Thursday, January 29, 2009

Officials: Army suicides at 3-decade high


By PAULINE JELINEK

Suicides among Army troops soared again last year and are at a nearly three-decade high, senior defense officials told The Associated Press on Thursday.

At least 128 soldiers killed themselves in 2008, said two officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because the data has not been formally released.

The final count likely will be considerably higher because more than a dozen other suspicious deaths are still being investigated and could also turn out to be self-inflicted.

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Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Alleged $300 Million Fraudster Surrenders in Madoff-Style Scheme

By RICHARD ESPOSITO

Photo: Hedge Fund Fraud Unravels After Madoff: $300 million fraudster surrenders; Senate told Ponzi schemes are Senate Told Ponzi Schemes are "Increasing" Across States

Arthur Nadel, who has been on the lam since Jan. 16 when he threatened to kill himself and vanished, surrendered to Florida authorities today in an alleged $300 million investor fraud case. Nadel, 76, now faces criminal charges in New York City, where a complaint against the fund manager was unsealed today. Read more...

UN Crime Chief Says Drug Money Flowed Into Banks

The United Nations’ crime and drug watchdog has indications that money made in illicit drug trade has been used to keep banks afloat in the global financial crisis, its head was quoted as saying on Sunday.

Vienna-based UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa said in an interview released by Austrian weekly Profil that drug money often became the only available capital when the crisis spiralled out of control last year. Read more...


Civil rights group to Obama: Release secret Bush memos

Mike Sheehan

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is calling on the Justice Department to release Bush administration documentation pertaining to torture, surveillance and other controversial national security policies.

The civil rights watchdog sent a letter today to the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, the same office that provided legal advice to the White House under George W. Bush.

The secret memos were essentially the legal foundation for many of the Bush adminstration's questionable practices, says the ACLU in a news release received by Raw Story. Read more...

Slumdog child stars miss out on the movie millions

By Dean Nelson and Barney Henderson

The child actors’ parents have accused the hit film’s producers of exploiting and underpaying the eight-year-olds, disclosing that both face uncertain futures in one of Mumbai’s most squalid slums.

Slumdog Millionaire has won four Golden Globes and is nominated for 10 Oscars. It is on its way to making hundreds of millions of pounds in box office receipts. Read more...



Controversial Bestseller Shakes the Foundation of the Israeli State

By
Joshua Holland

What if the Palestinian Arabs who have lived for decades under the heel of the modernhttp://www.israelvets.com/picts/nation_reborn/full_size_images/HerzlFPO.jpg Israeli state are in fact descended from the very same "children of Israel" described in the Old Testament?

And what if most modern Israelis aren't descended from the ancient Israelites at all, but are actually a mix of Europeans, North Africans and others who didn't "return" to the scrap of land we now call Israel and establish a new state following the attempt to exterminate them during World War II, but came in and forcefully displaced people whose ancestors had lived there for millennia?

What if the entire tale of the Jewish Diaspora -- the story recounted at Passover tables by Jews around the world every year detailing the ancient Jews' exile from
Judea, the years spent wandering through the desert, their escape from the Pharaoh's clutches -- is all wrong?

That's the explosive thesis of When and How Was the Jewish People Invented?  Read more....


Tanzania: Government Bans Traditional Healers to Try to Save the Lives of Albinos

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda announced Friday that the government was immediately revoking all licenses.

“These witch doctors are big liars,” he said at a public rally, the newspaper The Citizen reported. “They are fanning albino killings.”

At least 40 albinos have been murdered in Tanzania since mid-2007, many of them hacked to death in front of their families, and their legs, breasts, genitals and other parts carried off. In one case, an albino child 9 months old was taken from its mother and killed.  Read more...


Related article


Segregation and shopping

 Americans of all ethnic groups are increasingly living and going to school together. Shopping is another matter

Martin Luther King once described Sunday mornings, when people go to church, as the most segregated moment in American life. That is probably still true. But, particularly for groups other than blacks, Saturday mornings are not far behind. A century ago ethnic-minority groups clustered for self-defence, or because they were forced to. Half a century ago they were bound together by language and poverty. Now they congregate to eat and shop.  Read more...

Apollo Theater Marks 75th Year

http://freshbread.blogs.com/fresh_bread/images/p1020004.jpgHarlem's Apollo Theater is celebrating the 75th anniversary of its "Amateur Night" — a starting stage for some of the biggest stars in entertainment, including Ella Fitzgerald, Stevie Wonder and the late James Brown. Read more...


Barack Obama in Apollo Theater

Underground Economy is the Engine in Poor Neighborhoods

sudhir VenkateshNew America Media,Editor's Note: Sudhir Venkatesh is a sociology professor at Columbia University who has spent a decade studying a southside Chicago neighborhood where the informal or underground economy is an integral part of the local economy. His book, "Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor,"described the complex network of informal businesses—some illegal, like drug dealing, and others simply operating under the radar of regulators, like child day care operations. NAM editor Annette Fuentes spoke with him about the state of the underground economy in that Chicago neighborhood and other neighborhoods around the country as the economic recession squeezes Americans ever tighter. Read more...

Purchase this book today!



U.S. weapons facilitate Gaza killings

By Thalif Deen

The U.S. weapons systems used by the Israelis including F-16 fighter planes, Apache helicopters, tactical missiles and a wide array of munitions have been provided by Washington mostly as outright military grants. 

The administration of President George W. Bush alone has provided more than $21 billion in U.S.  Read more...



Iranian leader demands US apology

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - 15/1/2009Iran's president has responded to an overture by the new US president by demanding an apology for past US "crimes" committed against Iran.

The US "stood against the Iranian people in the past 60 years," Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said during an address in the western region of Khermenshah.

"Those who speak of change must apologise to the Iranian people and try to repair their past crimes," he said. Read more...


Related Article


History of US Iran Relations

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Father kills wife and five children after losing his job

By Catherine Elsworth

Ervin Antonio Lupoe, his wife Ana and their five childrenA father apparently desperate after losing his job at a Los Angeles hospital opened fire at his home killing his wife and five children before taking his own life, police said.

The bodies were found shortly after the man sent a fax to a local television station stating that he and his wife had both been made redundant and had decided the only way out was to kill themselves and their children.

Both Ervin Lupoe and his wife, Ana, were employed as medical technicians at a Kaiser Permanente hospital in west Los Angeles. In the two-page, type-written letter described as a suicide note by police, Mr Lupoe said they had lost their jobs after a dispute with a hospital manager. Read more...




Police: La. Man Kills Family Over Job Situation

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

BBC defends decision not to air charity appeal for Gaza

The British Broadcasting Corporation is standing firm in its decisions not to broadcast a charity appeal for Gaza, despite mounting public pressure to screen the advertisement.
MarkThompson, Director-General of BBC News, today defended the decision,saying that broadcasting the appeal could jeopardize the impartiality of the corporation.  Read more...

Rupert Murdock's Sky News also refuse to air the appeal.



BBC spurns Gaza appeal - 23 Jan 09

Monday, January 26, 2009

Obama Voices Hope for Mideast Peace in Talk With Al-Arabiya TV

By Michael D. Shear and Glenn Kessler

President Obama expressed optimism yesterday about the prospect of peace between Israel and the Palestinians, but he said a peace accord will take time and require new thinking about the problems of the Middle East as a whole.

Obama's comments came during his first formal television interview as president, with a correspondent from al-Arabiya, the Dubai-based satellite network that is one of the largest English-language TV outlets aimed at Arab audiences. Read more...


Obama's First Formal Interview on Al-Arabiya TV


Families of Incarcerated Youth Facing Debt

Yurina Rico, Translated by Suzanne Manneh

http://www.nashvillecitypaper.com/photos/Full59299.jpgHaving a child in juvenile hall is painful enough, but it is even more difficult when poor families have to pay Los Angeles County $25 for each day their child is locked up.

Isaac Gonzalez, who is 41 and works at a supermarket, received a bill of $5,000 for the six months his teenage son was at the juvenile detention center in Sylmar.  Read more...

The Epidemic That Wasn’t

By SUSAN OKIE

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/40898000/jpg/_40898128_crackpipe300spl.jpgWhen the use of crack cocaine became a nationwide epidemic in the 1980s and ’90s, there were widespread fears that prenatal exposure to the drug would produce a generation of severely damaged children. Newspapers carried headlines like “Cocaine: A Vicious Assault on a Child,” “Crack’s Toll Among Babies: A
Joyless View” and “Studies: Future Bleak for Crack Babies.”

But now researchers are systematically following children who were exposed to cocaine before birth, and their findings suggest that the encouraging stories of Ms. H.’s daughters are anything but unusual. So far, these scientists say, the long-term effects of such exposure on children’s brain development and behavior appear relatively small. Read more....


German economy faces gloomy 2009

Germany has predicted that its economy will shrink by 2.25% in 2009, which would be its worst performance in the post-World War II era.

The downgraded forecast is much lower than the previous prediction of 0.2% growth, made in October.

Germany's economy accounts for about a third of eurozone output. Read more...



Massive layoffs as gloom deepens

Workers around the world face losing their jobs as
several big corporations announced more than 70,000 layoffs in one single day.

The biggest cuts came in the US where construction equipment maker Caterpillar said it would cut around 20,000 jobs.

In Europe, electronics group Philips, financial firm ING and UK steelmaker Corus announced cuts. Read more...


US to hold 'direct talks' with Iran

The US ambassador to the United Nations has said the new Obama administration will engage in "direct diplomacy" with Iran.

Susan Rice said at UN that the US remained "deeply concerned" about Tehran's nuclear programme and that the issue remained a top priority for the White House. Read more...



Susan Rice as US ambassador to the UN.1



DR Congo war crimes trial begins

Thomas Lubanga, the leader of an armed group in the Democratic Republic of Congo, has pleaded not guilty to war crimes charges in the first case to be tried by the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

He is accused of leading an armed group that committed atrocities during a conflict in the African state that led to the deaths of 60,000 people. Read more...

When the mind is prevented from expanding

Shrii Prabhat R. Sarkar

Suppression occurs when the mind is prevented from expanding and all its outlets are closed, sealed and blocked. The nature of the human mind is that it wants to expand. Even if some force does not want the mind to expand, still the mind must try to expand. Repression occurs whenever you are faced with trouble, whenever you want to express your feelings, or whenever you want to be in an open atmosphere. In Islamic countries, for example, women want to participate in sports and games, but they are prevented. In communist countries there are many people who want to criticize communism, but if they do they will be in trouble and sent to concentration camps. There are also places where people want to sing and dance freely, but if they do they will face difficulty and be punished. Repression directly affects the subconscious mind. Gradually the psychic structure is severely damaged, and finally the mind is totally changed. The result is that people are inflicted with a defeatist psychology and an inferiority complex. Read more...

Counting the Walking Wounded



Consider that only 22 percent of recent veterans who may be at risk for P.T.S.D. (based on their answers to screening questions) were referred for a mental health evaluation. Less than 40 percent of service members who get a diagnosis of P.T.S.D. receive mental health services, and only slightly more than half of recent veterans who receive treatment get adequate care. Those who seek follow-up treatment run into delays of up to 90 days, which suggests there is a serious shortage of mental health professionals available to help them.  Read more...


Sunday, January 25, 2009

The Secret Governmental War on Black America

By Franklin G. Jones

black_matrix_cover (26K)THE BLACK MATRIX:

The Modern Mental and Social Suppression

of African American Under National Interest

The present despairing state of Black America is neither a baffling phenomenon, nor the result of some innate racial deficiency among Blacks, but rather instead the result of the White elite's innate proclivity for always reinventing devious methods of suppressing its Black population-- as a means of maintaining its white dominance and control. The architect of the modern method of suppression now used against Black America was the late Dr. Edward Bernays.


Dr. Edward Bernay's was a nephew of Sigmund Freud and one of the most skillful experts in mass manipulation. He invented the modern day Madison Avenue advertising Agencies by using his Uncle Sigmund's knowledge of the human psyche to make people feel they needed whatever product was being advertised. Edward Bernays also invented the public relations profession in the 1920s and was the first person to take Freud's ideas to manipulate the masses. Bernays was one of the main architects of the modern techniques of mass-consumer persuasion. He showed American corporations how they could make people want things they didn't need by systematically linking mass-produced goods to their unconscious desires. Read more...


Who Taught You To Hate Yourself - Minister Malcolm X


Israel: No Friend of Obama

By A. Akbar Muhammad

It is obvious to all who are looking that the Zionist entity wants to be center stage regardless of circumstances. Israel wants to see if they can play the new president like they played George W. Bush for the last eight years. In President Bush’s radio show on Saturday, Jan. 3, he tried to justify, in words, Israel’s attack on the Palestinians in Gaza. Gaza is an area of 150 square miles and home to a population of 1.5 million people. It is the most densely populated area in the world as the Palestinian people were forced into this small area in 1948 when Israel usurped their land.  Read more...

5.7% of U.S. Households -- or 6.5 Million Homes -- Still Unprepared for the Switch to Digital Television


More than 6.5 million U.S. households -- or 5.7 percent of all homes -- are not ready for the upcoming transition to all-digital broadcasting and would be unable to receive any television programming at all if the transition occurred today, The Nielsen Company reported today. Read more...


Israeli Soldiers Will Be Charged With Gaza War Crimes

Special legal teams will defend Israeli soldiers against potential war crimes charges stemming from civilian deaths in the Gaza Strip, the prime minister said Sunday, promising the country would “fully back” those who fought in the three-week offensive.  Read more...

Editors Note: Once again, the little man gets the shaft.  Not that the soldiers should get away with the genocide inflicted on the Palestinian people of Gaza, but we all know the orders came from the top.

Not one will presecute the Israeli Cabinet, they own most of the U.S. Congress and Senate.  Now print that on the front page newspaper.


Fox Attacks Black President While Defending Magic Negro

By Casey Gane-McCalla

Bill O’Reilly and Dennis Miller also bashed Jay Z and Young Jeezy for My President is Black. This is funny because just a few days earlier Bill O’Reilly was defending the Rush Limbaugh for his Barack the Magical Negro Parody. Miller and O’Reilly criticized the song as being vulgar. While Young Jeezy and Jay Z might have some profanities, it was far more benign than O’Reilly’s off camera outbursts or his graphic sexual harassment of co-workersRead more...



Jay-Z - My President Is Black (Real Official Remix)

Barack Obama Gives Black Press Interview During Historic Train Tour

Hazel Trice Edney

Still wearing his dark, cashmere coat after speaking to a Baltimore audience of 40,000 in bone-chilling temperatures during the Amtrak train tour from Philadelphia to Baltimore, President-elect Barack Obama described plans to use his presidential “bully pulpit” to challenge the Black community to strengthen itself from within. He also pushed public policies to deal with inequities that have long plagued African Americans from without.  Read more...


WMA signs Condoleezza Rice

By TED JOHNSON

<br />

Agency pacts with outgoing Secretary of State

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has signed with the William Morris Agency, the first step in what is being called the “reinvention and evolution” of her career.

The agency said Rice will focus on books, lecture appearances, philanthropic activities and “new business initiatives in the media, sports and communications sectors.” Read more...