North America

This photo essay could have gone on and on, just on the so called religious ideologies some preach and demand others must follow, as to All the intolerance episodes that have plagued this Nation since Europeans came over and took from the Natives what was theirs for thousands of years prior!

With recent episode of inflaming hatreds we're playing right into the hands, we already have during the previous decade, of those that used extremist ideologies as many here have picked that up and respond just as those they condemn!

One of the many New National Cemeteries that have come online this past year, in many cases communities and veterans from have been seeking same for years. Many of the new, as well as upgrading in a number of ways and needs, existing, around the Country have come about through the New Veterans Administration leadership as well as the Executive Branch and funded by government economic recovery {stimulus} funds in this collapsed economy, creating jobs to build as well as long term jobs to fill the needs. The Nation forced to 'Sacrifice', that itself doesn't demand!

Southern Maine Veteran’s Cemetery dedication Tuesday

GRITtv with Laura Flanders

August 19th, 2010 - My father died two weeks ago. He was a devout Catholic and former Franciscan brother. The last week of his life he was really upset -- not about dying, but about that church in Gainesville that’s planning to burn Korans on 9/11.

My dad thought it wasn’t Christian, but an act of Christian supremacy. I said it would be cute if they used German accents.

People Who Cannot Escape a System Are Likely to Defend the Status Quo, Study Finds

ScienceDaily (Aug. 16, 2010) — The freedom of emigration at will is internationally recognized as a human right. But, in practice, emigration is often restricted, whether by policy or by poverty. A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that people who are told that their right to emigrate will be restricted have what could be considered a strange reaction: they respond by defending their country's system.

ScienceDaily (Aug. 12, 2010) — According to 16 social science researchers from across the country, a renewed federal effort to fix the nation's stalled nuclear waste program is focusing so much on technological issues that it fails to address the public mistrust hampering storage and disposal efforts.

Writing in the latest issue of the journal Science, experts including Sharon M. Friedman of Lehigh University say that President Obama's Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future is not focusing enough on the social and political acceptability of possible solutions. "While scientific and technical analyses are essential, they will not and arguably should not carry the day unless they address, substantively and procedurally, the issues that concern the public," the experts write.

Ground Zero Mosque Not at Ground Zero and Not a Mosque : Veterans Today

Exchange among civilizations is a tremendous source for the creation of value and most of all, the value of diversity and tolerance

The above seems Not to be the ideals nor following the {re}written teachings of the so called self labeled 'christians' in the U.S. in this New Century carrying over from the previous but with louder whining and obscene hatreds, then they wonder why others shun them!!

One of the Lazy White Folk of Arizona:

A couple miles south is Suzie Perry's backyard — which she laments is in disarray. The yard is messy because Perry no longer hires the undocumented workers that she had paid for 15 years to maintain it. "We didn't really even think about its legality before. And now, that's sort of in the air. Like, should we be doing this or shouldn't we?" Perry says.

In Illegal Immigration Debate, To Hire Or Not?

By Dave Lindorff

The Coast Guard is conceding this afternoon that the pressure is not building up as hoped in the blown-out BP Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf of Mexico, raising concerns that the pipe that runs from the surface down through the bore to the oil reservoir 13,000 feet below the sea bottom has lost its integrity, and is allowing oil under high pressure to leak out into the surrounding concrete and rock outside the pipe, where it can and likely will make its way to the waters above.

Translation: "We will not tolerate wrongdoing by small fry (just forget Bush/Cheney, etc., etc., etc.)."

Six more policemen charged in Katrina killings

5:14pm EDT
By Jeremy Pelofsky

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Six more New Orleans police officers have been indicted in connection with the shooting deaths of two people and the wounding of four others who were walking on a bridge after Hurricane Katrina devastated the city in 2005, the Justice Department said on Tuesday.

U.S. prosecutors unsealed a 27-count indictment that charged three current officers and one former officer with the killing, and subsequent cover-up, of James Brissette, a 17-year-old city resident, and Ronald Madison, a 40-year-old man who suffered disabilities and was shot in the back.

By Linn Washington Jr.

Revered residence or house of horrors?

Intense controversy surrounds the President’s House project now under construction on America’s historic Independence Mall in downtown Philadelphia.

The multi-million dollar project located outside the iconic Liberty Bell, only a few steps from Independence Hall where America’s Founding Fathers declared freedom, commemorates the nation’s first Executive Mansion where two U.S. presidents lived, including George Washington.

The most inflamed controversy centers around who else lived in that rented residence with Washington and his wife Martha.

Washington, the general whose armies secured America’s independence during the Revolutionary War, kept slaves inside that house, many of whom slept in an area now literally on the doorstep of the Liberty Bell Pavilion.

I still have some hope, but waining rapidly, that this country can one day get back together, sadly I'll probably be long gone if that ever comes about, we've gone to far backwards in mentality and frankly evolution!!

Hear The Mix

Venezuela seizes US oil rigs | al Jazeera

Venezuela has nationalised a fleet of oil rigs owned by a US-based company which had been shut down in a dispute over payments.

In a statement the Venezuelan government said that seizing control of the 11 rigs was the only way to get them restarted after a year of idleness.

The move comes as Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's socialist president, pushes ahead with a policy of energy nationalisation as he seeks to expand the state's role in the economy.

He has also taken over assets in telecommunications, power, steel and banking.

The fleet of oil rigs belonging to Oklahoma-based energy firm Helmerich and
Payne have been idled for months following a dispute over payments by the Venezuelan state oil company, PDVSA.

Announcing the takeover of the rigs Rafael Ramirez, the Venezuelan oil minister, said companies that refused to put their rigs into production were part of a plan to weaken Chavez's government,

"There is a group of drill owners that has refused to discuss tariffs and services with PDVSA and have preferred to keep this equipment stored for a year," Ramirez told reporters in the oil producing state of Zulia.

"That is the specific case with US multinational Helmerich and Payne." Read more.

By Dave Lindorff

As the BP well in the Gulf of Mexico continues to spew out ever more toxic oil and methane into the sea, floating toxic sludge, by the millions of gallons, starts destroying the wetlands across the American Southeast, the dead hand of President Ronald Reagan is at work, making sure nothing is done to prevent yet another such disaster from occurring.

The name of that dead hand is Martin Leach-Cross Feldman, a federal judge in Louisiana, a part of the notoriously right-wing Fifth Circuit.

A poem by Gary Lindorff

(This poem appeared first in ThisCantBeHappening)

Looking out across the gulf
Of our mistakes, accidents and crimes
I see a murky horizon
Blurred by the brine of a tear
That is taking its time
Gaining enough weight
To trail down my cheek.
The deep horizon of this grief
Is far deeper than I thought. 
Was I foolish to come?
Didn’t I know that any space so hollowed
And left empty, 
Even for an instant, 
Fills with the tears of those
Who wept before us?
Such a weight, such a gulf,
Such a deep horizon. 
Even the crabs, the flattest of nations,
Cannot squeeze beneath
This mile-deep grief.
Fish roast in the sun
Like blackened shavings 
Of silver and copper;
In solidarity, 
I mimic their down-turned mouths.

. . .Sickened by the smell of the air we have made. . .

I come here to wade knee deep
Into this ruined place
And try to feel what we’ve done,

This is just coming across the wires:

Explosives Found in Vehicle at Georgia Army Base

Anthony Todd Saxon, 34, Arrested With Explosives In Vehicle At Fort Gordon, But No Terror Threat Seen

June 16, 2010 The FBI was investigating after a civilian was arrested with explosives in his vehicle on an Army base in Georgia that is headquarters to the service's global communication and information systems, authorities said Wednesday.

By Dave Lindorff

Even as BP’s blown well a mile beneath the surface in the Gulf of Mexico continues to gush forth an estimated 70,000 barrels of oil a day into the sea, and the fragile wetlands along the Gulf begin to get coated with crude, which is also headed into the Gulf Stream for a trip past the Everglades and on up the East Coast, the company is demanding that Canada lift its tight rules for drilling in the icy Beaufort Sea portion of the Arctic Ocean.

In an incredible display of corporate arrogance, BP is claiming that a current safety requirement that undersea wells drilled during the newly ice-free summer must also include a side relief well, so as to have a preventive measure in place that could shut down a blown well, is “too expensive” and should be eliminated.

Trucking Toward Climate Change
By Dahr Jamail | Truthout

The tar sands mining project in Alberta, Canada, is possibly the largest industrial project in human history and critics claim it could also be the most destructive. The mining procedure for extracting oil from a region referred to as the "tar sands," located north of Edmonton, releases at least three times the CO2 emissions as regular oil production procedures and will likely become North America's single largest industrial contributor to climate change.

Most of the oil produced by the project will likely be consumed by the United States, a country that, along with Canada, is already heavily invested, on many levels, in the project.

The project is operated by Imperial Oil, whose parent company, ExxonMobil Canada, has a long-term production goal of more than 300,000 barrels of bitumen (extra heavy oil) per day. To do this, they will require new equipment to be shipped through the United States.

Trucks and trailers moving specialized, nontoxic mining equipment from where it is manufactured in Korea to the Kearl oil sands project, located in the Athabasca oil sands in northeastern Alberta, are slated to use highways in Idaho and Montana to transport the gear. This would happen after it has been shipped across the Pacific Ocean to Portland, Oregon, where it would then be barged up the Hood and Snake Rivers to Lewiston, Idaho, from which it would be hauled over land into Canada. Read more.

Obama, Calderon push for immigration law changes | Reuters

Excerpts: Obama said the Arizona law underscored the need for comprehensive immigration reform and reflects U.S. frustrations, which he shares, with current law.

"In the United States of America, no law-abiding person -- be they an American citizen, a legal immigrant, or a visitor or tourist from Mexico -- should ever be subject to suspicion simply because of what they look like," Obama said....The United States needs a new law that secures the border, targets businesses that hire illegal workers and punishes illegals, but gives them a path to citizenship, Obama said. He asked for support from opposition Republicans to pass one....

The two countries broadly agree on issues like the global economy and climate change, despite tensions over immigration, border security, drug violence and trade. Their trade surpasses $1 billion a day, and Mexico sends 80 percent of its exports to the United States....

The two presidents said they would cooperate to crush drug gangs. The joint statement said the United States would speed delivery of helicopters and other aircraft for the drug fight. The traffickers' turf wars and battles with federal forces in Mexico have killed 23,000 people since Calderon took office in December 2006 and launched an army-backed offensive....

The countries are more closely aligned on the issue than they have been in years, and Mexico is pleased Washington acknowledges that U.S.-made weapons and U.S. demand for drugs are big parts of the problem. Read more.

Christ Would be Arrested in AZ: Swarthy, Walking through Desert, No Money, No Identification Papers, Long Haired.

Yes, "Christ Would be Arrested in AZ: Swarthy, Walking through Desert, No Money, No Identification Papers, No Driver's License, Long Haired." And don't forget, he'd be shabbily clothed: the perfect illegal immigrant profile.

Thanks to Madame Silverspurs of Democratic Underground for the insight and poster that the media ignored during a protest against the racist Arizona law, but says it all:

Cinco de Mayo History: An American Celebration of the Battle of Puebla
Obama Plans Rose Garden Celebration Amid Immigration Debate
By Liz Heron | ABC News

What is Cinco de Mayo anyway? Contrary to popular belief, it's not Mexican Independence Day, which is commemorated Sept. 16.

It actually celebrates the 1862 Mexican victory over the French in the Battle of Puebla and, according to many people, is more of a U.S. holiday than a Mexican one.

For the average Mexican, today is just another Wednesday, wrote Oscar Casares, a professor at the University of Texas-Austin.

"The holiday, which has never really been much of one in Mexico, crossed over to this side of the border in the 1950s and 1960s, as civil rights activists were attempting to build harmony between the two countries and cultures," Casares wrote. Read more.

Nation's first offshore wind farm approved for Nantucket Sound
By Wayne Drash | CNN

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on Wednesday approved the nation's first offshore wind farm, signing off on a project that has bitterly divided Cape Cod over the last nine years.

The 130 turbines are to be located several miles from the Massachusetts shore in the iconic waters of Nantucket Sound. The interior secretary said Cape Wind, as the project is known, is the start of a "new energy frontier."

"The United States is leading a clean energy revolution that is reshaping our future," Salazar told reporters in Boston. "Cape Wind is an opening of a new chapter in that future, and we are all part of that history."

"Cape Wind will be the nation's first offshore wind farm, supplying clean power to homes and businesses in Massachusetts, plus creating good jobs here in America," he said. "This will be the first of many projects up and down the Atlantic coast." Read more.

Media blind to Cuba's Haiti effort
By Norman Girvan | From Trinidad and Tobago Express via Progreso Weekly

(Progreso Weekly Note: The following piece is further proof of the selective coverage that the mainstream media offer on the Cuba issue. As several independent analysts have frequently noted, all news that contradicts the image that the powers that be promote of Cuba as part of the “evil empire” is consciously ignored or minimized.)

At the recent UN Donor Conference on Haiti, Cuba announced a program to rebuild that country’s entire national health service. Although this was, arguably, the most ambitious and impressive ‘pledge’ of the 59 governments, regional blocs and financial institutions that made commitments, it was largely ignored by the leading U.S. media --and hence overlooked by most of the world.

The Cuban program, which is based on the highly effective system developed in that country, embraces primary, secondary and tertiary health care, and medical training. Some of the highlights of the Cuban plan are: Read more.

Terrorizing Immigrants
By Stephen Lendman

On April 20, Reuters headlined, "Arizona passes tough illegal immigration law," saying:

State lawmakers "passed a controversial immigration bill on Monday (April 19) requiring police in the state (to) determine if people are in the United States illegally, a measure critics say is open to racial profiling."

Called "Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhood Act," the Arizona House and Senate passed it, sending it to Governor Jan Brewer who signed it on April 23 to make it Arizona law.

The National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (NNIRR) works for "a just immigration and refugee policy in the United States (for) all immigrants, regardless of immigration status....advocating for their full labor, environmental, civil and human rights."

"We are ALL Arizona," it said before the bill became law. "Stop the Criminalization of Immigrants, End Racial Profiling! Tell AZ Governor to Veto (this) Anti-Immigrant Bill," saying:

"The Arizona State Legislature just passed a law (SB 1070) that legalizes unchecked racial profiling by police of anyone they 'suspect' is undocumented. It would criminalize all undocumented immigrants as 'trespassers' and subject them to misdemeanor or, in some cases, felony charges for a new 'trespass' crime."

In a letter to Governor Brewer urging her veto, NNIIR said:

"If you sign SB 1070 into law, you will make Arizona a police state unprecedented in modern US history.

The Forever Drug War: Inside the Mexican Drug Wars Quickly Consuming a Nation
By Tomas Kellner and Francesco Pipitone | World Policy Journal via TomDispatch.com

On March 25th, the Department of Justice (DOJ) released its annual National Drug Threat Assessment report, a massive account of drug trafficking within the borders of the United States. Its findings span the underworld of the domestic drug trade.  Read it and you can find out about the 1.63 million kilograms of drugs seized in transit in 2009, the average price per gram of cocaine as of last September ($174.03, up 75% from January 2007), and the top in-country origination points and destinations for drug shipments intercepted by law enforcement officials (McAllen, Texas, and Atlanta, Georgia, respectively).
Arguably, the most startling finding in this year's drug threat assessment involves Mexican drug trafficking organizations, or DTOs. The flow of Mexican drug trafficking into the U.S. is an unstoppable force, it seems: the DOJ’s 2008 report found that Mexican DTOs had established networks in at least 230 American cities.  The 2010 report has no comparable numbers, but a Justice Department official, when asked why, indicated that the department was "reanalyzing" its numbers and predicted that the total, when known, would prove to be higher. Mexican DTOs, the 2010 assessment concludes, "are more deeply entrenched in drug trafficking activities in the United States than any other DTOs."  They are the only ones to be found in each of the nine regions of the country defined by the department as part of its efforts to bust traffickers.  In fact, the Mexican cartels now reportedly control most wholesale cocaine, heroin, and meth distribution in the U.S.

As Tomas Kellner and Francesco Pipitone of Kroll Associates write in a remarkably detailed and vivid account of the ever-expanding Mexican drug cartels, life in Mexico has taken on a distinctly murderous hue, as new waves of violence and crime spread to regions previously considered immune. Today's is the second major TomDispatch report on the U.S. drug wars of the moment -- the other being Alfred McCoy's investigation of Afghanistan's narco-state and of the 30-year drug war we've been waging there.  Kellner and Pipitone's report was written for the latest issue of a quarterly magazine we greatly admire, World Policy Journal, and is being posted here thanks to the kindness of that magazine’s editors. TomDispatch, which posted Martin Chulov’s piece on the great Iraqi drought from the last issue of WPJ, plans to continue to post a provocative piece from each new issue.  Read more.

U.S. Military Doing 'Limited' Drug War Work In Mexico, Napolitano Says
By Mark Memmott | NPR

"Our military, in certain limited ways, has been working with the Mexican military in their efforts against the drug cartels" inside Mexico, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told NPR's Robert Siegel this morning. Her comments were among the most extensive to date from a U.S. official about the U.S. military's role in the drug war raging across the border....

"Just to be clear," Robert continued. "Are you saying that (Mexican President Felipe) Calderon has expressed an openness toward a uniformed, U.S. military presence within Mexico?"

Napolitano's response:

"Yes. Let me be very, very clear (because) this is a very delicate subject. ... Our military in certain limited ways has been working with the Mexican military in their efforts against the drug cartels. But, it is at the request of the Mexican government, in consultation with the Mexican government. And it is only one part of our overall efforts with Mexico, which are primarily civilian in nature." Read more.

By Islam Times

The Business of Water: Privatizing An Essential Resource
By Stephen Lendman

In her 2002 book titled, "Water Wars," noted author, social activist, and ecologist Vandana Shiva called privatizing water:

• ecological terrorism;
• a global water crisis;
• along with overuse, waste and pollution, it can cause "the most pervasive, most severe, and most invisible dimension of the ecological devastation of the earth;"
• the road to "an ecological crisis with commercial causes but no market solutions; (they) destroy the earth and aggravate inequality; the solution to an ecological crisis is ecological, and the solution for injustice is democracy;" and
• water rights are natural and "usufructuary....water can be used but not owned;" it belongs to everyone as part of the commons as an essential "basis of all life....under customary laws, the right to water has been accepted as a natural, social fact."

Shiva lists nine water democracy principles:

Here's the story:

WINDSOR, Ont. — A prominent U.S. peace activist who has previously been refused entry to Canada crossed the border into Windsor Monday afternoon after three hours of questioning by Canadian border agents.

"I guess they didn't find my offences so offensive," joked Ann Wright shortly after emerging from the tunnel into Windsor.

The 63-year-old former U.S. army corporal was denied access to Canada three times in recent years after Canadian immigration agents noticed her name on an FBI watch list.

NATO Expansion, Missile Deployments And Russia's New Military Doctrine
By Rick Rozoff | Stop NATO | Blog site | February 12, 2010

"NATO´s eastward expansion and its push for a global role are identified as the number one threat to Russia....The U.S. is the source of other top threats listed in the doctrine even though the country is never mentioned in the document. These include attempts to destabilise countries and regions and undermine strategic stability; military build-ups in neighbouring states and seas; the creation and deployment of strategic missile defences, as well as the militarisation of outer space and deployment of high-precision non-nuclear strategic systems."

Developments related to military and security matters in Europe and Asia have been numerous this month and condensed into less than a week of meetings, statements and initiatives on issues ranging from missile shield deployments to the unparalleled escalation of the world's largest war and from a new security system for Europe to a new Russian military doctrine.

A full generation after the end of the Cold War and almost that long since the breakup of the Soviet Union, the past week's events are evocative of another decade and another century. Twenty or more years ago war in Afghanistan and controversial missile placements in Europe were current news in a bipolar world.

Twenty years afterward, with no Soviet Union, no Warsaw Pact and a greatly diminished and truncated Russia, the United States and NATO have militarized Europe to an unprecedented degree - in fact subordinating almost the entire continent under a Washington-dominated military bloc - and have launched the most extensive combat offensive in South Asia in what is already the longest war in the world.