Jon Ward: Ron Paul Not Likely to Endorse Mitt Romney!

A top adviser to Rep Ron Paul (R-Texas) said that the insurgent presidential candidate will probably not endorse Mitt Romney for president. "I would never say never," said Jesse Benton, national chairman of Paul's campaign. "I do not believe that that is likely." Benton told reporters that Paul and his campaign staff have appreciated the respect with which the Romney campaign has treated them in discussions about the party platform, which will be voted on at the Republican convention in Tampa in August. But Benton said the support of Paul's devoted supporters is not guaranteed to go to Mitt Romney, and issued a warning: Paul,a 76-year-old congressman from who is leaving the House after his current term, wants placed on the platform the following: a proposal for stricter oversight of the Federal Reserve, a ban on indefinite detention of American citizens, as well as a provision advocating greater freedom on the Internet, to keep the government from treating it as a"public utility." Benton implied that if the carefully selected items are not included in the platform, many of Paul's supporters might withhold support from Romney in the fall election. "The ball is in the court of the Republican Party, and the court of Mitt Romney." Benton said. "We're bringing forward an attitude of respect, and we're also bringing forward some very specific things that we believe in. If our people are treated with respect, if our ideas, their ideas are embraced and treated seriously and treated with respect, I think the Republican Party will have a very good chance to pick up a substantial number of our votes." "On the flip side," Benton continued, "if they're treated as they were in 2008, a lot of people are going to stay home!"   

Michel Chossudovsky: The Military Roadmap to World War III !

A problem for many citizens is that "doublethink and mind control" have become so deeply embedded and disseminated by the mass media, including the so-called quality free press, such as The New York Times and The Guardian. Allegedly sponsored by Al Qaeda, the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon played a central role in molding public opinion. One of the main objectives of war propaganda is to "fabricate an enemy". The "outside enemy" personified by Osama bin Laden is "threatening America". Pre-emptive war directed against "Islamic terrorists" is required to defend the Homeland. Realities are turned upside down: America is under attack. In the wake of 9/11, the creation of this "outside enemy" served to obfuscate the real economic and strategic objectives behind the American-led wars in the Middle East and Central Asia. Waged on the strategic objectives behind the American-led wars in the Middle East and Central Asia. On the grounds of self-defense, the pre-emptive war is upheld as a "just war" with a humanitarian mandate. From the outset of the Soviet-Afghan war in the early 1980s, the US intelligence apparatus has created its own terrorist organizations, and at the same time, it creates its own terrorist warnings concerning the terrorist organizations which it has itself created. Meanwhile, a cohesive multi-billion dollar counter-terrorism program "to go after" these terrorist organizations has been put in place. Instead of "war" or "state terrorism", we are told of "humanitarian intervention" directed against "terrorists". Instead of "offence", we are told of "defense" or "protection", Instead of "mass murder" we are told of "collateral damage". 

Prof. Peter Phillips: Desperate Times Demand Revolutionary Measures.

Don't waste any more time or energy on the presidential election than it takes to get to your polling station and pull a leaver for a third-party candidate- just enough to register your obstruction and defiance , and then get back out into the street. That is where the question of real power is being decided. Chris Hedges. May 2012. Runaway capitalism is moving unrelentingly towards sociopolitical-environmental collapse, cheered on by a two-headed single party machine known as US Congress. Activists, who see the coming disasters as catastrophic, are seeking revolutionary change through non-cooperation and occupy disruptions. Yet, many are still delusional hopefuls desperately fumbling with traditional responses, including "Kum ba yah" marches, and the futile support for progressive left-leaning candidates seeking positions of influence inside the Washington beltway. Do we understand that habeas corpus is no longer a legal protection in the US, or that the US president can torture and kill American citizens, let alone anyone in the world? How can we ignore the inconvenient truths of warrent-less wire taps and electronic monitoring for everyone? Why do we tolerate that US-NATO forces killing people in over one hundred countries in the world using special service operatives, private assassins and drones a million civilian deaths in Iraq alone? How can we be so blind as not to see our corporate media is a propaganda fog machine for the one percent? These questions, reflecting the reality of America today, are so far from the values of our traditions, that accepting any aspect of authority from Washington DC is a sacrilege to our honor. We are in desperate times. 

Dave Johnson: Will Conservatives Support American Companies?

Which is better for an economy: Millions of future jobs and trillions of future dollars, or a few people making a quick buck today by selling out their country? For decades, America's 1%-backed conservatives have chosen the latter course, and we can see the results all around us. Now the Obama administration has imposed stiff tariffs on Chinese solar panels, because China was "dumping", selling below cost, to drive American manufacturers out of business. Will conservatives support their country and our companies, or will they continue to side with our country's competitors? The Commerce Department yesterday concluded that Chinese solar panel companies are "dumping" product, selling below the cost of production, into the US market, and impose stiff tariffs: The United States on Thursday announced the imposition of anti-dumping tariffs of more than 31 percent on solar panels from China. The anti-dumping decision is among the biggest in American history, covering one of the largest and fastest-growing categories of imports from China, the world's largest exporter. Again and again, technology revolutions come along and disrupt economies. Countries that jump on new technologies are the countries that win the industries and jobs and revenue. This is how the United States became a world power: Railroads, steel, automobiles, airplanes, electronics, semiconductors, computers, the Internet, pharmaceuticals, biotech and software are a few examples, and in every case our government helped these new industries get off the ground. When these industries took root, the payoff was enormous! 

The Truth About JP Morgan's $2 Billion Loss!!

Before we can understand what's really going on with JP Morgans loss, which will probably end up being a lot more than $2 billion, we need a little background: JP Morgan is the world's largest publicly traded company, is the largest bank in the US, the biggest of the too big to fail banks which are killing the American economy, Is the largest derivatives dealer in the world, and derivatives are inherently destabilizing for the economy. Essentially wrote the faux reform for derivatives, which did nothing to decrease risk, and killed any chance of real reform. Is the creator of credit default swaps, which caused the 2008 financial crisis, and is the asset class which blew up and caused the loss. Has had large potential exposures to credit default swap losses for years. Has replaced the chief investment officer who made the risky bets, with a trader who worked at Long Term Capital Management, which committed suicide by making risky bets. Went completely insolvent in the 1980s, and again in 2007, and was saved both times by the government at taxpayer expense.

Arianna Huffington: My Conversation With the Dalai Lama!

At a lunch in the crypt at St.Paul's Cathedral before the Dalai Lama received the Templeton Prize, I was seated next to Canon Mark Oakley. "We need to move beyond relevance to resonance," he said. It was a call to move beyond the shallows to the depths, beyond the passing novelties of the moment to the echoes of the soul. The Canon summed up the vicious circle we too often find ourselves caught in: "We are," he said, "spending money we don't have on things we don't want in order to impress people we don't like." To find the peace of mind that alone can replace this aimless search, which has led to an epidemic of stress, anxiety, and drugs, legal and illegal. The Dalai Lama is looking specifically to neuroscience, to convince a skeptical, increasingly secular society of the power of contemplation and compassion to change our lives and our world. As he wrote in his 2005 book, The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Sprituality: The great benefit of science is that it can contribute tremendously to the alleviation of suffering at the physical level, but it is only through the cultivation of the qualities of the human heart and the transformation of our attitudes that we can begin to address and overcome our mental suffering. We need both, since the alleviation of suffering must take place at both the physical and the psychological levels. It is for this decades-long passion to bring together science and spirituality that he was awarded the Templeton Prize, a $1.7 million honor given to "entrepreneurs of the spirit" who make "an exceptional contribution to affirming life's spiritual dimensions, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works." 

Chris Hedges: A Victory for All of Us!

In January, attorneys Carl Mayer and Bruce Afran asked me to be the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, that challenged the harsh provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). We filed the lawsuit, worked for hours on the affidavits, carried out the tedious depositions, prepared the case and went to trial, because we did not want to be passive in the face of another egregious assault on basic civil liberties, because resistance is a moral imperative, and because, at the very least, we hoped we could draw attention to the injustice of the law. None of us thought we could win. But every once in a while the gods smile on the damned. US District Judge Katherine Forrest, in a 68-page opinion, ruled that Section 1021 of the NDAA was unconstitutional. It was a stunning and monumental victory. With her ruling she returned us to a country where, as it was before, Obama signed this act into law December 31, the government cannot strip a US citizen of due process, or use the military to arrest him or her and then hold him or her in military prison indefinitely. She categorically rejected the government's claims that the plaintiffs did not have the standing to bring the case to trial, because none of us had been indefinitely detained, that lack of imminent enforcement against us meant there was no need for an injunction and that the NDAA simply codified what had previously been set down in the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force Act. The ruling was a huge victory for the protection of free speech. Judge Forrest struck down language in the law that she said gave the government the ability to incarcerate people based on what they said or wrote.