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Indentured Servitude for Seniors: Social Security Garnished for Student Debts
By Ellen Brown
The Social Security program…represents our commitment as a society to the belief that workers should not live in dread that a disability, death, or old age could leave them or their families destitute.
– President Jimmy Carter, December 20, 1977.
[This law] assures the elderly that America will always keep the promises made in troubled times a half century ago…[The Social Security Amendments of 1983 are] a monument to the spirit of compassion and commitment that unites us as a people.
– President Ronald Reagan, April 20, 1983
So said Presidents Carter and Regan, but that was before 1996, when Congress voted to allow federal agencies to offset portions of Social Security payments to collect debts owed to those agencies. (31 U.S.C. §3716). Now we read of horror stories like this:
Brookings: A Reliable Imperial Tool
By Stephen Lendman
Brookings calls itself a Washington-based NGO "conducting high-quality, independent research" to advance three goals: democracy, economic and social welfare for all, and a "more safe, prosperous and cooperative international system."
In fact, it's a corporate financed imperial tool. It serves wealth and power. It deplores democracy, social welfare, and equal opportunity. It supports Washington's longstanding Syria and Iran regime change agenda. Doing so ignores rule of law principles.
Honoring a ‘Terror War’ Architect
by Ray McGovern
Since even readers of the New York Times are aware of deputy national security adviser John Brennan’s open identification with torture, secret prisons and other abuses of national and international law, Fordham University’s invitation to him to give the commencement address on May 19 brought, well, shock and awe to many Fordham students, faculty and alumni.
It now turns out we didn’t know the half of it. Piling outrage upon indignity, Fordham announced this week that Brennan will enjoy pride of place among the “eight notables” on whom it will confer honorary degrees at commencement. The others receiving a Doctorate in Humane Letters, honoris causa, include Timothy Cardinal Dolan (Archbishop of New York), and Brooklyn congressman Edolphus Towns. White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan Unlike his co-recipients, Brennan is widely known for his advocacy of kidnapping-for-torture (aka “extraordinary rendition”) and killing “militants” (including U.S. citizens) with “Hellfire” missiles fired by “Predator” and “Reaper” drone aircraft.
Fabricating Lies to Wage War on Iran
by Stephen Lendman
Turning Iran into a reliable pro-Western puppet state is a long-sought US goal. All options are considered, including war.
Tactics include calling Iran a threat to world peace, falsely accusing Tehran of terrorist attacks, and fabricating lies about an alleged nuclear weapons program despite no corroborating evidence whatever.
Focusing largely on defense and security issues, the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) advances US interests "to sustain American prominence and prosperity as a force for good in the world." It's closely connected to high level administration, congressional, and Pentagon officials.
Waging Total War on Islam
by Stephen Lendman
When asked why he robbed banks, Willie Sutton said that's where the money is. Washington targets the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia because it's where most proved oil and gas reserves are.
Waging war require enemies. Pretexts create them. Muslims are demonized as threats. They're portrayed as culturally inferior, dirty, lecherous, untrustworthy, religiously fanatical, and violent. Slanderous media commentaries suggest gun-totting terrorists threatening US interests.
Fear is heightened. Strategically timed false flag terror plots make headlines. So do arrests of entrapped Muslims despite no evidence of crime or intent to commit one.
Americans are manipulated to believe domestic and foreign jihadists threaten national security. Resource wars follow.
The Ings
By Robert Singer
- Birthing, Flirting, Dating, Marrying and Divorcing
- Learning, Reading and Writing (so we won’t be dumb as a farmer)
- Hiking, Biking, Flying and Driving
- Playing, Winning and Losing
- Hitting Balls (Golf, Base, Foot, Basket and Soccer)
- Dancing, Acting, Protesting and Praying (actually we are praying for an afterlife in heaven)
- Drinking, Drugging, Deceiving, Gambling and Gang [Bang]ing
- Buying, Selling, Stealing and Cheating
- Camping, Cruising and RVing
- Working, Quitting, Firing (getting fired) and Retiring
- Shopping, Hoarding, Wasting, Reclying (useless toxic stuff, gowns, tuxedos and the latest pair of “distressed” jeans)
- Designing, Decorating Posing and Painting (in Houses, second Houses, RVs and Apartments)
- Watching Movies, TVs, DVDs and Sporting Events (Monster Trucking is a Sport)
- Listening and Singing Opera, Rap, Jazz and Country
- Seeing Doctors, Dentists, Lawyers, Hair Dressers and Manicurists
- Talking, Gossiping, Surfing and Texting on our Lap Tops and Cell Phones
- Wondering if our ego will be satisfied with a new car and trying to deciding if an SUV or station wagon will make us look fat or if an SUV is a fat station wagon
Albert Camus, if he were alive today, would write: 21st century man will be remembered for fornicating, talking on his cell phone and surfing the Web.
The Difference between Modern man and the Animals
Animals don’t have time for the Ings because they have to find their own food.
The modern, common, useless eater man can waste his time on the Ings because The Global Agriculture Elite (TGAE) is feeding him cheap food, on the cheap. [1]
Men are still hunting and gathering. They hunt for bargains and gather the food … bringing home the big screen TV and the groceries in their Monster Truck.
The Children of Iraq: Was the price worth it?
Bie Kentane, BRussells Tribunal
The following is a presentation given at the Dialogue Series of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal.
“…Line up the bodies of the children, the thousands of children — the infants, the toddlers, the schoolkids — whose bodies were torn to pieces, burned alive or riddled with bullets during the American invasion and occupation of Iraq. Line them up in the desert sand, walk past them, mile after mile, all those twisted corpses, those scraps of torn flesh and seeping viscera, those blank faces, those staring eyes fixed forever on nothingness. This is the reality of what happened in Iraq; there is no other reality….” - Chris Floyd, December 17, 2011[1]
Darkness at the end of the tunnel
BY KHALID AMAYREH
On the 64th Nakba anniversary, Palestinians lose hope of statehood
As a clear extreme right trend continues to shape Israeli politics and society, and as the international community proves powerless to prevent Israel from killing the last vestiges of hope for a workable and dignified settlement to the Arab- Israeli conflict, many Palestinians are losing hope for the creation of a true, viable state, one that would have East Jerusalem as its capital. Palestinian officials, while continuing to invoke the mantra of the two-state solution in public, privately acknowledge that the creation of a genuine Palestinian state in the West Bank is becoming workable with each passing day.A few weeks ago, Ahmed Qurei, who occupied several important portfolios in the Palestinian Authority (PA) during Yasser Arafat's era, recognised that "it is probably no longer possible to create the kind of state that we want."
He continued: "Now we have to choose between two stark choices: Either we settle for a worthless state made of hapless ghettoes and miserable slums, and surrounded by Jewish settlements on all directions; or struggle for one unitary and democratic state where Jews and Arabs can live equally in all of Mandate Palestine from the Mediterranean to the River Jordan."
Nuclear Israel: Image of Apocalyptic Horror
By Ismail Salami
Imagine a world plunged in darkness and extreme cold with the sunlight screened off by a thick pall of dust cloud. Imagine a world flung back into chaos. This is an image conceived of a world abandoned to dereliction by doomsday weapons.
According to Samson Option theory, Israel reserves the option to retaliate massively with nuclear weapons when its existence is gravely endangered by the military might of another country although the regime refuses to admit to the possession of a huge nuclear arsenal. As a first sign of a nuclear threat, in the 1973 Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) War considered to be the fiercest Arab-Israeli conflict, when Arab forces were about to defeat Israeli forces, the Zionist Prime Minister Golda Meir ordered that 13 nuclear bombs be readied to be used either by missiles or by aircraft. And President Nixon agreed to the Israeli demand. In fact, the Samson Option is a horrific plan drawn up by Israel leaders to take down the Middle East and the entire world if necessary and proclaimed 'kosher'. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Seymour M. Hersh hypothesized that "Should war break out in the Middle East again and should the Syrians and the Egyptians break through again as they did in 1973 [Yom Kippur War], or should any Arab nation fire missiles again at Israel, as Iraq did [in the 1991 Gulf War], a nuclear escalation, once unthinkable except as a last resort, would now be a strong possibility."
Hunger Strikes Highlight Israeli Injustice
by Stephen Lendman
Israel treats Palestinian prisoners horrifically. Cruel and unusual punishment is policy. Detention conditions include torture, intimidation, and other abusive practices.
Hunger strikes first began in 1968. Nablus Prison detainees initiated them. Numerous others followed. At issue is abusive treatment and appalling prison conditions.
Medical neglect causes sickness, disease and death. Last summer, the Palestinian Center for Defending Detainees (PCDD) reported hundreds of seriously ill prisoners. They're affected by heart disease, cancer, kidney failure, pleurisy, chronic pain, and other illnesses too grave to ignore.
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