Archive for the 'Dictatorship' Category
Dred Scott Redux: Obama and the Supremes Stand Up for Slavery
December 26th, 2009Via: Chris Floyd: While we were all out doing our Christmas shopping, the highest court in the land quietly put the kibosh on a few more of the remaining shards of human liberty. It happened earlier this week, in a discreet ruling that attracted almost no notice and took little time. In fact, our most […]
China Jails Literature Professor Who Demanded Open Elections and the Rule of Law
December 26th, 2009Via: New York Times: The harsh sentence handed down on Friday to Liu Xiaobo, one of China’s most prominent campaigners for democracy and human rights, prompted strong rebukes in the United States and Europe, but it also raised fresh questions over whether the West has much leverage over a government that is increasingly self-assured on […]
Federal War Spending Exceeds State Government Outlays
December 26th, 2009Via: Public Record: The U.S. spends more for war annually than all state governments combined spend for the health, education, welfare, and safety of 308 million Americans. Joseph Henchman, director of state projects for the Tax Foundation of Washington, D.C. says the states collected a total of $781 billion in taxes in 2008. For a […]
Fannie, Freddie: Unlimited Fail
December 25th, 2009Via: Reuters: The Obama administration pledged on Thursday to back beleaguered mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac no matter how big their losses may be in the next three years. It also jettisoned a demand that the two companies cut the size of their mortgage-related investment portfolios next year, allowing them to provide […]
Swindler Duped CIA Over Al-Qaeda Decoding Scam
December 23rd, 2009Related “research”: U.S. Government Funding Research Into “Malintent” Detector? Via: AFP: A con artist convinced the CIA and other US agencies in 2003 that he could decode secret messages sent by Al-Qaeda through Al-Jazeera broadcasts, Playboy magazine reported. Duped by claims that “bar codes” on Al-Jazeera television contained targeting information for Al-Qaeda attacks, former president […]
Cost to Fight Each Al Qaeda Member in Afghanistan Per Year: $300 Million
December 23rd, 2009War is a Racket by Smedley D. Butler Via: ABC News: As he justified sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan at a cost of $30 billion a year, President Barack Obama’s description Tuesday of the al Qaeda “cancer” in that country left out one key fact: U.S. intelligence officials have concluded there are only about […]
GE Attempting to Silence a Danish Academic from Discussing Dangers of Omniscan
December 20th, 2009Via: Times Online: Two years ago in a conference room in the Randolph hotel in Oxford, Henrik Thomsen gave his inside account of a medical “nightmare”. In a presentation to about 30 colleagues, Thomsen, one of Europe’s leading radiologists, revealed how patients treated at his hospital had subsequently contracted a rare and potentially fatal disease. […]
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement: Secret Detention
December 20th, 2009Via: The Nation: “If you don’t have enough evidence to charge someone criminally but you think he’s illegal, we can make him disappear.” Those chilling words were spoken by James Pendergraph, then executive director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Office of State and Local Coordination, at a conference of police and sheriffs in August […]
Are Americans a Broken People?
December 16th, 2009In general, Americans represent a collective battered spouse who hopes that the batterer will change. Spitting teeth and squinting through two black eyes, they usually go back for more of the same. This isn’t politics. It’s pathology. —The Devil and Mr. Obama Via: Alternet: Can people become so broken that truths of how they are […]
U.S. Taxpayers Pay for Citigroup’s Fat Bastards to Get Fatter
December 16th, 2009Via: Washington Post: The federal government quietly agreed to forgo billions of dollars in potential tax payments from Citigroup as part of the deal announced this week to wean the company from the massive taxpayer bailout that helped it survive the financial crisis. The Internal Revenue Service on Friday issued an exception to long-standing tax […]
