Archive for June, 2009

(Reuters) – President Hugo Chavez has vowed to shake up the rules governing intellectual property rights on medicines and other products in Venezuela, the socialist’s latest move against the private sector. Read the rest of this entry »

This Thursday at 10 a.m. EDT the battle to save America from becoming a hate crimes police state will be joined in the hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Every American who is able should view the live webcast of the hearing at www.judiciary.senate.gov. Read the rest of this entry »

Human progress is furthered, not by conformity, but by aberration.
~ H.L. Mencken
For some time, I have been trying to figure out why the nation and we as individuals are in the fix we are in now. Many reasons manifest themselves. We labor under a government of such monstrous reach and epic incompetence that it makes the Soviets now look like a paragon of efficiency and probity. Read the rest of this entry »

(Ron Paul) – Last week Congress passed the war supplemental appropriations bill. In an affront to all those who thought they voted for a peace candidate, the current president will be sending another $106 billion we don’t have to continue the bloodshed in Afghanistan and Iraq, without a hint of a plan to bring our troops home. Read the rest of this entry »

(WSJ) – Fingering the villain in the banking crisis of 2008 turns out to be tougher than it looks. Was it the banker with the skewed incentives and the poor grasp of risk? Was it the over-indebted consumer with the 125% mortgage? Was it the politicians and regulators who failed to see the risks in both? Read the rest of this entry »

The World Bank maintains the database of Gross External Debt Positions of countries. The top five countries with the largest external debt are as follows: Read the rest of this entry »

Bob Chapman’s influential International Forecaster is reporting on the possibility of a so-called “bank holiday” planned for late August or early September. According to Chapman’s sources, U.S. embassies around the world are selling dollars and stockpiling money from respective countries where they operate. Read the rest of this entry »

He may yet turn out to be the avatar of Iranian democracy, but three decades ago Mir-Hossein Mousavi was waging a terrorist war on the United States that included bloody attacks on the U.S. embassy and Marine Corps barracks in Beirut. Read the rest of this entry »

It would be the first time the FTC tries to patrol systematically what bloggers say and do online. The common practice of posting a graphical ad or a link to an online retailer — and getting commissions for any sales from it — would be enough to trigger oversight. Read the rest of this entry »

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Continuing his series of articles aimed at exposing Washington’s “foolhardy” policy regarding the Islamic Republic of Iran, American scholar and writer William O. Beeman says in its quest for regime change in Iran, the United Sates might have “already picked the new rulers of that country”. Read the rest of this entry »

Continuing his series of articles aimed at exposing Washington’s “foolhardy” policy regarding the Islamic Republic of Iran, American scholar and writer William O. Beeman says in its quest for regime change in Iran, the United Sates might have “already picked the new rulers of that country”. Read the rest of this entry »

(AFP) — The son of the late shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, was Monday carrying in his breastpocket a photograph of the slain protester known as Neda said to have been killed in the Tehran protests. Read the rest of this entry »

(AFP) — The son of the late shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, was Monday carrying in his breastpocket a photograph of the slain protester known as Neda said to have been killed in the Tehran protests. Read the rest of this entry »

Reza Pahlavi, son of the former Shah of Iran, has continually appeared on satellite radio and TV shows beamed into Iran, repeatedly calling for civil disobedience in order to topple the Islamic Mullahs. He promotes a US-UN backed referendum to decide whether Iran is to be governed as a constitutional monarchy, which he says he can lead as Shah, or a “secular democracy.” Read the rest of this entry »

(RawStory) – The exiled son of the late shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, warned Monday of dire consequences for the volatile Middle East and the rest of the world if the popular uprising in Iran is crushed. Read the rest of this entry »

(FinancialTimes) – Ever since a minor earthquake rumbled through the concrete sprawl of Caracas in early May, the foundations of Venezuela’s last remaining flagrantly anti-government television station have looked unstable. Read the rest of this entry »

Washington and Wall Street seem to be treating California as if it were a sideshow in the financial circus of these turbulent times.

It’s not. Read the rest of this entry »

(BBC) – Iran continues hostility to western media, threatening harsher action if ‘interference’ in country’s affairs continues Read the rest of this entry »

Anti-fluoride extremists have threatened to kill a Victorian government minister and blow up a regional water authority. Read the rest of this entry »

Iranians do not need or want us to teach them about liberty and representative government. They have long embodied this struggle. It is we who need to be taught. It was Washington that orchestrated the 1953 coup to topple Iran’s democratically elected government, the first in the Middle East, and install the compliant shah in power. Read the rest of this entry »

Five-to-40-year-olds and Canada’s aboriginal communities should be the first to get vaccinated against human swine flu, experts say as Canadian officials decide who gets priority for the flu shots. Read the rest of this entry »

(Bloomberg) – Executives at U.S. companies are taking advantage of the biggest stock-market rally in 71 years to sell their shares at the fastest pace since credit markets started to seize up two years ago. Read the rest of this entry »

A report posted on the Kentucky Justice & Public Safety Cabinet website mentions the Kentucky chapter of the Constitution Party. The 2006 report, entitled “Hate Crime and Hate Incidents in the Commonwealth,” characterizes the paleoconservative political party as a patriot group and associates it with the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist organizations. Read the rest of this entry »

Since the June 12 Iranian presidential elections, Iran “experts” have mushroomed like bacteria in a Petri dish. So here is a quiz for all those instant experts. Which major country has elected more presidents than any in the world since 1980? Further, which nation is the only one that held ten presidential elections within thirty years of its revolution? Read the rest of this entry »

(Paul Craig Roberts) – President Obama called on the Iranian government to allow protesters to control the streets in Tehran. Would Obama or any US president allow protesters to control the streets in Washington, D.C.? Read the rest of this entry »

(WSJ) – Welfare rolls, which were slow to rise and actually fell in many states early in the recession, now are climbing across the country for the first time since President Bill Clinton signed legislation pledging “to end welfare as we know it” more than a decade ago. Read the rest of this entry »

(BBC) – This film explores the origins in the 1940s and 50s of Islamic Fundamentalism in the Middle East, and Neoconservatism in America, parallels between these movements, and their effect on the world today Read the rest of this entry »

(AsiaTimes) – Like the color-coded terror alert system, the technicolor “velvet invasions” blink a warning. Despite receiving an ugly bruise in Uzbekistan, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)and its non-governmental organization (NGO) regime-change industry hope to stage another cardboard coup in Iran. But it could be a black and blue revolution. Read the rest of this entry »

Staff at Goldman Sachs staff can look forward to the biggest bonus payouts in the firm’s 140-year history after a spectacular first half of the year, sparking concern that the big investment banks which survived the credit crunch will derail financial regulation reforms. Read the rest of this entry »

Critics said the war was all about the nation’s lucrative fuel industry. Are they now being proved right? Patrick Cockburn reports from Baghdad Read the rest of this entry »

Critics said the war was all about the nation’s lucrative fuel industry. Are they now being proved right? Patrick Cockburn reports from Baghdad Read the rest of this entry »

(Guardian) – Brazilian authorities investigating illegal deforestation have accused the suppliers of several UK supermarkets of selling meat linked to massive destruction of the Amazon rainforest. Read the rest of this entry »

(Guardian) – Brazilian authorities investigating illegal deforestation have accused the suppliers of several UK supermarkets of selling meat linked to massive destruction of the Amazon rainforest. Read the rest of this entry »

North Korea has accused US President Barack Obama of plotting a nuclear war on the communist nation by reaffirming a US assurance of security for South Korea, the North’s state media said. Read the rest of this entry »

Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki speaks out against Western efforts that seek to dramatize the post-election unrest in the country. Read the rest of this entry »

Harry Browne, the former Libertarian Party candidate for president, used to say: “the government is great at breaking your leg, handing you a crutch, and saying ‘You see, without me you couldn’t walk.’” That maxim is clearly illustrated by the financial industry regulatory reforms proposed this week by the Obama Administration. Read the rest of this entry »

(WashPost) – To the list of collegiate types – nerds, jocks, Greeks – add one more: spies in training. The government is hoping they’ll be hard to spot. Read the rest of this entry »

(Guardian) – A confidential record of a meeting between President Bush and Tony Blair before the invasion of Iraq, outlining their intention to go to war without a second United Nations resolution, will be an explosive issue for the official inquiry into the UK’s role in toppling Saddam Hussein. Read the rest of this entry »

(Guardian) – Fears the recession is affecting the mental health of the nation appear to be borne out by new figures that show prescriptions of antidepressants are soaring. Read the rest of this entry »

Another document designating Americans as terrorists has surfaced. The document, entitled “Crisis Controlled: Assessing Potential Threats of Violence,” authored by Trooper John R. Wright, is posted on the official website of the Commonwealth of Virginia, under the Department of Human Resources Management. Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s note: On November 9, 2007, investigative journalist Wayne Madsen wrote: “A State Department diplomat who recently returned from Iraqi Kurdistan revealed that ‘Israelis are everywhere in Kurdistan.’ Some are there for business reasons but a number are engaged in support for the PKK, PEJAK, and the MKO. This Israeli support, carried out with a wink and a nod from the neocon cabal in Washington, has strained Turkey’s relations with both Jerusalem and Washington.” Read the rest of this entry »

Water has been characterized as the oil of the 21st century. Blue gold. It is essential to life, and yet humanity faces a growing water crisis as a result of severe mismanagement in water and sanitation, which will be exponentially exacerbated in the coming decades by population growth combined with declining resources. Read the rest of this entry »

(WashTimes) – The turmoil ravaging General Motors and Chrysler generated big jumps in joblessness last month throughout the Midwest, sending Michigan’s unemployment rate above 14 percent and pushing three nearby states into double digits. Read the rest of this entry »

The following timeline describes just a few of the hundreds of atrocities and crimes committed by the CIA. Read the rest of this entry »