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The Burning Bush
Gilad Atzmon
Disaster in the North of Israel, at least 40 dead as fire rages across the Carmel Mountains. A mass evacuation has begun.
As I am writing these lines, Israeli Fire fighting crews are battling with the flames. They also express no hope of controlling the fire soon. "We lost all control of the fire," said the Haifa Fire fighting services spokesman. "There aren't enough fire fighting resources in Israel in order to put out the fire."
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hurried to the scene of the fire on Thursday. He requested the help of the U.S, Greece, Italy, Russia, and Cyprus to send additional forces to aid the Israeli firemen. A normal country would probably ask for the help of its neighbours, but the Jewish state doesn’t have neighbours. It made all its neighbours into enemies.
"Unconstitutional" food bill driven by Big Food lobby dollars
By Rady Ananda
While over 200 organizations lobbied on S.510, the Food Safety Modernization Act, no one seemed to notice an unconstitutional section in the bill until after it passed on Tuesday. That day, Roll Call advised that the bill contained a provision, Sec. 107, allowing the Senate to raise revenues. This violates Article I, Section 7, of the U.S. Constitution, granting that power exclusively to the House. S.510 opponents now celebrate the House's use of the “blue slip process” to return the bill to the Senate.
The Alliance for Natural Health figures that: “The only possible ‘quick fix’ would be a unanimous consent agreement in the Senate to strike that revenue-raising provision from the bill—but Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) has already stated that he will oppose, so unanimity will be impossible.” ANH believes it is unlikely that the Senate will return to a debate on S.510, given its full agenda. Its only other option is to “allow the bill to die at the end of this Congress [which means] a new Food Safety Bill will be introduced next year.”
No Room at the Inn - Not even a TARP
What do you get when you cross Tim Geithner and Peter Peterson?
Barack Obama; who would rather help the big banks and balance the budget than offer a helping hand for struggling homeowners. (Image)
The president demonstrated new heights of indifference toward the people in his handling of the mortgage relief program made a part of the Trouble Asset Relief Program (TARP). Citizens paid the full share for TARP and were to get a modest proportion. That's not the case. The November 2010 Congressional Budget Office Report on TARP was just issued. It showed that the funds for home mortgage assistance programs would be reduced from $50 billion to $12 billion, as reported in the Huffington Post.
Reading the details of the report, we find that the take back from homeowner relief through TARP funds is even more outrageous. The actual funds spent so far for homeowner relief is only $710 million.
The United States has long supported brutal regimes around the world: Prof. Robert Jensen
Interview by Kourosh Ziabari
Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center in Austin.
Jensen joined the UT faculty in 1992 after completing his Ph.D. in media ethics and law in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota. Prior to his academic career, he worked as a professional journalist for a decade. At UT, Jensen teaches courses in media law, ethics, and politics.
In his research, Jensen draws on a variety of critical approaches to media and power. Much of his work has focused on pornography and the radical feminist critique of sexuality and men’s violence, and he also has addressed questions of race through a critique of white privilege and institutionalized racism.
DEATH OF THE DOLLAR
Allen L Roland
The handwriting is on the wall and yet no one, from capitol hill to Wall Street, apparently wants to talk about it. The dollar’s demise, however, is obvious to the informed and knowledgeable ~ for its death is eventually inevitable.
First some history ~ The dollar became the world's reserve currency when President Nixon abandoned the gold standard in the 1970's. The dollar is used for 43% of all cross-border transactions, and 63% of the world's central bank foreign currency reserves are in dollars. The next most popular currency? The euro, which comprises only 30% of reserves. Although it is increasing rapidly, it is still less than half the amount held in dollars.
International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People
by Stephen Lendman
On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 181, the Palestine Partition Plan, granting 56% of historic Palestine to Jews (with one-third of the population), 42% to Palestinians, with Jerusalem designated an international city (a corpus separatum - separate body) under a UN Trusteeship Council. The area included all Jerusalem, Bethlelem, and Beit Sahour, to encompass Christian holy sites.
Resolution 181 called for an Independent Arab state by October 1, 1948, asking:
"all Governments and peoples to refrain from taking any action which might hamper or delay the carrying out of these recommendations," the Security Council to be empowered with "the necessary measures as provided for in the plan for its implementation."
Amnesia As A Way Of Life: WikiLeaks Amid The "Careless People"
By Phil Rockstroh
As many wags have noted, the disclosures of Wikileaks have subjected the US Empire and its operatives to a full-body scan. Turnaround is fair play, because, until now, in the US, the powerless masses are subject to arbitrary pat downs and body scans, while the powerful and connected are massaged by privilege and ensconced in immunity.
In hindsight, one realizes, when the Obama administration promised transparency and accountability in government, National Security State enabler that Barack Obama has proven himself to be, that his administration's definition of transparency would entail the countenancing of said body scans at the nation's airports, revealing the private bits of the hoi polloi, as, all the while, his administration was engaged in stonewalling the hidden agendas and felonies of the corporate and governing elite. Recent events should remove any doubt regarding who stands exposed and who will remain cloaked by official aegis.
Canada demands Assange be killed; Censors block WikiLeaks website; Interpol issues arrest order
By Rady Ananda
For the past three days, the WikiLeaks website (http://wikileaks.org/) has been under a massive "distributed denial of service" attack, "exceeding 10 gigabits a second," according to the world's most widely used whistleblower website. Amazon shut down WikiLeaks servers, it reported today on Twitter. But that's the least of its problems. Yesterday, a senior advisor to the Canadian Prime Minister issued a televised fatwa on Julian Assange. Today, Interpol posted its call for arrest of the website's founder and Ecuador withdrew its offer of asylum.
University of Calgary political science professor and key advisor to Canada's PM Stephen Harper, Tom Flanagan, called on President Obama to "put out a contract and maybe use a drone" during a talk show interview on the CBC News Network Tuesday evening:
..........
The New York Times Endorses Haiti's Coup d' Etat "Elections"
by Stephen Lendman
Two previous articles explained the sham, outrageous enough to make a despot blush, accessed through the following links:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2
No matter for The New York Times, a notorious voice for wealth and power. On November 30, its editorial titled "Haiti After the Vote" endorsed the sham, saying:
Despite elections "sullied by low turnout, polling-place confusion and accusations of voter intimidation, ballot stuffing and other fraud....international observers from the Organization of American States and the Caribbean Community agree with Haiti's national election council (the Provisional Electoral Council - CEP), which has declared that the election was fundamentally sound."
The folly of the Israeli AND Arab approach to Iran and Is Wikileaks being manipulated by an intelligence service?
Alan Hart
The Wikileaks revelation that some Persian Gulf Arab leaders wanted (and still want?) America to attack Iran is confirmation of what some of us thought we knew - that Arab leaders are not merely impotent but as dangerously deluded as their Israeli counterparts.
Netanyahu was absolutely correct when he told a group of editors in Tel Aviv that “Israel has not been damaged at all by the Wikileaks publications.” A senior Israeli government official went further in his response to questions from AFP. He said: “We have come out looking good.” The leaked documents, he added, “confirm that the whole Middle East is terrified by the prospect of a nuclear Iran… The Arab countries are pushing the United States towards military action more forcefully than Israel.”
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