Tomgram: Michael Klare, The Coming Era of Energy Disasters

By Michael Klare
Posted on June 22, 2010, Printed on June 23, 2010
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175264/

Isn’t it strange that, no matter how terrible the news from the Gulf, the media still can’t help offering a lurking, BP-influenced narrative of hope?  Here’s a recent headline from my hometown paper, for instance: “Signs of Hope as BP Captures Record Oil Amounts.”  The piece is based on a BP report that, last Thursday, its woefully inadequate, ill-fitting “top hat” had captured more than 25,000 barrels of the gushing oil -- that is, five times more than it long claimed was spewing from its busted well (25 times more than it originally suggested). 

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Obama's Approach to Jobs Is Out of Touch with Reality

By William Greider, The Nation
Posted on June 22, 2010, Printed on June 23, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/147290/

The first fundamental failure of Keynesian economics occurred forty years ago during the Vietnam War when the economy was overheating but the political system failed to take the corrective steps that would restrain price inflation—that is, raise taxes and reduce federal spending. The decade of economic stagnation that followed became a central factor in discrediting both liberalism and the Democratic Party.

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"Our Potential to Create a Better World, a Just World": Testimony of a Survivor of the Mavi Marmara Massacre

By Ken O'Keefe

Global Research, June 22, 2010

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19792

Ken O’Keefe, former US Marine, Gulf War veteran, and now survivor of the Mavi Marmara massacre, has issued a remarkable and searing statement from Istanbul.

“While in Israeli custody I, along with everyone else, was subjected to endless abuse and flagrant acts of disrespect.  Women and elderly were physically and mentally assaulted.  Access to food and water and toilets was denied.  Dogs were used against us, we ourselves were treated like dogs.

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US Stands, and Lies, With Israel

By Ira Chernus

Reprinted from Truthout

"We stand by Israel," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley declared, as he voiced the State Department's support for Israel's internal investigation of the attack on the flotilla bound for Gaza. Israel "has the institutions and certainly the capability to conduct a credible, impartial and transparent investigation," Crowley said.

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Are We Going Down Like the Soviets?

By Tom Engelhardt, Tomdispatch.com
Posted on June 21, 2010, Printed on June 21, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/147261/

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Mark it on your calendar.  It seems we’ve finally entered the Soviet era in America.

You remember the Soviet Union, now almost 20 years in its grave.  But who gives it a second thought today?  Even in its glory years that “evil empire” was sometimes referred to as “the second superpower.”  In 1991, after seven decades, it suddenly disintegrated and disappeared, leaving the United States -- the “sole superpower,” even the “hyperpower,” on planet Earth -- surprised but triumphant.

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The Constitution Party: Delusional Religious Fanatics Pushing for Christian Tyranny

By Liam Fox, News Junkie Post
Posted on June 20, 2010, Printed on June 21, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/147264/

Sharron Angle, Republican nominee for U.S. Senate from Nevada was a member of the Independent American Party, the Nevada affiliate of the Constitution Party, for six years, 1992 through 1998, before becoming a Republican in order to increase her chance of getting elected to office. If the Constitution Party sounds familiar, perhaps it’s because, during the 2008 presidential campaign, Todd Palin was revealed to have belonged, for seven years, to the Alaska Independence Party; Alaska’s Constitution Party affiliate.

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California on 'verge of system failure’

Golden State, like many others, is nearly bankrupt and desperately needs a bailout

Barrie McKenna

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/california-on-verge-of-system-failure/article1609891/

Los Angeles — Globe and Mail

Arnella Sims has seen a lot in her 34 years as a Los Angeles County court reporter, but nothing like this.

Case files piling up by the thousands, phones ringing off the hook, forced midweek courthouse closings and occasional brawls as frustrated citizens queue for hours to pay parking fines.

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Washington: Theater of the Absurd

by Ralph Nader

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/06/19-0

The festering corporate government in Washington, DC, is a theater of the absurd. Some of the acts of this tragedy follow:

1. Start with the often hapless Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the agency that administers Medicare. Medicare pays $1,593 per injection of Lucentis for wet age-related macular degeneration as well as $42 per dose for Avastin, a drug that has a similar molecular structure, used by ophthalmologists.

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Obama's still popular abroad — but his policies aren't

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/06/17/96103/obamas-still-popular-abroad-but.html

Maggie Bridgeman | McClatchy Newspapers

last updated: June 18, 2010 06:17:04 AM

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama still has great popularity abroad — where he enjoys higher approval ratings than he does at home — but foreign publics are a lot less happy with his administration's foreign policy, according to a new poll by the Pew Trust.

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Campaign Launched to Force 'BP Ten' and Others in Congress to Give Up Dirty Oil Cash

Friends of the Earth’s campaign targets underlying problem that led to Gulf spill: the undue influence of oil companies in Washington

WASHINGTON - June 17 - Today, as BP's CEO, Tony Hayward, was set to testify about the devastating oil disaster his firm caused in the Gulf of Mexico, the environmental watchdog group Friends of the Earth launched a campaign [2] to pressure members of Congress to unload the cash they’ve received from BP and other oil companies.

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Tale of Two Nuclear Whistleblowers

by David Krieger

Reliable sources have revealed that as a result of a secret trial, Iranian nuclear whistleblower Amid Nasri has been sentenced to 18 years in solitary confinement.  Nasri, a former worker at an Iranian uranium enrichment plant, revealed to the The Sunday Times in London that Iran was developing nuclear materials as part of a program to create nuclear weapons.  Lured to Rome by a strikingly beautiful Iranian secret agent, Nasri was kidnapped by the secret service and returned to Iran for trial. 

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Experts: U.S. has no long-term political strategy for Afghanistan

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/06/16/v-print/96019/experts-us-has-no-long-term-political.html

Posted on Wed, Jun. 16, 2010

Jonathan S. Landay and Nancy A. Youssef | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is focused on meeting its July 2011 deadline to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan, but it has no political strategy to help stabilize the country, current and former U.S. officials and other experts are warning.

The failure to articulate what a post-American Afghanistan should look like and devise a political path for achieving it is a major obstacle to success for the U.S. military-led counter-insurgency campaign that's underway, these officials and experts said.

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Afghanistan: The Longest Lost War

By Prof. James Petras

Global Research, June 16, 2010

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19758

Introduction:

Despite almost a decade of warfare, including an invasion and occupation, the US military and its allies and client state armed forces are losing the war in Afghanistan.  Outside of the central districts of a few cities and the military fortresses, the Afghan national resistance forces, in all of their complex local, regional and national alliances, are in control, of territory, people and administration.

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Call the Politburo, We’re in Trouble

Entering the Soviet Era in America 
By Tom Engelhardt

Mark it on your calendar.  It seems we’ve finally entered the Soviet era in America.

You remember the Soviet Union, now almost 20 years in its grave.  But who gives it a second thought today?  Even in its glory years that “evil empire” was sometimes referred to as “the second superpower.”  In 1991, after seven decades, it suddenly disintegrated and disappeared, leaving the United States -- the “sole superpower,” even the “hyperpower,” on planet Earth -- surprised but triumphant.

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More American Chickens Come Home to Roost

by Ted Rall

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/06/16-4

NEW YORK--Believe it or not, I don't scour the headlines looking for tragedies and atrocities to blame on the United States.     

But that's how it often works out.

When the big earthquake ravaged Haiti earlier this year, it would have been a relief to look at the resulting pain and despair and see nothing more than the terrible result of tectonic movements. It would have been nice to be able to blame nature. Or France.

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The U.S. War Addiction: Funding Enemies to Maintain Trillion Dollar Racket

By David DeGraw,
June 16, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/147217/

Editor's Note: With so many problems in the USA, it's no easy job to single out a handful of the most important, priority issues. But the enormous pile of wasted money spent on wars and the military-industrial complex has to be right at the top. Not only is the money spent an enormous destructive waste, but there's also the question of opportunity cost; just a fraction of war money could make major improvements to health care, schools and universities, and our decaying public infrastructure.

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Unusual Trading in Stock Options Prior to 9/11: Government Destroyed Documents Regarding Pre-9/11 Put Options

By Washington's Blog

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19750

Washington's Blog - 2010-06-14

On September 19, 2001, CBS reported:

Sources tell CBS News that the afternoon before the attack, alarm bells were sounding over unusual trading in the U.S. stock options market.

An extraordinary number of trades were betting that American Airlines stock price would fall.

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Timing of Leak of Afghan Mineral Wealth Evokes Scepticism

Jim Lobe

http://ipsnorthamerica.net/news.php?idnews=3124

WASHINGTON, 14 Jun (IPS) - The timing of the publication of a major New York Times story on the vast untapped mineral wealth that lies beneath Afghanistan's soil is raising major questions about the intent of the Pentagon, which released the information.

Given the increasingly negative news that has come out of Afghanistan - and of U.S. strategy there - some analysts believe the front-page article is designed to reverse growing public sentiment that the war is not worth the cost.

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Rand Paul Not Board Certified: Kentucky Senate Hopeful Faces Challenge From Medical Panel

BRUCE SCHREINER and BRETT BARROUQUERE | 06/14/10 04:20 PM |  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/14/rand-paul-not-board-certi_n_611018.html

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Rand Paul, who touts his career as a Kentucky eye doctor as part of his outsider credentials in his campaign for U.S. Senate, isn't certified by his profession's leading group.

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The Do-Nothing 44th President

by David Michael Green

What do nine dead Gaza activists in the Mediterranean, nine-plus percent unemployment, and ninety years of oil catastrophe clean-up have in common? 

How about one astonishingly tepid president? 

How about one guy in the White House who squirms in his chair anytime someone uses the word "bold" and actually means it? 

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