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Friday, August 29, 2008 |
GlobalResearch: "Former presidential candidate Rep. Dennis Kucinich delivered one of the most passionate addresses Tuesday night. 'Wake up, America. We went into Iraq for oil. The oil companies want more,' Kucinich said. 'War against Iran will mean $10-a-gallon gasoline. The oil administration wants to drill more, into your wallet. Wake up, America. Weapons contractors want more. An Iran war will cost 5 to 10 trillion dollars.'"
RockyMountainNews: "Marching behind a police vehicle that flashed the words 'Follow Us. Welcome to Denver.' on an electronic sign, at least 3,000 Iraq war veterans and anti-war protesters made their way through downtown Denver on Wednesday during the largest demonstration of the Democratic National Convention to date."
RawStory: "Thirteen Nepali men were recruited and held against their will for thirteen months in a human trafficking scheme engineered and perpetrated by Halliburton and its Jordanian contractor, according to a lawsuit filed yesterday in California federal court."
PhoenixNewTimes: "You're John McCain, a fallen hero who wanted to become president so desperately that you sold yourself to Charlie Keating, the wealthy con man who bears such an incredible resemblance to The Joker.
Obviously, Keating thought you could make it to the White House, too.
He poured $112,000 into your political campaigns. He became your friend. He threw fund raisers in your honor. He even made a sweet shopping-center investment deal for your wife, Cindy. Your father-in-law, Jim Hensley, was cut in on the deal, too.
Nothing was too good for you. Why not? Keating saw you as a prime investment that would pay off in the future.
So he flew you and your family around the country in his private jets. Time after time, he put you up for serene, private vacations at his vast, palatial spa in the Bahamas. All of this was so grand. You were protected from what Thomas Hardy refers to as 'the madding crowd'. It was almost as though you were already staying at a presidential retreat.
Since Keating's collapse, you find yourself doing obscene things to save yourself from the Senate Ethics Committee's investigation. As a matter of course, you engage in backbiting behavior that will turn you into an outcast in the Senate if you do survive."
McCainKeatingFive: "For anyone not aware of the Keating Five, here's a very simple summary:
Charles Keating owned a savings and loan in California. He was illegally using the money of his bank's customers to give loans to himself and friends that they didn't have to repay, and to speculate on risky real estate investments, which was strictly forbidden by U.S. law (the latter was one cause of the Great Depression).
When the feds found out what was going on and launched an investigation into Keating and his company, Keating called five U.S. Senators whom he had wined, dined, and lavished with hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign donations and personal gifts for years.
Keating asked the five Senators to tell the feds to bug off, and the five Senators, later known as the Keating Five, obliged, meeting with federal investigators twice and pressuring them to stop investigating Keating's crimes. They bought Keating some time, but the feds didn't give up and eventually Keating was nailed. The reason the feds were so persistent was because Keating wasn't playing with mere chump change. Keating blew $3.4 billion through illegal personal loans and bad investments, and the FDIC eventually had to reimburse Keating's customers who had been ripped off. (The FDIC is a part of the federal government funded by taxpayers dollars, so when Keating stole from his customers you and I were the ones who paid for it.)
John McCain was formally rebuked by the Senate Ethics Committee for exercising 'poor judgment' for intervening with the federal regulators on behalf of Keating, but because McCain accepted Keating's gifts of travel and vacations to Bahama while McCain was a member of the House of Representatives (he served one term there before moving to the Senate), the Senate claimed they had no jurisdiction to censure McCain. (However the meetings to pressure federal regulators occurred during the first few months of McCain serving in the Senate in 1987, so that excuse doesn't hold up)."
JustWorldNews: "Time was, the US economy dominated the world economy to such a degree that economists would quip that if the US economy sneezed the rest of the world would catch a cold.
Things have changed.
While the US is still a huge player in the world economy, its total GDP is now less than that of the European Union.
These international macroeconomic developments also provide another telling indication of the shifts in global economic power. As noted, the emerging market economies make up about half the world economy, so their growth of 6-7 per cent assures reasonably strong world output increases even if there were no expansion at all in the rich countries. China alone accounts for 10 per cent of the global total, so its annual expansion of 10 per cent generates a full percentage point of world growth all by itself.
Russia, China, the EU, the US, and other international actors all strongly need each other, at the economic level, if their own economies are to survive and prosper."
The Bush administration has ruined America and is terrorising the world. And he is still at it. Democrats where are you?
IHT: "The Bush administration is raising the stakes in a court fight that could change the balance of power between the White House and the U.S. Congress.
Justice Department lawyers said Wednesday that they will soon ask a federal appeals court not to force the president's top advisers to comply with congressional subpoenas next month. President George W. Bush argues Congress does not have the authority to demand information from his aides."
The first thing Obama should do when he is president is to set up an independent inquiry into George W. Bush's abuse of power and restore America to a democratic country that lives in peace with the rest of the world. It's in America's own interest.
11:27:34 AM 
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EUObserver: "As the European Union considers imposing sanctions against Russia over its recognition of independence for Georgia's rebel regions, Moscow has said that any punitive measures would be a 'grave mistake', harming the 27-nation bloc as much as Russia itself.
In practice, just a few countries - mainly the UK, Sweden, Poland and three Baltic EU states - are pushing for a tough line against Russia."
Britain is at present in the hands of a dangerously imperialist New Labour, Sweden is again in one of its reactionary phases, and the Baltic States and Poland are still acting out their frustration. So if Europe has some common sense it will have to accept Russia's viewpoints, concerns and potential. Britain should stop acting like America's bulldog.
Guardian: "A Whitehall counter-terrorism unit is targeting the BBC and other media organisations as part of a new global propaganda push designed to 'taint the al-Qaida brand', according to a secret Home Office paper seen by the Guardian.
The document also shows that Whitehall counter-terrorism experts intend to exploit new media websites and outlets with a proposal to 'channel messages through volunteers in internet forums' as part of their campaign.
The report, headed, Challenging violent extremist ideology through communications, says: 'We are pushing this material to UK media channels, eg, a BBC radio programme exposing tensions between AQ leadership and supporters. And a restricted working group will communicate niche messages through media and non-media.'"
EuroRus: "Afghanistan, Friday. Around a hundred civilians, many of them women and children, have been slaughtered in another NATO terrorist attack, at first denied and now admitted by the US Armed Forces after a callous attempt to downplay the tremendous carnage caused by another bombardment which went tragically wrong.
How democratic is NATO? Does NATO ask the citizens of its member states about its policies, even though these dictate the core of foreign policy? No, it does not. It is a supra-national, grey, faceless organism which overtakes each and every fibre of democratic control, placing the Washington/Tel Aviv arms lobby above the national governments and unanswerable and unaccountable to its peoples."
The greatest stumbling block for peace in Europe is Britain and NATO. After the demise of Communism in Russia, NATO no longer had a right of existence. Nevertheless it continued existing and even expanded its aim, thus making NATO not a defensive but an offensive organisation, led by the US and its British satellite. Britain is also collaborating with a CIA torture campaign.
AfterDowningStreet: "The use of torture by the US Government in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in New York on September 11, 2001 has come under increasing criticism."
AfterDowningStreet: "The US and Israel are the only two modern states that legally sanction torture. An earlier article covered America."
So whatever the West is saying about human rights and democracy, the West is still the greatest perpetrator, the greatest criminal, the greatest hypocrite.
Neocon satellite states like Georgia still continue provoking South Ossetia. It looks like the Georgian people won't see any improvements in their condition for a long, long time. Saakashvili will need all the resources he can gather to continue his crusade (the Georgian flag has a medieval origin), and that will mean increased poverty for his citizens.
RIAN: "TSKHINVALI, August 28 (RIA Novosti) - A Georgian unmanned reconnaissance plane was shot down early on Thursday over the South Ossetian capital, a local Interior Ministry official said.
'A Georgian drone was flying from south to north over Tskhinvali at 00.10 Moscow time (20.10 GMT). South Ossetian military units opened fire at the UAV and shot it down,' said acting Interior Minister Mikhail Mindzayev."
News: "Russia today won support from China and Central Asian states in its standoff with the West over the Georgia conflict as the European Union said it was weighing sanctions against Moscow.
China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan voiced support for Russia's 'active role'' in resolving the conflict in Georgia, according to the draft of a joint statement released by the Kremlin."
11:05:54 AM
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