Bill Moyers: Why I am Returning to the Air!

You already may have heard that I'd be coming back in January with a new series on the public television station nearest you, but you may not have heard exactly why. It's not just that I lack retirement skills, as my wife and co-editor, Judith, keeps reminding me. Or that the squeaky rocking chair on the front porch got on my nerves. I'm coming back because in tumultuous times like these, I relish the company of people who try to make sense of the tumult. These are the people I'll bring to our new broadcast, Moyers & Company. Journalism has long been for me a continuing course in adult education. Given what's happening in this country, it's time to sign up for more classes. The lack of civility and common sense that has paralyzed our democracy, the vast economic and social inequality that sends both left and right raging in the streets, the corrosive influence of money in politics, we're in a tailspin with little hope for a course correction from our elected leadership or corporate-dominated media. The need for voices of reason, simple and eloquent, has rarely been stronger. Those voices, whether they be from artist or social critic, philosopher or poet, historian or physicist, can bring us truth, inspiration, even hope.

Dr. Mercola: Why is the US Doubling Its Pharmaceutical Protection?Protection?

The US government has awarded a $433-million contract to pharmaceutical company Siga Technologies for 1.7 million doses of an experimental smallpox drug called ST-246 (Tecovirimat). In this time of limited resources and heavy budget deficits, the decision to spend nearly half a billion dollars to stockpile a drug of questionable safety and effectiveness, for a strictly theoretical danger, is puzzling, and that is an extreme understatement. Siga's ST-246, which reportedly works by blocking the ability of the smallpox virus to spread to other cells, has been granted "fast-track" status by the US Food and Drug Administration. Under this accelerated approval process, experimental drugs are brought to the market sooner, even though they've only been tested on a small number of people, and their effects and safety risks are nit clearly understood. Unfortunately, there are serious, and sometimes fatal consequences of bringing drugs to market without adequate safety testing, and its unclear why there is an urgent need for this drug that would warrant "fast-track" approval. Even Siga's Web site notes smallpox is "no longer found in the natural environment." 

President Obama Seeks Grater Power To Shrink The Fed

President Barack Obama is asking Congress for the power to shrink the federal government and merge federal agencies in an effort to make government more efficient and consumer friendly. The president is calling it "a big idea". Obama is trying to rally Republicans in Congress to get behind the plan, which would save $3 billion over 10 years. Under the proposal, six major trade and commerce agencies with overlapping programs would be merged. The Commerce Department would be among those that would cease to exist. President Ronald Reagan is the last president who had the type of reorganizational power that Obama is seeking from Congress. President Barack Obama will ask Congress on Friday for greater power to shrink the federal government, and he would start by trying to merge six major trade and commerce agencies whose overlapping programs can be baffling to business, the White House said Friday. The Commerce Department would be among those that would cease to exist. Obama will call on Congress to give him a type of reorganizational power last held by a president when Ronald Reagan was in office.

Marjorie Cohn: Pressure Israel, Not Iran

Neocons in Israel and the United States are escalating their rhetoric to prepare us for war with Iran. Even the infamous John Yoo, architect of George W Bush's illegal torture and spying programs, is calling on the Republican presidential candidates to "begin preparing the case for a military strike to destroy Iran's nuclear program." Under the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Iran has the legal right to produce nuclear power for peaceful purposes. The United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has found no evidence that Iran is developing a nuclear weapons program. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta recently said on CBS that Iran is not currently trying to build a nuclear weapon. Nevertheless, the United States and Israel are mounting a campaign of aggression against Iran. The United States has imposed punishing sanctions against Iran that are crippling Iran's economy, and pressuring other countries and strong-arming financial institutions to stop buying oil from Iran, the world's third largest exporter. The Obama administration is also preparing new punitive measures that target the Central Bank of Iran. 

Steven Erlanger and Alissa J. Rubin: France Weighs Pulout after 4 of its Soldiers are Killed!

President  Nicolas Sarkozy of France suspended military training and assistance for Afghan forces on Friday and said he would consider an early withdrawal from Afghanistan after  an Afghan soldier shot and killed four French soldiers on a base in eastern Afghanistan. The killings are designed to sap Western  moral and hasten the withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan sooner than agreed NATO  deadline of 20 of the end of 2014, when Afghan forces are supposed to be ready to defend the country on their own. A rising number of the attacks  have also been borne  of simmering animosity between coalition forces and the Afghan they fight alongside and train. With many European countries facing  unprecedented economic pressures at home,  such attacks by Afghan soldiers on foreign troops have added to public questioning of the value of continued  involvement involvement in Afghanistan. If France were to reduce its troops early or precipitously, it could spur other countries to follow suit, Western and Afghan officials warned. France has been a firm ally of the United States in Afghanistan, with the fourth-largest contingent of troops, according to NATO figures, and 82 French soldiers have died, many of them killed in fighting in Kapisa Province in eastern Afghanistan, where Friday's shooting occurred. Facing a fierce battle for his reelection, Mr. Sarkozy said that security had better improve in Afghanistan if France were going to stay.

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya: Privatization and Empire-Building!

The following is a 2011 article by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya for the Italian journal Eurasia about the manipulation of national constitutions as a neo-colonial means of empire-building. The article presents an important overview of the US empire building process: The USA has re-written the constitution of vanquished nations since the Second World War. In the last two decades, however, Washington has managed to totally restructure vanquished states economically and politically by de-centralizing them and legalizing foreign tutelage over their political structure and their national economies. From the former Yugoslavia to Afghanistan and Iraq, this process has gone hand-in-hand with war and both an immediate and extended foreign military presence. The new national constitutions of these countries have been central to the process and opened the door for the integration of these states into Washington's empire-building project. The geography of a nation is also fixed in its national constitution, such as the state's definitions of its own national and internal borders. Taking this observation one step further, it has to be said that constitutions can also be utilized and redefined to meet specific geo-political objectives. This is where an important and very relevant modern geo-political issue comes into the forefront of analysis when looking at countries that have been at war with the United States of America and its allies. Looking back at the Second World War, the constitutions of Japan and Germany were re-written after their defeats either directly by Washington or under Allied supervision. The Pentagon also erected military bases in both Germany and Japan that began to alarm Soviet leaders. The reconfiguring of both Germany and Japan served Washington's geo-political interests. This is evident when studying the Japanese Constitution, which was written by the US military: Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution renounces Japan's sovereign right to declare war or to maintain a standing navy, air force, and army. Japan was effectively neutralized by its new national constitution as a potential military rival or threat in East Asia and the Pacific.

Tom Burghardt: Terror Attacks, US Israeli War Games!

Amid rising tensions over bogus Western claims that Iran plans to build nuclear weapons, upcoming American war games with Israel have the potential of escalating into a deadly confrontation. A miscalculation, or deliberate provocation by the West, designed to maneuver the Iranians into "firing the first shot," could have disastrous consequences far beyond the confines of the Persian Gulf. That provocation wasn't long in coming! Despite an agreement reached by Iran with the P 5+1 group of nations (Britain, China, France, Russia, the United States and Germany), to restart talks in Turkey over the nuclear issue, the CIA-Mossad-Mek terror campaign took a dark turn this week; a sign that the imperialist powers, spearheaded by the United States, aim to scupper negotiations even before they start. On Tuesday, an Iranian university professor, Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, 32, a chemistry expert and director of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, was murdered after two assailants on a motorcycle attached magnetic bombs to his car. Analyst Richard Silverstein wrote on the Tikun Olam web site Wednesday that "my own confidential Israeli source confirms today's murder was the work of the Mossad and MEK, as have been a number of previous operations I've reported here." Silverstein averred that "the method recalls another series of assassinations that occurred of Fereidoun Abbassi Davani (who was seriously wounded) and his colleague Majid Shahriari (who was killed). Today's killing occurred two years to the day after the assassination of another scientist, Massoud Ali Mohammadi." According to Fars News Agency, the blast which killed Roshan "also wounded two other Iranian nationals in Seyed Khandan neighborhood in Northern Tehran."