Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/apr/27/us-banks-lobbyists-finance-reform-bill

Wall Street is flooding Congress with lobbyists seeking to curtail key parts of the sweeping regulatory bill. America's major banks are pouring millions of dollars into an apparently successful attempt to weaken Barack Obama's finance reform bill, currently stalled in Congress by Republican opposition. In the face of deep public anger over the financial crisis and government bailouts, banks have flooded Congress with lobbyists seeking to curtail key parts of the sweeping regulatory bill – such as provisions to create an office for consumer protection and more strongly regulate the vast derivatives market.

Link: http://www.truthout.org/the-real-war-reporters58914

A good friend noted recently how little we hear of Iraq and Afghanistan in the news anymore, and further noted the deafening silence regarding those ongoing wars from what he described as "dishwater left-leaning political activists" whose disengagement from the issue, according to him, makes them full of something I can't repeat in print. That bogus disengagement, he asserts, stems from the fact that Obama is in office now, so everything must be OK. It isn't, of course, but it is hard to miss the fact that we haven't heard much about the wars, or the protesters, since a couple of Januarys ago.

Link: http://www.truthout.org/henry-giroux-democracy-has-taken-a-major-hit58920

Giroux's talk, "Shattered Bonds: Youth in a Suspect Society and the Politics of Disposability," railed unambiguously against neoliberalism, against the "mindless, stupid" practice of teaching to the test, against the contempt with which society often treats youth (and more so those cut across class and color lines), against casino capitalism and against a culture of cruelty that insists "any form of dependency whatsoever is somehow a weakness."

Link: http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0427/what-afraid-of-reid-asks-gop-colleagues/

President Barack Obama's Democratic allies in the Senate set a new vote Tuesday on a sweeping bill to rein in Wall Street, looking to heap pressure on Republicans blocking the popular measure. Lawmakers were to vote on whether to formally start debate on the most ambitious regulatory overhaul of its kind since the Great Depression of the 1930s -- the same proposal they narrowly defeated late Monday.

Link: http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0427/grassley-takes-credit-health-reform/

In a sign Republicans may be worried that health reform is more popular than they're willing to admit, the GOP senator famed for saying the health overhaul will "pull the plug on grandma" is now taking credit for some of its elements. In a press release put out this past weekend, Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa said he "worked successfully to improve Medicare payments to doctors in rural states like Iowa and, in turn, access for beneficiaries, as part of the health care reform enacted this year."

Link: http://wsws.org/articles/2010/apr2010/pers-a27.shtml

Debate on the Senate version of the Obama administration’s bank regulatory overhaul is expected to begin shortly. The House of Representatives passed its banking bill last December. Neither bill does anything to curb the power of the banks or limit their parasitic and socially destructive activities. What the media is calling the “most sweeping overhaul” of the banking system since the Great Depression in reality sanctions the ever greater monopolization of the financial system by a handful of Wall Street giants, imposes no limits on executive pay, and allows the banks and hedge funds to continue gambling on exotic and largely unregulated securities such as collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps.

Link: http://wsws.org/articles/2010/apr2010/afgh-a27.shtml

The New York Times reported Sunday that American special forces units are operating in and around the Afghan city of Kandahar, assassinating or capturing alleged leaders and militants of the Taliban resistance ahead of the major US-NATO offensive scheduled for June. Suggestive of the sinister and murderous character of such operations, the Times noted that the “opening salvos of the offensive are being carried out in the shadows”. It reported that “elite” units had been “picking up or picking off insurgent leaders” for the past several weeks.

Link: http://www.truthout.org/document-goldman-shorted-mortgages-because-world-wouldnt-expect-it58916

A key Goldman Sachs trading manager indicated in his personnel performance review that he could use the "fear" in the market of a coming collapse in the nation's mortgage market to make profits for the Wall Street firm, documents released Tuesday show. Former trader Joshua Birnbaum wrote that because "the world would think" Goldman Sachs would invest in the mortgage market for the long term, the firm should "flip our risk" and bet on an impending crisis.

Link: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2712394320100427

For a second time in as many days, U.S. Senate Republicans mustered enough votes on Tuesday to block debate of a Democratic bill that would bring the biggest overhaul of financial regulation since the 1930s. And yet, the stupid American people keep reelecting them.

Link: http://www.redress.cc:80/zionism/jcook20100427

Jonathan Cook analyses the pillars that prop up Israeli apartheid in pre- and post-1967 Palestine, from the unique and racist nature of Israeli citizenship law, to Jewish control of land, to defining Israeli Arabs as a security threat. In a talk delivered to the fifth Bilin international conference for Palestinian popular resistance, held in the West Bank village of Bilin on 21 April, he argues that the fight against Israeli apartheid wherever it is found – in Jaffa or Jerusalem, in Nazareth or Nablus, in Beersheva or Bilin – is integral to the struggle for justice for the Palestinians.