Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Sunday, 2 November 2014


 Daily Headlines
Here's the transcript of my conversation with Ray McGovern, on Friday, the day after he was arrested for trying to attend a talk by General Petraeus. He goes into some great detail on what he wanted to ask and say to Petraeus.

What financier George Soros has called "market fundamentalism," is opposed to any interference with free markets. Yet, corporatism makes massive exceptions that rig markets and tilt the seller-buyer balance heavily in favor of the former who become bigger and bigger global corporations. The American people have enough evidence to abandon the ideological hypocrisy that corporatism uses to control them.
By Dennis Kaiser
War on Democracy
Over the span of 30+ years the United States has been battling wars from across the globe, according to Wikipedia there are 96 identified as "war" since 1980. Naturally, some were more devastating as the majority, but America has been at war for more than 30 decades against an enemy that is readily known.

With the present global turmoil ensuing from America's endless foreign policy machinations, it's timely to ransack history in anticipation of a two upcoming anniversaries -- neither of which is likely to be loudly celebrated, at least outside the Pentagon or the neo-con network. In this the first of a two-part series, Australian Greg Maybury reflects on Uncle Sam's foray into Vietnam, and the implications for the here and now.
Where this all ends is anyone's guess, but a ceasefire in the Syrian conflict, even one limited to certain areas as Washington, Tehran and Moscow are discussing, would perhaps help. Yet as various analysts and scholars postulate, the latest Sunni-Shia manifestation of Bellum Sacrum may well take a long time to heal--tens of years, or even centuries.
Australian writer Greg Maybury ponders the role of the mainstream media (MSM), its incestuous relationship with political, financial and business power elites and the national security state, what that means for our egalitarian society and democratic freedoms, and why we need to become more alert and knowledgeable in order to better protect them.
Tea Partiers have convinced millions of Americans that they are standing with the Constitution's Framers in a common disdain for a strong, activist federal government. That is false history but it is undergirding the expected Republican congressional victories on Tuesday, writes Robert Parry.
Multinational banks are preparing to pay out billions of dollars in fines to settle charges of foreign exchange manipulation. Some 19 investigations in ten different legal jurisdictions are now winding their way to completion and analysts says the final tally may hit $41 billion.
Udall has been a genuine watchdog: calling for CIA director John Brennan to resign after it was revealed that CIA operatives had been spying on the communications of Senate staffers, challenging his colleagues to establish effective oversight of intelligence agencies, demanding meaningful checks and balances and criticizing President Obama for failing to end the excesses of the Bush-Cheney era.
The second part of a three part transcript of my interview with Pulitzer Prize winning NY Times reporter James Risen.
By Citizen News Service - CNS
No single HIV prevention method can end AIDS: Combination prevention is key
As HIV prevention needs and contexts vary, it is important to expand the range of effective prevention options that people can use. Archbishop Desmond Tutu said in a video link at the first-ever international conference on all HIV-related biomedical prevention research, that "No single method of prevention can end this epidemic on its own."
William S. Burroughs wrote "Under pretext of drug control suppressive police states have been set up throughout the Western world". The police states maintain a democratic façade from behind which they denounce as criminals, perverts and drug addicts anyone who opposes the control machine."

Even the children who have learned several hundred sight words cannot read real stories. Until the child learns phonics, any attempt at reading a real story will be a humiliating, pointless ordeal.
The Day of the Dead invites us all -- "believers" or not -- to recall those who have gone before us to "rest in the sleep of peace" and to ready ourselves for The Great Transformation by looking death square in the face.
November is Positive Music Month and you can get a free download of one (or sometimes two) fabulous positive music songs by award-winning musicians every day of the month at EmPowerma.com
Even if only for a day, there is no denying it's fun to be someone else. For some, part of the fun is to be as different as possible. Perhaps that's why some men put on drag, why some demure women get their sexy on, and... why some white folks are drawn to blackface.
The doctor who became infected with Ebola has been upgraded to stable as he undergoes treatment at Bellevue Hospital. The New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation released a statement Saturday that said due to Dr. Craig Spencer's "clinical progress and response to treatment, today HHC is updating his condition to 'stable' from 'serious but stable.' The patient will remain in isolation and continue to receive full treatment." Spencer has been awake, communicating, and in good spirits, and health officials have said in the past that Spencer's condition will likely worsen before it gets better.
By Ed Ciaccio
If Barack Obama Were Truly a Liberal...
How Obama and the Democrats have failed to advance progressive policies.
A strategic Al Qaida goal in its terror war against America is to divide Americans politically, however the GOP for 2014 has adopted a Halloween-themed campaign strategy that they hope will incite voters to run screaming from Democrats.

By Kenneth G. Eade
Gas Wars
. The terror card played by George W. Bush, has been passed on to Barack Obama, who ironically won a Nobel Peace Prize five years ago for "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples," and promotion of a "new climate in international relations, especially in reaching out to the Muslim world." Our peace loving president, whose effort to bomb Syria last year was quashed by Russia
Before the Ping May, a rusty cargo vessel, could disembark from the port of Santa Marta en route to the Netherlands in late August, Colombian inspectors boarded the boat and made a discovery. Hidden in the ship's chain locker, amidst its load of coal bound for Europe, were approximately 40 kilograms, or about ninety pounds, of cocaine. A Colombian Coast Guard official told The Nation that there is an ongoing investigation.
James Chao, father of McConnell's wife Elaine, has a lot of questions to answer after about $6.7 million worth of cocaine was found on the Ping May, a ship owned by the Foremost Group, a company Chao founded and led to a tidy fortune. But was that fortune built on honest movement of legitimate bulk trade goods, or has Mr. Chao been trading in less than legal goods? Foremost is the source of most of Sen. McConnell's fortune through gifts and inheritance from his in-laws. It is a shadowy corporation, utilizing a complex scheme of shell companies to skip out on millions in taxes annually.
How security or the NYPD knew McGovern and the other activists by name and that they would be at the event is unknown at the moment. Whether an alert system like the alerts used by the State Department was involved to tip off security to their presence is also unknown as well.
The Democrats have mostly hidden from the Affordable Care Act (ACA). In fact, they have done their best to convince voters that they have nothing to do with this program; interestingly, so have many Republicans. The Republicans are fully aware of the danger they can face because of their opposition to extending health care insurance. Unfortunately, the Democrats have yet to catch on.
Mitch McConnell and the Kentucky Republican Party just sent a frightening, and possibly illegal, letter to Kentucky voters in an attempt to keep them from voting.
By Uri Avnery
Chicken*hit
Netanyahu is no fool. Chickenshit or not, he is considered smart and intelligent. So what is he doing? There is method in his madness. He knows that Israel controls the US Congress. In any confrontation between Congress and the White House over Israel, the President is bound to lose. So there is nothing to be afraid of.
With just days until voters go to the polls, Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes is calling for a federal investigation into voter intimidation tactics that are being used by Sen. Mitch McConnell in Kentucky. The Grimes campaign has already filed for an immediate injunction to force the McConnell campaign to stop using deceptive mailings in order to discourage voters from voting, but they are taking it one step further. The Kentucky Democratic Senate candidate is also calling for a state and federal investigation into McConnell and his tactics.
The American dream has become impossible for most of us to achieve. And more and more Americans believe, quote, "there's not much opportunity to get ahead. ... A living wage, retirement security, the opportunity for your children to get ahead are increasingly out of reach. Why aren't people furious about this?
Thanks to Prime Minister Stephen Harper's extremism--total subservience to the US and Israel Middle East agenda--Canada now has a thriving Muslim-based extremism.

 Latest Articles
Who will tell the Emperor he is not wearing any clothes
Where is the hard-hitting reporting on the safety of hydrofracking?
Is Bipartisanship Possible?
As the 2014-midterm elections grind down to their conclusion, voters in many communities continue to be subjected to wave after wave of negative ads. The obvious solution is to take big money out of politics, but another tactic would be to promote bipartisanship, to somehow dispel the rancor between Democrats and Republicans. Is bipartisanship possible? Or is the US too polarized?
New York City police arrested ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern to prevent him from attending a public event where he planned to pose a pointed question to retired Gen. David Petraeus, another sign of how much U.S. neocons love democracy, writes Robert Parry.

 Best News Links from the Web
It is our right and duty to reform and alter our government so that it will no longer be a Plutocracy ruled by the wealthy but instead will actually be of the people, by the people, and for the people. After all, Thomas Jefferson noted that: "I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society, but the people themselves: and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power." Jefferson also noted: "Those seeking profits, were they given total freedom, would not be the ones to trust to keep government pure and our rights secure. Indeed, it has always been those seeking wealth who were the source of corruption in government..." Americans now need to realize the truth.

Despite hundreds of millions of dollars to influence and practically buy elections, GOP will come up short to overtake Senate. The ploy to reduce the honorable accomplishments of President Obama, create an unfavorable political cloud to follow him, and connect all Democrats to the unfounded, but well funded tactic, worked well with the GOP base. But, not so much with Independent and undecided voters who hold nearly a 20 percent voting bloc. In addition, Democrats; white, black, Hispanic, Asian, and others, have stepped up in mail-in and early voting that has outpaced the GOP. October surprise!
A girl shot during a rampage at a Washington state high school last week that left two other girls dead along with the gunman has died from her wounds, Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett said on Friday. Shaylee Chuckulnaskit, 14, died at 4:45 p.m. at the hospital as a result of severe injuries after being shot in the head during last Friday's incident in a cafeteria at Marysville-Pilchuck High School, an hour's drive north of Seattle.
Marvin Gaye's family won a round in court over allegations that last year's blockbuster hit Blurred Lines ripped off the late Motown legend's work. Mix together Marvin Gaye, (who was shot dead by his father while sitting next to his mother on April Fool's Day in 1984 - with the gun he had given his father the previous Christmas) with the openly misogynistic music video Blurred Lines creators Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams (of the very different hit song "Happy") with a couple of lawyers intent on winning big bucks and it should be an attention-getting celebrity trial. Musicologist Sandy Wilbur testified that the melody, harmony and rhythm of the songs were different. She said that only one note in the songs' key phrases had the same pitch and placement. HOwever a judge ruled in the Gaye Family's favor. (See OEN comments for links to both songs and decide for yourself)
VVirgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo rocket plane exploded and crashed during a test flight on Friday, killing one crew member and seriously injuring another, authorities said. The explosion came after the plane dropped away from its WhiteKnightTwo carrier airplane and fired up its hybrid rocket engine, said Stuart Witt, CEO and general manager of the Mojave Air and Space Port in California. The blast scattered debris across a two-mile swath of the desert floor north of Mojave, which is about 95 miles (150 kilometers) outside Los Angeles. One of the two test pilots aboard the plane was killed, said Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood, who was among the officials dealing with the crash's aftermath. The other parachuted to the ground and was injured.
We welcomed approximately 10,000 Nazis, some of whom had played pivotal roles in the genocide. America began reaching out to leading Nazis months before the Germans surrendered. In March 1945, while the war still raged, the American spy chief Allen Dulles conducted a friendly fireside chat in the library of a Zurich apartment with the Nazi general Karl Wolff, the closest associate of the SS leader Heinrich Himm ler for much of the war. The Scotch- lubricated conversation convinced Dulles that Wolff, despite his ties to Himmler and his role as a leader of the Waffen SS, was a moderate who deserved protection. The CIA. and the FBI. sought out spies and informants who had participated in genocide. For these agencies, engaging in murder was acceptable as long as the recruits did not lie about their record. The intelligence agencies became the Nazis' best advocates and protectors.
Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 19:56