Link: http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/04/the-mighty-debt-purge-of-2009/

The Fed’s $12.8 trillion of monetary stimulus has triggered a six-week long surge in the stock market. Think of it as Bernanke’s Bear Market Rally, a torrent of capital gushing from every rusty pipe in the financial system. The Fed’s so-called “lending facilities” have gone far beyond their original purpose, which was to backstop a broken system. Now they’re leaking liquidity into the equities markets and sending stocks soaring while the “real” economy sinks to the bottom of the fish tank. That’s how the Fed does business these days: plenty of tasty crepes for the Wall Street kingpins and table scraps for the lumpen masses.

Link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1172688/British-soldiers-tortured-murdered-20-Iraqis-covered-firefight-claim.html

British soldiers tortured and murdered up to 20 Iraqis in cold blood, the High Court was told yesterday. It happened after a three-hour gun battle at an Army checkpoint near Basra, a lawyer claimed. Rabinder Singh said a group of local men were taken prisoner and transported to an Army camp where they were beaten with a rusty tent pole, punched, slammed against walls, denied water, blasted with loud music and forced to strip naked in the presence of a woman – a humiliation for Muslim men.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/apr/23/freddie-mac-chief-death

The acting chief financial officer of the ailing US mortgage provider Freddie Mac was yesterday found dead having apparently taken his own life. Police responded before dawn to an emergency call from the home of David Kellermann in Vienna, Virginia, on the outskirts of Washington. Fairfax county police said no foul play was evident and that the cause and manner of death was under investigation by the state medical examiner. Media reports said Kellermann had hanged himself in the basement of his home. Rat Tube: Freddie Mac CFO Suicide by Hanging? (or gunshot wound).

Link: http://www.alternet.org/immigration/137787/shocking%3A_today%2C_life_in_the_south_for_poor_latinos_is_pure_hell%21/

A new study finds that "legal" and "illegal", "citizen" and "resident," are distinctions without difference for poorer Latinos in today's Deep South.

Link: http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1226.htm

New reports circulating in the Kremlin today are showing that the rising tensions between the US and Israel have escalated even further after the Chief Financial Officer (CFO), David Kellermann, 41, of the US government-controlled home funding provider Freddie Mac was found hanged in what the FSB is describing as an ‘Israeli Mossad initiated suicide’ after his tracing of over $50 billion in United States government funds that were ‘funneled’ to Israel and led to the collapse of the American mortgage giant.

Link: http://socialistworker.org/2009/04/23/bursting-washingtons-bubble

Millions of people looked forward to Barack Obama's presidency with a sense of pride and hope. But Obama's first 100 days have raised critical questions about the limits of what we can expect from a Democrat in the White House--and what it will take to get the change we want.

Link: http://socialistworker.org/2009/04/23/is-a-recovery-in-sight

Whatever official statistics show, the economic picture is still grim for working people. THE OPTIMISTS claim that an economic recovery is near at hand, based on a recent stock market bounce and some less-bad-than-usual economic statistics.

Link: http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2009/04/23/torture/index.html

The "ticking bomb" scenario only happens on TV. Those, like Dick Cheney, who cite it are leading society down a fatal slippery slope of abuse.

Link: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090423/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_interrogation_memos_senate+

As national security adviser to former President George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice verbally approved the CIA's request to subject alleged al-Qaida terrorist Abu Zubaydah to waterboarding in July 2002, the earliest known decision by a Bush administration official to OK use of the simulated drowning technique.