Putting Today's 'Pirate' Attack in Context
by Jeremy Scahill
A US ship, owned by a Pentagon contractor with ‘Top Security’ Clearance, was seized off the Somali coast. Reports say the US crew has retaken the ship. But the question remains: Why are the pirates attacking?UPDATE: US Crew Tricked Into Giving Over Captain to the Pirates? Meanwhile US Warships head to Scene |
Experts: Earth Warming Faster; A Trigger for "Dangerous" Change?
by Reuters
OSLO/BONN - Global warming is likely to overshoot a 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F) rise seen by the European Union and many developing nations as a trigger for "dangerous" change, a Reuters poll of scientists showed on Tuesday.Nine of 11 experts, who were among authors of the final summary by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007 (IPCC), also said the evidence that mankind was to blame for climate change had grown stronger in the past two years. |
Did Paranoid Right-Wing Media Fuel the Pittsburgh Cop Killer's Rage?
by Max Blumenthal
— from AlterNetOn April 6, two days after the 22-year-old Richard Poplawski allegedly murdered three police officers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a radio host named Alex Jones settled in before a microphone in his studio in Austin, Texas to do some damage control. "The mainstream media has certainly enjoyed tying me into this story," Jones complained. "They're attacking me and saying I'm delusional and there's no New World Order The Second Amendment, what the country's founded on--it's all my fault!" |
Obama: Too much style, too little substance?
by Doug Thompson
It's still too early to make a final judgment but the administration of America's first black President may go down in history as a triumph of style over substance.Barack Obama's charisma charms the hell out of most of the American public, the mainstream media and even hardened political pundits. He's a powerful speaker, an articulate politician and an adept manipulator who has built an image that has mesmerized a nation and most of the world. |
Obama Administration quietly expands Bush's legal defense of wiretapping program
by John Byrne
In a stunning defense of President George W. Bush's warrantless wiretapping program, President Barack Obama has broadened the government's legal argument for immunizing his Administration and government agencies from lawsuits surrounding the National Security Agency's eavesdropping efforts. |
Biden fires back at Cheney: He's 'dead wrong'
by David Edwards and Jeremy Gantz
Vice President Joe Biden didn't mince words while responding to his predecessor's remark that the policies of the Obama administration have made Americans more vulnerable to terrorist attacks."I don't think [Cheney] is out of line, but he is dead wrong," Biden told CNN's Wolf Blitzer and Gloria Borger Tuesday, continuing a verbal battle between Cheney and Obama administration officials that began last month. |
US electricity grid hit by cyber attacks: report
by AFP
Chinese and Russian cyber-spies have hacked into the US electricity grid and inserted programs that could be used to disrupt the system, a report said Wednesday.Quoting unidentified intelligence sources and homeland security officials, the Wall Street Journal said cyber-spies penetrated the system repeatedly last year, without disrupting it. |
Striking It Poor
by Maureen Dowd
I wasn’t sure this column would pan out.But with my savings and salary shrinking, it seemed worth a try. Heck, how hard could it be? I’d seen “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” the 1948 classic starring Humphrey Bogart and directed by John Huston. (“Badges? ... I don’t have to show you any stinkin’ badges!”) That movie was the best meditation on prospecting for gold, and falling prey to greed, ever done — until the Bernie Madoff story. |
Gay Rights Groups Celebrate Victories in Marriage Push
by Abby Goodnough
MONTPELIER, Vt. — Gay-rights groups say that momentum from back-to-back victories on same-sex marriage in Vermont and Iowa could spill into other states, particularly since at least nine other legislatures are considering measures this year to allow marriage between gay couples. |
'Detroit' Country Song Could Mean Rehab For Republicans
by RJ Eskow
A couple of years ago some of us took Merle Haggard's rejection of the Bush Administration and the Iraq war as a sign that disaster was imminent for the GOP. A new country hit doesn't spell the same kind of doom for Obama and the Democrats - yet - but it reveals a vulnerability that they'd be foolish to ignore. |
Throwing the Game?
by Jerome Doolittle
I need a little help from all you lawyers out there. In the coverage of the prosecutorial misconduct in ex-senator Ted Stevens’s trial, I haven’t seen a single mention of what seems to me at least a strong possibility.Did the prosecutors from Bush’s Justice Department throw the case deliberately? |
William K. Black on Geithner: "The Guy Has a Track Record of Failure Evereywhere He's Gone"
by Cenk Uygur
We recently has James K. Galbraith on our show and since I think he is one of the top economists in the country and he has been critical of the Obama administration bailout plan, I asked him if he could pick one person he would put in charge instead who it would be? He said William K. Black. |
Another Bush Intelligence Failure
by Robert Parry
Add to the list of President George W. Bush’s failures his inability to straighten out what he regarded as one of the top national security needs, a more effective U.S. intelligence community.Despite upping the U.S. intelligence budget to $45 billion from about $30 billion – and signing legislation in 2005 meant to end “turf” battles – Bush left behind an intelligence community suffering from poor communications among agencies and a flawed management structure, according to an inspector general’s report finished in November and released last week. |
Where Is Obama Taking Us?
by Stephen Fleischman
Does Barack Obama think he can stop the collapse of an economic system by throwing money at it? That's what he's doing in massive amounts, in stimulus packages, budgets and bailouts, and it's our money.It seems to be having little effect. With job losses at the rate of 600,000 per month, 660,000 last month, the economy is slip-slidin' toward a 1930s type depression. |
What's the Real Reason?
by David Swanson
The Pentagon is starting to cut weapons programs, and peace groups are bound to cheer.I don't just mean pseudo-peace groups funded by the makers of OTHER weapons systems (and these do exist, and you should be wary of any campaign obsessed with ending a particular weapon). I mean ordinary peace groups. Because we've been demanding an end to wasteful weapons systems, fraudulent and outdated weapons systems, weapons systems designed for nonexistent enemies. We claimed that those concerns were at least among our real reasons for wanting to cut Pentagon funds. |
Above the din, Ma Joad's voice still confident, clear
by Pierre Tristam
Homeless camps now sprawl instead of developments. Unemployment numbers are spilling off front pages into our lives. Employers are turning workers into modern-day sharecroppers (every man his own contractor). And next week, as if on cue, marks the 70th anniversary of the publication of "The Grapes of Wrath," John Steinbeck's novel of foreclosure and dispossession in the 1930s. How timely. |
I love parrots in the springtime
by Ed Naha
Having a president who is intelligent, thoughtful, diplomatic, witty and open to debate is truly remarkable. So is watching his detractors, waddling around squawking about everything from tax cuts to armed rebellion. It’s not that the repetitive Republicans or the mind-numbing minions of the MSM have suddenly lost 100 IQ points. It’s just that, without congenital mouth-breathers and idiotic ideologues in the White House to buffer the view, their pre-pubescent posturing is now in the spotlight for all to see. |
