Link: http://www.counterpunch.org/christison04152009.html

To a greater degree than perhaps ever before, Washington today is engulfed in denial about Israel and its stupefying behavior, about its murderous policies toward the Palestinians, about the efforts of Israel and its U.S. defenders to force us to ignore its atrocities. Blinders have always been part of the attire of U.S. policymakers and politicians with regard to Israel and Israeli actions, but in the wake of the three-week Israeli assault that laid waste to the tiny territory of Gaza -- an assault ended very conveniently just before Barack Obama was inaugurated, so that he has been able to act as though it never occurred --

Link: http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/61492

"Bailing out pensioners would help both workers and the economy. The money that workers and their families would receive from the government would be spent on creating jobs, or at least slowing down the rising unemployment rate." Governments in Canada, both federal and provincial, were quick to bailout banks and the auto industry, but have been reluctant to step up to protect auto industry workers, who will lose their pensions if companies like General Motors go bankrupt.

Link: http://www.nyclu.org/node/2342

The New York Civil Liberties Union today filed a federal lawsuit against the NYPD on behalf of a Queens man who was ejected from the old Yankee Stadium last August after trying to use the restroom during “God Bless America.” The lawsuit maintains that Bradford Campeau-Laurion, a 30-year-old lifelong baseball fan and resident of Astoria, was the victim of religious and political discrimination on Aug. 26, 2008 when police officers forcibly restrained and ejected him from Yankee Stadium after he tried to walk past an officer during the playing of “God Bless America.”

Link: http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/04/14/spain_to_indict_the_bush_six_over_torture

Spanish prosecutors will indict high-ranking members of the Bush administration over allegations of detainee abuse and torture. The six are: former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; former head of the Office of Legal Counsel Jay Bybee; former OLC lawyer John Yoo; former Defense Department lawyer William J. Haynes II; David Addington, a former adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney; and former Undersecretary of Defense Doug Feith.

Link: http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22417.htm

In Spain, "prosecutors have decided to press forward with a criminal investigation targeting former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and five top associates [John Yoo, Jay Bybee, David Addington, Doug Feith and William Haynes] over their role in the torture of five Spanish citizens held at Guantánamo." Spain not only has the right under the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture to prosecute foreign officials for torturing its citizens, but it -- like the U.S. -- has the affirmative obligation to do so. (Indeed, the Bush administration itself insisted just last year that the U.S. the right to criminally prosecute foreign officials for ordering acts of torture even in the absence of an accusation that any of the victims were American).

Link: http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/04/the-warren-report/

On Tuesday, a congressional panel headed by ex-Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren released a report on Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s handling of the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP). Warren was appointed to lead the five-member Congressional Oversight Panel (COP) in November by Senate majority leader Harry Reid. From the opening paragraph on, the Warren report makes clear that Congress is frustrated with Geithner’s so-called “Financial Rescue Plan” and doesn’t have the foggiest idea of what he is trying to do. Here are the first few lines of “Assessing Treasury’s Strategy: Six Months of TARP”:

Link: http://www.democracynow.org/2009/4/14/analysis_somalia_piracy_began_in_response

President Obama vowed an international crackdown to halt piracy off the coast of Somalia Monday soon after the freeing of US cargo ship captain Richard Phillips, who had been held hostage by Somali pirates since last Wednesday. While the pirates story has dominated the corporate media, there has been little to no discussion of the root causes driving piracy. We speak with consultant and analyst Mohamed Abshir Waldo. In January, he wrote a paper titled “The Two Piracies in Somalia: Why the World Ignores the Other?”

Link: http://bellaciao.org/en/spip.php?article18641

The recent visit of US President Obama to Turkey was far more significant than the President’s speech would suggest. For Washington Turkey today has become a geopolitical “pivot state” which is in the position to tilt the Eurasian power equation towards Washington or significantly away from it depending on how Turkey develops its ties with Moscow and its role regarding key energy pipelines.

Link: http://www.infowars.com/republicans-and-democrats-determined-to-turn-tea-parties-into-circus-sideshow/

It’s not enough the disinfo operative Glenn Beck and the neocons posing as Republicans led by Fox News are attempting to undermine grassroots efforts to undermine and render politically correct — for milquetoast Republicans — the grassroots tea party movement. Now the sinister organization ACORN, funded to the hilt by the globalist George Soros and the one-world foundations, has piled on.

Link: http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Report_Obama_may_keep_some_CIA_0414.html

President Barack Obama is "wavering" on whether to fully release details of the Bush administration's approved torture techniques, according to a report in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal based on statements by "people familiar with the discussions."

Link: http://www.democracynow.org/2009/4/13/noam_chomsky_on_the_global_economic

Part II of our conversation with MIT professor and author Noam Chomsky on the global economic crisis, healthcare, the media, US foreign policy, the expanding wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, resistance to American empire, and more. “As far as policy is concerned, unless [Obama] is under a lot of pressure from activist sectors, he’s not going to go beyond what he’s presented himself as in actual policy statements or cabinet choices and so on: a centrist Democrat [who’s] going to basically continue Bush’s polices

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/apr/13/investigative-journalism-protecting-sources

Every call made, email sent and website visited is now being logged under new regulations. New regulations that came into force last week - requiring telephone and internet companies to keep logs of what numbers are called, and which websites and email services and internet telephony contacts are made - have left some wondering if investigative journalism, with its need to protect sources (and its sources' need, often, for protection), has been dealt a killer blow. This is the death of freedom on the internet.

Reporters from INFOWARS.COM were harassed and threatened with arrest in downtown Kansas City, Missouri after filming the local branch of the private Federal Reserve building. Security guards working for the bank approached the reporters at a city park that houses the National WWI memorial and demanded that they provide their names and disclose why they were filming the building. "This is what it is to be a slave."

Link: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/04/12-2

If the past week was any indication, the U.S.-Israeli relationship, which could scarcely have been smoother during the eight-year presidency of George W. Bush, appears headed for choppy waters.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/apr/12/david-de-rothschild-plastiki-pacific

In a few weeks, the heir to one of the world's greatest fortunes, David de Rothschild, will set sail across the Pacific - in a boat, the Plastiki, made from plastic bottles and recycled waste. The aim of this extraordinary venture is simple: to focus attention on one of the world's strangest and most unpleasant environmental phenomena: the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a rubbish-covered region of ocean, several hundred miles in diameter.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/12/russia-tajikistan-recession-guest-workers

Until last month, Zafar Kasimov was working in a cement factory in St Petersburg. Now, however, he is back home from Russia and scraping a living in Tajikistan, central Asia's most hard-up nation. "My Russian boss told me there was no more work," Zafar, 26, said. "I used to earn 10,000 roubles a month (£230). Now that's finished. I've come back because of the crisis."

Link: http://proudatheists.wordpress.com/2009/04/12/why-do-christians-insist-that-hitler-was-an-atheist/

Why do we feel the need to excuse/distance our religious affiliation from madmen like Hitler? Is it out of shame or just plain denial? There are certain facts about Adolf Hitler that simply cannot be overlooked.

Link: http://theragblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/wall-street-and-pentagon-greed-and-its.html

At the heart of both scams is the deliberate corruption of information on such a vast scale that it overwhelms the mind of the educated layman to make sense out of it.

Link: http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=91241&sectionid=351020101

Shimon Peres warns about a possible military strike against Iran if the much talked-about US-Iran negotiations do not soften the Iranian president's approach. Israel 'will' launch its much-predicted military strike against Iran, should Washington's overture to Tehran prove to be of no avail. In an interview with Kol Hai Radio, Israeli President Shimon Peres launched into a tirade against Iran and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warning him about his stance.

Link: http://www.infowars.com/world-fluoridated-water-map/

The extent of fluoridated water usage around the world. Colors indicate the percentage of population in each country that receives fluoridated water, where the fluoridation is to levels recommended for preventing tooth decay (sic). This includes both artificially and naturally fluoridated water.

Link: http://wsws.org/articles/2009/apr2009/pers-a11.shtml

On Thursday, Leon Panetta, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), issued an internal memo declaring the Obama administration’s opposition to the investigation of intelligence personnel who carried out torture under the Bush administration.

Link: http://wsws.org/articles/2009/apr2009/warf-a11.shtml

The Obama White House Thursday submitted its formal request to the US Congress for $83.4 billion in “emergency” supplemental funding to pay for the continuation of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan launched under the Bush administration.

Link: http://rawstory.com/blog/2009/04/newspapers_go_green/

Writers with two mainstream American newspapers took on the issue of marijuana today. And here's the shocker: both articles are outstanding. In the San Francisco Chronicle, Bob Egelko explores the questions surrounding medical marijuana defendants charged under Bush-era policies that don't sync with the Obama administration's position on the matter.

Link: http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/mayfaire/latimes0213.htm

If Congress approves the latest funding request, as expected, the Iraq war will have cost about $694 billion, making it the second most expensive conflict in U.S. history behind World War II. The amount of U.S. money spent on the Iraq war will surpass the cost of Vietnam by the end of the year, making it the second most expensive military conflict in American history, behind World War II, according to Pentagon figures provided Friday.

Link: http://my.auburnjournal.com/detail/111427.html

The imminent indictment in Spanish courts of former officials of the Bush Administration is being applauded by civil and human rights organizations and legal scholars. The popular wave of support for indictment of Bush officials will inevitably lead to Bush himself.

Link: http://www.alternet.org/rights/136123/%27these_people_fear_prosecution%27%3A_why_bush%27s_cia_team_should_worry_about_its_dark_embrace_of_torture/

On the night of April 6, a long-secret document was published -- in its entirety for the first time -- that provided a clear, stark look at the CIA torture program carried out by the Bush administration.

Link: http://www.truthout.org/041209B

Fifteen years ago, efforts at genocide killed about 800,000 Rwandans. Now that tragedy is providing the government with a cover for repression. During a gruesome three months in 1994, about 800,000 Rwandans were murdered as part of a calculated effort by a group of Hutu extremists to eradicate the country's Tutsi population.

Link: http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1222.htm

“First, the frogs began disappearing, with as many as 122 species becoming extinct worldwide since 1980. Then honeybee colonies began to collapse. Scientists fear that bats might be next”, begins the Washington Post News Services’ shocking report that the mysterious disease killing bats in the United States has, for the first time, hit in their Southern regions where between the States of Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama are held some of the largest populations of hibernating bats on Earth.

Link: http://www.examiner.com/x-3665-Boston-Libertarian-Examiner~y2009m4d11-Few-terrorists-but--hundreds-of-Pakistani-civilians-killed-by-US-drones-and-nothing-but-silence

Is it possible for an American acting in "official" federal government capacity to commit the crime of murder against a foreigner? Can the US federal government kill any foreigner it wants at any time as long as they just label them a "terrorist" without so much as ever offering even one scintilla of evidence that such a label is applied justly or correctly?

Link: http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/61416

"Galloway's views aren't odious. In fact, they're in sync with millions of Canadians. In a recent Angus Reid poll, 48 per cent of Canadians wanted our troops brought home from Afghanistan before the scheduled 2011 withdrawal. A BBC poll showed Canadians have more negative than positive views of Israel - even before the Gaza bombing, which UN human rights investigator Richard Falk said last month ‘would seem to constitute a war crime of the greatest magnitude."

Link: http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22393.htm

The New York Times on Thursday published a front-page article that provides further insight into the economic and class interests that are being served by the Obama administration’s economic “recovery” policies.

Link: http://story.australianherald.com/index.php/ct/9/cid/c08dd24cec417021/id/488322/cs/1/

In the dying days of the Bush administration, and a week before Israel launched an aerial bombing campaign, followed by a land invasion of the Gaza Strip, the U.S. military shipped 989 containers of munitions to Israel. Each container was 20-feet long with a total estimated net weight of 14,000 tonnes. The shipment reportedly reached Israel last month at Ashod, 40 kiometres north of Gaza. The huge arsenal of munitions will replenish those expended in the Gaza War.

Link: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=53330

Saed BannouraMinistry of Social Affairs in the Gaza Strip reported that the Israeli offensive against the Gaza Strip left 1500 children orphans, in addition to killing 437 children and wounding 1500 others. Ahmad Al Kurd, Minister of Social Affairs, stated on Friday that the Israeli army targeted women and children, and it’s shelling targeted homes, hospitals, educational facilities and even mosques. He said that the large number of killed and wounded children proves that Israel did not hesitate in targeting civilian areas...

Link: http://socialistworker.org/2009/04/10/against-shared-sacrifice

If anyone was living "beyond their means" during the 2000s, it was Corporate America and the rich.

Link: http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_4578.shtml

To sober, clear-eyed observers of history and political deception, the ascension of Barack Obama held the promise for unprecedented new dangers: a revitalized New World Order, led by the Anglo-American empire’s neoliberal criminal faction and an iconic, deceptive new facilitator; and a continuation of Bush/Cheney criminality and war, under smarter and much more effective management.

Link: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46462

The world is losing its northern freezer as Arctic winter ice is in sharp decline, NASA scientists reported this week. Even with below average winter temperatures, Arctic ice is thinner and covers less area than it did a decade ago. Arctic sea ice is the cooling mechanism for the global climate system. As it declines and the region warms - already three to five degrees Celsius warmer - then inevitably there are local, regional and hemispheric climate impacts. "We’ve already lost one third of the summer ice cover since the 1980s. There are already impacts from this," says Ron Kwok of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

Link: http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22396.htm

On Tuesday, a congressional panel headed by ex-Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren released a report on Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's handling of the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP). Warren was appointed to lead the five-member Congressional Oversight Panel (COP) in November by Senate majority leader Harry Reid. From the opening paragraph on, the Warren report makes clear that Congress is frustrated with Geithner's so-called "Financial Rescue Plan" and doesn't have the foggiest idea of what he is trying to do. Here are the first few lines of "Assessing Treasury's Strategy: Six Months of TARP":

Link: http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22390.htm

America is a nation of laws--laws enforced by Spain. John Yoo, Jay Bybee, David Addington, Alberto Gonzales, William Haynes and Douglas Feith wrote, authorized and promulgated the Justice Department "torture memos" that the Bush Administration used for legal cover. After World War II, German lawyers for the Ministry of Justice went to prison for similar actions.

Link: http://www.democracynow.org/2009/4/10/a_new_way_forward_protests_scheduled

National demonstrations are scheduled in more than fifty cities across the country tomorrow to protest the government’s handling of the economic crisis. The demonstrations are organized by the recently launched group A New Way Forward. They are calling on the government to take three main actions on the country’s banks: nationalize, reorganize and decentralize.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/apr/09/endemol-us-reality-tv-unemployment

About 700,000 Americans were sacked in March. In the past month three men who recently lost their jobs went on gun rampages, killing a total of 26 people. What to do with such grim news? Turn it into a reality TV show, of course. Bright sparks at Endemol USA, the American branch of the brand that brought you Big Brother, have come up with a new idea: to wallow in the misery of America's threatened workers. Isn’t that the American way? People are suffering terribly so lets make a mockery and a side show of their suffering and profit from it.