Dissent Mag

As more Americans are watched, fewer cases are made. The trend concerns civil liberties groups as well as some lawmakers and legal experts.

By Richard B. Schmitt, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

May 12, 2008

WASHINGTON — The number of Americans being secretly wiretapped or having their financial and other records reviewed by the government has continued to increase as officials aggressively use powers approved after the Sept. 11 attacks. But the number of terrorism prosecutions ending up in court — one measure of the effectiveness of such sleuthing — has continued to decline, in some cases precipitously.

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by Stephen Lendman

Global Research, May 12, 2008

Led by Dick Cheney, Bush administration neocons want war on Iran. So does the Israeli Lobby, but it doesn’t mean they’ll get it. Powerful forces in Washington and the Pentagon are opposed and so far have prevailed. Nonetheless, worrisome recent events increase the possibility and must be closely watched.

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By Bill Henderson

10 October, 2005
Countercurrents.org

“It would have been one thing to put the United States at the head of a coordinated, international effort to reduce dependence on carbon fuels; it is quite another to send American forces around the world – from Colombia to Uzbekistan, from Angola to the Persian Gulf – to oblige the world to meet an American demand for almost half the world’s oil supplies.” Godfrey Hodgson Oil and American Politics

Note - video “McCain: Oil is the reason for U.S. wars” and “Keith Olbermann - John McCain’s War For Oil Comments” below the article

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By ZIGA VODOVNIK

Howard Zinn, 85, is a Professor Emeritus of political science at Boston University. He was born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1922 to a poor immigrant family. He realized early in his youth that the promise of the “American Dream“, that will come true to all hard-working and diligent people, is just that – a promise and a dream. During World War II he joined US Air Force and served as a bombardier in the “European Theatre“. This proved to be a formative experience that only strengthened his convictions that there is no such thing as a just war. It also revealed, once again, the real face of the socio-economic order, where the suffering and sacrifice of the ordinary people is always used only to higher the profits of the privileged few.

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By Scott Thill, AlterNet. Posted May 13, 2008.

Hedge funds exploited the misfortunes of those caught beneath currency, housing and internet bubbles, and got paid by the boatload.
Recently, two important and related events occurred. The first is that hedge fund kingpin Cerberus Capital Management was considering buying Blackwater, the notoriously Orwellian security contractor that has become the scourge of Iraq and America alike. And the second event? As soon as the news was reported, the deal was killed.

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Posted on May 11, 2008

By Scott Ritter

As someone who has been urging focused citizen activism for some time now, I find it heartening that there are those in the United States who put action to words and seek to lead by example. This is the case with Chicago Alderman Joe Moore, who, together with seven of his 49 colleagues (Toni Preckwinkle, Sandi Jackson, Eugene Schulter, Robert Fioretti, Freddrenna Lyle, Ricardo Munoz and Mary Ann Smith), has prepared a resolution for the Chicago City Council opposing war on Iran. By itself, this resolution most probably will not serve to alter the policies currently being pursued by the Bush administration. But when a great American city such as Chicago takes the lead in expressing its rejection of irresponsible national policy, other cities should, and will, take notice.

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