Truthout
Afghanistan War: US Troops, Afghan Politician Targeted in Deadly Weekend
Seven US soldiers were killed Saturday and Sunday in Afghanistan, in a violent weekend that deepened concerns about security ahead of September elections. A senior Afghan official also raised fresh questions about US strategy in defeating the insurgency.
Over the weekend, a candidate for parliament was killed by insurgents and the bodies of five campaign workers for a female parliamentary candidate were found. About eight civilians also died.
Violence has risen as more US troops arrive in Afghanistan, bringing the number to about 100,000.
The Fate of New Orleans Hangs in an Uncomfortable Balance With Mother Nature
Hurricane Katrina demonstrated the havoc Mother Nature can play on a modern city.
It also brought to light the way our concerns about economics can compromise people's safety when we attempt to control nature.
Over one million people in the Gulf area were affected by "the storm," as residents call it, including just about everyone in New Orleans. Ninety percent of this 485,000-person city evacuated as 125,000 homes were severely damaged and 250,000 homes were summarily destroyed.
Reinventing Paradise 2.0 - A Video Essay on New Orleans
As America faces the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina - for those who lived through it, the scale and complexity of the disaster remain beyond words. Living it is one thing, understanding it is another. And reporting it, is yet another.
And as Spike Lee has discovered along with a myriad of other filmmakers, producers and writers - documenting the process of recovery is an ominous endeavor. There is no definitive story to tell. It is ongoing, dynamic, tragic and hopeful at the same time. But even more challenging is communicating to the rest of the nation the meaning and dynamics of recovery, and how our nation learns from the past and prepares for future disasters.
Despite "All Clear," Mississippi Sound Tests Positive for Oil
The State of Mississippi's Department of Marine Resources (DMR) opened all of its territorial waters to fishing on August 6. This was done in coordination with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the US Food and Drug Administration, despite concerns from commercial fishermen in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida about the presence of oil and toxic dispersants from the BP oil disaster.
Pachamama and Progress: Conflicting Visions for Latin America's Future
Miners in Potosí, Bolivia set off sticks of dynamite as cold winter winds zipped through the city, passing street barricades, protests, hunger strikers and an occupied electrical plant. These actions took place place from late July to mid-August against the perceived neglect of the Evo Morales administration toward the impoverished Potosí region.
Body Scanners in Courtroom, on Street, Continue to Raise Privacy Concerns
Despite previous assurances by federal agencies that images from body scanners were not saved or recorded, fears of indiscriminate scanner use rise as the US Marshal Service admits that it stored more than 35,000 body scan images collected from a security checkpoint.
First discovered by a Freedom of Information Act request sent to the agency by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), a civil liberties group, the stored images of body scans were taken from February 2010 through July 2010 at a Florida courthouse during the testing of the machines.
Hawks Box in Obama on Afghan War
Just back from Afghanistan, Marine Commandant, Gen. James Conway held a news conference to add his voice to the Pentagon campaign to disparage the July 2011 date President Barack Obama set for U.S. troops to begin leaving Afghanistan.
On Tuesday, Conway claimed that intelligence intercepts suggest that this deadline has strengthened the conviction of those resisting the U.S.-led occupation that it is just a matter of time before most foreign forces leave. Conway said:
"In some ways … it's probably giving our enemy sustenance. … We think he may be saying to himself … 'Hey, you know, we only have to hold out for so long.'"
Banks' Self-Dealing Super-Charged Financial Crisis
Over the last two years of the housing bubble, Wall Street bankers perpetrated one of the greatest episodes of self-dealing in financial history.
Faced with increasing difficulty in selling the mortgage-backed securities that had been among their most lucrative products, the banks hit on a solution that preserved their quarterly earnings and huge bonuses:
They created fake demand.
Our Weird and Wanton Wars
Many citizens in Britain are puzzled. Why do we always seem to be at war? How can this come about? What does it mean? At the same time, we seem to think of ourselves as a peaceful nation. In seeking answers, let us list a few notable characteristics of our current wars.
Michael N. Nagler | From Churchill to Petraeus
"I have not become her Majesty's first minister to preside over the dissolution of the British Empire." It was hard not to remember this proud declaration of Winston Churchill, as wrong headed as it was confident, when General Petraeus argued last Sunday that he had "not come to Afghanistan to preside over a graceful exit." Can we, unlike many, unfortunately, who will be persuaded by his reasons to delay withdrawing troops from Afghanistan until the "job" is done, draw some lessons from the instructive parallel?
Motive Behind Slaying of 72 Mexican Migrants Still Unclear
Mexico City - President Felipe Calderon on Friday accused the gunmen who killed 72 illegal migrants in northern Mexico this week of "incalculable savagery" as his government attempted to depict the major drug gang implicated in the slaughter as weakened and desperate.
The discovery of the grisly massacre Tuesday night at a ranch near San Fernando, about 45 miles southwest of Brownsville, Texas, put the spotlight on Los Zetas, a crime syndicate based along the Gulf Coast of Mexico that has international tentacles.
Speculation and the New Commodity Price Crisis: Separating the Wheat From the Chaff
Wheat prices had been climbing prior to the August 5 announcement of a Russian wheat export ban. Kansas Board of Trade wheat futures contracts had gone from $4.92 a bushel on June 10 to spike at $7.95 a bushel on August 5, prompting a reporter to ask, "How could a Russian drought in the age of instant information escape the world's notice until the country's wheat crop was devastated?" This excellent question does not yet have a clear answer.
No "Home Sweet Home"
Note from Greg Palast: Matt Pascarella and I encountered Patricia Thomas while she was breaking into a home at the Lafitte Housing Project in New Orleans. It was her own home. Nevertheless, if caught, she’d end up in the slammer. So would we. Matt was my producer for the film, Big Easy to Big Empty, and he encouraged my worst habits. I’d worked for the New Orleans Housing Authority years back and knew they wanted the poor black folk out of these pretty townhouses near the French Quarter. Katrina was an excuse for ethnic cleansing, American style. Matt and I skipped cuffs on this shoot, but were charged later by Homeland Security (see below). While I recorded the story of hidden evils on film, Matt gathered a story which no camera can capture.
Is the US Pulling the Plug on Iraqi Workers?
Early in the morning of July 21, police stormed the offices of the Iraqi Electrical Utility Workers Union in Basra, the poverty-stricken capital of Iraq's oil-rich south. A shamefaced officer told Hashmeya Muhsin, the first woman to head a national union in Iraq, that they'd come to carry out the orders of Electricity Minister Hussain al-Shahristani to shut the union down. As more police arrived, they took the membership records, the files documenting often-atrocious working conditions, the leaflets for demonstrations protesting Basra's agonizing power outages, the computers and the phones.
News in Brief: Bernanke Says Recovery on Track as GDP Falls, and More ...
Bernanke Says Recovery on Track as GDP Falls
Obama Resists Pressure for Red Line on Iran's Nuclear Capability
Washington - President Barack Obama's refusal in a White House briefing earlier this month to announce a "red line" in regard to the Iran nuclear programme represented another in a series of rebuffs of pressure from Defence Secretary Robert Gates for statement that the United States will not accept its existing stocks of low enriched uranium.
The Obama rebuff climaxed a months-long internal debate between Obama and Gates over the "breakout capability" issue which surfaced in the news media last April.
Gates has been arguing that Iran could turn its existing stock of low enriched uranium (LEU) into a capability to build a nuclear weapon secretly by using covert enrichment sites and undeclared sources of uranium.
Fighting Corporate Concentration in Agriculture
Today, the U.S. Departments of Justice and Agriculture convene their fourth public hearing on corporate concentration in U.S. agricultural markets. Farmers and ranchers are expected to crowd Fort Collins, Colorado to air their long-standing grievances about the disproportionate power of multinational meat packers. To contribute to this unprecedented public policy process, research assistant Sarah E. Trist and I surveyed the evidence of buyer power in U.S. hog markets, which have undergone rapid structural transformation in the last 25 years.
Rachel Maddow: Radio Fills Crucial Role in New Orleans at Critical Time (Video)
Rachel Maddow replays some of the calls to WWL (New Orleans) radio, following Hurricane Katrina and talks with Garland Robinette about how the station became a community service source during the national emergency.