By: B.A. Brooks

The CDC and many doctors have been warning for years that it is not an issue of “if”, but “when” a major H5N1 Avian Flu outbreak will decimate humanity. A pandemic that would make the 1918 Spanish Flu look small in comparison. Hundreds of thousands of birds have been culled over the past several years in order to stop just such outbreaks from presenting themselves. Today we find ourselves a few months into a major H1N1 Swine Flu global pandemic which according to WHO and The CDC has killed 700 people worldwide to date.

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By Emily Spence

What an enjoyable summer many Americans experienced! Living in their own small air conditioned bubbles, they confirmed that whatever happened in the outside environment could be of little concern. Detached from the natural world, they passed between various cool zones with relative ease and no discomfort.

So for many, did it matter, for instance, that it was the hottest July on record for Wyoming, Montana and Idaho according to the NOAA National Weather Service? Who cared that Boise, Idaho’s average high temperature, a blistering 98.6 degrees F (37 degrees C), was more than nine degrees F (five degrees C) above average so that July 2007 was Boise's hottest month ever documented? What difference did it make that drought conditions worsened in parts of the northern Rockies, northern Plains, Midwest, and mid-Atlantic while more than 5 million parched acres burned in the contiguous U.S. by early August according to the National Interagency Fire Center? So what that August, for the most part, was even worse [1]? Likewise, so it goes relative to the floods, hurricanes, droughts and other weather related extremes being faced in Europe, Australia, Africa, and all other land masses. So what if countless species are slowly being destroyed in the process while a vastly increasing amount of terrain is rendered unusable for any life [2]?

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Gilad Atzmon

There is an old Jewish joke that tells the story of a dying Jewish merchant who calls his son to his sickbed just before he perishes. He tells him, “Listen to me Moisha’le, life is not just about money… you can also do gold and diamonds.”

Monitoring Israeli and Jewish news reveals a devastating fact, it is not ‘just’ about money. It may also be about human organs. A few weeks ago we learned about a ring of American Rabbis who had been arrested in New Jersey upon suspicion of human organs trafficking (amongst many other crimes). Rabbi Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, we read, enticed “vulnerable people to give up a kidney for $10,000 which he would turn around and sell for $160,000." Not too bad, I thought to myself then. We are living in hard times, financial melt down, credit crunch, Wall Street is licking its wounds, the car industry is evaporating. Seemingly, kidney trafficking is still booming.

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by Rita Inklovich

They come in their thousands, waiting up to 36 hours to receive the only free medical care in America from Remote Area Medical, founded to provide basic free medical care in the 'third world' by Englishman/angel Stan Brock, shown holding the megaphone.

I am English (and a dual citizen of England and the United States) and I am increasingly frustrated with the misinformation reported regarding socialized medicine. Several opponents of health care reform--including major conservative radio and TV commentators and several republican politicians--claim that in England major surgery is not given to those over 59. This simply is NOT TRUE!

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by Stephen Lendman

Part II continues Petras' analysis of the global depression, regional wars, and the decline of America's empire.

Obama's Latin American Policy

At all times under all administrations, policy, not rhetoric, defines priorities, and it's no different for Obama. With regards to Latin America and its people, he's been hostile and dismissive by:

-- allocating half a billion dollars "in military and related aid" to aid the right wing Calderon regime and militarizing the US - Mexican border;

-- on the pretext of fighting drugs trafficking and regional security, funding to Mexico and Colombia goes for military purposes; Colombia gets the most - billions under Plan Colombia; economic aid is ignored;

-- beyond the timeline of Petras' book, Hugo Chavez and other regional leaders voiced concern over Washington's intention to supply Colombia with new weapons and technology, continued billions for the hardline "Uribe doctrine," and of greatest concern the plan to access seven new military bases - three airfields, two naval installations, and two army bases besides nine others currently stationing US forces all supplemented by the reactivated Fourth Fleet in April 2008;

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Najwa Sheikh Ahmed

The place where you live and the circumstances surround your daily life force you sometimes to endure great pain that overwhelmed you squash your heart, conquer your mind, and swallow your soul you to the darkest sides in your life. With such feelings, and state of mind you will be standing helplessly, paralyzed, unable to do any thing, or to make any kind of reaction, expect of a voiceless scream that even increases your pain, and leaving you in a great loss of time, place, and even your own humanity.

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Eric Walberg

Georgia is to Russia as Columbia is to Venezuela, and Kaidanow spells trouble, analyses:

War clouds refuse to disperse a year after Georgia waged war against Russia. On the anniversary of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili's ill-fated invasion of South Ossetia 8 August, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev warned: "Georgia does not stop threatening to restore its 'territorial integrity' by force. Armed forces are concentrated at the borders near Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and provocations are committed," including renewed Georgian shelling of the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali.

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by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

In the wake of Bush's utter failures, lies, and crimes, the left-wing, by rights, should be tucking tail and seeking cover! Not so --Rush Limbaugh, to be expected of a crooked idiot has said he hopes Obama fails. Others have picked up the mantra!

It has been my experience in life, journalism and politics that two things among all others makes one miserable: 1) just wanting to stay alive, and 2) wishing failure or hardship upon someone else upon one's on evil, vile motives. My response: the GOP does not deserve to survive as a party, and, secondly, the GOP rise upon the backs of all those people for whom the GOP wish and, in fact, inflicted hardships.

The GOP shares this much with Nazis and other parties totalitarian inclined: the GOP cannot tell the truth and the truth is that it does not represent the electorate but a shrinking elite which amounts --last time I checked --to some 1 percent of the entire population and shrinking. They make up the rest by lying about their real intentions. Even then, they are a minority of about 30 to 40 percent hardcore who share two characteristics:

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Franklin Lamb
Along the Blue Line in South Lebanon

Part II: AIPAC sends in the clowns

Suddenly they were all over the place, arriving not as singles but in battalions. Many, like Maryland’s 5th District Rep. Steny Hoyer had been to Israel nearly a dozen times; career stalwarts once more showing fealty to Israel’s brutal occupation of Palestine while lamely telling their constituents that they were on a legitimate ‘fact finding mission.” For many, their real purpose was to signal their President that there must be no change in the US policy of coddling Israel’s increasingly Apartheid regime.

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By Guy Adams

Some people waited for 36 hours to see the medical staff.

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