Jan. 5, 2009 (Truth To Power) -- For several months I have been meaning to write a review of Rob Hopkins' The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience, but other things got in the way -- like a planetary economic meltdown and out-of-control climate change that exceeds some of the most dire predictions by climate scientists. I should have spoken out earlier in support of this movement, but I didn't. Now, as we commence this new year, I am.

  Dec. 31, 2008 (Monthly Review) -- "Edupunk," one of 2008's official buzzwords, means someone who is self-educated, "without concern for schools, corporations, or governments."  I shall now describe Mickey Z as a hyper-stone-uber-megalo "edupunk."  Mickey, nee Michael Zezima, is a 48-year-old working-class writer, martial artist, vegan, public speaker, and environmental activist who lives in The People's Republic of Astoria, Queens.  He's just published his 6th book, No Innocent Bystanders, so we sat down to discuss it:

  WINTER SOLSTICE, DEC. 21, 2008 (Truth To Power) -- On Dec. 17, a Reuters story Downturn Spurs Survival Panic reported that, "A paralegal, recently laid off, wanted to get back at the ‘establishment' that he felt was to blame for his lost job. So when he craved an expensive new tie, he went out and stole one.

  Dec. 19, 2008 (AIP Bulletin of Research News) -- Former presidential science advisor Vannevar Bush referred to science as an endless frontier of new discoveries.  So what were the big physics findings for 2008?  The following list was chosen by editors and science writers at the American Institute of Physics and the American Physical Society.  It winnows a wealth of discoveries into the following ten topic areas, which are listed in no particular order.

  November (National Intelligence Council) -- "Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World" is the fourth unclassified report prepared by the National Intelligence Council (NIC) in recent years that takes a long-term view of the future. It offers a fresh look at how key global trends might develop over the next 15 years to influence world events. Our report is not meant to be an exercise in prediction or crystal ball-gazing. Mindful that there are many possible "futures," we offer a range of possibilities and potential discontinuities, as a way of opening our minds to developments we might otherwise miss.

  Military Investigations Stymied By Missing Documents, Flawed Records And Failure Of Witness Recollection, Records Show

  The 2008 elections showed the South is one of the nation's biggest political battlegrounds. Then why are the pundits saying the South is now irrelevant? And how many times can they get the story wrong?

PHOTO: ZAPATISTAS FOR CULTURAL AND INDIGENOUS RIGHTS

  Nov. 15, 2008 (Truth To Power) -- The bottom line is profit. Profit and the lust for it is capitalism's event horizon. Much like what happens at the boundary of a black hole ("boundary of a black hole" is roughly what the term "event horizon" means in the theory of general relativity) any energy, information or meaning that passes the threshold of a consciousness driven by profit disappears into the super-gravitational field of the black hole itself -- never to be seen or heard of again.

John Pilger

  Nov. 12, 2008 (Information Clearing House) -- My first visit to Texas was in 1968, on the fifth anniversary of the assassination of president John F Kennedy in Dallas. I drove south, following the line of telegraph poles to the small town of Midlothian, where I met Penn Jones Jr, editor of the Midlothian Mirror. Except for his drawl and fine boots, everything about Penn was the antithesis of the Texas stereotype. Having exposed the racists of the John Birch Society, his printing press had been repeatedly firebombed. Week after week, he painstakingly assembled evidence that all but demolished the official version of Kennedy's murder.

Joshua Frank

  Nov. 6, 2008 (Information Clearing House) -- Tuesday’s celebration hangovers have finally started to wear off, and the pieces are beginning to fall into place. Change will be coming to Washington in January, but it is difficult to decipher what form it will take. Early clues, however, suggest that Barack Obama’s administration will prove unlikely to alter the fundamental political machinery that has led us into war and economic turmoil. Below is a brief summary of Obama’s potential choices for a few key roles in his administration.

  Election 2008 showed the South is changing. What does it mean for the region's future?

Dale Allen Pfeiffer

  Oct. 1, 2008 (www.mountainsentinel.com) -- U.S. democracy and free market capitalism are nothing more than myths. These myths were drilled into us in public school, and are constantly reinforced by the mass media. Yet events in the past year make it plain these are myths. If we would be willing to take off our blinders and look around us with our own eyes, we would see quite plainly what a cruel deception we suffer under.

  Georgia tells 4,770 voters their votes 'challenged,' encourages voters to contest citizenship of other voters on Election Day

'End Of The Road' Allen L. Thornton

  Oct. 31, 2008 (Global Research) -- From too much of a good thing. From the 1980s and 1990s excesses. From the longest ever U.S. bull market. Heavily manipulated to keep it levitating. From August 1982 to January 2000. An illusory reprieve from October 2002 to October 2007. Fluctuations aside, all lost in the past 12 months. The wages of sin are now due, and payment is being painfully extracted. From all nations globally. Affecting ordinary people the most who had nothing to do with creating booms and busts. They got little on the upside but are paying dearly for the down.

October 28, 2008      Visit our homepage

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Election Complaints Are Pouring In

Mark Crispin Miller

  Oct. 24, 2008 -- Burlington, Vt. (Truth To Power) -- Shortly before a public lecture presented at Champlain College, I sat down with Mark Crispin Miller, Professor of Media Studies at New York University, to ask him a number of questions regarding stolen elections -- a subject Miller has researched and written about extensively. Greg Palast, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Bev Harris, Steve Rosenfeld, Bob Fitrakis, and Lynne Landes, have provided monumental contributions to the subject of election fraud, each with their own unique styles and methods of targeting the issue. Mark Crispin Miller's 2005 book Fooled Again, impeccably documents the stealing of the 2004 election, and Loser Take All, a 2008 collection of essays on stolen elections incorporates the research of other investigators of election fraud such as Robert Kennedy, Jr; Bob Fitrakis, and Steve Rosenfeld.

  Oct., 2008 (WWF) -- Scientific research on climate change and its impacts published since the deadline for the latest assessment report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is revealing that global warming is accelerating, at times far beyond IPCC 2007 forecasts. This brief summary seeks to bring together some of the key findings, including particular impacts of climate change in Europe.

Mickey Z.

  Oct. 4, 2008 (Dissident Voice) --We have recordings, but no music; we have movies, but no film; we have books, but no literature.

Dale Allen Pfeiffer

  (www.mountainsentinel.com) -- I'll parse as few words as possible. We don't need this bailout. The economy will not crash if Congress doesn't pass it. What is more, the bailout itself could sink the economy.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)

The current financial crisis facing our country has been caused by the extreme right-wing economic policies pursued by the Bush administration. These policies, which include huge tax breaks for the rich, unfettered free trade and the wholesale deregulation of commerce, have resulted in a massive redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the very wealthy. 

The Energy Markets were looking for a big upward move, based upon the potential for destruction from Hurricane Gustav upon the oil and natural gas infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico. Right now, it would be wise to reflect upon what that Scottish guy once wrote regarding "Best Laid Plans".

James Kunstler

The feeble American response to Russia's assertion of power in the Caucasus of Central Asia was appropriate, since our claims of influence in that part of the world are laughable.

America is on vacation from its financial, fiscal, and economic problems, having left the centers of power in Wall Street and Washington for a Nantucket-of-the-mind, where, in a haze of artisanal vodka and bong smoke, it's out in the cool dune grass watching imaginary whalefishes blow, leaving only the TV Bubbleheads behind back home. Larry Kudlow of CNBC was practically drooling into his cufflinks on screen last week when the dollar popped against the Euro, and crude oil slumped, and the equity markets climbed up a flagpole.

  (Global Research) -- When Henry Paulson agreed to leave his job as chairman of the powerful Wall Street investment bank, Goldman Sachs to go to Washington as Treasury Secretary in 2006 he demanded extraordinary powers as de facto economic czar. He got it. Paulson is also head of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets -- the secretary of the treasury and the chairmen of the Federal Reserve Board, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The Working Group is the financial world's equivalent of the Pentagon war room. Paulson, not Fed chairman Bernanke, is the person running the Administration’s crisis management. And his recent actions indicate he has lost control as the snowballing problems from the semi-government mortgage companies Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to the collapse of the multi-trillion dollar market in Asset Backed Securities (ABS) to the real economy are compounding into the worst crisis since the 1930’s Great Depression.

  Memo Instructed CIA To Document Both Torture Techniques And Agents Participating In Interrogations

Sen. Jesse Helms

  (Facing South) -- What does one say at the funeral of a bigot? Politicians and pundits have been grappling with that question since the passing of Sen. Jesse Helms July 4, and the collective reaction to Helms' death speaks volumes about the state of race relations and social progress in our country.