Link: http://www.alternet.org/economy/146999/the_corporate_stranglehold%3A_how_bp_will_make_out_like_bandits_from_its_massive%2C_still_gushing_oil_disaster/

The existing $75 million cap on damages for offshore drilling companies is a bailout every bit as disgusting as those recently bestowed upon Wall Street. Petitions by Change.org|Get Widget|Start a Petition » You've got to hand it to BP. After witnessing the Great Financial Crash of 2008, it seemed like it would be decades before any corporation could eclipse Wall Street's reckless rush to place its own short-term profits ahead of the public interest. But the epic drilling disaster off the Louisiana coast demonstrates that many of the problems that wrecked Wall Street are deeply embedded in other sectors of the American economy. Over the past 30 years, corporate titans have so thoroughly corrupted the notion of "free markets" that many of the world's riskiest businesses are not only insulated from regulatory supervision, they have been immunized from even minimum standards of market discipline.

Link: http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0526/case-marijuana-legalization-petitions-seized-drug-raid/

Task force allegedly held gun to 14-year-old boy's head. The campaign director for Washington state's marijuana legalization effort is unable to account for eight petitions allegedly seized from a medical marijuana dispensary by a drug task force during a raid two weeks ago. "What I am told by personnel at North End Club 420 is that ten petitions were seized. Sensible Washington is seeking to "remove state civil and criminal penalties for persons eighteen years or older who cultivate, possess, transport, sell, or use marijuana" through the initiative process. In order to get Initiative 1068 onto the November ballot in Washington, they must submit 241,153 valid signatures by July 2. Dawdy says his volunteers have collected over 100,000 but plan to triple that total over the next five weeks.

Link: http://www.truthout.org/after-long-argument-bp-official-made-fatal-decision-drilling-rig59875

Company executives and top drill hands on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig argued for hours about how to proceed before a BP official made the decision to remove heavy drilling fluid from the well and replace it with lighter weight seawater that was unable to prevent gas from surging to the surface and exploding. Brown said in sworn testimony on Wednesday that the BP official stood up during the meeting and said, "This is how it's going to be."

Link: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25543.htm

Teams of American special forces have been authorised to conduct spying missions intended to pave the way for a military strike on Iran in case President Obama orders one, US government sources have confirmed.

Link: http://www.thenation.com/article/mothers-catch-22

Now When Congress and Bill Clinton decided to end "welfare as we know it," they made a deal with the poor folks who were being cut loose from their AFDC checks. Go out and find a job, they told the mothers with dependent children. Government will help by providing a modest subsidy to pay for child care. As a practical matter, most mothers with small children couldn't go to work without it.

Link: http://criminalstate.com/2010/05/watching-israel-delegitimize-the-u-s/

What’s behind the sudden crisis in Korea? Who benefits? Which nation’s nuclear arsenal is problematic? The U.S.-Israeli relationship has long been America’s Achilles heel. Our first president warned against “entangled alliances” particularly when, as here, there’s a “passionate attachment.” Our “special relationship” with this rogue state has placed the U.S. outside the same system of international law that we now seek to impose on others, including Iran. Our handling of the current crisis on the Korean peninsula could restore our tattered reputation. What’s the first issue that needs to be addressed?

Link: http://wsws.org/articles/2010/may2010/econ-m26.shtml

Stock markets worldwide were extraordinarily unstable Tuesday, as fears about the expanding European financial crisis and the possibility of military conflict on the Korean peninsula combined to shake investors.

Link: http://wsws.org/articles/2010/may2010/pers-m26.shtml

Last week high school teachers in Central Falls, Rhode Island—who were fired en masse last February for defying concession demands—were forced to accept an agreement in return for their jobs that will increase the school day by 25 minutes, compel them to tutor an hour each week, gut seniority rights and submit to a new evaluation system that will facilitate their termination.

Link: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/05/26-7

If BP fails to plug its ruptured offshore oil well, intense underground pressure would be enough to pump vast quantities of thick brown crude into the Gulf of Mexico for months, even years. If even BP's backup plans fail, it would cause a pollution disaster "heretofore unseen by humanity," said one expert.

Link: http://wsws.org/articles/2010/may2010/petr-m26.shtml

A front-page article in Tuesday’s New York Times reveals the existence of a secret directive signed by Gen. David Petraeus, chief of the US Central Command, ordering the expansion of covert military operations throughout the Middle East, Central Asia and the Horn of Africa. The seven-page document, entitled “Joint Unconventional Warfare Task Force Execute Order,” essentially provides the US military with a blank check to carry out aggressive acts against virtually any country.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/richard-adams-blog/2010/may/26/top-kill-oil-spill-live-deepwater-horizon

'Top kill' is BP's attempt to shut off the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The first five hours as it happened. 2pm: Here we go: BP has announced it has started its procedure known as "top kill" – its latest attempt to shut off the thousands of barrels of oil daily gushing from the ruins of the Deepwater Horizon's subsea well. All the action is taking place deep on the sea floor of the Gulf of Mexico – and the good news is that we may get to see it all happen in real time, after BP reversed its ealier plans to shut off the live video feed from the sea floor while the procedure was taking place.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/26/shell-alaska-drilling-oil-gas

Interior secretary due to give final approvals. Shell is planning a drilling project in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas off the northern coast of Alaska. The Obama administration is coming under intense pressure from Democrats in Congress and environmentalists to shelve a Shell offshore drilling project in the Arctic.

Link: http://www.truthout.org/in-flight-reality59838

the Sunday Times of London ran a story on the Wall Street firm Goldman Sachs, which was headlined: "I'm doing 'God's work'. Meet Mr. Goldman Sachs." The idea of the investment firm doing God's work was attributed to the Chairman and CEO Lloyd Blankfein. The rich irony that underpinned this image of Blankfein was indicative of the rhetoric that has emerged in the defense of the workings of Wall Street amid growing evidence of both incompetence and chicanery on the part of major investment houses and assorted banks. In earlier times, Jesus Christ used a whip to drive the money changers from the temple for their desecration of the sacred space. Today, the American government will have to redefine the spaces within which the money changers will operate and, perhaps, jail more of the perpetrators of fraud like Bernard Madoff rather than whip them in the manner of Christ.

Link: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/5/26/bp_played_central_role_in_botched

The BP oil spill is the worst to hit the United States since the Exxon Valdez disaster of 1989. The devastation in the Gulf Coast has renewed attention on BP’s key role in the botched containment of Exxon Valdez. We speak to Zygmunt Plater, an environmental law professor at Boston College who headed the legal team for the state-appointed Alaska Oil Spill Commission that investigated the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill.

Link: http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0526/unhinged-carville-obama-gulf/

James Carville, one of tv's most popular Democratic talking heads and a former adviser to President Bill Clinton, turned visibly angry in a interview Wednesday about the BP oil spill, accusing President Barack Obama of losing control.

Link: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m66378&hd=&size=1&l=e

The frightening death and destruction that the American civil War brought made General William Sherman, a Union general, say, "War is hell". A U.S. Airforce Commander after the terror bombing of Dresden in the Second World War admonished, "War must be destructive and to a certain extent inhuman and ruthless." When a high-tech mighty war machine is unleashed on a nation in a decrepit state and with a weaker or non-existent military power, the hell becomes more intense and destruction unbelievably more destructive for the men and women of the frail nation.

Link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/7769126/US-money-supply-plunges-at-1930s-pace-as-Obama-eyes-fresh-stimulus.html

The M3 money supply in the United States is contracting at an accelerating rate that now matches the average decline seen from 1929 to 1933, despite near zero interest rates and the biggest fiscal blitz in history. The stock of money in the US fell from $14.2 trillion to $13.9 trillion in the three months to April, amounting to an annual rate of contraction of 9.6pc Photo: AFP The M3 figures - which include broad range of bank accounts and are tracked by British and European monetarists for warning signals about the direction of the US economy a year or so in advance - began shrinking last summer. The pace has since quickened.

Link: http://www.propagandamatrix.com/articles/may2010/052610_controlled_demolition.htm

Respected Middle East expert and former BBC presenter Alan Hart has broken his silence on 9/11, by revealing that the world's most prominent civil engineering company told him directly that the collapse of the twin towers was a controlled demolition. Speaking on the Kevin Barrett show yesterday, Hart said he thought the 9/11 attack probably started as a Muslim operation headed up by Osama Bin Laden but that the plot was subsequently hijacked and carried out by Mossad agents in collusion with elements of the CIA, adding that since its formation, Israel has penetrated every Arab government and terrorist organization.

Link: http://www.paltelegraph.com/palestine/gaza-strip/6167-israel-considers-gazas-fleet-of-freedom-as-qprovocative-stepq

The head of Coordination and Liaison in the Beit Hanoun crossing on the border between Gaza and the territory of the 1948, Moshe Louis, said today that the fleet of "freedom" to break the siege of Gaza is just a provocative step only.

Link: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/tenth-worker-at-ipad-factory-commits-suicide-1982897.html

The Foxconn factory in the southern Chinese boom town of Shenzhen is so vast that walking around its outer perimeter takes two hours. Its workers turn out components that are supplied to big Western electronics brands including Nokia, Hewlett-Packard and Dell. And it is here that most of the parts for Apple's iPhone, and the much-awaited iPad, which goes on sale in the UK this week, are manufactured.

Link: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7136969.ece

Engineers on the Deepwater Horizon rig pressed ahead with an operation to plug and cap the well despite a series of clear warnings that pressure inside was surging, according to a memorandum of events leading up to the April 20 blast. Details of the warnings, which included equipment readings that showed gas was finding its way into the well, were contained in evidence submitted to a US Congressional panel that was briefed on the accident by BP.

Link: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2621304420100526

More than 700 complaints about health problems in infants and children given Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N) medications, including 30 reports of deaths, have been lodged with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration but no direct link has yet been found, according to a congressional memo.

Link: http://www.counterpunch.org/cook05262010.html

Israel faces unprecedented pressure to abandon its official policy of “ambiguity” on its possession of nuclear weapons as the international community meets at the United Nations in New York this week to consider banning such arsenals from the Middle East.

Link: http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/do-no-harm-medical-professionals-urge-new-york-ban-participation-torture

On May 18, a group of 15 medical students, clinicians, psychologists, and instructors, met with lawmakers in Albany to advocate for the passing of a state-based anti-torture bill: New York State Assembly Bill A-6665-B (introduced by Assemblyman Richard Gottfried) and Senate Bill S-4495-A (introduced by Sen. Tom Duane). The first such law in the nation, the Gottfried-Duane Bill would permanently ban the involvement of state-licensed physicians and other health professionals in acts of torture and prisoner abuse.

Link: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/05/2010526165359187854.html

BP has launched its latest attempt to plug a leaking oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, using a so-called "top kill" procedure involving heavy mud and cement. The British energy giant said it began pumping heavy mud into the ruptured well on Wednesday, shortly after gaining approval from US officials to try the complex technique. Engineers will use robotic submarines to pump enough mud into the gusher to overcome the flow of the well and then attempt to seal it permanently. The manoeuvre has never before been tried 1,500 metres beneath the sea, and company officials say it can be a couple of days before they know whether it is successful.

Link: http://www.doomdaily.com/2010/rothschilds-engineer-fire-sale-of-uk-infrastructure-to-offshore-corporations/http://www.doomdaily.com/2010/rothschilds-engineer-fire-sale-of-uk-infrastructure-to-offshore-corporations/

Elitist banking dynasty pushes for toll roads that would privatize the UK’s road network, enrich coffers of same banking elite who have wrecked global economy. The Rothschild banking family is pushing for the privatization of the UK’s motorway network that would force Brits, who already pay road tax, to enrich the coffers of private corporations intimately tied in with the Rothschilds by means of road tolls and pay-by-mile schemes enforced with spy cameras.

Link: http://www.ogaden.com/editorial/792-the-decline-of-western-influence-on-ethiopia.html

The verdict is in. While the people of Ethiopia have not spoken, the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) regime currently in power in Ethiopia certainly has. The message from TPLF to those Western democracies that have been coddling and cajoling it is this: any leverage they thought they might have had on the TPLF regime no longer exists.