Link: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jul2009/afgh-j04.shtml

The Obama administration has ordered the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade (2 MEB) into a potentially bloody offensive in the southern province of Helmand. The objective is the suppression of the ethnic Pashtun population, which is overwhelmingly hostile to the seven-and-a-half year US and NATO occupation of the country and rejects the legitimacy of the Afghan puppet government headed by President Hamid Karzai. -Change for the worse...and people in Afghanistan didn't even elect this monster.

Link: http://kennysideshow.blogspot.com/2009/07/replay-4th-of-july.html

The 4th has always been the quintessential all-American holiday. Fireworks and the flag. Fitting symbols for our great ability to blow things up. It seems more and more that's all we're good at. Destroying places and lives in far away lands. Creating havoc in in the name of independence and freedom while at the same time giving it up here at home.

American independence is waning. Soon the globalists , if successful, will chunk it to the dustbin of history and probably replace our 4th of July holiday with something along the lines of "World Slavery Day". The burgers and beer will probably be in short supply by then but not too many will notice. Giving up our old way of life for the good of the world (and the rich) will be enough for the brain dead masses who long ago forgot the words "O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave".

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkPvzSZRuDo

Cynthia McKinney calls WBAIX from Israeli prison. She and 20 others where detained after being seized by Israeli Navy while in international waters. They were attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza. AJC: Cynthia McKinney: I’m in jail in Israel. PressTV: US remains silent over McKinney arrest by Israel. Desert Peace: NEW YORKERS PROTEST THE PIRACY ON THE MEDITERRANEAN …… PHOTO ESSAY

Link: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jul2009/econ-j03.shtml

The US economy lost far more jobs in June than had been predicted by economists, and the unemployment rate hit 9.5 percent, its highest level since 1983, according to data released by the Labor Department on Thursday. The June jobless report undercut the efforts of the Obama administration and the media to downplay the depth of the economic crisis and generate illusions of a rapid recovery.

Link: http://uruknet.de/?colonna=m&p=55631

The Commanding Officer of the Welsh Guards has been killed in action in Afghanistan - Britain's most senior war casualty since the Falklands. Lt Col Rupert Thorneloe, 40, was blown up in an armoured vehicle by a massive hidden bomb yesterday afternoon. A second soldier died alongside him in the devastating blast and six more were seriously wounded. The high flying colonel's death is a huge scalp for the Taliban and a disaster for the Army. It caps one of the bloodiest weeks of fighting in opium-swamped Helmand province in the three year-long NATO security mission. British forces have suffered more than 25 wounded this week alone, The Sun can also reveal.

Link: http://kennysideshow.blogspot.com/2009/07/nsas-internet-surveillance-program.html

It takes a lot of electricity to spy on Americans. Will the NSA need to buy carbon credits as a major 'polluter?' Or better yet, save the coal, just shut down the NSA.

Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/02/jon-stewart-blasts-glenn_n_224766.html

Hey, you remember a couple of days ago when Michael Scheuer appeared on the "Glenn Beck Whirligig Of Freakjuice" to talk about border security, and he said that "the only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States." Is this guy Michael F. Scheuer really a former CIA employee, like they say he is?

Link: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/28816321/the_great_american_bubble_machine

In Rolling Stone Issue 1082-83, Matt Taibbi takes on "the Wall Street Bubble Mafia" — investment bank Goldman Sachs. The piece has generated controversy, with Goldman Sachs firing back that Taibbi's piece is "an hysterical compilation of conspiracy theories" and a spokesman adding, "We reject the assertion that we are inflators of bubbles and profiteers in busts, and we are painfully conscious of the importance in being a force for good." Taibbi shot back: "Goldman has its alumni pushing its views from the pulpit of the U.S. Treasury, the NYSE, the World Bank, and numerous other important posts; it also has former players fronting major TV shows. They have the ear of the president if they want it." Here, now, are excerpts from Matt Taibbi's piece and video of Taibbi exploring the key issues. TrueSlant: Rolling Stone Reporter Blows The Lid Off Oil/Gas Speculation By Goldman Sachs And Why Gas Prices Are So High. The People's Voice: Goldman Sachs -the Root of All Evil?

Link: http://www.krysstal.com/democracy_whyusa03.html?

The USA vetos a number of United Nations resolutions which are approved by the vast majority of the world's nations. These are some that were vetoed or voted against by the USA in 2008.

Link: http://www.examiner.com/a-2099809~Obama_administration_delays_release_of_CIA_report.html

The Obama administration said Thursday that it needs two more months to review an internal CIA report on the agency's secret detention and interrogation program before making it public, drawing criticism from civil libertarians who say it's past time for Americans to know how its government treated terrorism suspects. This report will never be published in its entirety. A selected few will be permitted to do so but that not the same, is it? InfoWars: The Obama Deception HQ Full length version (Video).

Link: http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/07-suspected-us-drone-attack-targets-baitullah-hideout-ha-02

The attack came a day after thousands of US Marines launched an offensive against the Afghan Taliban in the southern Afghan province of Helmand.

Link: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jul2009/mald-j03.shtml

Assessing the career of a performer, especially one as lengthy and complicated as Karl Malden’s, is not an easy matter. Malden, who died in Los Angeles July 1, first made his name in the New York theater as part of a generally left-wing group of writers, directors and performers and later enjoyed a long career in Hollywood extending from the postwar years to the early 1970s. He most famously worked with Elia Kazan and Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and On the Waterfront (1954), with Brando again as a fellow actor and director in One-Eyed Jacks (1961), and with Burt Lancaster and John Frankenheimer in Birdman of Alcatraz (1962).

Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/02/AR2009070203608.html?hpid=topnews

A document filed in federal court this week by the Justice Department offers new evidence that former vice president Richard B. Cheney helped steer the Bush administration's public response to the disclosure of Valerie Plame Wilson's employment by the CIA and that he was at the center of many related administration deliberations.

Link: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/06/30/accountability/index.html

In anticipation of the release of that report [a 2004 CIA Inspector General's Report], there is an important effort underway -- as part of the ACLU Accountability Project -- to correct a critically important deficiency in the public debate over torture and accountability. So often, the premise of media discussions of torture is that "torture" is something that was confined to a single tactic (waterboarding) and used only on three "high-value" detainees accused of being high-level Al Qaeda operatives. The reality is completely different. The interrogation and detention regime implemented by the U.S. resulted in the deaths of over 100 detainees in U.S. custody -- at least. Scoop: Report: CIA Crucified Captive In Abu Ghraib Prison: “A forensic examiner found that he (the prisoner) had essentially been crucified; he died from asphyxiation after having been hung by his arms, in a hood, and suffering broken ribs,” the magazine’s Jane Mayer writes in the magazine’s June 22nd issue. “Military pathologists classified the case a homicide.” The date of the murder was not given. Mother Jones: Defining Torture Down: "Do they know this is torture? Of course they do. Glenn Greenwald is right when he says the excerpt below is probably all you need to read. What it says, in a nutshell, is that when other people do this stuff, we naturally call it torture. But when we do it, it's not. Sickening." OneWorldNet: Survivors of torture joined human rights activists in the streets of Washington DC to demand prosecution of those involved in planning and implementing U.S. torture policies.

Link: http://therearenosunglasses.wordpress.com/2009/06/30/u-s-built-bridge-is-windfall-—-for-illegal-afghan-drug-trade/

In August 2007, the presidents of Afghanistan and Tajikistan walked side by side with the U.S. commerce secretary across a new $37 million concrete bridge that the Army Corps of Engineers designed to link two of Central Asia’s poorest countries. Dressed in a gray suit with an American flag pin in his lapel, then-Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said the modest two-lane span that U.S. taxpayers paid for would be “a critical transit route for trade and commerce” between Afghanistan and Tajikistan. Today, the bridge across the muddy waters of the Panj River is carrying much more than vegetables and timber: It’s paved the way for drug traffickers to transport larger loads of Afghan heroin and opium to Central Asia and beyond to Russia and Western Europe. NowPublic: CIA: Secret Operations, Drug Money

Link: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-afghan-captured-soldier3-2009jul03,0,5444155.story

The soldier has been missing from his unit since Tuesday, said Army Capt. Elizabeth Mathias. Citing concern for his safety, she did not disclose the circumstances of his disappearance, or explain how military "authorities" had concluded that he was being held, or say whether there had been any communication with insurgents Afghans about the missing man occupation soldier. The Guardian: Afghans capture US soldier as Obama's offensive starts. The Independent: Two British soldiers have been killed in southern Afghanistan.

Link: http://www.greenpartywatch.org/2009/06/30/cynthia-mckinney-reportedly-taken-captive-by-israeli-navy/

The latest from www.freegaza.org reports that the humanitarian vessel Spirit of Humanity has been attacked and boarded by the Israelis 23 miles off the coast of Gaza. Former US Congresswoman and Presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney is among the 21 human rights workers taken prisoner off the ship. TPV/VDare: Pirates of the Mediterranean. ADS: Emergency Email to Obama Re Gaza: "My friend, Cynthia McKinney and Nobel laureate, Mairead Maguire and 20 other people were trying to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza, which, as I understand, is something that you have encouraged Israel to allow." Kenny's Sideshow: The silence is deafening.

Link: http://www.uruknet.com/?p=m55617&hd=&size=1&l=e

The Zionist goal is understood and very clear, the Zionist entity under all its governments and ruling parties and coalitions are trying to strangle Palestinian Arabs in their own occupied land and force them to commit "self transfer" till Palestine is free of its Palestinians; so as to become only a "Jewish state".

Link: http://news.antiwar.com/2009/06/30/gen-odierno-concedes-troops-remain-in-iraqi-cities-wont-say-how-many/

On Sunday he declared all troops were out of Iraq’s cities, but today top US commander in Iraq General Raymond Odierno conceded that “a small number” of US troops are still there, and “will remain in cities to train, advise, coordinate with Iraqi security forces, as well as enable them to move forward.”

Link: http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=46667

Georgetown University says it covered over the monogram “IHS”--symbolizing the name of Jesus Christ—because it was inscribed on a pediment on the stage where President Obama spoke at the university on Tuesday and the White House had asked Georgetown to cover up all signs and symbols there. Daily Mail: Church of England school bans girl from wearing crucifix - but allows Sikh pupils to wear bangles.

Link: http://www.campaignforliberty.com/blog.php?view=21001

As President Obama has called for humanitarian aid to be sent to Gaza, and as the International Red Cross has damned the inhumanity of Israel's blockade of Gaza, the question that immediately comes to mind is why did not the United States send sufficient US Navy escort to see the "Spirit of Humanity" safely through international waters to Gaza? We send ships against Somalian pirates, why not against Israeli ones? We all know the answer. The US talks a good "human rights" game, but never delivers--especially if the human rights abuser is Israel. After all, Israel owns the US Congress and President Obama. Israel even has an Israeli citizen and former member of the Israeli Defense Forces as the Chief-of-Staff in Obama's White House. Israel owns millions of American "Christian Zionists" and "rapture evangelicals." When it comes to Israel, the American government is a puppet state. It does what it is told.

Link: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2009/07/01/cbs_helen_thomas_challenge_gibbs_on_controlled_town_hall_meeting.html

CBS' Chip Reid and Helen Thomas double teamed Robert Gibbs today at the daily press briefing on the "tightly controlled" town hall meeting President Obama will hold on health care. Gibbs kept saying lets have this discussion AFTER the meeting. Helen Thomas accused the White House of "controlling the press." She said almost all White House/Obama events are "prepackaged." She accused the White House of not "having any answers." CNS News: Helen Thomas: Not Even Nixon Tried to Control the Media Like Obama.

Link: http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2009/07/02/eager-to-tap-iraq-s-vast-oil-reserves-in-1

Two years before the invasion of Iraq, oil executives and foreign policy advisers told the Bush administration that the United States would remain "a prisoner of its energy dilemma" as long as Saddam Hussein was in power. That April 2001 report, "Strategic Policy Challenges for the 21st Century," was prepared by the James A. Baker Institute for Public Policy and the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations at the request of then-Vice President Dick Cheney. In retrospect, it appears that the report helped focus administration thinking on why it made geopolitical sense to oust Hussein, whose country sat on the world's second largest oil reserves. "Iraq remains a de-stabilizing influence to the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East," the report said.

Link: http://wakeupfromyourslumber.blogspot.com/2009/07/reverend-jeremiah-wright-and-them-jews.html

Now Wright has addressed those remarks, as ABC News reports. Speaking on satellite radio, Wright said he "misspoke" when he complained that "Jews" were keeping him away from the president. The word he really meant to use, Wright said, is "Zionists."

Link: http://amnesty.org/en/for-media/press-releases/israeloccupied-palestinianterritoriesimpunity-war-crimes-gaza-and-southe

Israeli forces killed hundreds of unarmed Palestinian civilians and destroyed thousands of homes in Gaza in attacks which breached the laws of war, Amnesty International concluded in a new 117-page report published today - the first comprehensive report to be published on the 22-day conflict earlier this year.

Link: http://tenpercent.wordpress.com/2009/07/02/honduras-coup-just-got-chile/

As in torture regime Old-cold(war)-School, first we have Battalion 316 (y’know John Negroponte’s fave gang of cowardly butchers) ghoul Joya in charge of repression...VoltaireNet: The Coup in Honduras: Obama’s Real Message to Latin America?

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/jun/30/congress-financial-reform-banks

Last month, when the US Congress failed to pass a bankruptcy reform measure that would have allowed home mortgages to be modified in bankruptcy, senator Dick Durbin succinctly commented: "The banks own the place." That seems pretty clear.

Link: http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE55T3H420090630

"I'm not guilty. I'm only responsible for carrying out orders that I received from my superiors," Lady, the CIA's Milan station chief at the time, was quoted as telling Il Giornale newspaper when asked whether he participated in the abduction. Just like the Nazis in Nuremberg: "Befehl ist Befehl" ([I was] "only following orders") The People's Voice: ”Extraordinary rendition” -The hunt for ”Mister Bob” and the 18 bastards.

Link: http://www.russiatoday.com/Top_News/2009-07-01/_US_continues_to_print_dollars_into_no_value_at_all_.html

Gerald C. Celente, an American economist and founder & director of The Trends Research Institute, spoke exclusively to RT about the current situation on global markets and the future of the US economy.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6-4wPVwNEM

Check out this! + this one: The Obama deception. Full version. (Video). Raw Story: Fein: Obama 'shuts his eyes' to 'open confessions' of Bush-era war crimes.