Obama adds 675 million Muslims to the ultimate US Terrorism List
Franklin Lamb, Beirut
Lebanon reacts: “Would it be simpler just to put the whole world on?”
However President Obama is judged on various subjects for his first year in office, he has already made history in the way that neither his predecessor nor any other leader has ever managed.
On January 3, 2010, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) issued new security directives to all United States and international air carriers with inbound flights to the U.S. effective January 4, 2010. The TSA press release sought to assure the traveling public: "The new directive includes long-term sustainable security measures developed in consultation with law enforcement officials and our domestic and international partners."
PermalinkEconomy 2010: From the Scandalous Known Past to the Uncertain Future
By Rodrigue Tremblay
“Homes rose markedly in value, especially in hot markets like Florida and New York City. Borrowers believed that home purchases were no-risk ventures certain to escalade, and they went out on a limb to buy. Lenders who had once required large down payments now permitted home purchasers to combine two and three loans to buy a home. People took out what were called “buffet” loans, which were interest-only loans that buyers were told they should refinance in three years or five years. Lenders told home buyers not to worry; homes were rising so fast in value that it would always be easy to refinance into another loan. Developpers built larger houses. Why not? Borrowers wanted larger homes. They needed the space to hold all the things they were buying.”
Israeli Use of Painful Shackling As A Form of Torture
by Stephen Lendman
Founded in 1990 to highlight a growing problem, the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PACTI - stoptorture.org) "believes that torture and ill treatment of any kind and under all circumstances is incompatible with the moral values of democracy and the rule of law. (It) advocates for all persons - Israelis, Palestinians, labor immigrants and other foreigners in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) - in order to protect them from torture and ill treatment by the Israeli interrogation and law enforcement authorities."
They include the Israeli Police, the General Security Service (GSS), the Israeli Prison Service (IPS), and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). In June 2009, PACTI published a report titled, "Shackling As A Form of Torture and Abuse." Its findings are discussed below.
PACTI reviews the "serious phenomenon" of shackling Palestinian detainees "in a systematic manner and throughout all stages of detention and interrogation." Its purpose is to dehumanize and inflict pain, suffering, punishment, intimidation, and discrimination as a way of lawlessly extracting information even though experts acknowledge that torture is ineffective, counterproductive, and, of course, illegal under all circumstances at all times with no exceptions allowed ever.
U.S. Venezuelan Relations: Imperialism and Revolution
By James Petras
Historically Latin America has been of great importance to the United States on numerous counts: the region has in the past, provided the US with a trade surplus; its outflows of licit and ill-begotten funds to US banks, numbers annually in the tens of billions; the US has been, up to recently, the major trading partner in the region; Latin America has provided a lucrative outlet for US buyouts of oil, telecoms, banking and related strategic mining companies during the golden age of imperial pillage (1975 – 1999). Throughout most of the 20th century the US could rely on the vote of its client regimes in the United Nations (UN), the Organization of American States (OAS) and in the international financial institution (IMF, WB, IDB) to back its efforts to sustain its global political and economic expansion.
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