14 reasons Main Street loses big while Wall Street sabotages democracy. Yes, we're dummies. You. Me. All 300 million of us. Clueless. We should be ashamed. We're obsessed about the slogans and rituals of "democracy," distracted by the campaign, polls, debates, rhetoric, half-truths and outright lies. McCain? Obama? Sorry to pop your bubble folks, but it no longer matters who's president. Why? The real "game changer" already happened. Democracy has been replaced by Wall Street's new "disaster capitalism."

Interview with Naomi Wolf author of "The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot". The Guardian: Fascist America, in 10 easy steps: From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all. AntiWar: What Happens in a Police State... Daily Press: Government lies are the new 'normal'. Barnabas Nagy: THE NEW WORLD ORDER IS HERE! (VIDEO)

A citizen of Virginia named Moya Atkinson wrote to Senator John Warner to express concern over the recent violation of the Posse Comitatus Act created by the assigning of U.S. soldiers to duty within the United States, reported by the Army Times as intended for "crowd control" among other duties. This, like other changes imposed by President Bush, of course violates the Posse Comitatus Act. It also served to strengthen the threats of martial law that Congressman Brad Sherman reported the White House making to Congress members in order to win their support for the $780 billion give-away to Wall Street. Warner [proposed] that, rather than changing the president's behavior to comply with the law, we should -- as with warrantless spying, habeas corpus, etc. -- change the law to comply with the president's behavior. Raw Story: ACLU demands info on domestic military deployments: The American Civil Liberties Union is demanding more details on the domestic deployments, which appear to violate the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits use of the military to direct internal affairs of the US. The ACLU warns that without fully knowing the reasoning and justifications behind the Army's plan, the domestic deployments could be used to expand a militarized surveillance apparatus that already includes the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program and DHS's plans to turn military spy satellites inside US borders.

See how NBC puts togther one or two sentences from each propaganda theme in a very professional way in just a three-minutes report. It is really amazing. Note the intro, the middle, the putting words in others' mouth, the coming back to the real propaganda theme and the justification for the next war of aggression. A perfect propaganda piece. Nazis would be turning in grave to see this level of perfection on the part of modern day warlords promoting and glamourising war after wars. Editor & Publisher: Top 30 Most Popular News Outlets on the Web for Sept. WUFYS: Obama's Use Of Hidden Hypnosis In Speeches. Barnabas Nagy: THE NEW WORLD ORDER IS HERE! (Video). RedPill: The CFR controls American media (Video).

There was major political theater involving President Bush's former chief of staff Karl Rove. A protestor tried to arrest Rove for treason Tuesday morning while he was speaking at the Mortgage Bankers Association Convention, continuing in San Francisco.

Obama won the Democratic presidential nomination by presenting himself as the more consistent antiwar candidate, and the Democratic ticket in public pledges to end the war in Iraq and adopt a less militaristic stance. But behind closed doors, before select audiences of the financial and political elite, Biden has given a glimpse of the real perspective of the Democratic wing of American imperialism. AntiWar: The War Party Embraces Obama.

Deregulation brought us hugely "leveraged" investments, and they brought us panicked markets and pain. The bottom line: There was a feeding frenzy that drove housing prices far beyond what the fundamental laws of supply and demand would dictate. People certainly got in over their heads, but the ultimate responsibility for that lies with the investment bankers who cooked up exotic new ways to make risky investments look more secure than they actually were. GWB: Banks ADMIT They'll Keep on Hoarding Cash. Media Monitors: No Wind of Change in Wall Street or Washington after the bailout. Global Research: Financial Meltdown: The Greatest Transfer of Wealth in History. Online Journal: Unstoppable changes in the post crash world. + A primer on inflation. CounterPunch: The ABCs of Paulson's Bailout.

The American right wing, consulted by slick Madison avenue whiz kids, will never call the American gulag of FEMA camps by the names 'work houses' or 'prisons'. By any name, they are presumably open and ready for those who fall through the gaping cracks. A perpetually depressed economy is a good source of slave labor. Who benefits? KBR? Halliburton? Lew Rockwell: The Sick Man of North America.

Later that evening, in class, I took a good, long look at that man. I wanted to see what evil looks like. Be they Fascist Republicans or Marxist Democrats, one common thread runs through their thinking: there is no right or wrong. There's only a desire to impose their will on the rest of us. By all means, stock up on beans, rice, ammunition, fuel, and gold. If the Empire is crumbling – and I believe it is – you'll need all of those things. More important, though, is that we be mentally prepared for what is coming. When your friend, neighbor, colleague, or any passing aquaintance declares himself for evil, take him at his word.

A report issued yesterday by the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) revealed the United States has the third worst level of income inequality and poverty among the group's 30 member states. Only Mexico and Turkey ranked higher in those categories. OECD states in western Europe, along with Japan, South Korea, Canada and Australia, all recorded better figures than the US, as did central and eastern European states, including Poland and Hungary. USA Today: Homeless numbers 'alarming'. LiveScience: Middle-Age Suicide Rate Rising: The U.S. suicide rate is up for the first time in a decade, and it's rising most among middle-aged white men and women, a new study finds. The researchers don't know why, but say we need to find out more so new prevention plans can be put in place. Suicide claimed 32,637 lives in 2005, a rate of 11 per 100,000 people. The study, released this week, featured an analysis of data from 1999 to 2005.

Small note: I had no idea Buchanan liked Palin. The thought struck me as so obscenely stupid that I almost decided not to post the first part of the interview with him. But then I still decided to post it. For all his wrongs, Buchanan is at least a real old style conservative, not the Neocon breed now running the GOP. And then, I don't like censorship anyway - so I left both parts.

India launched its first unmanned mission to the moon on Wednesday, becoming the third Asian country to do so after Japan and China. Chandrayaan-1 was carried into space by the Indian-built PSLV-C11 rocket, and will take 15 days to reach the moon. Chandrayaan means "Moon Craft" in ancient Sanskrit. The lunar mission signifies India's breakthrough into the club of leading space powers, and the liftoff was broadcast live on television across the country. Boston.com: India launches its first moon mission in Asian space race.

CIA agent Anthony Bruschuto hung up the phone. General Bark noticed his sly smile and asked, "Who was that?" "Ted." "What did he want?" "He said, 'Make sure that bitch is on the plane'." General Barker laughed, "Did you tell him we escorted Barbara to Flight 11 with a pair of agents almost an hour ago?" "That's exactly what I said." "Alright, let's get down to serious business then." "One and Two are wired, ready to go. This building is on standby. The planes go airborne in about an hour."

Keith Olbermann examines why McCain has suddenly stopped talking about the dangers of vote fraud. Perhaps the reason is that McCain employs a GOP operative who has been accused of committing massive vote fraud.

Joe Biden the seemingly clairvoyant senator from Delaware, and vice presidential nominee was out making predictions, again. The last time Joe was using his crystal ball was on September 10, 2001, one day prior to the 9/11 attacks.

The second TrooperGate investigation gets under way soon. Today is not a good day to be a Palin...

Q: Brandon Garcia wants to know, “What does the Vice President do?” PALIN: That’s something that Piper would ask me! … [T]hey’re in charge of the U.S. Senate so if they want to they can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes that will make life better for Brandon and his family and his classroom. PressTV: Palin exuberant about VP duties. Russia Today: Palin beware – Russians can see you too!

A US-led coalition airstrike in the eastern Afghan province of Khost has killed at least nine Afghan soldiers and wounded four others. Khost province's governor, Arsallah Jamal, said that the coalition forces early Wednesday mistakenly hit a fixed military checkpoint in province's Sayed Kheil area instead of suspected Taliban hideouts. The coalition forces killed 91 civilians in the western Herat province in August which resulted in widespread protest across the war-battered country. AP: 9 Afghan soldiers killed in airstrike. When Afghans betray their fellow citizens by killing Afghans for the US army, they are politely referred to as "soldiers". And whomever they kill, is being dishonestly referred to as a Taliban, "insurgent" or a "terrorist". ― Unfortunately for the 9 "soldiers", all they got in return from their American "friends" for this disgraceful betrayal of their fellow citizens was death. -It was an instant one, alright, but the ignominy will last a little longer.

"The consequences of not having a SOFA (Status of Forces Agreement) and of not having a renewed UN authorization are pretty dramatic in terms of consequences for our actions," Robert Gates told reporters at a press conference at the Pentagon after Iraq's cabinet decided on Tuesday to seek changes to the draft pact. "What really needs to happen is for us to get this SOFA done. It's good for us. It's good for them. It really protects Iraqi sovereignty," Gates claimed. What really protects Iraqi sovereignty, is for the US to pull out. NOW. This is what is good for "them". Times Online: Iraqi MPs demand changes to US troop withdrawal agreement. FCNL: "President" Bush Asserts Right to Control Iraqi Oil. The People's Voice: Iraqis protest against proposed security agreement with US. Global Research: War is Illegal.

EU lawmakers have joined US civil liberty campaigners in criticising a new scanner technology that allows airport security staff to see through passengers' clothes, calling it a virtual strip search that should only be used as a last resort. "Many travelers will consider these scanners an enormous intrusion" on their personal privacy, Philip Bradbourn, a British Conservative member of the EU assembly, said on Tuesday.

When I was in Crawford, Tx at Camp Casey in the Summer of '05, I would receive hundreds per day. Of course, I am dishonoring my son's memory and I am un-patriotic and even a "whacko" "nut job" "bat shit crazy" and their favorite: "mama moonbat." I dared to question their President and the lies that led to my son's death. I refused to be an appreciative Gold Star Mother wearing a wilted carnation at the Memorial Day observances and accepting my grief in patriotic silence.

Germany’s Minister of State at the Federal Foreign Office has said that Ukraine and Georgia have too many problems to be considered ready for NATO membership.

A Kabul appeals court has quashed a death sentence imposed on the Afghan student Sayed Pervez Kambaksh for downloading information from the internet on women's rights. The judges ruled however, that the 24-year-old trainee journalist should serve 20 years in jail – a decision Mr Kambaksh's lawyers insisted was unconstitutional and should be overturned by the country's supreme court.

Brajveer Singh does not own a wide-brimmed hat, leather boots or a pair of jeans. And he has never ridden a mechanical bull. But he can lay claim to being a real-life urban cowboy. Singh is among the dozens of men who spend their days roping cattle on the streets of this city as part of a long and frustrating battle to rid India's capital of stray cows. There is perhaps no more stereotypical image of India than that of a stray cow sauntering down the middle of a busy city street, seemingly oblivious to the traffic swerving around it.

They're almost an endangered species, the dwindling number of people who say the country is heading in the right direction. But they're out there. The way they see it, the U.S. has come through tough times before and will do it again. Fewer than one in seven, or 15 percent, say the country is on the right path, according to the latest Associated Press-Yahoo News poll of adults. In these economically tough times, they tend to be older, less educated, conservative and supporters of Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

Every day, we walk past people in the streets without having the slightest clue that they are homeless because they do not fit the stereotypical image. Even of those that do fit the common-held image, you simply cannot tell by looking at them what past contribution to society they may have made or what contribution they may be capable of producing in the future. You never know what value or talent could be concealed behind the grubby faced facade.

A major earthquake somewhere in California is virtually a certainty in the next 30 years, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Some of the most hazardous regions of the state are also the most populated, including Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area. A major quake in one of these areas is guaranteed to be a disaster that will take many lives.

In 1893, Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen and his ship Fram were victims of a strange phenomenon as he sailed past the Nordenskiöld Archipelago, north of Siberia. Nansen wrote afterwards: "Fram appeared to be held back, as if by some mysterious force, and she did not always answer the helm … We made loops in our course, turned sometimes right around, tried all sorts of antics to get clear of it, but to very little purpose." Nansen called the effect "dead water", reporting that it slowed Fram to a quarter of her normal speed. You Tube: Mysterious 'dead water' effect caught on film (Video).

Handle With Caution -DEBKAfile is not a particularly reliable source: DEBKAfile reports that Arab Internet sites, most of them Jordanian, claim that 10 days ago on Oct. 12, Meir Dagan, the head of Israel’s external intelligence service, the Mossad, was targeted by assassins while visiting Amman. Some describe a large bomb explosion alongside his convoy and add that Israeli and Jordanian guards with the convoy were injured. Others say Dagan himself was hurt or even killed in the attack. They claim Israel and Jordan are keeping the incident a secret.

Government plans to build a giant database holding information about every phone call, email and internet visit were last night dealt a major blow after the man in charge of prosecuting terrorism in England and Wales warned of the dangers posed by a "Big Brother" security state. Sir Ken Macdonald, the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), told ministers not to "break the back of freedom" by creating irreversible powers that could be misused to spy on individual citizens and so threaten Britain's hard-won democracy. CS Monitor: A financial new world order? You Tube: The New World Order is Here!

When you go to a foreign country, it is common to bring a translation dictionary to help curb the confusion that comes with trying to understand a foreign language. Likewise, in American politics, we also need a translation guide to understand mainstream discussion given the universal double standards, egotistical national chauvinism, and internalized elite values. Propaganda in the US rests mostly in what is not said, but rather assumed. Such a system of indoctrination is extremely powerful as it serves the purpose of making certain thoughts not so much undesirable, but unthinkable, strikingly reminiscent of Orwell's depiction of totalitarian control and manipulation of the English language in his novel, 1984.

If it hasn’t gone the way of Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany, it’s sure teetering on the brink. America is a nation in deepening crisis, a nation whose leaders repeatedly plunge their citizens into, and make them pay for, serial wars abroad, while stealing their liberties at home. USA has become a country that trashes its citizens(New Orleans), tortures its enemies(Abu Ghraib), threatens other nations with nuclear fire(Iran), flouts international treaties(UN Charter re Iraq), and spies on(FISA), and intimidates, its critics(No Fly). Americans that can clearly see the totalitarian machinations of Vladimir Putin in Russia and Hu Jintao in China are blind to the fascism threatening to envelop them as well. POAC: 14 Points of fascism: The warning signs. WUFYS: Fascism Has Replaced American Democracy: Blame The Roundtable.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama will leave the campaign trail to go to Hawaii this week to visit the ailing grandmother who helped raise him, an aide said on Monday. "Recently his grandmother has become ill and in the last few weeks her health has deteriorated to the point where her situation is very serious," said Obama aide Robert Gibbs.

Fearing as "inevitable" a global recession following the US financial meltdown, Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso said the magnitude of the turmoil was increasing in "seriousness" and wanted the international
community to make "concerted efforts" to tackle the crisis. "The financial turmoil arising from the Sub-prime loan issue in US August 2007 is increasing in seriousness. I recognise that financial crisis triggered by the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers could lead to a global recession. "Although the impact of this financial crisis on Japanese financial institutes has been limited so far, it seems inevitable that the slow-down of international economy will have an influence on the Japanese economy as well," Aso told PTI in an e-mail interview. You Tube: The federal reserve caused the 700 billion dollar bailout and economic crash: Currently, the Federal Reserve is printing billions of dollars to bail out Wall Street while destroying the middle class and the dollar with inflation. If our country wants a sound and transparent monetary system, we need to abolish the Federal Reserve.

George Packer from the New Yorker magazine reports on an email he got from Ken Adelman today indicating that the neo-con is planning on voting for Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.As Packer points out, this is no small thing.

Three Putnam County voters say electronic voting machines changed their votes from Democrats to Republicans when they cast early ballots last week. This is the second West Virginia county where voters have reported this problem. Last week, three voters in Jackson County told The Charleston Gazette their electronic vote for “Barack Obama” kept flipping to “John McCain”. In both counties, Republicans are responsible for overseeing elections. Pakistan Daily: U.S.A Elections 2008 It's Already Stolen.

Tens of thousands of Iraqis marched from the working class districts of Sadr City to the centre of Baghdad on Saturday to denounce moves by the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to finalise a security agreement with the Bush administration. The pact is intended to provide a fig-leaf of legality for the ongoing occupation of Iraq by the US military after a United Nations mandate expires on December 31. You Tube: Raw Video: Massive Baghdad Protest.

Bush is anti-American and so, too, those who have provided him material support. They share his guilt and should, likewise, be tried for capital crimes as specified in US federal laws and numerous international laws to which the US is bound by treaty. It is those who have ignored and deliberately broken these laws with 'malice aforethought' who are truly 'anti-American'. NYT: Bush Decides to Keep Guantánamo Open.

Nato chief attacks "lack of will" on Afghanistan. There are about 50,000 troops in the Nato-led international force. The US maintains a separate force in the southeast, which it is intending to expand by up to 15,000, making a total of more than 40,000. Britain has about 8,000 troops in southern Afghanistan. "I want more forces from all nations," a senior Nato commander said yesterday. He described Nato's operations in Afghanistan as "disjointed in time and space". An example was counter-narcotics. That, he said, was the responsibility of the Afghan government. Yet it could not take on that task on its own. "The money from the narcotics trade is feeding the insurgency," he said. "It buys weapons and pays fighters that kill soldiers and Afghan citizens alike. It is a cancer - contributing to corruption, impeding legitimate commerce and undermining governance." What this fool is blithely ignoring, is that apart from the pipelines from the Caspian sea that are to pass through Afghanistan, the other strategic reason the CIA & the US government are in this stricken country is because of CIA's heavy involvement in the heroin trade in this area ever since 1979. (In fact, it created it. You can find out more about this HERE and HERE.) Now the Pentagon want these US client states and partners-in-crime to do even more of its dirty work. They're having qualms about it? -Anyway, all their blunders make it difficult to sell this war in Europe. It also is because of this: Deutsche Welle: An Unwinnable War in Afghanistan: Even if NATO isn't thinking of a withdrawal, the attackers are managing to sow the seeds of doubt in the soldiers' home countries. When 10 French soldiers were killed in Afghanistan in August, the country was in a state of shock for weeks. The growing threat is having the effect that soldiers are sticking close to their base camps and avoiding any contact to the civilian population, which then only shows increasing animosity towards the soldiers. Clearly, such a "spiral of alienation" is no help to the reconstruction of Afghanistan. [This is not about the "reconstruction of Afghanistan". The US is there because of the pipelines and its heroin business and NATO is there because of the member states' oath of FEALTY to their American overlords. But Nato chief General Craddock is right about one thing though: The narcotics trade is a cancer. -He just can't bring himself to admit that the US & NATO are the main causes of it. ] PressTV: US-led mission 'wavering' in Afghanistan. Index Research: Index on Afghanistan and Pakistan - Murder & Security, Aug/Sept. ’08.

“We could not find a single person in the entire locality who could agree with the [police] story of the ‘encounter’,” reports a citizens’ fact-finding team that visited Jamia Nagar several days after the shooting. “There is a complete unanimity in the opinion of the people about the one-sided nature of the firing and the time for which it continued. ... No one told us about an exchange of fire. It was ‘only one kind of sound’.”

A US breakfast television anchorwoman who had a bit part in the Oliver Stone biopic W about President Bush has been found beaten nearly to death in her bed. Anne Pressly, 26, was discovered by her mother at 4.30am after she failed to respond to a wake-up call for her shift yesterday on Daybreak, the early breakfast show on KATV , a TV station in Arkansas.

I tried hard to be proud of my service, but all I could feel was shame. Racism could no longer mask the reality of the occupation. These are human beings. I've since been plagued by guilt. I feel guilt any time I see an elderly man, like the one who couldn't walk who we rolled onto a stretcher and told the Iraqi police to take him away. I feel guilt any time I see a mother with her children, like the one who cried hysterically and screamed that we were worse than Saddam as we forced her from her home. I feel guilt any time I see a young girl, like the one I grabbed by the arm and dragged into the street.

Dressed in a red, blue and white stars and stripes scarf, Ratchet the dog wagged his tail excitedly, leapt out of his crate and onto US soil for the first time after leaving his Iraqi home for a new life in America.

After abruptly canceling on him in September, last week Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) went back to David Letterman’s show, where he apologized and admitted he “screwed up.” On his blog on Friday, Larry King said that he is waiting for McCain to offer him the same courtesy, after abruptly canceling a Sept. 2 appearance.

One of Russia’s harshest critics, Republican presidential candidate John McCain, has been left with egg on his face after his campaign team sent a cap-in-hand letter to the Russian mission in the UN begging for cash. But Russia says it won't donate, insisting it doesn't interfere in politics abroad.

More than a year before 9/11, media mogul Rupert Murdoch produced a television program that depicted a passenger aircraft being hijacked by remote control and flown into the World Trade Center. A chief of the international Zionist network, Murdoch has close and long-standing relations with the individuals who gained control of the twin towers shortly before they were destroyed. One question has to be asked: Did Rupert Murdoch have prior knowledge of 9/11?

Russia says it agrees on the installation of a US anti-missile radar system in the Czech Republic if Washington complies with Moscow's conditions.

A prominent Palestinian human rights group says it has found evidence that 68 children were killed in the Gaza Strip in the 12 months to June this year as a result of "disproportionate and excessive lethal force" by the Israeli military. The deaths are documented, with witness testimony, in a report published today by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. Many of the deaths resulted from an Israeli military incursion into Jabaliya, in eastern Gaza, in late February and early March, in which more than 100 Palestinians, at least half of them civilians, died in what Israel said was an operation to stop rockets being fired into southern Israeli towns. Palestinian Centre for Human Rights HERE.

Any decision to attack Iran would be an 'irreversible error' unforgivable until the fall of the enemy, says a senior Iranian commander. "Mistake can be rectified but the launch of an invasion of Iran would be an irreversible error that we will respond to until their collapse," said top Iranian Army commander, Major General Ataollah Salehi. PressTV: 'War on Iran to spell Israel's collapse'.

As we prepare to elect the next leaders of our country to their proper positions in congress and the White House, it would seem an opportune time to examine what elements make a man, or woman, a great leader. And indeed, there has been much discussion on the subject. Wisdom and judgment have been cited as crucial factors any number of occasions. LA Times: Rep. Michele Bachmann works to undo self-inflicted political damage. CityPages: Colin Powell calls out Michele Bachmann.

When Sarah Palin entered the election race, Tina Fey's success was guaranteed. Her uncanny impersonations on Saturday Night Live have turned her into a household name. Now, she has been signed up for $5m to write a book and will star in Ricky Gervais' directorial debut next year.

After falling for more than a decade, the U.S. suicide rate has climbed steadily since 1999, driven by an alarming increase among middle-age adults, researchers said Monday. A new six-year analysis in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that the U.S. suicide rate rose to 11 per 100,000 people in 2005, from 10.5 per 100,000 in 1999, an increase of just under 5%.

Britain was today declared a world leader in wind power generation, as the Government announced a major programme to cut the cost of off-shore wind farms.

Pakistan said China will help build two more nuclear power plants in the energy-starved Muslim nation, tightening its bonds with Beijing as rising militant violence strains its anti-terror alliance with the United States.

Though scientists have yet to find alien life on distant exoplanets, much about those planets certainly seems alien — especially the weather. Now researchers have developed a model that can explain some of the bizarre weather patterns seen on other worlds.

More than 1,000 dinosaur footprints along with tail-drag marks have been discovered along the Arizona-Utah border. The incredibly rare concentration of beastly tracks likely belonged to at least four different species of dinosaurs, ranging from youngsters to adults.

A zoo in America is pioneering an unusual form of exercise for its animals and their trainers. Going for a swim. Together. Tigers at the Institute of Greatly Endangered and Rare Species (Tigers), in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, are taught to swim with their trainers from an early age in a specially designed pool.

The plans to implement martial law in America have been taking shape for decades, hidden behind "Continuity of Government" contingency planning. Now, with public outcry over the banker bailout bill at fever pitch, all of the pieces are in place for the U.S. Army to start policing American citizens. Global Research: Secret Bush Administration Plan to Suspend US Constitution: "Continuity of Government" (COG) Provisions activated in 2001. WUFYS: Links between Financial Bubble & Anti-Terror Laws?

The Washington Post endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama yesterday. Such an endorsement—by the second-most influential liberal paper after the New York Times, headquartered in the nation’s capital, and which obtained widespread support in the 1970s for uncovering the Nixon administration’s role in the Watergate affair—carries immense weight in the US political establishment. WSWS: Colin Powell endorses Obama. You Tube: MALCOLM X: THE HOUSE NEGRO AND THE FIELD NEGRO.

Gen. Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama for president yesterday and slammed McCain’s smear campaign of Obama as some kind of secret Muslim terrorist sympathizer (see video). Powell talked about a Muslim-American soldier killed in the Iraq war. Kareem Khan was only 20 when he was killed by a bomb in Baquba-Iraq last year with only a month left in his tour.

Colin Powell, George Bush's former secretary of state, yesterday dealt his own party a major blow when he threw his weight behind Barack Obama's bid to become the next president of the United States. The retired four-star general spurned his good friend, the Republican John McCain, to heap praise on the "transformational figure" of Obama, the Democratic party candidate, saying America needed a "generational change". The Independent: Obama announces record fundraising haul. PressTV: Brzezinski: Powell decision tears GOP ticket. Lew Rockwell: Your Presidential Choice: Two Names for More of the Same.

The real America: Do you think that America is what you see in the big cities, with educated, centrist elite who are smart, erudite and surf the web for news?

I created this map over at Real Clear Politics, and I think what it shows are the states that will go for McCain, the states that will go for Obama and the states that are true toss-ups.

Hard and troubled. Racked by fear and uncertainty. For many trauma. Experts predict, speculate and conjecture, but no one knows for sure what's ahead. Key questions are whether we're in a protracted and severe recession. Or at the onset of another Great Depression. So much is unresolved. The problems have built for years and are immense. Maybe nothing at this stage will work and the best hope is for light at the end of a very long, dark tunnel.

Reuters reports today that "The incoming Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., was awarded an $18.7 million cash bonus for half a year of work as the chief executive of the Goldman Sachs Group." The massive bonus was, not surprisingly, approved by Goldman Sachs at the very same time Paulson was both CEO and Treasury Secretary designate. This raises a very simple question: What is Goldman Sachs buying with this brazen payoff to someone they knew was headed to one of the most powerful government posts in America?

America’s de facto finance czar, US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, has reached for the panic button and made a dramatic 180-degree reversal of his financial bailout plan passed only days before. On September 23 in testimony before the US Congress, Paulson, former CEO of the politically influential Wall Street investment firm, Goldman Sachs, declared his adamant opposition to the idea of the US government taking equity stakes in troubled major banks in order to provide them capital and stabilize the frozen interbank trading market. On October 13, that opposition to ‘nationalization’ collapsed. Palestinian Pundit: Never Mind the Dow, Here’s the Economy! WSWS: Plant closures, layoffs mount in US and Europe. Daily Telegraph: Crisis may make 1929 look a 'walk in the park'.

Fascism is an authoritarian, anti-democratic, anti-communist system of government in which economic control by the state, militaristic nationalism, propaganda, and the crushing of opposition by means of secret police emphasize the supremacy of the state over the individual.

From those same lovable folks who brought you the crimes and abuses of COINTELPRO comes the following brochure, printed at taxpayer expense by the FBI and intended to be issued to law enforcement, requesting that the Joint Terrorism Task Force be called in the event suspicious behavior is witnessed. And what is "suspicious behavior"? Defending the Constitution!

Hundreds of concerned parents participated in demonstrations outside the New Jersey Statehouse yesterday in protest of the State’s decision to mandate flu vaccinations for young children. Protesters also turned out to support a bill that would allow for conscientious objections to forced vaccinations, arguing that medication should be the choice of the parent not the government.

Real-time streaming video of Iraqi and Afghan battle areas taken from thousands of feet in the air can follow actions of people on the ground as they dig, shake hands, exchange objects and kiss each other goodbye. The video is sent from unmanned and manned aircraft to intelligence analysts at ground stations in the United States and abroad. They watch video in real time of people getting in and out of cars, loading trunks, dropping things or picking them up. They can even see vehicles accelerate, slow down, move together or make U-turns. "The dynamics of an urban insurgency have resulted in a rapid increase in the number of activities visible in the video field of view," according to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Recently the Taliban have sought to instigate talks that may lead to a settlement in Afghanistan which the US and their allies now concede is unwinable. Part of the concessions the Taliban are willing to make are to disassociate themselves from ‘al Qaeda’. A reader has asked me to comment on this. Here is my response.

The smear experts of the GOP would make Joseph McCarthy blush. The Modern GOP no longer conducts its smears through 'proxies' like the 'Swift Boat Veterans". The Palin-McCain ticket now openly indulges slander, smears, lies, bullshit and extremism. It proves what I have been saying about the GOP at least since that party's incompetent attempt to impeach Bill Clinton. HuffPo: ABC Poll: 60 Percent Say Ayers Not Legitimate Campaign Issue. AlterNet: Vanden Heuvel Responds to Rep. Bachmann's McCarthyite Attacks: 'I Fear for My Country'

This is a fascinating article and helps explain Obama's popularity. It is a long document, but well worth the read.

Republican vice-presidential candidate makes brave appearance on Saturday Night Live alongside Tina Fey, her mimic. She has spent weeks being ridiculed by liberal US commentators for her folksy clichés and perceived lack of political knowledge. But, Saturday night, Sarah Palin faced up to her tormentor-in-chief when she appeared on primetime US television alongside her mimic, the actress Tina Fey. ABC News: Did Palin's 'SNL' Stint Make Any Difference? AlterNet: SNL Disaster: Sarah Palin Shoots Herself in the Foot. We disagree with that. We're confident that this wasn't a disaster for her at all. Quite the opposite. Sarah Palin did a GREAT job there -she was funny and very, very brave! We hate to admit it, but we're kind of beginning to like & respect her!

Shiites rally in Baghdad against a U.S.-Iraqi security pact, burning effigies of President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Marchers want Iraq's parliament to reject the agreement, letting troops stay until 2011.

Traitors, irrespective of time and place, are enemies of their own peoples and motherlands. They are also enemies of the most fundamental human morality. One, of course, should not worship his country. A morally enlightened citizen should refrain from supporting his own country, or more correctly his government if it chooses to do wrong and adopt policies that are manifestly immoral. The notorious Israeli oppression of the Palestinians and the genocidal American imperialism in Iraq and Afghanistan are two classical examples of criminal policies that good men and women of conscience ought to strongly reject and resist. Indeed, opposing such policies is the ultimate expression of true patriotism, whereas supporting one’s country -right or wrong- reflects mindless jingoism and moral bankruptcy. This factor ultimately draws the line of distinction between civility and savagery and between enlightenment and primitiveness.

Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) Continue Systematic Attacks against Palestinian Civilians and Property in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). ►IOF killed 2 Palestinian civilians in the West Bank. ►13 Palestinian civilians, including 2 children, were wounded by the IOF gunfire. ►11 of the wounded were wounded during peaceful demonstrations against the construction of the Annexation Wall. ►IOF conducted 15 incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank. ►IOF arrested 29 Palestinian civilians, including 8 children. ►IOF have continued to impose a total siege on the OPT and have isolated the Gaza Strip from the outside world. ►IOF imposed a comprehensive closure on the OPT for the Jewish Sukkot. ►IOF troops positioned at various checkpoints in the West Bank wounded 2 Palestinian civilians and arrested 3 others. ►IOF have continued settlement activities in the West Bank and Israeli settlers have continued to attacks Palestinian civilians and property. ►IOF established a Jewish synagogue on Arab land in East Jerusalem.

U N I T E D N A T I O N S General Assembly Determines that zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.

I have obtained a new document via FOIA request. It is an FAA memo comprising a transcript of calls between various FAA facilities and other institutions on the day of 9/11, and was referenced in the 9/11 Commission Report, in endnote 128 to Chapter 1 (on page 459). It is not spectacularly exciting, but touches on awareness of all four hijacks, in particular the last three.

Pakistani jets attacked the Swat Valley village of Barthana today, acting on a tip-off regarding the presence of militants in the village. The overall death toll in the attack is not yet clear, but 30 have been confirmed killed to this point, and over 100, many of them civilians, are reported to have been killed overall. Scores of others were reported wounded.

Wracked by political instability and hard hit by the global economic crisis, Pakistan is teetering on the brink of default. The country’s foreign reserves have dwindled to around $4.5 billion, equivalent to about six weeks of imports, foreign investors have fled the country in droves and the rupee has fallen sharply. The international credit rating agency, Standard & Poor’s, has downgraded Pakistan to a position superior only to the Seychelles, which has already defaulted.

Water covers 71 percent of the Earth’s surface and supports some of the most complex eco-systems and bizarre creatures on the planet. Yet we only know about a fraction (really, it’s roughly ten percent) of what’s swimming around down there.

During their deployment to Helmand Province, Marines of B Company, 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment had few options for killing time between pulling guard shifts or walking patrol. They worked out on a ramshackle bench press; jumped rope in the dust; or played spades.

Whoever is elected president in the coming November 4 American election will inherit a most miserable situation on nearly all fronts. This is because George W. Bush has been one of the worst presidents the U.S. has ever had, if not the worst. It is widely recognized that he was a below average politician who led his country on the wrong track, both domestically and internationally. Today, only a meager 9 percent of Americans dare to say that their country is moving in the right direction.

Robert Marion LaFollette (1855-1925) delivered the following speech in the Senate on March 17, 1908, in response to Senate bill 3023 to amend the national banking laws.

On a cloudy night in Kent, Milton Torres, a US air force fighter pilot based at RAF Manston, was scrambled to intercept a UFO. Ordered to go full throttle towards East Anglia, within minutes he was 15 miles from a mysterious blip that looked as big as a B-52 bomber on his screen. He was ordered to fire a full salvo of 24 missiles, but before he could, the object vanished. AP: Britain releases UFO files, dispels some mysteries.

A pride of white lions, including two adult males and two juvenile females, has been released into Sanbona Wildlife Reserve in South Africa's Western Cape Province. The release is the culmination of a years-long White Lion Project, which was sponsored by the Shamwari Dubai World Africa Conservation team.

The market is worth more than $516 trillion, (£303 trillion), roughly 10 times the value of the entire world's output: it's been called the "ticking time-bomb". It's a market in which the lead protagonists – typically aggressive, highly educated, and now wealthy young men – have flourished in the derivatives boom. But it's a market that is set to come to a crashing halt – the Great Unwind has begun.

Richard Andrew Grove, a whistleblower who worked for the big boys and money people behind 9/11 has come out with information to set the 9/11 movement on fire. LectLaw: 1993 World Trade Center bombing: Who Bombed The World Trade Center? Fbi Bomb Builders Exposed! St. Olaf College: Save Your Children.

This video is dedicated to every veteran, dead or alive, who has ever been pushed around by a police officer that enjoys abusing his or her power. Furthermore, this video is dedicated to every veteran, dead or alive, who has fought to protect our liberties Especially those who have come back to find that their liberties have been extinguished while they fought abroad. Why is this injustice not being covered by the mainstream news? That is for you to decide...

In this episode of 20/20, John Stossel rounds up the gods of central planning, communism, campaign finance, and farm subsidies, grabs them by the hair, and heaves the whole rotten lot of them onto the roaring bonfires of liberty. It's about bloody well time, I'd say. (Now, will bodyguards please protect John Stossel from federal assassins? You know how nasty this murderous federal government is.)

No matter how badly the economy is doing and what shareholders in Amercian financial firms have lost, it would be a shame to see investment bankers go without their bonuses.

The U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary, Michael Leavitt, has declared a series of 'public health emergencies' -- due to risk of a bioterrorism attack -- that continue through 2015.

Everyone who buys a mobile telephone will be forced to register their identity on a national database under government plans to extend massively the powers of state surveillance. Phone buyers would have to present a passport or other official form of identification at the point of purchase. Privacy campaigners fear it marks the latest government move to create a surveillance society.

While cover-ups of murders, especially assassinations, are commonplace, never has such a big, quick one been arranged as in the killing of Austrian, right-wing party leader Jörg Haider. It took only a week to complete and legalize it - the same amount of time as it took to arrange a state funeral for the struck-down troublemaker. By comparison, the assassinations of leaders like JFK, MLK, RFK, Dr. David Kelly,Greater Manchester Police's Chief Constable Mike Todd et al. took months if not years to achieve the same status, and some of them don't even have it yet.
Urban Dictionary: Boston Brakes: "The boston brakes": assassination technique developed in boston by the s.i.s. A technique in wich microchip transceiver's built into cars (mostly after theft and recovery)override the steering column and braking funtions causing seemingly out of control accidents, drift, powerslide, and or skid marks are all commonly found in cases involving the "boston brakes".

BRIT HUME, HOST: It has been more than 16 years since a civilian working for the Navy was charged with passing secrets to Israel. Jonathan Pollard pled guilty to conspiracy to commit espionage and is serving a life sentence. At first, Israeli leaders claimed Pollard was part of a rogue operation, but later took responsibility for his work. Now Fox News has learned some U.S. investigators believe that there are Israelis again very much engaged in spying in and on the U.S., who may have known things they didn't tell us before September 11.

Followers of the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr took to the streets on Saturday in a demonstration against the proposed security agreement between the American and Iraqi government, now being reviewed by Iraqi political leaders. In a message to the assembled marchers, one of Mr. Sadr’s senior clerics read a statement from him warning that “whoever tells you that this pact gives us sovereignty is lying.” A leading Sadrist cleric at the rally, Hazim al-Arraji, said: “This is the voice of the Iraqi people from all over Iraq: we need the invaders to leave our country, no one wants them to stay. ‘No invasion! Get out invaders!’ That will be our slogan.” RTE News: 50,000 protest against Iraq security pact Occupation.

The Elephant in the Room is a documentary following British filmmaker Dean Puckett through his journey into the 9/11 Truth Movement: a global movement of 'conspiracy theorists' who believe that the official explanation about what happened on 9/11 is totally or partially inaccurate. The filmmakers travel from middle England, across Europe and to New York for the six year anniversary of the attacks, where the film takes one final twist as we are introduced to the 9/11 first responders who are suffering from various grave health difficulties due to the toxic dust that they breathed in trying to help their country during the weeks after this tragic event. Told with a personal hands on approach that avoids advancing any one position, the film asks the question: are these crazy conspiracy theorists? Or is 9/11 Truth a credible political movement? The People's Voice: Giuliani Told Towers Would Collapse, Alex Jones 9/11 & Silverstein WTC 7 Clip.

A report issued Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) documents how the infant mortality rate in the United States is growing in relation to other countries. The study, “Recent Trends in Infant Mortality in the United States,” found that at least 28 other countries now have lower death rates for infants in the first year of life.

Three Putnam County voters say electronic voting machines changed their votes from Democrats to Republicans when they cast early ballots last week. This is the second West Virginia county where voters have reported this problem. Last week, three voters in Jackson County told The Charleston Gazette their electronic vote for "Barack Obama" kept flipping to "John McCain". "I pushed buttons and they all came up Republican," she said. "I hit Obama and it switched to McCain. I am really concerned about that. If McCain wins, there was something wrong with the machines.

ACORN describes itself as an organization of “low- and moderate-income people with over 400,000 member families” which focuses on such goals as raising the minimum wage and expanding access to affordable housing. It unreservedly supports the Democratic Party and has endorsed Barack Obama for the presidency. In the lead-up to the 2008 election, ACORN has launched a major voter registration campaign to bring poor and minority people—who tend to vote Democratic—to the polls in the upcoming election. It claims to have registered over 1.3 million voters, largely in critical “battleground” states. The problem with ACORN is that it it is a drive to get more people to vote. Less people should do so, in fact, no one should vote at all. Both this article (WSWS) and the GOP are setting up a false problem. The WSWS could be excused by maintaining that they don't understand what the real problem is. But the people behind the GOP know very well how the last two elections were "won". This will get you up to speed: The last honest American election took place long ago. The American voters are not in charge. They only have to go through the motions, so that the fraudulent result can be declared to be the "will of the people": The purpose of the election campaign now is to get people to vote. Systemic vote fraud will see to it that the election result is what the elite wanted in the first place. Remember: This is NOT basically a question of whether the voting machines can be hacked. (They can.) Nor is it about whether voters can trust the vote count. (They can not.) -It is about whether people now are able to independently verify whether their votes have been counted correctly or not (They can not). The corporate vote counting business has closed the voting machines for inspections so that vote fraud can go undetected. We would be fools to trust these corporations and walk right into a trap. We would be fools to vote. Stay home -2008 is rigged! The People's Voice: What's Worth More? A Dollar, or a Vote? (VIDEO)

Here's some of the more obnoxious pushers of hate and bigotry. Just like the rabid Zionists who poisoned wells in Palestine when they invaded that state, these modern thugs poison the wells of people's minds.

Delhi running terror camps in Afghanistan: India involved in Quetta killing. India is running six terrorist training camps inside Afghanistan for subversive activities and attacks on Pakistani territory, Islamabad says.

Revealing dark PuppetMasters behind ShadowPlays of Deception...What if 9/11 was not an act of Islamic extremism, but something far more sinister... an evil from within?

British defence officials said last night they were investigating reports that civilians, including women and children, were killed in an air strike by Nato forces in southern Afghanistan. Angry villagers took 18 bodies - including badly mangled bodies of women and children - to the governor's house in the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah, Haji Adnan Khan, a tribal leader in the city who had seen the bodies, was reported as saying. He said there might be more bodies trapped under the rubble. A BBC reporter in Lashkar Gah said he saw the bodies - three women and the rest children ranging in age from six months to 15. The families brought the bodies from their village in the Nad Ali district. The Independent: We need 30,000 more soldiers "to beat Taliban," says general. No comment.

On Wednesday night, the BBC reported that a British soldier had been killed in Helmland province in Afghanistan. On Thursday night, the BBC reported that an airstrike by as-yet unidentified "foreign forces" has killed at least 18 civilians -- in Helmland province. AntiWar: The NATO Alliance: Dangerous Anachronism.

Experience in Indochina and Central America suggests that CIA, the principal paymaster for U.S.-backed Afghan warlords, may be more deeply involved in the drug trade than we yet know. [Here are some links to get you started:] ►Interview with Alfred McCoy ►Washington's Hidden Agenda: Restore the Drug Trade The Spoils of War ►Afghanistan: Drug Addiction Lucrative for Neolib Banksters, CIA ►The Real Drug Lords, CIA, Drugs, and Wall Street ►Narco-Terrorism in Afghanistan

Wednesday’s nationally televised encounter between Barack Obama and John McCain was less a debate than a ritualized episode of a peculiarly American form of political theater. Consortium News: Last Debate Turns to Theatre: Sen. John McCain needed a game changer in the last presidential debate with Sen. Barack Obama and the Republican came out swinging. Socialist Worker: Antiwar vets attacked by police outside debate.

The morning after he emerged as the unexpected star of Wednesday evening's US presidential debate, Samuel "Joe" Wurzelbacher of Holland, Ohio, found himself at the centre of a media frenzy, with reporters camped out on his front lawn and his phone ringing off the hook. But it wasn't long before the Association of Plumbers, Steamfitters and Service Mechanics revealed that Wurzelbacher was not a licensed member of their trade. Obfuscation Report: Joe the Plumber? Nope. Joe the Tax Dodger. Joe the Relative of Charles Keating. Hilarious. SF Gate: Story of Joe the Plumber springs many leaks.

When the polls open in 18 days, voters will be faced with a stark choice in presidential candidates -- a choice that ultimately comes down to one question: What do you want the next four to eight years of your life to look like? Because the next president will shape the issues that affect the way we live our day-to-day lives. From the fate of the Supreme Court to the future of Internet access, here are the 10 most important differences between Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain. The People's Voice: What's Worth More? A Dollar, or a Vote? (VIDEO)

The choice is made easy in part by Mr. McCain's disappointing campaign, above all his irresponsible selection of a running mate who is not ready to be president. It is made easy in larger part, though, because of our admiration for Mr. Obama and the impressive qualities he has shown during this long race.

Appropriately, Republican John McCain was seated to Edward Cardinal Egan's right at Thursday night's annual Al Smith Dinner - Democrat Barack Obama to his left. Donning white tie and tails, they put aside political rancor to roast and toast each other with equal relish. McCain got the ball rolling with a mock announcement that he had fired his entire team of high-priced advisers, as he once did last summer. Donklephant: A Night For Laughs. Kenny's Sideshow: What American Democracy has always been about ...

For weeks, Americans have been in agony over the financial meltdown millions of us knew was coming, we just didn't know when the numbers would catch up to the lies. What has been done the past ten days is so horrific, most of us have been stunned at the hubris and outright commandeering of America's private lending institutions, the outright stealing from the American people to reward incompetence and likely criminal behavior. There is no money to pay for all these "rescues." Paper the country with confetti or cut up newspapers because that's the "worth" of what's being handed out like candy at Halloween. Not only did a majority of Congress participate in giving Paulson, Bush and Bernanke authority to begin the final looting of America, Pelosi and her band of bandits are proposing to slap even more debt on our backs. ICH: "We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office."

Suddenly, three decades of pro-market, neoliberal ideology have been shattered as the U.S. government carries out its greatest intervention in the economy since the Great Depression of the 1930s, including the partial nationalization of the banking system. The crisis marks an epochal shift--one that will transform U.S. society and politics in the months and years ahead. As the economy worsens, tens of millions of working people are rightly worried about their future. How bad will it get? Reuters: Recession looms despite global interventions. Lew Rockwell: Thanks for the Depression. Existentialist Cowboy: 'Great Depression' Lessons from 'It's a Wonderful Life'.

Millions of Americans are caught in the squeeze between higher health care costs and lower incomes. The Saker: Tips for New Paupers (a must read for non-Americans).

Let Bush, Cheney & the rest of 'em be put on notice. On October 16 1998, a magistrate signed a warrant for the arrest of Senator Augusto Pinochet and changed the course of history. The former Chilean head of state was arrested a few hours later, at the request of a Spanish prosecutor who charged him with a raft of international crimes, some dating back to the early 1970s. Over the next 18 months, one dramatic development followed another. The People's Voice: Pinochet-era death squad members jailed.

WikiPedia: Wounded Knee Massacre: On December 29, 1890, 500 troops of the U.S. 7th Cavalry surrounded an encampment of Miniconjou Sioux (Lakota) and Hunkpapa Sioux (Lakota) with orders to escort them to the railroad for transport to Omaha, Nebraska. By the time it was over, more than 300 men, women and children of the Lakota Sioux lay dead.

Powerful allies in Capitol Hill and a worldwide online petition meant that Ratchet, a black dog that was adopted by Sergeant Gwen Beberg, will be shipped out of Iraq as early as Sunday. It will go first to Kuwait, where NorthWest Airlines is waiting to fly the dog to Minneapolis. The rescue operation, which was due to start yesterday, was delayed after a communications breakdown between a pet rescue group and the US military.

On Monday, General Raymond Odierno, commander of US troops in Iraq, had said that Iran is bribing Iraqi deputies to hinder Iraq-US security deal. In a statement, the Iraqi Parliament expressed concern and outrage about the comments, calling them an insult to the representatives of the Iraqi people. The statement added the comments were a violation of diplomatic norms and interference in the internal affairs of the country.

Remember the attack on the U.S. embassy in Yemen last month that took the lives of eighteen people? A group calling themselves "Islamic Jihad" claimed responsibility for the blast. It has a nice, scary ring to it hasn't it? "Islamic Jihad" also happens to be the name of a group that operates out of Gaza.

Israel has been suffering its worst bout of inter-communal violence since the start of the second intifada, with a week of what has been widely presented as "rioting" by Jewish and Arab residents of the northern port city of Acre.

The sources asserted that the IOF troops ambushed a few meters away from the young men in the dark and opened fire directly at them wounding Aziz Arar and one of his friends Shadi Suleiman; although, they were able to detain the young men without having to shoot them. The sources added that Suleiman managed despite his injury to crawl towards the other side of the road and reach a civilian car without being seen by the IOF troops because of darkness, while Arar was detained and left bleeding for more than one and a half hour until he died.

Oliver Stone tackles another high profile political figure...BuzzFlash: Sarah Palin and the Know Nothings.

Ayers, now an elementary education theorist and author of several works on the subject, left his radicalism behind him years ago. Like many of his generation, he slid back into liberal and community politics. A private citizen, with no official position in the Democratic campaign, the former Weatherman has become the victim of a ferocious and cowardly assault, aimed at furthering McCain’s electoral ambitions. Ayers is coming under attack from people who have the enormous resources of the American state and media behind them.

The new U.S. embassy in Kathmandu occupies the grounds of a former CIA safe house and operations center in the Nepali capital. The embassy, in the Maharajgunj district of Kathmandu, is a one-block long fortress-like structure and the subject of derision among the Nepali people. The embassy is built along Stalinesque architectural standards now common with new U.S. embassies around the world: stark, rectangular structures that convey the notion that the United States is an impenetrable fortress that is closed to the outside world. US Embassy, Nepal: New American Embassy Dedicated.

A report based on declassified documents suggests that the Nixon and Ford administrations, angry with the shah for his support for raising oil prices, worked to curb his ambitions. National Security Archive: The secret CIA history of the Iran coup, 1953.

Months after the Pentagon pundits flap, the Department of Defense continues to hand down contracts for propaganda in Iraq and beyond.

Law enforcement personnel from 3 jurisdictions, with an assist from personnel and equipment from Blackwater, searched a rural area in the county Tuesday morning for a suspect they say shot a county resident as he walked out his house to go to work.

All the evidence suggests that 9/11 was an Israeli false flag operation, carried out with the assistance of key individuals and elements within the United States by a Zionist elite. One of these individuals is Larry Silverstein, who purchased the 99 year lease on the World Trade Center complex in July 2001 and who oversaw control of the complex before and during the attacks, along with Australian real estate tycoon Frank Lowy of Westfield America. Silverstein and Lowy are good friends, and Silverstein has been a director of Lowy's Westfield America since May 1997.

Jean Charles was shot in cold blood primarily in order “to instill fear in the population and implement a shoot-to-kill policy that had been secretly decided on by Prime Minister Tony Blair and top officials two years previously.” The treatment meted out to de Menezes sent out the clear message—first articulated by Blair—that the “rules of the game” had changed. Convincing as this may be, there is yet another possibility. -The British government was in fact running a parallel exercise that day (just as the CIA & Mossad were doing on 911). The designated "terrorists" (patsies), who had nothing whatever to do with the real terror attack perpetrated by the government, had to be killed so that the media & propaganda frenzy could put the blame on them, shifting the focus away from the British government. This may be why de Menezes had to be killed. -Not because he was a terrorist or because they wanted to send a message, but because he was a patsy that could have become a witness.

The Democratic chairman of a House investigative committee presented documents to the Pentagon on Thursday charging that a top Republican fund-raiser, Harry Sargeant III, made tens of millions of dollars in profits over the last four years because his contracting company vastly overcharged for deliveries of fuel to American air bases in Iraq.

The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal by death row prisoner Troy Davis, clearing the way for the state of Georgia to set a third execution date in the coming weeks. It was another painful blow for Troy, an innocent man who has spent nearly 20 years facing the threat of execution for a crime he didn't commit. He has evidence that points to his innocence which has never been heard by a jury--yet one court after another, citing laws that sharply restrict what prisoners can raise during appeals, has turned down his pleas to listen to the truth.

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today responded to recent reports regarding the Bush Administration’s continued negotiations with the Iraqi parliament. Negotiations center on a status of force agreement that would authorize the continued presence of U.S. troops in Iraq.

E-mail: 'I am beginning to have grave misgivings about what I am doing'. Struggling with orders to prosecute a young detainee at Guantanamo Bay, U.S. Army Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld went online and consulted a well-known Jesuit priest for help with his concerns about the fairness of the military tribunals. Vandeveld described a crisis of conscience over the prisoners' treatment and the ethical handling of cases that led him to quit last month as prosecutor.

This isn't going to make people happy. Remember the furor when people discovered that Apple could remotely kill applications running on iPhones? Well, Google has decided to implement the same type of action. It can remove programs it deems "bad" from your HTC G1.

The Catholic Church has always seen the contemplative life as the "Air Force" in its spiritual struggle, as the Rev. David Toups of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops commented—a conduit of spiritual power.

Daniela Rossi, a Rome archaeologist, said that the discovery of the marble tomb of Marcus Nonius Macrinus, which has an inscription bearing his name, was “the most important Ancient Roman monument to come to light for 20 or 30 years”.

Scientists are getting closer to creating a bionic human, or at least a $6 million one. Today, we can replicate or restore more organs and various sundry body parts than ever before. From giving sight to the blind to creating a tongue more accurate than any human taste bud, gentlemen, we have the technology. -- Maggie Koerth-Baker

'Winter thickens the blood' is just one of the many sayings about the weather that most of us would dismiss as old wives' tales. In fact, scientists and medics are coming round to the idea that the weather really can have an effect on our physical and mental health, as Angela Epstein reports...

Originally considered a dud, an old volcano-in-a-bottle experiment designed to mimic conditions that may have brewed the components of life might have been right on target. Science Daily: Details Of Evolutionary Transition From Fish To Land Animals Revealed.

The etiquette in a bee yard is simple: Don't be afraid or an idiot, don't swat and, most of all, send the bees love. The same could be said to Lily Owens (Dakota Fanning) in "The Secret Life of Bees". LA Times: Review: 'The Secret Life of Bees'.

A three-time Oscar winner, Stone's latest subject is President George W. Bush. His movie "W." opens in the United States on Friday, less than three weeks before Americans elect their next president on November 4. You Tube: Oliver Stone On "W" (VIDEO). + The Bush Movie: A Film About George W. Bush.

Unemployment soared and markets plummeted yesterday as the world’s biggest economies braced themselves for a prolonged recession. The number of people out of work in Britain will rise to three million within two years, economists forecast, as unemployment surged at its fastest rate for 17 years. David Blanchflower, a member of the Bank of England’s rate-setting committee, said that the figure could exceed two million by Christmas. The Saker: THE CRASH CONTINUES (Graph)

The total potential cost of the financial bailout to the U.S. taxpayer is already rapidly approaching $5 trillion, over seven times as much as the meaningless $700 billion bailout bill figure. Analysts have previously marked out the $5 trillion figure as the actual cost, now those predictions are becoming demonstratively accurate. LA Times: Federal deficit hits record $455 billion. Online Journal: The question to be asked: ‘Where will the money come from?’

A report released Tuesday by the Working Poor Families Project reveals that more than 28 percent of American families with one or both parents employed are living in poverty. The report, “Still Working Hard, Still Falling Short,” is based on data for the period from 2004 through 2006 gathered from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey and the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey. Poverty News Blog: The Working Poor in America: Still Falling Behind.

Accounts of the October 13 meeting between US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and top bank CEOs on the government’s bailout of Wall Street—now estimated at $2.5 trillion—paint an extraordinary portrait of class relations in America. Though they were to receive hundreds of billions of dollars from the Treasury to stave off a credit collapse of their own making, the bankers arrogantly refused to accept the slightest limits on their prerogatives. Instead, the Treasury approached the bankers as a supplicant, agreeing that if they accepted the bailout, it would place no real caps on exorbitant CEO pay and exercise no effective oversight of bank operations.

Now that their banking system has collapsed and their imports have been cut off, Icelanders are too busy emptying supermarket shelves to ponder the disastrous errors that led to their national disaster. The Independent: Global shares carry on falling. The Real News: Europe fumes over Wall Street meltdown.

But enjoyable as it's been to watch conservatives flee from the GOP, something about all this leaves me feeling a little down. Because as the more respectable, literate conservatives distance themselves from the GOP, increasingly, the only ones left on the right are paranoid, rage-driven, xenophobic nuts. Bitter? You betcha! Twisted too! WUFYS: Misconceptions of Obama fuel Republican campaign (VIDEO).

Obama’s lead over McCain grows after final debate. Fierce words flew as the U.S. presidential candidates slugged it out in the final TV debate. In a series of fractious exchanges Barack Obama and John McCain battled over everything from education to taxes to healthcare. The Independent: McCain on the attack. HuffPo: McCain Frowns, Rolls Eyes, And Blinks More Than 3,000 Times.

AlterNet readers respond to the latest evidence of just how bad Sarah Palin is for an office that puts her a heartbeat away from the presidency. PoliticalAffairsNet: Palling Around with Secessionists.

Among the ways in which freedom is being chipped away in Europe, one of the less obvious is the legislation of memory. More and more countries have laws saying you must remember and describe this or that historical event in a certain way, sometimes on pain of criminal prosecution if you give the wrong answer. What the wrong answer is depends on where you are. In Switzerland, you get prosecuted for saying that the terrible thing that happened to the Armenians in the last years of the Ottoman empire was not a genocide. In Turkey, you get prosecuted for saying it was. What is state-ordained truth in the Alps is state-ordained falsehood in Anatolia.

Just in Time for the Capitalist Meltdown: Army, Justice Department to Field 'Pain Ray'. Back in July I reported that Raytheon (No. 4 on Washington Technology's "Top 100 List of Prime Defense Contractors," with $5,170,829,645 in revenue) was developing a microwave "non-lethal" weapons (NLW) system for the U.S. Army. At a cost of $25 million, five truck-mounted NLWs will soon be shipped off to Iraq for heavy-lifting in Iraqi cities for use against militant oil workers and citizens should U.S. energy multinationals finally get their greedy little hands on that nation's oil wealth. A slimmed-down version of the Active Denial System (ADS) is sought for deployment in the "homeland. The People's Voice: WHAT IS THE SECRET KILLING WEAPON IN IRAQ? (Video)

The financial collapse we are seeing all around us may prove to be an economic 9/11. That was a security crisis, with security implications. This is an economic crisis, but its social and security implications are potentially just as severe. In our world, economic strength is power, and until the dust settles from this crisis, we don't know where the power will lie. The international landscape may change radically, and that will mean new risks and new threats. National Expositor: Threat Of Martial Law Following Economic Crisis. Facts-not-Fairies: GET THIS VIDEO OUT TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW.

Two suspected US missiles have landed on a Pakistani tribal area bordering Afghanistan, killing at least 6 people and wounding 5 others. The missiles hit a house on Thursday in the village of Sam in South Waziristan, in an area regarded as a stronghold of Baitullah Mehsud, head of Pakistani Taliban militants. The incident in the lawless district is the latest in a string of attacks on Pakistani soil that have raised tensions between Islamabad and Washington. US Predator drones usually armed with Hellfire missiles and ground raids have killed dozens of Pakistani civilians in recent months.

It seems strange that Peres argued that Ahmedinejad’s speech called for a return to the Dark Ages, when the only reference to the Dark Ages in the speech was a critical warning against such a return. Either Peres failed to read the entire speech, failed to understand it or he deliberately chose to misrepresent it. Did Peres object to this by Ahmedinejad: "We must not, at the beginning of the 21st century, revert to the logic of the Dark Ages and once again try to deny societies access to scientific and technological advances?" Of course, Ahmedinejad was pointing to the efforts by the USA and Israel to stop Iran's efforts to develop nuclear power.

Iran's Air Force is set to test the country's state-of-the-art military equipment and flight tactics in a large-scale aerial maneuver. Iran's show of armed muscle is aimed at demonstrating the country's military offensive capabilities in the wake of escalating war threats against the Islamic Republic. RupeeNews: Iran already has 5 batteries of S-300 SAMS in place.

"Vice President Dick Cheney, who was scheduled to make a fundraising appearance today in Homer Glen, has canceled, according to Andy Seré, spokesman for 11th Congressional district GOP candidate Marty Ozinga," the Chicago Tribune reported early Wednesday morning. Why, we didn't know he even had one. -Thing is, the heart rythm isn't the only abnormal thing about this reptile -he's a full-blown sociopath.

New ’strip search’ full body scanners being trialled in Australia will show people’s private parts, officials have admitted. But to spare their blushes, the faces of passengers will be blurred.

The heartrending reality of bigotry and Islamophobia in today’s American environment is overwhelming. The Islamophobes use the media as a propaganda tool to poison the minds of the American people under the disguise of “freedom of speech.” This was evident when Mr. Glen Sheller, editor of The Columbus Dispatch newspaper’s editorial page, defended the Dispatch’s distribution of the fear mongering DVD Obsession, which was intended to instill fear in the hearts and minds of the unsuspecting American people.

More than 7,000 runners who raced earlier this month in a half-marathon in London were under the influence of a scientifically derived and powerful performance-enhancing stimulant — pop music.

The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari has been widely hailed in the West, where there has been an outpouring of praise for the man and his efforts. Generally seen as a tireless promoter of peace and reconciliation, Ahtisaari has another side that has not received sufficient attention.

A falconer who trains big birds born in captivity how to fly has used an unusual technique to get a 14-year-old eagle into the air. In this video, Jacques-Olivier Travers takes the eagle by helicopter to the top of Mont Blanc and then films the bird from his paraglider as he flies next to it. During the flight, the bird gets tired quickly because of the thin air and perches on his trainer mid-air for a much-need break.

Chile's Supreme Court has jailed a retired senior military officer for his involvement in manslaughter during Pinochet dictatorship. The Supreme Court jailed Gen Sergio Arellano Stark, 88, along with four other retired military men on Wednesday for their connection to the Pinochet-era military death squad dubbed as 'Caravan of Death'. Let Bush, Cheney & the rest of 'em be put on notice. -Remember the following press conference? Reporter: “Do you want bin Laden dead?” President Bush: “I want justice. There's an old poster out west, as I recall, that said, "Wanted: Dead or Alive." Couldn't agree more. -W dead or alive! YubaNet: Sherwood Ross: Name Members To Committee To Seek Prosecution of Bush For War Crimes.

China and Pakistan have signed an unprecedented eleven agreements on a vast spectrum of subjects. We have reported on the wishes of the Pakistani people-a close relationship with China. President Zardari’ trip to China was a culmination of the wishes of the people. Frequent contacts with between the Chinese and Pakistani leadership augers well for the two nations, the region and the world. Friendship towards all and enmity towards none. Asia Times: Zardari takes begging bowl to Beijing. CBS News: Pakistan Gets Help From China For Ailing Economy.

The UN General Assembly votes Friday to choose five new non-permanent members of the powerful Security Council, with all eyes on the contest between Iran and Japan for the lone Asian seat, AFP reports.

George Dubya Bush money... it ain't it worth shit, but cha can buy gas with it! Haha. Monopoly.

The Bush administration endorsed the use of waterboarding against al-Qaeda suspects in secret memos to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Washington Post has reported. The pair of classified memos, written in 2003 and 2004, were requested by George Tenet, former CIA chief, more than a year after secret interrogations got under way, the newspaper quoted administration and intelligence officials as saying. The Guardian: Secret White House memo endorsed waterboarding. Live News: Bush White House 'endorsed torture'. It certainly wasn't Bush who came up with that idea (although he isn't above stuff like that). -He "endorses" cheeseburger pizza for dinner and Gameboy and a steady supply of of new pencils he can chomp on or throw at the ceiling when nothing seems to stop his downward slide in the polls. But CHENEY is a different piece of shit altogether: HE endorses wars & plunder -and of course TORTURE. (All this -and more- is also known as "policy". Very important business, you see.) So he's the guy to be looking at.

With three weeks to go before America elects its next president, and on the eve of the third and final TV debate between the two candidates, a four-day tracking poll released this morning shows Barack Obama increasing his lead over John McCain. It looks more and more likely that America is about to elect its first black president. The Guardian: New poll puts Obama 14 points ahead of McCain.

It’s gone awfully quiet out there in neocon land. They’re not putting up much of a fight to help their man in to the White House to replace Bush. And what little fight they are putting up seems half-hearted and even defeatist, somehow accepting of what seems inevitable – an Obama win. The same people who handled the GOP-CONS will be in charge of Obama & his cohorts. NO difference there...

As the director of the new, critically acclaimed documentary film about the late Republican operative Lee Atwater, I am constantly asked one thing: Will the Lee Atwater playbook save McCain and Palin on Nov. 4th?

Early plans to create a giant "Big Brother" database holding information about every phone call, email and internet visit made in the UK were last night condemned by the Government's own terrorism watchdog. Lord Carlile of Berriew QC, the independent reviewer of anti-terrorist laws, said the "raw idea" of the database was "awful" and called for controls to stop government agencies using it to conduct fishing expeditions into the private lives of the public.

No outsider has spent more time tracking the labyrinthine ways of the National Security Agency than James Bamford. But even he gets lost in the maze. Despite countless articles and three books on the U.S. government's super-secret, signals-intelligence service — the latest of which, The Shadow Factory, is out today. WikiPedia: James Bamford. You Tube: Confronting the Surveillance Society (VIDEO): Talk by James Bamford author of "The Puzzle Palace" and "Body of Secrets" & Chris Calabrese Program Counsel of the ACLU Technology and Liberty Project.

Russia has recently embarked on the most massive military maneuvers since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Interestingly, the role of the Ground Forces was this time rather limited and it is the Navy and the Air Force which took center stage. [...] All this points to one very clear conclusion: the Russians were practicing for a major war, not a local conflict (indeed, according to some media reports, the maneuver's scenario featured a joint Russian-Belarussian defense against a US-NATO attack).

Pre-trial hearings into the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya have begun at a Moscow military court. Four men are facing trial for their involvement in the killing. Three of them are charged with murder while the fourth is accused of assisting them. The hearings are going ahead despite the fact that Karina Moskalenko, a lawyer representing the Politkovskaya family, is in hospital after a suspected poisoning in Strasbourg.

Patrick Carroll has been a mailman for 23 years and works in Quakertown, Pennsylvania. A mailman spoke with the American News Project and McClatchy Newspapers about how the nation's financial crisis has impacted both his own life and the people he encounters everyday.

A newly reissued Department of Defense directive (pdf) explicitly prohibits several of the more controversial interrogation techniques that have previously been practiced against suspected enemy combatants.

And certainly don’t ask about the troops on bases here in Afghanistan who don’t wear uniforms, have long beards (so they can better blend in during covert operations), tattoos and don’t mingle with regular soldiers. They eat in their own chow halls, plan their own missions and don’t talk much. They don’t talk at all to the media. They’re the men who have been called in to cross into Pakistan when the drones can’t get deep enough to find and kill their targets. They are elite Special Operations Forces, the most-highly trained and covert of the U.S. military. They are America’s ghost warriors.

As Pakistan observes “Defence Day,” the United States is putting the finishing touches on a National Intelligence Estimate on Pakistan. And while much as the NIE on Afghanistan the document is expected to remain classified, those privy to the contents of the document say it paints a “very bleak” picture. Another summarized the conclusions as “no money, no energy, no government.”

Based solely on their age, and no other health issues, McCain’s life expectancy is 12 years and Obama’s is 31 years.1 Over the next 4 years a man of 72 years has a probability of dying of 16% and over 8 years, 38%. At age 47 a man has a 2% probability of dying of within 4 years, and 5% within 8 years.

Todd Palin interfered regularly in his wife's affairs as governor, and there's every reason to assume he'd do the same in the White House. Todd Palin seated behind a White House desk and shaping national policy could be one of the most dangerous aspects of a potential Sarah Palin presidency.

Venezuelan tax authorities have ordered 118 McDonald's restaurants to shut down through Saturday because of "inconsistencies" in the chain's financial records.

Shocked by 9-11, Americans wondered who could perpetrate such a horrible crime against people. Over two thousand Americans jumped to their death, were burned, crushed, or murdered in a spectacular collapse of the Twin Towers. In a joint session of Congress a few days later, President George W. Bush gave us the first clue who "they" were. "They" hated us for our freedoms.

The recent killings of Christians in the northern city of Mosul has stunned the Church in Iraq and left it wondering who is responsible, one of its leaders, Shlemon Warduni has told Adnkronos International (AKI). At least 12 Christians have been murdered in Mosul over the past two weeks, a number of Christian homes have been destroyed, and hundreds of families have fled.

Europe's top human-rights watchdog, The Council of Europe, called 'sensible', Britain's decision to drop a proposal to detain terrorism suspects for up to 42 days without charge. The rights group, headed by Secretary General Terry Davis, said the proposal's rejection on Monday by the House of Lords - Britain's Upper House of Parliament - would allow the British authorities to fight terrorism without undermining the freedoms protected by the European Convention on Human Rights. The Guardian: The rejection of Labour's proposal for detention without charge was a victory for human rights and common sense in parliament.

Incendiary slams on Senator Obama at McCain/Palin events continue, as evidenced in Scranton, Pennsylvania Tuesday.

When Adele was born they couldn't tell if she was a girl or a boy. A series of childhood genital operations 'corrected' her into a boy but as she grew up it became apparent a mistake had been made. Now at 29 Adele is trying to transition into a woman, only to find she belongs somewhere in between. 1 in 2000 babies are born like Adele and she asks if it isn't time to make room in our society for more than two genders.

Is technology changing our brains? A new study by UCLA neuroscientist Gary Small adds to a growing body of research that says it is. And according to Small's new book, "iBRAIN: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind," a dramatic shift in how we gather information and communicate with one another has touched off an era of rapid evolution that may ultimately change the human brain as we know it. "Perhaps not since early man first discovered how to use a tool has the human brain been affected so quickly and so dramatically," he writes. "As the brain evolves and shifts its focus towards new technological skills, it drifts away from fundamental social skills." BBC: Internet use 'good for the brain'.

Salon has this up at their site and I'm sure we haven't heard the end of this incident, or like others maybe we have! The only way that doesn't happen is if You, the Citizens Of This Country, Make Sure It Gets Investigated and Indictments come down, not for the Soldiers but for those in Leadership, Top Down!

Its not like Pakistan and China started trading a few years ago. The Pakistan China trade has beeing going on for more than 5000 years. China and Pakistani cooperation runs deep in many areas–missiles, nuclear technology, clean coal energy, ports and shipping, education, industrial zones and of course defense and arms. Pakistan is the only wountry in the world with which China has a Free Trade Agrement (FTA). The deals signed are not for the world pres, but for a long lasting relationship. Pakistani Gwador to China links threaten Indian Chahbahar links to Kabul via Iran. In an orchestrated campaign, the Indian press is goading the world media into expecting a defiant China signing a deal with Pakistan to piss off the world.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the first major world leader to face voters since the global financial meltdown, led his Conservative Party to victory in Tuesday's election but was forecast to fall short of a majority in Parliament.

There are two opposing approaches to the analysis of ecological destruction and the emergence of Indian movements in Latin America: the liberal and the Marxist. The liberal approach emphasizes ‘universal responsibility” for the destruction of the environment – rich and poor, mining companies and miners, factory owners and factory workers, auto manufacturers and drivers, governments and citizens, real estate speculators and slum dwellers. The liberal ecologists claim the negative consequences adversely affect everyone: “We all suffer from the destruction of the environment.” The liberal approach to the development of Indian movements and politics follows a similar approach, using the non-class categories of ‘community’, ‘culture’ and religion, to discuss Indian social structure as a ‘homogenous’ social phenomenon.

Criticising Israel for building a synagogue within the premises of Al Aqsa, OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu termed it an aggression against the Mairaj of holy Prophet Muhammed (peace be upon him), and a major offensive against the holy sites of the Islamic nation. Ynet News: Doha conference calls for protection of Al-Aqsa mosque. World Bulletin: OIC condemns Israel's synagogue building next to Al-Aqsa Mosque.

There will be no letup in Wall Street bankers’ ruthless pursuit of profits and personal wealth. While the government and politicians of both parties are calling for all Americans to “sacrifice” for the sake of the “nation,” the CEOs of major banks and financial companies are exploiting the crisis of their own making to extract new concessions from the government. The arrogance of the bankers is so brazen than even the Wall Street Journal is warning that their behavior could spark a popular backlash. Times Online: Failing Lehman Approved Huge Packages for Executives Days Before it Went Bust. WSWS: Obama floats economic plan: tax breaks and austerity: In reality, the proposals that he and other Democrats are now putting forward amount to little more than window dressing for the real rescue plan—that is, transferring hundreds of billions of dollars in public funds into the private coffers of Wall Street. Whatever campaign promises he—or for that matter his Republican rival McCain—makes in the closing weeks of the election campaign, the reality is that the overriding task of the next administration will be to impose the full burden of the bank bailout onto the backs of American working people.

The four biggest banks—Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo—are to receive $25 billion each. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are each to get $10 billion, Bank of New York Mellon will receive $3 billion and State Street will get $2 billion. The remaining $125 billion in the stock purchase program will be made available to thousands of smaller banks. The new bailout plan is widely referred to in the media as a “partial nationalization” of the banks. It is nothing of the kind. It is, rather, a massive intervention by the state to use public funds to protect the social interests of the financial elite that is responsible for the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression.

For starters, the mainly unregulated free market economy that operates in America is one that is always going to be geared towards the needs of people with money in the first place. That is how this system is meant to operate and it is simply not going to change now, no matter how much taxpayers struggling with their mortgages want it to. And while the concerns and worries of ordinary folks on ‘Main Street’ are certainly valid, what they do not realise is that to expect the system to suddenly now work in a way that puts their welfare ahead of those of Wall Street is naive. In fact, many conservatives in the U.S. have attacked the idea of doing so as nothing more than socialism. Pravda: The final shoe on American consumerism is about to fall.

Wall Street took the US (and the world) hostage and extracted a heavy ransom. But while the enormous ransom was successfully extracted, there are no guarantees that the hostages will be set free from the shackles of trickle-down economics. On the contrary, there are strong indications that the fraudulent (and perhaps criminal) bailout may turn the current crisis into a protracted agony of a long bleeding economic depression. Online Journal: The bailout doesn’t pass the smell test.

What U.S. law requires Americans to pay income taxes? Watch IRS Commissioner Everson evade a direct question from the New York Times tax reporter. Why won't he answer ???

The finding could transform both popular and scientific understanding of bonobos, which like chimpanzees share 98 percent of their DNA with humans. But unlike chimps, bonobos have been considered gentle and good-natured: they don't engage in inter-tribal warfare or primate cannibalism, are dominated by females rather than males, and exchange sexual acts with the casualness of humans talking about the weather. WikiPedia: Bonobo.

Silvio Berlusconi falls over himself - and his podium - to praise the US president. "I'm 100% confident that we'll be friends forever," Berlusconi told the US president as he clutched the remains of the broken podium.

The 936 point rise on the US stock market yesterday was the American ruling elite’s initial verdict on the extraordinarily favorable terms the government is granting to financial firms in the $700 billion bailout passed by Congress on October 3. Far from heralding improving economic conditions for working people, the Wall Street surge reflects the financial establishment’s success in extorting massive sums of money from taxpayers. EPJ: Bizzarro Banking Comes To America. Global Research: Who is Behind the Financial Meltdown?

Adam Kokesh speaks for many (if not all) of the freedom fighters to whom this blog is dedicated. Each, in his or her own way, has fired a first shot. -VIDEO

It was the economic meltdown of Yugoslavia that gave us Slobodan Milosevic. It was the collapse of the Weimar Republic that vomited up Adolf Hitler. And it was the breakdown in czarist Russia that opened the door for Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Financial collapses lead to political extremism. The rage bubbling up from our impoverished and disenfranchised working class, glimpsed at John McCain rallies, presages a looming and dangerous right-wing backlash. MarketWatch: It's Not Over: Rally Won't Hold (Video). HuffPo: Global Economic Crisis Likely To Have Profound Consequences For US Politics, World Relations. CounterPunch: The God That Failed: The 30-Year Lie of the Market Cult. Lew Rockwell: The Evil of Bailout.

Iceland's blue-chip stock exchange plummeted 76% when it resumed trading today. Icelandic stockmarkets had been suspended since Thursday. The OMX 15 fell 76% to 716.27 points, while the all-share index dropped 66% to 953.14 points. Six financial stocks — Kaupthing, Landsbankinn, Glitnir, Straumur-Burdaras, Reykjavik Savings Bank and Exista — remained suspended. WSWS: Britain and Iceland in bitter conflict over banking collapse. WUFYS: England uses "anti-terror" laws to seize Iceland's assets. Russia Today: Russia to help Iceland overcome the crisis. It would be naïve to believe that the Russians did this out of kindness. They may have ulterior motives. -The arctic region is very important to them and they fully intend to dominate it.

The myth has quickly taken hold that the global financial crash was caused by bad mortgages. This has allowed rightwing hatemongers to blame the meltdown on the "liberal" programs that encouraged home ownership among a small percentage of lower-income people (a poisonous canard that parts of the mainstream media have actually done a fairly good job of knocking down), while "progressives" of various stripes have denounced banks and other financial institutions for pushing over-easy credit on people who couldn't really afford it.

The campaigns are in full gear, the candidates are picked, TV ads are running, and election corruption is taking hold. Around the country, particularly in swing states, there are stories of efforts to undercut voter registration especially by poor and African American voters. In addition, this summer has seen story after story of the potential corruption and likely dysfunction of electronic voting machines. The People's Voice: What's Worth More? A Dollar, or a Vote? (VIDEO). It is NOT basically a question of whether the voters can trust the vote count, but whether they are able to independently verify whether their votes have been counted correctly or not. The corporate vote counting business has closed the voting machines for inspections and the possibility of fraud can not be excluded. We would be fools to trust these corporations.

After Downing Street - David W. Moore, who worked for Gallup for 13 years as managing editor and senior editor of the Gallup Poll, has a new book out denouncing most polls by Gallup or anyone else as useless, and explaining that this became obvious to him when he first began work at Gallup, raising the obvious question of why he stuck around for 13 years. The explanation seems to be that he was trying to fix the problem, and one of the motivations for the book seems to be that he believes he still can fix it.

We are disturbed by the degree to which 'Arab' has become the metaphorical mud to sling against your opponent. This week, for example the Republican Jewish Coalition released a document in which they use the term Pro-Arab as a pejorative accusation. For his part, Rush Limbaugh has joined in by declaring that Obama is in fact an Arab American. Then, on Friday, after a supporter called Senator Barak Obama "an Arab", Senator John McCain came to the defense of of his political opponent by saying "No, ma'am. He's a decent family man and citizen...." From this we are left to infer that an Arab man is less then a "decent family man" Facts-not-Fairies: Shocking: McCain STILL thinks Iraq had ties to 9/11. Existentialist Cowboy: Monsters from the GOP 'Id': In the late 90s, a sleep study done at Stanford University indicated that Republicans have more 'nightmares and night terrors' than do Democrats or, for that matter, members of any other party. The study could not have imagined one of the GOPs worst nightmares ever: a landslide loss of the White House to a black liberal who has proven himself as tough as he is intelligent, as formidable in debate as John F. Kennedy. Faced with a similar catastrophe, a good Nazi could have been relied upon to shoot himself. With the cowardly GOP, the rest of us won't be nearly so lucky. Global Research: GOP attacks on American voters turn desperate, ugly and dangerous.

The "SNL" veteran who has come back to play the Republican Vice Presidential candidate (and whose own show, "30 Rock," is still nowhere to be seen), said, "We're gonna take it week by week. If she wins, I'm done. I can't do that for four years. And by 'I'm done,' I mean I'm leaving Earth." You Tube: Sarah Palin "Anyone Can Be VP" Song and Cartoon. After Downing Street: Sarah Palin Supporters' Strange World (VIDEOS).

Regardless of the election outcome, Jews continue to be well represented, at least in terms of raw numbers, on Capitol Hill. Though Jews are only about 2% of America’s total population, Jewish lawmakers already represent nearly 10% of Congress. They include 29 Jews in the House and 13 in the Senate.

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says peace and stability in the Middle East depends on the withdrawal of foreign forces from the region. "Conflicts, war and killings will not resolve problems in the Middle East because the region has no capacity for any aggression," Ahmadinejad said in a meeting with the former Secretary General of the United Nations Kofi Annan, former Norwegian and Italian prime ministers Kjell Magne Bondevik and Romano Prodi in Tehran Monday.

Since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the US military reports it has captured about 200,000 Iraqis, with some 96,000 of these being held at one time or another in US prisons in Iraq. This information, which we believe is the first such documentation offered by the US, was provided to Consumers for Peace by a spokesperson for Task Force 134, the command responsible for US prisons in Iraq, in the course of a three-month exchange of questions and answers about the US holding of Iraqi citizens.

Given the global economic crisis, a record 90 percent of registered voters say the country is seriously off on the wrong track, the most since this question first was asked in 1973.

Columbus exposed as iron-fisted tyrant who tortured his slaves. Consortium News: New York, Slavery & the Truth.

Israeli settlers ►killed a Palestinian civilian in near Nablus. ►16 Palestinian civilians, including four children, and a Scottish human rights defender, were wounded by the IOF gunfire. Nine of the wounded were wounded during peaceful demonstrations against the construction of the Annexation Wall. ►IOF conducted 38 incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank. ►IOF arrested 59 Palestinian civilians, including 13 children and a woman. ►IOF violently assaulted a number of Palestinian civilians during house raids. ►IOF arrested 2 Palestinian civilians near the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel. ►IOF have continued to impose a total siege on the OPT and have isolated the Gaza Strip from the outside world. ►IOF imposed a comprehensive closure on the OPT for the Jewish Kipurim festival. ►IOF troops positioned at various checkpoints in the West Bank arrested 2 Palestinian civilians. ►IOF held a number of journalists near a settlement in the West Bank. ►IOF have continued settlement activities in the West Bank and Israeli settlers have continued to attacks Palestinian civilians and property. ►Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian civilians and property. ►Four Palestinian civilians and two human rights defenders were injured. ►Israeli settlers deliberately set fire to dozens of olive trees. Palestinian Pundit: Israel to allow 700 additional armed PA troops into Hebron. PIC: Hamas warns of third intifada if Israeli aggressions on Aqsa persist.

NEW YORK Many may consider the modern newsroom a lumbering dinosaur, but longtime Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez finds the symphony orchestra a more fitting metaphor. This came to him in writing his new book The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music, which chronicles his efforts to help Nathaniel Ayers — a homeless, Juilliard-trained musician with an untreated mental illness — whom Lopez first encounters playing a two-string violin in downtown Los Angeles. The film version, directed by Atonement's Joe Wright and starring Robert Downey Jr. as Lopez and Jamie Foxx as Ayers, opens in November. You Tube: The Soloist Trailer. + The Soloist - A Look Inside.

How many more lies must we listen to? How many more political scandals must we endure? How many more of our young people have to be grievously wounded or die in unnecessary and illegal wars, and how many more trillions of dollars in economic waste must we clean up before we are sickened enough to demand effective changes in our government?

And, so an intellectual event matched only by the sacking of Constantinople in 1453, the Swedish central bank has announced that Krugman will take his place alongside F.A. Hayek and others as the Nobel laureate. Now, the bank announced that the prize was for Krugman’s semi-discombobulated trade theories, not his incoherent, Keynesian columns that he writes for the Democratic Party, er, the editorial page of the New York Times.

Cross the threshold of John Pilger's south London home and the deep pile carpet gently gives way beneath the feet. Soothing strains of classical guitar waft through the air and, over mugs of tea, the great polemicist examines the impact of his career, his sentences punctuated by the mewling of a ginger cat.

The totalitarian state secured a major strategic victory at the weekend over the US, which finally removed North Korea from its terrorism blacklist, consigning to history President George Bush's description of Pyongyang as a member of the "Axis of Evil".

Feral House offers this important and urgent publication of Dennis Kucinich’s Articles of Impeachment this election season in two formats: an offset-printed paperback book available for the cost of $12 and a free downloadable PDF available below.

You won't see this on any American evening news programs. Nothing happening here folks. Everything is fine. Keep shopping. Contribute to your 401k. Don't question authority. The Bailout is good for you.

UCLA scientists have found that for computer-savvy middle-aged and older adults, searching the Internet triggers key centers in the brain that control decision-making and complex reasoning. The findings demonstrate that Web search activity may help stimulate and possibly improve brain function.

No matter whether you're talking elephants or bacteria, a new study proposes that, pound for pound, all living things' at-rest metabolisms use similar amounts of energy. Though living things vary greatly in complexity and size, their energy usage falls between 3 and 90 watts per kilogram of biomass. For comparison, a MacBook Pro is supposed to draw about 12 watts when operating from its battery.

We first saw a production version of the lilliputian runabout at the Geneva Auto Show in March, at which point Toyota told us the car was designed for the Japanese and European markets and would not be coming to the states. But Motor Trend, citing unidentified sources, says the iQ is coming to America, albeit as a Scion, and we'll see it next month at the Los Angeles auto show.

Sea otters sleep holding hands.

Afshin Rattansi & Max Keiser on Goldman Sachs & Toilet Paper. Afshin Rattansi in Tehran talks to Max Keiser in Paris about the end of Wall Street, dollars and toilet paper - and Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs no longer being investment bank.

US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson signaled a significant shift in the plan to turn over hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to Wall Street, announcing Friday that the Bush administration will invest funds directly in financial institutions, rather than buying mortgage-backed securities. The Real News Network: Worst week ever on world markets (Video). TimesOnline: IMF warns that markets could collapse by another 20%. Anti-Neocons: Guys who got the economy Right. Lew Rockwell: The Depression Reader: Learn About the Great Depression II.

The Pentagon has reportedly proposed a $450 billion increase in the military budget in a move believed to be in preparation for a war. The new military budget estimate for the next five years is expected to be revealed shortly before President George W. Bush leaves office in January 2009.

It was revealed last Tuesday at a congressional hearing that a week after the government bailed out insurance giant AIG to the tune of $85 billion, the company hosted its top life insurance agents at the luxury St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach, California. There they ran up a bill of over $443,000 that included $200,000 for rooms, $150,000 for catered banquets, $23,000 for the spa and nearly $7,000 in golfing fees.

Heating costs for the coming winter in the US are expected to increase significantly, threatening working class families already facing precarious economic conditions. With ongoing layoffs, stagnating wages, declines in savings and home values and increasing consumer prices, many households will be hard-pressed to keep their families warm.

US troops are back home in America to wage war upon the people of the US. New laws make public dissent of any kind --however peaceful --an act of 'terrorism'. Congress was threatened with martial law, literally blackmailed, into passing the infamous and ineffective bailout! The threat of martial law, therefore, is not only in the official record, it is made clear with the arrival of US troops withdrawn from Iraq to patrol US streets, control crowds, deal with 'civil unrest'. Bluntly --they are here to wage war on you unless you happen to be among the one percent who owns more than 90 percent of the nation's total wealth. Index Research: U.S. Martial Law Timeline. Online Journal: FEMA sources confirm coming martial law.

In an exclusive interview with The Times newspaper in Baghdad, al-Maliki said British troops should leave the country because as a fighting force they were no longer needed to maintain security and control. Talking about the role of British non combat troops in training the Iraqi army, Maliki said that “There might be a need for their experience in training and some technological issues, but as a fighting force, I don't think that is necessary.”

Osama bin Laden is dead. The news first came from sources in Afghanistan and Pakistan almost six months ago: the fugitive died in December [2001] and was buried in the mountains of southeast Afghanistan. Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, echoed the information. The remnants of Osama's gang, however, have mostly stayed silent, either to keep Osama's ghost alive or because they have no means of communication.

The events of September 11, 2001 have spawned their fair share of these ludicrous fairy tales. And as always, there is - sadly - a small but gullible percentage of the population eager to lap up these tall tales, regardless of facts or rational analysis. One of the wilder stories circulating about September 11, and one that has attracted something of a cult following amongst conspiracy buffs is that it was carried out by 19 fanatical Arab hijackers, masterminded by an evil genius named Osama bin Laden, with no apparent motivation other than that they "hate our freedoms."

After years of testing, the Active Denial System -- the pain ray which drives off rioters with a microwave-like beam -- could finally have its day. The Army is buying five of the truck-mounted systems for $25 million. But the energy weapon may face new hurdles, before it's shipped off to the battlefield; a new report details how the supposedly non-lethal blaster could be turned into a flesh-frying killer. The People's Voice: WHAT IS THE SECRET KILLING WEAPON IN IRAQ? (Video)

In recent weeks, Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) rallies have become increasingly hostile and divisive. Supporters have called Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) a “traitor,” yelled “off with his head,” and accused him of being a “terrorist.” After Obama criticized the McCain campaign for “riling up a crowd by stoking anger and division,” McCain adviser Nicolle Wallace attacked Obama for “insulting” their supporters.

A feisty debate between Robert Fisk and the author Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman brought The Independent Woodstock Literary Festival to a close on a high note last night. The absence of a debate on the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians in the US presidential elections was "shocking", Fisk told a packed hall at Blenheim Palace, the grand 18th-century home in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, which hosted the festival. "America must pull its military forces out of Iraq and the Middle East, leaving the peoples of the region to decide their own future."

"I certify to you that, with the help of God, we shall powerfully enter into your country and shall make war against you in all ways and manners that we can, and shall subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church and of Their Highnesses. We shall take you and your wives and your children, and shall make slaves of them, and as such shall sell and dispose of them as Their Highnesses may command. And we shall take your goods, and shall do you all the mischief and damage that we can, as to vassals who do not obey and refuse to receive their lord and resist and contradict him." WUFYS: Columbus the Jew by B'nai B'rith, 1926.

Two Capitulating "Leaders" Coordinating Capitulating Some More. Remember Annapolis? Syria Was There Too.

Time to Face Facts in Afghanistan: For those who savor historical irony, the Soviet Empire collapsed in the years 1989–1991 because of an implosion of its economy brought on by a ruinous arms race with the United States and the heavy costs of occupying Afghanistan. Seventeen years later came the turn of the world’s other great imperial power, the United States. Lethally bloated by runaway debt, and burdened by 50% of the world’s military spending, the house of cards known as the US economy finally collapsed.

Sarah Palin is the new star on the U.S. political scene, but the secret of her success borrows heavily from the man currently in charge, says John Bourke, political analyst for RT.

Who would make a better president — a man with more than 30 years of experience in Congress or one with about six? If you chose the latter, congratulations: You've elected James Buchanan, one of the least popular presidents in U.S. history, over Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Now, he is easily angered by hecklers, and makes factual mistakes and racial slurs while aggressively defending his wife’s campaign for presidency. Everyone sees his mental and emotional decline, yet to date, no medical professionals have spoken out about the cause or offered help. Not a single one—not one bypass surgeon, cardiologist or psychiatrist—has stepped forward in his defense; even though all of them are trained to recognize “post bypass surgery cognitive dysfunction.” One of the best-kept secrets in medicine is the brain damage caused during bypass surgery.

This video was aired on 25. Sept. 2008. Shortly before the Rightist groups surged to a combined 30% of the vote in parliamentary elections last month, with Haider's smaller Alliance for Austria's Future tripling its support to about 12%. Here are some of his words...16 days before he crashed his Phaeton and died. Whale: Assassination by car accidents. Urban Dictionary: Boston Brakes.

This cute chimp isn’t just a primate – she is this baby tiger’s BEST mate. Loving Anjana cradles the white tiger cub after acting as surrogate mother to him and his twin brother. And the two-year-old chimpanzee clearly isn’t monkeying around, she has also raised LEOPARDS and LIONS.

Guys, if you're trying to lay blame for your pitiful mid-life crisis, some good news: Scientists have found that premature ejaculation is not all in your head. In fact, the propensity is genetically determined. Neuro-psychiatrist Marcel Waldinger and pharmacological researcher Paddy Janssen at Utrecht University studied 89 Dutch men who always suffer this problem, plus a control group of 92 men who are able to take their time. The study subjects' female partners actually timed them with stopwatches.

US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson signaled a significant shift in the plan to turn over hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to Wall Street, announcing Friday that the Bush administration will invest funds directly in financial institutions, rather than buying mortgage-backed securities. The change is driven in part by the rapid deterioration of global financial markets, which makes the bailout as initially proposed by Paulson—a complicated process in which banks will offer their toxic securities for purchase by the Treasury in reverse auctions—far too slow to funnel vast amounts of cash into the financial system.

Imagine a country such as Venezuela announced that it was bailing out an investment bank, then just days later said it was nationalizing its mortgage industry, and then just days later that it was bailing out its biggest insurance company, and then just days later its government pledged 700B$ to inject into its failing banks, and then just days later its stock market fell 20%. Would you feel comfortable having your money invested in such a country, in its stock market, in its bond market or in its currency?

Lee Sustar explains why the Group of Seven industrialized countries failed to come up with a coordinated plan to rescue the world economy. THE BIG industrial powers went into the weekend promising an internationally coordinated economic rescue plan--but then announced competing measures instead.

“The basis for optimism is sheer terror.” --Oscar Wilde [After the March 2008 Bear Stears bailout] “As more firms lost access to funding, the vicious circle of forced selling, increased volatility, and higher haircuts and margin calls that was already well advanced at the time would likely have intensified. The broader economy could hardly have remained immune from such severe financial disruptions.” --Ben Bernanke, Fed Chairman (March 2008)

A lethal new threat is emerging at the dark heart of the financial system. We must have a unified global response or an already perilous position will become a calamity

Today our World is staring into the abyss of total economic collapse on a scale unseen since the Great Market Crash of 1929, and which has been succinctly stated by London economic expert Will Hutton who has stated:

The International Monetary Fund has said that the world's financial system is near meltdown. The warning came hours before European leaders began a meeting in the French capital to tackle the deepening financial crisis.

Derivatives at the heart of the crisis, catastrophic losses are inevitable, financial system headed for oblivion, the new world disorder, EU doomed, Credit Default Swaps at the heart of the problem, Plunge Protection Team history, coverups for globalization failures, Bloodbath for the Yen,

World stock markets plummeted Friday, ending a week that saw the biggest collapse in share values since 1929. The looming threat of a world depression provided the backdrop for a meeting of finance ministers from the G7 industrialized countries, who gathered in Washington for emergency talks with US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke. The Real News Network: Worst week ever on world markets (VIDEO).

McCain-Palin refuse to talk about the fact that the US and the world face the biggest economic collapse since the GOP brought you the Great Depression. McCain Palin want to talk about someone Obama might have met when he was eight years old!

Charles Manson prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi has already put away over 100 criminals. Now he has his sights set on his biggest target yet: George W. Bush.

IN THE WORDS OF CHRIS FLOYD: As we've noted here many times before, Arthur Silber is one of the most astute and insightful analysts of our degraded political culture. His is a most rare voice, of clarity, depth and eloquence, in the howling storm of sinister noise that constitutes the national "discourse." Long-time readers here know that Arthur is in low water: his health is very bad, and he struggles with a level of poverty that few of us have ever experienced. Now, in addition to these chronic difficulties, he is facing a dire threat to his main link to the world, and our only link to his insights: his computer. He operates on antiquated equipment that, again, few people would accept these days; but now, even this threadbare system is breaking down. I know these are hard times all around, especially for the kind of people who read this blog, and Arthur's. But if you can give any extra support at all to Arthur -- or get him a better computer somehow -- then I urge you to do so. His passionate commitment to truth and enlightenment is an invaluable resource that we cannot afford to lose, for as long as we can have it. Head on over there now and lend a hand, if you can.

No matter how corrupt and sloppy the establishment press becomes, they always find a way to go lower. Time Magazine has just published what it purports to be a news article by Massimo Calabresi claiming that “nobody cares” about the countless abuses of spying powers by the Bush administration; that “Americans are ready to trade diminished privacy, and protection from search and seizure, in exchange for the promise of increased protection of their physical security”; and that the case against unchecked government surveillance powers “hasn’t convinced the people.” Not a single fact — not one — is cited to support these sweeping, false opinions.

In November 2007 the European Commission submitted a proposal to add three new criminal offences to the 2002 EU Framework Decision on terrorism.1 If agreed by governments, EU countries will be obliged to criminalise “provocation”, “recruitment” and “training” for terrorism. Charges of “recruitment” and “training” will need to show a direct link with terrorist groups or activity (as defined in 2002), but the “provocation” offence is extremely broad, as it does not require a direct encouragement to commit terrorist acts but applies to any statements which create a “danger” of such acts being committed.

Stockmarkets around the world slumped today as fears of a global recession deepened. After Wall Street fell to a five-year low last night, the rout started in Asia, where Singapore slid into recession, and quickly spread to Europe. In London, the FTSE 100 plunged more than 10% in early trading, and the Dow Jones dived nearly 700 points to 7882 shortly after Wall Street opened, a fall of 8%. Both markets later came off their lows, and the FTSE 100 closed almost 9% down an