The Nobel Committee’s tradition is long and inglorious, but for the well-informed no surprise. Consider its past honorees:

– Henry Kissinger;

– Shimon Peres;

– Yitzhak Rabin;

– Menachem Begin;

– FW de Klerk;

– Al Gore;

– The Dalai Lama, a covert CIA asset;

– Kofi Annan, a reliable imperial war supporter;

– UN Peacekeeping (Paramilitary) Forces that foster more conflicts than they resolve;

– Elie Wiesel, a hawkish Islamophobe;

– Norman Borlaug, whose “green revolution” wheat strains killed millions;

– Medecins Sans Frontieres, co-founded by rabid war hawk Bernard Kouchner, now France’s Minister of Foreign and European Affairs;

– Woodrow Wilson who broke his pledge to keep “us out of war,”

– Jimmy Carter who backed an array of tyrants and drew the Soviets into its Afghan quagmire that took a million or more lives;

– George C. Marshall, instrumental in creating NATO and waging war against North Korea;

– Theodore Roosevelt who once said “I should welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one;” and

– other undeserving winners….”War is peace,” what Orwell understood and why the award legitimizes wars and the leaders who wage them.
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In April 2009, a confidential February 2007 ICRC torture report was publicly released. Titled, “ICRC Report on the Treatment of Fourteen ‘High Value Detainees’ in CIA Custody,” it detailed harsh and abusive treatment from their time of arrest, detention, transfer, and incarceration at Guantanamo where ICRC professionals interviewed them.

Besides detailed information on torture and abusive treatment, they obtained damning, consistent detainee accounts of medical personnel involvement, including: Continue reading →

In response to two Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits, “The government today handed over to the American Civil Liberties Union (one of dozens of documents comprising an unprecedented 130,000 previously secret pages, including) a detailed official description of the CIA’s interrogation program.”

Referring to a heavily redacted December 2004 report (originally commissioned by CIA director George Tenet) detailing torture of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, it “describes the use of abusive interrogation techniques including forced nudity, sleep deprivation, dietary manipulation and stress positions.” Far worse ones were understated or redacted entirely. Continue reading →

For eight years, the Bush administration relentlessly targeted Muslim, environmental, and animal rights activists as national security or terrorist threats. Shamefully, Obama continues the same practice.

On May 20, the FBI arrested four New York men, claiming they planned to bomb a Bronx synagogue and community center and shoot down Newburgh, New York-based Air National Guard jets with stinger missiles. Continue reading →

At least three US federal laws should concern all Americans and suggest what may be coming – mandatory vaccinations for hyped, non-existant threats, like H1N1 (Swine Flu). Vaccines and drugs like Tamiflu endanger human health but are hugely profitable to drug company manufacturers.

The Project BioShield Act of 2004 (S. 15) became law on July 21, 2004 “to provide protections and countermeasures against chemical, radiological, or nuclear agents that may be used in a terrorist attack against the United States by giving the National Institutes of Health contracting flexibility, infrastructure improvements, and expediting the scientific peer review process, and streamlining the Food and Drug Administration approval process of countermeasures.” Continue reading →

Obama’s Cairo speech was profoundly disingenuous, much like others past and more recently. He decried the “killing of innocent men, women, and children,” yet US forces slaughter them daily in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and supply Israel with billions of dollars and the latest weapons and technology to commit slow-motion genocide against millions of Palestinians, deny their legitimate self-determination, and right of their refugees to return home as international law demands.  FULL ARTICLE

Media reform activists have drawn a line in the sand. Net Neutrality must be defended at all costs. Preserving a viable, independent, free and open Internet (and the media overall) is essential to a functioning democracy, but the forces aligned against it are formidable, daunting, relentless, and reprehensible. Some past challenges suggest future ones ahead. FULL ARTICLE

This is the first of several articles on Ellen Brown’s superb 2007 book titled “Web of Debt,” now updated in a December 2008 third edition. It tells “the shocking truth about our money system, (how it) trapped us in debt, and how we can break free.” Given today’s global economic crisis, it’s an appropriate time to review it and urge readers to digest the entire work, easily gotten through Amazon or Brown’s webofdebt.com site. Her book is a remarkable achievement – in its scope, depth, and importance.

In the forward, banker/developer Reed Simpson said:

“I have been a banker for most of my career, and I can report that even most bankers (don’t know) what goes on behind (top echelon) closed doors….I am more familiar than most with the issues (Brown covered, and) still found it an eye-opener, a remarkable window into what is really going on….(Although many banks follow high ethical practices), corruption is also rampant, (especially) in the large money center banks, in one of which I worked.” FULL ARTICLE

Under George Bush, torture was official policy. It remains so under Barack Obama in defiance of US and international laws that prohibit it under all circumstances, at all times, with no exceptions allowed ever. FULL ARTICLE

Using the ruse of food safety and security, they aim to eliminate competition to have it all and replace wholesome foods with unsafe GMOs. Congress is willing to go along. And why not. Representatives like DeLauro get large Ag business contributions. In return, they assure bills like HR 875 are passed. It’s for concerned people to stop them. FULL ARTICLE