Prof. Peter Phillips & Kimberly Soeiro. Exposing the Ruling Class!

This study asks: Who are the world's One percent power elite? And to what extent do they operate in unison for their own private gains over benefits for the 99 percent? We examine a sample of the 1 percent: The extractor sector, whose companies are on the ground extracting material from the global commons, and using low cost labor to amass wealth. These companies include oil, gas, and various mineral extraction organizations, whereby the value of the material removed far exceeds the actual cost of removal. We also examine the investment sector of the global 1 percent: Companies whose primary activity is the massing and reinvesting of the global 1 percent: Companies whose primary activity is the amassing and reinvesting of capital. This sector includes global central banks, major investment money management firms, and other companies whose primary efforts are the concentration and expansion of money, such as insurance companies. Finally, we analyze how global networks of centralized power, the elite 1 percent, their companies, and various governments in their service plan manipulate and enforce policies that benefit their continued concentration of wealth and power. We demonstrate how the US/NATO military industrial media empire operates in service to the transnational capital in the world. The Occupy Movement has developed a mantra that addresses the great inequality of wealth and power between the world's wealthiest 1 percent and the rest of us, the other 99 percent. While the 99 percent undoubtedly serves as a motivational tool for open involvement, there is little understanding as to who comprises the 1 percent, and how they maintain power in the world.

Prof. Michel Chossudovsky: Keep the Ball Rolling: Media Lies

Mainstream media fiction has reached new heights. Public opinion is duped into endorsing the repeal of civil liberties in the name of "national security" as well as the conduct of "humanitarian wars" with a view to promoting "democracy" and achieving a lasting "World peace". Without media disinformation and war propaganda, which offensively pervade the global news chain, the legitimacy of the US NATO military agenda would collapse like a deck of cards. Despite relentless efforts of the independent alternative media to convey unbiased analysis and honest news reporting, the outright lies and fabrications of the mainstream media continue to thrive. For almost eleven years, Global Research, together with partner alternative media organizations, has sought Truth in Media, with a view to eventually "disarming" the corporate media's disinformation crusade. To reverse the tide, we call upon our readers to participate in an important endeavor. Global Research has more than 50,000 "unique visitors" on the global-research.ca website and 30,055 "unique visitors" on the global research.ca website, and 30,055 subscribers to our newsletter. Our objective is to recruit one thousand committed "volunteers" among our 30,000 Newsletter subscribers to support the distribution of Global Research articles. Do not send us money. Under Plan A below, we call upon our readers to donate 5 minutes a day to Global Research. If, however, you are pressed for time in the course of a busy day, scroll down to Plan B. Establish an email list of some fifty friends and family, or use your existing email list. Forward the daily Global Research Newsletter and/or your favorite Global Research articles to this list on a daily basis, with a personal message to your friends.  

Julie Levesque: Freedom Fighters: The Foot Soldiers of America

Since the end of World War II, the Anglo-American Empire has covertly supported the deployment of foreign and domestic "foot soldiers", including terrorists and paramilitary brigades to bring about regime change and further its agenda of World domination. One of the earlier examples of such a modus operandi, still widely ignored, is Gladio, "NATO's European stay behind army", active during the Cold War. Controlled by the CIA and Britain's MI6, Gladio members orchestrated terrorist attacks in Western Europe, which were blamed on Communist entities. Gladio was falsely presented to key European state officials as a stand by secret army, ready to counter a possible communist take over. The ultimate goal of Gladio was to demonize the Communist and Socialist parties and encourage European citizens to endorse their governments' commitment to "National security". American citizens were not exempt from such scheming. As Prof. James F Tracy explains: "The string of still unresolved US political assassinations throughout the 1960's suggest how such practices were not restricted to foreign countries, nor were they solely the terrain of intelligence agencies. Along lines similar to Gladio, in the early 1960s the US Joint Chiefs of Staff proposed Operation Northwoods, where terrorist attacks would be initiated against US civilians in American cities, and the violence blamed on Cuban combatants to justify war against the island nation. The Kennedy administration rejected the proposal. While Northwoods exhibited the capacity for government to conceive and propose such plans, Gladio was demonstrably carried out against Western civilian populations in multiple locations over many years." The recruitment of paramilitary armies and death squads played a key role in the conduct of US foreign policy.  

Don Hazen: Paul Ryan for Veep is Smarter Than You Think!

When Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney tapped Paul Ryan, the 42 year old Wisconsin congressman to be his running mate, progressives went on a happy-thon. That Romney chose the House Budget Committee chairman known as the architect of draconian budgets that would make huge cuts in every aspect of the safety net, not to mention his quest to turn Medicare into a voucher program just seemed like a major blunder. My colleague, Joshua Holland, called it Romney's biggest mistake. Many were gleeful and shocked that Romney would seemingly play right into the Obama message on how the Romney agenda harms the middle class, but I wasn't so happy. The Romney decision signals several things about the future, and non of them good. Rather scary and ugly, as a matter of fact. My gut told me that, for the Republican vice presidential candidate, I would much rather have a non-entity like Portman or Pawlenty as the Republican than a right-wing rock star. Any day. Progressives are right when they say Ryan represents everything that shows how out of touch the Republicans are with the needs of the country, but they are not looking toward at Romney's Ryan decision for what it is, a hugely dangerous step toward getting the Koch brothers' hand picked star right to the verge of the presidency, which, if it should come to pass, could dramatically transform the nature of American politics for our lifetimes. Whether Romney wins or loses, the Ryan pick poses a threat to the well being of the nation. If Romney wins, then Ryan occupies the number two spot with a money base and huge constituency of his own, far more than any vice president has ever enjoyed.    

Richard Eskow: "President Ryan" Another Shrewd Move in the Corporate State!

Paul Ryan's looks are often compared to an actor's, and that's no accident: He is being groomed for the role of a lifetime. When Mitt Romney accidentally introduced Ryan Ryan as "the next President" he may have been displaying the same predilection for accidental honesty, for truth telling as political gaffe, that he showed when he praised Israel's socialized health system. And Romney may be right. The most likeable and electable extremist in the country just became the GOP's 2016 front runner. That's no accident either. All the signs suggest that the economy will struggle for years, unless progressive steps are taken. Worse, another steep decline into recession or depression could occur at any time. If Obama's re-elected and we're still suffering in 2016, as now seems likely, our "electable extremist" will be in the perfect position to become the next President. Heads we win, says Corporate America, and tails you lose. Even that doesn't tell the whole story. The Ryan choice reflects something much bigger than an election or two. Corporate America, and those who serve it have been playing a long game for political power, displaying formidable qualities yet to be seen in its electoral opponents, a clearly articulated vision, concrete goals, and the ability to plan and execute long range strategies. Under their ideal of Corporate Statism, the President is no longer "the Decider." He or she increasingly serves as Corporate America's employee, a hireling who serves as its sales rep, its celebrity spokesperson, as a flesh and blood avatar for faceless financial power. Who's better suited for that job than Paul Ryan? The game plan was laid out in the infamous Lewis Powell memo of 1970, which encouraged corporations to take control of all major Us institutions, and their game was already well underway when Powell sketched his strategy on the chalkboard. Far from being a blunder, the Ryan nomination can be seen as the next step in a decades long plan to capture this country's political institutions for the ideology of radical corporate statism.    

Ray McGovern: Israel Likely to Strike Iran Before November!

More Washington insiders are coming to the conclusion that Israel's leaders are planning to attack Iran before the US election in November in the expectation that American forces will be drawn in. There is widespread recognition that, without US military involvement, an Israeli attack would be highly risky and, at best, only marginally successful. At this point, to dissuade Israeli leaders from mounting such an attack might require a public statement by President Obama warning Israel not to count on US forces,, not even for the "clean-up." Though Obama has done pretty much everything short of making such a public statement, he clearly wants to avoid a confrontation with Israel in the weeks before the election. However, Obama's silence regarding a public warning speaks volumes to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Natanyahu. The recent pilgrimages to Israel by very senior US officials, including Secretaries of State and Defense carrying identical "Please Don't Bomb Iran Just Yet" banners, has met stony faces and stone walls. Like the Guns of August in 1914, the dynamic for war appears inexorable. Senior US and Israeli officials focus publicly on a "window of opportunity," but different ones. On Thursday, White House spokesman Jay Carney emphasized the need to allow the "most stringent sanctions ever imposed on any country time to work." That, said Carney, is the "window of opportunity to persuade Iran to forgo its nuclear weapons ambitions." That same day, a National Security Council spokesman dismissed Israeli claims that US intelligence had received alarming new information about Iran's nuclear program. "We continue to assess that Iran is not on the verge of achieving a nuclear weapon," the spokesman said. Still, Israel's window of opportunity, what it calls the "zone of immunity" for Iran building a nuclear bomb without Israel alone being able to prevent it, is ostensibly focused on Iran's continued burrowing under mountains, to render its nuclear facilities immune to Israeli air strikes, attacks that would seek to maintain Israel's regional nuclear weapons monopoly.    

Sally Kohn: Ryan Family Fortune Built on Public Works Projects!

When Paul Ryan took the stage in Mooresville North Carolina as Mitt Romney's running mate, he attacked President Obama's "you didn't build that" remark about the role of government in supporting private innovation, but while Republicans have been clamoring to make this election a false dichotomy between the private sector and the public sector, Paul Ryan, heir to a private fortune made by building public highways, is a gaping pothole in that plan. Paul Ryan is a living, breathing GOP example of how public infrastructure and private entrepreneurship work hand in hand. Paul Ryan's great grandfather started a construction company to build railroads and, eventually, highways. According to the Web site of "Ryan Incorporated Central" the company was founded in 1884 with a single team of mules building railroad embankments in Southern Wisconsin." And in the 1800's railroad construction was subsidized by the federal government. Mid century, President Lincoln signed the Pacific Railway Act into law, providing taxpayer dollars to fund the construction of a transcontinental railway. All railroads thereafter connected to, and benefited from that public investment. At the turn of the century, Ryan Inc turned to road building. A subsidiary family corporation, Ryan Incorporated Southern, states on its Web site, "The Ryan workload from 1910 until the rural interstate Highway System was completed 60 years later, and was mostly Highway construction." The $119 billion spent by the federal government on the Interstate Highway System was, by one account, "the largest public works program since the Pyramids." And, according to the Ryan Inc. Web site, the company completed some of the original work at what would become O'Hare Airport in Chicago. Originally, O'Hare Airport was a manufacturing base for World War II transport planes. It's likely that construction project was also paid for by tax dollars!  

Geoffrey Nunberg: Why do we Idolize Jerks?

From the book Ascent of the A-Word by Geoffrey Nunberg. Reprinted by arrangement with Public Affairs, a member of the Perseus Books Group. This is an age of ass-holism simply because we find the phenomenon and its practitioners so interesting, or provocative, or compelling, or compellingly repulsive, or sometimes all those at once. I'm not thinking so much of assholes of opportunity like Charlie Sheen and Mel Gibson, or of incidental assholes like James Cameron or Brett Favre, whose ass-holism only adds a colorful sidebar to an independently impressive career. There's little about those people that's particular to the age, save that in earlier periods the public probably would have been spared the details of the personal tics and twitches that qualify them for the asshole label. What's unique to our time is the fixation with certain iconic assholes, who exemplify each in his way the problematic allure of the species. Steve Jobs, for example, was a modern personification of the asshole as achiever, someone whose ass-holism seems to be inextricable from his success as a leader. The traditional paragons of the type are the storied tough guys from military, business, and public life, whose leadership styles are packaged in memoirs and advice books, like What It Takes to Be #1: Lombardi on Leadership, Rudy Giuliani's Leadership, 29 Leadership Secrets from Jack Welch, and above all a four foot shelf of inspirational works on George S Patton, the first general to have been explicitly designated an asshole by both his men and his superiors. From Patton we learn: If he slapped a soldier, well, it was certainly wrong, but he thought it necessary for the morale of his troops. It was often said that his troops would accomplish the impossible, then go out and do it all over again.

Ellen Brown: Establishing a Democratic Public Banking System!

On July 27, 2012, the National Association of Letter Carriers adopted a resolution at their National Convention in Minneapolis to investigate establishing a postal banking system. The resolution noted that expanding postal services and developing new sources of revenue are important to the effort to save the public Post Office and preserve living wage jobs , that many countries have a successful history of postal banking, including Germany, France, Italy, Japan, and the United States itself, and that postal banks could serve the 9 million people who don't have bank accounts, and the 21 million who use usurious check cashers, giving low income people access to a safe banking system. A USPS bank would offer a public option for banking, concluded the resolution , providing basic checking and savings, and no complex wheeling and dealing. The USPS has been declared insolvent, but it is not, because it is inefficient - it has been self funded throughout its history. It is because in 2006, Congress required it to prefund postal retiree health benefits for 75 years into the future, an ominous burden no other public or private company is required to carry. The USPS has evidently been targeted by a plutocratic Congress, bent on destroying the most powerful unions and privatizing all public services, including education. Britain's 150 year old postal service is also on the privatization chopping block, and its postal workers have also vowed to fight. Adding banking services is an internationally proven way to maintain post office solvency and profitability. Serving an Underserved Market, without going broke. Many countries operate postal savings systems through their post offices, providing people without access to banks a safe, convenient way to save. Great Britain first offered this arrangement in 1861. It was wildly popular, attracting over 600,000 accounts and 8.2 million accounts, and 8.2 million in deposits in its first five years. By 1927, there were twelve milion accounts, one in four Britons with 283 million on deposit. Other banks followed.    

Bill Boyarsky: The Ambiguous Battle for Jobs!

It's the great unanswered question of the presidential campaign. Just how can America actually create jobs? President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are ducking the specifics, tearing each other down and offering little hope to the 15 percent of Americans without enough work. The rhetoric of the campaign, and the coverage by political journalists don't deal with the subject, except in the context of the back and forth insults that have marked this contest. For example, last month Obama, talking about why the rich should pay their fair share of taxes, stated the obvious: "If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. The Internet didn't get invented  on its own. Government research created the Internet, when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together." Any successful entrepreneur with a restaurant or retail operation on an interstate highway would probably agree. But Romney picked it up as more evidence of Obama's rejection of the national entrepreneurial spirit: "It shows how out of touch he is with the character of America," Romney said. Obama isn't out of touch with the American character, but the negativity of his unrelenting attacks against Romney puts him out of touch with the main American need, specific ways of lowering the unemployment rate. Away from the campaign trail, in the real world, life is different, and the entrepreneurial spirit exists to a great extent because workers, business people and governments work together on the complex and frustrating task of actually creating jobs. The New York Times reported Sunday how state government, using financial incentives and salesmanship, with a little help from Congress, persuaded Nissan to build cars in Tennessee. Now, the Times said, Tennessee has more than 60,000 jobs related to automobile and parts production. The state unemployment rate, once above the national average, is now slightly below it.    

Chris Hedges: Criminalizing Dissent!

I was on the 15th floor of the Southern US District Court in New York in the courtroom of Judge Katherine Forest last Tuesday. It was the final hearing in the lawsuit I brought in January against President Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. I filed the suit. along with lawyers Carl J Mayer and Brice I Afran, over Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). We were late joined by six co-plaintiffs, including Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg. This section of the NDAA, signed into law by Obama on December 31, 2011, obliterates some of our most important constitutional protections. It authorizes the executive branch to order the military to seize US citizens deemed to be terrorists or associated with terrorists. Those taken into custody by the military. which becomes under the NDAA a domestic law enforcement agency, can be denied due process and "habeas corpus", and held indefinitely in military facilities. Any activist or dissident, whose rights were once protected under the First Amendment, can be threatened under this law with indefinite incarceration in military prisons, including our offshore penal colonies. The very name of the law itself, the Homeland Battlefield Bill, suggests the totalitarian credo of endless war waged against enemies within the homeland, as well as those abroad. The essential thrust of the NDAA is to create a system of justice that violates the separation of powers, Mayer told the court. The Obama administration has taken detention out of the judicial branch and put it under the executive branch. In May, Judge Forrest issued a temporary injunction, invalidating Section 1021 as a violation of the First and Fifth amendments. It was a courageous decision. Forrest will decide within a couple of weeks, whether she will make the injunction permanent.       

Prof. James F Tracy: False Flag Terror and Conspiracies!

The news medias readiness to accept official pronouncements and failure to more vigorously analyze and question government authorities in the wake of domestic terrorist incidents contributes to the American public's already acute case of collective historical amnesia, while it further rationalizes the twenty first century police state and continued demise of civil society. Some may recall "Bugs Raplin" (Giancarlo Esposito) the resolute investigative journalist depicted in Tim Robbins 1992 political mockumentary Bob Roberts. After being framed as the culprit in a false flag assassination attempt by corrupt political huckster Bob Roberts, Raplin delivers a perceptive soliloquy, that among other things effectively describes the American public's moribund civic condition and short circuited democracy. The reason Iran Contra happened, Raplin begins, is because no one did anything substantial about Watergate, and the reason Watergate happened is because there were no consequences from the Bay of Pigs. They're all the same operatives, the foot soldiers at the Bay of Pigs, the plumbers that got busted at Watergate, the gunrunners in Iran Contra, all the same people, same faces. Now it doesn't take a genius to figure out the connection here: A secret government beyond the control of the people and accountable to no one, and the closer we are to to discovering the connection, the more Congress turns a blind eye to it. We cant talk about that in open session, they say. National security reasons. The truth lies dormant in their laps, and they stay blind out of choice. A conspiracy of silence. Twenty years later, amidst the vast outsourcing of intelligence and military operations, many more events may arguably be added to such a shadow government's achievements: The 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1995 Oklahoma City Murrah Federal bombing, the September 11 terror attacks, the non existent weapons of mass destruction prompting the occupation of Iraq, the July 7, 2005 London tube bombings, the shoe and underwear bombings, all of which have contributed to the official justification of imperial wars abroad, and an ever expanding police state at home. 

Felicity Arbuthnot: Amnesty International or War Propaganda?

Amnesty International has released satellite pictures of craters in Syria, citing an increased use of heavy weapons, including near residential areas. The BBC reports, quoting Amnesty: Images from "Anadan" revealed more than 600 probable artillery impact craters from heavy fighting between Syrian armed forces and armed opposition groups. Further: "Turning Syria's most populous city into a battlefield will have devastating consequences for civilians. The atrocities in Syria are mounting already," warned Christoph Koettl, emergency response manager for Amnesty International USA, without acknowledging that the killings of civilians are committed by the US NATO Free Syrian Army (FSA) rather than the government. The Syrian military and the opposition fighters must both adhere to international humanitarian law, which strictly forbids the use of tactics and weapons that fail to distinguish between military and civilian targets. Amnesty's record on impartiality suffered a fatal blow, when they stated in 1991 that Iraqi soldiers had torn babies from their incubators in Kuweit, and left them to die on the hospital's "neo-natal" unit. Arguably this sealed the 1991 onslaught on Iraq. The story that the Kuwaiti government rewarded Amnesty with $500,000 for endorsing this pack of lies has not gone away, and as far as I am aware, to date, has not been denied. Amnesty's record suffered a further blow, when it organized a demonstration last year, outside the London Syrian Embassy, with CAABU- Council for Arab British Understanding, calling for the overthrow of the sovereign Syrian government. A plan which was outlined by the US Embassy in Damascus in December 2005. This action arguably falls under the definition of incitement to terrorism, set out by the UN Security Council on 4th May 2012.    

John Pilger: How the "Chosen Ones" ended Australia's Olympic Prowess!

The ferries that ply the river west of Sydney Harbor bear the names of Australia's world champion sportswomen. They include the Olympic swimming gold medalist Dawn Fraser and Shane Gould, and runners Betty Cuthbert and Majorie Jackson. As you board, there is a photograph of the athlete in her prime, and a record of her achievements. This is vintage Australia. Often shy and never rich, sporting heroes were nourished by a society that, long before other countries won victories for ordinary people: The first 35 hour working week, child benefits, pensions, secret ballots and, with New Zealand, the vote for women. By the 1960's, Australians had the most equitable spread of personal income in the world. In modern day corporate Australia, this is long forgotten: "We are the chosen ones," sang a choir promoting the 2000 Sydney Olympics. One of the ferries is named after Evonne Goolagong, the tennis star who won Wimbledon in 1971 and 1980. She is Aboriginal, like Cathy Freeman, who won a gold medal in the 400 meters at Sydney. For all their talent, both belong to a carefully constructed facade, behind which Australia's secret indigenous history is suppressed and denied. The late Charlie Perkins, an Aboriginal leader who played first division football in England, told me: "There's an ambivalence that consumes many of us. I was so pleased to be back home, seeing that wonderful light, hearing the birds, seeing my mates, but felt the racism more than ever. For one thing, no white person ever invited me home for a meal, for anything. Blacks weren't even allowed in the grandstands, not even in the blacks only sections." In the 1960's Charlie led "freedom rides" into the north-west of New South Wales, where "nigger hunts" were still not uncommon. Abused and spat at, he stood at the turnstiles of local swimming pools and sports fields and demanded that a race bar be lifted: "In South Africa, at least you knew were you stood," he said. "In Australia, you can have a friend and an enemy all in one person, especially if you are like me, of mixed blood.   

Ismail Salami: Orwellian Ramifications Unfold in Syria!

There is speculation that Western supported insurgents in Syria may have seized hold of chemical weapons. Apart from the unthinkable havoc the rebels can wreak in Syria, and in the region with WMD's in their possession, the rhetorical question which remains, is how these weapons of mass destruction have fallen into the hands of the insurgents, who are chiefly composed of Wahhabi al-Qaeda mercenaries of different nationalities including Afghans, Iraqis, Turkish, Yemenis, Jordanians, Pakistanis, and Saudis. The situation in Syria is assuming Orwellian ramifications, and the possibility to clearly understand or dissect the situation in the country is not an easy task: In addition to the active role the Saudi backed Wahhabis, CIA and some western intelligence organizations are playing in Syria, there is one entity, namely Israel which is stealthily espying every single development in Syria. For the first time, an Israeli spy official clearly stated that Israel supports regime change in Syria, and that it really demands an end to the government of President Bashar Assad. I hope it will happen, even though I don't know how, Intelligence Agencies Minister Dan Meridor said on Tuesday. The top spy chief implicated why Assad should go, and how it would damage the Islamic Republic of Iran. I am not going to try to calculate when Assad's end will come, but when it happens, Iran's biggest ally will be gone. Taking it for granted that Assad is doomed to go, he said, I hope the new Syria will understand that joining Iran is a mistake that brings isolation from the Western world. Such a feeble perception of the Syrian situation is indicative of one who is either too optimistic or one who is well aware of what is going on behind the scene, and that which is not visible to the ordinary people with no intelligence savvy. Furthermore, Dan Meridor does not seem to understand that the situation in Israel is spiraling out of control with people protesting against social injustice almost on a daily basis.

David Swanson: Soldiers Who Refuse to Kill?

One of the most inspiring events thus far at the Veterans for Peace National Convention underway in Miami was a presentation by several veterans who have refused to participate in war. Typically, they have done this at the risk of significant time in prison, or worse. In most cases, these resisters avoided doing any time. Even when they did go behind bars, they did so with a feeling of liberation: Gerry Condon refused to deploy to Vietnam, was sentenced to 10 years in prison, escaped from Fort Bragg, left the country, and came back campaigning for amnesty. President Jimmy Carter pardoned resisters as his first act in office. Condon never served a day, in either the military service or prison. Jeff Paterson of "Courage to Resist" refused to fly to Iraq, choosing instead to sit down on the tarmac. Ben Griffin from VFP's new chapter in the UK refused to participate in our nations' wars and has been issued a gag order. He is not permitted to speak, and yet he speaks so well. Mike Prysner of March Forward and Camilo Meijia of VFP here in Miami described their acts of resistance: Mejia did us all the enormous favor some years back, of putting his story down in a book, an extremely rarity, sadly for peace activists with great stories to tell. Mejia's book "Road From Ar Ramadi" is a terrific introduction for anyone wondering why someone would sign up for the military and then refuse to kill people. Mejia, who now works on domestic civil rights issues in Miami, while remaining part of the antiwar movement, is a co-convenor of the VFP convention. In October 2003, Mejia was the first US soldier to publicly refuse to fight in Iraq. At that time, only 22 members of the US military had gone AWOL from that war, a number that would quickly climb into the thousands, as the war worsened and as belief in the various rationales offered for the war evaporated.     

Gordon Duff: Does the NATO Free Libyan Government Overshadow America?

At home, Romney builds a "new Self" of dung stacked high. The reality of being a Mormon candidate is you can't drink a Coke because of the caffeine, but you can take $100 million from the earnings of prostitutes to pay for your "expenses." We call that "moral flexibility." Libya Yesterday: During the entire struggle for independence, hundreds of "independent journalists," some paid up to $15,000 per day by Colonel Gaddafi, others working for the Washington Israeli axis were publishing wild stories about heroic Libyan freedom fighters. To them, all were Al Qaeda or Navy "SEALS" or both. No reason or rationale was crazy enough as long as the money flowed. Their stories, in the thousands, discredited themselves and proved that the "independent media" was unaccountable to fact, Islamophobic, greedy and willing to back a monster in order to express rabid anti Americanism. Not one photo of an American was ever taken, no Al Qaeda were seen, only endless thousands of Israeli hired mercenaries, hired to murder for Gaddafi, filled prison camps for months. Gaddafi is dead, or most likely dead, as nothing we see, less we hear nothing we read can be depended on anymore. I mourn his passing, as I think nostalgically of him as a Cold War holdover, a "larger than life" political theorist who borrowed too much from East Germany, guaranteeing a long rule but at a cost to individual rights and freedoms, misrepresented by some as "benevolence." Gaddafi wasn't Stalin, but an opponent of Gaddafi was anyone who failed to give him undying blind support, and such failure would cost beatings and even death. Thus my criticism of those who saw his dollars, and failed to recognize the brutality, or the simple fact that "rule for life" is wrong: Israeli hired African mercenaries put in a zoo and fed flags, as reported by Russia Today. The irony? Foreign death squads were supplied to Gaddafi by his "pretend Zionist enemy," making every word of his mouth a lie. The lesson? Stay home! Are we also talking to Saudi Arabia, and more than one or two other regimes as well?    

Gordon Duff: Turkey Enters a Dangerous Game!

The following short article was printed on Press TV (Iran) website today. The meaning of it is clear to those familiar with the region, and, as hundreds, perhaps thousands of journalists have worked in Iraq and the Kurdish regions, where I have also worked, the story is obvious, it just can't be printed. Many of "players," the Mossad, big oil, the Bush family, are beyond the reach of the press, protected from the laws of man, empowered to play the world as a grand chessboard, to quote Zbigbiew Brzezinski. Today's pawn is Kurdistan, unaware they are being played. "The Iraqi government has summoned Ankara's envoy to Baghdad in protest to a recent visit by Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu to the disputed Iraqi city of Kirkuk. Turkey's foreign minister traveled to Kirkuk on Thursday, while on a visit to Iraq's semi autonomous Kurdistan region. The Iraqi Foreign Ministry says Ankara must have informed it ahead of the visit. Iraq has warned that Turkey should be ready for the results of this action and its potential negative effects on relations between the two countries. The real story is Turkey, whose armies have entered have entered Iraq chasing terrorists on many occasions, to the point their artillery would awaken me, has decided to become involved in Iraq's internal affairs. Kurdistan may well have a right to be a free nation. Were it so, 70% of the land making up Kurdistan would come from inside Turkey, not just Iraq. For decades, Turkey violently suppressed the role of Kurds within Turkey, in large regions where they make up the majority of the population. So, what has driven the Turkish Foreign Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, to visit Kurdish regional officials in the city of Kirkuk? Before Saddam realigned the population of Iraq, Kirkuk, home of one of the world's largest oil fields, was a Kurdish city. There have been continual political confrontations over Kirkuk for years. My personal views tend to side with the Kurds. They are my friends, some are as my own family. However, the value of Kurdistan has changed since Israel moved in. They had been there for many years, operating in the shadows, assassinating Christian leaders, pitting side against side, but Kurdistan never joined in the civil war planned for them.    

Jill Richardson: Huge Food Corporations Will Make Price Hikes Worse!

Farmer George Naylor sounds a little too much like the fictional character Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh, when asked about his corn crop. June is usually a wet month, but not this year. One time it rained so little it just barely wet the bottom of his rain gauge. Add that to several days of triple digit temperatures that accelerated water loss from his soil and his crop, and his corn is in a sad state. But he's actually relatively lucky, because he is in Iowa, which got some rain early in the season. Farmers in Illinois and Indiana are faring much worse. The 2012 drought is now the worst drought our country has faced in half a century. As of the end of June, a third of the nation was in severe drought, and more than half faced moderate to extreme drought. All in all, June ranks as the 14th warmest and 10th driest June on record. By the end of July, the USDA had declared 1,584 counties in 32 states as primary disaster areas, making farmers and ranchers in those counties eligible for federal relief programs. Analogies to the Dust Bowl are becoming common. Most of the time, Americans don't need to worry much about how the food gets to our table, and whether the weather has anything to do with it. It gets hot, and we put on the air conditioning. It doesn't rain for weeks on end, and we celebrate the sunshine. But now, the fate of the corn crop on Midwestern farms even has comedian Stephen Colbert worried. Agricultural economist Bruce Babcock appeared on his show, warning him that the prices of meat, dairy and eggs will increase because "American livestock are fed a corn heavy diet." As Colbert put it, "It is one thing for global warming to make sea levels rise, but nobody told me it would make my cheese levels recede."  

James Rohrer: A Simple Recipe for "Us vs Them"

My Uncle Richard did not need to die prematurely. He was a victim of the most relentless killer the world has ever known: Us and Them. This assassin can slay victims in countless ways. In my uncle's case, it looked like either a stroke or medical malpractice, but it really was US and Them. Richard had left our Appalachian family farm at the tag end of the Great Depression. He moved to a big city in New York, got a job with a rising company, and soon he became management. He made a bundle, joined a country club, had a good life, but got burned out. When I was about ten years old, he decided to take early retirement and move back to the farm. He wanted out of the city, out of the rat race, and back to nature. Soon after he returned, he went to our local small town doctor for a physical exam. He felt fine, but the doctor told him that he needed immediately to stop taking a medication that his family physician in New York had prescribed. Uncle Richard derisively ignored the advice. His New York doctor was an old friend, a member of the country club, while the small town doctor was a refugee from the Soviet Union. This was during the Cold War, when most Americans imagined that nothing in the Soviet Union could possibly be up to American standards, and certainly not medical training. The last time I ever saw my Uncle, he was fuming about the "damned Russkie." "Can you imagine the nerve of that damned Russkie, thinking he knows more than my doctor?" Two weeks later, Uncle Richard was dead. The coroner's report made it clear: He should have listened to the Russkie. My uncle was not particularly stubborn or foolish. He was just being human. We humans are by nature social creatures, even the most introverted of us, and we tend to trust and follow the thinking of the groups with which we identify. 

W. Henry Wall, Jr: How the CIA's LSD Experiments Destroyed My Father's Mind

From Healing to Hell, a memoir in which oral surgeon and inventor W. Henry Wall Jr. explores how a mind control experiment destroyed his father, former Georgia senator and mental health advocate, Dr. W. Henry Wall, Sr."Daddy" became addicted to the narcotic Demerol after a routine dental procedure. His dependency eventually landed him in prison, where he became a victim of the CIA's MK-Ultra experiment. "We do not target American citizens. The nation must to a degree take it on faith that we who lead the CIA are honorable men, devoted to the nation's service." Richard Helms, former CIA director. In March 1979 the revelation came. After Times Books published journalist John Marks's nonfiction opus, The Search for the Manchurian Candidate, a horrifying expose of a Central Intelligence Agency program known as MK-Ultra, that focused on attempts to find an effective mind control or "truth"drug, the Atlanta Journal Constitution featured a series of six articles detailing the book's content. By the time I read the second page of the second installment, I knew exactly what had happened to my dad. Stunned, I read it again slowly to be quite sure. As Marks reported, the linchpin of the MK Ultra program was the compound d-lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD. I had heard plenty about this hallucinogen through the 1960s headline grabbing antics of Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey, Allen Ginsberg, and other derangement devotees. Sought by some as a mind expander, at times the LSD experience or "acid trip" plunged other users into terrifying sensations and led to ghastly flashbacks that might persist for years. More to the point, as far as Daddy was concerned, its bad effects were said to be even greater for a person given the drug in "circumstances not conducive to pleasant feelings" as when you were given it by someone you despised.