Poor management and critical mistakes by BP and its contractors led to the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history, according to the final report of the largest U.S. government probe into last year's massive Gulf oil spill.
Investigators from the U.S. Coast Guard and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management scattered blame for the accident on the companies involved while also saying stronger regulations could have helped prevent the catastrophe.
Final U.S. report lays Gulf spill blame on BP, contractors
Corruption? 5400 Lawmakers Have Become Lobbyists in the Last Decade
More proof that Washington is corrupt? A new Legistorm study reveals there is a "revolving door" between Congress and lobbying firms, showing that almost 5400 lawmakers have jumped from the government to lobbying firms in the last decade. Washington Post:
Of the 5,400 lobbyists with recent Hill experience, the study found that 2,900 were registered to lobby on behalf of clients this year. Twenty-five powerhouse firms and organizations employ 10 or more former Hill workers. The largest number are at the Podesta Group, followed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which employs at least 21.
CNN Panders to the Tea Party
CNN, which likes to boast that it’s America’s non-ideological cable news network, revealed in its Republican presidential debate collaboration with the Tea Party Express the hidden political reality behind “centrist” journalism – a never-ending pandering to the Right.
The basic truth about mainstream journalism is that the careerists who dominate the national news media are keenly attuned to where the worst career dangers lie and steer away accordingly. And, by far, the biggest risk to a journalist’s career is to be deemed “liberal” by the Right’s powerful attack machine.
Ex-FBI interrogator 'gagged' over 9/11 backstory
Former FBI agent Ali Soufan says he has not been allowed to tell the truth about 9/11 and events since. A former FBI agent who worked at the heart of America's battle against al-Qaeda has told the BBC he is being prevented from telling the truth as he challenges the back story of 9/11 and what has happened since.
Mr Soufan also argues against the effectiveness of interrogation techniques used by the CIA, such as water boarding. Ali Soufan has not appeared on camera before, but he has now decided to speak out to counter what he sees as a misleading narrative about the last 10 years.
Census: U.S. poverty rate hit 52-year high in 2010
Continued high unemployment drove the number of Americans living in poverty to a 52-year high in 2010 and pushed the nation’s median household income down for the third straight year since the Great Recession first cast its ominous cloud over the nation’s economy.
More than a year after the economic recovery officially began in June 2009, 46.2 million people were earning below the poverty level in 2010, up from 43.6 million in 2009, according to new U.S. Census Bureau figures released on Tuesday.
UN experts say Israel's blockade of Gaza is illegal
Israel's naval blockade of the Gaza Strip violates international law, a panel of human rights experts reporting to a U.N. body said on Tuesday, disputing a conclusion reached by a separate U.N. probe into Israel's raid on a Gaza-bound aid ship.
The so-called Palmer Report on the Israeli raid of May 2010 that killed nine Turkish activists said earlier this month that Israel had used unreasonable force in last year's raid, but its naval blockade of the Hamas-ruled strip was legal.
Does 9/11 Truth Have A Chance?
In the US on September 11, 2011, the tenth anniversary of 9/11, politicians and their presstitute media presented Americans with “A Day of Remembrance,” a propaganda exercise that hardened the 9/11 lies into dogma. Meanwhile, in Toronto, Canada, at Ryerson University the four-day International Hearings on the Events of September 11, 2001, came to a close at 5pm.
During the four days of hearings, distinguished scientists and scholars and professional architects and engineers presented the results of years of their independent research into all aspects of 9/11 to a distinguished panel consisting of the honorary president of the Italian Supreme Court who was an investigative judge who presided over terrorism cases and three distinguished scholars of high renown and judgment. The distinguished panel’s task is to produce a report with their judgment of the evidence presented by the expert witnesses.
Journalism in The Shadow of Terror Laws
Noting that since the September 11th terrorist attacks on the United States, the response by governments to the threat of terrorism had been massively disproportionate, resulting in.
- fundamental rights being routinely violated and undermined,
- a raft of mass surveillance measures targeting journalists and media organizations being introduced,
- laws and regulations that undermine almost half of the minimum standards set out in the 1948 UN Universal Declaration on Human Rights being enacted by governments, often in the absence of scrutiny and debate, and
- media and independent journalism suffering in a “pervasive atmosphere of paranoia” which is leading to dangerous levels of self-censorship,
Pentagon Papers Whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg Says that the Government Has ORDERED the Media Not to Cover 9/11
The entire 9/11 field of inquiry has been vilified, poisoned over the years by ridicule, sometimes fantastic conspiracy mongering, and fearfulness by journalists of approaching the material, lest they be branded as irresponsible or some kind of conspiracy freak. As a result, little work has been done to investigate, except by a small group of people, some of whom have raised some real questions …
Similarly, Air Force Colonel and key Pentagon official Karen Kwiatkowski – who blew the whistle on the Bush administration’s efforts to concoct false intelligence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction:
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