"The Obama administration said Wednesday it has suspended joint military operations with Honduras to protest a coup that forced President Manuel Zelaya into exile. The U.S. withheld stronger action in hopes of negotiating a peaceful return of the country's elected leader. The Organization of American States, meeting in Washington, gave Honduran coup leaders three days to restore Zelaya to power — under threat of suspending Honduras's OAS membership. Afterward, several officials said the administration is still reviewing the possibility of cutting off U.S. aid."

"Elderly grandmothers, infants, pregnant women, wounded fathers, their faces as twisted and contorted as the razorwire that imprisons them, trapped in a state of incarceration the Colombo authorities claim is necessary for the refugees' own "safety". Further into the bush are the field hospitals, hidden from the eyes of the world yet overflowing with civilian victims of the war. Beyond the medical camps, according to eyewitnesses, are thousands of freshly dug graves. Six thousand miles away in London, a growing body of UK-based campaigners are calling it quite simply "The War Without Witness"." Many Tamils were killed. Hundreds of thousands were driven into exile and hundreds of thousands were driven into concentration camps. What was solved?

John Bolton, former US ambassador to the UN, and a warmongering idiot then and now, claims that "the already compelling logic for an Israeli strike is nearly inexorable". Warning, clicking on this link and reading his rantings may cause nausea.

"Take the following para from a BBC piece titled ‘US treads careful path on Honduras’ (30 June, 2009) “So while Washington’s reaction has been strong and swift, when it comes to statements, its actions have so far been measured. Now you may wonder why the BBC chose the word ‘measured’ to describe the US’ response to the military coup d’etat? Not only why but how? ...it’s not Zelaya’s actual policies that troubles the BBC but the fact that he’s sided with the “leftists” (with the assistance no doubt of his “fanatical supporters”). The term “leftist” is loaded with hidden meaning for Western readers, it’s way beyond ‘left-wing’ which may well describe a handful of Labour MPs who consider themselves as such. Even the title of the piece reveals much about the relationship between the BBC and the USUK state, after all what does ‘US treads careful path on Honduras’ really mean? Careful not to reveal their role in the coup? Careful to make it look like the US supports actual democracy as opposed to fake ones, eg Iraq and Afghanistan? Careful not to let the cat out of the bag is closer to the truth, that the US is more than happy to see Zelaya removed but makes all the right noises in public. Any actual steps to restore Zelaya to his rightful position eg, cutting off the military aid the US ‘gives’ to Honduras is noticeable by its absence."

Arne Duncan uses Rhode Island to make a point: innovation in education is code for charter schools. The legislature in R.I. blocked funding for two charter schools because there was not increased funding for already existing public schools - in other words, it would seem they held the utterly unreasonable view that we ought to prioritize improving the schools we have! (snark). Duncan told them to restore the funding or else suffer federal cuts...

I worked as a senior executive at health insurance companies, and I saw how they confuse their customers and dump the sick "" all so they can satisfy their Wall Street investors. I know from personal experience that members of Congress and the public have good reason to question the honesty and trustworthiness of the insurance industry. Insurers make promises they have no intention of keeping, they flout regulations designed to protect consumers, and they make it nearly impossible to understand""or even to obtain""information we need. As you hold hearings and discuss legislative proposals over the coming weeks, I encourage you to look very closely at the role for-profit insurance companies play in making our health care system both the most expensive and one of the most dysfunctional in the world. I hope you get a real sense of what life would be like for most of us if the kind of so-called reform the insurers are lobbying for is enacted. When I left my job as head of corporate communications for one of the country's largest insurers, I did not intend to go public as a former insider. However, it recently became abundantly clear to me that the industry's charm offensive""which is the most visible part of duplicitous and well-financed PR and lobbying campaigns""may well shape reform in a way that benefits Wall Street far more than average Americans.

"As US combat troops retreated from Iraqi urban centers on Tuesday, signs of an incomplete withdrawal abounded. Some soldiers remained in cities, their labels changed from "combat troops" to "trainers" or "advisers," while others relocated to bases close outside city borders. However, the US-Iraq security pact approved last December requires that every single US troop withdraw from the country by December 31, 2011, and an upcoming referendum vote in Iraq may demand an even quicker deadline. In less than a month, the Iraqi people may vote on the validity of the security pact, which permits the continuing US presence in Iraq."

This is the final post of the four part series by Felice Gelman who writes about her recent trip to Gaza under the pen name rosahill. Here are links to the first three posts from her diary. Here are links to the first three posts, Part I, Part II, Part III. Sunday, June 7, 2009 A Detailed Account of the Impact of Israel's Attack Our meeting with the Palestinian Center for Human Rights is the best orientation to the impact of the Israeli attack. PCHR meticulously documents everything, and deals quite fearlessly with both internal and external violations of human rights. PCHR estimates that, during the Israeli attacks, 2,500 tons of explosives were dropped on Gaza. That equals 3 kilos of explosives per meter. (They have a massive display of weapons fragments in their office, with all too many bearing indications that they were made in the USA

Exit poll naysayers could not provide a rational explanation for the Final 2004 National Exit Poll and its impossible returning Bush phantom voter anomaly. The "false recall" hypothesis was advanced soon after the reluctant Bush responder (rBr) theory was thoroughly debunked. But why was "mere forgetfulness" unique to Gore or Kerry voters? Are we supposed to believe that only those who DID NOT vote for an ILLEGITIMATE incumbent were afflicted with Alzheimer's? How come returning Bush voters were immune to this malady? The original purpose for proposing "false recall" was to call into question the 2004 exit poll results. The MSM fiction that Bush really did win the election fairly had to be maintained. The recorded vote was sacrosanct. A corollary was that the unadjusted (unweighted) exit polls were not accurate. After all, they differed from the recorded vote. Therefore, they could not be valid indicators of fraud. So much for the "spreadsheet-wielding Internet bloggers". But the 2006 and 2008 Final Exit Polls proved that "false recall" was nothing more than a desperate "Hail Mary" pass that was intercepted by the Truth.

Big Pharma pulled off a first-class PR coup last week with its widely celebrated pledge to support health care reform by offering up a package of discounts they claim will run to $80 billion over the next ten years. The highlight of the package, said to be worth about $30 billion, is a 50 percent discount offered to old and disabled people who fall into the "donut hole," the notorious coverage gap in the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit, which leaves some of us paying as much as $3,000 out of pocket for our meds.

Saddam Hussein told an FBI interviewer before he was hanged that he allowed the world to believe he had weapons of mass destruction because he was worried about appearing weak to Iran, according to declassified accounts of the interviews just released. The former Iraqi president also denounced Osama bin Laden as "a zealot" and said he had no dealings with al-Qaeda. Saddam, in fact, said he felt so vulnerable to the "fanatic" leaders in Tehran that he would have been prepared to seek a "security agreement with the United States to protect it [Iraq] from threats in the region".

If Americans hope to discuss health care, climate change, green economics or public infrastructure with any degree of realism, then the time has come to acknowledge that hearing someone say “a trillion dollars” is no reason to panic. Politicians and pundits cite that figure to argue that we cannot afford health care reform, following recent cost estimates by the Congressional Budget Office, but the plain truth is that we spend (and squander) more than that on purposes not nearly so wise and humane as universal quality health care.....As a matter of fact, America’s current health care system wastes considerably more than a trillion dollars every year. We know that because countries such as France, Germany, Japan and Finland, with standards of living comparable to ours, spend roughly half what the United States spends annually on health care per citizen, while they cover everyone and achieve better results. So if the total cost of American health care over the coming decade reaches $40 trillion, as economists expect, then we will be “wasting” approximately $20 trillion, or $2 trillion a year. ...Investing a trillion dollars or so in modernizing and improving our health care system is a good bargain—especially when contrasted with the maddening way that we have thrown away tax dollars over the past several years....

Amnesty International has condemned the unprecedented scale and intensity of attacks on Gaza earlier this year, as it launches the first comprehensive report to be published on the 22-day conflict. The report, Israel/Gaza: Operation 'Cast Lead' – 22 days of death and destruction, documents Israel's use of battlefield weapons against a civilian populations trapped in Gaza. It also uncovers evidence of unlawful attacks by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups who fired hundreds of rockets into southern Israel, killing three Israeli civilians. Amnesty's researchers in Gaza during January and February found that many victims of the attacks were killed when their homes were bombed while they slept. Children were struck while playing in their bedrooms. Paramedics and ambulances were repeatedly attacked while attempting to rescue the wounded or recover the dead. "The deaths of so many children and other civilians cannot be simply dismissed as ‘collateral damage’, as argued by Israel," says Holmes. "Many questions remain to be unanswered about these attacks and about the fact that the strikes continued unabated despite the rising civilian death toll."

For the first time since the Great Depression (with a brief exception in 1992) California, state finance officials will begin issuing IOUs today to meet its $24-billion budget shortfall.These will go to local governments, vendors, taxpayers and college students receiving state financial aid. State workers will face more unpaid leave days and Counties that administer social services also would not get paid, nor would taxpayers who are still expecting refunds. Were California an independent nation it's economy would rank in the top ten globally and now it is bankrupt, and it is not the only US state economy in deep trouble. It's economy accounts for 12 percent of US domestic product and has the largest retail consumption in the country.

If you want good roads, parks, decent schools (California's schools, once the best in the nation, are now among the worst) and adequate social services, you have to pay for them. For some reason, Californians have never come to grips with this fact. Some citizens who voted for Prop. 13 and other anti-tax measures are hard-line right-wingers who are ideologically opposed to government and don't care if state programs die. They are the soul mates of the current Republicans in the Legislature, who see the current crisis as a golden opportunity to get rid of government programs they have opposed for years. But they are the minority. Polls show that most Californians are more centrist. They are not absolutely opposed to taxes or government programs. They want compromises that work. The tragedy of California is that its political system no longer speaks for them. The center has not held. It no longer exists. It is a self-reinforcing problem: The more the public perceives politicians as ineffectual, the more it dismisses politics altogether.

“Evidence shows that this sheet is expected to melt first, along with Greenland. West Antarctica sits below sea level, so as the ocean warms, the ice sheet also warms. One way to understand this is to use the paeloclimate record to go back to a time when the earth was warmer and to see how West Antarctica behaved. We know that greenhouse gases in the atmosphere were slightly above what they are now, and the earth was two to three degrees warmer. When the West Antarctica ice sheet collapsed numerous times, it raised sea levels by up to 10 metres.”

The Rockefeller Foundation on Wednesday unveiled a 100-million-U.S. dollar initiative to support the strengthening of health systems in Africa and Asia. Addressing a news conference in Nairobi, the Foundation's President Judith Rodin said the Transforming Health Systems (THS) will address global need for affordable, accessible and quality health services. Rodin said the launch of the THS will shift focus from treatments and vaccines to informing the efforts of low-income countries to take on the challenges of health systems. The goal, she said, is to expand health coverage and provide new health and financial protections for all. "The Rockefeller Foundation has long been committed to public health interventions in the developing world to break bottlenecks that prevent access to quality health services," said Rodin. Note: Somebody please tell me that they see something terribly wrong with this picture?

For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post is offering lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, nonconfrontational access to "those powerful few" — Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and the paper’s own reporters and editors. Unacceptable.

Last week, Physicians for Human Rights and the Public Committee against Torture in Israel published a joint report examining hundreds of arrests in which Palestinians were bound in “distorted and unnatural” ways to inflict “pain and humiliation” amounting to torture. The report cited instances where prisoners, including a pregnant woman and a dying man, were shackled while doctors carried out emergency procedures in a hospital. According to the report, the doctors violated the Tokyo Declaration, the key code of medical ethics adopted by the WMA in 1975 that bans the use of cruel, humiliating or inhuman treatment by physicians. Ishai Menuchin, the head of the Public Committee, said his group had been lobbying strenuously against Israeli doctors’ complicity in torture since it issued a report, Ticking Bombs, in 2007, arguing that torture was routine in Israel.

A week later, the 'paper of record' fails to correct egregious 'paper ballots' error in endorsement editorial | Democratic Congressman's own website touts endorsement, repeats same fictitious information about bill...