Associated Press: Romney Blames Obama For Economic Uncertainty!dt

There is no one running for president who understands economics and the way jobs are created like Governor Romney, and it's not even close! He has executive experience, both running Bain Capital in the private sector, and the state of Massachusetts in the public sector. He did well in both, even in spite of a legislature overwhelmingly controlled by Democrats in the latter. Noon the job training needed for this man. The problems of our economy are diverse and complex, and there is no single solution to solve them all. Housing, energy, manufacturing, health care, you name it. You can't solve them all with the same medicine. Romney understands that. He is smart, very smart! Some people think he is not conservative. He is! That is the basis of his thinking. That's why I am strongly supporting Governor Mitt Romney for President. I want this country to grow again. I want to have confidence in the future again. I want to be willing to take business risks again. I want Americans to to have good jobs again. I want the rest of the world to treasure our debt again, and not fear it. I want my kids to live better and have more opportunity than I did. I think Mitt Romney is far and away our best chance at accomplishing these goals in the coming four years. He will lead! He will solve problems. He can achieve the consensus to make things happen. His administration will work. He is the competent, proven conservative in the race. Please join me in supporting Mitt Romney for President!

Steven D. BooMan Tribune: Social Security is NOT an Entitlement!

Last night in Youngstown Ohio, 200 or so people, seniors and activists and politicians, met at a town hall event at the United Baptist Church. Senator Sherrod Brown appeared and spoke at the event that was sponsored by the Mahoning Valley Organizing Collaborative, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and the Ohio Organizing Collaborative. The message from the people of Youngstown who attended was clear: "Social Security is NOT an entitlement; it is a promise to the American people who have paid into the system," Williams told the audience. "Proposed cuts will force recipients to pay higher insurance premiums and co-pays, and deny us money for essentials like prescription drugs and groceries." Williams has reason to be angry, with all the talk in Washington about cutting Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. She had to take an early retirement as an X-Ray Technician who worked hard for 24 years because of an injury. She now depends on benefits to survive, but she wasn't the only person last night to tell her personal story, and express her anger at official Washington's out of touch attitude toward the suffering of working people who rely on our "social safety net". These people paid for these benefits with their taxes, and now our government is "pulling the rug out from under their feet". Now, they don't want the wealthy and corporations to avoid paying their share of the deficits brought about by the Bush tax cuts, the needless and illegal wars he fought, and the borrowing by the Treasury to fund the deficits. They haven't forgotten what former Vice President Dick Cheney said about deficits to the Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, when the GOP was in control of the government: "Fired in a shakeup of Bush's economic team in December of 2002, raised objections to a new round of tax cuts, and said the "president" balked at his more aggressive plan to combat corporate crime after a string of accounting scandals, because of opposition from "the corporate crowd". O'Neill said he tried to warn Vice President Dick Cheney that growing budget deficits were expected to top $500 billion this fiscal year alone, which posed a threat to the economy. Cheney cut him off: "You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don't matter". A month later, Cheney told the told the Treasury Secretary that he was "fired"!!

Gordon Sturrock: Returning to American Indian Ways of Democracy and Ecology!

Those of us whose roots lie in Europe, Africa or Asia are new arrivals to this American land. Our connections are to other places, other soils. Some of us may have some Indian blood, but only those whose forefathers came here so long ago that they have no ancestral memory of anywhere else on the globe can truly said to belong to the land we now all live upon. Unfortunately, we have forgotten this, or never knew it. In their pride and arrogance, most of our white ancestors ignored this tie to the land, a tie that native Americans have felt so deeply that it seems almost part of their physical being. Our grandfathers may once have felt this way about the lands from which they came - from County Cork or Manchester, from Senegal or Canton - but nothing like what American Indians clearly feel for theirs, for among native Americans there is a mystical element that few Westerners can claim to experience, but it is present in the rituals, the teachings, the spirit of American Indian ways. If we could only recapture that spirit! For our latecomers' society is destroying the Earth that American Indians treasured and preserved for thousands of years. The survival of all life on the planet may indeed depend on our regaining it.
In his classic history of Indian law, In the Courts of the Conqueror: The Ten Worst Indian Law Cases Ever Decided, Walter Echo-Hawk discusses the modern struggle of Indians to preserve the sanctity of their ancient sacred sites. That the land was held sacred was true throughout the Americas. One scholar tells us, for example, about the highlands of central Mexico, where the most important sites had a spiritual meaning accumulated over centuries of occupation: The hill named Huizachtlan, the great urban pyramid of Tenochtitlan, the ritual Hill of Tetzcotzingo, and the shrines upon the heights of Mt Tlaloc and at Pantitlan in Lake Tezcotzingo, and the shrines upon the heights of Mt Tlaloc and at Pantitlan in Lake Tetzcoco were principal icons of Aztec sacred geography, designed to manifest the inherent power of things seen and unseen in the natural environment. (Richard Townsend, The Aztecs)

Michel Chossudovsky: Who Really Benefited by our 911 Attack?

Look at reality, and not so-called conspiracy theories. Dare to ask who actually benefited from our nation's 9/11 calamity. It is now time to ask who actually benefited from America's disaster. Here are the troubling facts: 1) The New York Port Authority was having difficulty renting space in the Twin Towers. In addition, there was a huge asbestos liability. The Towers were sold to new owner Larry Silverstein just three months prior to the tragic event. He, in turn, managed to get an insurance contract for a big payout, if any of the Tower buildings were hit by an airplane. Our first move, after the towers were hit, was to bomb Afghanistan, based on the assumption that people there were involved. Thus, the local heroin industry of that country was reactivated, and local and international drug cartels rediscovered a "gold mine" of money supply. Bin Laden and the Taliban closed down that trade to a trickle, but after the bombing shake-up people connected with the heroin trade in Central Asia, reaping billions of dollars. This is fact, and NOT fiction. Investors of profitable corporations connected to the military-industrial complex reaped enormous profits. War has always been profitable for some industries, though for public consumption, they always say that profits are NOT their motives! (Since the Vietnam War, in which I served as Advisory Team Leader, my team and I, in addition to killing the enemy, did use enormous quantities of small arms ammunition, and requested many air force missions to keep us out of hot water.) Prior to 9/11, some US corporate stocks immediately went up in value, as did some military contracts.

Michel Chossudovsky: Somalia - The Real Causes of Famine

For the last twenty years, Somalia has been entangled in a "civil war" amidst the destruction of both its rural and urban economies. The country is now facing widespread famine. According to reports, tens of thousands of people have died from malnutrition in the last few months. The lives of several million people are threatened. The mainstream media casually attributes the famine to a severe drought without examining the broader causes. An atmosphere of lawlessness, gang warfare and anarchy is also upheld as one of the major causes behind the famine, but who is behind the lawlessness and armed gangs? Somalia is categorized as a "failed state", a country without a government, but how did it become a "failed state"? There is ample evidence of foreign intervention as well as covert support of armed militia groups. Triggering "failed states" is an integral part of US foreign policy. It is part of a military intelligence agenda. According to the UN, a situation of famine prevails in southern Bakool and Lower Shabelle, areas in part controlled by Al Shahab, a jihadist militia group affiliated with Al Qaeda. Both the UN and the Obama administration had accused Al Shahab of imposing a ban on foreign aid agencies in its territories in 2009. What the reports do not mention, however, is that Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen (HSM) (Movement of Striving Youth) is funded by Saudi Arabia and supported covertly by Western intelligence agencies. The backing of Islamic militia by Western intelligence agencies is part of a broader historical pattern of covert support to Al Qaeda, affiliated in a number of countries, including more recently Libya and Syria. The broader question is: What outside forces triggered the destruction of the Somali State in the early 1990's?
Somalia remained self-sufficient in food until the late 1970's despite recurrent droughts. As of the early 1980's, its national economy was destabilized and food agriculture was destroyed. The process of economic dislocation preceded the onset of the civil war in 1991. Economic and social chaos resulting from IMF economic medicine was a precondition for the launching of a US sponsored civil war. An entire country with a rich history of commerce and economic development was transformed into a territory. In a bitter irony, this open territory encompasses significant oil wealth. Four US oil giants had already positioned themselves prior to the onset of the Somali civil war in 1991. According to The Times, nearly two-thirds of Somalia was allocated to the American oil giants Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Phillips in the final years before Somalia's pro-US President Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown and the nation plunged into chaos in January 1991.

Global Research: Propaganda and the War on Truth

This past weekend, news outlets across the world have turned their lenses to focus on the horrific events that took place in Norway on Friday, July 22. The picture which emerges is of a lone gunman opening fire at a children's camp, following a bomb explosion that claimed anywhere between 76 and 93 deaths in Oslo, the nation's capital. Already we see mainstream media indiscriminately putting its spin of choice on this tragic event and, not surprisingly, buzzwords are being tossed around without regard for the truth or facts, which include everything from "Muslim terrorists" to the omnipresent propagandistic "war on terror". In his article on "News Without Facts", Edward Teller lists several specific examples: "As the story developed Friday, almost every news outlet was quick to provide "experts" ("X" is at best an unknown quantity, and a "spurt" is usually defined as a "drip" under pressure). Within hours of Norway's deadly bomb and gun attacks claiming the previously mentioned victims, it has become clear that the horror was perpetrated by a Norwegian loner, with right-wing Christian fundamentalist affiliations, yet President Barack Obama reacted immediately to the news of the atrocity to insinuate an Islamic connection, and to justify America's "War on Terror". Obama is reported to have been briefed by "intelligence" officials before he spoke on the matter, which makes his untimely, and incorrect response an all the more odious bit of politicking to turn a horrific, tragic event into a propaganda stunt to stir up anti-Islamic fears, and shore up Washington's illegal "wars on terror". Such neglectful and downright manipulative reporting of a devastating event will undoubtedly be used in the future to justify further US/NATO aggression against "perceived threats", long after the truth may be revealed and rumors exposed as false speculations.

Michel Chossudvsky: Somalia:The Real Causes of Famine

For the last twenty years, Somalia has been entangled in a "civil war" amidst the destruction of both its rural and urban economies. The country is now facing widespread famine. According to reports, tens of thousands of people have died from malnutrition in the last few months, and the lives of several million people are threatened. The "mainstream media" casually attributes the famine to a severe drought without examining the broader causes: An atmosphere of lawlessness, gang warfare and anarchy is also upheld as one of the major causes behind the famine, but who is behind the lawlessness and armed gangs? Somalia is categorized as a "failed state", a country without a government, but how did it become a "failed state"? There is ample evidence of foreign intervention as well as covert support of armed militia groups. Triggering "failed states" is an integral part of US foreign policy. It is part of a military intelligence agenda. According to the UN, a situation of famine prevails in southern Bakool and Lower Shabelle, areas in part controlled by Al Shabelle, a jihadist militia group affiliated with Al Qaeda. Both the UN and the Obama administration had accused Al Shahab of imposing a ban on foreign foreign aid agencies in its territories in 2009. What the reports do not mention, however, is that Harakat al-Shabaab al Mujahideen (HMS) (Movement of of Striving Youth) is funded by Saudi Arabia and supported covertly by Western intelligence agencies.