Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Friday 26 April 2013


Daily Headlines

This is a report of my interview with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he has been granted political asylum since June 2012.

America, difficult as it may be for some to accept, is a house of cards, i.e., "a weakened structure that is in danger of collapsing or failing if its foundations continue to erode." Our nation and our democracy are being ravaged by Corporatists and rogue politicians. There is only one way to combat this dangerous coalition and that is by unleashing the massive power of the American people against it.

By Bob Burnett
What's Wrong With Social Security?
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it." For 58 million Americans, the Social Security system works satisfactorily. Therefore, many were surprised when President Obama suggested a fix, using the chained CPI for the cost-of-living adjustment. What's wrong with the Social Security system?
In 1997, Thatcher was the first former prime minister to visit Tony Blair after he entered Downing Street. There is a photo of them, joined in rictus: the budding war criminal with his mentor. When Ed Milliband, in his unctuous "tribute," caricatured Thatcher as a "brave" feminist hero whose achievements he personally "honored," you knew the old killer had not died at all.

By David Swanson
Libyan Door to Syrian Door to Iran
I do assess with varying degrees of horror (some of the varying degrees rather high even) that a lot of people are going to die.
I grew up playing basketball, I have been interested in business since I was 13 years old, but poetry came to me a little later in life. One of my favorite quotes says: "No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care." I go through life caring and sharing with people and then write about how it makes me feel and the lessons I learn about happiness and inner peace.

The Houston Chronicle reported last week that for years before the explosion that destroyed the West Fertilizer Co. facility, "neighbors had repeatedly called state authorities with complaints about leaks, the odor of ammonia and concerns about a nearby middle school and nursing home."

You have to give the AP an A for effort, for at least trying to tell its huge audience about one aspect of the president's major Medicare proposal. But when it comes to judging the quality of the AP's story, a grade of C minus might be more appropriate. for some Medicare services but that's about it. Not much context. The piece loses people in a fog of numbers that obscure rather than clarify.

By Dave Lefcourt
A Possible Motive Behind the Boston Marathon Bombings
Ever since the Boston Marathon bombings the motives of the 2 brothers allegedly committing this crime has been baffling. Yesterday, the younger brother wrote during interrogation the older brother was upset by the U.S. wars in Iraq & Afghanistan & his anger was the motivation to plant 2 homemade bombs along the race route. So is the killing of Muslim innocents in U.S. wars the motive behind the bombing of innocents in Boston?
By William Boardman
F-35 Plans Attack Civilians
While it's too soon, perhaps, to say that the over-budget, overdue, and under-performing F-35 joint strike fighter is in a political tailspin, having its biggest Senate booster accused of pushing for political pork at the expense of his poorer constituents hasn't made the controversial stealth bomber's flight path less bumpy.

Who says "they" are not trying to kill us? CFL lighting, now mandatory in many developed-world jurisdictions, are extremely hazardous and release enough mercury vapor when broken to seriously harm a child. Furthermore, most of them emit a dangerous cocktail of toxic vapors even when used normally. They don't even last very long! This great investigative report explains all. You will probably be shocked well beyond your wildest expectations, but this is no conspiracy flick, just a solid report by some great journalists.

Scott Cooper is a long-time activist who lives in Newton, Massachusetts, a city that borders on Boston and through which the Boston Marathon runs. We asked him about the bombing at the Marathon and his reactions to the lockdown the Friday after as police sought the suspects.

Jesus was a dedicated Jew who prayed, as Jews do today, with prayer shawl and tefillin (pylacteries).He regularly attended prayer services at a synagogue where he read from the Torah.A synagogue visit during prayer services offers an authentic Jesus experience: "That's what Jesus did every Sabbath."

"Obamacare is making underinsurance the new normal," said Woolhandler. "It will reduce the number of uninsured from 50 million to 30 million, but the new coverage is full of holes. Americans deserve the kind of first-dollar, comprehensive coverage that Canadians already have. But that's only affordable under a single-payer system that cuts out the private insurance middlemen."

The Pew report found that the poorest 93 percent of US households saw, on average, a four percent decline in their net worth during these two years of stock market boom, while the wealthiest seven percent saw their net worth increase by an average of 28 percent.

Israel declared Tuesday that it had found evidence that the Syrian government repeatedly used chemical weapons last month, arguing that President Bashar al-Assad was testing how the United States and others would react and that it was time for Washington to overcome its deep reluctance to intervene in the Syrian civil war. Israeli officials argued that President Assad had repeatedly crossed what President Obama said last summer would be a "red line." But Obama administration officials pushed back, saying they would not leap into the conflict on what they viewed as inconclusive evidence.

With the opening of the George W. Bush presidential library in Dallas, Texas today, there has been some creative re-telling of history and the Bush legacy--a legacy full of terrible consequences, intended and otherwise, that we're still having to deal with to this very day. He Authorized the use of torture--Politicized climate science--Ignored Afghanistan to launch a war in Iraq--Botched the response to Hurricane Katrina--Defunded stem cell research--Required Muslim men to register with the government--Reinstated the global gag rule--Supported anti-gay discrimination--Further deregulated Wall Street--Widened income inequality--Undermined worker protections--Ideological court appointments--Presided over a dysfunctional executive branch...Miss him yet?

These banks, which already possess enormous power just by virtue of their financial holdings -- in the United States, the top six banks, many of them the same names you see on the Libor and ISDAfix panels, own assets equivalent to 60 percent of the nation's GDP -- are beginning to realize the awesome possibilities for increased profit and political might that would come with colluding instead of competing. Moreover, it's increasingly clear that both the criminal justice system and the civil courts may be impotent to stop them, even when they do get caught working together to game the system.

Rape in the military as well as among civilians is part of a worldwide system known as patriarchy. We have to begin to challenge its presence here in the US and around the world.

Frank Luntz, the media-friendly Republican consultant and word wiz, told a group of college students this week that Rush Limbaugh and right-wing talk radio are "problematic" for the GOP and partly responsible for the stark polarization within the nation's political discourse. He only dared to speak so candidly about Limbaugh and other conservative hosts off the record. A secretly recorded video, though, captured Luntz's remark.

Why is there such a clampdown on information about who hired Craft mercenaries for the Boston Marathon, asks TCBH! journalist Dave Lindorff, who tried everyone and got no answers.



Latest Articles
The problem with our economy today is quite simple: The upper one percent has sucked the middle class dry while they have stashed their money offshore and left the general economy in a depressed state.

A brief explanation into why budgets have grown to be so important, volatile and are practically meaningless as a management tool. They contribute to the problem that they were meant to solve.

Sometimes you just can't help it

If you want to reduce the deficit, try passing a jobs bill and putting people back to work! More people working and higher incomes for working people result in HIGHER TAX REVENUES! You won't have to take food out of the mouths of our children; or force our elderly citizens, who have spent their lives working and paying into Social Security, to choose between food and medicine.

Todd Gitlin: The Tinsel Age of Journalism
After all these decades, here's the strange thing: what I remember are his hands, not his face. But perhaps that's fitting for a writer. His name was Robert Shaplen and he was a correspondent for the New Yorker. My parents knew him and, as a boy, I idolized him. From World War II on, he covered Asia. He seemed to me the most adventurous man on the planet.

Best News Links from the Web
The Obama administration said Thursday that the Syrian government has likely used chemical weapons on a small scale against rebel forces, but it stopped short of threatening military action against President Bashar al-Assad. But these "intelligence assessments" remain to be corroborated with hard facts, and the administration is "pressing for a comprehensive United Nations investigation that can credibly evaluate the evidence and establish what took place."

U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel indicated on Wednesday that he was caught by surprise when Israeli officials publicly revealed their assessment that Syria has used chemical weapons in its civil war. Hagel told reporters that his Israeli counterpart, Moshe Yaalon, did not alert him to the assessment when they met in Tel Aviv on Monday. The assessment was announced publicly on Tuesday by a senior official with Israel's military intelligence office.

Given what appears to be a bounty of evidence against the Tsarnaev brothers, the FBI says the time frame of Dzhokhar's confession won't matter. They say between the physical and photographic evidence they have from the Boston Marathon crime scene, and what they collected from the violent manhunt that followed, they have more than enough to convict.

A fire that sparked huge explosions and injured three workers on a pair of Mobile River barges is out, the U.S. Coast Guard said Thursday. The barge was empty at the time of the initial explosion Wednesday night, but authorities believe a spark ignited vapors in it, causing an explosion that ignited a second barge. At least seven explosions rocked the barges, according to the Coast Guard.

Ron Paul is back, this time as head of a new "institute' for "peace' comprised of anti-Semites, 9/11 truthers, and dictator lovers. it is now impossible to extricate Paul from the extremist views of his hangers-on. That is because Paul, who retired from Congress in January, has decisively thrown in his lot with a bevy of conspiracy theorists, cranks, and apologists for some of the worst regimes on the planet.
Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 22:38