“Hamza Hendawi” - Police, protesters clash for 2nd day in Egypt

Over 1,000 people injured as Egyptians riot over delays in police officer prosecution

Hamza Hendawi

June 30, 2011

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/story/index.html?story=/news/feature/2011/06/30/ml_egypt_19

Egyptian security forces clashed for a second day in Cairo Wednesday with hundreds of youths demanding that the country's military rulers speed up prosecution of police officers accused of brutality during mass protests that forced Hosni Mubarak to step down. More than 1,000 people have been injured, a senior official said.

In scenes reminiscent of the 18-day uprising that ousted Mubarak on Feb. 11, riot police deployed around the Interior Ministry building and fired in the air or used tear gas as demonstrators threw rocks and firebombs. The fighting left streets littered with rocks and debris and a heavy, white cloud of tear gas hung over the area.

By late afternoon, army troops backed by armored vehicles took over from riot police who had been protecting the Interior Ministry, closing all roads leading to the complex, the official Middle East News Agency, MENA, reported.

The protests attest to the ongoing upheaval in Egypt nearly five months after Mubarak stepped down. The country is struggling with a worsening economic crisis and as a security vacuum that has led to a surge in crime.

The question of meting out justice to those responsible for the deaths of some 850 protesters during the uprising, as well as for regime stalwarts charged with corruption, is among the most divisive in post-Mubarak Egypt. Many of those who took part in the uprising accuse the ruling military of showing too much reverence to key figures of the old regime and lenience with senior police commanders accused of ordering the killing of protesters.

Gigi Ibrahim, one of the protesters, said security forces rained tear gas on them.

"It was like January 25," she said, referring to the first day of the uprising. "The protesters have enough anger, either because change has not come or because the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces hasn't done enough" to meet their demands.

MENA quoted Assistant Health Minister Abdul-Hameed Abazah as saying that of the injured, some 900 were treated on the spot and more than 120 went to hospitals.

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“Tom Engelhardt” - Does Obama idolize the military?

Tom Engelhardt

June 30, 2011

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/barack_obama/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2011/06/30/obama_afghanistan_speech

It's already gone, having barely outlasted its moment -- just long enough for the media to suggest that no one thought it added up to much.

Okay, it was a little more than the military wanted, something less than Joe Biden would have liked, not enough for the growing crew of anti-war congressional types, but way too much for John McCain, Lindsey Graham, & Co.

I'm talking about the 13 minutes of "remarks" on "the way forward in Afghanistan" that President Obama delivered in the East Room of the White House two Wednesday nights ago.

Tell me you weren't holding your breath wondering whether the 33,000 surge troops he ordered into Afghanistan as 2009 ended would be removed in a 12-month, 14-month, or 18-month span. Tell me you weren't gripped with anxiety about whether 3,000, 5,000, 10,000, or 15,000 American soldiers would come out this year (leaving either 95,000, 93,000, 88,000, or 83,000 behind)?

You weren't? Well, if so, you were in good company.

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“Tom Levitt” - Greenpeace takes on Monsanto over 'pesticides arms race'

Tom Levitt
The Ecologist, 30 June 2011
http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/961236/greenpeace_takes_on_monsanto_over_pesticides_arms_race.html

*Main ingredient of Monsanto's Roundup weed killer is being linked to cancer, birth defects and Parkinson's disease and should be banned, according to campaigners behind new report

The use of the popular weedkiller, 'Roundup', in public parks and on agricultural crops is a danger to public health, according to a new analysis of scientific evidence.

One of the main ingredients of Roundup, as well as several other herbicides, is a chemical known as glyphosate. A review of academic research, conducted by Greenpeace and the anti-GM campaign group GM Freeze, suggests exposure to it can cause cancer, hormonal imbalance, birth defects and neurological illnesses including Parkinson's.

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"Progressive Radio Host Mitchell J. Rabin, Monday @ 6pm" - The latest Jewish Haiku

Jewish Haiku

Beyond Valium,
peace is knowing one's child
is an internist.

On Passover we
opened the door for Elijah.
Now our dog is gone.

After the warm rain
the sweet smell of camellias.
Did you wipe your feet?

Her lips near my ear,
Aunt Sadie whispers the name
of her friend's disease.

Today I am a man
Tomorrow I will return
to the seventh grade.

Testing the warm milk
on her wrist, she sighs softly
But her son is forty.

The sparkling blue sea
reminds me to wait an hour
after my sandwich.

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“Christopher Mims” - U.S. politicians’ campaign of terror against climate scientists

Christopher Mims

 June 28, 2011

http://www.grist.org/list/2011-06-28-company-wants-to-turn-worlds-biggest-coal-field-into-worlds-bigg

A 250 mile long coal seam discovered deep in the interior desert of Australia's Northern Territory appears to be the most gigantic coal deposit on planet Earth, and Central Petroleum Limited wants to burn it all. They project it will take them at least a century to go through the entire reserve, or right about until they’ve turned Australia’s notoriously harsh desert into an incomprehensibly lifeless hellscape populated by miners in climate controlled space-suits.

Their approach is somewhat unconventional: Central Petroleum wants to liquefy the coal underground, turn it into a gas, and then transform that gas back into a liquid, to be used like conventional oil. They project the field could produce 1 billion barrels a year, thus totally solving peak oil FOREVER for about ten minues.

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“Delay Espo” - Delay Medicare eligibility: Coburn and Lieberman

David Espo

June 28, 2011

http://www.salon.com/wires/us/2011/06/28/D9O54D4O1_us_debt_showdown/index.html

Two Senate rebels jumped into Congress' cut-the-deficit competition on Tuesday, proposing to raise the age of Medicare eligibility to 67 and increase monthly premiums for millions of current beneficiaries.

"We can't save Medicare as we know it," said Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., who authored the plan with Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. "We can only save Medicare if we change it," he added in an apparent jab at President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats.

Democrats reacted with criticism of the proposal, which Coburn said was designed to rescue the financially imperiled program and help the nation confront a "wall of debt." Republicans betrayed no sign of support either.

If nothing else, the response underscored the difficulty of legislative free-lancing at a time the Obama administration and congressional leaders are struggling to negotiate a compromise that cuts future deficits and clears the way for an increase in the nation's $14.3 trillion debt.

Without a debt limit increase by Aug. 2, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has warned, the government could default, risking calamity for the U.S. economy and serious effects worldwide.

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"YouTube Clip" - British video clip on bailing out the European economies

Watch this video right here:

British video clip on bailing out the European economies

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=thSTpGnWEAs

“Progressive Radio Host Glen Ford, Monday @ 4pm(est)” - Four Decades of Cruelty and Inhumanity to U.S. Political Prisoners

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/06/26-0

Published on Sunday, June 26, 2011 by Black Agenda Report

A Black Agenda Radio commentary

by Glen Ford

For almost 40 years, Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace have been in solitary confinement at Louisiana’s infamous Angola State Prison, in what is thought to be the longest period of enforced solitude in America’s vast prison gulag. Amnesty International says their treatment is “cruel and inhumane and a violation of the US’s obligations under international law.” Woodfox is now 64 years old, and Wallace is 69. They are two of the original Angola 3, convicted of the murder of a prison guard in 1972. The other member of the trio, Robert King, was released after 29 years in solitary confinement after pleading guilty to a lesser charge.

Under the conditions of solitary confinement, Woodfox and Wallace are restricted to their tiny cells for 23 hours a day. Three times a week, for an hour, they are allowed to exercise in an outdoor cage, if weather permits. For 40 years, they have not been allowed access to work or to education. And there has been no legitimate review of their cases in all that time.

There was never any physical evidence of the men’s guilt, only the very questionable testimony of other inmates, one of whom was bribed by officials and another of whom retracted his testimony. Woodfox and Wallace and King have been subjected to the greatest cruelties Louisiana has to offer because they became political prisoners after entering Angola, when they formed a prison chapter of the Black Panther Party. One prison official says flatly, that “there’s been no rehabilitation” from “practicing Black Pantherism.” In other words, the prison considers their politics to be their crime.

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"Ellen Brown"- How the Bailout Killed Local Lending

With the big banks speculating instead of lending to small businesses, states are looking for new ways to keep credit flowing.

posted Jun 30, 2011

http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/how-the-bailout-killed-local-lending-and-how-some-states-hope-to-bring-it-back

“Wall Street banks have cut back on small business lending… [by] more than double the cutback in overall lending.… [Small business] options just keep disappearing.”

-Elizabeth Warren, Chair of the TARP Congressional Oversight Panel,
quoted in Judd and McGhee, “Banking on America”

The Wall Street bailout of 2008 has radically altered the banking business. The bailout was supposed to keep credit flowing to Main Street, but it has wound up having the opposite effect. Small and medium-sized businesses have traditionally been the main engines for increasing employment, and they need bank credit for their working capital; but today credit to local businesses has collapsed nearly everywhere.

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"Charles Davis"- Obama Loses His 'Constitutional Law Professor Hat'

Published on Thursday, June 30, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/06/30-10

As a candidate for president, Barack Obama was a Distinguished Constitutional Scholar. As a president waging an illegal war? He's just some guy who, gosh, isn't really in a position to talk about that complex document he took an oath to uphold and defend.

At a press conference this week, NBC correspondent Chuck Todd -- presumably under strict orders not to ask about Newsweek's Princess Di cover -- questioned the erstwhile legal scholar about whether he felt the War Powers Resolution, which forbids the president from deploying troops without congressional consent except in cases of imminent danger to national security, and even then for only 60 days, passed constitutional muster.

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