"Chris Hedges" - Libya, Here We Go Again

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/libya_here_we_go_again_20110905/

Posted on Sep 5, 2011

By Chris Hedges

Here we go again. The cheering crowds. The deposed dictator. The encomiums to freedom and liberty. The American military as savior. You would think we would have learned in Afghanistan or Iraq. But I guess not. I am waiting for a trucked-in crowd to rejoice as a Gadhafi statue is toppled and Barack Obama lands on an aircraft carrier in a flight suit to announce “Mission Accomplished.” War, as long as you view it through the distorted lens of the corporate media, is not only entertaining, but allows us to confuse state power with personal power. It permits us to wallow in unchecked self-exaltation. We are a nation that loves to love itself.

I know enough of Libya, a country I covered for many years as the Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times, to assure you that the chaos and bloodletting have only begun. Moammar Gadhafi, during one of my lengthy interviews with him under a green Bedouin tent in the sprawling Bab al-Aziziya army barracks in Tripoli, once proposed marrying one of his sons to Chelsea Clinton as a way of mending fences with the United States. He is as insane as he appears and as dangerous. But we should never have become the air force, trainers, suppliers, special forces and enablers of rival tribal factions, goons under the old regime and Islamists that are divided among themselves by deep animosities and a long history of violent conflict.

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"Joseph Stiglitz" - The Price of 9/11

Published on Monday, September 5, 2011 by Project Syndicate

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/stiglitz142/English

by Joseph E. Stiglitz

NEW YORK – The September 11, 2001, terror attacks by Al Qaeda were meant to harm the United States, and they did, but in ways that Osama bin Laden probably never imagined. President George W. Bush’s response to the attacks compromised America’s basic principles, undermined its economy, and weakened its security.

The attack on Afghanistan that followed the 9/11 attacks was understandable, but the subsequent invasion of Iraq was entirely unconnected to Al Qaeda – as much as Bush tried to establish a link. That war of choice quickly became very expensive – orders of magnitude beyond the $60 billion claimed at the beginning – as colossal incompetence met dishonest misrepresentation.

Indeed, when Linda Bilmes and I calculated America’s war costs three years ago, the conservative tally was $3-5 trillion. Since then, the costs have mounted further. With almost 50% of returning troops eligible to receive some level of disability payment, and more than 600,000 treated so far in veterans’ medical facilities, we now estimate that future disability payments and health-care costs will total $600-900 billion. But the social costs, reflected in veteran suicides (which have topped 18 per day in recent years) and family breakups, are incalculable.

Even if Bush could be forgiven for taking America, and much of the rest of the world, to war on false pretenses, and for misrepresenting the cost of the venture, there is no excuse for how he chose to finance it. His was the first war in history paid for entirely on credit. As America went into battle, with deficits already soaring from his 2001 tax cut, Bush decided to plunge ahead with yet another round of tax “relief” for the wealthy.

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"Nancy Murray and Kade Crockford" - What a Difference a Decade Makes: Ten Years of "Homeland Security"

Thursday 1 September 2011

http://www.truth-out.org/what-difference-decade-makes/1314126592

by: Nancy Murray and Kade Crockford, "Ten Years Later: Surveillance in the 'Homeland'" [3] | Special Feature

On August 5, 2002, President George Bush declared, "We're fighting ... to secure freedom in the homeland." Strikingly, he did not use the word "nation," or "republic," but instead adopted a term, with its Germanic overtones of blood, roots and loyalty going back generations, for a country that is not the ancestral home of most of its citizens.

Soon after, the Homeland Security Act of 2002 created the massive Department of Homeland Security [5](DHS), an amalgam of 22 agencies and nearly 200,000 employees. The FBI and CIA remained outside the DHS, while the military, in October 2002, established its own Northern Command [6] (NORTHCOM) to defend the "homeland."

In the years since then, the full weight of government has been bent on ensuring "homeland security" - a term rarely heard before the 2001 attacks. Over the decade, the government's powers of surveillance have expanded dramatically. They are directed not just at people suspected of wrongdoing, but at all of us. Our phone calls, our emails and web site visits, our financial records, our travel itineraries, and our digital images captured on powerful surveillance cameras are swelling the mountain of data that is being mined for suspicious patterns and associations.  

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"Diane Silver" - Beyond PTSD: Soldiers Have Injured Souls

Saturday 3 September 2011

http://www.truth-out.org/beyond-ptsd-soldiers-have-injured-souls/1315066215

by: Diane Silver, Miller-McCune [3] | Report

John Fisher got his soul back when he visited a cemetery in Greece.

Shelley Corteville felt “rocketed” into healing when she told her story at a veterans’ retreat after 28 years of silence.

Bob Cagle lost his decades-long urge to commit suicide after an encounter at a Buddhist temple.

These veterans and thousands like them grapple with what some call “the war after the war” — the psychological scars of conflict. Working with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and private organizations, these men and women are employing treatments both radically new and centuries old. At the center of their journey is a new way of thinking that redefines some traumas as moral injuries.

The psychological toll taken by war is obvious. For the second year in a row, more active-duty troops committed suicide in 2010 (468) than werekilled in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan [5] (462). A 2008 RAND Corporation study reported that nearly 1 in 5 troops who had returned from Iraq and Afghanistan reported symptoms of post-traumatic stress or major depression [6].

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"Eric Alterman" - Why Are Politicians Running from Economic Reality into Tea Party Fantasy Land?

By Eric Alterman, The Nation
Posted on September 5, 2011, Printed on September 6, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152301/why_are_politicians_running_from_economic_reality_into_tea_party_fantasy_land

In 2008 America elected as its president not only an African-American but an unapologetic Keynesian. In his inaugural address Barack Obama declared, “The state of our economy calls for action, bold and swift. And we will act not only to create new jobs but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together.”

The stimulus package that followed -- while disappointing in many respects (and based on a far rosier view of economic conditions than turned out to be justified) -- was nevertheless defended in explicitly Keynesian terminology. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act injected $814 billion into the economy. As Obama described it, the stimulus was “the largest investment in research and development in our history, the largest investment in infrastructure since Dwight Eisenhower, the largest investment in education…in this country in thirty years” and “the largest investment in clean energy in our history.”

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"Noam Chomsky" - Was There an Alternative? Looking Back on 911 a Decade Later

By Noam Chomsky

Posted on September 6, 2011, Printed on September 6, 2011
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175436/

We are approaching the 10th anniversary of the horrendous atrocities of September 11, 2001, which, it is commonly held, changed the world. On May 1st, the presumed mastermind of the crime, Osama bin Laden, was assassinated in Pakistan by a team of elite US commandos, Navy SEALs, after he was captured, unarmed and undefended, in Operation Geronimo.

A number of analysts have observed that although bin Laden was finally killed, he won some major successes in his war against the U.S. "He repeatedly asserted that the only way to drive the U.S. from the Muslim world and defeat its satraps was by drawing Americans into a series of small but expensive wars that would ultimately bankrupt them," Eric Margolis writes. "'Bleeding the U.S.,' in his words." The United States, first under George W. Bush and then Barack Obama, rushed right into bin Laden’s trap... Grotesquely overblown military outlays and debt addiction... may be the most pernicious legacy of the man who thought he could defeat the United States” -- particularly when the debt is being cynically exploited by the far right, with the collusion of the Democrat establishment, to undermine what remains of social programs, public education, unions, and, in general, remaining barriers to corporate tyranny.

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"PF Louis" - National Public Radio underwritten by Monsanto?

by PF Louis

http://www.naturalnews.com/033462_National_Public_Radio_Monsanto.html

(NaturalNews) There was a strong reaction recently observed over public radio stations touting Monsanto and running Monsanto's promotional ads. Technically, it wasn't NPR (National Public Radio) as most assumed, but a program called Marketplace that is underwritten by Monsanto. American Pubic Media (APM) produces Marketplace.

But both NPR and Marketplace broadcast during the same time frame from stations that are public radio affiliates. They share the same network apparatus and appeal to the same audience.

Monsanto's use of the APM platform is a crafty PR maneuver to suck in gullible listeners by using the "feeding the world mantra" while ignoring Monsanto's dark legacy of profiting from toxic destruction and harassing farmers who try to do the right thing. (Legacy in source below)

Naive Public Perception of Public Radio

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"AFP" - Tests find thyroid radiation in Japanese children

AFP

August 18, 2011 (3 weeks ago)

http://www.dawn.com/2011/08/18/tests-find-thyroid-radiation-in-japanese-children.html

TOKYO: Forty-five per cent of children tested in the region around Japan’s stricken nuclear plant were found to have traces of radioactive elements in their thyroid glands, an official said Thursday.

The official said that the iodine concentrations – found in tests that the government carried out about five months ago in Fukushima prefecture – were not considered alarming in terms of their health impact.

“The government’s official position is that none of the children showed radiation levels that would be problematic,” he told AFP.

The government’s nuclear accident taskforce tested 1,149 children aged up to 15 about two weeks after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami triggered meltdowns, blasts and fires at the Fukushima plant.

Radioactive iodine tends to gather in the thyroid glands of minors in particular, increasing the risk of developing cancer later in life.

Of the valid test results collected for 1,080 children, 482 or 44.6 per cent were confirmed to have some level of radioactive contamination in their thyroid glands, the government official told AFP.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said none of the children suffered contamination beyond the equivalent of 0.2 microsieverts (mSv) per hour, the standard set by Japan’s Nuclear Safety Commission.

“Only one child showed a contamination level of 0.1 mSv per hour, the highest of the group,” the official said without giving the child’s sex or age.

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"Mike Adams" - Meet your new Federal Family (and don't use the word "government" please) (satire)

http://www.naturalnews.com/033497_federal_family_Napolitano.html

"Mike Adams" - Meet your new Federal Family (and don't use the word "government" please) (satire)

Saturday, September 03, 2011 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger

(NaturalNews) As the reputation of the U.S. government is now in shambles, the feds are turning to the same bait-and-switch tactics used by the Corn Refiners Association as they tried to rename High Fructose Corn Syrup to the more innocent sounding "corn sugar." The federal government no longer wants to be called a "government" at all. Instead, you're supposed to refer to them as your "federal family."

Seriously. This is the word from FEMA, which announced last week, "Under the direction of President Obama and Secretary Janet Napolitano, the entire federal family is leaning forward to support our state, tribal and territorial partners along the East Coast."

Family? Really? Sort of like an organized crime family, perhaps?

Let's take a look at this family, shall we?

Note: This article is obviously satire. All photos used herein are presented under Fair Use for the purpose of public commentary and satire.

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"Tony Isaacs" - Enjoy a healthy change of pace for breakfast with meatless tacos

http://www.naturalnews.com/033493_breakfast_tacos.html

Saturday, September 03, 2011 by: Tony Isaacs

(NaturalNews) Try a delicious and healthy change of pace for breakfast with these breakfast tacos, which use no unhealthy processed meats and are made with healthier wheat tortillas and homemade pico de gallo (directions for the pico de gallo are included below).

While the recipe is not a strictly vegetarian one, it is perfect for lacto-ovo vegetarians (people who eat only vegetables with the exception of dairy products and eggs). Plus, with a few adjustments the recipe can be made into a strictly vegetarian one if desired, as suggested below.

Healthy Breakfast Tacos

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