By Sheila Samples

I didn't know Van Jones. I didn't know Van Jones was a friend of mine -- at least not until the stench billowing from the Fox Hate Channel became so foul I was forced to take a closer look at this terrifying creature. No -- not Jones, whom President Obama wisely had hired as Special Advisor for Green Jobs at the Council on Environmental Quality -- but the sobbing, lying, deliriously insane Glenn Beck.

According to Beck, who began his assault on Jones in a July 23 disjointed rant, wherein he claimed Jones is not only "a communist-anarchist radical," but a former black nationalist, avowed communist-anarchist radical. Or something. Anyway, according to Beck, Jones is really really dangerous -- a racist just like Obama, who has a "deep-seated hatred for white folks" and whose entire agenda is restructuring America into a land of reparations, social justice and jobs for minorities.

The appalling thing about the intellectually challenged Beck, like the Limbaugh-loon he so desperately struggles to impersonate, is that he is given a podium from which to spew his hate. Even more appalling is that he is allowed -- encouraged -- to do so with no reservation, no regulation, and no repercussion. Unless, of course, you consider the multi-million-dollar salary he receives for telling lies and for whipping paranoid masses of gun-toting racists into glassy eyed fury, then it's easy to see Beck is hitting the repercussion jackpot -- over and over again.

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David Ray Griffin

Is Osama bin Laden still alive? I have dealt with this question in a recent little book entitled Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive? The present essay summarizes the main points of this book.

Since the transference of power from the Bush administration to that of Barack Obama administration, the question of whether bin Laden is dead or alive has become more important.

Although George W. Bush famously said that he wanted Osama bin Laden “dead or alive,” he made clear that he was not serious about this. Besides stating that he was not concerned about bin Laden, he demonstrated this by diverting most of America’s military resources to Iraq. Bush could, of course, be unconcerned about bin Laden because he knew that, besides the fact that bin Laden had nothing to do with 9/11, he was probably dead anyway.

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Michel Chossudovsky

When war becomes peace,

When concepts and realities are turned upside down,

When fiction becomes truth and truth becomes fiction.

When a global military agenda is heralded as a humanitarian endeavor,

When the killing of civilians is upheld as "collateral damage",

When those who resist the US-NATO led invasion of their homeland are categorized as "insurgents" or "terrorists".

When preemptive nuclear war is upheld as self defense.

When advanced torture and "interrogation" techniques are routinely used to "protect peacekeeping operations",

When tactical nuclear weapons are heralded by the Pentagon as "harmless to the surrounding civilian population"

When three quarters of US personal federal income tax revenues are allocated to financing what is euphemistically referred to as "national defense"

When the Commander in Chief of the largest military force on planet earth is presented as a global peace-maker,

When the Lie becomes the Truth.

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"Deficit Neutral" Health Care Reform

Absurdity upon Absurdity

Michael Collins

The health care debate and general political climate compound absurdity upon absurdity.

First we're told that our health care is only worth the time and effort if the remedy has no negative impact on the budget. No deficits allowed. The deficit risk defines your chances for health and longevity.

At the same time, we see that Wall Street failures and the overseas war effort are not held to the same standard on deficits spending.

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Gilad Atzmon

Imprisoned by the most dangerous Zionist guards

People out there are divided whether it was a right decision to award Obama with a Nobel prize for peace. In fact, almost everyone around me is outraged, what ‘peace’ they ask, what about Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, Palestine? We are tired of promises they insist. The Nobel Prize committee on its part ‘highlighted Obama’s effort to support international bodies, build ties with the Muslim world, act in favour of nuclear disproliferation and fight Climate change’. Those who are unimpressed with Obama stress that the above is just ‘empty rhetoric’, nothing but ‘hot air’. “We want to see action, we demand facts on the ground”.

While Obama’s critics raise some valid points, they for some reason seem to fail to grasp the distinction between ‘Obama the Brand’ and ‘Obama the President’. The ‘Brand’ stands for hope and humanism. It tends to say the right things on the right occasions. It is ethically aware. It employs reason occasionally and it even manages to talk sense often enough. ‘Obama the Brand’ is, no doubt, a refreshing event in the Western political arena.

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James Bamford

The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the National Security Agency
by Matthew M. Aid
Bloomsbury, 423 pp., $30.00

On a remote edge of Utah's dry and arid high desert, where temperatures often zoom past 100 degrees, hard-hatted construction workers with top-secret clearances are preparing to build what may become America's equivalent of Jorge Luis Borges's "Library of Babel," a place where the collection of information is both infinite and at the same time monstrous, where the entire world's knowledge is stored, but not a single word is understood. At a million square feet, the mammoth $2 billion structure will be one-third larger than the US Capitol and will use the same amount of energy as every house in Salt Lake City combined.

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Emily Wilson

The author talks about how a plague of positive thinking is permeating our society, from medicine to business, and is even contributing to our financial crisis.

When Barbara Ehrenreich went to be treated for breast cancer, she was exhorted to think positively; and when she expressed feelings of fear and anger, she was chided for being negative.

Ehrenreich, the author of 16 books, including Nickel and Dimed and Bait and Switch, which examine the blue- and white-collar job markets, took on what she sees as an epidemic of positive thinking in her new book: Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America.

Positive thinking is different, she says, from being cheerful or good-natured -- it's believing that the world is shaped by our wants and desires and that by focusing on the good, the bad ceases to exist.

Ehrenreich believes this has permeated our culture and that the refusal to acknowledge that bad things could happen is in some way responsible for the current financial crisis.

In her new book, Ehrenreich examines how the positive-thinking movement was started by Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, and an amateur metaphysician named Phineas Parkhurst Quimby in response to Calvinism; how being positive became mandatory in corporate culture; and how she thinks prosperity preachers, such as Joel Osteen of Lakewood Church in Houston encouraged a culture of debt by telling their congregations that God wants them to have a big house and a nice car.

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Mary Shaw

Republican congressman Pete Sessions as Taliban insurgent

Just when ACORN needed a break from all the hysterical right-wing finger pointing, along came the perfect diversion: President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. And so a new feeding frenzy began.

Erick Erickson of Redstate.com wrote: "I did not realize the Nobel Peace Price had an affirmative action quota."

Glenn Beck chimed in with his usual kind of absurdity: "The Nobel Peace Prize should be turned down by Barack Obama and given to [...] the tea party goers and the 9-12 Project."

But the reaction that most caught my attention came from Republican Party chief Rush Limbaugh: "Folks, do you realize something has happened here that we all agree with the Taliban and Iran about and that is he doesn't deserve the award. Now that's hilarious, that I'm on the same side of something that the Taliban, and that we all are on the same side as the Taliban."

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eileen fleming

In his congratulatory message to President Obama upon being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Israeli President Shimon Peres stated:

"Very few leaders if at all were able to change the mood of the entire world in such a short while with such profound impact. You provided all of humanity with fresh hope, with intellectual determination, and a feeling that there is a Lord in heaven and believers on earth. Under your leadership, peace became a real and original agenda. And from Jerusalem, I am sure all the bells of engagement and understanding will ring again. You gave us a license to dream and act in a noble direction." [1]

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Khaled Amayreh from Ramallah

In monumental fashion, recent events in Geneva have roundly earned Fatah and Abbas's Palestinian Authority the contempt of ordinary Palestinians.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) is facing an extremely embarrassing situation following its decision earlier this week to endorse deferring the ratification of the Goldstone Report at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva.

The report, compiled by South African judge Richard Goldstone, accused Israel of committing, knowingly and deliberately, war crimes and crimes against humanity during its winter onslaught on the Gaza Strip in which more than 1,400 Palestinians were killed, most of whom were innocent civilians, including more than 300 children, with thousands others injured or badly incinerated by phosphoric bombs. Thousands of homes, mosques and public buildings were destroyed in the 22-day blitz.

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