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PBS and the Koch Brother Scandal (plus “Koch Brothers Exposed”)

Posted on 05/22/2013 by Juan Cole

PBS declined to show “Citizen Koch, a documentary about the Wisconsin public union issue, treating the influence of the dirty energy magnates who are destroying the world through climate change and funding climate change denial, among the various other nefarious things they do. This according to the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer. It points to the dangers of declining public funding for institutions such as PBS in favor of corporate sponsorships and the donations of the rich. No wonder investigative journalism is an endangered species!

Robert

The FBI in Orlando, Florida, have shot a man they were questioning about possible links to Boston bombs suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, US media report.

An FBI spokesman said they were responding to the incident and that the agent had shot and killed the man "while conducting official duties".

NBC News quoted unnamed sources as saying the suspect had tried to attack an agent.

Tsarnaev died in a shootout with police days after the deadly marathon blasts.

Anonymous law enforcement officials and a friend of the man in Orlando said he had been killed on Tuesday night.

FBI spokesman Dave Couvertier said in a statement: "The agent encountered the

This sums up the political use of anti-Semitism. The new State Department Envoy on anti-Semitism is former AIPAC lobbyist Ira Forman, a guy whose entire careerhas been dedicated to advancing the policies of the Israeli government, at AIPAC and then as head of the National Jewish Democratic Council, where he worked to ensure that Democrats were more hawkish on Israel than Republicans.

And why is there a Special Envoy on anti-Semitism? Why is that the one form of hate granted a special post at the State Department? You know why: because the lobby wanted it. And it gets to place its ex-lobbyist in it.

What does the Special Envoy do? He does the same thing that David Harris of the American Jewish Committee does (except Harris doesn't do it on the taxpayers' dime). He travels around the world, kibitzes with various world leaders, stays in fancy hotels, eats in great restaurants, goes on great tours and then, every now and then, admonishes his hosts to be more vigilant about anti-Semitism (which, nowadays, usu

Exciting news. One day after the Palestinian flag reached the top of the world, a flag raising ceremony was held in Paterson, New Jersey (video 3:12) accompanied by the Palestinian national anthem and cheers of "Long Live Palestine". It's probable Paterson has become the very first municipality in the United States to raise the Palestinian flag in front of their city hall. Last Sunday dignitaries were in attendance and the day, May 19th, was being honored as Palestinian-American Day in Paterson. JTA reports: N

La leçon du jour

 ACTIVISM Having missed out on the so-called Arab Spring, will Lebanon finally jump on the bandwagon of regional change through its labor movement?

Since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war, successive Lebanese governments, backed by the Syrian occupation forces, effectively managed to paralyze labor activity in the country. Whether through directly threatening outspoken labor leaders or manipulating the membership and workings of the officially recognized sole representative of workers – the Confédération Générale des Travailleurs au Liban (CGTL) or General Confederation of Lebanese Workers – the labor movement became a mere political tool far from demanding the protection of rights, improved working conditions and deserved pay raise for an increasingly impoverished segment of the population.

It has only been in the last two years that a flurry of union activity has awakened this vital segment of the population from its slumber. And the government, businesses and the population at large has taken notice. In the summer of 2012, public utility Electricité du Liban (EDL)’s contractual employees staged a 3-month sit-in to demand fair employment

Movement gathers around 'Moral Monday' protests aimed at fighting off GOP takeover- Lauren McCauley, staff writer

"We’re going to continue our acts of civil disobedience because the General Assembly has made a cruel attack on the most vulnerable people in this state,” declared Rev. William J. Barber II, president of the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP.

It's becoming an annual tradition: Spring rolls around, and while nobody is looking, Wall Street quietly lays siege to Washington and reaches a hand out to yank the last remaining teeth out of the government's financial regulatory head.

In the last two weeks, we've seen two major developments here. There was a wave of deregulatory bills that snuck through the House with surprisingly bipartisan support, and a series of regulatory decisions by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission that will seriously weaken the already-weak Dodd-Frank reform legislation, particularly with regard to derivatives trades.

If a story about a wave of bills designed to prevent the meager derivatives reforms passed in Dodd-Frank from being enacted sounds familiar, that's because it is. I wrote almost exactly the same story a year ago, in the middle of May, 2012, when a herd of Wall Street-friendly congresshumans teamed up in the House Financial Services Committee to push through a wave of nine ambitious bills targeting derivatives reform. This is from last spring:

The nine bills being contemplated by Congress take a variety of approaches to gutting Dodd-Frank. Two bills, H.R. 1840 and H.R. 2308, are essentially stalling tactics, requiring reg

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/deja-vu-on-the-hill-wall-street-lobbyists-roll-back-finance-reform-again-20130521#ixzz2Txh5Usvr ;
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lmost 18 months ago (Dec. 11, 2011), then Defense Minister Ehud Barak predicted that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s days in power were numbered and that his situation was dire. Albeit that his assessment, which he kept reiterating, was based on intelligence information, it was also wishful thinking — he believed Assad’s downfall would be a blessing for the Middle East and good news for Israel. His opinion was shared by nearly all of the senior defense echelons in Israel. 

Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/05/veteran-labor-knesset-member-assad-is-preferable-for-israel.html?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=7287#ixzz2TvpoU8Zb

Mona Ghalayini is one of the few women in the Gaza Strip who has managed to join the world of business and the economy, for many years a preserve of Palestinian men. Gaza is home to a conservative society that does not give women much space, but some women, like Ghalayini, have nonetheless managed to establish themselves in business despite societal prohibitions and economic h

Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/05/gaza-women-economy.html?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=7300#ixzz2U24c5aAq

Pamela Olson's book tour for Fast Times in Palestine took her all over the US, including to California, Oklahoma, Washington, Colorado, and many major cities on the east coast. She wrote this blogpost describing her reception. 

I resolved at the beginning not to sugarcoat anything or promote false equivalencies. In presentations and interviews, I was clear about the Wall stealing land, the horrors of “administrative detention,” and many other injustices. If people asked tough questions that required speaking about racism, oppression, and American support of a de facto apartheid situation, I answered forthrightly. (For an example, you can view my talk at the Palestine Center in DC here.)

I braced myself every time, waiting for the backlash.

To my shock, it never came.

People were receptive, interested, thoughtful, and sometimes skeptical, but almost never hostile or disbelieving. Some crowds were self-selected, but others were more mainstream, including a banquet in eastern Washington attended mostly by retirement-age pillars of the community.

At the banquet, one man

Like some of the nation’s prominent chief executives, Apple’s Timothy D. Cook has a simple proposal to help spur the economy and encourage corporate tax compliance: give American companies a tax break to bring to the United States untaxed profits parked overseas.

But .. 

 SPORT Algeria is competing to be the next Arab nation to witness a popular revolt. That is assuming football is a barometer of rising discontent in a region experiencing a wave of mass protests that have already toppled the leaders of Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Yemen and sparked civil war in Syria.

In fact, there is increasingly little doubt that football, a historic nucleus of protest in Algeria, is signaling that popular discontent could again spill into the streets of Algiers and other major cities. Two years ago, protesters inspired by events in Egypt and Tunisia, ultimately pulled back from the brink despite the toppling of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

Now, in circumstances similar to Saudi Arabia, protests are mounting amid uncertainty about the future as Algeria’s aging leadership struggles with a series of natural deaths and the effects of health problems among its remaining key members.

Football fans earlier this month demonstrated their disdain for the fate of 76-year old President Abdelaziz Bouteflika who is recovering from a stroke in a Paris hospital by cheering their team for days in the streets of Algiers in advance of an upcoming championship. Similarly, fans interrupted a moment of silence in a stadium to commemorate the death of a former leader by chanting “Bouteflika is next.”

Mr. Bouteflika’s illness follows the death in the past year of two former presidents, Ahmed Ben Bella and Chadli Benjedid and Ali Kafi, who served as a transition leader in the early 1990s while the military fo

 I had an interesting conversation today with a friend, born in France, but also his parents .. not his grandparents. She explained to me why she is afraid to like the FB page "I Acknowledge Exists Apartheid in Israel" ("https://www.facebook.com/IAcknowledgeApartheidExists) His grandparents were born in Palestine. His grandmother, before having children in France with his grandfather had children in Palestine with another man. This branch of the family is an activist branch They were threatened by the Zionists, if they continued their activism My friend did not like this page to protect his family and that person would establish links with that family. Another thing, of course, his name is French with its Breton father but his physique is indeed oriental. Like that of her children. she has children who she asks to hide their Palestinian origins Ironically, everyone thinks they are Jews because they resemble the Jews Another irony, one of his children now living his early teens emotions with a Jewish If he knew, he would continue to get away with it? I who am Spanish (a country that has been dominated the Moors for 700 years), it confuses me if I'm tanned, with a Lebanese, an Arab and a Jewish sometimes. My blood type is AB-also .. very rare in Switzerland, much less in Spain and even less in the Maghreb countries (at least, I have no information on the AB-group in the Middle East) I would give no reviews .. Think for yourself and act as best you can. In any case, it is sure that this friend is not happy to have to hide its origins to protect his job to protect his family, to protect her children Juan Carlos Hernandez »

As big business makes its way around the world like a modern-day Attila the Hun, pillaging and despoiling, it has the U.S. military covering its back with 900 overseas bases in 130 nations.

May 21, 2013 "Information Clearing House" -"CD" - The damage caused by the relentless corporate drive for profits has become more clear in recent years. In the most important areas of American life, devastating changes have occurred:

Health Care: Almost half of the working-age adults in America passed up doctor visits or other medical services because they couldn't afford to pay. The system hasn't supported kids, either. A UNICEF study places the U.S. 26th out of 29 OECD countries in the overall well-being of its children.

Education: Student loan balances increased by 75% between 2007 and 2012.

Household Wealth: Median wealth fell by 66% among Hispanic households and 53% among black households between 2005 and 2009, mainly because of the mortgage banking collapse. Almost half of Americans have ZERO wealth, with their assets surpassed by debt.

Water and Food: Life-giving seeds and drinking water have been increasingly treated as products to be bought and sold.

All these areas of life have been degraded by a free-market system that has thrived on publicly-funded research, infrastructure, and defense. Yet in a brazen show of hypocrisy, major corporations have ignored all the problems they've caused, choosing instead to cut their taxes in half despite doubling their profits, to hold 60% of its cash offshore, to eliminate workers rather than create jobs, and to reduce the pay of their remaining employees.

An Apple executive explained: "We don't have an obligation to solve America's problems."

Calling Themselves 'Multinationals': No Allegiance to Anyone

Big business has found its Utopia, a world in which millions of people are willing to work for a fraction of U.S. salaries.

In this dream world of global capitalism, young people are going from zero income on the farm to a few dollars a day on a 12-hour factory shift, and as a result, based on the World Bank's poverty threshold of $1.25 per day, they're no longer "in poverty." So the media piles on praise for free markets. The Economist proclaimed that "poverty is declining everywhere." The Washington Post gushed that "a billion people have been lifted from poverty through free-market competition."

But the reality is very different. Inequality continues to grow, both between and within countries. Poverty levels haven't changed much in 30 years, with almost half of humanity, up to three billion people, living on less than $2.50 a day. A quarter of the world's children - over 170 million kids under age five - are growing up stunted because of malnutrition.

The World Bank estimates the total cost for a successful attack on malnutrition would be approximately $10.3 to $11.8 billion annually. Apple alone underpaid its 2012 taxes by $11 billion, based on a 35% rate.

It may be time to update the company's quote: "We don't have an obligation to solve the world's problems."

Even if there were no obligation to help solve the world's problems, there IS an obligation to pay for global energy consumption and infrastructure usage and industrial pollution. Yet a review of 25 multinational companies shows clear negligence in meeting that responsibility. The 25 companies, with almost a half-trillion dollars in 2011-12 income, paid just 8% in taxes to the U.S. and 9% to foreign countries. A 35% tax -- paid to ANY country or countries -- would have generated another $90 billion over two years, four times the amount needed to battle malnutrition.

Even Worse Than Not Paying: Making the World Pay for Them

A recent study estimated that toxic pollution affects the health of more than 100 million people, shortening their productive life spans by 12.7 years on average. A related study concluded that in 2010 over 8 million individuals were at risk of exposure to industrial pollutants at 373 toxic waste sites in three low-income countries (India, Indonesia, and the Philippines).

Some of our largest multinational companies hold top positions on the federal contractor misconduct list, which recognizes corporate environmental, ethics, and labor violations. Oil spills are common. Underdeveloped countries like Nigeria have been ravaged by oil production. Big firms are buying up farmland in more than 60 developing countries. Most perversely, multinationals are working hard to pass trade agreements, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would actually dismantle environmental protections.

Absurd as it once seemed, a 1991 quote from the World Bank's Larry Summers now comes back to haunt us: "Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging more migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs (lesser developed countries)?...I've always thought that underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly under polluted."

And as big business makes its way around the world like a modern-day Attila the Hun, pillaging and despoiling, it has the U.S. military covering its back with 900 overseas bases in 130 nations. If one of the countries kicks up a fuss, the corporations can just move on to the next one.

Paul Buchheit is a college teacher, an active member of US Uncut Chicago, founder and developer of social justice and educational websites (UsAgainstGreed.org, PayUpNow.org, RappingHistory.org), and the editor and main author of "American Wars: Illusions and Realities" (Clarity Press). He can be reached at paul@UsAgainstGreed.org.

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Bombings killed at least 95 people on Monday in Iraq, with 10 car bombs going off in the capital of Baghdad alone. Two car bombs were detonated in the southern Shiite port city of Basra, and the mostly Sunni city of Samarra north of the capital was also attacked. Most of the violence seems to have been aimed at Shiites.

If physical access is an important requirement for good journalism, the ability of Palestinians and Israelis to cover their ongoing conflict is largely compromised. This is one of the issues raised by a delegation of the International Press Institute (IPI) that visited Palestine and Israel in February.

Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/05/ipi-report-press-freedom-israel-palestine.html?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=7287#ixzz2Tvq38bkI

Syria’s civil war has forced more than a million Syrians to flee their homeland in search of protection and shelter in Turkey, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon. Palestinian refugees from Syria are particularly vulnerable as a result of the lack of recognition and support they receive from the international community.

Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/05/palestinian-refugees-syria.html?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=7287#ixzz2TvpgZFu8