Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Monday 6 May 2013


Daily Headlines


Even the best deals are only netting 5 percent. That's not enough to wet the beak of the big players who thought they'd be raking in the moolah. Now that the price of distressed properties has skyrocketed, the Wall street guys are going to make even less, which means they'll probably reduce their spending on housing and move on to more lucrative areas of investment.

By Bill Moyers
Gun Madness v. Gun Sanity
As the gun carnage continues across the United States, the Right won't stop peddling its bogus historical claimsabout the Second Amendment and rallying its gullible supporters to fight even modest safety laws. But victims of gun violence are finally fighting back.

So, we have over 7 million homes from the real estate bubble under the radar, out of view, kept out of the market by banks. I think the metaphor of a fart works-- gas that came in, got bigger even, and it's just sitting there, waiting.

By Danny Schechter
Israel's Bombing of Damascus: When Aggression is Framed As Defense
Syria is Bombed--How the Press Reacts
All digital communications -- meaning telephone calls, emails, online chats and the like -- are automatically recorded and stored and accessible to the government after the fact. To describe that is to define what a ubiquitous, limitless Surveillance State is.

The Texas plant did not report the fact that it was storing 270 tons of ammonium nitrate to the Department of Homeland Security as required by law, even though that's more than 200 times the amount Timothy McVeigh used to blow up the Federal building in Oklahoma City. We're expected to suspend our civil liberties in the name of national security, but businesses aren't even being asked to follow safety regulations.

By William Blum
Blindness to Blowback
After a terrorist attack, if anyone dares suggest that the killings represent blowback from U.S. military violence abroad, that person can expect furious denunciations even though the point is almost surely true, a paradox that William Blum confronts in this article from Anti-Empire Report.

By Rob Kall
Bottom up Religion?
ere are top-down religions and bottom up religions and ways of thinking about matters of faith and god.

As a kid I learned to write fast, clean, and hard in an old-fashioned newsroom, among chattering teletypes, clattering Linotype machines, and the eleven a.m. daily roar of the presses.

Diverse Panel at IFP talks about the web and independent film.

'Author claims she was duped into signing over the rights on her prizewinning book'

Humanity is at a critical juncture in its history. Prophecy appears to be coming true. Indeed, the various religions of the world are being linked together as one (e.g., psychiatrist Carl Jung's work and mythologist Joseph Campbell). For many, it also appears that prophecy, as identified in the "Bible's" "Book of Daniel," may be coming true. Does this mean we're doomed? Not if Zoe Hudson's work is taken to heart.

A new rule set for approval by the North Carolina Mining and Energy Commission requiring some disclosure of chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing has been withdrawn at the request of industry giant Halliburton. Lawyers for Halliburton say regulations requiring disclosure of chemicals pumped into the ground during drilling would reveal trade secrets. Landowners and environmentalists, pushing for public disclosure, worry about the potential for groundwater and well contamination.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai acknowledged Saturday that he has frequently received money from the CIA and that he had called a meeting this past week with the CIA's Kabul station chief, who he said "promised that they are not going to cut this money." Saturday also marked one of the deadliest days of 2013 for international forces in Afghanistan. Five U.S. service members were killed by a makeshift bomb in southern Afghanistan, two more were killed when an Afghan soldier turned his weapon on foreign troops in western Afghanistan, and one was killed in an attack in the north.

Upset with Wells Fargo's foreclosure practices, protesters held a demonstration on May Day that briefly shut down one of the bank's branches in downtown Los Angeles. The action was organized by Occupy Fights Foreclosures, an Occupy Los Angeles subcommittee that has been assisting homeowners fight what they consider are fraudulent foreclosures. About 80 activists, which included foreclosed homeowners, stood in front of the bank's entrance for a half hour before joining the nearby May Day demonstration held by the Southern California Immigration Coalition.

How did Barack Obama become America's first black president? He pleased the "elites," according to Clarence Thomas, the second African-American ever to be appointed to the Supreme Court. Speaking about his life at Pittsburgh's Duquesne University in April, Thomas explained that he always thought there would be a black president in his lifetime. "The thing I always knew is that it would have to be a black president who was approved by the elites and the media because anybody that they didn't agree with, they would take apart," he added.

United States Lost Output Clock
You've heard of the debt clock? This it the lost output clock, showing the difference between what we are producing and what we should be producing. It's at $4 trillion, according to Federal Reserve Figures, and climbing...
By Uri Avnery
No, We Can't!
Kerry will elicit some more words from the Arabs. Some more promises from Netanyahu. There may even be a festive opening of a new round of negotiations, a great victory for President Obama and Kerry. But nothing will change. Negotiations will just drag on. And on. And on. For the same reason that there has been no movement in the past, there will be no movement in the future.

A scathing analysis of how "useful idiots" of both the Republican and Democrat stripe dominate the news with their mutually hateful "idiot wars," keeping the far more important story or corporation domination off its rightful place on the front page. Also stresses how much liberal idolaters of faux-progressive Obama block political progress as much as the "right-wingnuts" they vilify.

How is it that it was Democrats all squeamish in Kentucky recently over fricking hemp legalization? Because police and other traditional Democratic special interests own them of course.

By helping to fund illegal settlements the Israel Lobby,with the help of U.S. charitable foundations, is in fact an agent of the State of Israel. It is in direct opposition to U.S. policy regarding illegal settlements and its actions hinder a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Eroding political support is exactly what congressional Republicans want. They fear that Obamacare, once fully implemented, will be too popular to dismantle. So they're out to delay it as long as possible while keeping up a drumbeat about its flaws. Repealing laws by hollowing them out -- failing to fund their enforcement or implementation -- works because the public doesn't know it's happening.

By earl ofari hutchinson
Thomas's Race Hit on Obama No Surprise
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas did the seemingly impossible. He turned from court mute to a hit man on President Obama. In an interview at Duquesne University Law School in April, Thomas snidely rapped Obama for being the darling of the "elites." To Thomas that means liberals, progressives, intellectuals, and the supposedly hopelessly liberal media.


Latest Articles

Daniel Quinn's book, Ishmael, about a telepathic gorilla, won a Ted Turner award for book with a hopeful vision of the future. It's become a bestseller translated into many languages and I recommend it as must reading if you've never read it. This portion of the interview discusses the book AND his thoughts on civilization, beyond civilization, the Sixth Extinction and the disaster that hierarchy is...


Best News Links from the Web

Israeli jets bombed Syria on Sunday, rocking Damascus for hours and sending pillars of flame into the night sky in what a Western source called a new strike on Iranian missiles bound for Lebanon's Hezbollah. Local people reported massive explosions and internet video showed the capital's skyline lit by flashes; Syrian opponents of President Bashar al-Assad rejoiced at Israel's third raid this year, and second in 48 hours, while anger in Tehran highlighted how Syria's civil war risks spinning further beyond its borders.

"Absent a magic potion or explosive economic growth, it was all but inevitable President Barack Obama would have to break some of his campaign promises to keep others. If there's one thing that distinguished them besides their ambition, it was their incompatibility"

Former US vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin has outraged anti-gun campaigners after praising America's powerful gun lobby for not giving in to pressure to tighten laws. Addressing tens of thousands of delegates at the annual convention of the National Rifle Association in Houston, Texas, Palin said: "The Washington establishment sneers at you, and you don't give up. "The lamestream media just plain doesn't get you, and you don't give up. You don't retreat."

Search teams on Saturday found the bodies of two American crew members near where their military refueling plane crashed in the rugged mountains of Kyrgyzstan, while the third crew member was still missing. Residents of the rural, sheep-herding region described hearing the plane explode in the air and seeing it break apart as it fell. "I heard a very loud explosion," Emil Bokochev, a member of the village council, told an AP reporter at the site. "Literally six or seven seconds afterward there was another explosion and the plane broke apart into four or five pieces and at that moment we thought it was going to fall on the village Chaldovar."

Israeli missiles struck a research center near the Syrian capital Damascus, setting off explosions and causing casualties, Syria's state news agency reported early Sunday, citing initial reports. If confirmed, it would be the second Israeli strike on targets in Syria in three days, signaling a sharp escalation of Israel's involvement in Syria's bloody civil war.

"Orb won the 139th running of the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs with a furious rally in the homestretch. The victory gave famed trainer Shug Mcgaughey his first Kentucky Derby victory."