Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Tuesday, 18 November 2014


Daily Headlines
Michael Brown's tragic death, the anguish of his family, and the turmoil in Ferguson, Missouri, are all salient reminders that the longstanding and seemingly intractable realities of unequal treatment, circumstance, and opportunity for African Americans -- and for other communities of color -- pose a difficult yet increasingly urgent challenge.

Duplicate or double voting is a crime punishable by 2 to 10 years in prison. Yet, despite this supposed vote-fraud crime wave, not one suspect on Crosscheck lists was charged, although prosecutors would have access to any alleged fraudsters' names and addresses.
In 1965, for every dollar earned by the average worker, CEOs earned 20 dollars. By 2012, that gap mushroomed to 354 to one. But, when asked in the survey, Americans grossly underestimated this gap....

It's official. Nancy Pelosi has been re-elected as house minority leader. And Harry Reid has been re-elected as Senate minority leader. Both had little or no competition.
News headlines chronicle the bloody war in Ukraine. But there are international political machinations playing out behind the scenes.
Analysts who view the election results as a referendum against Obama are missing the point. When voters are consistently offered a choice between Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber to represent them in Congress, they will eventually replace one party in power with the other as long as they refuse to consider alternatives.
Jack Abramoff introduces a key premise of the film: that major political spending is about a return on investment; there is nothing more profitable than lobbying and contributing to campaigns in order to get preferable treatment for your business.Others can make that claim. He can attest to having done it. He said that for tens of millions, he was able to make clients billions."99% of what I did was legal; that's the problem."
An analysis of publicly available, aggregated income and tax data from the IRS shows that residents of rich zipcodes manage to avoid progressive taxation. They pay little or no more in taxes, as a proportion of income, than many poorer zipcodes.
When government law enforcement officers kill civilians it is everyone's right to know about it. We are all ultimately responsible for the actions of our government. But only 44% of law enforcement agencies voluntarily report police action homicides. It's time to make this mandatory.
President Obama's China climate deal and his decision not to deport 5 million immigrants following the midterm rout of Democrats raises the question is he now belatedly ready to fight for the left? And what kind of an ex-president might Mr Obama become?
By John Whitehead
Are 'We the People' Useful Idiots in the Digital Age?
In an Orwellian age where war equals peace, surveillance equals safety, and tolerance equals intolerance of uncomfortable truths and politically incorrect ideas, "we the people" have gotten very good at walking freely into the slaughterhouse, all the while convincing ourselves that the prison walls enclosing us within the American police state are there for our protection.
Anonymous declared cyber war after the Klan threatened Ferguson protesters with physical violence. Using the hashtags #OpKKK, and #HoodsOff members of Anon have been pulling the#HoodsOff Klan members in the St.Louis and Ferguson area, showing their faces and other identifying information all day long. They also mentioned two Klan members who are Florida police officers. Anonymous unhooded one Indiana Klansman, Chad Burris, who displays an image of a klan man lounging on the connected bodies of two lynched black people. Anonymous mentioned the activities of the Charleston, West Virginia police lieutenant suspended last month for Klan activities.

By Eric Lotke
70 Year Old Woman Prosecuted for Neglecting Her 98 Year Old Mother
Another case of irrational, excessive prosecution. This is a tragedy,not a crime.
By Reza varjavand
Is Fear of Islam Irrational? Ask the Victims of Extremism
The recent appearance of Reza Aslan on CNN and his flare-up during an interview has created a public backlash concerning the treatment of women and violent actions in Islamic countries. He overreacted to the CNN interviewers' claim that women in Islamic countries are mistreated by calling their claim "stupid."
According to the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC,) unless we cut them 70% by 2050, and go to zero emissions by 2100, the poorest countries may as well use that $3 billion to build Noah's ark.

A former Marine officer who was Mayor of a small town on the Iran border, returns there icognito. A searing indictment of the war and its aftermath, with stunning pictures and conversations with Iraqi tribespeople, taxi drivers, interpreters, shop keepers and of course, officials.
By Thomas Farrell
The Islamic State, the Caliphate, and Theocons
The Islamic State has recently beheaded Peter Kassig, an American aid worker and former Army Ranger. President Barack Obama has vowed to degrade the Islamic State -- evidently, through air strikes. But the Islamic State is making a powerful appeal to Muslim young men to join the cause by invoking the dream of the caliphate. I want to explore the caliphate and related ideas from European history.
According to United States Elections Project estimates, just 36.3 percent of eligible voters bothered to participate in elections where members of the US House and Senate, most governors and most state legislators and thousands of local officials were chosen. The nation's most populous states, all of which had full federal and state ballots, saw dismal turnout.
By Robert Weiner
Democrats' National Silence Was Deafening
the national Democratic party's silence was deafening on recent accomplishments.
The 'Ready for Hillary PAC' was founded in 2013. The super-PAC said in a statement in July of this year that it received money from 90,000 supporters after holding more than 500 fundraisers nationwide.

With this article, I officially drop my push for Sanders as president in favor of Elizabeth Warren, who's now dropped hints she might run. While Bernie remains as deserving as ever, any political realist knows that Warren, as Democrats' rising superstar--and potential first woman president to boot--is far more electable. This article logically argues why Naomi Klein's followers URGENTLY need to demand Warren's candidacy.
By Shirley Braverman
Rate Of Premature Births Fall As Obamacare Provisions Begin To Take Effect
Clinics opening under Obamacare for prenatal services are already making an impact in California and other states that started their programs in 2010. Caring for premature babies is tremendously expensive. Preventing premature birth will lower our infant death rate faster than any other solution.
By Jean-Luc Basle
Kissinger: Will it be "chaos" or "insight"?
"Do we achieve a world order through chaos or through insight?" Kissinger
In Israel, as is the case in the United States, the lawful structure of representative government has long been replaced by a "Deep State" apparatus with remarkably similar results: Military aggression as the mode of operation in international affairs, and Robber Baron Era style domestic policies, leading to unchecked power of the banking system and rapid increase in poverty.

Election officials in St. Louis County, Missouri were repeatedly warned by local Election Integrity advocates that a plan to supply enough paper ballots for only 15% of the electorate at polling places on Election Day there would not be enough, according to emails obtained by The BRAD BLOG.
By Robert Parry
Letting the Neocons Lead
At the G-20 meeting, Putin-bashing was all the rage, as President Obama and other Western leaders berated Russian President Putin for his supposed "aggression" in Ukraine. The mainstream media also piled on. But the reality is much more complex, writes Robert Parry.
As the Masters of the World gather at the G20 summit in Australia, Patrick Smith provides a fascinating look at some behind-the-scenes developments that could help make the bewildering facade of American foreign policy make more sense. You will not be surprised to find that it centers around our monied, militarized elites' desire to retain and expand their domiination of the world -- no matter what.
By Tom Engelhardt
Michael Klare: The New Congress and Planetary Disaster
Pop the champagne corks in Washington! It's party time for Big Energy. In the wake of the midterm elections, Republican energy hawks are ascendant, having taken the Senate and House by storm. They are preparing to put pressure on a president already presiding over a largely drill-baby-drill administration to take the last constraints off the development of North American fossil fuel reserves.

 Latest Articles
Countries have committed to an ambitious goal of eliminating malaria from the entire Asia Pacific region in the next 15 years. The bold move shows strong leadership on health security and responds head-on to concerns about growing resistance to the drug artemisinin, the mainstay of worldwide treatment for the most dangerous form of the disease.

The national guard has been activated to suppress any riots that might occur if the grand jury declines to indict Officer Darren Wilson on a wrongful death charge. If you remember, the city erupted in violence shortly after the fatal shooting when Office Wilson was not immediately arrested, but was instead placed on paid leave.

 Best News Links from the Web
The principle known as "net neutrality" -- and it says that an entrepreneur's fledgling company should have the same chance to succeed as established corporations, and that access to a high school student's blog shouldn't be unfairly slowed down to make way for advertisers with more money. Ensuring a free and open Internet is the only way we can preserve the Internet's power to connect our world. That's why the President has laid out a plan to do it, and is asking the FCC to implement it.

The number of homeless children in the US has surged in recent years to an all-time high, amounting to one child out of every 30, according to a comprehensive state-by-state report. The report, issued on Monday by the National Center on Family Homelessness [NCFH], says that nearly 2.5 million American children were homeless at some point in 2013.
Evidence of a possible malicious intrusion led the State Department to completely shut down its email service on Friday, and it's still down. A senior official told the Associated Press that the agency had discovered "activity of concern," but said that no classified material was compromised, only unclassified email. The White House, the Postal Service, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have all been hacked in recent months, not to mention countless corporations.
Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 21:05