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Dangerous coal, neglected lives
Mary Shaw
Last week, 29 workers died as a result of an explosion at a West Virginia coal mine. The mine was owned by Massey Energy.
Apparently, Massey CEO Don Blankenship has a history of putting profits over worker safety by fighting against any kind of regulation, accountability, or labor rights, as Bloomberg News reports:
"Don Blankenship, chief executive officer of Massey Energy Co., has fought with mine regulators, unions, residents of his town and even his personal maid.
"His company regularly appeals fines for safety infractions. He has personally gone into mines to persuade workers to abandon union organizing efforts. Massey is fighting lawsuits that claim it contaminated groundwater in Blankenship’s town. A maid supplied by a company she claimed was a Massey unit was forced to fight all the way to West Virginia's highest court to collect unemployment benefits."
Easy to Avoid Paying Income Tax
Joel S. Hirschhorn
Would you choose being wealthy and paying income tax or making little enough to escape income tax? Americans have a far greater chance of being in the latter group.
Sometimes there are statistics that you really need to meditate on for awhile. They open the door to critical thinking about American society. They shed light on a host of hot political and public policy issues. This is especially true for rich versus poor issues, taxes, justice and equality. First, note the number of households in the United States: now at 115 million, which equates to an average of 2.6 people per household.
Now, think for a few moments and guess the answers to this question: What fraction of households have assets of $1 million or more and what fraction will pay no federal income tax for 2009?
Take a moment, think seriously about what these two fractions might be. To have net assets of $1 million or more certainly signifies people at the top of the economic ladder, but is a far greater number than the superrich, because a million bucks is not what it used to be. A lot of ordinary people seeing themselves as middle class, but making good incomes and probably older, even with lower house values, can have wealth at this level.
Obama's Brave Nuke World
by Stephen Lendman
NPR 2010 says America "reserves the right" to use nuclear weapons...
At the same time the Pentagon issued its new Nuclear Posture Review, Obama officially ordered the murder of a US citizen, Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki - accused of terrorism and an Al Qaeda connection without evidence.
Earlier on February 4, Washington Post writer Ellen Nakashima headlined, "Intelligence chief acknowledges US may target Americans involved in terrorism," saying:
"Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair acknowledged (February 3 in testimony to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence) that government agencies (specifically CIA operatives and Special Forces death squads) may kill US citizens abroad who are involved in terrorist activities if they are 'taking action that threatens Americans," or administration officials say so.
After Peak Oil, Are We Heading Towards Social Collapse?
By Emily Spence
Recently, Glen Sweetnam, director of the International, Economic and Greenhouse Gas division of the Energy Information Administration at the DoE, announced that worldwide oil availability had reached a "plateau". However, his statement was not made known through a major U.S. mainstream media outlet. Instead, it was covered in France's "Le Monde" as follows: article in Le Monde.
One could assume that the U.S. assessment of the oil decline was exposed through this particular publication perhaps due to some arrangement that Barack Obama made with Nicolas Sarkozy. (Maybe it is an indirect way to alert the French while keeping most Americans still in the dark on the topic so that the later bunch can ignorantly carry onward as usual. After all, no unsettling prognosis should disturb their slow return into shopoholic ways that keep the economy, particularly China's on which the U.S. federal government depends for loans, going strong.)
The Peace Pipeline
By: Peter Chamberlin
Obama is a flexible puppet in the empire-builders hands, readily facilitating the decades-old scheme to seize control of the former Soviet satellite nations and all of their vast energy resources. But, unlike Bush and Cheney, he seems to have a strong sense of conscience that is occasionally revealed on his face as a furrowed brow or clenched lips, whenever he is taking another immoral step for Empire, which carries a heavy human toll.
If this guilt for the actions he is taking is real moral guilt and not more stage-acting, then it is his weakness, that could potentially be exploited to compel our President to create actual change. He has a lot of fresh blood on his hands for the decisions he has made so far, but even more because of the ones he has resisted making.
The fresh blood of several hundred Kyrgyz citizens is merely the freshest blood to stain Obama’s hands, wafting upwards into his face, filling his nostrils with the warm stench of mortal wounds. Maybe the disgust he feels can linger in his brain long enough to interfere with his programming.
Reminder
Link* Bush Accused of Tyranny and Murder at Impeachment Hearing July 25, 2008
* The People, the Press, and the Case for Impeachment July 29, 2008
* The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder: An Interview with Vincent Bugliosi - Part 1 Aug. 8, 2008
* Bush, Manson, and the Media Blackout: An Interview with Vincent Bugliosi - Part 2 Aug. 12, 2008
* White Paper Justifying Iraq War Written Three Months Before Intel Report Arrived Aug. 25, 2008
* The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder by Vincent Bugliosi. A Review by Michael Collins * Murder Trumps Torture Says Bugliosi Apr. 9, 2009
How the Right Wing Destroyed America
by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy
The U.S. Supreme Court has decreed: corporations are now people. They have been given rights that only real people had before. Worse --corporations remain 'privileged' in ways that real people could only dream about! Corporations enjoy 'limited liability', a privilege which, in fact, defines them. Corporations are above the law.
Real people meanwhile may be prosecuted for murders and, if found guilty, sentenced and possibly executed. A mere legal abstraction need never fear the hand of justice. They have been made 'people' but very, very privileged people to whom the criminal laws may never be applied. Examples are Exxon with respect to the Exxon Valdez disaster and Dow Chemical, Union Carbide et al with respect to mass deaths at Bhopal.
The Key to the Secret of the Universe
By Robert Singer
"I hope the TPTB accept defeat and are thrown into the Lake of Fire"
I found, according to me, the key to the secret of universe while “wandering into a spiritual area, where I had little knowledge.”
I wrote an essay based on a book by Ian Gurney, the Cassandra Prophesy: “Is Jesus Christ Coming Back to Earth in XXXXIII (2023)?”.
I claim the key to the secret can be found by identifying “the abomination of the desolation” as spoken of by the prophet Daniel in the Greatest Book of Disinformation ever written (The Bible):
THE SHYLOCKS MEET THE FAGINS
BY GILAD ATZMON
Western cultural heritage provides us with a few interesting fictional characters who may be able to throw light on the current moral state of Israel and the latest organ trafficking affair in particular.
In Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice Shylock is a Jewish moneylender, a character who has become a name of the ultimate heartless usurer. In the play Shylock lends money to his Christian rival, Antonio, setting the bond at a pound of Antonio's flesh. Once Antonio fails to pay his loan back, Shylock demands the pound of flesh in return. Though Shylock is just a fictional character, the willingness to attach a price tag to blood or human flesh is rather revealing.
Imprisoning Palestinian Children
by Stephen Lendman
In June 2009, Defence for Children International (DCI)/Palestine Section published a report titled, "Palestine Child Prisoners: The systematic and institutionalized ill-treatment and torture of Palestinian children by Israeli authorities."
DCI/Palestine "is a national section of the international non-government child rights organisation and movement (dedicated) to promoting and protecting the rights of Palestinian children," according to international law principles.
Each year, about 700 West Bank children, under 18, are arrested, detained, interrogated, and prosecuted in Israeli military courts, in total about 6,500 since 2000. DCI lawyers represent 30 - 40% of them. The report focuses on their torture and abuse in custody.
Since the 1967 occupation, an estimated 700,000 Palestinian men, women, and children passed through Israel's judicial system, over 150,000 tried in military courts from 1990 - 2006, the remainder handled through plea bargains for lighter sentences. On average, over 9,000 Palestinians a year are affected, including 700 children treated the same as adults.
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