TV News LIES

Real men go to Tehran!" brayed the neoconservatives, after the success of their propaganda campaign to have America march on Baghdad and into an unnecessary war that has forfeited all the fruits of our Cold War victory.
 
Now they are back, in pursuit of what has always been their great goal: an American war on Iran. It would be a mistake to believe they and their collaborators cannot succeed a second time.

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A whistleblower contacted US regulators more than five years ago with allegations that Sir Allen Stanford’s businesses were involved in an “illegal Ponzi scheme”, the Financial Times has learnt, raising new questions about why authorities waited until last week to shut down the alleged $8bn fraud.

Leyla Basagoitia, a former Stanford employee, raised a series of red flags about the tycoon’s empire in a 2003 employment dispute with her company at a tribunal run by the finance industry’s self-regulatory body. Ms Basagoitia also alerted the US Securities and Exchange Commission at about the same time, her lawyer said, echoing criticisms the agency ignored early warnings about the alleged $50bn Ponzi scheme run by Bernard Madoff.

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Only in America can elected officials go on TV and confess to felonies (including torture and warrantless spying, not to mention aggressive war) and the resulting debate focus around the question of whether investigating the "possibility" of wrong-doing would be too radical. This week a coalition of dozens of human rights groups including the Center for Constitutional Rights, the National Lawyers Guild, and the Society of American Law Teachers released a statement, as drafted by The Robert Jackson Steering Committee, cutting to the chase.

President Obama arrived at one of the nation’s most storied military bases Friday morning to unveil plans to pull most troops out of Iraq by August 2010 after receiving support from an unlikely quarter — Senator John McCain, the Republican he beat in last year’s election.

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NAFTA has produced winners, mostly multinational corporations and a long list of losers, which includes farmers. The trade agreement has been the source of much discontent and has become an easy target. NAFTA is so badly flawed, but it is only one part of our failed trade and economic strategy. It has hurt many farmers in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Just as there are calls to reform energy, investment, labour and environmental provisions of NAFTA, many are also demanding changes to agricultural clauses found in the agreement.

NAFTA has essentially pitted farmers from all three countries against each other. Some have sought to establish more control over the marketing of farm produce only to be harassed.

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The mayor of a California city says he will resign after being criticized for sharing an e-mail picture depicting the White House lawn planted with watermelons under the title "No Easter egg hunt this year."

Grose came under fire for sending the picture to what he called "a small group of friends." One of the recipients, a local businesswoman and city volunteer, publicly scolded the mayor for his actions.

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The oil industry created the practice of countries (SHIPS?) flying "flags of convenience" as a means of avoiding income taxes nearly a century ago. Since the 1960s the U.S. Government itself has encouraged American banks to set up branches in Caribbean hot-money centers and more distant islands as a means of attracting foreign money into the dollar. The initial aim was to help finance the Vietnam War by turning America into a new Switzerland for the world's hot money.

If the economic crisis goes on much longer, will there be any newspapers left in the US to write about it?

"You take readers and advertisers who were already migrating away from print, and add a steep recession, and you've got serious trouble," writes the New Yorker's James Surowiecki.

Of course, print circulation losses are being partially offset by increases in online readership.

The problem for the newspapers has been finding a way to turn increased readership into increased revenue.

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