Link: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2011750220_oil01.html

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico presents British Petroleum with a problem of unprecedented severity — a limitless gush in deep waters — forcing the company to grasp for fixes to a problem that it never envisioned. ANOTHER EXXON VALDEZ? Gulf Coast catastrophe could be worse than 1989 spill. Look back at the Seattle Times' Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the Valdez disaster. The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico presents British Petroleum with a problem of unprecedented severity — a limitless gush in deep waters — forcing the company to grasp for fixes to a problem that it never envisioned.

Link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1269948/Goldman-Sachs-facing-criminal-probe-mortgage-securities-deals.html

Goldman Sachs came under fresh pressure this morning after it was revealed the Wall Street powerhouse faces a criminal investigation into mortgage security deals it arranged. The inquiry follows civil fraud charges filed by the government against Goldman two weeks ago. The U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan opened the investigation following a criminal referral by America's financial watchdog, the Securities and Exchange Commission. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1269948/Goldman-Sachs-facing-criminal-probe-mortgage-securities-deals.html#ixzz0mhlWUo00

Link: http://justinwrites.wordpress.com/2010/05/01/leaked-report-government-now-fears-deepwater-horizon-well-could-become-unchecked-gusher-that-will-decimate-the-coast-sending-in-national-guard-for-security/

A confidential government report on the unfolding spill disaster in the Gulf makes clear the Coast Guard now fears the well could become an unchecked gusher shooting millions of gallons of oil per day into the Gulf. “The following is not public,” reads the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Emergency Response document dated April 28. “Two additional release points were found today in the tangled riser. If the riser pipe deteriorates further, the flow could become unchecked resulting in a release volume an order of magnitude higher than previously thought.”

Link: http://uruknet.info/index.php?p=m65575&hd=&size=1&l=e

There was a strange moment last week during President Obama's speech at Cooper Union. There he was, groveling before a cast of Wall Street villains including Goldman Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfein, begging them to "Look into your heart!" like John Turturro's character in Miller's Crossing...when out of the blue, the POTUS dropped this bombshell: "The only people who ought to fear the kind of oversight and transparency that we're proposing are those whose conduct will fail this scrutiny."

Link: http://wsws.org/articles/2010/apr2010/oilr-a30.shtml

Oil is leaking into the Gulf of Mexico from the well beneath where a British Petroleum (BP) drilling rig exploded at the rate of 5,000 barrels a day, a rate five times greater than earlier estimates, the US government reported late Wednesday night. US Coast Guard officials said a scientist from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had reached the conclusion based on aerial surveys of the slick.

Link: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/4/30/you_got_bailed_out_we_got

Thousands of people turned out for a protest on Wall Street Thursday to denounce the taxpayer-funded bailout and the role of large financial firms in the nation’s economic crisis. A coalition of union and community groups organized the march as the Senate opened debate on a measure to overhaul financial regulation.

Link: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100517/hayes_breakdown

After weeks of Republican stall tactics and filibuster threats, the Senate has finally opened debate on Sen. Chris Dodd's financial regulatory reform bill. But the legislation has been on the floor of public opinion for months, and misperceptions and rumors about the bill abound. On this week's podcast, Washington Editor Christopher Hayes debunks myths and discusses the bill's economic implications. Will it end bailouts? Or just reinforce a broken system? Get the answers on this week's The Breakdown.

Link: http://www.counterpunch.org/kreisler04302010.html

Elizabeth Warren was born in Oklahoma in 1949, professes law at Harvard Law School and is currently chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel to investigate the banking bailout, formally known as the Troubled Assets Relief Program. She’s also the prime advocate for the creation of a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency, which Congress is now considering, but which may well be suffocated in the embrace of the Federal Reserve. Warren's has been cited as among names being considered as Supreme Court nominees to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens.and in the opinion of the editors of CounterPunch would be the best choice. AC/JSC

Link: http://bellaciao.org/en/spip.php?article19793

The Israelis recently celebrated 62 years of Independence of their race-based state built on mass murder, ethnic cleansing, theft, mass imprisonment of subject populations, abusive imprisonment of 800,000 children in what the Catholic Church describes as the Gaza Concentration Camp, race-based Apartheid laws, gross human rights abuse - and all of this summarized by the 2 words Palestinian Genocide (for details see "Palestinian Genocide":

Link: http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/95235-democrats-spark-alarm-with-call-for-national-id-card

A plan by Senate Democratic leaders to reform the nation’s immigration laws ran into strong opposition from civil liberties defenders before lawmakers even unveiled it Thursday. Democratic leaders have proposed requiring every worker in the nation to carry a national identification card with biometric information, such as a fingerprint, within the next six years, according to a draft of the measure.

Link: http://www.sott.net/articles/show/207740-Congressman-Waxman-Sneaks-Anti-Vitamin-Amendment-into-Wall-Street-Reform-Bill

Of all the sneaky tactics practiced in Washington D.C., this recent action by Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) is one of the most insidious: While no one was looking, he injected amendment language into the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009 (H.R. 4173) that would expand the powers of the FTC (not the FDA, but the FTC) to terrorize nutritional supplement companies by greatly expanding the power of the FTC to make its own laws that target dietary supplement companies.

Link: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/04/201043010326951978.html

For years the Greek Orthodox Church has been criticised for leasing its land in Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank to the state of Israel for tens of millions of dollars. Al Jazeera has seen documents that reveal the full extent of the deals made between the church's former patriarch with a powerful Israeli settler organisation. Now the new patriarch says he is fighting to stop church property being turned into settlements.

Link: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/04/201043015759452829.html

Small amounts of oil from a massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico have reached US shores. Officials said the leak, from an oil rig sunk by a massive explosion last week, was five times worse than previously thought, and could trigger a disaster of "national significance" on the Gulf coast.

Link: http://www.alternet.org/story/146675/exploring_the_mind-bending_world_of_salvia_divinorum

Within around thirty seconds of smoking the dark herbal extract the effects rapidly began, and I felt my entire sense of identity suddenly shift. I was instantly transformed from a human being into a tiny disembodied speck of consciousness -- completely bewildered as to what I was and amnesic of my former identity. I was suspended in a hyperspatial dimension, a crystalline network of pulsing energies, that was filled with countless other miniature beings like me. I found myself inside of a kind of space within space, that appeared to transcend the whole three-dimensional universe. The sale of salvia divinorum is prohibited in the following repressive states: Florida, Delaware, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Virginia, Kansas, Mississippi, Ohio; and in the following repressive countries: Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Spain, Sweden.