a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll last February, showed 5l% of respondents opposed to the war in Afghanistan, compared to 47% in favor. Yet, President Obama is plunging ahead against the majority and mindless of the cost to a tottering domestic economy starved for good jobs, good housing, good education, good medical care, and good credit.
Contrast President Obama’s attitude with President Franklin Roosevelt’s careful reading of public opinion in the Thirties that caused him to go slow even in aiding countries threatened by Hitler. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Saturday, June 27 @ 21:07:49 EDT (26 reads)
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| International: Now We See You, Now We Don’t |
by: Kathy Kelly, t r u t h o u t | Perspective
In early June, 2009, I was in the Shah Mansoor displaced persons camp in Pakistan, listening to one resident detail the carnage that had spurred his and his family's flight there a mere 15 days earlier. Their city, Mingora, had come under massive aerial bombardment. He recalled harried efforts to bury corpses found on the roadside even as he and his neighbors tried to organize their families to flee the area.
"They were killing us in that way, there," my friend said. Then, gesturing to the rows of tents stretching as far as the eye could see, he added, "Now, in this way, here."
The people in the tent encampment suffered very harsh conditions. They were sleeping on the ground without mats, they lacked water for bathing, the tents were unbearably hot, and they had no idea whether their homes and shops in Mingora were still standing. But, the suffering they faced had only just begun.
UN humanitarian envoy Abdul Aziz Arrukban warned on June 22 that the millions of Pakistanis displaced during the military's offensive against the Swat Valley would "die slowly" unless the international community started taking notice of the "unprecedented" scope of the crisis.
UN agencies and NGOs such as Islamic Relief and Relief International report that many of the persons now living in tent encampments, or squatting in abandoned buildings, or crowded into schools designated as refugee centers, may soon start dying from preventable disease.
Health teams note increasingly frequent cases of diarrhea, scabies and malaria, all deadly in these circumstances, especially for young children. With so many people living so close to each other, these diseases are spreading fast. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Saturday, June 27 @ 19:25:21 EDT (23 reads)
(Read More... | 7323 bytes more | Comments? | International | Score: 5)
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| Humor/Satire: Join the Anti-Zombie Front! |
By Cage Innoye
There are dead philosophies and ideologies in the beginning of the 21st century. However, they don’t know they are dead. They are Zombies, the living dead. But they think they are alive! They walk and talk and bump into each other. Stunned, they are unaware that they are actually deceased -- dead people following a dead ideology. They are Zombies!
They spout Conservative theories, deregulated capitalism, greed, selfishness and war. They are bigoted; they are anti-poor, anti-minority and anti-Third World. They are against global cooperation, and want to resurrect Imperialism and a new Cold War.
They hold Zombie conventions and Zombie picnics and Zombie soccer games.
You can see them running Zombie election campaigns, and hear them on Zombie talk radio.
Perhaps you have heard their new slogan: “Zombies of the world unite, you have only your tombs to lose”? ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Saturday, June 27 @ 19:17:17 EDT (24 reads)
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| The News: The Girl From Ipanema |
by: William Rivers Pitt, t r u t h o u t | Columnist
Dozens of people have been killed by suicide car-bombers in Iraq over the last several days in an ominous upswing of violence that gives lie to the recent veneer of stability in that nation. The streets of Iran run with the blood of protesters seeking a fair election and the end of their country's oppressive fundamentalist regime. North Korea has threatened to fire long-range missiles at Hawaii over the Fourth of July if anyone so much as looks funny at one of their weapons-laden cargo ships on the high seas.
Tall and tan and young and lovely
The girl from Ipanema goes walking
And when she passes, each one she passes goes ... ah
Ah, indeed.
There are other things in life besides mayhem, madness and butchery, a fact South Carolina's Republican Gov. Mark Sanford was kind enough to remind us of this week. There is irony of the purest ray serene; there is hypocrisy like a house on fire, and there is perfect comedy, and when a man like Governor Sanford takes the time and energy to combine all three, the magnificent absurdity of it all reminds us of the joy that still exists in this cruel and crazy world. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Friday, June 26 @ 20:46:08 EDT (24 reads)
(Read More... | 7449 bytes more | Comments? | The News | Score: 0)
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| Politics: False Health-Scare Ad on CNN |
 By Robert Parry
A right-wing group called Conservatives for Patients’ Rights is airing a political attack ad against the idea of a public option for health insurance by turning upside down an analysis showing that 119 million Americans would jump from their private health insurer to a government plan if one existed.
According to that analysis, 119 million Americans – roughly two-thirds of those now on private plans – would defect to a public option if they had a choice. But the right-wing group, in airing its ad on CNN, presents that number as a case of denying those Americans the choice of staying on their private plans.
“Experts say a government plan could result in 119 million Americans coming off their existing coverage,” a woman’s voice intones over the image of a Wall Street Journal article. “They’d end up on a government-run plan.”
However, those 119 million Americas would be “coming off their existing coverage,” according to the analysis, because they would choose a public health option over their existing private plan. In other words, what the CPR group wants to do is to deny those 119 million Americans the choice they want. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Thursday, June 25 @ 20:22:10 EDT (30 reads)
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| Labor News: Unions Are Good For Rural Economies |
by Richard A. Levins
Congress is considering legislation called the Employee Free Choice Act. If passed, the Act would make it easier for people to join labor unions and bargain for higher wages and better benefits. This, in turn, would provide some much-needed stimulus for rural economies.
It’s no secret that rural economies are in tough shape. During the 1990’s, a University of Minnesota study found shocking similarities between the state’s rural economy and that of a developing country. The current economic tailspin has only made things worse.
For as long as I can remember, rural residents have tried to entice businesses into their communities by offering them a cheaper workforce: “Bring your factory to our town. People will work for less here, and we’ll throw in tax cuts for good measure.” But these efforts have done nothing to halt the economic decline of most of our rural communities.
On the other hand, Paul Krugman, our most recent Nobel Prize winner in economics, wrote that “falling wages are a symptom of a sick economy.” He went even farther and said that falling wages “can make the economy even sicker”. (NY Times, May 4, 2009) ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Wednesday, June 24 @ 21:33:29 EDT (29 reads)
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| Reviews: The Vision Revolution: Eyes Are the Source of Human “Superpowers" |
New book challenges conventional wisdom on why human vision, brains have evolved to perform extraordinary feats
News Release: RPI.edu
For Mark Changizi, it’s all in the eyes.
About half of the human brain is used for vision, and sight is the best understood and most thoroughly investigated of the five senses. This is why Changizi, a neurobiology expert and assistant professor in the Department of Cognitive Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, has spent the past several years researching, writing, and challenging some of the most basic scientific assumptions about human vision.
Reaching beyond “how,” and instead inquiring “why” vision evolved as it has over millions of years, Changizi made a startling discovery: human beings do, indeed, have superpowers. And it turns out that these superpowers, all related to vision, have been instrumental in shaping the way we interact with and see the world. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Wednesday, June 24 @ 21:03:02 EDT (22 reads)
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| History/Culture: Destroying Indigenous Populations |
by: Dahr Jamail, t r u t h o u t | Perspective
The Fort Laramie Treaty once guaranteed the Sioux Nation the right to a large area of their original land, which spanned several states and included their sacred Black Hills, where they were to have "the absolute and undisturbed use and occupation" of the land.
However, when gold was discovered in the Black Hills, President Ulysses S. Grant told the army to look the other way in order to allow gold miners to enter the territory. After repeated violations of the exclusive rights to the land by gold prospectors and by migrant workers crossing the reservation borders, the US government seized the Black Hills land in 1877.
Charmaine White Face, an Oglala Tetuwan who lives on the Pine Ridge Reservation, is the spokesperson for the Teton Sioux Nation Treaty Council (TSNTC), established in 1893 to uphold the terms of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. She is also coordinator of the voluntary group, Defenders of the Black Hills, that works to preserve and protect the environment where they live.
"We call gold the metal which makes men crazy," White Face told Truthout while in New York to attend the annual Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues at the United Nations in late May. "Knowing they could not conquer us like they wanted to ... because when you are fighting for your life, or the life of your family, you will do anything you can ... or fighting for someplace sacred like the Black Hills you will do whatever you can ... so they had to put us in prisoner of war camps. I come from POW camp 344, the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. We want our treaties upheld, we want our land back."
Most of the Sioux's land has been taken, and what remains has been laid waste by radioactive pollution. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Monday, June 22 @ 22:07:05 EDT (31 reads)
(Read More... | 16911 bytes more | Comments? | History/Culture | Score: 0)
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| The News: Infotainment Society: Junk Food News – 2008/2009 |
 by Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff
The late New York University media scholar Neil Postman once said about America, “We are the best entertained least informed society in the world." From Jessica Simpson’s weight and Brangelina’s escapades, to Britney Spears’ sister and the Obamas’ First Puppy, Americans are fed a steady “news” diet of useless information laden with personal anecdotes, scandals, and gossip.
Since the middle of the 1980’s, Project Censored at Sonoma State University has annually researched this phenomenon. We have found that topics and in-depth reports that matter little to anyone in any meaningful way are given massive amounts of media coverage in the corporate media. In recent years, this has only become more obvious.
For instance, CNN’s coverage of celebrity Anna Nicole Smith’s untimely death in early 2007 is arguably one of the most egregious examples of an over abused news story. The magnitude of corporate media attention paid to the event were clearly out of synch with the coverage the story deserved, which was at most a simple passing mention. Instead, CNN broadcast “breaking” stories of the event uninterrupted, without commercials, for almost two hours, with commentary by lead anchors and journalists. This marked among the longest uninterrupted “news” broadcasts at CNN since the tragic events of September 11, 2001. Anna Nicole Smith and 9/11 are now strange bedfellows, milestone bookends of corporate news culture. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Saturday, June 20 @ 13:19:02 EDT (40 reads)
(Read More... | 5357 bytes more | Comments? | The News | Score: 0)
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| Business/Economy: Dairy Crisis Demands Federal Action Now |
by Paul Rozwadowski
What will it take for President Barack Obama and our congressional representatives to realize the catastrophe that is overtaking rural America as dairy farmers face prices that are lower than what we received in the 1970s? Every other week seems to bring news of another farm suicide, another lifelong dairy farmer out of business, and despair from farm families wondering how we’re going to feed our kids with no money left for food. Yet our politicians and media seem utterly unaware of just how desperate the situation is.
For 20 years, since President Ronald Reagan deregulated the price of milk, dairy farmers have been on an emotional rollercoaster where the price is determined by only a few corporate entities. Farmers are receiving $9-10 per hundredweight for their milk when it costs us $20-30 per hundredweight to produce it. Conventional wisdom blames farmers for overproducing and oversupply, but food processors are importing massive amounts of inferior dairy substitutes, called milk protein concentrates, that are flooding the market and replacing our quality American dairy products. Consumers are not benefiting either from our misery. Milk and cheese prices at the grocery stores have certainly not dropped by 50 percent.
Meanwhile, Dean Foods, the largest fluid milk supplier in the country, doubled its first quarter profits to $76 million. Kraft Foods also saw its profits soar by an increased $60 million compared to last year. These are the corporate entities, along with our corrupt dairy cooperatives such as Dairy Farmers of America (DFA), responsible for milk prices crashing. In December, thanks to the hard work of the National Family Farm Coalition, DFA was fined $12 million for trading violations at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, which is where much of our milk price is determined. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Friday, June 19 @ 20:38:28 EDT (32 reads)
(Read More... | 4652 bytes more | Comments? | Business/Economy | Score: 0)
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| War News: ACLU Lawsuit Challenges Secret Creation Of Isolated Housing Units |
 In Federal Prisons
From The American Civil LibertiesUnion
Prisoners Unfairly Assigned To Draconian Units Government Claims Are For Terrorists
TERRE HAUTE, IN – The American Civil LibertiesUnion and the ACLU of Indiana today (6/18/2009) filed a legal complaint challenging the unprecedented and secret creation of housing units inside federal prisons in which prisoners are condemned to live in stark isolation from the outside world. Called Communication Management Units (CMUs) and designed to house prisoners viewed by the government as terrorists, they were established in violation of federal laws requiring public scrutiny and today are disproportionately inhabited by Muslim prisoners – many of whom have never been convicted of terrorism-related crimes.
The complaint, which names as defendants U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder and two senior Bureau of Prisons officials, was filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana on behalf of Sabri Benkahla, an American citizen confined in the CMU at the Federal Correctional Institution in Terre Haute, Indiana despite being found not guilty by a federal judge in 2004 of providing support to the Taliban. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Friday, June 19 @ 19:11:18 EDT (37 reads)
(Read More... | 4804 bytes more | Comments? | War News | Score: 0)
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| Thursday, June 18 | | · | Marijuana Bills Introduced in Congress |
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