Link: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2009/11/15/2009-11-15_the_worst_is_yet_to_come_unemployed_americans_should_hunker_down_for_more_job_lo.html

Foreclosures hit record, to worsenNew York's unemployment rate hits 9%, highest since April 1983Greenman: The left's hypocritical silence on American dronesAOL to lay off third of staffRohatyn: America's very scary economic predicamentThink the worst is over? Wrong. Conditions in the U.S. labor markets are awful and worsening. While the official unemployment rate is already 10.2% and another 200,000 jobs were lost in October, when you include discouraged workers and partially employed workers the figure is a whopping 17.5%. While losing 200,000 jobs per month is better than the 700,000 jobs lost in January, current job losses still average more than the per month rate of 150,000 during the last recession.

Link: http://www.democracynow.org/2009/11/13/eminent

Homeowners in New London, Connecticut took on the city’s leaders after they announced plans to condemn all of the homes in one neighborhood to make way for a private development project for pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. The city said it would bring in thousands of jobs. After a 2005 Supreme Court ruling against the homeowners, the entire neighborhood was bulldozed. This week Pfizer announced it is shutting down its research center. In 2005, the United States Supreme Court issued a decision called Kelo v. New London. It’s probably the most controversial court decision since Roe v. Wade. The difference was, this time almost everyone in America was on one side: everybody thought it was wrong. And that decision stemmed from a fight, a street fight, really, that took place in this neighborhood over a seven-year period between a small group of neighbors who fought against the city of New London, who wanted to take their neighborhood away. The decision stood for the idea that government, local government or state government, can take people’s private land or private homes and turn it over to a private developer for private development or private gain.

Link: http://www.voltairenet.org/article162816.html

In the second part of his study Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed offers a behind-the-scenes account of the 1991 Gulf War revealing that, contrary to conventional opinion, there exists considerable evidence to indicate that the Gulf War had not only been anticipated by the United States, but fell well within its political, strategic and economic interests. A variety of factors, both within the U.S. and the Middle East, support the conclusion that Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait was deliberately engineered by the U.S. to provide a pretext for war, serving to establish a permanent military presence in the Middle East and achieving vast geopolitical power into the next century through control of its oil resources. It is clear then that a fundamental purpose of attacking the civilian society of Iraq during the Gulf War was politically motivated, and performed with the view to induce a population that could be appropriately subdued into recognising Western superiority, to support the removal of the overly-independent Saddam and bring Iraq back under U.S. sphere of influence. [89] Western objectives in Iraq were candidly outlined by Thomas Friedman, then Chief Diplomatic Correspondent of the New York Times. Friedman reported that the West’s hope was for Iraqi generals to topple Saddam Hussein, “and then Washington would have the best of all worlds: an iron-fisted Iraqi junta without Saddam Hussein.”

Link: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2009/11/2009112568247503.html

Hundreds of former Chilean military conscripts have offered to reveal details of crimes they committed and witnessed during the late General Augusto Pinochet's rule.

The former soldiers, who served in the army during Pinochet's 1973 coup against Salvador Allende, the then president of Chile, made the offer to talk during a demonstration on Sunday to seek financial and medical benefits from the state.

They said they would reveal details such as where bodies of victims were buried, but only if their safety is guaranteed, fearing that they could face prosecution or retaliation by the former superiors who they claimed ordered them to torture and kill political prisoners.

Using their confessions as a bargaining chip, the former participants in the "dirty war" hope to improve their chances of securing benefits from pensions to psychological treatment. They gathered in the business district of the capital, Santiago, on Sunday for a meeting where Fernando Mellado, the president of the Association of Former Conscripts, informed them that there had not been any progress in talks with the authorities. Mellado told the Associated Press news agency that all efforts to obtain a pension increase for the years they served in the army or medical assistance - especially psychological care - had failed.

Link: http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/6399

The current global downturn, the worst since the Great Depression 70 years ago, pounded the last nail into the coffin of globalization. Already beleaguered by evidence that showed global poverty and inequality increasing, even as most poor countries experienced little or no economic growth, globalization has been terminally discredited in the last two years. As the much-heralded process of financial and trade interdependence went into reverse, it became the transmission belt not of prosperity but of economic crisis and collapse.

Link: http://www.findingdulcinea.com/news/Americas/2009/October/Texas-Capital-Punishment-System-Examined.html

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is under fire for delaying a state investigation into the execution of a convicted arsonist in 2004. Reports have determined that the man was convicted using disproved fire science techniques, suggesting that he may have been innocent.

Perry’s Handling of Case Causes Controversy

Cameron Todd Willingham, a Corsicana, Texas, man convicted of starting a fire in his home that killed his three daughters in 1991, was executed by the state of Texas in 2004. Several reports have condemned the investigation that led to Willingham’s conviction, raising the possibility that the state may have executed an innocent man.

The Willingham case has gained national attention in the past several months due to a piece by David Grann in The New Yorker and a state-sanctioned report by fire scientist Craig Beyler that both concluded that there was almost no scientific evidence to suggest that the fire was an act of arson.

Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8306475.stm

Benito Mussolini may be among history's most notorious fascist dictators, but evidence suggests he worked for British secret services during World War I. Historian Dr Peter Martland says MI5 records show it paid "Il Duce" £100 per week, about £5,000 today,to spread pro-war propaganda via his newspaper.

The Cambridge University academic made the discovery while studying the papers of former agent Sir Samuel Hoare MP. However, Dr Martland believes Mussolini probably spent the cash on womanising. "Mussolini was the ace womaniser and of course, he's spent most of it on his women," he suggests. Dr Martland said the payments were agreed in 1917, after Russia collapsed into the Bolshevik revolution and Italy was "smashed" at the Battle of Caporetto.

Link: http://www.counterpunch.org/mccann10122009.html

British Government Still Covering Up Bloody Sunday: The families of 14 men killed by British paratroopers in Derry in Northern Ireland on January 20 1972 - “Bloody Sunday” - have been paying close attention to a ruling of the High Court in London in the case of Khunder al-Sweady.

Mr. al-Sweady is one of six Iraqis who claim that soldiers of the Princess of Wales Royal Regiment tortured and murdered a number of civilians in southern Iraq in May 2004. On October 6th last, three judges ruled on the men’s application for previous decisions to be set aside and a new, public inquiry ordered into the incident.

Upholding the application, Judges Scott Baker, Silber and Sweeney, none of them noted as a radical maverick, accused the Ministry of Defence (MoD), the Royal Military Police and the Treasury Solicitors of deliberately withholding evidence and of dishonesty with regard to the evidence which they did present. Civil servants from the Treasury Solicitors were said by the judges to have lied persistently in telling the court that they knew of no undisclosed documents which might throw light on the case.

Under current plans for publication of the Bloody Sunday report, the Treasury Solicitors - in essence, the British Government’s solicitors - will be allowed to go through the text after it has been delivered to the Northern Ireland Office but before the public, including the Bloody Sunday families, are allowed to see it. According to Northern Ireland Secretary Shaun Woodward, the reason is so that they can recommend the removal of passages which they reckon might contravene the rights under Article Two of the European Human Rights Convention of anyone named in the Report

Link: http://www.findingdulcinea.com/news/science/2009/oct/-Darwin-s-Darkest-Hour--Offers-Insight-Into-Scientist-s-Inner-Struggle.html

Exploring Darwin’s Inner Monologue. Many authors, screenwriters and historians have attempted to portray Darwin’s life and his work through books, films and comedies. This latest attempt, a two-hour docudrama starring Henry Ian Cusick of the popular TV series “Lost” as Darwin, and Frances O’Connor from the film “Mansfield Park” as his wife Emma, airs tonight.

Set in 1858, the film is a critical window into Darwin’s life as he struggles with the decision to share his controversial research. According to the PBS press release, Darwin worried that if he delayed publication of his theory on natural selection, his life’s work might be erased, "[b]ut to come forward with his ideas risked the fury of the Church and perhaps a rift with his own devoted wife.”

In the trailer, one gets a sense of the anguish both Darwin and his wife felt over his “abominable volume,” and the magnitude of his decision. The film also offers other insights into his family life. Screenwriter John Goldsmith told NOVA how pained Darwin was upon losing his daughter Annie to scarlet fever. “It was the great emotional moment of Darwin's life," Goldsmith said, "what remnants he had of Christian faith, I think, were absolutely killed stone dead by that.”

Link: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,653981,00.html

To this day, the murder by poisoning of the six children of Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels remains a mystery. Newly discovered records show that a doctor confessed in the 1950s to having been an accomplice, but that the judges in the case let him go unpunished. These are the last days of their lives, but the children don't know it. There is 12-year-old Helga, who has the eyes and dark hair of her father, Joseph Goebbels. There is Hilde, 11, who is more of a brunette; anyone looking at her quickly realizes that she is about to blossom into a true beauty. And then there are eight-year-old Holde, six-year-old Hedda and the youngest of the girls, four-year-old Heide. H for Hitler. The name of each child evokes the name of the Führer, for whom Goebbels works as propaganda chief. The family's only son is named Helmut, a slightly languorous nine-year-old. Berlin, the end of April 1945, the Reich Chancellery. Hitler's bunker, deep underground beneath the Chancellery, is a place of gray concrete, narrow passageways, iron doors and cold light. It isn't a welcoming place, particularly not for children who, only a few weeks earlier, were living a seemingly carefree and innocent life, playing with cats and dogs on a farm far away from Berlin. Russian soldiers are only a few hundred meters away, and everyone in the bunker is urging the parents to finally take the children to a safe place. Hanna Reitsch, a celebrated German aviator, says: "My God, Mrs. Goebbels, the children cannot stay here, even if I have to fly in 20 times to get them out." But the Goebbels remain unyielding. "It is better for my children to die than to live in disgrace and humiliation," says their mother, Magda. Their father fears that Stalin could take the children to Moscow, where they would be brainwashed into becoming communists. "No, it's better that we take them along."

Link: http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1285.htm

“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” - Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860)

There comes a time in everyone’s life when the TRUTH, no matter how horrible, catastrophic or repugnant it may be, must be faced. America, your turn to awaken to the TRUTH is now at hand! For many years we, and others like us, have been shouting warning, after warning, after warning to you….but you have not listened. Not only did you fail to listen but upon our issuing some of our first warnings we were ridiculed.

Link: http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_5191.shtml

With the United States and United Kingdom stating they are committed to diplomacy with Iran over its nuclear power program, but also refusing to rule out military action even as Israel pushed for such action, WMR has obtained a formerly Top Secret Supplement to a CIA Current Intelligence Digest that shows past US-UK collusion to overthrow Iran’s government.

The document’s contents reveal that Washington and London have conspired for several decades to undermine Iranian governments not held in favor by either country. The comments suggesting the “surprise” of President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband over Iran’s communiqué to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that it was building a second uranium enrichment facility indicate that Washington and London continue to conspire against Tehran.

The May 1, 1952, document states that Iran’s nationalistic and democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq reached out to the United States to sell it oil after he nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) in March 1951. However, the CIA, acting in concert with the British, launched Operation Ajax to overthrow Mosaddeq and placed Kermit Roosevelt, Jr., the grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt, in charge of the clandestine mission.

Link: http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1284.htm

According to these reports, Obama stated to Putin that the US Government was in “total disarray” after what the American President called a “putsch” made against him by high-ranking members of the US Military during a ‘fractious’ meeting in the White House of the United States top Military, Intelligence and National Security officers over the future course of the war in Afghanistan... Obama further reported to Putin that Gates told him, “in no uncertain terms” that the President had “no power whatsoever” over US Military decisions regarding Afghanistan whereupon Gates then ‘leaked’ to the US propaganda media his intention to massively increase America’s troop levels in the Afghan war zone. Even worse for Obama, who is already struggling with a collapsing economy, Gates further undermined the President by ordering 6,600 armored war trucks at a cost estimated to be in excess of $8 billion the US Military intends to pour into Afghanistan during the coming year at the expense of his Nations people already struggling under their Nations massive war debts. When queried by Putin as to his ability to regain control of those factions opposing him Obama in these reports is quoted as saying, “I may not make it”. Further troubling evidence of the disarray the US Government now finds itself in as Obama wages this titanic battle against the right-wing fascist forces seeking to destroy him can be seen in the actions of the powerful US Senator Jim DeMint who is openly defying the White House by traveling to the Central American Nation of Honduras to give his support to the CIA backed coup leader, Roberto Micheletti, who recently overthrew that countries legitimate President Manuel Zelaya and put his Nation under martial law.

Link: http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=107650&sectionid=351020606

Italian prosecutors have pressed on with a bid to arrest 26 US Central Intelligence Agency officers over their 'grave crime' of abducting a 'terror suspect' in 2003. Public prosecutors in Italy have called upon a Milan court to issue the arrest warrant for the CIA agents who participated in a 2003 kidnapping operation, as part of US 'renditions' of terrorism suspect authorized by former US administration, which led to the detention and 'harsh' interrogation of the Egyptian Muslim cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, aka Abu Omar. The Italian lawyers have also urged the court to convict the CIA agents involved in the so-called US war on terror and put them behind bars for at least 10 to 13 years for their offense. Moreover, they have requested the court to mete out similar imprisonment term for Italy's former head of secret service, Nicolo Pollari. Under renditions program, the US spy agency relocated suspects to a third country where torture was exercised as an attempt to outsource the afflicting practice, human rights activists say.

Link: http://liberty.hypermart.net/cgi-bin/blogs/voices.php/2005/11/18/extraordinary_rendition_the_hunt_for_mis

The story that you are about to read is a true one. It’s a story about the kidnapping of a 39 year old Eyptian on February 17, 2003, by a team of CIA agents. This happened in the middle of Milan. Nasr Oussama Mustafa Hassan (alias Abu Omar), who was a native of Alexandria, had obtained political asylum in Italy in 2001. He had been arrested in Egypt in 1993 for political reasons. He had wrongly been assumed to be an imam of the Islamic center on the Jenner boulevard in Milan, and had simply been noticed because he had led the prayers at the other mosque, on Quaranta street in Milan. His kidnapping was followed by an”extraordinary rendition” to the Egyptian secret services in Cairo (Mabahith Amn Al Dawla). We have not heard from Abu Omar in over a year. At worst, he is dead. At best, he languishes in an Egyptian prison.

Link: http://liberty.hypermart.net/Newsletter/4/5_9-11_Commission_Omissions.htm

On May 30, 2001 Tom White, a former Enron executive, was appointed by the Bush administration to be Secretary of the Army, and more importantly the "executive agent for the Department of Defense". The next day on June 1st, Tom White radically altered existing DOD protocols and issued a new DOD directive placing all decision-making powers, specifically in the case of 'Derelict Airborne Objects', under the control of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Having served his purpose, White was eventually fired by Rumsfeld, allegedly for disagreeing about a weapons system.5 The 9-11 Commission has failed to ask Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and others many key questions concerning the mass murder of over 2800 Americans in New York on September 11, 2001. Perhaps the most glaring of these questions is: Why, after the FAA alerted the military concerning the grave threats posed by the hijacked airline flights, was the Air Force prevented from responding?

Link: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/oct2009/geor-o02.shtml

Georgian attack unjustifiable under international law. When is military aggression not military aggression? For the powers that be in Washington and their media lackeys, the foreign policy interests of US imperialism dictate the answer. Hence, in the August 2008 war between US-ally Georgia and Russia, the former was portrayed as the helpless victim and the latter the aggressive bully. Following 10 months of investigation ordered by the European Union (EU) into the war, a report has found “unequivocal” proof that Georgia was the aggressor. The Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Conflict in Georgia issued a report September 30 that contains more than a thousand pages of evidence. The Council of the EU established the mission in order to verify conflicting claims of responsibility for the war. The inquiry was led by Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini, who stated that “None of the explanations given by the Georgian authorities in order to provide some form of legal justification for the attack” are valid. “In particular, there was no massive Russian military invasion under way, which had to be stopped by Georgian military forces,” Tagliavini added.

Link: http://www.truthout.org/1005093

Unemployment will almost certainly in double-digits next year -- and may remain there for some time. And for every person who shows up as unemployed in the Bureau of Labor Statistics' household survey, you can bet there's another either too discouraged to look for work or working part time who'd rather have a full-time job or else taking home less pay than before (I'm in the last category, now that the University of California has instituted pay cuts). And there's yet another person who's more fearful that he or she will be next to lose a job. In other words, ten percent unemployment really means twenty percent underemployment or anxious employment. All of which translates directly into late payments on mortgages, credit cards, auto and student loans, and loss of health insurance. It also means sleeplessness for tens of millions of Americans. And, of course, fewer purchases (more on this in a moment).

News reports today indicate that the Obama administration will not seek legislation or issue an executive order to institute a system of indefinite detention without charge or trial. According to the reports, the administration backed away from seeking legislation because it believes the federal government already has the power to detain terrorism suspects indefinitely under the congressional resolution passed after 9/11 authorizing the president to use force against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. The American Civil Liberties Union strongly urges the Obama administration to reject any system of detention without charge or trial. Currently, the United States government continues to hold people indefinitely at Guantánamo and Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan without charging them or bringing them to trial.

Link: http://www.alternet.org/blogs/politics/142726/the_last_time_right-wing_hatred_ran_wild_like_this_a_president_was_killed_

I've been thinking a lot of Kennedy and Dallas as I've watched the increasingly violent rhetorical attacks on Obama be unfurled. As Americans yank their kids of class in order to save them from being exposed to the President of the United States who only wanted to urge them to excel in the classroom. And as unvarnished hate and name-calling passed for health care 'debate' this summer. The radical right, aided by a GOP Noise Machine that positively dwarfs what existed in 1963, has turned demonizing Obama--making him into a vile object of disgust--into a crusade. It's a demented national jihad, the likes of which this country has not seen in modern times.