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The Ever Expanding Empire ON WISCONSIN? Bob_Kincaid chatted Tuesday Let the framing begin! This just arrive from Reince Preibus (whose name still reminds me of something you take for a bowel problem): "tonight's victory is a major win for Republicans across the country and a fantastic sign of things to come in battleground states across the country on November 6th." Well wouldn't you know CPAC did just that! NPR's David Shaper files Conservative Confab Rallies Behind Wisconsin Victory DAVID SCHAPER, BYLINE: There's definitely a buzz of conservative excitement here in President Obama's hometown, or actually just outside of it here at the Rosemont Convention Center near O'Hare Airport, where a couple of thousand of conservative activists have gathered for CPAC Chicago. One of the main reasons for this buzz is what happened earlier this week just about an hour drive north of here in Wisconsin, where Republican Governor Scott Walker easily won reelection, soundly defeating a democratic effort to recall him from office. UGH. BradBlog sums up Tuesday's recall election in WALKER, MOST OTHER REPUBS REPORTEDLY SURVIVE WISCONSIN RECALL ELECTIONS keyword being "reportedly": "It was a great demonstration of democracy, whether you agree or disagree with the outcome," Huffington Post's political reporter Howard Fineman told Ed Schultz on MSNBC late tonight, while discussing the results of the historic Wisconsin recall elections. Fineman's comment is either accurate or it is not. Just as the results reported by the computers across the Badger State are either accurate or not. Who knows? Nobody in WI does, and that's exactly the problem. The early Exit Poll results had reportedly predicted the race between Republican Gov. Scott Walker and Democratic Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett a virtual tie, leading media to plan for a long night tonight. A second round of Exit Polls results, however, was said to have given Walker a broader lead over Barrett. Even so, we were told, the race based on the Exit Poll data alone was still "too close to call." Those data were either accurate or they were not. Of course, the raw, unadjusted Exit Polling data are no longer entrusted to us mere mortals. They can be seen only by members of the mainstream media, and we are simply left to trust them to report it all accurately to us or not. And when, after all, have we not been able to rely on the mainstream media to report everything accurately to us? But never mind the Exit Polls. We've got real polls, real votes, actual ballots now to tell us who won or lost. If only we'd bother to actually count them... Instead, those ballots --- Wisconsin votes on mostly paper ballots --- are tabulated by computer optical-scan systems like the ones in Palm Beach County, FL, which, in March of this year, had named several losing candidates to be the "winners." And like the ones in New York City which, in 2010, managed to toss out thousands of valid votes, including as many as 70% in one South Bronx precinct. And like the ones in Oakland County, Michigan, where officials found the same machines failed to count the same ballots the same way twice in 2008. And like the ones in Leon County, FL, which, in 2005, were hacked to entirely flip the results of a mock election. ...... County-by-county results, at least for the gubernatorial race, can be perused very generally here at Huffington Post. Unfortunately, the state of Wisconsin does not report results for the entire state at any central location, so tracking results and watching for anomalies in each of its 72 counties and thousands of municipalities is exceptionally difficult for both Election Integrity folks and even regular old citizen voters simply trying to oversee their own elections. ...... But, of course, elections should not be about justifying results which may or may not be accurate. They should be about democratic self-governance, in which both participants and observers know the results are accurate. Too many similarly questionable elections led us last year to call for hand-count paper ballot pilot projects to, once and for all, begin moving the life-blood of our system of self-governance --- the vote itself --- to a system in which all stakeholders can know for certain that the tally is accurate and that we truly have the self-governance we pretend to have. That starts with the vote, and it should end with "Democracy's Gold Standard": hand-marked paper ballots, publicly hand-counted at the precincts (or wards, as they call them in Wisconsin), with all citizens, parties, and video cameras observing and with results posted right then and there before any ballots are moved anywhere. It's quick, accurate and a very difficult system to game, at least without a good chance of detection, and it would help put an end to all the questions in election after election, as to whether those announced as the "winners" have actually won. The Nation's John Nichols accepts the unverified results on face value in Recall Campaign Against Scott Walker Fails he failure of the June 5 recall campaign against Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker—while heartbreaking for union families and the great activist movement that developed to oppose the governor and his policies—offers profound lessons not just for Wisconsin, but for progressives who are wrestling with fundamental questions of how to counter corporate and conservative power in the era of Citizens United. Those lessons are daunting, as they suggest that the “money power” that populists and progressives identified a century ago as the greatest threat to democracy is now a force that cannot be easily thwarted, even by determined “people power.” The Wisconsin result—which followed upon a campaign that saw the anti-labor governor vastly outspend Democratic challenger Tom Barrett, thanks to the tens of millions of dollars that Walker’s billionaire backers flooded the state with—should send up red flags for Democrats as they prepare for this fall’s presidential and Congressional elections. But the quick calculus that says organized money always beats organized people misses the fact that those who sought to depose Walker made mistakes. They were also let down by national Democratic players who never quite recognized the importance of the race, while the Republican National Committee and “independent” groups on the right were deeply involved, testing and perfecting strategies for November. ..... The Wisconsin results say that big money matters more—perhaps much more—now than it ever has. Many of Mitt Romney’s backers celebrated Walker’s win as a message that would resonate nationally (in fact, it may not even resonate in Wisconsin, as exit polls showed Obama leading Romney by a significant margin among voters who re-elected Walker). But that does not have to be the end of the story. “Democrats don’t have to have as much money as Republicans to compete in campaigns,” insists State Representative Fred Kessler, a Democrat who has been running campaigns for fifty years. “What they have to do is figure out how to spend the money they have in a way that counters the big money.” “You can’t spend all your money on television. You’ve got to spend it on the ground,” says Congresswoman Gwen Moore, a Democrat from Milwaukee, which saw a significant increase in African-American turnout from 2010. “That’s the most important thing to take away from Wisconsin…. Even if it wasn’t quite enough, people have to realize that’s where you begin. That’s how you build the base for winning next time.” And there has to be a next time...... Watch DN! below for an interview with John Nichols.
In a long read Paul Craig Roberts explains the Collapse At Hand Ever since the beginning of the financial crisis and quantitative easing, the question has been before us: How can the Federal Reserve maintain zero interest rates for banks and negative real interest rates for savers and bond holders when the US government is adding $1.5 trillion to the national debt every year via its budget deficits? Not long ago the Fed announced that it was going to continue this policy for another 2 or 3 years. Indeed, the Fed is locked into the policy. Without the artificially low interest rates, the debt service on the national debt would be so large that it would raise questions about the US Treasury’s credit rating and the viability of the dollar, and the trillions of dollars in Interest Rate Swaps and other derivatives would come unglued. In other words, financial deregulation leading to Wall Street’s gambles, the US government’s decision to bail out the banks and to keep them afloat, and the Federal Reserve’s zero interest rate policy have put the economic future of the US and its currency in an untenable and dangerous position. It will not be possible to continue to flood the bond markets with $1.5 trillion in new issues each year when the interest rate on the bonds is less than the rate of inflation. Everyone who purchases a Treasury bond is purchasing a depreciating asset. Moreover, the capital risk of investing in Treasuries is very high. The low interest rate means that the price paid for the bond is very high. A rise in interest rates, which must come sooner or later, will collapse the price of the bonds and inflict capital losses on bond holders, both domestic and foreign. he question is: when is sooner or later? The purpose of this article is to examine that question. Let us begin by answering the question: how has such an untenable policy managed to last this long? A number of factors are contributing to the stability of the dollar and the bond market. A very important factor is the situation in Europe. There are real problems there as well, and the financial press keeps our focus on Greece, Europe, and the euro. Will Greece exit the European Union or be kicked out? Will the sovereign debt problem spread to Spain, Italy, and essentially everywhere except for Germany and the Netherlands? Will it be the end of the EU and the euro? These are all very dramatic questions that keep focus off the American situation, which is probably even worse...... Unlike Japan, whose national debt is the largest of all, Americans do not own their own public debt. Much of US debt is owned abroad, especially by China, Japan, and OPEC, the oil exporting countries. This places the US economy in foreign hands. If China, for example, were to find itself unduly provoked by Washington, China could dump up to $2 trillion in US dollar-dominated assets on world markets. All sorts of prices would collapse, and the Fed would have to rapidly create the money to buy up the Chinese dumping of dollar-denominated financial instruments. The dollars printed to purchase the dumped Chinese holdings of US dollar assets would expand the supply of dollars in currency markets and drive down the dollar exchange rate. The Fed, lacking foreign currencies with which to buy up the dollars would have to appeal for currency swaps to sovereign debt-troubled Europe for euros, to Russia, surrounded by the US missile system, for rubles, to Japan, a country over its head in American commitment, for yen, in order to buy up the dollars with euros, rubles, and yen......However, for China, for example, to dump its dollar holdings all at once would be costly as the value of the dollar-denominated assets would decline as they dumped them. Unless China is faced with US military attack and needs to defang the aggressor, China as a rational economic actor would prefer to slowly exit the US dollar. Neither do Japan, Europe, nor OPEC wish to destroy their own accumulated wealth from America’s trade deficits by dumping dollars, but the indications are that they all wish to exit their dollar holdings. Unlike the US financial press, the foreigners who hold dollar assets look at the annual US budget and trade deficits, look at the sinking US economy, look at Wall Street’s uncovered gambling bets, look at the war plans of the delusional hegemon and conclude: “I’ve got to carefully get out of this.”.... YIKES! Speaking of PROVOCATIVE...
As empires begin to collapse they become even more confident of their superiority, blind to the impending doom they will suffer, and reach out even further from their base to try to exert their diminishing influence. So is it any surprise LEON PANETTA is making the rounds to the Pacific Rim nations expressing belicose and provocative statements?
Rick Rozoff explains AMERICA THREATENS CHINA: Pentagon Prepares for Confrontation in the Asia-Pacific Region In January of this year the three officials in charge of U.S. global military strategy and operations - commander-in- chief President Barack Obama, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey - unveiled the 2012 Defense Strategic Guidance, entitled “Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense,” which officially confirmed American plans to increase its military presence in the Asia-Pacific region to counter China, now the world's second-largest economy. Alternately referred to as rebalancing, reemphasis, refocusing and a pivot away from Europe and toward the Asia-Pacific and the Middle East, the new doctrine reflects the past twenty years' consolidation of U.S. military and political control of Europe through the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the subjugation of North Africa and the Middle East except for, at least for the present, Syria and Iran through the creation of U.S. Africa Command, NATO's Mediterranean Dialogue and Istanbul Cooperation Initiative military partnerships and its ten-and-a-half- year-old Operation Active Endeavor in the Mediterranean, and the wars against Iraq and Libya. Having not so much neutralized opposition - there were no effective challengers to U.S. geopolitical hegemony in the indicated areas - as eliminated remaining pockets of independence and nonalignment (Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya), the Pentagon and its allies are free to move against China, having already surrounded Russia through NATO expansion and partnerships from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, the South Caucasus to Central Asia, the Arctic Ocean to Mongolia. On June 1 Pentagon chief Panetta spoke at the eleventh annual Shangri-La Dialogue defense summit in Singapore, where the U.S. has recently gained basing rights for its warships, and reiterated plans to expand, tighten and integrate its alliances with defense treaty partners in the Asia-Pacific: Australia, Japan, New Zealand, the Philippines, South Korea and Thailand. (Taiwan is practically if not formally in that category.) As the Defense Department's news agency, American Forces Press Service, reported, Panetta emphasized that "Defense policy in the region calls for the U.S. military to expand military-to- military relationships well beyond the traditional treaty allies." The allusion is to the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam and Thailand) not already included in bilateral military alliances with Washington as well as new partners like Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Mongolia, Tonga and others supplying troops or transit bases for the U.S.-NATO war in Afghanistan. An old ally, Pakistan, and newly acquired ones, India and Bangladesh, are also within the Pentagon's purview. In the past few years the U.S. has pulled Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) members Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam into its political-military orbit and expanded partnerships with Malaysia and Singapore, which have troops serving under NATO command in Afghanistan along with Australia, Mongolia, New Zealand, South Korea and Tonga. Panetta's comments in Singapore included the following: "By 2020, the Navy will reposture its forces from today’s roughly 50/50 split between the Atlantic and Pacific to about a 60/40 split between those oceans - including six aircraft carriers, a majority of our cruisers, destroyers, littoral combat ships and submarines.” To appreciate the scale of what that redeployment portends, it's worth noting the unprecedented and unparalleled military capacity the U.S. has built from the end of World War II to the present, in the process establishing the first and only global military force. Read on to get a grip on how big PACOM is! And with the "withdrawal" of troops from Iraq (and soon Afghanistan) the U.S. military seems to need some more places to send troops into harm's way, not just PACOM but SOUTHCOM who claims SOUTHCOM´s Area of Responsibility includes: The land mass of Latin America south of Mexico; The waters adjacent to Central and South America; The Caribbean Sea ... about one-sixth of the landmass of the world assigned to regional unified commands! See this Unified Combatant Commands map. SOUTHCOM's latest adventure? Drug interdiction: The U.S. wades more deeply into Honduras (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) .... The U.S. Central American Regional Security Initiative, focused on security and the interdiction of drug trafficking in countries of that region -- Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama -- put $107 million into Honduras in 2011. Under jurisdiction of the military's Southern Command, headquartered in Miami, the United States has built three new forward operating bases in Honduras. U.S. officials have said that, with the Iraq War finished and the Afghanistan War winding down, more attention and money can be devoted to the war on drugs in Central America. That effort, with military, law enforcement and development components, complements U.S. companies' involvement in the region, including the traditional banana producers, Dole and Chiquita. One problem with increased U.S. involvement, apart from the futility of an effort to keep drugs out of the United States by trying to shut off transit points, is the nature of the Honduran government. President Porfirio Lobo came to power in controversial elections held after a coup by Honduran security forces in 2009, which overthrew a democratically elected president. Those same security forces, Mr. Lobo's base, are now said to be tangled up with the country's drug traffickers. To Americans of a certain age, the picture of U.S. drug advisers, flying in State Department helicopters and operating in a small jungle country in support of the corrupt security forces of a questionable president, is all too familiar. It is also entirely inappropriate, particularly as innocent civilians die as a result of their work.
John Glaser at AntiWar.com has more Despite Bloody Failures, US Doubling Down on Drug War After U.S. Drug Enforcement agents killed several innocent Honduran civilians in a botched raid earlier this month, some expected drug war efforts in Central America would relent. But American intervention has doubled down. ..... But the drug war, as fought by Washington, also has other negative corollaries. The Obama administration chose to support the illegal military coup in Honduras in 2009, which ousted democratically elected Jose Manuel Zelaya. The coup leaders
continued to receive U.S. aid as American military and DEA presence in the country began to expand. This began a descent into what Dana Frank, professor of history at the University of California,
called “a human rights and security abyss.” Washington’s efforts to clamp down on drug enforcement in Mexico led President Calderon to militarize the conflict, which ended up causing the deaths of about 50,000 in a matter of years. The State Department’s own
report on human rights said this month that U.S.-trained security forces in Mexico have “engaged in unlawful killings, forced disappearances, and instances of physical abuse and torture” in the U.S.-led war on drugs. “We have seen over the years that whenever the military interfaces with the populace, incidents of human rights abuses go way up,” said George Withers, a senior fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America. “We’re concerned that the U.S. is encouraging the use of the military for police work.” So the U.S. is doubling down on its drug war in Central America, even though these efforts are a proven failure which have consistently brought havoc on the innocent populations in the region. But apparently they’ve got to do something with all the money being freed up from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan winding down.
Tom Burghardt reports from GlobalResearch.ca NARCOTICS: CIA-Pentagon Death Squads and Mexico's 'War on Drugs" .... Although little explored by corporate media, the CIA and Defense Department's role in escalating violence across Mexico is part of a long-standing strategy by American policy planners to deploy what the late Col. L. Fletcher Prouty called The Secret Team, "skilled professionals under the direct control of someone higher up." According to Prouty, "Team members are like lawyers and agents, they work for someone. They generally do not plan their work. They do what their client tells them to do." In the context of the misbegotten "War on Drugs," that "client" is the U.S. government and the nexus of bent banks, crooked cops, shady airplane brokers, chemical manufacturers, and spooky defense and surveillance firms who all profit from the chaos they help sustain. As Narco NewsNarco News disclosed last summer, "A small but growing proxy war is underway in Mexico pitting US-assisted assassin teams composed of elite Mexican special operations soldiers against the leadership of an emerging cadre of independent drug organizations that are far more ruthless than the old-guard Mexican 'cartels' that gave birth to them." "These Mexican assassin teams now in the field for at least half a year, sources tell Narco News, are supported by a sophisticated US intelligence network composed of CIA and civilian US military operatives as well as covert special-forces soldiers under Pentagon command--which are helping to identify targets for the Mexican hit teams." "So it should be no surprise," Bill Conroy wrote, "that information is now surfacing from reliable sources indicating that the US government is once again employing a long-running counter-insurgency strategy that has been pulled off the shelf and deployed in conflicts dating back to Vietnam in the 1960s, in Latin America in the 1980s and 1990s, and beyond, and in more recent conflicts, such as in Iraq." That strategy, as numerous journalists and researchers have reported, provides specialized training and heavy-weapons to neocolonial clients that the imperial Godfather believes will do their bidding. More often than not however, there are serious consequences for doing so. ..... While the implications of these policies may be scandalous to the average citizen, they're part of a recurring pattern, one might even say a modus operandi reproduced ad nauseam. More than three decades ago we learned from Danish journalist Henrik Krüger in The Great Heroin Coup, that the CIA was at the center of the "remarkable shift from Marseilles (Corsican) to Southeast Asian and Mexican (Mafia) heroin in the United States," and that the legendary take-down of the "French Connection" actually represented "a deliberate move to reconstruct and redirect the heroin trade... not to eliminate it." (emphasis added) A similar process is underway in Mexico today as drug distribution networks battle it out for control over the multibillion dollar market flooding Europe and North America with processed cocaine from South America's fabled Crystal Triangle. In fact, the illicit trade would be nigh impossible without official complicity and corruption, on both sides of the border, and at the highest levels of what sociologist C. Wright Mills called the Power Elite. Without batting an eye however, the Times told us that the arrest of Mexico's top "drug fighting" generals "is sure to rattle American law enforcement and military officers, who in the best of times often work warily with their Mexican counterparts, typically subjecting them to screening for any criminal ties." Really? Not if a U.S. Army Special Operations Forces Field Manual (FM 3-05.130), titled Unconventional Warfare, serves as a guide for the Pentagon's current strategic thinking on the conflict in Mexico. Published in 2008 by WikiLeaks, the anonymous authors informed us that:
- Irregulars, or irregular forces, are individuals or groups of individuals who are not members of a regular armed force, police, or other internal security force. They are usually nonstate-sponsored and unconstrained by sovereign nation legalities and boundaries. These forces may include, but are not limited to, specific paramilitary forces, contractors, individuals, businesses, foreign political organizations, resistance or insurgent organizations, expatriates, transnational terrorism adversaries, disillusioned transnational terrorism members, black marketers, and other social or political "undesirables." (Unconventional Warfare, p. 1-3)
VIDEO Jeremy Scahill on Global Research TV Women and Children Murdered on Orders of President Obama (Source: Up with Chris Hayes - 05:35) Barack Obama has personally ordered mass murder in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and beyond, in his policy of illegal and immoral assassination which far outstrips that of the George W. Bush administration, and which has slaughtered hundreds of innocent civilians, including many women and children. Journalist Jeremy Scahill says it is creating a new generation of anti-American militants in the countries of the victims which will result in future in 'blowback' attacks on the United States. Good thing we have a Nobel Peace Prize President, eh?
At the Huffington Post Robert Reich explains The Big-Lie Coup d'Etat JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, BP, Chevron, WalMart, and billionaires Charles and David Koch are launching a multi-million dollar TV ad buy Tuesday blasting President Obama over the national debt. Actually, I don't know who's behind this ad because there's no way to know. And that's a big problem. The front group for the ad is Crossroads GPS, the sister organization to the super PAC American Crossroads run by Republican political operative Karl Rove. Because Crossroads GPS is a tax-exempt nonprofit group, it can spend unlimited money on politics -- and it doesn't have to reveal where it gets the dough. By law, all it has to do is spend most of the money on policy "issues," which is a fig leaf for partisan politics. Here's what counts as an issue ad, as opposed to a partisan one. The narrator in the ad Crossroads GPS is launching solemnly intones: "In 2008, Barack Obama said, 'We can't mortgage our children's future on a mountain of debt.' Now he's adding $4 billion in debt every day, borrowing from China for his spending. Every second, growing our debt faster than our economy," he continues. "Tell Obama, stop the spending." This is a bald-faced lie, by the way. Obama isn't adding to the debt every day. The debt is growing because of obligations entered into long ago, many under George W. Bush -- including two giant tax cuts that went mostly to the very wealthy that were supposed to be temporary and which are still going, courtesy of Republican blackmail over raising the debt limit. In realty, government spending as a portion of GDP keeps dropping. As I said, I don't know who's financing this big lie but there's good reason to think it's some combination of Wall Street, big corporations, and the billionaire Koch brothers. ....... How can it be that big corporations and billionaires will be spending unlimited amounts on big lies like this one, without any accountability because no one will know where the money is coming from? Blame a majority of the Supreme Court in its grotesque 2010 Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission decision -- as well as the IRS for lax enforcement that lets political front groups like Crossroads GPS or the U.S. Chamber of Commerce pretend they're not political. But you might also blame something deeper, more sinister. I'm not a conspiracy theorist (you can't have served in Washington and seriously believe more than two people can hold on to a big story without it leaking), but I fear that at least since 2010 we've been witnessing a quiet, slow-motion coup d'etat whose purpose is to repeal every bit of progressive legislation since the New Deal and entrench the privileged positions of the wealthy and powerful -- who haven't been as wealthy or as powerful since the Gilded Age of the late 19th century. Its technique is to inundate America with a few big lies, told over and over (the debt is Obama's fault and it's out of control; corporations and the very rich are the "job creators" that need tax cuts; government is the enemy, and its regulations are strangling the private sector; unions are bad; and so on), and tell them so often they're taken as fact. Then having convinced enough Americans that these lies are true, take over the White House, Congress, and remaining states that haven't yet succumbed to the regressive right (witness Tuesday's recall election in Wisconsin). I desperately hope I'm wrong, but there's growing evidence I may be right. With the hidden circuitous path money takes, from the uncountable Super PACs to the teevee owners' bank accounts to the populace's eyeballs Bob might just not grasp the whole of it. We're reminded of Joseph Goebbels and his prescient quote:
- “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
- Why Democrats shouldn't fear Mitt Romney's money. Salon
- A House subcommittee votes to block funding for a FCC initiative to disclose TV political ad spending. Sunlight Foundation
- As big money pours into elections, states' campaign finance transparency is lacking. StateIntegrity.org
- Ben & Jerry's cofounder Ben Cohen and anti-Citizens United activists launch campaign to stamp dollar bills with messages like "money is not speech." MovetoAmend.org
Monday, June 4, 2012
- Heba Morayef, Human Rights Watch @ Democracy NOW! Mubarak Sentenced to Life Term in Egypt, But Protests Erupt as Sons, Aides Avoid Convictions
- Norman Finkelstein @ Democracy NOW! Norman Finkelstein: Waning Jewish American Support for Israel Boosts Chances for Middle East Peace & Norman Finkelstein on the Role of BDS & Why Obama Doesn’t Believe His Own Words on Israel-Palestine
- Chris Woods, Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London @ Democracy NOW! As U.S. Escalates Pakistan Drone Strikes, Expansive "Kill List" Stirs Fears of Worse Civilian Toll
- Jan Karski, Polish resistance fighter, interviewed by Andrew Leslie Phillips in 1986 @ Democracy NOW! Polish Resistance Figure Jan Karski, Honored with Posthumous Medal of Freedom, in His Own Words
- Robert Kraig & Richard Esenberg @ Democracy NOW! Wisconsin Recall: As Voters Head to Polls, a Debate on Walker’s Record, Election Spending and Unions
- John Nichols @ Democracy NOW! Walker Survives Wisconsin Recall After GOP, Corporate Backers Rally and Dems Stay on Sidelines
- Joseph Stiglitz @ Democracy NOW! Joseph Stiglitz on "The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future" AND Joseph Stiglitz on Occupy Wall Street & Why U.S.-Europe Austerity Will Only Weaken Economic Recovery
- Jamel Mims, member of the Stop Mass Incarceration Network & Dr. Ben Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP@ Democracy NOW! Resistance to NYPD’s Stop-and-Frisk Comes to D.C. as Lawmakers, Groups Urge Justice Dept. Probe
- Glenn Katon, legal director for the group Muslim Advocates @ Democracy NOW! Muslim Group Files Landmark Suit Challenging NYPD Surveillance in Northeast
- Palestinian Emad Burnat & Isaeli Guy Davidi co-directors of 5 Broken Cameras @ Democracy NOW! 5 Broken Cameras: Home Videos Evolve into Stirring Film on Palestinian Resistance to Israeli Wall
- Kevin Gosztola @ Democracy NOW! Ahead of September Trial, Bradley Manning Seeks Withheld Gov’t Evidence and Dismissal of 10 Charges
- Denver Nicks @ Democracy NOW! "Private": Bradley Manning’s Story, From Difficult Childhood to Alleged Whistleblower on World Stage
- Palestinian Emad Burnat & Isaeli Guy Davidi @ Democracy NOW! Part 2: Acclaimed New Film "5 Broken Cameras" Captures Palestinian Village’s Nonviolent Resistance
»»» GRITtv @ www.grittv.org with Laura Flanders
»»» FEATURED SHOW Do We Need A Coming-Out Movement for the Poor? Is poverty such a problem in the US because poverty alleviation programs don't work, or because we have too many low-wage jobs? Peter Edelman of Georgetown University Law Center joins Laura Flanders to explain how we became a nation that fails to help its most needy citizens, what can be done and his new book, So Rich So Poor.
BRICK TEEVEE SPORT!©
»»» NASCAR TNT It's the Pocono 400 on the 2.5-mile tri-oval! Coverage begins at 12:00 pm et
»»» MLB Sunday TBS Interleague Play! Mets @ Yankees 1 pm et
»»» MLB Sunday Night ESPN2 Tigers @ Reds 8 pm et
»»» MLB Monday Night ESPN Red Sox @ Marlins 7 pm et
»»» MLB Wednesday Night ESPN Yankees @ Braves 7 pm et
»»» NBA FINALS on ABC Game 1 Sunday Heat @ Thunder 9 pm et
BRICK TEEVEE ACTION!©
The 1st Amendment is Our Permit Our permit to occupy is The First Amendment. Quickly sign the following statement which will be delivered to mayors, police chiefs and major media across the country:
- Our permit to occupy public squares and parks is in The First Amendment, which affirms "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." When people across the Middle East occupied public squares, leaders in Washington mostly cheered those protesters and warned Middle Eastern governments not to use force to clear them. Those other societies don’t have a First Amendment. Yet Washington affirmed the universal right to assembly and protest. We do have a First Amendment. The force being used to clear nonviolent protesters from public squares in our country is unacceptable. It must stop.
- Please SIGN THE PETITION in support of the "99%'s Deficit Proposal" and plan direct actions to tell the Super Committee that the 99% have better solutions to our nation's crises. You can plan your own action at your Congressmember's office or join us in Freedom Plaza in Washington, DC for marches to Capitol Hill. Check our calendar for announcements.
NET NEUTRALITY! SaveTheInternet.org A Push for Privacy in the Wake of the Carrier IQ Controversy Remember Carrier IQ, the company that makes the secret spying software that’s installed on more than 140 million phones? You know, the software that can record our most sensitive personal data? ... Thanks in part to the 22,000 people who joined Free Press’ call for a congressional investigation, some of those questions are closer to being answered and mobile users are closer to being protected. The protection comes in the form of a bill from Massachusetts Rep. Ed Markey. Markey released a draft of a bill called the "Mobile Device Privacy Act" that would require phone companies to disclose to users just what is being done with all of their data. If the bill passes, an opt-out provision would go into effect a year later and would require companies to allow users to opt out of data-collection schemes like the one developed by Carrier IQ........
CAMPAIGN FOR AMERICA'S FUTURE American Majority Rejects Washington Austerity Consensus – And We Demand Media Coverage by Roger Hickey, President, Campaign for America's Future: No more silent majority. The Campaign for America’s Future is joining with the Center for Economic and Policy Research (whose Co-Director, Dean Baker blogs regularly about economic bias in the media) and with FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) to monitor the media’s coverage and representation of the American Majority views as they go into covering the big deficit fight. But we want to enlist YOU too. Send us accounts of unbalanced coverage in the national media and in your local newspapers and television. Call up reporters, editors, assignment people and tell them when they are under-representing the views of the American Majority. We should have at least half the experts, pundits, quotes and real people represented in their coverage. In a debate as important as the one we are going into, we can’t allow the media to ignore the American Majority. Much more at www.ourfuture.org
MOVE TO AMEND! www.movetoamend.org SIGN HERE NOW! Also visit Rep Alan Grayson's site www.savedemocracy.net And Alan Grayson is running again in FL-8! Help out at CongressmanWithGuts.com
SUPPORT THE TROOPS WHO REFUSE TO FIGHT See CourageToResist.org and Bradley Manning Support Network
UPDATE! Michael Ratner on ANTIWAR RADIO Michael Ratner May 2, 2012: Michael Ratner, President Emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights, discusses his article “Bradley Manning: a show trial of state secrecy;” Manning’s quasi-public trial (which is open to observation, yet vital evidence and court documents are withheld from the media and public); why the NY Times is just as guilty of “aiding the enemy” as Manning and WikiLeaks; how President Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta made a fair trial impossible; and how you can support Bradley Manning in his time of need.
DONATE YOUR OLD CELL PHONES TO T.J. MARTELL FOUNDATIONHelp save lives. Donate your old & used iPhone, Blackberries, Droid and other phones to help the T.J. Martell Foundations fund life-saving cancer & AIDS research. For more information, go to www.tjmartellfoundation.org
CELLULAR PHONE TASK FORCE EDUCATION, ADVOCACY, SUPPORT at CellPhoneTaskForce.org The Cellular Phone Task Force is dedicated to halting the expansion of wireless technology because it cannot be made safe. We provide: education to the public concerning electromagnetic pollution (electrosmog); advocacy for an electromagnetically cleaner environment; support for individuals disabled by radiation from wireless technology and other sources.
B R I C K T E E V E E
image ©2006 arkysue
THEY report. YOU throw bricks. ©
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The essential guide for watching government propaganda
IRAQ: 4,486 US Military Dead as of April 21, 2012
AFGHANISTAN: 2,003 US Military Dead as of June 7, 2012
The Obameter: Tracking Obama's Campaign Promises
Considering Democracy: 8 Things to ask your Representative
- This Week (ABC) anchor George Stephanopoulos with Jake Tapper subbing
• Fact Checking ABC's "This Week" at NPR "On the Media" - Jake Tapper, interim host of ABC's "This Week," liked the idea of fact-checking his guests' comments, so he set up a partnership with Politifact, a non-partisan fact-checking organization. See Politifact Statements ABC News 'This Week'
• Obama campaign senior adviser David Axelrod
• former Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum
• ROUNDTABLE: former Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, former Republican Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Ann Coulter and Van Jones.
- Face The Nation (CBS) Host Bob Schiefer
• Wisconsin's Republican Gov. Scott Walker
• Gov. Martin O'Malley, D-Md.
• AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka
• Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward
• ROUNDTABLE: John Dickerson and Norah O'Donnell
- 60 Minutes (CBS)
• Defense Secretary Panetta - He's balanced the budget, run the CIA and eliminated Osama bin Laden. Now, Leon Panetta takes on another great challenge as U.S. Secretary of Defense, with massive responsibilities, including keeping Iran from producing a nuclear bomb. Scott Pelley reports. Henry Schuster is the producer.
• Parker And Stone - Steve Kroft talks to Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of Comedy Central's "South Park" and follows the process that each week produces another scathing and hilarious episode for the biggest hit on basic cable television. Now the disrespectful duo also have one of the biggest hits on Broadway, the musical comedy "The Book of Mormon." Graham Messick is the producer.
- Meet the Press (NBC) Host David Gregory
• Meet the Facts at NPR "On the Media" - Last December, NYU professor Jay Rosen proposed something simple yet revolutionary: why don't the Sunday morning chat shows fact check their guests? After "Meet the Press" host David Gregory declined, two college students launched a website to do it for him. One of them, Chas Danner, explains what they're trying to accomplish. See their website MeetTheFacts.com updating soon!
• Meet the Press will not air Sunday due to NBC Sports coverage of the French Open
- State of the Union With Candy Crowley (CNN) At 9 AM ET, Candy talks to the power players: politicians, business leaders and international newsmakers who will make Monday morning's headlines. At NOON ET, Candy wraps it all up with fresh interviews and the best of the earlier hours.
• Obama’s Senior Campaign Adviser, David Axelrod
• Senator John McCain (R-AZ)
• Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA,)
• Rep. Peter King (R-NY.)
• ROUNDTABLE: TBA
- HEAD ON RADIO with Bob Kincaid
Headon Radio with Bob Kincaid 6 PM Eastern, 3 PM Pacific, 2300 GMT. Duration: 3 hrs. To be part of Conversation Radio on Head-on Radio, call toll-free (877) 443-2366, or use our Liberal community line at 304-658-3333. Email bob [at] headonradio [dot] com during the show!
• LIVE SHOW MONDAY!!!!! Bob The Activist is back from Europe with a major filibobster! Catch Monday's live show! Listen HERE (mp3) NOW! Amen to the White Rose Society! Donate to Head On HERE! And join Coal River Mountain Watch at www.crmw.net!
- YOUR GREEN NEWS REPORT
The Green News Report with Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen: 6 minutes of green news, politics, analysis & snarky comment! BOOKMARK greennews.bradblog.com NOW!
• 'Green News Report' - June 7th IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Congressional Republicans attack the military's clean energy programs; NC Republicans vote to outlaw physics; Germany sets solar energy world record; Warming Arctic now growing 'pop-up forests'; PLUS: US wildfire season, off to a roaring --- and record --- start... All that and more in today's Green News Report!
• IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see link): Top 5 US cities most vulnerable to hurricanes; House GOP's 7 bills increasing drilling, rolling back public health standards; Cost of deaths from coal pollution higher than value of electricity produced; Big US firms to develop plant-based plastics; Secrets of the first artificial leaf; Geo-engineering may disrupt rainfall; Solar Plane completes intercontinental voyage; Why are US taxpayers subsidizing the coal industry? ... PLUS: Warning: you are approaching a state shift in Earth's biosphere ... and much, MUCH more! ...
• BRADBLOG UPDATE: Did Our Public Airwaves 'Win' it for Walker? Guest blogged by Sue Wilson - Whatever questions remain about Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's recall election, there is no question that his campaign was built on big money, the likes of which we've never seen in a gubernatorial campaign before. And where did all that money go? Right into thin air - OUR air.
• BRADCAST! VIDEO: Brad on RT on Questions About Wisconsin's Recall Election Results I was on cable/satellite news channel RT this afternoon discussing concerns about the Wisconsin Recall elections. Here's the hit...
• BRADCAST UPDATE! GUEST HOSTING the Mike Malloy Show (Nationally Syndicated, air affiliates, SiriusXM Ch. 127, Call-in#: 877.520.1150) MON-FRI 6/11-6/15, 6p-9p PT (9p-Mid. ET)
• Visit BradBlog.com to see who counts yer votes! Now up to 9,200+ Election Protection posts! Reference yer background/research at Who's Counting? too.
- The Peter B. Collins Show PODCAST!
Listen at PeterBCollins.com!
The Peter B. Collins Show covers American news and politics from the Left Coast. Veteran talk radio personality Peter B. Collins, based in San Francisco, delivers fresh interviews, commentary and analysis on a range of important topics, with views and voices you don’t often find in the corporate media.
• Holiday Break and Website Changes
- To my valued listeners: We are making some changes to the website and our terms, effective in January. We will continue to offer free podcasts–my new daily news and commentary. Our in-depth interviews will be available for $1 per episode, or to subscribers who pay $5 per month or more. Loyal listeners who simply can’t afford it should send an email to peter@peterbcollins.com, as we will be offering a limited number of scholarships to our friends who are hurting during these tough times. More information will be posted as we complete the revisions. I’m grateful to each of you for listening and supporting this work, and hope that the new model will enable us to keep it going well into the future. All the best, -pbc
• PBC Podcast 494 June 8, 2012 Part 2: Fighting for Immediate Rollback of ‘Citizens United’ with Mayer and Fergatch; Cartoonist, Author and Columnist Ted Rall Matter-of-Factly Calls for Revolution Carl Mayer and Adam Fergatch update their campaign to force the Supreme Court to undermine its Citizens United ruling; Ted Rall is a great political cartoonist and columnist, author of The Book of Obama: From Hope and Change to the Age of Revolt.
- Ring of Fire Radio
Find us at http://ringoffireradio.com and http://goleft.tv/ hosted by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mike Papantonio and Sam Seder
Ring of Fire Radio - GoLeft TV - Robert F. Kennedy, Mike Papantonio, Sam Seder - Politics, Commentary, and News.
This Week on Ring of Fire! June 8, 2012
• Paul Waldman, contributing editor at The American Prospect will be here to tell us why the Democratic Party needs to be more aggressive when battling the GOP.
• Academy Award nominated filmmaker Rachel Grady will join us to discuss the new film “Detropia.”
• Alternet senior editor Josh Holland will tell us about the massive amount of work that remains to be done to fix our broken healthcare system.
• We’ll have a discussion about this week’s Wisconsin recall elections with Lily Eskelsen, vice president of the National Education Association.
• And radio host Shannyn Moore will discuss the controversy over the Pebble Mine project in Alaska.
• VIDEO! Papantonio: Generational Divide Helped Secure Walker Victory Mike Papantonio appears on The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann to talk about the silver lining to Scott Walker’s recall victory in Wisconsin, and how the generational divide among voters helped secure Walker’s victory.
• VIDEO! Papantonio: You Can’t Make Nice With The Tea Party Today’s Republican Party is the most vitriolic, hateful Party we’ve seen in modern history. They can’t stand Obama, they can’t stand Democrats of any kind, and they see no problem spreading outright lies and hatred about progressives at every possible opportunity. In spite of that, some progressives are still confused about how to handle the Tea Party GOP, and they think that we should play nice. Mike Papantonio talks with Paul Waldman, a contributing editor at The American Prospect, who says that there’s only one way to deal with these Tea Partiers, and that is to get tough.
• Support Those Who Support Progressive Media! 2011 has certainly been a great year for Ring of Fire, and we’ve had some great sponsors that have helped support the show throughout the year. We wanted to take the time to personally thank each and every one of them, and we encourage all of our listeners to take the time to support those who have support us.
• Join our blog at www.ringoffireradio.com. You can now SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST by clicking on the "Podcast" tab at the top of the Ring of Fire blog. Please help support progressive radio by signing up!
Ring of Fire Radio Ring of Fire, hosted by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mike Papantonio and Sam Seder: Saturdays at 3 o’clock Eastern, rebroadcasts 8-11 et Sunday evenings on Chicago's Progressive Talk WCPT AM & FM and 4 pm et on Sirius/XM 167 featuring The PAP Attack! "We’ll bring you the stories that the mainstream media didn’t feel like reporting this week."
- Majority Report with Sam Seder Streaming LIVE weekdays 11:30 am et @ Majority.fm!
• June 4, 2012 Amanda Terkel on Split-Ticket Outcome for Wisconsin Recall & More
• June 5, 2012 Heidi Ewing, Detropia: Canary in Coal Mine for American Cities
• June 6, 2012 Ruth Conniff, Translating Wisconsin Election Results
• June 7, 2012 Casual Friday! Live from Netroots Nation 2012!
• June 8, 2012 Casual Friday! Cliff Schecter & Senator Jeff Merkley — Netroots Nation 2012
• MORE Podcast Interviews at Majority.fm!
- On the Edge with Max Keiser Podcasts and more @ MaxKeiser.com!
"HI Y'ALL! Tell the people! Tell the people!"
WHO IS MAX KEISER? Max Keiser is a financial expert, Prediction Markets analyst, inventor and filmmaker. He is the creator of the Hollywood Stock Exchange (HSX) the first Prediction Market. Max Keiser co-hosts "The Truth About Markets" on ResonanceFM 104.4 in London. He also produces and presents documentary films covering markets and finance for Al Jazeera’s "People & Power" series. Max Keiser started his career on Wall Street in 1983. He is the creator of KarmaBanque a site that enables activists to challenge corporate power.
• VISIT PirateMyFilm.com!!! Crowd Funding for Pirates!
• NEW! MaxKeiserTV on YouTube! MaxKeiserTV PLUS here is Max Keiser’s official Facebook page And here is the official Keiser Report page
• h/t Barry Ritholtz@ritholtz | Yves Smith Decimates Freakonomics author Steve Levitt “Chicago Boy, Likes People to Go to Jail so Markets Can Be Free” by maxkeiser READ Steve Levitt: Like a True Chicago Boy, Likes People to Go to Jail so Markets Can Be Free (nakedcapitalism)
• VIDEO! Max Keiser and Hugo Salinas Price on Sunny TV – Athens, Greece by maxkeiser Interview by George Noulas.
• KEISER REPORT [KR297] Keiser Report: Paper Money Collapse We discuss all hell breaking loose as an electronics chain store stockpiles security shutters, capital flees Greece (and Spain) and Max proposes a love market. In the second half of the show Max talks to Detlev Schlichter, author of Paper Money Collapse, about the euro, the drachma, the dollar and gold.
• KEISER REPORT [KR298] Keiser Report: Planet Ponzi We discuss shamed, naive and unsustainable ponzis and the UK’s Metropolitan Police’s Total War on Economic Crime (or at least that committed by the bottom 99%). In the second half of the show Max talks to Mitch Feierstein, hedge fund manager and author of Planet Ponzi, about global ponzi schemes, asymmetric hedging and whether or not hedge funds do any ‘good.’
• KEISER REPORT Keiser Report: With Pierre Jovanovic on JP Morgan and the Vatican Bank We discuss ‘wash trades,’ debt crises and the speculation on JP Morgan’s growing debt problem in London. In the second half of the show Max talks to Pierre Jovanovic of Jovanovic.com about JP Morgan ‘firing’ the Vatican, whether or not Jamie Dimon will last the year and what the future holds for French bonds.
• ON THE EDGE On the Edge with Warren Pollock
• THE TRUTH ABOUT MARKETS [TaM-362] The Truth About Intergalactic Jet Lag Download show HERE (mp3)
• Donate to ResonanceFM here!
- ANTIWAR RADIO with Scott Horton
LIVE (9-11am Pacific, 12pm - 2pm Eastern) Plenty of archives too!
Listen at antiwar.com/radio
• Nikolas Kozloff June 06, 2012: Nikolas Kozloff, author of Hugo Chavez: Oil, Politics and the Challenge to the U.S. , discusses his article “What’s Behind Obama’s New Military Base in Chile;” doubts about the base’s official purpose as peacekeeper training facility, considering the recent history of US interference in South America; the Chilean government’s fight (aided by the FBI) with the Mapuche Indians over control of natural resources; US worries about Brazil as a future near-peer competitor; why the School of the Americas (now WHINSEC) is still a popular destination for Chilean military officers; and the intricacies of US-Venezuelan relations.
• Nick Turse June 06, 2012: Nick Turse, associate editor of TomDispatch.com, discusses his article “A Drone-Eat-Drone World;” the Pentagon’s eager anticipation of autonomous drones that decide when and where to rain death from above; why drones are rapidly proliferating even though they aren’t effective in fighting and winning wars; the 1-to-1 UAV flight time to maintenance ratio; and the ability of drones to evade rifle-wielding tribesmen – but not semi-modern air defenses (or Pakistani public opinion).
• Eric Margolis June 06, 2012: Eric Margolis, internationally syndicated columnist and author of American Raj, discusses Pakistan’s potential for dissolution; the Lebanonization of Syria; why Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is urging India to get more involved in Afghanistan ; India’s big-spending on Afghanistan’s ethnic minorities; and what a foreign military “trainer” really is.
• Gareth Porter June 07, 2012: Gareth Porter, investigative historian and journalist specializing in U.S. national security policy, discusses his article “US Rejected 2005 Iranian Offer Ensuring No Nuclear Weapons;” the Bush administration’s hardline stance against even a single Iranian centrifuge; how the MEK “laundered” Israeli intelligence on the Natanz facility, providing enough disinformation for years of anti-Iran propaganda; and Iran’s offer to have all its low-enriched uranium converted into fuel-rods, which cannot be used to make nuclear weapons.
• Many more interviews at Antiwar Radio!
- fauxnews
• Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels (R)
• President of the National Education Association Dennis Van Roekel
• AFL-CIO's Deputy Chief of Staff Thea Lee.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
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