Allen L Roland

World War III has already started. It is not a military war but instead an economic class war by the people against the corporate global elite whose puppet spoke person is President Obama. The economically oppressed masses of people in Egypt realized they could literally shut down the government and that empowering message has reached the United States where the masses of enraged people in Wisconsin are taking to the streets in a revolt against their own corporate welfare state. Obama take note ~ this is the beginning of world wide shift in consciousness which will culminate in 2012 and politically sweep away the Oligarchy in the process.

Wikipedia defines Oligarchy as a form of power structure in which power effectively rests with a small number of people. These people could be distinguished by royalty, wealth, family ties, corporate, or military control. Aristotle pioneered the use of the term as a synonym for rule by the rich, for which the exact term is plutocracy. As such, my use of the term corpocracy should be taken in the same context as the Oligarchy and plutocracy ~ rule by the privileged few or global elite.

Read more »

Mahboob A. Khawaja, Ph.D.

“Tyranny begins where reason ends.”

Egypt is people, nation, culture, history and civilization, the progressive and conscious combination unparallel in human history. Not too many knew in the modern world that Egypt can generate a momentous history of freedom from man-made evil and oppression. First, the Western media described the Freedom Movement as “unrest” as usual in the Western corporate owned news media’s portrayal “unrest” is always colored, not white. Then it upgraded its status to “Egyptian Uprising.” After persistent sit-ins at the Tahrir Square, it was defined as “People Revolution.” If Islam was the system of governance, it would have been a consequential outcome of the people’s movement for change and reformation of the old and obsolete governance.

Read more »

By Gaither Stewart

Noemi Letizia, one of Berlusconi’s scandals with a teenager, and
protagonist of “Noemi Gate”.

Not too improbably, what may have kept Berlusconi afloat is that he’s “all too human” in the eyes of many Italians. His penchant for nubile girls is certainly proof of that.

(Rome). Rubygate it’s called. The final act of the Berlusconi saga. Over fifteen years of comedy for the outside world. A comedy played out against a background of non-government and misery for many Italians. For years now, each new scandal, each new act of corruption, is identified with the suffix “gate”. Deriving from the original Watergate, even though the latter was not actually a “gate” as used today to pinpoint scandalous behavior and the resultant cover-up. During these last stages of the Berlusconi era there has been Noemi Gate, named for another of Sultan Silvio’s teenage favorites. Then, the Bunga Bunga Gate, in reference to the sex games and “orgies” in the Sultan’s luxurious private residences in Milan and Rome. In Italy, in Commedia dell’Arte fashion, the gate suffix means scandal, speculation and gossip.

Read more »

By Robert Singer

Click here to read why “this article is not currently available” at OpEdNews.

Want fries with that budget crisis?

Instead of cutting jobs and services to solve California’s budget crisis, why not eliminate the state water subsidies that allow McDonalds and Colonel Sanders to market burgers and chicken for a dollar? Reducing the consumption of water by the livestock industry would benefit almost every economic facet of the California economy.

A recent analysis done by the Pacific Institute, “More with Less: Agricultural Water Conservation and Efficiency in California - A Special Focus on the Delta,” was presented at a briefing to legislators in Sacramento along with recommendations on how farmers can grow more food and use less water. What the report doesn't mention is the dramatic water saving that could be realized by limiting livestock production in California.

Our federal and state governments subsidize the meat industry's water consumption at every stage of the process. Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) consume particularly egregious quantities of water.

Cornell economists, David Fields and his associate Robin Hur, have studied the fiscal consequences of water subsidies to the meat industry:

“Reports by the General Accounting Office, the Rand Corporation, and the Water Resources Council have made it clear that irrigation water subsidies to livestock producers are economically counter productive. Every dollar that state governments dole out to livestock producers, in the form of irrigation subsidies, actually costs tax payers over seven dollars in lost wages, higher living costs, and reduced business income.

The 17 Western states receive limited precipitation, yet their water supplies could support an economy and population twice the size of their present ones. But most of the water goes to produce livestock, either directly or indirectly. Thus, current water use practices now threaten to undermine the economies of every state in the region.”

You might think that all this water consumption would at least create jobs. But no other industry comes close to the meat industry’s paucity of jobs created per gallon of water consumed. Every job created by livestock production in California uses 30 million gallons of water a year, far more than any other industry.

Read more »

Alan Hart

Never before has an American President’s fear of offending the Zionist lobby and its stooges in Congress been so exposed as it was by Obama’s decision to veto the Security Council resolution condemning continued, illegal Israeli settlement activities on the occupied West Bank and demanding that Israel “immediately and completely cease” all such activities. In a different America - an informed America - some might think, I do, that Obama should be impeached. The charge? TREASON.

Read more »

Franklin P. Lamb

The Tahrir Square “Hurriya!” tremors spreading across the Middle East may or may not be impacting today’s events in the historically liberal American state of Wisconsin and other areas of America, yet most of us would agree that the Tunisian-Egyptian revolutions are being felt far and wide and appear to be dramatically gaining steam. Lebanon’s Palestinian refugees camps are no exceptions.

Perhaps sooner rather than later, a half dozen or so Arab despots may reluctantly retire or leave for medical treatment in Saudi Arabia. Indeed some Saudis may themselves move to America to occupy their vast real estate holdings stateside, some located in largely Israeli duo-national neighborhoods, whose occupancy rates are also dramatically rising, as many in Israel sense that the CIA predicted collapse of their settler colony may be accelerating.

Read more »

by Stephen Lendman

It was reminiscent of November 22, 2000 Florida, outside the Miami-Dade County Canvassing Board offices when dozens of imported Bush-Cheney ruffians rampaged through Miami's County Hall, disrupting the recount of about 10,000 undervotes, ballots with no presidential choice registered.

They assaulted Democrat party representatives, near rioted, and succeeded in halting the process. As a result, hundreds of Gore-Lieberman votes weren't counted in largely Democrat Dade County.

Fraud, intimidation and ties to big money infest US politics. Washington's criminal class is bipartisan, but Republicans are especially brazen. Wisconsin's Governor Scott Walker matches the worst of his Capitol Hill counterparts. Likely he's been chosen for his role and was directed by party bosses to wage open warfare on labor rights, the same scheme playing out across America, including by Democrats, many as extremist as Republicans at a time working people are being hammered relentlessly.

Read more »

Mary Shaw

Whenever I write or speak about my opposition to the death penalty, I invariably hear from death penalty proponents who argue that killing the killer serves the best interests of the victim's family, giving them closure.

But not all families are thirsty for revenge. In fact, there are at least two organizations in the U.S. - Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation (MVFR) and Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights (MVFHR) - which actively work for abolition of the death penalty.

And there is Margaret Hawthorn, the mother of a murder victim who testified in New Hampshire on February 1 in opposition to a bill that would expand that state's death penalty.

Read more »