100,000 could be dead in Burma, diplomat says

Aid agencies face battle to reach victims of the cyclone

Obama-Clinton Hilarious Math Update
It's reached a point that everyone has known for months it had to reach, the point at which even people paid to do so cannot keep it going with a straight face. On Tuesday, Senator Barack Obama picked up approximately 99 new pledged delegates from North Carolina and Indiana, while Senator Hillary Clinton picked up about 85. The final count may move a delegate or two, but these numbers are close enough for the following calculation.
Obama now has 1,592 pledged delegates to Clinton's 1,419. There are 217 delegates remaining to be pledged. Of those 217, Clinton would need to win 196 to beat Obama, or a victory of 90 percent to 10 percent. That's about as likely as Dick Cheney hitting 50 percent approval.

Amnesty Intl: Ethiopian troops commit atrocities in Somalia
In a new report, Amnesty International detailed chilling witness accounts of indiscriminate killings in the Horn of Africa country and called on the international community to stop the bloodshed.
Ethiopia's government said the report was unbalanced and "categorically wrong."
The London-based rights group said testimony it received suggested all parties to Somalia's conflict have committed war crimes. But it singled out Ethiopian troops, who are in the country to back Somalia's U.N.-sponsored government, for some of the worst violations.

Insurgents say US airstrike hit Somalia; US denies report

Large earthquake hits Japan

Obama's Clarifying Win: The Fly on the Wall Is the Wall

Why Media Fix on Wright and Ignore Hagee

As Executions Resume, So Do Questions of Fairness
The release of the third death row inmate in six months in North Carolina last week is raising fresh questions about whether states are supplying capital-murder defendants with adequate counsel, even as an execution on Tuesday night in Georgia ended a seven-month national suspension.
In all three cases, North Carolina appeals courts found that evidence that would have favored the defendants was withheld from defense lawyers by prosecutors or investigators. In two of the cases, including that of Levon Jones, who was released on Friday after 14 years on death row, the courts said the defendants' lawyers had failed to mount an adequate defense. Nationwide, Mr. Jones's release was the sixth in a year.

Junkie Nation

High Oil Prices for Obama and Clinton

Wright or Wrong: What's Going On?

Iron Man and the Merchants of Death
The phrase Merchants of Death takes center stage in the movie Iron Man, which is a spectacular expose of a subject that dominates the American economic landscape but about which Americans have very little knowledge. The phrase and the movie deal with the odd juxtaposition of capitalism and war as found in the weapons industry. Here we have innovations and efficiency of the type we associate with the private commercial sector but serving ends that are the very opposite of capitalism. The industry serves war, not peace, depends on coercion, not human volition, and profits from destruction, not creation.

Bush's Brain Speaks to Obama

A Monument to Stupidity

US Media Trivializes Campaign 2008

What Is It with Men and Torture?
Back in 2005 James Wolcott wrote of torture: "Women may take part -- though I imagine it's rare, and under duress -- but only men could devise the intricate and cruel tortures and torture devices that have been inflicted over the centuries."
This is one generalization about women that feminists let slide. Lynndie England of Abu Ghraib fame was a blip on torture's radar screen and women would like to keep it that way. But what infuses men with the urge to torture?

Oil jumps over $123 on drop in diesel, heating oil supplies

Poll results, Zimbabweans the winners

Presidential candidates set for a run off election

Self-determination is at root of conflict
With controversy in the western media about Zimbabwe, disputes about the outcome of March 29 voting for president, charges of against President Robert Mugabe and his Zanu PF party, and calls from opposition leaders for western intervention, Final Call interviewed Zimbabwean Ambassador to the United States, Machinvenyika Tobia Mapuranga to discuss the political situation in Zimbabwe and issues facing the country.

Zimbabwe: More Than Complicity of Silence
Today Zimbabwe has taken a high profile place in corporate media headlines. Are we getting the truth this time and can we rely on the same progressives who broke through misinformation around Iraq to do the same for us again?

Expressions of imperialism within Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe's Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Patrick Chinamasa on Friday denounced the US and Britain for their interference in Zimbabwe's elections. At the same time, he decried the Morgan Tsvangirai faction of the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC-T), and its civil society partner, the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN), as being part of a US and British program to reverse the gains of Zimbabwe's national liberation struggle.

Myanmar cyclone kills 10,000 people
The Myanmar government has said that the cyclone that struck the south-east Asian nation this weekend has killed 10,000 people.
The toll from Cyclone Nargis, which swept through Myanmar knocking out power and causing widespread flooding, might rise further as 4,000 people remain missing. Hundreds of thousands have been left homeless.

Oil passes $120, gas prices slip more than a cent

Why (?) The Wright Story Stuck...and will most likely continue to

The Dummies' Guide to Stupid Leaders and Misleading Numbers
In case you didn't know, the loss of 20,000 American jobs in April is actually good news. You see, economists had predicted 73,000 jobs would be lost last month, so thank God we dodged that bullet, right?!
In fact, the unemployment rate fell to 5.0% from 5.1% in March. Therefore, the unemployment rate is going down!! Surely, a .1% drop in the unemployment rate means America's determined locomotive is chugging toward the dawn of a new economic renaissance...right?

The Green Recession
Americans are feeling the pinch of stagflation. Going to the grocery store and to the gas station leaves consumers in a state of sticker-shock. Neighbors are losing their homes. Retailers, restaurants, and countless other businesses are closing their doors. Mass layoffs are being announced with alarming frequency. As inflation and joblessness spiral upward, the economy plunges to greater depths. Opinions abound as to why America’s economic ship is taking on water. Just as certainly as John McCain has personally witnessed global warming, I have ascertained the cause of America’s economic malaise. Indeed, in a moment of deep insight, I have discovered that our economy is sinking in direct proportion to the rise of the environmental movement. The greener Americans become, the further our economy falls.

How to live without money

The Pentagon vs. America
I recently heard from an anti-war student I met while I was speaking at a college in northern Vermont. The e-mail included the following query:
“I told you about how I wanted to build a career around social activism and making a difference. You told me that one of the most important things was to make myself reputable and give people a reason to listen to you. I think this is some of the best advice I’ve received. My issue however is that you mentioned joining the military as a way to do this and mentioned how that is how you fell into it. … We talked extensively about all of our criticisms of the military currently and our foreign policy. … What I don’t understand is, how can you [advise] someone who wants to make a difference with the flawed system, to join that flawed system?”

The Media, The Right and 1988: Endless Deja Vu

Bush Admits He Approved Torture

Rev. Wright, the CIA and the AIDS Thing

The Fed Sinks the Dollar
Against the recommendations of most economists and even the Financial Times of London, the Federal Reserve Board yesterday cut its discount rate by yet another quarter-point, to just 2%. Ostensibly, the intention is to try and spur economic “recovery” – as if a cut in the interest rates would do this. At first glance this seems to reflect the Fed’s ideology that manipulating the interest alone can expand or contract the economy – as if it is like a balloon, with its structure is pre-printed on it, to be inflated or deflated at will to control the level of activity.

US teenagers ruthlessly kill homeless just because they are not humans

Report: U.S. Not as 'Free' as Touted

Iraq Says No Hard Evidence of Iran Support For Militia

ocuments Confirm Psychologists Collaborated with “War on Terror” Torture Program

Iraq hospital 'damaged by US raid'

Carter accuses Rice of being untruthful over Hamas meeting

Uruknet Cut Off From Google News Again!

Gaza streets to be flooded with wastewater if fuel crisis continues

Is Big Brother Hacking Into The Internet?

Several believed dead in US air raids in Baghdad

The World must Step in
This morning, seven residents of the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun were killed in Israeli shelling. The tank shell directly hit a home in the Azbat Abed Rabbo quarter of the town, taking the lives of an entire family. Khadra Abu Muteq was killed along with her four children: one year old Musaab Abu Muteq, Hana’ Abu Muteq, 3, Saleh Abu Muteq 4, and Rudeineh Abu Muteq, 6. One teen, 17-year old Ayoub Atallah was also killed by the shelling and his friend Mutassem Sweilem injured as they were walking to school. Nine others were injured in the attack, several of them in serious condition.

Taliban Karzai Attack Propaganda Victory
The attack on a military parade in the capital was a propaganda victory for the Taliban, undermining confidence in the West-backed regime of Hamid Karzai's ability to protect itself let alone the Afghan people, analysts believe.
"It was clearly aimed at grabbing enormous amounts of attention; striking in the center of the capital," Joanna Nathan, a Kabul-based analyst for International Crisis Group, told Reuters on Monday, April 28.

Is There an Army Cover-Up of Rape and Murder of Women Soldiers?
The Department of Defense statistics are alarming - one in three women who join the US military will be sexually assaulted or raped by men in the military. The warnings to women should begin above the doors of the military recruiting stations, as that is where assaults on women in the military begin - before they are even recruited.

Jeremiah Wright Delivers the Knockout Punch
"And the United States of America government, when it came to treating her citizens of Indian descent fairly, she failed. She put them on reservations. When it came to treating her citizens of Japanese descent fairly, she failed. She put them in internment prison camps. When it came to treating citizens of African descent fairly, America failed. She put them in chains. The government put them on slave quarters, put them on auction blocks, put them in cotton fields, put them in inferior schools, put them in substandard housing, put them in scientific experiments, put them in the lowest paying jobs, put them outside the equal protection of the law, kept them out of their racist bastions of higher education and locked them into position of hopelessness and helplessness. The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law, and then wants us to sing God bless America? No, no, no. Not God bless America; God damn America!

How Safe Are Green Cleaning Products?

Bloated in Baghdad

A Massacre of the World's Poor
Food riots have broken out across the globe destabilizing large parts of the developing world. China is experiencing double-digit inflation. Indonesia, Vietnam and India have imposed controls over rice exports. Wheat, corn and soy beans are at record highs and threatening to go higher still. Commodities are up across the board. The World Food Program is warning of widespread famine if the West doesn't provide emergency humanitarian relief. The situation is dire. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez summed it up like this, "It is a massacre of the world's poor. The problem is not the production of food. It is the economic, social and political model of the world. The capitalist model is in crisis."

On "Withdrawing Responsibly" from Iraq

"Adelitas" Shut Down Mexico's Congress

Fifty Shots! That's Murder!

The Iraq War Morphs Into the Iran War

The Torture Election

War with Syria?

Barack Obama cuts bait with Jeremiah Wright

Many states appear to be in recession

Wheat prices down 40% from peak

Sweep of polygamists' kids raises legal questions

Skepticism toward Bush claims about Syria and North Korea

Barack, Hillary, Jeremiah and Howard
Maybe the best solution would be for Barack and Hillary to step aside and let Howard Zinn run for President! The Reverend Wright would no doubt be qualified, but as a man of God, he would probably not be interested in the demotion. But Howard Zinn has the knowledge, the understanding, the empathy and the character to stand up for the common man. If properly organized, this should give him the best potential for electability in a democracy."