Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Wednesday 22 May 2013


Daily Headlines


By Greg Palast
My Big Fat Greek Minister
Fat Bastard -- or Theodoros Pangalos, leader of the Panhellenic Socialist Party (PASOK), Greece's equivalent to UK's Labour Party -- thinks the little Greek kiddies should stop belly-aching. Pangalos, as you can see from the photo below, is not bent over with hunger pains. In fact, he looks more likely to be bent over with labour pains, but in truth he probably just can't bend over at all.

By Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Obama and Nixon: A Historical Perspective
Republican legislators have apparently been ordered by their leadership to hold scandal-mongering hearings but to stall any legislation for genuine reform. The real scandal is the Republican party's devotion to grandstanding over governance and its preference for slime over substance.

Assault on Wall Street is an all-American revenge movie with shoot outs that will unsettle those at the center of financial power.

There are some positive ways to deal with evil and psychopaths that use bottom up approaches that bring out the best in people.

By Elayne Clift
Paying Attention to Climate Change Before It's Too Late
Oil covered wildlife. Sludge clogging waterways and snaking down suburban streets. The potential for disaster, especially with a transcontinental pipeline, have never been greater.
At a cabinet meeting Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Israel was prepared to attack Syria for the third time this month. Why not? He got away with it before, using the "self defense" righteous rationale that empires employ as they increase their power one step at a time. This is the way empires grow. It is also the way they die, one pyrrhic victory after another.

Many Republicans -- and some liberal Democrats -- are calling for Holder's replacement these days. The broad Justice Department subpoena of AP phone records is the main reason they cite. But the chance of Holder losing his job anytime soon is not very high, absent any further disclosures. "The president will stay with Eric Holder until the very end," said former GOP lawmaker Joe Scarborough on his MSNBC show on Friday.

The threat to democracy that the president described would be complete -- as sincere activists on the right and the left would be shunted to the sidelines of a new political landscape where corporate cash decides the day and the boss is not a CEO but a cynical political operative named Karl Rove.

Naval exercises harm and kill massive amounts of sea animals every year. This practice has recently been monitored and recorded with dire results.

Not only did the Church sequester the Latin Bible from the Christian populace for a thousand years, it forbid translating the New Testament into native languages. Robert Tyndale who defied the Church and translated the Bible into English was burned at the stake for his "heresy." Why would the Church distance the Christian populace from direct contact with their holy scriptures? This article proposes a surprising motive.

By Burl Hall
Beyond Conditioning
Our lives have purpose and they arise from that purpose and the purpose is to serve all of life. From our writings, readings, breathing, elimination of waste, eating and so on, we fulfill our mission on life...to support the whole of creation. Ultimately, the universe is more verb than noun, Creativity more so than Created. It is via tapping into the infinity of Creativity that the new can arise from the depths of our being

By Steven Jonas
On "42:" A Movie About Racism
At one level, the movie 42, about Jackie Robinson, is a "baseball movie." But to my mind much more importantly, it's a movie about racism in the United States. Since our nation is still so heavily burdened with this way of thinking, engineered and promoted by the corporate and political interests which it serves, I regard it as an important statement and lesson for the present, as well as very well done history.
H&M (Hennes & Mauritz), a major Swedish "fast fashion" retailer, led 30 international companies this week to commit to a new $3 billion fund to improve the safety of garment factories in Bangladesh. Watchdog organizations say the companies acted only because of external pressure by activists and workers.

Whether in the military or civilian world, more soldiers in that room have been affected by this issue than anyone will know. But now they know they can talk about it if they need to. Now they know their brother or sister in arms to the left or

By John Bruhns
It's Time to Get Real on Immigration
It is understandable why many in this country want the borders closed. Preventing terrorist attacks is of prime importance to them. After all, as a nation of laws we need to uphold our standards, and terrorism is a legitimate concern. Having said that, I cannot think of any terrorist attack carried out by undocumented Mexicans residing in the United States.
At Smokedown Prohibition V Adam Kokesh is targeted for arrest even though it is obvious he isn't smoking marijuana. This happened on May 18, 2013 at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, PA

By Dave Lindorff
Official Story has Odd Wrinkles: A Pack of Questions about the Boston Bombing
Surveillance photos of the Tsarnaev brothers arriving at the Marathon finish line wearing packs suggest they couldn't have been carrying heavily-loaded pressure-cooker bombs in their bags, says TCBH! journalist Dave Lindorff
The right continues to denigrate themselves by their overt racism. No one in their right mind can interpret President Obama's Morehouse speech as anything but brilliant. They can!

By Mahdi Haile
Enough Is Enough! No More Looting of Somalia's Oil!
In reading Katrina Manson's article "Oil Thrown on the Fire" at the Financial Times website, I saw again that, with every passing year, Somalis are losing more and more control of their own country to international criminals all over Africa and Europe. Kenya and Norway are the latest entrants in the scramble for Somalia's resources.
The Washington Post reports that James Rosen, the chief Washington correspondent for Fox News, was subjected to intense government monitoring as part of an investigation into possible leaks of classified information about North Korea in 2009. The intrusion on Rosen was more severe than that of the AP reporters, whose phone call records were grabbed as part of a separate national security leaks investigation. The feds obtained authorization to seize information showing Rosen's communication with "any other source" related to the leak and also demanded Google turn over IP addresses and other metadata stored by the reporter's Gmail account.

By Tom Engelhardt
Mattea Kramer and Jo Comerford: Congress Tweeted While America Burned
Three days after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Congress passed a joint resolution called an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). You might remember it. In layman's terms, it was a carte blanche for the Bush administration to go to war wherever it wanted, whenever it wanted, however it wanted, under the guise of fighting anyone who "planned, authorized, committed, or aided" the September 11th attackers
By Kathy Malloy
Sunday Bloody Sunday
There are plenty of legitimate criticisms to level at the current administration, starting with the ongoing illegal terror wars, un-investigated corporate abuses of labor, drone strikes, closing GITMO, etc. But there will never be a serious investigation as long as the "morans" are running the place, Just this endless sea of pointless hearings and time-wasters.

Google, Amazon, Starbucks, every other major corporation, and every big Wall Street bank, are sheltering as much of their US profits abroad as they can, while telling Washington that lower corporate taxes are necessary in order to keep the US "competitive." Baloney. The fact is, global corporations have no allegiance to any country; their only objective is to make as much money as possible.

Republicans are hyping the flap over Benghazi talking points by calling it "worse than Watergate," a false narrative that Bob Woodward has helped along by ignoring new evidence connecting Richard Nixon's sabotage of Vietnam War peace talks in 1968 to his political spying in 1971-72.

By Stephen Pizzo
Watch At the Sausage Factory
One of the first, and most important, things I learned when I started covering Washington many years ago was that there was not one, but two Washington's. There was the elected Washington, and unelected Washington. One was temporary, the other permanent.


Latest Articles

This entire civilization is in free fall to something entirely new. When we hit the bottom and the system shatters completely we will all be aware of it. Right now places like OPED allow us to see what is happening even now when things still work in many ways and places

In today's world, there are several ways people are becoming more self-sufficient and less dependent on corporations and government. Some of these community movements are known as Transition Towns, Permaculture and there are others. This article explores this movement in relationship to a rapidly growing community based business, "Little Free Libraries".

Contrary to what the MSM tells us, most people are not idiots. I think that most Americans can look at their lives and pretty much come to this conclusion; they are not living as well as their parents did. There are many Americans who really don't believe that the new American "normal" of working two part-time jobs with no health benefits isn't a "be all, end all" situation.

This Memorial Day, Let's Remember Women in War
Now that women can enter combat officially, it's a good time to remember the many roles women have played during wartime, whether military or civilian.

Best News Links from the Web

Illegal Detention (video)
Five members of The Panic Hour were followed into the City Hall rail station in Center City Philadelphia. Kyle Prouty was illegally searched and detained by SEPTA police officer Nicole Lawson at 3:20pm on 5/20/13. Kyle was charged with "disorderly conduct" "obstructing a highway and other public passage" and "resisting arrest". The people in this video had just left an arraignment hearing for Adam Kokesh and Nikki Allen Poe who were kidnapped from a peaceful marijuana rally on 5/18/13. They are currently being held illegally in Federal Detention at the Federal Detention Center 700 arch street Philadelphia Pennsylvania.
The American Legislative and Issue Campaign Exchange, or ALICE, is a one-stop, web-based, public library of progressive law on a wide range of issues in state and local policy. As our name may suggest, ALICE may be understood as a very partial antidote to ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), the corporate-backed group that has for nearly 40 years provided model state law and connection to corporate lobbyists to its nearly 2,000 state legislator members. Like ALEC, ALICE is a values-based nonprofit and offers model legislation over a broad range of state and local issues. But we're easily distinguished from our counterpart. Our values are to promote, not destroy, economic fairness, environmental sustainability, and effective democratic government. Our model laws are public, not secret. They're written by public interest advocates and volunteers, not paid corporate lobbyists.

New government figures underscore the staggering long-term consequences of military sexual assaults: More than 85,000 veterans were treated last year for injuries or illness linked to the abuse, and 4,000 sought disability benefits. While women are more likely to be victims, men made up nearly 40 percent of the patients the VA treated for conditions connected to what it calls "military sexual trauma."