Time to clip the wings of Vulture Funds

Investigative reporting by Greg Palast, broadcast on the BBC and Democracy Now, has exposed the vulture funds, defined by the International Monetary Fund as companies that buy up the debt of poor nations on the cheap when it is about to be written off and then sue for the full debt plus interest, often pocketing 10 times what they paid for it......more

Zambia at a glance

Open Letters to George W. Bush
From his ardent admirer Belacqua Jones....here

The Wit and Wisdom of Belacqua Jones

Central Command in Florida and targets inside Iran

It is understood that any such attack - if ordered - would target Iranian air bases, naval bases, missile facilities and command-and-control centres. That list includes Iran's uranium enrichment plant at Natanz. Facilities at Isfahan, Arak and Bushehr are also on the target list.....more

I Hope They Get It

"We can't get fooled again"

Your mission for the day is to look at these images of a beautiful, progressive and creative country and its generally moderate people and guess who they are........here

Mrs. Clintons Roadmap Out of Iraq

A Rarity for Faux News: Real Journalism

Bush's inevitable showdown

Chosen to pretend that in failing it has succeeded

It is impossible to guess the consequences of the approaching showdown between the US and Iran. But if the events of the past week are any guide, the future does not look promising. Today positive and negative indicators regarding the nature and outcome of a US confrontation with Iran run together and so forecasting the likely form and outcome of the contest is all but impossible......more

Dear Americans, We Are So Confused ...

The fundamental problem for America and its allies in Iraq is not Iranian interference, it is incoherent US foreign policy in the Middle East. If you think this is just opinion, try comprehending US-Middle East relations......more

Dispatch From the Mexican Border

Why the security fence will never be built

Ever since October 2006, when President George W. Bush signed a bill authorizing the construction of 700 miles of fencing along the border with Mexico, top-ranking Latin American politicians have denounced the plan, calling it unnecessary, offensive, and, in the words of former Mexican President Vicente Fox, "deplorable.".......more

Video: Al-Qaeda Martyrdom Training

Faux News Self-Parody

The premiere tomorrow opens with Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter in a skit set in January 2009. Mr. Limbaugh is the newly elected commander in chief, and he tells his fellow Americans that his Democratic opponent, Howard Dean, is “finally getting the medical attention he has so desperately needed for so long,” which is a strange joke for Mr. Limbaugh to make, given his history of pain killers and prescription fraud.

Growing a Blue Brain in Switzerland

A network of artificial nerves is growing in a Swiss supercomputer -- meant to simulate a natural brain, cell-for-cell. The researchers at work on "Blue Brain" promise new insights into the sources of human consciousness.......more

Democrats Say No Surge

"The stakes in Iraq are too high to recycle proposals that have little prospect for success,"........Nancy Pelosi

The Democratic-controlled House issued a symbolic rejection of President Bush's plan to deploy more troops to Iraq on Friday, opening an epic confrontation between Congress and commander in chief over an unpopular war that has taken the lives of more than 3,100 U.S. troops.......more

Country Music Superstars Faith Hill and Tim McGraw

Al Gores "Live Earth Concerts"

Al Gore announced on Thursday a series of worldwide concerts to focus on the threat of climate change with a powerhouse lineup from the Red Hot Chili Peppers to Snoop Dogg to Bon Jovi. The concerts on seven continents will bring newfound publicity to Gore, who already is enjoying celebrity status with his Oscar-nominated documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth.....more

Best Of Right Wing Howler:
Typical Liberals

It’s simple, really. Democrats and liberals, for the most part, are at the bottom end of the economic scale. They collect welfare, collect food stamps, and have a mentality that says, “I want you to GIVE me whatever I need.” So is it any surprise they will not buy into the advertising nor buy the books Kos sells? They want it given to them. They just want a place where they can smoke their dope, wear their patchouli, dress in their Birkenstocks and protest the fact no one gives them what they want?......more

In Dixie Chicks Land, A Stand

Those who destroy CDs or books out of spite, and stir up such campaigns...well, I suppose that's free speech, too. But by the way, would that angry reaction to those who voice their dislike of presidents also apply, say, to Rush Limbaugh and his oft-expressed views on President Bill Clinton? Or is that different?......more

After Democrats Pick Obama or Hillary, U.S. Election May Be Over
Will U.S. Democrats tear themselves to shreds deciding who to nominate for President? Will the Republican nominee attack Bush and cause internal Republican Party dissention? Who better to ask that one of the most powerful political parties in the world – the Chinese Communists? According to this op-ed article from China's state-controlled Xinjingbao [Beijing News], the Democrats are in such good shape, there may be little need for Americans to vote........more

A Aussie's View Of America

Medical Proof Homosexuality Is Harmful To Health

A top Moscow official repeated Wednesday that the city will not allow a gay rights parade, echoing the mayor's vocal criticism and saying that homosexuality is bad for people's health......more

Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream

The sweet taste of liberty in your mouth

Stephen Colbert may have no taste for the truth, but he does have a sweet tooth. Ben & Jerry's has named a new ice cream in honor of the comedian: "Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream." It's vanilla ice cream with fudge-covered waffle cone pieces and caramel.......more

Censored?
Vox found it, Tampa Pirate confirmed it. Story @ Pushing Rope

Britain and US ranked last in child well-being league

The study found Britain lagged behind on key measures of poverty and deprivation, health and safety, relationships, risk-taking and young people's own sense of well-being giving it the lowest overall placing, along with the United States.......more

India, China and Russia meet to counter US power

India, China and Russia account for 40 per cent of the world’s population, a fifth of its economy and more than half of its nuclear warheads. Now they appear to be forming a partnership to challenge the US-dominated world order that has prevailed since the end of the Cold War.......more

Putin 'Tells Off' the United States

Wanted: A Progressive Party
In the past year, and particularly this week it’s occurred to me that we do not have a progressive political party in America; and as the two parties we currently have become more like one another, we desperately need one......more

No Gang Signs

Restoring the Constitution Act of 2007

Please take a moment to watch the video and read the text of the Restoring the Constitution Act of 2007, sign on as a citizen co-sponsor, and forward the bill to your personal networks.

Faux News can't refrain from dig at Dixie Chicks

This is a good example of how a piece, at first glance straightforward, promotes the agenda at FOX. First, Smith (or his producers - whatever) chose to highlight the Police, doing a little history of the band and showing extensive footage and snips, even though the Dixie Chicks were the big winners of the night........more

Grammy Sweep by Dixie Chicks Is Seen as a Vindication.......NY Times

The music doctor who revived the Dixie Chicks.......NZ Herald

Dixie Chicks' victory shows country's anti-war turn.......Boston Globe

Protesting the Dixie Chicks

"I'm ready to make nice! I think people are using their freedom of speech with all these awards. We get the message."

The Low Blow From Down Under

Prime Minister John Howard said Obama's plan to withdraw troops by March 2008 would play into terrorists' hands. "If I were running Al Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008 and be praying as many times as possible for a victory, not only for Obama but also for the Democrats," Howard said. Obama noted that Australia has only 1,400 troops in Iraq. "If he's ginned up to fight the good fight in Iraq, I would suggest that he calls up another 20,000 Australians and sends them to Iraq. Otherwise it's just a bunch of empty rhetoric," Obama said.......more

Joan Baez - We Shall Overcome - Woodstock 1969

The Dixie Chick's Rule The Grammys

And The Grammys Go To.......

Album of the Year, Song of the Year, Best Country Album, Record of the Year

Country Music Establishment And Wingnuts, Up Yours!

"Well, to quote the great 'Simpsons' — 'Heh-Heh.'

California Dreaming?

The Psycological Chains of Slavery Continues!

Kiri Davis is a young filmmaker whose high school documentary has left audiences at film festivals across the country stunned -- and has re-ignited a powerful debate over race

Excellent Stevie Nicks Concert: Almost 2 Hours

Getting Out Of The Florida State Fairgrounds Parking Lot: Over 2 Hours

Stevie Nicks Can Still Rock

It's Howard Dean's party

If there's one thing obvious in this room, it is that Emanuel might be clever, but it's Howard Dean's party. Dean electrified a similar DNC gathering four years ago when he said that he was "from the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party," and launched his anti-war candidacy briefly into the stratosphere. Now, all the Democratic presidential candidates appearing here borrow from Dean and try to appease the party's yowling, anti-war base........more

Bill Donohue A 'Cafeteria Catholic'

To rightwing Catholic activists, "cafeteria Catholic" is a term of contempt for those who pick and choose which Church doctrine to follow. Bill Donohue arrogantly dismissed the Pope's pleas against the Iraq War in order to serve his political bosses, yet some reporters is still characterize him as a Catholic spokesman. Donohue's selectivity in following Church teachings is as "cafeteria" as it gets.....more

Natasha Henstridge

The Svalbard International Seed Vault

The final design for a "doomsday" vault that will house seeds from all known varieties of food crops has been unveiled by the Norwegian government. The Svalbard International Seed Vault will be built into a mountainside on a remote island near the North Pole. The vault aims to safeguard the world's agriculture from future catastrophes, such as nuclear war, asteroid strikes and climate change.......more

The End of Conservative Hegemony

Ronald Reagan is dead, Margaret Thatcher is senile and the ideological world that they created is now dying with them. From 1979 to 2004, the political Right won the Western world's battle of ideas. Conservatives triumphed because they were correct about the two biggest issues of that era: They were for free markets and against communism. But now confusion on the Right prevails, because today it is they who are on the wrong side of the West's two greatest political issues: climate change and the Iraq War.......more

Let's Have A War Tax

Right-wing Blogosphere has gotten its scalps

John Edwards has fired the two controversial bloggers he recently hired to do liberal blogger outreach. The bloggers, Amanda Marcotte, formerly of Pandagon, and Melissa McEwan, of Shakespeare's Sister, had come under fire from right-wing bloggers for statements they had previously made on their respective blogs. A statement by the Catholic League's Bill Donohue, which called Marcotte and McEwan "vulgar trash-talking bigots,"......more

"The Catholic church is not about to let something like compassion for girls get in the way of using the state as an instrument to force women to bear more tithing Catholics,"......Amanda Marcotte

Bush, The Divider

The roots of most of American Jewry's anger toward the current president, George W. Bush, cannot be traced to Israel. They did not vote for him in the first place. His ongoing support for Israel may be recognized and appreciated by the establishment, Israeli and Jewish, but it does not receive due credit among a wide Jewish-American public that is liberal, Democratic, dovish and very angry at Bush for significant and various reasons......more

"Move On" Ad: Blocking Debate

Is Edwards the Howard Dean of 2008?

With his call earlier this week for higher taxes on both the wealthy and businesses to support his massive $120 billion-per-year universal health-care plan, John Edwards continued a series of moves that have made him the 2008 campaign's Howard Dean......more

Fruitcake Polling Higher Than Bush

According to the latest CBS News poll, the president's overall approval rating has dipped to 28 percent—the lowest number in his presidency and dangerously close to Nixon's all-time low of 24 percent. To lend a little context to this historic feat, we found some other people and things with equal or greater popularity........more

“Let’s get rid of the Mexicans!”

Supremacist activity flourishes

Groups linked to the Ku Klux Klan, skinheads and neo-Nazis grew significantly more active, holding more rallies, distributing leaflets and increasing their presence on the Internet — much of it focused on stirring anti-immigrant sentiment........more

Florida Hate Groups

Michelle Malkin's Lips

Activists Launch The Occupation Project:

A Campaign of Sustained Nonviolent Civil Disobedience to End the Iraq War

Ten people were arrested occupying the offices of the staunchly pro-war and likely-presidential hopeful Senator John McCain. The activists sang the names of seventy-five servicemembers from McCain’s home-state of Arizona who died in Iraq and chanted “We remember you.” The action is part of a new campaign called The Occupation Project: A Campaign of Sustained Nonviolent Civil Disobedience to End the Iraq War. It's being led by the group Voices for Creative Nonviolence.

Kathy Kelly's, (Executive Director of Voices for Creative Nonviolence) interview with Amy Goodman.....here

Red Eye - Faux News' Answer to The Daily Show

Dean on the GOP's Obstruction on Iraq Resolution

"This is the most important issue facing our nation and the American people have made it clear where they stand. We believe that the American people deserve to know where their representatives in Congress stand on the President's escalation of the Iraq War. Why are the president's supporters in Congress afraid to have to stand up and tell the American people where they stand on the president's efforts to escalate the war? By voting to block this debate, Republicans have essentially given a green light to President Bush to continue down the same failed strategy in Iraq.....more

Lieberman joined with the Republican filibuster. Republicans Susan Collins of Maine and Norm Coleman of Minnesota switched sides and voted with the Democrats.

Limbaugh compared American troop deaths in Iraq to Philly murder rate

We're concerned with death here. We're concerned with body counts. We're concerned with the breakdown of law and order. Insurgencies, gangs, whatever you want to call them. They're out of control in major American cities, and Philadelphia is just one example, and where are the hearings on this?........more

Beirut Store Owners Ban Political Talk

It's one of the ways Lebanese are coping with the standoff between pro- and anti-government camps."It's better without politics," reads the red and white sticker at the entrance of a pub on the restaurant- and bar-filled Gemayzeh Street in the Christian sector of Beirut.......more

Kuwaiti Singer Satirizes the Bush War

The Kingdom's Religious Police
Mutaween
A Saudi Arabian judge sentenced 20 foreigners to receive lashes and spend several months in prison after convicting them of attending a party where alcohol was served and men and women danced....more
The Official Religious Police site (Arabic)

If Clinton Wins Nomination, Nader May Run

I don’t think she has it. And she has this increasingly distasteful habit of pandering and flattering in her public appearances. And she panders to special interest groups that need to be given the straight truth, and she flatters people in her audience. And I think that is a sign that she thinks she’s a frontrunner and she can play cautious......more

The New Mass Migration

There are journeys that change a traveler, that transform him into a different person. And there are travelers who, by the end of their journey, want nothing so much as for life to return to the way it used to be. But they discover that there is no turning back, that their world has changed irrevocably.......more

Democrats praise Dean's much criticized 50-state strategy

The Democratic National Committee showcased the party's presidential candidates at its winter meeting here, but the gathering also was a victory lap for Chairman Howard Dean and his much criticized 50-state strategy.Just months ago, as the 2006 congressional elections were approaching, Dean came under fire from some party officials, who charged that the national party was wasting money in so-called red Republican states instead of pouring resources into blue states that tend to vote Democratic......more

THE CANDIDATES: Presidential hopefuls court the party faithful

Four years ago, Howard Dean burst onto the national stage with a fiery speech at the Democratic National Committee's winter meeting that captured his party's anger toward President Bush and the brewing war in Iraq.......more

Right Sees Lemons in White House Race

Contemplating the current field of Republican presidential candidates, Rush Limbaugh sounded like a man with malaise. "To be honest with you, there's nobody out there that revs me up," he confessed to his audience of several million conservative sympathizers on his radio show last week, "so why should I pretend there is?"......more

Hillary The Opportunist

Orange snow falls in Siberia

Russia's emergency situations ministry said today it was dispatching experts to a Siberian province to find out why yellow and orange snow has been falling in several villages. Snow ranging in colour from light yellow to orange and carrying a distinctive "musty" odour was observed yesterday in five districts of Omsk province, which lies in western Siberia and borders Kazakhstan.....more

Echoes of Dean in '08

"People were going crazy," committee Chairman Howard Dean said to ABC News of the February 2003 speech in which he ignited his presidential campaign by forcefully identifying himself as representing the "Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.".......more

"By about the fifth sentence, when I gave that line about the Democratic Party, I realized that it was pretty powerful."

The Other Miami

Our relentless tour guides have yet more reality in store for us. We head north to the Umoja Village shantytown, a 45-person squatter settlement on a barren city-owned lot that looks like the sort of thing you might find in Bangladesh. A couple of residents show us around—the “kitchen” area buzzing with flies, the “living room” crammed with tattered old furniture and the dwellings made of plywood, cardboard and tarp.......more

“We can have a democratic society, or we can have the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few. We cannot have both.”- Louis Brandeis. Supreme Court Justice

Umoja Village USA

"REAL MEN DON'T SEXUALLY ABUSE WOMEN OR ALLOW IT TO HAPPEN."

Spc. Swift, facing a redeployment to Iraq while serving under the command of the same individuals that allowed her to be raped and sexual harassed, suffered a breakdown due to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and went absent without leave rather than subject herself to the horrors she experienced during her first tour of duty.......more

Dear 2008 Presidential Candidate

We call on you to oppose any escalation of the Iraq War, to demand a swift end to the occupation, and to propose a plan that brings our brave men and women home.

The Democracy for America community awaits your response

Sign the Petition......here

Bush wants to put giant mirrors in space

The US wants the world's scientists to develop technology to block sunlight as a last-ditch way to halt global warming. It says research into techniques such as giant mirrors in space or reflective dust pumped into the atmosphere would be "important insurance" against rising emissions, and has lobbied for such a strategy to be recommended by a UN report on climate change.......more

WHY THIS SUDDEN INTEREST IN GLOBAL WARMING?

The Real John McCain

Rush Limbaugh for 2007 Nobel Peace Prize?

"The foremost advocate for freedom and democracy in the world today"

Landmark Legal Foundation today nominated nationally syndicated radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Limbaugh, was nominated for the prestigious award for his "nearly two decades of tireless efforts to promote liberty, equality and opportunity for all humankind, regardless of race, creed, economic stratum or national origin......more

Ms. Bondi, Lies About Master Tank

I legally fostered and adopted a dying dog who had a serious medical condition that long predated the hurricane," Pam Bondi (Hillsborough County Prosecutor)

"If he had been as close to death as Ms. Bondi claims, he would never have been placed on a transport that would take on a good day over 10 hours to get to the destination," Ceily Trog (Manager of St. Bernard Parish Animal Control)

Judge rules against Katrina dogs' new owners