Allen L Roland

There is a strange lull in our present economic recession wherein the Administration's economic advisors are saying that the worst is over while consumers are beginning to feel the leading edge of a major depression:

The current cheer leading by some economic leaders, that the worst is probably over, sounds vaguely hollow in light of a Wall Street top down stimulus package that left out Main Street consumers ~ who paid for this massive infusion of capital and who increasingly want their money back.

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Allen L Roland

America is living on borrowed time as the credit clock time bomb approaches midnight. The Obama administration still doesn't get it with its top down stimulus plan ~ Americans are in survival mode. They are broke, their credit cards are maxed out, they only spend for necessities wherein food and rent take precedence over credit card purchases or payments: Allen L Roland

The Obama administration is still trying to reinflate the credit bubble that just burst with the same cast of characters who initially inflated it ~ and it is about to blow up in their face.

On June 30th, 2008 I wrote a column HUGE CREDIT CARD CRISIS NEXT FOR AMERICA in which I said that many Americans are living off their credit cards but be forewarned ~ that bubble is about to burst as more Americans are using high-interest credit card cash to pay at least part of their mortgages. http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/2008/06/30.html

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James Petras

In early June, Peruvian President Alan García, an ally of US President Barack Obama, ordered armored personnel carriers, helicopter gun-ships and hundreds of heavily armed troops to assault and disperse a peaceful, legal protest organized by members of Peru’s Amazonian indigenous communities protesting the entry of foreign multinational mining companies on their traditional homelands. Dozens of Indians were killed or are missing, scores have been injured and arrested and a number of Peruvian police, held hostage by the indigenous protestors were killed in the assault. President García declared martial law in the region in order to enforce his unilateral and unconstitutional fiat granting of mining exploitation rights to foreign companies, which infringed on the integrity of traditional Amazonian indigenous communal lands.

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By Kevin Zeese

Single payer witnesses show the common sense path, but Congress is listening to industry donors

Yesterday, as Senator Tom Harkin (D-IO) left the health care hearing room he leaned over to me and said:

“I used to sell insurance. The basic rule is the larger the pool the less expensive the health care. Today we have 1,300 separate pools – separate health care plans – and that is why health care is so expensive; 700 pools would be more efficient and less expensive and one pool would be the least expensive. That’s why single payer is the answer.

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from South Lebanon

[RAMALLAH, 11 June 2009] – Today, DCI-Palestine is releasing a report which documents the widespread ill-treatment and torture of Palestinian children at the hands of the Israeli army and police force – Palestinian Child Prisoners: The systematic and institutionalised ill-treatment and torture of Palestinian children by Israeli authorities.

The release of the report comes just days after an article was published in The Independent newspaper reporting the testimonies of two Israeli soldiers which detail the deliberate abuse of Palestinian children. One soldier is reported as saying that in an incident that occurred in a Palestinian village in March, he saw a lot of soldiers ‘just knee (Palestinians) because it's boring, because you stand there for 10 hours, you’re not doing anything, so they beat people up.’

The report published today contains the testimonies of 33 children, one as young as 10 years old, who bear witness to the abuse they received at the hands of soldiers from the moment of arrest through to an often violent interrogation. Most of these children were arrested from villages near the Wall and illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank. There is evidence that many children are painfully shackled for hours on end, kicked, beaten and threatened, some with death, until they provide confessions, some written in Hebrew, a language they do not speak or understand.

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Franklin Lamb, Dahiyeh

Jimmy Carter and Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah meet on Hezbollah turf for dialogue

“I will try to get you off the US Terrorism list if you can arrange a meeting for me with Hassan Nasrallah”

Jimmy Carter reportedly joking to Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah at their 6/9/09 meeting

Some readers may recall a December 15, 2008 Report in Counterpunch entitled “Why Hezbollah Stiffed Carter.. The former American President was in Beirut at the time to announce the Carter Center’s Election Monitoring project and was disappointed when Hezbollah’s Mohammad Raad told the media that the National Lebanese Resistance would not be meeting with him. Carter wrote in his December 19, 2008 Report to the Carter Center: “This (recent trip to Lebanon-ed.) was something like a presidential visit in that we had long conversations with top officials, cabinet members and delegations of the many political parties. Hezbollah refrained from meeting with us but expressed approval of our election monitoring”

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by Stephen Lendman

Following Israel's Operation Cast Lead, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) documented the toll on Gaza's children and published it in May. It did so "in response to the unprecedented number of children who were killed (and injured) by (the Israeli Defense Forces) during the offensive on Gaza." According to international standards, the Convention on the Rights of the Child's (CRC) definition was used to apply to anyone under age 18.

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By Ramzy Baroud

His room is ready; the walls have fresh paint and my kids prepared a basket of chocolates and other treats to place beside his bed. They hung a poster on his door that has been decorated with colored pens and glitter that says “Welcome Shobhi!” I have taught them that “Sobhi” actually means the “morning light”, and that during his visit, he will not be treated as a visitor, but as a brother. They have compiled a list of fun places to visit, parks, the beach and maybe a ferry ride.

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By Khalid Amayreh

Journalist — Occupied Palestine

Obama ignored mentioning Israeli atrocities and occupation, more ominously, without even remembering international law, (Reuters photo)

It is hard to treat with indifference President Obama's speech in Cairo on 4 June, 2009.The speech itself seemed to represent an ostensible departure from the virulent anti-Islam rhetoric which very much characterized the general discourse of the former Bush administration.

Needless to say, the calumnies and canards concocted by Bush against the world's 1.5 billion Muslims; using the term "Islamofascists" and claiming that Muslims "hate our freedoms" effectively put the United States and Islam on a virtual collision course.

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By Kevin Zeese

Lawyers were the lynchpin if they had given real legal advice: torture is illegal under domestic and international law; there would have been no torture program.

Since filing complaints against 12 Bush-Cheney lawyers the case for disbarment has gotten stronger. More information is leaking out. And, more and more Americans from citizens to generals to a former president are speaking out. On June 10th, a coalition of hundreds of organizations filled an addendum to the complaints against these lawyers to highlight the new information.

The addendum included statements by two generals with first hand knowledge of what occurred in U.S. detention centers in Iraq and Afghanistan. General David Patraeus said on May 29th that the U.S. violated the Geneva Conventions in carrying out “enhanced interrogations.” On FOX TV, in response to a question about the controversial interrogation practices, Patraeus said:

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