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John Simkin

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    "Big Picture" Schools

    in Non-Academic Discussions

    Posted

    Is there no one out there who can tell me about Big Picture Schools in the US?

    I don't know about the US but they don't seem to have made an impact in the UK. Cigdem Göle description is very interesting. However, it is not the sort of thing that could be fitted into the British system.

    Winter issue of HerStoria Magazine

    in History:Resources

    Posted

    Here are just some of the highlights to be found in the Winter issue of HerStoria.

    In March 1944 secret agent Yvonne Baseden parachuted into occupied France. We hear her story, mostly untold, as one of the Special Operations Executive.

    Who was the Queen who ruled at the same time as Boudica, and who managed to keep her people safe and prosperous during thirty years of Roman occupation? Find out in in our next issue…

    Discover moving women's poetry of the second world war.

    Join us for a women’s history walk around the fine medieval city of Norwich.

    And, with the pantomime season nearly upon us and ‘principal boys’ about to take to the stage, we discover the history of cross dressing actresses (oh yes we do!)

    History Today: January 2010

    in History:Resources

    Posted

    Drink: the British Disease?

    James Nicholls looks back over five centuries to examine the many, often unsuccessful, attempts to reform the nation’s drinking habits.

    Murder on the Métro

    A Finley-Croswhite & G K Brunelle tell the story of Laetitia Toureaux, a young woman swept up in the passions of 1930s Paris.

    Gun, Gales and God

    Ian Friel argues that popular ideas of the nature of Elizabethan seapower are distorted by concentration on big names and major events.

    Aids to Independence

    Kenneth Baker, explores the American War of Independence through caricature and print.

    New World Overtures

    How did opera, an art form of the British elite, become so successful in the USA? Daniel Snowman explains.

    Herodotus: Father of History

    Herodotus's story is part tragic drama, part folk-tale and part travel-book, but is informed throughout by the desire to verify and by rational curiosity, by Russell Meiggs

    Lost Pioneers of Science

    Medieval scholars were the first to make the connection between maths and science.So why have they been forgotten, asks James Hannam.

    No Offence, Your Majesty

    Sedition could cost you your life in Tudor England, but by the 18th century the monarch was fair game, writes David Cressy.

    A World Without End

    Jonathan Clark considers what effect the intellectual currents of our own time have had on the way historians write.

    http://www.historytoday.com/MainArticle.as...p;amid=30259892

    post-7-1262678324_thumb.jpg

    Past and Present

    in Philosophy of History

    Posted

    In 1952 a group of historians founded the journal, Past and Present. Over the next few years the journal pioneered the study of working-class history. John Saville later wrote: "The Historian's Group had a considerable long-term influence upon most of its members. It was an interesting moment in time, this coming together of such a lively assembly of young intellectuals, and their influence upon the analysis of certain periods and subjects of British history was to be far-reaching." Members of this group included:

    E. P. Thompson

    http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/HIStompson.htm

    Eric Hobsbawm

    http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/HIShobsbawm.htm

    Raphael Samuel

    http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/HISsamuelR.htm

    John Saville

    http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/HISsaville.htm

    Christopher Hill

    http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/HIShillC.htm

    Rodney Hilton

    http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/HIShilton.htm

    Mitch Werbell

    in JFK Assassination Debate

    Posted

    I post the following purely as a curiosity.

    The link below is the first part of a most interesting series concerning Mitch WerBell. The other links can be found on this page.

    The whole thing is a bit cheesy but there is some interesting tid bits including the piece of equipment shown at the 5 minute mark. Over the years, I have had several conversations with many of the anti-Castro guys of the early 1960's and they said that a version of this type of weapon was around at the time. More information regarding this to follow.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrtrmeITQNk

    Cheers,

    James

    I have added the video to my page on WerBell:

    http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKwerbell.htm

    Top Censored Stories

    in Political Conspiracies

    Posted

    http://www.WantToKnow.info/mass_media/media_censorship_09

    Project Censored specializes in covering the top stories which were subjected to censorship either by being ignored or downplayed by the mainstream media each year. Project Censored is a research team composed of more than 200 university faculty, students, and community experts who annually review up to 1,000 news story submissions for content, reliability of sources, and national significance. The top 25 stories selected are submitted to a distinguished panel of judges who rank them in order of importance. The results are published each year in an excellent book available for purchase at their website, amazon.com, and major book stores.

    A summary of the top 25 media censorship stories of 2009 provided below proves quite revealing and most informative. After the headline of each news story is a link for those who want to read the entire article. For whatever reason the major media won't report these major stories. Yet thanks to the Internet and wonderful, committed groups like Project Censored, the news is getting out to those who want to know. By revealing these examples of media censorship, we can stop the excessive secrecy and work together for a brighter future. And don't miss the section on little-known inspiring stories, too. Please help to spread the word, and take care.

    With best wishes,

    Fred Burks for PEERS and the WantToKnow.info Team

    Former language interpreter for Presidents Bush and Clinton

    Top 25 Stories of 2009 Subjected to Media Censorship

    1. US Congress Sells Out to Wall Street (For full story, click here)

    Americans get the best democracy money can buy, money coming more than ever today from Wall Street. Since 2001, eight of the most troubled financial firms have donated $64.2 million to congressional candidates, presidential candidates and the Republican and Democratic parties. Is it surprising how much they control them? Influential House and Senate finance and banking committee members got $5.2 million from bailout recipients like Goldman Sachs, Citibank, AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and others. In the last election cycle, Obama received at least $4.3 million from the same institutions. From 1998 - 2007, financial and banking companies spent $1.7 billion on federal campaign contributions and another $3.4 billion on lobbyists. In 1999, the Glass-Steagall Act was gutted – the landmark 1933 law that prevented banks from getting into the insurance business. In January 2000, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act legitimized swap agreements and other hybrid instruments, at the core of today's problems, by preventing regulatory oversight of derivatives and leveraging, thus letting Wall Street legally pillage and speculate. The result was a financial coup d'etat cementing the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders who choose candidates, control elections, weaken financial regulations, and basically run the country for their own self-interest. As a result, Washington today has become largely a subsidiary of the Wall Street financial giants.

    Sources: Truthout/McClatchy, Oct. 2, 2008, “Lax Oversight? Maybe $64 Million to DC Pols Explains It,” by Greg Gordon. Rolling Stone, Mar. 19, 2009, “The Big Takeover,” by Matt Taibbi. OpenSecrets.org, Feb. 10, 2009, “Congressmen Hear from TARP Recipients Who Funded Their Campaigns,” by Lindsay Renick Mayer.

    2. US Schools Are More Segregated Today than in the 1950s (For full story, click here)

    According to a UCLA Civil Rights report, "schools in the US are 44 percent non-white, and ... Latinos and blacks, the two largest minority groups, attend schools more segregated today than during the civil rights movement forty years ago." The result is: unequal education which denies disadvantaged youths access to college and better jobs; growing numbers of these youths becoming "virtually unemployable" for anything more than menial labor or the military; greater vulnerability to future poverty, poor health, gangs, crime, and prolonged incarceration in America's vast prison/industrial complex. The report stresses the need for "leaders who recognize that we have a common destiny in an America where our children grow up together, knowing and respecting each other, and are all given the educational tools that prepare them for success in our society." The UCLA Civil Rights Study shows that most severe segregation in public schools is in the Western states, including California – not in the South, as many people believe. Eighty-five percent of the nation’s teachers are white, and little progress is being made toward diversifying the nation’s teaching force.

    Source : The Civil Rights Project, UCLA, January 2009, “Reviving the Goal of an Integrated Society: A 21st Century Challenge,” by Gary Orfield.

    3. Toxic Waste Behind Somali Pirates (For full story, click here)

    The international community has come out in force to condemn and declare war on the Somali fishermen pirates, while discreetly protecting the illegal, unreported and unregulated fleets from around the world that have been poaching and dumping toxic waste in Somali waters since the fall of the Somali government eighteen years ago. Foreign interests have been using hundreds of vessels to loot the country's food supply, according to the High Seas Task Force (HSTF), stealing "an estimated $450 million in seafood from Somali waters annually" and ruining the livelihoods of Somali fishermen. Somalia has also been used as a dumping ground for hazardous waste starting in the early 1990s, and continuing through the civil war there. Instead of rectifying the problem, the UN passed "aggressive resolutions that entitle and encourage transgressors to wage war on Somali pirates." NATO, the EU, and other countries issued similar orders. Some say that the acts of piracy may actually be born of desperation. What is one man’s pirate may be another man’s Coast Guard.

    Sources: UK's Independent, January 5, 2009, “You are being lied to about pirates,” by Johann Hari. Al Jazeera English, October 11, 2008, “Toxic waste behind Somali piracy,” by Najad Abdullahi. WardheerNews, January 8, 2009, “The Two Piracies in Somalia: Why the World Ignores the Other,” by Mohamed Abshir Waldo.

    4. Nuclear Waste Pools in North Carolina (For full story, click here)

    North Carolina's Shearon Harris nuclear plant contains the largest radioactive waste storage pools in the country. If the cooling system malfunctions, the resulting fire would be virtually unquenchable and could trigger a nuclear meltdown. Between 1999 and 2003, there were twelve major problems requiring the shutdown of the plant. In 2002, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) put the plant on notice for nine unresolved safety issues detected. When the NRC returned to the plant a few months later, it determined that the corrective actions were “not acceptable.” Between January and July of 2002, Harris plant managers were forced to manually shut down the reactors four times. Problems at Shearon Harris continue with chilling regularity. Yet the NRC ignores the potential risks. A recent study by Brookhaven Labs estimates that a pool fire could cause 140,000 cancers, contaminate thousands of square miles of land, and cause over $500 billion in off-site property damage. The plant is a nuclear time bomb, and millions in the region are at risk.

    Source: CounterPunch, August 9, 2008, “Pools of Fire,” by Jeffrey St. Clair.

    5. Europe Blocks US Toxic Products (For full story, click here)

    Unlike in America, European countries are moving toward a model of insisting on environmental and consumer safety that requires assessing thousands of chemicals for their potential toxic effects. New regulations will mandate that companies seeking market access eliminate toxic substances and produce safer electronics, automobiles, toys and cosmetics. Without compliance henceforth, the products of hundreds of US companies may be excluded from European markets, and according to Mark Schapiro, author of Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products, "only five percent of all chemicals in the US have undergone even minimal testing." Further, new EPA requirements consider the "costs to industry" in assessing threats to public health as a reason to side with industry and keep regulations minimal. The divergence between US and European regulation has made America the dumping ground for toxic toys, electronics and cosmetics. The US produces and consumes the toxic materials from which other countries around the world are protected.

    Sources: Scientific American, Sep. 30, 2008, “European Chemical Clampdown Reaches Across Atlantic,” by David Biello. Environmental Defense Fund, Sep. 30, 2008, “How Europe’s New Chemical Rules Affect US.”

    6. Lobbyists Buy Congress (For full story, click here)

    In 2008, The Center for Responsive Politics reported that "special interests paid Washington lobbyists $3.2 billion in 2008," higher than any year on record and 13.7% more than 2007. That amounts to $17.4 million for each day Congress was in session, or $32,523 per legislator per day. Health interests spent the most for the third consecutive year, $478.5 million, followed by the FIRE sector (finance, insurance and real estate) at $453.5 million. It's a small investment yielding big returns for these and other industries, competing at the public trough for as much as they can get. The payoff is in the billions for some corporations, and for Wall Street trillions have been pledged, as well as interest free money from the banker-owned Federal Reserve.

    Source: OpenSecrets.org, “Washington Lobbying Grew to $3.2 Billion Last Year, Despite Economy,” by Center for Responsive Politics.

    7. Obama's Military Appointments Have Corrupted Pasts (For full story, click here)

    After promising not to politicize intelligence and to keep lobbyists out of top government posts, Obama appointed many former lobbyists and board members of companies doing business directly with the Pentagon. He retained Robert Gates as Defense Secretary despite his history at CIA of having cooked the books for political reasons. According to Agency insiders who knew him, he "corrupted the intelligence product" to suit the White House and further his own self-interest. When Bush nominated him for CIA Director in 1991, a virtual insurrection among CIA analysts erupted over his penchant for having politicized intelligence. Independent counsel Lawrence Walsh states that, despite Gates' touted memory, he "denied recollection of facts thirty-three times." Obama's Deputy Defense Secretary, William Lynn, is just as tainted. The former Raytheon vice president and company lobbyist caused Republican Senator Charles Grassley to object to his "very questionable accounting practices" as Pentagon comptroller during the Clinton years. He and Obama's Undersecretary of Defense, Robert Hale, who served as Assistant Air Force Secretary Financial Comptroller under Clinton, are claimed to have lost enough taxpayer money to pay for Obama's stimulus plan four times over. They now again oversee DOD spending. The list goes on. Most of Obama's national security team is composed of recycled appointees committed to continued imperial wars and outlandish amounts of military spending for them.

    Sources: The Hill, November 24, 2008, “Ties to Chevron, Boeing Raise Concern on Possible NSA Pick,” by Roxana Tiron. Truthout.org/Consortium News, November 13, 2008, “The Danger of Keeping Robert Gates,” by Robert Parry. Global Research, February 13, 2009, “Obama’s Defense Department Appointees - The 3.4 Trillion Dollar Question,” by Andrew Hughes.

    8. Bailed Out Banks Cheat IRS Out of Billions (For full story, click here)

    It's an old story. "Only the little people pay taxes," according to former tax cheat Leona Hemsley (1920 - 2007), and rarely does anyone like her get caught. In 2008, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that 83 of the top publicly held US companies have operations in tax havens like the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, and the Virgin Islands. 14 of these companies, including AIG, Bank of America, and Citigroup, received money from the government bailout. In addition, Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) helped wealthy clients cheat the IRS out of over $20 billion in recent years, according to the Department of Justice. Other notorious tax havens include Austria, Luxembourg, Singapore, Hong Kong, Monaco, Gibraltar, and the Bahamas. In 2008, havens like these saved Goldman Sachs billions of dollars through "changes in (its) geographic earnings mix." For many other companies, it's much the same through legal provisions in the tax code. According to some estimates, trillions of dollars in both corporate profits and personal wealth have migrated offshore, and the offshore banking world now harbors $11.5 trillion in individual wealth alone.

    Sources: Bloomberg, December 16, 2008, “Goldman Sachs’s Tax Rate Drops to 1% or $14 Million,” by Christine Harper. The Huffington Post, February 23, 2009, “Gimme Shelter: Tax Evasion and the Obama Administration,” by Thomas B. Edsall.

    9. US Arms Used for War Crimes in Gaza (For full story, click here)

    For decades, America has supplied Israel, population 7.5 million, with tens of billions in aid, interest-free loans, and the latest in new weapons and technology, including illegal white phosphorous shells used against Gazan civilians during Operation Cast Lead. In addition, Washington has supplied F-16 fighters, attack helicopters, tactical missiles, bunker-buster bombs, a wide variety of other munitions, and undisclosed new weapons for testing in real time combat situations against Palestinian or other Arab civilians. In Gaza, shell fragments revealed names of US defense contractors, including Raytheon. Another was marked the Pine Bluff Arsenal in Arkansas. In shocking support for Israel's questionable attacks, and in violation of international and US law, both Houses of Congress overwhelmingly endorsed the continued aggression. Obama stayed silent on the subject in the run-up to his January 20 inauguration.

    Sources: Human Rights Watch, Mar. 25, 2009, “White Phosphorus Use Evidence of War Crimes Report,” Fred Abrahams. Guardian, Feb. 23, 2009, “Suspend Military Aid to Israel, Amnesty Urges Obama,” Rory McCarthy. Inter Press Service, Jan. 8, 2009, “US Weaponry Facilitates Killings in Gaza,” Thalif Deen. Consortium News, Jan. 18, 2009, “Is Israel’s Gaza War a New War Crime?” by Dennis Bernstein. Foreign Policy Journal, Jan. 09, 2009, “US Senate Endorses Israel’s War on Gaza,” by Jeremy R. Hammond.

    10. Ecuador Declares Foreign Debt Illegitimate (Full story here)

    In November 2008, Ecuador became the first country to undertake an examination of the legitimacy and structure of its foreign debt. In violation of Ecuadorian law, predatory international lenders were involved in hundreds of illegitimate irregularities. Billions in foreign debt at exorbitant interest rates resulted in debt service far exceeding the principal borrowed, and at a staggering human cost. In December, President Rafael Correa announced his country would default. In April 2009, he was re-elected overwhelmingly. Ecuador exposed the corrupted international finance system in a way that could set a precedent for the poorest of indebted countries. Correa asked other Latin American nations "to forge a united response, (and for) the United Nations to help develop international norms to regulate the foreign debt market." The April 2008 House passed Jubilee Act was a positive step forward. However, the Senate failed to pass its S. 2166 version, then cleared the legislation from its books. In June 2009, Ecuador agreed with 91% of its creditors to pay 35 cents on the dollar for its debt. Other countries may now follow suit, especially those most impacted by the global economic crisis.

    Sources: Alternet, Nov. 26, 2008, “Ecuador Declares Foreign Debt Illegitimate and Illegal,” by Daniel Denvir. Utube, Fall 2008, “Invalid Loans to Ecuador: Who Owes Who,” by Committee for the Integral Audit of Public Credit. Institute for Policy Studies, Dec. 15, 2008, “Ecuador’s Debt Default,” by Neil Watkins, Sarah Anders.

    Other Media Censorship Stories in the Top 25

    11. Private Corporations Profit from the Occupation of Palestine (For full story, click here)

    US, Israeli, and other international corporations profit from the occupation of Palestine. They lead real estate deals, develop Israeli settlements and infrastructure, and help solidify the continued land theft, economic exploitation, and apartheid separation of Muslims and Jews, in violation of international law.

    12. Mysterious Death of Mike Connell - Karl Rove's Election Thief (For full story, click here)

    As Karl Rove's chief IT consultant, Connell was a key figure in 2004 election manipulations for George Bush. Under subpoena to testify on his role in Ohio, he died mysteriously in a Dec. 19, 2008 plane crash. IT expert Stephen Spoonamore, a conservative Republican, explained how Connell's vote tabulation system worked. "It allowed (for) the introduction of an additional single computer between computer A and computer B." The centralized collection of all incoming statewide results made it easy for a single operator, or a preprogrammed computer to change the results in any way desired by the team controlling the inserted computer.

    13. Katrina's Hidden Race War (For full story, click here)

    After Hurricane Katrina, a Nation magazine report explained that "white vigilante groups patrolled the streets of New Orleans ... shooting at least eleven African American men." Falsely portrayed as looters and thugs, they were gunned down in cold blood by "gun-toting white males," yet city police didn't intervene or investigate. In addition, Blackwater mercenaries were deployed in New Orleans right after the storm. In full battle gear, they terrorized black residents, removed them from choice areas for development, and assured they didn't return.

    14. Congress Invested in Defense Contracts (For full story, click here)

    According to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, over 151 congressional members have invested up to $195 million in major defense contractors, thus profiting from America's imperial wars. Major investors include: Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ) - $49.1 million; Senator John Kerry (D-MA) - $38.2 million; Rep. Robin Hayes (R-NC) - $37.1 million; Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) - $8.4 million; Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) - $7.6 million; Rep. Jane Harmon (D-CA) - $6.3 million; and Rep. Tom Petri (R-WI) - $5.8 million.

    15. World Bank's Carbon Trade Fiasco (For full story, click here)

    On the pretext of environmental protection, the World Bank is brokering carbon emission trading arrangements that destroy indigenous farmlands around the world and do little to cut pollution or reduce the threat of climate change. The scheme is similar to Obama's cap and trade bill (HR 2454: American Clean Energy and Security Act) that lets corporate polluters reap huge windfall profits by charging consumers more for energy and fuel.

    16. US Repression of Haiti Continues (For full story, click here)

    The US government plans to demolish the homes of hundreds of Haitians to expand an occupying UN force’s military base. The New York Times has also published a revealing article titled "Rights Groups Assail US for Withholding Aid to Haiti, Citing Political Motives." The Bush administration may have caused the deaths of thousands of Haitians by blocking aid for cynical and self-interested political purposes.

    17. The ICC Facilitates US Covert War in Sudan (For full story, click here)

    Huge potential oil reserves explain the significance of Darfur. Washington's genocide claim is exaggerated for political purposes. It's part of America's chess game with China for control of the region's resources. Beijing already gets up to 30% of its oil from Africa. Under cover from International Criminal Court's fraudulent indictment of Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir for war crimes and other contrived reasons, America has exploited the region militarily for geopolitical advantage.

    18. Ecuador's Constitutional Rights of Nature (For full story, click here)

    In September 2008, Ecuador became the first country ever to declare constitutional rights to nature, thus codifying a new system of environmental protection. Its Constitution declares nature "has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution." Ecuador's Rights of Nature hold hope that other nations may adopt them and start to more fully protect the environment.

    19. Bank Bailout Recipients Spent to Defeat Labor (For full story, click here)

    After receiving $25 billion in federal bailout funds, Bank of America organized opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) - legislation to guarantee workers the right to bargain more fairly and collectively with management. Business is firmly opposed. On March 10, S. 560: Employee Free Choice Act of 2009 was introduced in the Senate. It was referred to the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee where it's pending. Given the Obama administration's opposition, its passage looks doubtful.

    20. Secret Control of the Presidential Debates (For full story, click here)

    Since 1987, the Republican and Democrat-controlled Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) has run the process, dictates terms, and excludes unwanted participants. During the 2008 presidential cycle, the Obama and McCain teams secretly cut a deal on who could participate, permissible topics, and the debate format structure. Before he died, Walter Cronkite called the CPD an "unconscionable fraud."

    21. Recession Causes States to Cut Welfare (For full story, click here)

    Faced with huge budget shortfalls and little help from Washington, states have been forced to make major expenditure cuts, many affecting vital social services, including health care, education, and welfare. Yet cutting Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) began prior to the present crisis so funds could be redirected to other priorities. Nationally, welfare rolls dropped over 40% between 2001 and June 2008, and in some states, like Georgia, up to 90%. America's social safety net is fast disappearing.

    22. Obama's Trilateral Commission Team (For full story, click here)

    Obama appointed 11 members of the Trilateral Commission (TC) to top positions in his administration in his first ten days in office. He was groomed for the presidency by key TC members. Zbigniew Brzezinski, co-founder of the TC with David Rockefeller in 1973, has been Obama’s principal foreign policy advisor. Since the Carter administration, Trilateralists have held the following very influential positions: six of the last eight World Bank presidents; all presidents and vice-presidents of the US (except Obama and Biden); over half of all US secretaries of state; and three quarters of the secretaries of defense. The original stated purpose of the TC was to create a "new international economic order." For more on powerful secret societies, click here.

    23. Activists Slam World Water Forum as a Corporate-Driven Fraud (For full story, click here)

    Organized every three years since 1997, activists have blasted the World Water Forum as a corporate trade show promoting privatization of water. The Forum's main organizer, the World Water Council (WWC), is dominated by two of the world's largest water companies, Suez and Veolia. WWC promotes expensive and destructive dam and water diversion projects, as well as putting water services in private hands through the establishment of Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs). The result has been huge price hikes, water pollution, depletion, and cut-offs that deny people the right to water if they can't pay the exorbitant cost.

    24. Dollar Glut Finances US Military Expansion (For full story, click here)

    Economist Michael Hudson first addressed this topic in his 1972 book, "Super Imperialism," updated in a 2003 edition. He revisited it in an award-winning article which explained the inter-related dynamics of: surplus US dollars pouring into the rest of the world for financial speculation and corporate takeovers; global central banks recycling these dollar inflows into US Treasury bonds to finance the federal budget deficit; and most important (but suppressed in the US media), the military character of the US payments deficit.

    25. Fast Track Oil Exploitation in Western Amazon (For full story, click here)

    Home to the world's most biodiverse and intact rainforest, the Western Amazon may soon be covered with oil rigs and pipelines. Vast parts of of this region will be opened for oil and gas exploration, putting some of the planet's most pristine and biodiverse forests at risk.

    Stories of Inspiration and Hope

    Project Censored also presents inspiring stories that didn't receive the coverage they deserved. Below are key examples from the year 2009.

    Evidence that the human brain is hardwired to reward caring, cooperation, and service.

    Community banks functioning as an alternative to Wall Street giants.

    The Common Good Bank model distributing profits back to the community and making all lending and spending decisions through participatory democracy.

    Canada's Stephen Harper led government apologizing for the treatment of native peoples.

    Senator Daniel Akaka (D-HI) introducing a bill to strengthen federal whistleblower protections.

    New York grassroots organizers and volunteers using the state's fusion voting laws to win over citizens for higher wages, fair taxes, affordable housing, civil rights, and campaign finance reform.

    Pro-Israeli groups like Americans for Peace Now (APN) and J Street calling for an immediate cease fire in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead last December and January.

    A federal appeals court telling the EPA that its pollutants standards are "contrary to law and unsupported by adequately reasoned decision making."

    Urban farms becoming an important resource for providing cheap, local amounts of food for growing numbers of people.

    The US Conference of Mayors voting to encourage municipal water use over high-cost corporate sources.

    Congress approving a massive public lands bill to protect two million acres of wilderness in nine states and 1,000 miles of rivers.

    Ireland and the province of British Columbia, Canada banning uranium mining.

    Brazil pledging to reduce deforestation by 70% over the next decade.

    The Pathway to Housing program calling for a "housing first" approach to address chronic homelessness.

    A Latin American commission challenging the efficacy of the war on drugs and calling for a new paradigm.

    America becoming the world's largest wind-energy producer.

    Portugal building the world's largest solar photovoltaic farm to supply enough electricity for 30,000 homes.

    Rising investment levels being made in renewable energy.

    Note: Thanks to Stephen Lendman at www.globalresearch.ca for his work in compiling parts of this summary.

    Important: Top 20 Articles Ever Published Revealing Media Censorship

    For concise summaries of the top 20 most revealing articles ever published in the major media with links to the full articles on their major media websites, see www.WantToKnow.info/newsarticles. For some of the top stories ever which the press failed to cover, click here. And for an empowering website which specializes in providing fact-filled news articles and concise summaries of major cover-ups which impact our lives and world, see www.WantToKnow.info. All information is provided to inspire us to work together for a brighter future for us all.

    Are Presidents Afraid of the CIA?

    in Political Conspiracies

    Posted

    Are Presidents Afraid of the CIA?

    By Ray McGovern

    December 29, 2009

    Not Just Paranoia

    In that fear, President Obama stands in the tradition of a dozen American presidents. Harry Truman and John Kennedy were the only ones to take on the CIA directly.

    Worst of all, evidence continues to build that the CIA was responsible, at least in part, for the assassination of President Kennedy. Evidence new to me came in response to things I included in my article of Dec. 22, “Break the CIA in Two."

    What follows can be considered a sequel that is based on the kind of documentary evidence after which intelligence analysts positively lust.

    Unfortunately for the CIA operatives who were involved in the past activities outlined below, the temptation to ask Panetta to put a SECRET stamp on the documentary evidence will not work. Nothing short of blowing up the Truman Library might help some.

    But even that would be a largely feckless “covert action,” copy machines having long since done their thing.

    In my article of Dec. 22, I referred to Harry Truman’s op-ed of exactly 46 years before, titled “Limit CIA Role to Intelligence,” in which the former President expressed dismay at what the Central Intelligence Agency had become just 16 years after he and Congress created it.

    The Washington Post published the op-ed on Dec. 22, 1963, in its early edition, but immediately excised it from later editions. Other media ignored it. The long hand of the CIA?

    Truman wrote that he was “disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment” to keep the President promptly and fully informed and had become “an operational and at times policy-making arm of the government.”

    The Truman Papers

    Documents in the Truman Library show that nine days after Kennedy was assassinated, Truman sketched out in handwritten notes what he wanted to say in the op-ed. He noted, among other things, that the CIA had worked as he intended only “when I had control.”

    In Truman’s view, misuse of the CIA began in February 1953, when his successor, Dwight Eisenhower, named Allen Dulles CIA Director. Dulles’s forte was overthrowing governments (in current parlance, “regime change”), and he was quite good at it.

    With coups in Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954) under his belt, Dulles was riding high in the late Fifties and moved Cuba to the top of his to-do list.

    Accustomed to the carte blanche given him by Eisenhower, Dulles was offended when young President Kennedy came on the scene and had the temerity to ask questions about the Bay of Pigs adventure, which had been set in motion under Eisenhower.

    When Kennedy made it clear he would NOT approve the use of U.S. combat forces, Dulles reacted with disdain and set out to mousetrap the new President.

    Coffee-stained notes handwritten by Allen Dulles were discovered after his death and reported by historian Lucien S. Vandenbroucke. They show how Dulles drew Kennedy into a plan that was virtually certain to require the use of U.S. combat forces.

    In his notes Dulles explained that, “when the chips were down,” the new President would be forced by “the realities of the situation” to give whatever military support was necessary “rather than permit the enterprise to fail.”

    Additional detail came from a March 2001 conference on the Bay of Pigs, which included CIA operatives, retired military commanders, scholars and journalists. Daniel Schorr told National Public Radio that he had gained one new perception as a result of the “many hours of talk and heaps of declassified secret documents”:

    “It was that the CIA overlords of the invasion, Director Allen Dulles and Deputy Richard Bissell, had their own plan on how to bring the United States into the conflict.… What they expected was that the invaders would establish a beachhead … and appeal for aid from the United States. …

    “The assumption was that President Kennedy, who had emphatically banned direct American involvement, would be forced by public opinion to come to the aid of the returning patriots. American forces, probably Marines, would come in to expand the beachhead.

    “In fact, President Kennedy was the target of a CIA covert operation that collapsed when the invasion collapsed.”

    The “enterprise” which Dulles said could not fail was, of course, the overthrow of Fidel Castro. After mounting several failed operations to assassinate him, this time Dulles meant to get his man, with little or no attention to what the Russians might do in reaction.

    Kennedy stuck to his guns, so to speak; fired Dulles and his co-conspirators a few months after the abortive invasion in April 1961; and told a friend that he wanted to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds.”

    The outrage was mutual, and when Kennedy himself was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963, it must have occurred to Truman that the disgraced Dulles and his outraged associates might not be above conspiring to get rid of a President they felt was soft on Communism — and, incidentally, get even.

    In his op-ed of Dec. 22, 1963, Truman warned: “The most important thing … was to guard against the chance of intelligence being used to influence or to lead the President into unwise decisions.” It is a safe bet that Truman had the Bay of Pigs fiasco uppermost in mind.

    Truman called for CIA’s operational duties [to] be terminated or properly used elsewhere.” (This is as good a recommendation now as it was then, in my view.)

    On Dec. 27, 1963, retired Admiral Sidney Souers, whom Truman had appointed to lead his first central intelligence group, sent a “Dear Boss” letter applauding Truman’s outspokenness and blaming Dulles for making the CIA “a different animal than I tried to set up for you.”

    Souers specifically lambasted the attempt “to conduct a ‘war’ invading Cuba with a handful of men and without air cover.”

    Souers also lamented the fact that the agency’s “principal effort” had evolved into causing “revolutions in smaller countries around the globe,” and added:

    “With so much emphasis on operations, it would not surprise me to find that the matter of collecting and processing intelligence has suffered some.”

    Clearly, CIA’s operational tail was wagging its substantive dog — a serious problem that persists to this day.

    Fox Guarding Hen House

    The well-connected Dulles got himself appointed to the Warren Commission and took the lead in shaping the investigation of JFK’s assassination.

    Documents in the Truman Library show that he then mounted a small domestic covert action of his own to neutralize any future airing of Truman’s and Souers’s warnings about covert action.

    So important was this to Dulles that he invented a pretext to get himself invited to visit Truman in Independence, Missouri. On the afternoon of April 17, 1964, Dulles spent a half-hour trying to get the former President to retract what he had said in his op-ed. No dice, said Truman.

    No problem, thought Dulles. Four days later, in a formal memo for his old buddy Lawrence Houston, CIA General Counsel from 1947 to 1973, Dulles fabricated a private retraction, claiming that Truman told him the Washington Post article was “all wrong,” and that Truman “seemed quite astounded at it.”

    No doubt Dulles thought it might be handy to have such a memo in CIA files, just in case.

    A fabricated retraction? It certainly seems so, because Truman did not change his tune. Far from it.

    In a June 10, 1964, letter to the managing editor of Look magazine, for example, Truman restated his critique of covert action, emphasizing that he never intended the CIA to get involved in “strange activities.”

    Dulles and Dallas

    Dulles could hardly have expected to get Truman to recant publicly. So why was it so important for Dulles to place in CIA files a fabricated retraction? My guess is that in early 1964 he was feeling a good bit of heat from those suggesting the CIA might have been involved somehow in the Kennedy assassination.

    Indeed, columnists were asking how the truth could ever come out with Allen Dulles on the Warren Commission. Prescient.

    Dulles feared, rightly, that Truman’s limited-edition op-ed might yet hit pay dirt and raise serious questions about covert action. Dulles would have wanted to be in position to flash the Truman “retraction,” with the hope that this would nip any serious questioning in the bud.

    The media had already shown how co-opted — er, I mean “cooperative” — it could be.

    As the de facto head of the Warren Commission, Dulles was perfectly positioned to exculpate himself and any of his associates, were any commissioners or investigators — or journalists — tempted to question whether the killing in Dallas might have been a CIA covert action.

    Did Allen Dulles and other “cloak-and-dagger CIA operatives have a hand in killing President Kennedy and then covering it up? The most up-to-date — and, in my view, the best — dissection of the assassination appeared last year in James Douglass’s book, JFK and the Unspeakable.

    After updating and arraying the abundant evidence, and conducting still more interviews, Douglass concludes the answer is Yes.

    They Died Fighting for Democracy

    in History:Resources

    Posted

    Ralph Fox was born in Halifax on 30th March 1900. While at Oxford University he became an ardent socialist. On 31st July, 1920, he became a founder member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). His friend, Harry Pollitt, later argued: "There was no personal economic reason why Fox should have joined the Communist Party. He did so from a deep sense of intellectual conviction, and from the moment he took out his Party card, his life was dedicated to the cause of Communism. Whether as author, journalist, or instructor of our factory groups in various parts of London, Fox undoubtedly influenced the thought of thousands of working men and women, and also of a big section of the professional classes of this country."

    Fox graduated with a first in modern languages. He then went to the Soviet Union in 1923 and worked for the Friends Relief Mission in Samara. In 1925 he started work with the Communist International. Later he became the librarian at the Marx Engels Institute in Moscow.

    Fox contributed a regular column for the Daily Worker. In 1933 he published a biography of Lenin. This was followed by Marxism and Modern Thought, Genghis Khan and the Novel and the People. In 1934 Fox joined forces with Tom Wintringham and John Strachey to establish the Writers' International, "an association of revolutionary socialist writers who are working for the end of the capitalist order and a new order based on co-operative effort."

    In 1936 Fox joined the International Brigades that fought on the side of the Republican Army in the Spanish Civil War. He became a political commissar in the British Battalion. He was killed at Córdoba on 3rd January, 1937. Harry Pollitt compared Fox to Lord Byron: "The great poet Byron went to Greece to fight for liberty; this is the example that our British comrades are following today in the conditions of our time." Harold Laski added that his death was “for him, simply a necessary service to his ideal.” A book on his experiences in Spain entitled, Ralph Fox: A Writer in Arms (1937), was published posthumously.

    http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SPfoxR.htm

    They Died Fighting for Democracy

    in History:Resources

    Posted

    Philip Detro was one of the Americans who was killed during the Spanish Civil War. Born in Texas he became a seaman and in 1932 he was in Nazi Germany when he heard Adolf Hitler make a speech. This resulted in Detro becoming an anti-fascist.

    On the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War he attempted to join the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, a unit that volunteered to fight for the Popular Front government against the military uprising in Spain. However, the American Communist Party turned him down. In his book, Comrades and Commissars: The Lincoln Battalion in the Spanish Civil War (2007), Cecil D. Eby suggests that this was because he was "a poor political risk". However, John Gates later recalled that Detro was an undercover member of the party.

    After the disaster of Jarama the leaders of the American Communist Party changed its mind about the role of its activists and allowed Joe Dallet, Steve Nelson, David Doran and 22 other volunteers to go to Spain. At the Tarazona training camp Detro impressed his tutors and this 6ft 4in soldier was marked down as a future officer.

    During the fighting at Hans Amlie Detro took over from Hans Amlie as commander of the Lincoln-Washington Battalion. He was injured at Mosquito Ridge and therefore missed the Quinto campaign. According to Cecil D. Eby he refused to wear tailored uniforms like Robert Merriman and David Doran: "Detro invariably wore a faded beret and a turtleneck sweater several sizes too large for his thin chest."

    Philip Detro was shot by a sniper while fighting in Teruel in January 1938. He was rescued by Joe Bianca and taken to the dressing station. The doctor found that he had a compound fracture in the right femur. He was advised to have his leg amputated but he refused and he died of gangrene six weeks later in a Murcia hospital.

    http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/TUdetroP.htm

    Mitch Werbell

    in JFK Assassination Debate

    Posted

    I post the following purely as a curiosity.

    The link below is the first part of a most interesting series concerning Mitch WerBell. The other links can be found on this page.

    The whole thing is a bit cheesy but there is some interesting tid bits including the piece of equipment shown at the 5 minute mark. Over the years, I have had several conversations with many of the anti-Castro guys of the early 1960's and they said that a version of this type of weapon was around at the time. More information regarding this to follow.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrtrmeITQNk

    Cheers,

    James

    Great video. Who made it? Interesting to see John Singlaub interviewed.

    The Corruption of New Labour: Britain’s Watergate?

    in Political Conspiracies

    Posted

    Hans Blix, Monday 14 December 2009

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/ci...nge-inspections

    Before the Iraq war was launched in March 2003 the world was given the impression by the US and Britain that the goal was to eradicate weapons of mass destruction. Recent comments by Tony Blair suggest, however, that regime change was the essential aim. He would have thought it right to remove Saddam Hussein even if he had known that there were no WMD, he said, but he would obviously have had to "deploy" different arguments. Must we not conclude that the WMD arguments were "deployed" mainly as the best way of selling the war? Blair's comments do not exclude a strong – but mistaken – belief in the existence of WMD even when the invasion was launched. However, given that hundreds of inspections had found no WMD and important evidence had fallen apart, such a belief would have been based on a lack of critical thinking.

    How could the issue of – non-existent – WMD mislead the world for more than 10 years? At the end of the Gulf war in 1991 the UN security council ordered Iraq to declare all WMD and destroy them under international supervision. However, Iraq chose to destroy much material without any inspection, giving rise to suspicions that weapons had been squirrelled away. These were nurtured by the frequent Iraqi refusals throughout the 90s to let UN inspectors enter sites and by evasive and erroneous responses to inspectors' inquiries.

    What other reason could there have been than to prevent inspectors getting evidence of existing weapons? It is possible that Saddam wanted to create the – false – impression that he still had WMD. What seems more likely to me, however, was a sense of hurt pride, a wish to defy and the knowledge that some of the inspectors worked directly for western intelligence – perhaps even passed information about suitable military targets.

    Only in September 2002, when the US had already moved troops to Kuwait, did Iraq say it was to accept the inspection that the UN demanded. By that time a new US national security strategy declared that it could take armed (pre-emptive or preventive) action without UN authorisation; many in the Bush administration saw UN involvement as a potential impediment.

    Many are convinced that the American and UK military plans moved on autopilot, and the inspections were a charade. I am sure that many in the Bush team felt that way. It seems likely that British and American leaders expected that UN inspections would again be obstructed or that Iraqi violation of the draconian new resolution 1441 would persuade the security council to authorise military action to remove the regime. For my part, I tended to think of the war preparations rather as a train moving slowly to the front and helping to make Iraq co-operative. If something removed or reduced the weapons issue, the train, I thought, might stop.

    For the UK to join the US on an unpredictable UN line was a gamble – and in the end it failed. Inspections did not turn up any "smoking guns" and gradually undermined some of the evidence that had been invoked. Iraq became more co-operative and showed no defiance that could prompt the authorising of armed force. Thus, while the train of war moved on, the UN path pointed less and less to an authorisation of war.

    What could the UK have done to avoid this development? It could have made a condition of its participation in the enterprise that the movement of the military train be synchronised with the movement on the UN path. With inspections just starting in the autumn of 2002 the military train should have moved very slowly. We have heard that Karl Rove had said that the autumn of 2003 was the latest time for invasion. Why so fast then in 2002? As the then German foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, said: what was the sense of demanding UN inspections for two and a half years and then let them work only for a few months? Of course, if regime change – and not WMD – was the main aim, the steady speed becomes logical.

    The responsibility for launching the war must be judged against the knowledge that the allies had when they actually started it. The UK should have recognised that no smoking gun had been found at any time, and that in the months before the invasion evidence of WMD was beginning to unravel. As we have heard recently: out of 19 Iraqi sites suspected by the UK – and suggested to the UN monitoring, verification and inspection commission for inspection (Unmovic) – 10 were actually inspected, and while "interesting", none turned up any WMD. This warning that sources were not reliable seems to have been ignored. Intelligence organisations seem to have been 100% convinced of the existence of WMD but to have had 0% knowledge where they were. Worse still: the uranium contract between Iraq and Niger that George Bush had given prominence in his 2002 state of the union message was found by the International Atomic Energy Agency to be a forgery.

    The absence of convincing evidence of WMD did not stop the train to war. It arrived at the front before the weather got too hot and the soldiers got impatient waiting for action. The factual reports of the IAEA and Unmovic did, however, have the result that a majority on the security council wanted more inspections and were unconvinced about the existence of WMD.

    At the end the UK tried desperately to get some kind of authorisation from the security council as a legal basis for armed action – but failed. Confirming the fears of Dick Cheney, President Bush's vice-president, the UN and inspections became an impediment – not to armed action, but to legitimacy.

    Unlike the US, the UK and perhaps other members of the alliance were not ready to claim a right to preventive war against Iraq regardless of security council authorisation. In these circumstances they developed and advanced the argument that the war was authorised by the council under a series of earlier resolutions. As Condoleezza Rice put it, the alliance action "upheld the authority of the council". It was irrelevant to this argument that China, France, Germany and Russia explicitly opposed the action and that a majority on the council declined to give the requested green light for the armed action. If hypocrisy is the compliment that virtue pays to vice then strained legal arguments are the compliments that violators of UN rules pay to the UN charter.

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