Soraya Chemaly: Six Absurdly Demeaning Attacks on Women!

Everyone knows women can be bitches sometimes, right? Unless they're cougars, that is, on the prowl, or if they're a bit younger, they're more like vixens, kinda foxy. They henpeck when married and go wet and wild when single. They can take out their claws out or put them away. Less dangerous are the girls and the young women, softer and fuzzier, who are more like bunnies,or, as the English say, like birds. Either way, diminutive and harmless. Girls like these are more like pets. Chicks or kittens. Everyone does it, using language that renders women as animals -the list is endless. This culturally ingrained misogyny, as reflected in acceptable language that dehumanizes half the world's population, is not limited to anyone country or religion, or followers of one or another ideology. But in US politics, a particular trend has emerged among a certain set of conservatives,, that of equating a woman with a farm animal. When, last week, Safeway Senior Vice President General Counsel Bob Gordon stood before a shareholders' meeting that portrayed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi as being worth less "than a pair of hogs, he clearly had no reservations about publicly making this joke, and obviously thought it was funny. After all, he was only elaborating on a meme that's been evolving among right-wing Republican politicians in state legislatures. Let's see: There is state Rep Terry England, the infamous Georgia legislator comparing pregnant hogs and cows to women, while debating a proposal that became known as the "women as livestock bill, which would hold pregnant women to the animal husbandry standard of carrying a dead fetus to term.

Marat Musin: Terrorists Killed Families Loyal to the Government!

This incisive report by independent Russian journalist Marat Musin dispels the lies and fabrications of the Western media. The report is based on a chronology of events as well as eyewitness accounts. Entire pro-government families in Houla were massacred. The terrorists integrated by professional mercenaries, were not pro-government militia as conveyed in chorus by the mainstream media, they were in large part mercenaries and professional killers operating under the auspices of the self-proclaimed Free Syrian Army (FSA). "When the rebels seized the lower checkpoint in the center of town and located next to the local police department, they began to sweep all the families loyal to the authorities in neighboring houses, including the elderly, women and children. Several families of the Al-Sayed were killed, including 20 young children and the family of the Abdul Razak. The people were killed with knives and shot at point blank range. Then they presented the murdered to the UN and the international community as victims of bombings by the Syrian army, something that was not verified by any marks on their bodies." We call on our readers to forward this report far and wide. The massacre in Houla is being blamed on the Syrian government without a shred of evidence. The objective is not only to isolate Syria, but to develop a pretext and a justification for waging an R2P humanitarian war on Syria. It is essential to reverse the tide of war propaganda, which uses civilian deaths as a pretext to wage war, when those civilian deaths were carried out not by the government, but by professional terrorists operating under the helm of the US-NATO supported "Free Syrian Army."  

Ellen Brown: Reform of the US Monetary System!

The you-tube video of 12 year old Victoria Grant speaking at the Public Banking in America conference last month has gone viral, topping a million views on various websites. Monetary reform is the contention that governments, not banks, should create and lend a nations money has rarely even made the news, so this is a first. Either the times they are a-changing, or Victoria managed to frame the message in a way that was so simple and clear that even a child could understand it. Basically, her message was that banks create money out of thin air and lend it to people and governments at interest. If governments borrowed from their own banks, they could keep the interest and save a lot of money for the taxpayers. She said her own country of Canada actually did this, from 1939 to 1974. During that time, the governments debt was low and sustainable, and it funded all sorts of remarkable things. Only when the government switched to borrowing privately did it acquire a crippling national debt. Borrowing privately means selling bonds at market rates of interest, which in Canada quickly shot up to 22%, and the money for these bonds is ultimately created by private banks. For the latter point, Victoria quoted Graham Towers, head of the Bank of Canada for the first twenty years of its history. He said: Each and every time a bank makes a loan, new bank credit is created, new deposits brand new money. Broadly speaking, all new money comes out of a Bank in the form of loans. As loans are debts, then under the present system all money is debt. Towers was asked. Will you tell me why a government with power to create money should give that power away to a private monopoly, and then borrow that which parliament can create itself, back at interest, to the point of national bankruptcy?  

Robert Scheer: Hope Burning?

So now we have Rambo Obama, a steely warrior who, according to a lengthy leaked insider account in The New York Times, hurls death-dealing drones at anyone who threatens the good old USA. Including children. Those children are presumed guilty by virtue of proximity, and the Times plays along, not even modifying a targeted terrorist with the word "alleged," as once had been the paper's convention: When a rare opportunity for a drone strike at a top terrorist arises, but his family is with him, it is the president who has reserved to himself the final moral calculation." Obama as the "cool trigger-man" is an image useful to White House operatives as they buff the president's persona for the coming election, but what it reveals is the mindset of a political cynic, whose seductive words cloak the moral indifference of a methodical executioner. Forget Harry Truman, who obliterated the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or Lyndon Johnson, who carpet-bombed millions in Vietnam. The Democrats have got themselves another killer, one whose techniques are as devastatingly effective, but brilliantly refined. The story was obviously planted in The New York Times to benefit the Obama political campaign. Otherwise, why would the president's former chief of staff, William Daley, and three dozen current and past intelligence insiders provide the newspaper with the most sensitive details of national security decision-making? Pfc Bradley Manning was held for many months in solitary confinement for allegedly disclosing information of far lower security classification. The difference is that the top secrets in the news article are ones the president wants leaked in the expectation they will burnish his "tough on terrorism" credentials.

Bill Boyarsky: Whom Will the President Kill Next?

The revelation that President Barack Obama is personally selecting names for a kill list of suspected al-Qaida terrorists is a striking illustration of what actually occurs behind the White House's closed doors. The New York Times revealed Tuesday how the president "has placed himself at the helm of a top secret 'nominations' process to designate terrorists for kill or capture, of which the capture part has become largely theoretical. "He insists "on approving every new name on an expanding 'kill list,' poring over terrorist suspects' biographies on what one official calls the macabre 'baseball cards' of an unconventional war." The Times described how more than 100 members of "the government's sprawling national security apparatus" meet in a video conference to go over potential nominees for the death list and"recommend to the president who should be the next to die." The nominations then go to the White House where Obama, guided by his top counter-terrorism adviser, John O. Brennan, approves names added to the list. Brennan, without mentioning the president's role, had outlined the process in an April 30 speech to the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, posted on the Law-fare website. Those who make the list, he said, pose "a significant threat to United States interests. "In such cases, he said, stopping them would prevent attacks, and capture is "not feasible." Each nominee "will go through a careful review and, as appropriate, will be evaluated by the most senior officials in our government for decision." The most senior, of course, is the president. The idea of Obama picking out individuals for the death list brings back memories of President Lyndon B Johnson selecting targets for bombing in Vietnam: So intent was Johnson on micromanaging the war, that he lost sight of how the bombing strengthened the will of North Vietnam!

Blair Hickman: How We Treat Our Troops!

We rounded up some of the best accountability journalism for US soldiers in our recent wars. Check them out while you're basking on a boat this weekend, and remember the reason for this federal holiday. Armored Humvees are in short supply. When the insurgency in Iraq started, the US Army didn't have enough armored Humvees to protect its troops. As soldiers died in vehicles not built to withstand combat, the Army boosted their orders, but that takes time. While waiting for requests to be filled, soldiers rigged their own with sandbags. Barrage of Bullets Drowned Out Cries of Comrades, The Washington Post, 2004. After NFL-star-turned-soldier Pat Tillman died in Afghanistan, the Army took weeks to admit friendly fire had killed him. Over a year later, records emerged indicating they'd also withheld details of his death by fratricide, and the case spun into a saga of an investigation. When we asked national security expert Andrew Exum for a seminal piece on the case, he replied: We're looking for the seminal article on the Pat Tillman case. Anyone know one? Behind The Walls of Ward 54, Soldiers at Walter Reed said that the facility's psychiatric care was outdated and inadequate, heavily medicating soldiers in "lock-down wards," offering group therapy that often didn't address wartime experiences, and in some cases, hesitating to diagnose PTSD at all. Soldiers Face Neglect, Frustration, at Army's Top Medical Facility: The first article in a Pulitzer-Prize-winning investigation of neglect and bureaucratic failures at Walter Reed. While the surgical hospital was held up as a paragon of care, hundreds of soldiers went unnoticed in decrepit outpatient wards with few services or oversight. Soldiers described the experience as living in a chapter from Catch-22!    

The Telegraph: Palestinian Prisoners Enter Hunger Strike!

A pair of Palestinian prisoners being held without charge enter day 74 without food, as physicians believe their lives are in "immediate danger". Humanitarian organization Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), expressed concern about prisoners Bilal Diab and Thaer Halahleh as they began their 74th day without food on Friday. An estimated 1,600 out of 4,800 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails stopped taking food on April 17, demanding better conditions, an end to administrative detention and solitary confinement and more family visits. Diab and Halahleh, two of six prisoners, have refused food for between 49 and 74 days according to PHR, were among the first wave of inmates whose initial refusals to accept food prompted the mass hunger strike. The scope of the strike has posed a new challenge to Israel, which has come under international criticism over detentions without trial, and could face a violent Palestinian backlash if any of the protesters die. At the PHR offices in Tel Aviv, the director of the Prisoners and Detainees department said Halahleh's life was in "immediate danger." His doctor told him that hislifew is in immediate danger, and that he could die any moment. What is very worrisome is the fact that he doesn't want to be saved if something happens to him, and he loses consciousness. He doesn't want resuscitation," Anat Litvin said, adding that the organization believed that the prisoners did not have access to adequate equipment or expertise. The fate of the hunger strikers has touched a nerve in the Palestinian territories, with daily demonstrations in the occupied West Bank and in the Gaza Strip to support the movement.