Mary Shaw

Human rights and civil rights groups are mourning the death of their staunch ally Senator Edward ("Ted") Kennedy.

At its 2008 annual dinner, Human Rights First had honored Senator Kennedy as a lifelong champion of human rights. Upon his death this week, Elisa Massimino, the group's First Chief Executive Officer, shared the following comments:

"Human Rights First mourns the passing of our cherished friend Senator Ted Kennedy, and extends our deepest condolences to his family, his colleagues, and his many friends. Senator Kennedy spent nearly 50 years championing the cause of human rights. He was a voice for the voiceless and a true advocate for the fundamental rights of all people -- Americans, as well as those beyond our shores, including refugees and immigrants, victims of armed conflict, and political prisoners in all corners of the globe. Senator Kennedy's belief in the inherent dignity of all people, combined with his drive to ensure that the United States lived up to its potential to advance that concept at home and throughout the world, animated every battle he fought in his long and distinguished career. We have lost a tireless ally, but the lessons we all learned from him -- about perseverance, principle, and how to make progress towards a world in which all people can live in dignity and freedom -- will ensure that his legacy lasts forever. We will miss him greatly."

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by Jeff Gates

In 2005, the Nobel Prize in Economic Science was awarded to Israeli mathematician and game theory specialist Robert J. Aumann, co-founder of the Center for Rationality at Hebrew University. This Jerusalem resident explains: “the entire school of thought that we have developed here in Israel” has turned “Israel into the leading authority in this field.”

Israeli strategists rely on game theory models to ensure the intended response to staged provocations and manipulated crises. With the use of game theory algorithms, those responses become predictable, even foreseeable—within an acceptable range of probabilities. The waging of war “by way of deception” is now a mathematical discipline.

Such “probabilistic” war planning enables Tel Aviv to deploy serial provocations and well-timed crises as a force multiplier to project Israeli influence worldwide. For a skilled agent provocateur, the target can be a person, a company, an economy, a legislature, a nation or an entire culture—such as Islam. With a well-modeled provocation, the anticipated reaction can even become a powerful weapon in the Israeli arsenal.

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By Emily Spence

Two dialectically opposed, prevailing theories are that large scale events (such as wars, famines, plagues, and so on) shape the course of history and, counterpoised, singular beings (like Napoleon Bonaparte, Henry Ford, Adolf Hitler, Mohandas Gandhi, etc.) do so. This, of course, is like arguing over which came first -- the chicken or the egg, as happenings mold people and people can, largely, direct outcomes. Anyone doubting the interplay need only consider the experiences (including the ones involved in the teaching of parental values) that influenced the life defining choices of Hugo Chávez and George Bush, Jr.

In this vein, the options that individuals elect to take, in an irrevocable fashion, change the way that the future unfolds. Nothing would quite be the same without each and every one of us contributing whatever we foist into the world at large, regardless of whether these affect offspring or create change on some larger scale, as did the decision made by Colonel Paul W. Tibbets, Jr., when he gave the order to release Little Boy from the bowels of Enola Gay.

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by Michel Chossudovsky

"Over the course of the next few months, with the assistance of our partners in the private and public sector and at every level of government, we will move aggressively to prepare the nation for the possibility of a more severe outbreak of the H1N1 virus. We will do all we can to plan for different scenarios. We ask the American people to become actively engaged with their own preparation and prevention. It’s a responsibility we all share." (US Government advisory, flu.gov: Vaccines, Vaccine Allocation and Vaccine Research )

A Worldwide public health emergency is unfolding on an unprecedented scale. 4.9 billion doses of H1N1 swine flu vaccine are envisaged by the World Health Organization (WHO).

A report by President Obama's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology "considers the H1N1 pandemic 'a serious health threat; to the U.S. — not as serious as the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic but worse than the swine flu outbreak of 1976.":

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by Stephen Lendman

In 1962, Michael Harrington's "The Other America" exposed the nation's dark underside enough for John Kennedy to ask his Council of Economic Advisor chairman, Walter Heller, to look into the problem and for Lyndon Johnson to say (on January 8, 1964) that his administration "today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America."

In fact, it was little more than a skirmish that fell way short of addressing the real problem in the world's richest nation. Today it's even greater and increasing exponentially under a president who, unlike Johnson, declared war on the poor and disadvantaged to favor privilege over growing needs and essential social change.

In his book, Harrington wrote:

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Terrence McNally

[An Interview With Benjamin Skinner] The world suffers global recession, enormous inequity, hunger, deforestation, pollution, climate change, nuclear weapons, terrorism, etc. To those who say we’re not really making progress, many might point to the fact that at least we’ve eliminated slavery. -But sadly that is not the truth.

One hundred forty-three years after passage of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and 60 years after Article 4 of the U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Human Rights banned slavery and the slave trade worldwide, there are more slaves than at any time in human history -- 27 million. Today’s slavery focuses on big profits and cheap lives. It is not about owning people like before, but about using them as completely disposable tools for making money.

During the four years that Benjamin Skinner researched modern-day slavery, he posed as a buyer at illegal brothels on several continents, interviewed convicted human traffickers in a Romanian prison and endured giardia, malaria, dengue and a bad motorcycle accident.

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Allen L Roland

Afghanistan is rapidly becoming Obama's waterloo as he accelerates our presence in an unwinnable war that is really an illegal occupation. If I were an Afghan, as I am an American, while a foreign force was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms ! ~ Never! Never! Never! :

This is exactly the same column I wrote almost three years ago, on September 30, 2006 except the title was IRAQI TERRORISTS OR FREEDOM FIGHTERS ? ~ but now it's an illegal occupation of Afghanistan which could well be Barack Obama's waterloo versus Bush's Iraq quagmire.

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by Richard C Cook

On Thursday, April 23 2009, Stephen Zarlenga, director of the American Monetary Institute (AMI), delivered two briefings on Capitol Hill on the American Monetary Act that AMI drafted and that may be introduced as legislation during the current congressional session. This single measure has the potential of bringing together the tens of millions of people who have realized it's our bank-run debt-based monetary system that lies at the center of the financial rot that is destroying our republic and its values.

Attending the briefings were congressional staffers and members of the public. Zarlenga was introduced by Congressman Dennis Kucinich (Democrat, Ohio), who has spoken in favor of wholesale reform of the monetary system on the floor of the US House of Representatives. Kucinich is also sponsor of HR 7260, the "Transparency in the Creation of Wealth Act of 2008". This act would require the Federal Reserve to resume reporting on the quantity of M3 in the economy (mega-money accessible only to large financial institutions), along with several other economic indicators it now keeps to itself, such as total credit market debt and the holding of Federal Reserve notes by foreign interests.

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by William Hughes

“The IDF...acted in violation of basic human values.” - Report of Physicians for Human Rights-Israel. (1)

One must praise the ability of Israel Worshippers to change the subject! As I write, the 1.5 million people of Gaza are barely existing under the heel of a brutal Israeli occupation and its most recent terror-driven siege. From Dec. 27, 2008 to Jan. 18, 2009, in a 22 day rampage, about 1,400 innocent Gazan civilians, many of them children--Christian and Muslim alike--were slaughtered by the IDF. (2) Prior to that blood bath, the population was subjected to and continues to be victimized by an Israeli blockade of vital goods necessary to sustain life. (3) George Galloway, MP, a champion of a “Free Palestine,” put it this way: Gaza is “locked-up!” (4)

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Ayman T. Quader

And every time, she tries to understand what happened to her, she asks herself : what was my fault?, what’s going to happen to me in my tent?

Ilham, 30 years old, a mother of 6 , she lives in Al-atatra district , in the northern part of the Gaza strip. The Israeli war had a huge impact on her, it actually destroyed her house, her parent’s house and killed her brother.

Ilham and her family spent 25 days in one of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency’s schools (UNRWA), to take shelter from phosphorous missiles of death that was chasing all the population of the strip. She was saying: "Israeli armed forces bombarded our house with many missiles, destroyed its walls, set fire in its rooms, and spread darkness all around us (she meant the missiles fumes), to a point that we couldn’t breathe anymore… and after hours, during which we were facing death, the ambulance transported us to the hospital.

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