Giuliani on WTC7 questions: Get a haircut, take a shower

By Rady Ananda
Activist Post

When confronted with questions about World Trade Center 7 at a speech on Thursday at the University of Florida, bald Rudy Giuliani told long-haired radio host Bob Tuskin, “You are too rude to be entitled to an answer. May I suggest a haircut and a shower?”

Filmed by The Intel Hub, Tuskin was escorted from the auditorium.

Another audience member began questioning the former New York City mayor’s honesty, to which he responded, “Oh, get lost,” reports The Alligator, calling him a “clown.”

The Crisis of Education in America: “How to Become a Serf”

By John Kozy
Global Research

Educational systems now train workers to fulfill the needs of companies. A society in which people exist for the sake of companies is a society enslaved. But there’s a deep problem with the notion that education should equal vocational training.

Confessions of a Lukewarmist

By Rady Ananda

Today, the Wall Street Journal published a letter from 16 distinguished scientists addressed to political candidates entitled, No Need to Panic About Global Warming.

“Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now,” they write, a fact that “is known to the warming establishment…”

The piece directly attacks the notion that carbon dioxide emissions are warming the globe, concluding with:

EU signs ACTA, global internet censorship treaty

By Rady Ananda
Activist Post

The European Union and 22 member states signed the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced today.  They have now joined the US and seven other nations that signed the treaty last October.

Works in Progress

By Robert C. Koehler

I’m sitting in my daughter’s Baltimore apartment thinking about works in progress. This city is a work in progress and its pockets of vibrancy delight me, partly because, like my own hometown, Detroit, it is too frequently written off in the national mindset as broken, dying — above all, an undesirable place to live.

My apolitical thought on this rainy January afternoon is this: Shatter in your own mind the prejudgments of popular culture, the grinning media dictates of who or what is in and who or what is out. Shatter also any notion of what you can and can’t do.

He’s Back: Internet censorship must be stopped

By Chris Pratt
COTO Report

After failing to get COICA (Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act) passed in 2010, he is back again this year with PIPA (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and the Theft of Intellectual Property Act).

Do not forget PIPA is the son of COICA.  Back then (2010) while the Vermont ACLU was nominating Senator Patrick Leahy as the Civil Libertarian of the Year, the national ACLU office was writing him a letter in opposition to COICA legislation.  Senator Wyden from Oregon subsequently tabled it.

Castro: World Peace Hanging by a Thread

Photo released by Iranian Fars News Agency shows Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, who was killed in a bomb blast in Tehran, Iran, on Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2012, with his son.

By Fidel Castro

I am convinced that Iran will not commit any rash actions that might contribute to setting off a war. If a war were to be unleashed, it would inevitably be completely as a result of the recklessness and congenital irresponsibility of the Yankee Empire, writes former Cuban leader, Fidel Castro.

PIPA vote stalled while US censorship still grows

By Rady Ananda
Activist Post

After the world’s most massive online protest on Jan. 18 against two internet censorship bills, which generated over 7 million petition signatures, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid postponed the PIPA vote set for the 24th, so that lawmakers could rework the bill.

Just Short of Treason in Georgia and Kansas

By Michael Collins

It’s official. The crazies have arrived for the 2012 presidential race, florid in their deviant and repulsive rhetoric. Andrew B. Adler, editor of The Atlanta Jewish Times, called on Israel’s President Benjamin Netanyahu to “Order a hit on a president in order to preserve Israel’s existence.” This reference to President Barack Obama appeared in the print edition of the paper on January 13 and was first published online by Gawker on the 20th (alternate links here and here).

Right wing Republican Mike O’Neal, speaker of the Kansas House of Representatives, forwarded an email referring to the president that quoted (approximately) Psalm 109.8: “Let his days be few and brief; and let others step forward to replace him.” The Lawrence Journal World noted that the very next verse, 109.9, indicates how the president should be replaced: “Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.” (Image SND)

The First Amendment is ignored when reactionary mayors want to stop the free speech and assemblies of Occupy Wall Street. However, free speech is expanded beyond the limits of the law when religious extremists in Atlanta and Kansas step well outside of the boundaries of U.S. Code.

Israel’s Role in Creating Hamas

Review of:
Hamas: The Islamic Resistance Movement
Beverley Milton-Edwards and Stephen Farrell
Polity Press, 2010 (340 pp.)

Beverly Milton-Edwards is Professor in the School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy at Queen’s University Belfast. Steven Farrell, who has dual British-Irish citizenship, is Middle East Correspondent for The New York Times.

By Dr Stuart Jeanne Bramhall

Hamas is about the militant Palestinian group which was democratically elected to run the Palestinian Authority in 2006. The main value of the book is the rich context it provides regarding the Israeli occupation of Palestine, which is totally absent from the mainstream media. Hamas clearly documents the role Israel played in promoting the rise of Muslim fundamentalism in Palestine. The book also emphasizes the essential role foreign financial assistance plays in perpetuating this war – with the US heavily backing Israel and other Islamic states backing occupied Palestine.

The Dignity of Corpses

By Robert C. Koehler

Civilization hasn’t successfully drawn a moral border at the sanctity of human life itself, but because it needs to put some limit on human behavior, it has, apparently, taken a last stand at the dignity of corpses.

It’s OK to kill your enemy, but not to urinate on him, at least not after he’s dead.

Thyroid cancer, fracking and nuclear power

By Rady Ananda
An Activist Post Special Report

Thyroid cancer cases have more than doubled since 1997 in the U.S., while deadly industrial practices that contaminate groundwater with radiation and other carcinogens are also rising.

New information released by the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) estimates that 56,460 people will develop thyroid cancer in 2012 and 1,780 will die from it.

That’s up from 16,000 thyroid cancer cases in 1997 – a whopping 253% increase in fifteen years, while the US population went up only 18%.

It’s here – Global centralization of elections, privatized

By Bev Harris
Black Box Voting

In a major step towards global centralization of election processes, the world’s dominant Internet voting company has purchased the USA’s dominant election results reporting company.

First NDAA; Now Enemy Expatriation Act

By Chuck Baldwin

On the heels of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), otherwise known as the “Indefinite Detention Act,” comes another draconian bill designed to give the federal government the power to turn American citizens into enemies of the state for virtually any reason it deems necessary. Stephen D. Foster, Jr. has the story.

“Congress is considering HR 3166 and S. 1698 also known as the Enemy Expatriation Act, sponsored by Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Charles Dent (R-PA). This bill would give the US government the power to strip Americans of their citizenship without being convicted of being ‘hostile’ against the United States. In other words, you can be stripped of your nationality for ‘engaging in, or purposefully and materially supporting, hostilities against the United States.’ Legally, the term ‘hostilities’ means any conflict subject to the laws of war but considering the fact that the War on Terror is a little ambiguous and encompassing, any action could be labeled as supporting terrorism.”

Ron Paul’s 2002 Predictions set against later headlines

Is he really that smart or is the US government truly this corrupt?

Iowa Lesbian Couple Wins Birth Certificate Battle

By Steve Williams
Care2.com

A married lesbian couple who went to court over the Iowa Department of Public Health’s refusal to put both their names on their child’s birth certificate were issued a new certificate this week as part of a court ruling in their favor. [Image: Heather and Melissa Gartner with child Mackenzie]

Canadian Gov’t Dissolves Thousands of Same-Sex Marriages

Surprise, You're Divorced!

By Kevin Farrell
Unicorn Booty

UPDATE 1/13/12: Canadian Gov’t: YES, We Dissolved Your Gay Marriage, But We’re Working on a Fix 

Thousands of LGBT couples across the world awoke this morning to learn that they are no longer married.

A Department of Justice lawyer under Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party of Canada government has nullified all same-sex marriages performed in Canada in which the couples’ native country does not permit gays and lesbians to marry.

Mitt, My Good Man

copyright © 2012 Betsy L. Angert. Empathy And Education; BeThink or BeThink.org

Dearest Mitt . . .

I am unsure if we have had the pleasure of an in-person exchange. I too travel in political circles. However, I do not recall. Perhaps we met in the past. I trust I have done business with you and your firm, Bain Capital. Bravo on your successes.

Please allow me to introduce myself by way of this letter. This morning, I caught a glimpse of your Today Show interview with Matt Lauer. I heard you speak of the exaggerated envy now heard on the campaign trail. Oh, my friend Mitt, how I relate. If I might; well stated my man. People do want what they do not have. First Bain, then the White House. Indeed, one Chief Executive position ensured that you were a world power. The other is but a natural transition. Instead of having a seat at the table of global influence, as President of the United States, you, old man, will own the table.

A Momentum of Cynicism

By Robert C. Koehler

“But no matter how futile, repulsive or dysfunctional war may be,” Barbara Ehrenreich wrote in her book Blood Rites, “it persists.”

A fascinating story in the New York Times just after Christmas showed this persistence unfolding before our very eyes.

The sale of arms to Iraq (remember Iraq?) — $11 billion worth of almost everything, fighter jets, battle tanks, cannons, armored personnel carriers, armor and helmets, even sport utility vehicles — is going to move forward even though it makes little sense from multiple points of view, including U.S. geopolitical interests. As far as I can tell, the sale is going to go through because “war persists” — or something persists, a force invisible to reporters and beyond the control of diplomats (at least those who speak on the record).

FDA sued over lack of Nanotech oversight, labels

By Rady Ananda
Activist Post

The first ever lawsuit concerning risks of nanotechnology was filed in federal court last month when several groups jointly sued the US Food and Drug Administration for its lack of response to a 2006 petition demanding that products with nanomaterials be labeled and their affects tested for safety. [Image]