Should Harry Reid’s corporate interests trump public grazing rights?

By Rady Ananda
COTO Report

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has a problem. All but one rancher has sold his grazing rights and gotten out of the cattle business on a certain piece of real estate in Nevada. Senator Reid wants that land for a multi-billion dollar solar farm and factory.

But since the economic incentive didn’t work for the Cliven Bundy family, Reid and the Bureau of Land Management sent in armed contract cowboys this month to rustle 300 cattle with helicopters and guns, killing some in the process.

The Bundy family has been grazing their cattle on public lands in Clark County for six generations. They rely on grazing rights established in 1877, which Harry Reid, via the federal government, wants to quash so that a Chinese energy company can develop the Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone.

Obamacare a Private Sector Rip-Off of Americans

By Paul Craig Roberts
Global Research

Obamacare works for the insurance companies, but not for the uninsured.

.The government of the “world’s only superpower,” the “exceptional,” the “indispensable” country, claims to know what is best for Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, Mali, Russia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil, China, indeed for the entire world. However, the “indispensable” country cannot even govern itself, much less the world over which the “superpower” desires hegemony. The government of the “world’s only superpower” has shut itself down.

Measuring Up As Men

By Volaar

“I call on men and boys everywhere to take a stand against the mistreatment of girls and women. It is by standing up for the rights of girls and women that we truly measure up as men.”  — Desmond Tutu, November, 2012

Not three months prior to Tutu’s statement, two teenage boys brutally assaulted, humiliated and traumatized a sixteen year old girl who was inebriated past the point of being able to take care of herself, let alone call for help from others.

To this very day, the victim’s family and the victim continue to receive death threats and threats of bodily harm from the victim’s teenage peers in the Ohio town of Steubenville, population under 19,000.

Gary Webb: An American Hero

By Volaar

Eight years ago, December 10, 2004, respected and award-winning investigative journalist Gary Webb was murdered by a conspiracy of an apathetic citizenry, corporate malfeasance and government corruption.  The Sacramento County coroner, Robert Lyons, publically, if hastily, characterized the gunshot wounds in Gary Webb’s head three times before finally ruling the double-gunshot wound to Webb’s face a “suicide,” noting the use of a .38 caliber revolver, the presence of a suicide note and Webb’s close friend and ex-wife, Sue Bell, claiming that Gary, “had been depressed about being unable to obtain employment from another major newspaper for some time.” The San Jose Mercury News, on orders from “on high,” had terminated Gary Webb’s career progression after they claimed they had discovered errors in trivial matters of fact in his career-capping exposé, “A Dark Alliance” (ADA).

The Obama-nation

By Volaar

The “Honorable Michael B. Mukasey?”  At this juncture I could express shock, disbelief and horror at such a thought after reading former FBI Special Agent Colleen Rowley’s article available via Information Clearinghouse and also at the Huffington Post.  But I won’t.

Rowley takes exception that such a relic from the Bush Administration could be called upon by any academic institution, let alone one involved in the training of professional attorneys, to speak on the subject of ethics and the implementation of unethical, often illegal, policies.

Fast, Furious and Outrageous

By Volaar

Wayne Madsen has learned from his contacts within the Beltway intelligence community that Jared Lee Loughner is an “MK-ULTRA” programmed assassin and that US District Judge John Roll and Congresswoman Gabriel Giffords were targetted for assassination.  The reason for the decision to target Judge Roll and Congresswoman Giffords has to do with their knowledge

Libya and the world we live in

NATO’s racist Al Qaeda forces target blacks in Tripoli

By William Blum
Anti-Empire Report

“Why are you attacking us? Why are you killing our children? Why are you destroying our infrastructure?” ~Television address by Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi, April 30, 2011

A few hours later NATO hit a target in Tripoli, killing Gaddafi’s 29-year-old son Saif al-Arab, three of Gaddafi’s grandchildren, all under twelve years of age, and several friends and neighbors.

In his TV address, Gaddafi had appealed to the NATO nations for a cease-fire and negotiations after six weeks of bombings and cruise missile attacks against his country.

Well, let’s see if we can derive some understanding of the complex Libyan turmoil.

Common Sense in a Coma

By Robert C. Koehler

“Then there is the issue of how the Afghans will be able to pay for their greatly enlarged police and military, which by some estimates will require $10 billion a year to sustain come 2014 — 10 times the Afghan government’s annual tax revenues.”

Of all the ironic absurdities and preposterous twists in the war on — I mean the war to promote — terror, this quote from the New York Times back in April, which I came upon as I was researching something called the Strategic Partnership Declaration between the United States and Afghanistan, felt the most like a mugging.

Corrupt Obama Admin Pressures NY Attorney General to Support Mortgage Whitewash

By Yves Smith
Naked Capitalism

It is high time to describe the Obama Administration by its proper name: corrupt.  The latest example is its heavy-handed campaign to convert New York state attorney general Eric Schneiderman to a card carrying member of the “be nice to our lords and masters the banksters” club.

[Image: Kathryn S. Wylde, New York Federal Reserve Board Member]

(Also see today’s TRNN interview of Yves Smith, “Should banks be a public utility?“)

Reform, Revolution or Radical Transformation?

By NoCureForThat.org

Return to Nazareth

By Volaar

“Such was the crucifixion of the Son of God. His faithlessness did this to him.”

A Course In Miracles, p. 421

Imagine a world where this might be true.

In the first place, being a country-born ideologue riding into the “Big City” on a white jackass to “learn them city boys some righteousness,” would always be contraindicated regardless of their obvious need for remediation. Mocking the power structure must always result in your untimely death at the hands of that power structure.

A Certain Pestilence

By Volaar

Today we celebrate our distress by pretending distress does not exist, that the now familiar pressure in our lives is actually that of earning a living for our families, no matter how outrageous, or even surreal, the pressure on our families becomes. Rather than the effects of nineteen Arab Muslims with box-cutters on the economies of the western world, perhaps a warp in space-time swallowing even the light with which we view our television sets is to blame. Forget that fascism has always been a pestilence since it became the reason we broke from Mother England over two hundred years ago, let us stare, instead, at the fascinating or morbid, strangeness staring back at us as we observe a cosmic black hole in some far-off galaxy.

WE’RE #1, WE’RE #1! Charting American Exceptionalism

By Joe Weisenthal
Business Insider

Is America the exceptional, #1 country in the world? Of course it is!

David Morris of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance has published the truth about American exceptionalism. It turns out, the US is #1 in all sorts of ways.

A Theism

By Volaar

Atheism:  (n) à-thē-i-zəm, godlessness (the doctrine or belief that there is no God). 

Get It Now?

Our religious friends will be gratified to know that this word is at the bottom 50% of word lookups in the online Merriam-Webster dictionary, while our atheist friends will be disturbed to recognize that the mechanics of human perception render their basic doctrine mute in cases where the god under review is omnipresent.

Joe Bageant Passes; Review of his last book on agrarian democracy

Joe Bageant, 1946-2011

After a vibrant life, Joe Bageant died on March 27 following a four-month struggle with cancer. He was 64. Joe is survived by his wife, Barbara, his three children, Timothy, Patrick and Elizabeth, and thousands of friends and admirers. He is also survived by his work and ideas. According to Joe’s wishes, he will be cremated. His family will hold a private memorial service.

Here’s his last post, on January 4, 2011, announcing his cancer.

Some Fight Back

A Review of Joe Bageant’s Rainbow Pie: A Redneck Memoir

By Michael Donnelly

This book is all about the post WWII shift from Maw and Pap’s agrarian democracy to the urban-dominated/techno/bureaucratic/ military/security/consumer Empire of today, showing how that shift and the resulting class stratification has led us to the brink of economic and ecological collapse, writes Donnelly.

Class War: Maine Governor seeks to erase labor history

Why Governor LePage Can’t Erase History

Why We Need a Fighter in the White House

By Robert Reich
TruthOut

Maine Governor Paul LePage has ordered state workers to remove from the state labor department a 36-foot mural depicting the state’s labor history. Among other things the mural illustrates the 1937 shoe mill strike in Auburn and Lewiston. It also features the iconic “Rosie the Riveter,” who in real life worked at the Bath Iron Works. One panel shows my predecessor at the U.S. Department of Labor, Frances Perkins, who was buried in Newcastle, Maine.

The LePage Administration is also renaming conference rooms that had carried the names of historic leaders of American labor, as well as former Secretary Perkins.

The Governor’s spokesman explains that the mural and the conference-room names were “not in keeping with the department’s pro-business goals.”

Are we still in America?

Story of Citizens United vs FEC (Video)

By Annie Leonard
Story of Stuff Project

Season Two launched on March 1st with The Story of Citizens United v. FEC, an exploration of the inordinate power that corporations exercise in our democracy.

Dark Mountain Project to issue second book

By Dougald Hine and Paul Kingsnorth
Dark Mountain Project

We are the initiators of the Dark Mountain Project. Last year, with your help, we raised $6,140 to cover the publishing costs of Dark Mountain: Issue 1, our first book-length collection of essays, stories, poetry, conversations and art for living through times of global disruption.

A year later, we are in the final stages of putting together Issue 2. Once again, it will be a hardback book of around 250 pages, with contributions from writers ranging from familiar names to those appearing in print for the first time.

Time to Topple Corporate Dictators: Americans Need to Show Up

By Ralph Nader
CounterPunch

The 18 day non-violent Egyptian protests for freedom raise the question: is America next? Were Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine around, they would likely say “what are we waiting for?” They would be appalled by the concentration of economic and political power in such a few hands. Remember how often these two men warned about concentrated power.

Our Declaration of Independence (1776) listed grievances against King George III. A good number of them could have been made against “King” George W. Bush who not only brushed aside Congressional War-making authority under the Constitution but plunged the nation through lies into extended illegal wars which he conducted in violation of international law. Even conservative legal scholars such as Republicans Bruce Fein and former Judge Andrew Napolitano believe he and Dick Cheney still should be prosecuted for war and other related crimes. The conservative American Bar Association sent George W. Bush three “white papers” in 2005-2006 that documented his distinct violations of the Constitution he had sworn to uphold.

Kick Out For Change In 2011

Happy New Year’s Eve, gentle readers.

Corporate fascism is on the march, racism against Arabs on the part of law enforcement is thick enough to cut with a knife, Republicans in the legislature can dare refuse funds for the treatment of Ground Zero  heroes, Democrats refuse to come to the aid of Dennis Kucinich, 90% of the casualties in our mid-east wars are civilians (up from 70% during all of Viet Nam) and our President is a pestilent windbag of tepid air.  Strikes by labor and university students are global and virtually unknown by our media and ignorance and brainwashed stupidity have run rampant.

If anyone is feeling powerless this evening, imagine my shock.