Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Thursday 16 May 2013


 Daily Headlines
What makes the DOJ's actions so stunning here is its breadth. It's the opposite of a narrowly tailored and limited scope. It's a massive, sweeping, boundless invasion which enables the US government to learn the identity of every person whom multiple AP journalists and editors have called for a two-month period.

The Republicans, however, will grasp at anything -- birthers, deathers, Acorners ... they will throw everything at him, no matter how ridiculous, until something sticks. Now things are legitimately sticky. Many of us would feel better about this mess if he were to be impeached over drone strikes, but from day one it did seem inevitable that the Neocons would get him somehow.
Attorney General Eric Holder defended the Justice Department's subpoena of AP phone records, including personal cellphone records of some of its reporters, saying Tuesday that a leak to the news organization about a 2012 counterterrorism operation put Americans at risk and needed an "aggressive" response.

These people are predators. They don't feel emotions like other people. They don't feel empathy or compassion. Researchers study callousness as a parameter of their emotional makeup.
The wonders a concerned billionaire can work in a mere month!
In terms of partisanship, Republicans now screaming bloody murder over the IRS allegations clearly don't care about the principles of equal protection, nonpartisan public services or impartial governance. We know this because most of them had nothing to say about the Bush administration's actions against the GOP's ideological opponents.
By David Fiderer
Fannie's Settlement Agreement Conceals Dirty Laundry
After a 9-year lawsuit that produced nothing, Fannie's conservator settles rather than allow some inconvenient facts to emerge.
Reconstructing nuclear confidence in the post-Fukushima world is a long and painful process. But real-life energy demands, especially in the developing countries, predetermine a significant share of nuclear energy in their national energy consumption structure. Russian experience in this field can offer some interesting solutions to the decision-makers.

As part of a new leak investigation, the Justice Department has secretly obtained the call records for twenty phone lines owned by the Assocated Press (AP), which could put sources for as many as one hundred reporters at risk.
By Andrew Schmookler
Benghazi Talk: Call It Out for What It Is
The Republicans are about one thing: getting more power for themselves, regardless of how much that pursuit degrades the country. Two items in the news of yesterday reminded me of the need for us to keep this consistent pattern in mind, and to respond to it appropriately-- i.e. like we're in a battle in which the stakes are as high as they can be.
When a new law paved the way for tar sands pipelines and other fossil fuel development on native lands, four women swore to be "idle no more." The idea took off.

Stephen Hawking has not been known for political activism. His story unfolded in a different arena. It is a story of his enormous personal courage and significant achievement as a physicist and cosmologist. Hawking has to be the most high-profile invitee yet to boycott an Israeli Presidential conference, an event which in the past has attracted little media attention. Hawking has changed that.
Student loans amounting to more than $1 trillion exceed the total outstanding credit card debt in the U.S. Students actually spend their loan money on surviving as consumers in a tight economy, while learning skills needed for the economy of the future. On the other hand, the already too-big-to-fail banks have used the government's free money to become even more obscenely powerful.
Five Questions with Blackfeet author, Stephen Graham Jones.
We no longer live in a free society. Having traded our freedoms for a phantom promise of security, we now find ourselves imprisoned in a virtual cage of cameras, wiretaps and watchful government eyes. All the while, the world around us is no safer than it was a decade ago. Indeed, it well may be that we are living in a far more dangerous world, with the government itself
Imagine a mass murderer who killed people to make a point... This monster wannabe was attempting to re-enact the role of a previous monster/mass murderer... I"m talking about the man Tamerlane Tsarnaev may have been named after.
By Gary Lindorff
Patience is a disease
New poem by TCBH resident poet
By Robert De Filippis
Do We Need Religion?
Religion is getting a bad rap today. Do we need it or can we do just fine without it?
CNN has obtained the full email from a White House official on the Benghazi talking points, which undermines claims that the administration acted deliberately to change the intelligence community's assessment.

Top advisers to the president defended the Obama administration on Tuesday from criticism that it had drastically over-extended its authority in seizing telephone records for the Associated Press as part of a leak investigation. In dual briefings that overlapped for several minutes, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney and Attorney General Eric Holder remained vague when asked why the Department of Justice had subpoenaed the records of up to 100 AP reporters and editors from a two-month period. In some instances, their defense of the department's actions could be distilled down to a simple plea: trust us, we mean no harm.
By Sam Amer
The Israeli Design for the Palestinians
the US is not serving its long term interests in the Middle by only supporting one side.
The Pentagon's civilian workforce learned just how extensive its "sequester"-related furloughs would be on Tuesday, with the announcement by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel that 800,000 employees would be forced to take unpaid leave. That figure represents most of the Department of Defense's civilian workers. Media reports suggest 10 to 15 percent of civilian workers could get exemptions. The rest are expected to be affected.

By Patrick Walker
To Save the Democratic Party, We Must Risk Destroying It
A desperate plea that in our desperate circumstances--cicumstances CONFIRMED desperately by the popularity of alarmist writers on OpEdNews--we must risk splitting (and thereby possibly destroying) the Democratic Party for the sake of at last giving REAL progressive values a voice in our government. Before it's too late!
Antiwar leaders do not call for the prosecution of US homicidal crimes against humanity ALREADY committed in Syria, nor of crimes committed in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, Grenada, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Cuba, Lebanon, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Guatemala, Congo, Korea and Greece. Crimes committed without fear of arrest, arraignment, indictment, punishment, imprisonment, or hanging.

In a blistering statement late Monday, House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa blasted the Obama administration after the Associated Press revealed that the Justice Department had obtained months of phone records from its reporters and editors.
Local resolutions have helped advance many issues, including war opposition, when they've been passed in large numbers.
Sojourners editor Jim Wallis' newest book asks us to consider an ancient concept called the common good in order to help with the political, environmental, and social ills of our day. As we face terrifying news about climate change what more do we need to understand the concept of interconnectedness and the common good?
Official Washington is captivated by the image of Obama "scandals," including Benghazi talking points and extra IRS questions posed to Tea Party groups, but journalists are peering into the Right's funhouse mirror which for decades has made big scandals small and small scandals big.
We have just begun. Widening inequality, a shrinking middle class, global warming, the corruption of our democracy by big money -- all of these, and more, must be addressed. To make progress on these -- and to prevent ourselves from slipping backwards -- will require no less steadfastness, intelligence, and patience than was necessitated before.
Microlending was supposed to focus on the poorest women in a society, but as profit motives have entered in and the money has increased, women are being left out, writes TCBH@! journalist Dave Lindorff

 Latest Articles
Heart which define the life's relativity
To process a heart, Heart which define, The life's relativity.
Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 01:02