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Slick Operator: The BP I've known too well
by Greg Palast
Deepwater Horizon in flames before sinking. Photo provided by D.Becnel
I've seen this movie before. In 1989, I was a fraud investigator hired to dig into the cause of the Exxon Valdez disaster. Despite Exxon's name on that boat, I found the party most to blame for the destruction was ... British Petroleum. That's important to know, because the way BP caused devastation in Alaska is exactly the way BP is now sliming the entire Gulf Coast.
Tankers run aground, wells blow out, pipes burst. It shouldn't happen but it does. And when it does, the name of the game is containment. Both in Alaska, when the Exxon Valdez grounded, and in the Gulf over a week ago, when the Deepwater Horizon platform blew, it was British Petroleum that was charged with carrying out the Oil Spill Response Plans ("OSRP") which the company itself drafted and filed with the government.
Remarks on the National Bankruptcy of Greece
By Reinhard März
For public experts it is no mystery why this member of the European Union on the southern periphery went broke. The country — in fact, just about all of its inmates — “have been living beyond their means.” Citizens pay no taxes; politicians do not even try collecting them. The money they need for governing they pick up in Brussels by cooking their books, they use it to pay pensioners, teachers and other public employees, and maintain an economy that consists mainly of graft and the typical southern leaning toward lethargy… This is roughly the way one is supposed to imagine how the country has been managing things for twenty years. The first part of the message is that in the midst of Europe, habits have implanted themselves among the rulers and the people down there — artfully concealed so that no one has noticed — that go against just about everything that is allowed in the European Economic and Monetary Union and is the rule among all the other members of the “euro family.” Secondly, this makes it clear that it’s definitely no accident this state is bust. It’s simply an alien element in the union of Europeans meeting its proper fate, after tempting it with its outlandish, if not criminal machinations…
An Investigative Report: The Woodrow Wilson Center Desecrates its Namesake’s Legacy and Violates its Congressional Mandate
By David Boyajian
Woodrow Wilson, the 28th American president, is looking down in horror at what the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (WWC; WilsonCenter.org) is doing in his name.
Most Americans are not aware of the DC-based organization, or that their taxes comprise one-third of its multi-million dollar annual budget. The WWC was created by Congress in 1968 through the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Act to commemorate the late president’s “ideals and concerns” and memorialize “his accomplishments.”
New York Car Bomb Incident: Another False Flag?
by Stephen Lendman
On May 1, New York Times writers Al Baker and William Rashbaum headlined, "Police Find Car Bomb in Times Square," saying:
"A crude car bomb of propane, gasoline and fireworks was discovered in a 'smoking' Nissan Pathfinder in the heart of Times Square on Saturday evening, prompting the evacuation of thousands of tourists and theatergoers on a warm and busy night."
Mayor Michael Bloomberg claimed "We were very lucky. We avoided what could have been a very deadly event."
Socialism? Un-American? I Think Not!
By Timothy V. Gatto
The mood in America couldn’t be darker. I’ve noticed that many articles that bemoan the current state of affairs, i.e.; the corporate control of the two major political parties and the media, the outsourcing of American jobs overseas, the waste fraud and abuse of government and the unbridled military spending in support of major military adventures overseas that cannot be justified by logic, just to name a few, are accompanied by a persistent comment. Many readers of these articles have a comment that basically says “I know what problems we face, why aren’t you suggesting solutions?
I can understand why many political writers hesitate to put their views on what they think would offer solutions to the problems Americans face. I believe that many writers feel that it is more important for the people to understand what is happening than to offer their opinions on how to solve these issues.
I too felt this way until recently. I now believe that the majority of people that will read this article truly understand what is happening. In fact, I briefly stopped writing about what I see happening across America because I felt that I was “preaching to the choir”. I found myself writing about the same things over and over again. The details may have changed, but the basic underlying causes of these problems like corporate control of the government and the mainstream media were still the same. Since 2004 I have written hundreds of articles that all expressed the same opinion. I now find myself reluctant to sit down and write another piece about it, after all, how many different ways can you tell the same old story?
Colombia: State Terror in the Name of Peace
James Petras
Introduction
The first casualty of state terror is the corruption of language, the invention of euphemisms, where words mean their opposite and slogans cover great crimes: There is no longer a world consensus that condemns crimes against humanity. This is because mass murder and assassinations secure investor ‘confidence’, because Indians are dispossessed so the mines can be exploited; oil workers disappear so the petroleum will flow; and the international financial press praises the success of el Presidente for “pacifying the country”.
When narco-presidents are embraced by the leaders of North America and Europe, it is evident that criminals have become respectable the respectable have become criminals.
Lebanon’s Merry Month of May, Part III of a six part series on securing Palestinian Civil Rights in Lebanon
Franklin Lamb, Shatila Palestinian Refugee Camp, Beirut
In Lebanon this month, like spring flowers, proposals to give Palestinians the right to work are bursting out all over...
This year, the Merry Month of May in Lebanon includes Labor day, the May 15 anniversary of the Nakba, the month long Lebanese municipal elections and the May 5 elevation of Lebanon to the Presidency of the United Nations Security Council.
Yet, for most Palestinians wiling away their lives in Lebanon’s 12 fetid refugee camps and 27 gatherings, May will pass anything but Merry. The festive Labor day and month long elections, held in the 26 municipalities in Lebanon, with the participation of more than 650 glad-handing -vote seeking candidates extolling the Lebanese virtue of working to provide for one’s family, constitute a cruel joke for Palestinian refugees denied the right to work.
NOT MUCH TIME REMAINS FOR ISRAEL- A FILM REVIEW
BY GILAD ATZMON
The London Palestinian Film Festival opened this year with Elia Suleiman’s latest feature “The Time that Remains” (105min), a monumental reflective and poetic take on Palestine since 1948.
To a certain extent Suleiman’s latest film reminded me of Ramzy Baroud’s book My Father Was a Freedom Fighter. Both works chart a personal and devastating expedition into hopelessness. Both accounts are saturated with repeated failures and betrayals, both Baroud and Suleiman are courageous enough to criticise their collective narrative and yet, both pepper their story with some staggering wit, hope and humour. They make you smile just when you are about to sob.
Declaring War On The Universe?
By Jim Kirwan
It is one thing to declare war upon poor or struggling nations to improve the bottom-lines of the Plutocracy that runs the world at the moment: But it is something else entirely to attack the DNA of the this tiny blue planet at its molten core; especially when such a death blow cannot then be stopped by the puny efforts of those that chose to attack the very forces of nature that give all of us the lives we are trying to live today.
What has happened in the Gulf of Mexico is about to open a direct link to the molten core of the planet that we may not be able to control; much as the fallen being above, having become paralyzed by his obsession with the weight of his excessive dreams, now finds himself starring down into the unknown abyss of his own creation-the world may soon find itself nearly powerless before the primeval forces that we have allowed BP to disturb in the unholy name of private-profits over the survivability of this planet.
EVEN ONE OF THESE LITTLE ONES...
By Sheila Samples
"Going to church no more makes you a Christian than sleeping in your garage makes you a car."~~Garrison Keiler
Do you ever wonder what Jesus would say about the sadistic cesspool that is swirling throughout the Catholic disfunctional structure at tsunami speed? Unfortunately, since the New York Times drew attention to the issue in March, the answer to that is getting buried deeper each day under fresh accusations of child molestation, counter accusations, denials and sordid attempts at justification.
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