Venice Louisiana - Thousands of fish and a dead whale on Monday were found dead at the mouth of a shipping channel in Venice. Species include crabs, sting rays, eels, drum, speckled trout and red fish.
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Here are a few recently-reported disturbing indicators that our life support system may be nearing critical condition:
Universal outrage has been drummed up over the case of an Iranian woman about to be stoned to death for adultery. She's also implicated in the murder of her husband, for which she may be hanged. This second, more serious crime has been left out of many news stories. America also executes, but it doesn't stone, especially for a bit of ticklish fun on the side. We inject, electrocute, gas, hang and shoot our condemned. We're more humane that way. Forever bureaucratic, we pay attention to procedural niceties.
This is a documentary on 911. What makes this documentary different from others is that it is from home movies footage from various people who witnessed the event.
Part One:
Part One:
© Max Blumenthal
Cindy, Sarah, and Craig Corrie in the Haifa District Court for the second round of hearings in their civil suit against the Israeli government.
Cindy, Sarah, and Craig Corrie in the Haifa District Court for the second round of hearings in their civil suit against the Israeli government.
"There are no civilians during wartime," Yossi declared under oath.
Yossi made his remarkable statement under withering cross examination by Hussein Abu Hussein, the lawyer for the family of Corrie, who was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer in Rafah on March 17, 2003. In the back of the courtroom were Rachel's parents, Craig and Cindy, and her sister, Sarah, back in Israel for the second round of hearings in their civil suit against the state of Israel. They were joined by supporters, friends and a handful of reporters, including me (see Nora Barrows-Friedman's report for more). No one from the Israeli media was present - the case has been virtually ignored inside Israel.
In the immediate wake of Corrie's killing, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, then the chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, instructed Corrie's parents to demand a "thorough, fair and transparent investigation" from the Israeli government. Since then, the Israelis have stonewalled them, refusing to provide key details of their investigation, which was corrupted from the start by the investigators' apparent attempts to find evidence that a bulldozer did not in fact kill Rachel.
© Chuck Olsen/Flickr
There's a difference between being paranoid and being suspicious. Paranoia is mental disturbance; suspicion is a rational deduction.
For example, if you suspect that America's economy, politics, government, media, judiciary and practically every other system has been wired to favor corporate interests over every other interest in our country, you're deducing, not hallucinating. From the infamous Wall Street bailout to the Supreme Court's shameful decree that corporations have more political rights than humans, we see again and again that corporate might overwhelms what's right.
This is not by accident, but by the deliberate, relentless efforts of corporatists to bend our nation's institutions to their will. Take one huge corporation you've probably never heard of, even though your consumer dollars are financing its right-wing agenda.
Above, Tony Blair was pelted with eggs and shoes by anti-war protesters in Dublin last week.
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Mr Blair said he was concerned about the potential "hassle and cost" to the police of pressing ahead with Wednesday's event in central London.
Eggs and shoes were thrown by demonstrators at a previous signing in Dublin and anti-war groups have promised a mass protest outside the Waterstone's store in Piccadilly.
The ex-PM said it was "sad" that people wanted to disrupt such events but indicated he may call it off amid evidence that other hostile groups were set to join in.
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In explaining why, I'll begin by defining some terms, because, when discussing the covert op called "the politics of terror," words and their management are all important.
How are politics and terror actually defined: how are these meanings manipulated; for what purposes, and by whom?
Terrorism is defined as "violence against civilians intended to obtain a political purpose."
This is an ambiguous phrase, which begs the questions: what are politics and violence?
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Well, in 2010 life is very, very different depending on whether you are a "have" or a "have not". The recent article on CNBC referenced above described it this way....
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Those who fail to learn from history. . .
Those who fail to learn from history. . .
Hermann Goering
Goering was perhaps the most influential person, next to Hitler, in the Nazi organization. He was one of only 12 Nazis elected to the Reichstag in 1928. He orchestrated the Reichstag fire on February 27, 1933 and, with Goebbel's assistance, used the fire as a propaganda tool against the communists. In the mid-1930's Goering was in charge of the Aryanization of Jewish property, a policy which extended to Jews throughout Europe following Anschluss. After the events of Kristallnacht, November 8 and 9, 1938, Goering (under instructions from Hitler) called a high-level meeting of the party, on November 12, to assess the damage done during the night and place responsibility for it. Present at the meeting were Goering, Goebbels, Reinhard Heydrich, Walter Funk and other ranking Nazi officials. The intent of this meeting was two-fold: to make the Jews responsible for Kristallnacht and to use the events of the preceding days as a rationale for promulgating a series of antisemitic laws which would, in effect, remove Jews from the German economy. (An interpretive transcript of this meeting is provided by Robert Conot, Justice at Nuremberg, New York: Harper and Row, 1983:164-172):
Comment: Blair thinks it is "sad" that people want to disrupt his little ego trip. What is inexpressibly sad is the 1 million+ Iraqi civilians that were murdered as a direct result of his lies about the threat from Iraq and his pathological drive to invade and occupy Iraq at all costs.
Notice how Blair attempts to dismiss the demonstrators as members of the extremist "BNP" (British National Party) and how his spokesperson labels protest against war crimes as "unpleasant". How unfortunate for poor Tony that members of the public would dare stand up and shove the truth of his monstrous crimes back in his face. The reality is that those who have and plan to protest this particular war criminal's attempt to slip into the role of 'elder statesman' are ordinary people who happen to still possess a conscience (a rare quality in these times). They should therefore be applauded for their efforts in standing up for justice and against the predations of psychopaths in power like Blair.