News others won't tell you
NATIONAL:
Conyers: Patriot Act renewal 'dangerous'
Congressman John Conyers Jr. (Democrat - MI) released the following statement calling the bill calling for reauthorization of the Patriot Act "dangerous" because it makes it harder for recipients to challenge gag-orders, and complaining about the lack of debates or hearings leading up to the vote.
How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track your Every Move with Radio Frequency Identification
"We may be standing on the brink of that terrifying world if global corporations and government agencies have their way. It's the world that Wal-Mart, Target, Gillette, Procter & Gamble, Kraft, IBM, and even the United States Postal Service want to usher in within the next ten years.
The Soldiers Speak. Will President Bush Listen?
One more bit of evidence that our grim stay-the-course policy in Iraq has failed. Even the American troops on the ground don't buy into it ? and having administration officials pontificate from the safety of Washington about the need for ordinary soldiers to stay the course further erodes military morale.
*The Troops Want to End Iraq Occupation in 2006
*Poll: U.S. Troops in Iraq: 72% Say End War in 2006
Senator Feinstein's War-Profiteering
The Democrats aren’t just letting the Republicans get away with murder, however, some of them are also reaping the benefits of the Bush wars. We constantly hear about Dick Cheney’s ties to Halliburton and how his ex-company is making bundles off US contracts in Iraq. But what we don’t hear about is how Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein and her husband are also making tons of money off the “war on terror”.
Connecting John Snow, David Sanborn, the Carlyle Group, CSX, and ...
It just gets weirder and weirder.
*US Coast Guard warned about ports
*Dubai Does Brisk War Business
*Dubai Port Company Official Tells Senate Boycott Of Israel Is True...
U.S. plan to divide Iran
Marines produce road map to ethnic strife Washington bankrolls separatist groups
Storm's Missing: Lives Not Lost but Disconnected
"We get some calls that say, 'I just thought about my fiancé is missing,' " said Lenora Green, shaking her head in a mixture of sympathy and disbelief. "It's like they just click back into reality because of the shock they're going through."
*The 'New Orleans Stare' - Mental Health Needs of Blacks Acute ...after katrina
*Fat Tuesday for Disaster Profiteers
Historic pictures of civil rights struggle published
The photos had been in a box marked: "Keep. Do Not Sell." At the time they were taken, the newspaper did not want to draw attention to the racial discord of the 1950s and 60s, photographers from the period said. "The editors thought if you didn't publish it, much of this would go away," said Ed Jones, 81, a photographer at the News from 1942 to 1987.
Plan To Name Street After Black Panther Blasted
A police union official is criticizing a Chicago proposal to rename a street after a slain Black Panther leader who once advocated violence against police officers. The City Council's transportation committee approved an ordinance yesterday to rename a one-block section of Monroe Street on the city's West Side after former Panther Fred Hampton. Hampton was gunned down by police in a controversial raid at his Chicago apartment in 1969.
Court Blocks DOD's New Rules for Workers
"Taken as a whole, the design of these regulations appears to rest on the mistaken premise that Congress intended flexibility to trump collective bargaining rights," wrote Sullivan, who noted that the new regulations "entirely eviscerate collective bargaining."
Reichstag Fire Anniversary: A Precedent ?
A small group of sociopaths, seeking world domination, set fire to a nationally symbolic building and blamed it on a group of misguided idealists, thereby inculcating a sense of fear into the nation and enabling the perpetrators to gain total control of the nation.
Sound familiar ?
Appointee with ties to Farrakhan won't quit
"Why should I step down? What have I done? That's a foolish question," Claudette Marie Johnson said when asked whether she intends to remain a member of the governor's Commission on Discrimination and Hate Crimes. "If you were appointed by the governor, would you step down?" A group of Jewish, gay and conservative lawmakers plan today to call on Johnson, also known as Sister Claudette Muhammad, to publicly repudiate Farrakhan's statements or step down from the governor's panel.
Smithsonian's Doors Open to a Hip-Hop Beat
Grandmaster Flash gave his prized Technics turntable. Ice-T offered vintage tour T-shirts and rare CD's. Afrika Bambaataa gave a trove of jackets, caps and jewelry in his trademark Afrocentric style. All will go to the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in Washington, where they will reside alongside the flag that inspired "The Star-Spangled Banner" and the Woolworth's lunch counter from Greensboro, N.C., where four black students sat for civil rights in 1960.
San Francisco Bay View - National Black Newspaper of the Year
Slave revolts, the Underground Railroad and the Baptist Church: The rise and fall of the Black Hockey League
Black life was not always so constrained in Canada. Even though historians downplay Canada’s own sordid attempts at slavery, slavery did indeed exist there, though it was never economically as viable as it was in the more Southern colonies. During the American revolution, thousands of formerly enslaved Blacks and freedmen fought on the side of the British loyalists, many in the Ethiopian Regiments and the Black Rangers, because they saw their struggle (rightly so as it turned out) as a fight against slavery.
More know Simpsons than Constitution
Pathetic!
INTERNATIONAL:
Campaign against Bush visit gains momentum
"We emphatically oppose the forthcoming visit... President Bush is the topmost official of U.S. imperialism, leading enemy of the sovereignty of nations and the peoples of the world today. He is the leader of the imperialist quest at neo-colonial world domination. He is certainly not welcome in India... "
*Open Letter to President Bush on His Visit to India
*Bush Should Not Visit Gandhi Memorial, Says Peaceniks
*Why India Should Choose Iran, Not the US
*Arundhati Roy: Baby Bush go home
Israel angered as Europe aids Palestine
The bulk of yesterday's EU-agreed aid package will go on direct humanitarian aid paid through the UN and other agencies. But the EU will also release $21m for salaries which had been frozen in a World Bank Trust fund - providing this is spent before the new Palestinian government is formed.
*Palestinians face financial collapse
Apartheid's founding party draws last breath
The successor to the party that introduced apartheid and enforced racist segregation for 46 years took a mere 2 per cent of the vote against the ANC's two-thirds majority. Finally, in August 2004 the NNP's national executive took a unanimous decision to dissolve the party.
"Refugee Crisis Grows as Darfur War Crosses a Border"
Arab gunmen from Darfur have pushed across the desert and entered Chad, stealing cattle, burning crops and killing anyone who resists. The lawlessness has driven at least 20,000 Chadians from their homes, making them refugees in their own country.
*Chad's Oil Riches, Meant For Poor, Are Diverted
IRAQ:
Violence threatens Iraq drawdown
Imagine that!
BUSH CRIME FAMILY:
Jeb Bush Asked to Explain Cruise Ship Deal
In a letter, Rep. Henry Waxman of California called on Bush to explain his role in the award of the "lucrative contract," which was given to the Florida-based company without a full competitive bid process. The e-mails Waxman released were provided to Congress by Michael Brown, former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The Secret Service at Booker Elementary: The Dog That Did Not Bark
Okay, let's have a look at how the Secret Service reacted when President Bush was informed by Andrew Card that America was under attack
*Get Over It, America: Osama bin Laden Didn't Do 9/11!
ECONOMY:
FT.com / Markets / Capital markets - Fed in call for 'stand-by' Treasuries bank
The US Federal Reserve has asked Wall Street dealers to develop a "stand-by" bank that would step in if one of the two leading Treasuries clearing banks encountered problems. The Fed and the US Treasury depend on the Treasuries securities market to implement monetary policy and fund the US government. But the market, in which $545bn is traded daily, depends on two banks, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of New York, to clear its trades. This situation concerns regulators.
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Global Credit Ocean Dries Up
"The carry trade has pervaded every single instrument imaginable, credit spreads, bond spreads: everything is poisoned," said David Bloom, currency analyst at HSBC.
"It's going to come to an end later this year and it's going to be ugly, even if we haven't reached the shake-out just yet. History tells us that carry trades end when central bank tightening cycles begin." Ominously, almost every bank other than the Bank of England is now tightening in unison.
OP-ED:
Behind The Curtain No Longer
Six months ago to this day, Hurricane Katrina not only flooded a city and flattened a coast. She also blew away the thick curtain our nation had drawn across our most poor. “Pay no attention to the poor behind the curtain!” those controlling the levers in Washington have since been saying, as they desperately try to distract us with more smoke and loud noises. But it is too late; Katrina exposed our poor for all the world to see.
Twilight of the Hegemony
Bush's ill-fated invasion of Iraq has set in motion forces beyond his control. By invading Afghanistan and Iraq and by threatening Syria and Iran, Bush has taught Muslims everywhere that they owe their humiliation to the Western controlled secular governments that suppress their aspirations. When Bush attacks Iran, the US army will be caught between the Iraqi Shia and the Iranian Shia and will be decimated in fourth generation conflict, so aptly described in CounterPunch a few days ago by William S. Lind.
Thom Hartmann: When Americans No Longer Own America
Through a combination of the "Fast Track" authority pushed for by Reagan and GHW Bush, sweetheart trade deals involving "most favored nation status" for dictatorships like China, and Clinton pushing us into NAFTA and the WTO (via GATT), we've abandoned the principles of tariff-based trade that built American industry and kept us strong for over 200 years.
Bob Herbert : Ike Saw It Coming
The military-industrial complex has become so pervasive that it is now all but invisible. Its missions and priorities are poorly understood by most Americans, and frequently counter to their interests.
Bush in Pakistan
As I left my office this evening I saw with apprehension three sinister dark helicopter gunships patrolling low over Islamabad. I wondered who they were protecting. Then I realised that a murderer, in fact a mass murderer, will be in town tomorrow. But the helicopters were not there to protect the people of Islamabad from this murderer but they were there to protect the murderer from the wrath of the people of the world.
SCIENCE&TECHNOLOGY:
'Project SERPO' story gets more credible?
Is it a hoax and fiction? Is it a disinformation psychological operation (PSYOP) of some kind? Is it part of an acclimation program to further educate and prepare Americans and the international population for the reality of extraterrestrial visitation and activities on Earth? Or, is it something else or some combination of things?
FOOD&DRINK:
Sticky Rice
Sticky rice is the main event at the northern Thai table. Small bites of each dish are put on the diner's plate, then a walnut-size amount of rice is formed into a ball with your fingers and used to pick up a chunk of meat or vegetable.
REVIEWS/INTERVIEWS:
Roundtable: Black Authors in Spotlight
Black authors are enjoying increasing book sales and greater attention. Farai Chideya hosts a roundtable on the past, present and future of black literature. Guests include author DeWitt Gilmore, who writes under the name Relentless; Malaika Adero, senior editor for Atria Books; and Nick Chiles, editor-in-chief of travel magazine Odyssey Couleur.
HUMOR?:
'Boondocks' Comic Strip Going on Hiatus
This Modern World
