Link to source: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/sep2010/paki-s06.shtml

The US Justice Department filed criminal charges against Hakimullah Mehsud last Wednesday for allegedly organising the suicide attack in December on Forward Operating Base Chapman in Afghanistan near the border with Pakistan that killed seven CIA agents and wounded six more. The State Department also confirmed that it had added Mehsud’s Tehrik-e-Taliban to its list of “foreign terrorist organisations”, and is offering rewards of up to $5 million for information about the location of Mehsud and his second-in-command, Wali Ur-Rehman.

Two counts filed in a District Court in Washington charge Mehsud with conspiracy to murder US citizens abroad and conspiracy to use a “weapon of mass destruction”—the home-made suicide bomb used by the CIA contact who carried out the attack. The charges carry a sentence of life in prison, but a US official told Reuters that they “are meant to deal with Hakimullah if he’s captured. … He can face justice in other ways too. That hasn’t changed.” In other words, the CIA and US military are still seeking to murder Mehsud using missiles launched from remote-controlled Predator drones.

Tehrik-e-Taliban, also referred to as the Pakistani Taliban, was formed in 2007 to unify tribal and Islamist resistance against the Pakistan government and the US-NATO occupation of neighbouring Afghanistan. Based in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of South and North Waziristan, it supports Afghan insurgents who use the Pashtun tribal areas along border as safe havens.

Link to source: http://www.eurasiareview.com/201009057788/who-pays-for-the-loss-of-life-in-iran.html

Since the victory of Iran's Islamic Revolution in 1979 which toppled the U.S.-backed regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Iran has been facing with devastating and agonizing financial sanctions of the United States and its European allies who didn't favor the post-revolutionary Iran's doctrine of confrontation with the superpowers and its denial of Western liberal democratic values.

The 1979 revolution which put an end to 2,500 years of imperial monarchy in Iran was pivoted on theocratic and ideological values which the sumptuous, thrilling West usually tends to dislike and rebuff. Under the spiritual leadership of Imam Khomeini, Iranians declared that they wouldn't need the support of Western and Eastern superpowers, will stand on their own feet and only seek to realize a political regime which establishes its bases and principles in accordance with morality and Islamic solidarity.

Iran's ideological disagreement with the West and its efforts to fulfill independence as an Islamic state, however, cost for the Iranian people heavily. First of all, the United States spurred its regional puppet, the late dictator Saddam Hussein, on to launch a massive, crushing war against Iran so as to push the country's newly-established political regime to annihilation. The 8-year war demolished Iran's infrastructures irreversibly, caused irreparable damages to country's economy and left more than 350,000 Iranians dead.

Link to source: http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/09/honduran-repression-continues-unabated.html

Earlier articles explained the June 28, 2009 coup and aftermath, the latest accessed through the following link:

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/08/honduran-junta-murdering-journalists.html

For Hondurans, the event marked a new beginning, not an end to their dark history. Widespread killings and human rights abuses followed and a sham November election, installing Porfirio (Pepe) Lobo Sosa president, a US-friendly stooge heading a fascist regime. The nation's military is firmly in control against popular resistance, street violence and death squad terror its repressive tools. The Obama administrative stands firmly supportive. It blessed the coup, the new government and provides aid, all for hardline rule, none for popular needs.

Activists and journalists are especially threatened. Honduras is one of the most dangerous countries anywhere for those speaking openly about government corruption, human rights abuses, and despotism, the latest casualty - Radio Internacional reporter Zelaya Diaz, shot dead on August 24 along a rural San Pedro Sula road. According to press reports, he died from two bullet wounds to the head, another in his chest. Like similar past incidents, an investigation, if it occurs, will be whitewashed. No one will be held accountable.

Though not openly threatened, an earlier suspicious fire damaged Diaz's home, a message perhaps demanding he stop reporting on politics and crime. Since March alone, eight journalists have been killed, a disturbing pattern against others stepping too close to honest reporting about what Hondurans most need to know - the truth about their corrupted, brutal regime.

Link to source: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/PET108A.html

La Jornada, Mexico, 19th May 2001
Posted at globalresearch.ca 29 August 2001

There is a consensus among U.S. Congressional Investigators, former bankers and international banking experts that U.S. and European banks launder between $500 billion and $1 trillion of dirty money each year, half of which is laundered by U.S. banks alone. As Senator Carl Levin summarizes the record: "Estimates are that $500 billion to $1 trillion of international criminal proceeds are moved internationally and deposited into bank accounts annually. It is estimated that half of that money comes to the United States".

Over a decade then, between $2.5 and $5 trillion criminal proceeds have been laundered by U.S. banks and circulated in the U.S. financial circuits. Senator Levin's statement however, only covers criminal proceeds, according to U.S. laws. It does not include illegal transfers and capital flows from corrupt political leaders, or tax evasion by overseas businesses. A leading U.S. scholar who is an expert on international finance associated with the prestigious Brookings Institute estimates "the flow of corrupt money out of developing (Third World) and transitional (ex-Communist) economies into Western coffers at $20 to $40 billion a year and the flow stemming from mis-priced trade at $80 billion a year or more. My lowest estimate is $100 billion per year by these two means by which we facilitated a trillion dollars in the decade, at least half to the United States. Including the other elements of illegal flight capital would produce much higher figures. The Brookings expert also did not include illegal shifts of real estate and securities titles, wire fraud, etc.

Link to source: http://www.cafecreole.net/archipelago/Karen_Dialogue.html

Ryuta Imafuku:
First of all, I'd like to explain some ideas in the agenda at hand. The first is to try to discover a new map behind the old map, to see a new image of the world in a new map instead of continually looking at our old, conventional image of the world. Certain complicit ideologies like imperialism, colonialism , nationalism, and the overall principle of the nation-state underlie our concept of the old conventional map. Nowadays as well, a kind of stubborn regionalism, exclusive nativism, and narrow-minded ecology movement favorable only for the world's elite, might also underlie this conventional map. If we can see an old map as representing these interrelated ideologies, then we are in a better position to think critically and clearly about the need for a new map.

The second idea in thinking about this new geography has to do with two different consciousnesses used to describe the world: historical consciousness and spatial/geographical consciousness. As we know, our socio-cultual theory today is already precisely historicized thanks to the significant works by postmodernist thinkers and newhistoricist theorists. But now I'd like to pose a new agenda for going beyond a highly historicized concept of culture. It is very important to enter history not through time but through spatial consciousness, and it is crucial to create a new consciousness, to grasp an image of the world which is spatial or geographical. We need to renew our geography.

Your new book, Tropic of Orange, has many geographical references or connotations and a tendency to look at things through spatial or geographical symbols or references. Perhaps you can give your perspective as a fiction writer with respect to this crucial agenda to shift temporal consciousness to a spatial consciousness in order to criticize contemporary culture. For example, in the depiction of one of your characters who is conducting the L.A. freeway traffic, there are many references to maps and geography...

Karen Tei Yamashita:
The character you refer to is Manzanar Murakami who is a homeless man who stands on an overpass, over a freeway system -- that great arterial system through Los Angeles -- and conducts as one conducts an orchestra. This image came about because one day while driving, my husband saw a homeless man conducting, and I imagined that perhaps this man thought he was conducting traffic. From this image, I created the character. Actually he was a character in a musical at first, and I later transported him into the novel because I thought he could express an idea of Los Angeles as an entity in musical terms. The sound of this writing is romantic and intensely symphonic. At the same time, Manzanar conducts through geographical layers in the city that he senses in musical terms. There is this interpretation of the world, of Los Angeles, through Manzanar's musical point of view.

Your mention of geography is of interest to me. In Brazil, I met several geographers. I was curious about their work because in the United States, geography had never existed for me as a department of study for undergraduates, at least. Now I've met geographers in the United States, but I never thought about it as a field of study. If I had known, maybe I would have become a geographer. I have always had interest in anthropology, but geography crosses into many more fields of thought. The geographers I met in Brazil were working in rural areas, looking at the conditions of farmers, at rural production, the economic conditions in the area, the politics, history, the social interactions, and of course the land itself. Their approach was broad in the same way I had to be broad to see the larger picture in order to write about the people I met.

Link to source: http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/09/ripping-off-dead-war-vets-beneficiaries.html

Wall Street and other financial scammers do it from the living, Prudential and many insurers from the dead, ripping off families of killed war vets. On July 28, Bloomberg.com's David Evans discussed how it works in an article titled, "Fallen Soldiers' Families Denied Cash as Insurers Profit," a polite way of explaining grand theft. From the living, it's bad enough, from the dead, it gives chutzpah new meaning, affecting countless thousands of bereaved families.

Evans wrote about one, Cindy Lohman. Two weeks after her son Ryan was killed, she received a Prudential Financial, Inc. "9-inch-by-12-inch envelope," the company managing life insurance for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

A letter explained. As his beneficiary, she was entitled to $400,000 in death benefits along with something looking like a checkbook. The funds "would be placed in a convenient interest-bearing account, allowing her time to decide how to use" them, the letter saying:

"You can hold the money in the account for safekeeping for as long as you like," plus a disclaimer in easily overlooked fine print, explaining "what it called its Alliance Account," a non-FDIC insured scheme, a ripoff to defraud beneficiaries like Lohman.

After leaving the funds untouched for months, she tried unsuccessfully using one of the "checks," then failed a second time. She was "shocked," saying she thought the money was FDIC insured, in a bank, to be used freely.

Link to source: http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/09/here-we-go-again-another-rig-explosion.html

Drilling means spilling, hundreds of annual incidents, most small, unreported, yet their cumulative effect is devastating, what the industry and nightly news won't mention or explain.

On February 25, 2009, Environmental Research web.org writer Kate Ravilious did, headlining "Small unreported oil spills add up to major damage," saying:

Big spills make headlines while small ones "often go unnoticed and unreported. But these little slicks could be just as damaging to the environment as large spills, according to new research findings."

Barcelona, Spain Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya Professors Jose Redondo and Alexei Platonov developed a way to spot spills from satellite images. They show that "small oil spills are very common, and when added together they become comparable to large" ones. Their frequency makes them damaging, yet little about them is reported.

Link to source: http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/09/reflections-on-jack-kennedy.html

Though much about his background and public service warrants criticism, he also deserves praise rarely given properly, this article offering some and the writer's personal reflections on his commencement address to my June 14, 1956 graduating class, a message not heard now by US leaders - erudite, incisive and timely. More on it below.

Some Background

Had an assassin not taken his life, his health surely would have, some around him saying "from a medical standpoint, (he) was a mess." Indeed so, having been hospitalized more than three dozen times in his life and given last rites on three occasions.

At age 2 years, 9 months, he nearly died of scarlet fever. He contracted measles, whooping cough and chicken pox the same year, and as a child, was susceptible to upper respiratory infections and bronchitis. In 1935, he suffered jaundice, had a history of sports-related injuries because of his weak physique, and his mother remembered him as "a very, very sick little boy." In the 1930s, he began taking steroids for colitis, later developing complications, including a duodenal ulcer, back pain, digestive trouble, and underactive adrenal glands known as Addison's disease.

He had a host of other problems as well, including a bout of malaria as a naval officer in the Pacific. At age 43, the 1960 presidential campaign exhausted him because he overdid it for a man of his health and stamina. In 1947, his Addisonism was diagnosed, at the time told he had one year to live, and was given his last rites shortly afterward. Yet as senator and president, his health problems were hidden, an observer calling it "one of the most cleverly laid smoke screens ever put down around a politician('s)" physical well-being.

Link to source: http://www.marxist.com/south-africa-workers-reject-offer-prepare-general-strike.htm

Link to source: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/sep2010/home-s02.shtml

A report released in July by the advocacy groups National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth (NAEHCY) and First Focus reveals the explosive growth of homelessness among public school students during the economic crisis.

Based on Federal data from the US Department of Education, the number of students identified as homeless by public school districts rose by more than 40 percent between the 2006-2007 school year and 2008-2009, to 956,914. The figure has almost assuredly passed one million in the current school year.

That well over one million public school students are homeless is a damning indictment of the entire social order. The staggering growth in student homelessness took place simultaneously with the transfer of trillions of dollars in public funds to Wall Street, overseen by the administrations of former President George W. Bush and current President Barack Obama.

No part of the country was spared. NAEHCY and First Focus found that 70 percent of school districts reported an increase in homelessness since 2007-2008, and 39 percent reported enrolling more homeless students in the first six months of the 2009-2010 school year than in the entire previous year.

The worst affected states have been Texas and Iowa, with increases of 139 and 136 percent, respectively, between the 2006-2007 and 2008-2009 school year. Other hard-hit states include New Mexico (91 percent), Kansas (88 percent), New Jersey (84 percent), New York and South Dakota (73 percent), and Georgia (72 percent). Of the 50 states plus the District of Columbia, 13 registered increases of child homelessness of 50 percent or more.

Link to source: http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/09/katrinas-destructive-aftermath.html

August 29, 2005, a day of infamy remembered less for the storm, catastrophic floods and destruction, and more as a metaphor for disaster capitalism, exploiting security threats, "terror" attacks, economic meltdowns, and "natural" disasters like Katrina.

It turned this aging senior into a writer and radio host, furious over federal, state and local authorities using it to reward business at the expense of New Orleans' poor Blacks. Five years later, their lives remain in disarray through no fault of their own.

Levies protecting their neighborhoods were left weak, vulnerable to fail as they did, then Congressman Richard Baker (R. LA) saying, "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it but God did," with considerable willful negligence help.

Malik Rahim, (New Orleans) Common Ground Relief (CGR) co-founder said:

"They wanted them poor niggers out of there and they ain't had no intention to allow it to be reopened to no poor niggers, you know? And that's just the bottom line."

Blank is beautiful. Ethnic cleansing was long-planned, the scheme, of course, to erase poor neighborhoods, replacing them with upscale condos and other high-profit projects on choice city land, New Orleans developer Joseph Canizaro saying, "we (now) have a clean (slate) to start (over and take advantage of) big opportunities."

Link to source: http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/category/mizgin-yilmaz-richard-armitage-series/

Richard Lee Armitage, Honorary KCMG (born April 26, 1945) was the 13th United States Deputy Secretary of State, the second-in-command at the State Department, serving from 2001 to 2005. His Political Contributions.

The Early Years & the Golden Triangle

As mentioned earlier, Brent Scowcroft will be ending his nine-year reign as chairman of the American Turkish Council (ATC) and will be succeeded by former Bush administration Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage.

Armitage may be best remembered for leaking information to Robert Novak that exposed Valerie Plame as a covert CIA agent in a political scandal that became known as the Plame Affair. Selective amnesia on the part of the servile US mainstream media has repeatedly obscured Armitage’s curriculum vitae, which goes back decades and begins during the Vietnam conflict.

Graduating from the US Naval Academy in 1967, Armitage served four tours of duty in Vietnam before leaving the military in 1973, when he joined the Defense Attache in Saigon. It was at this time that Armitage’s association with the CIA began:

Link to source: http://mexfiles.net/2009/07/19/honduras-the-venezuelan-connection/

Despite continued resistance (nearly all major highways are blocked), the coup has continued to hold on, and thanks to obvious Venezuelan interference (though not from the Venezuelan government), and U.S. support, the coup is “winning” simply by staying in power long enough to force acceptance of the status quo.

Roberto Carmona Borjas, a Venezuelan whose shady Arcadia Foundation (the group’s website: arcadiafoundation.org) has been pushing claims that deposed President Mel Zelaya was corrupt (which is an after the fact justification for the coup) describes himself as an academic (at both American University and George Washington University, both in Washington, D.C.).  The GW Hatchet (an independent student newspaper at George Washington University) wrote about Carmona’s graduate course in Political Management last October:

The class, which meets Tuesdays from 7:10 p.m. to 9:40 p.m., already boasts an impressive list of speakers, including Colombian President Alvaro Uribe; U.S. ambassador to Venezuela Otto Reich; Leopoldo Lopez, a Venezuelan politician; Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutiérrez and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., has also been invited.

Reich is misidentified as the Ambassador to Venezuela .  He WAS Ambassador during the Reagan Administration, during which time he arranged for the release of wanted terrorist Orlando Bosch, who was involved in blowing up a civilian airliner, though, being a Cuban airliner, has never been pursued by the United States government, despite Bosch’s residence in the U.S.  More importantly, as Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs during George W. Bush’s administration, Reich attempted to build support for the attempted 2002 coup in Venezuela among other nations in the Hemisphere.  That coup, like the 28 June coup in Honduras, started with the military removal of the elected President, followed by a statement (the Carmona Decrees) which claimed consitutionality for the action.  Carmona Borjes is said to have authored that document, which is confused by the fact that the President of the Venezuelan Chamber of Commerce (who was installed as president — supposedly under constitutional procedure) is another Carmona:  Pedro Carmona Estanga.

Link to source: http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/09/continuity-of-government-coup-detat.html

This article reviews the historical roots and America's current Continuity of Government authority, initially planned and developed by Ronald Reagan. More on that below.

On March 1, 2002, Washington Post writers Barton Gellman and Susan Schmidt headlined, "Shadow Government Is at Work in Secret," saying:

"President Bush has dispatched a shadow government of about 100 senior civilian managers to live and work secretly outside Washington, activating for the first time longstanding plans to ensure survival of federal rule after a catastrophic attack on the nation's capital."

Shortly after 9/11, a classified "Continuity of Operations Plan" (aka "continuity of government") was implemented. Legal documents were then drafted, creating a shadow government in case of a catastrophe, George Bush saying:

"We take the continuity of government issue seriously because our nation was under attack. Until this country has routed out terrorists wherever they hid, we're not safe."

In other words, the plan, like the "war on terror," is open-ended, in violation of the Constitution's Separation of Powers, the document George Bush called "just a goddamn piece of paper," and governed accordingly throughout his tenure, a practice Obama continues. More on that below.

Link to source: http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5605

Mérida, August 31^st 2010 (Venezuelanalysis.com) – 75.4% of televised campaign advertisements have been pro-opposition and 24.6% have been pro-government since the race for 165 seats in Venezuela’s National Assembly officially began last Thursday, according to a study by the National Electoral Council (CNE).

The CNE recorded the total amount of advertizing spots and their duration in seconds on the two major state-owned channels, VTV and TVES, and the four major channels controlled by private broadcasters, Globovision, Venevision, Televen, and Meridiano TV.

CNE President Tibisay Lucena announced the results of the study in a televised interview on Monday. She said when the ads were measured in seconds, pro-opposition ads accounted for 73.8% of the total, and pro-government ads accounted for 26.2%.

The opposition, which is grouped into a coalition called the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD), has used its media reach to convey the messages of landed estate owners such as Franklin Brito, who died on Monday in a hospital following a hunger strike to protest the government’s granting of land to landless peasants on the outskirts of his 500 hectare (1,235 acre) estate.

Link to source: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/sep2010/obam-s01.shtml

President Barack Obama’s nationally televised speech from the White House Oval Office Tuesday night was an exercise in cowardice and deceit. It was deceitful to the people of the United States and the entire world in its characterization of the criminal war against Iraq. And it was cowardly in its groveling before the American military.

The address could inspire only disgust and contempt among those who viewed it. Obama, who owed his presidency in large measure to the mass antiwar sentiment of the American people, used the speech to glorify the war that he had mistakenly been seen to oppose.

The most chilling passage came at the end of the 19-minute speech, when Obama declared, “Our troops are the steel in our ship of state,” adding, “And though our nation may be traveling through rough waters, they give us confidence that our course is true.”

It is for this statement, rather than all the double-talk about troop withdrawals, that Obama’s miserable speech deserves to be remembered. It was rhetoric befitting a military-ruled banana republic or a fascist state. The military—not the Constitution, not the will of the people or the country’s ostensibly democratic institutions—constitutes the “steel” in the “ship of state.” Presumably, the democratic rights of the people are so much ballast to be cast overboard as needed.

Link to source: http://911truthnews.com/9-years-later-why-911-truth-still-matters/

On September 10, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld announced that an estimated $2.3 Trillion in Pentagon spending was missing – and unaccounted for. One day later, on 9/11, the story also disappeared, along with any semblances of governmental accountability and journalistic integrity.

In the wake of 9/11, America was a traumatized nation where asking difficult questions was often perceived as unpatriotic and equated with disloyalty.

Forget the fact that $2.3 Trillion equals the GDP of Italy. Forget that the military only spent an estimated $311 billion in the year 2000 – and that approximately 7.5 times that amount had disappeared. We were at war the very next day on 9/11 – and that was all that mattered.

That was the power of 9/11.

And in the years that followed it appeared that no lie was too big, no claim too outrageous, no initiative too insane, to trigger an appropriate response from either the media or the public. Accountability was replaced with blind nationalism and comforting platitudes.

“United We Stand.”

“We Will Never Forget.”

Sadly, nine years after 9/11, we neither stand united nor care enough to remember.

Link to source: http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/08/legislation-for-greater-agribusiness.html

On July 29, 2009, the House passed HR 2749: Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009 "To amend the (1938 as amended) Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to improve the safety of food in the global market, and for other purposes."

An earlier July 2009 article discussed it, accessed through the following link:

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2009/07/hr-2749-agribusiness-empowering-act.html

On March 3, 2009, S. 510: FDA Food Safety Modernization Act was introduced as the Senate's version of the House bill. On December 18, 2009, it cleared committee and was placed on the Senate's Legislative Calendar for consideration. Thus far not addressed, it likely will be and passed in the wake of the egg salmonella scare though, like its companion bill, it's for agribusiness empowerment, not food safety, used as cover to enhance greater industry consolidation at the expense of small farmers and consumers.

Link to source: http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/08/lawsuit-challenges-obama.html

An earlier article addressed the issue, accessed through the following link:

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/08/targeted-assassinations-challenging-us.html

In February, then Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair acknowledged it saying CIA operatives and Special Forces death squads have been authorized to kill US citizens abroad, suspected of terrorist involvement.

Disapproval came from an unlikely source, Hollywood tough guy Chuck Norris in an article titled, "Obama's US Assassination Program? 'A Shortlist of US Citizens Specfically Targeted for Killing?" saying:

It's true, an "abandonment of our Constitution....based on nothing more than" suspicion of terrorist involvement. "That's right. No arrest. No Miranda rights. No due process. No trial. Just a bullet," bomb or slit throat, Washington's new approach along with torture as official policy - justice, American-style under Republicans and Democrats, Obama even more extreme than Bush, the rule of law defunct and defiled, the "land of the free" disgraced, the entire world unsafe.

Enough to arouse the ire of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and ACLU, on August 30, filing a federal lawsuit (Al-Aulaqi v. Obama) challenging America's right to kill US citizens abroad in cold blood "far away from any armed conflict and without charge, trial or judicial process," the way the Obama administration interprets US and international law.

Link to source: http://www.snarke.com/2009/05/sylvia-plaths-cubist-collage-poetry.html

“This is newness—
there’s no getting up
to it by words you know”
—Sylvia Plath,
New Year on Dartmoor

Harold Bloom makes a distinction between the “poet-in-a-poet” and the “person-in-a-poet.” So that Plath’s two early ‘50s collages, “Nine Female Figures” and “Two Women Reading,” can be “seen” and “read” as alternate modes for achieving this “poet-in-a-poet” status—within Plath’s boring tawdry tacky day-to-day “person-in-a-poet” existence.

Both collages are “performances”—toward the Other or the Double Diva that is the true poet which Plath wants to be. Her Journals read like notebooks—meditating on how to achieve her goal. But discursive prose doesn’t do the trick. It takes poetry to make the “poet-in-a-poet” possible. Journal prose is simply “pulp fiction”—when it comes to actualizing the Double.

Plath portrays her Double gradually—as a coming out of the closet into a visible performative existence. “Nine Female Figures” shows how the Double gradually performs itself out of its sketchy collage background—into the more articulated Double in the foreground.

The boxed-in sketchy closetry of "Nine Female Figures” moves from the background to the foreground completed portrait of Plath’s double—uniting both sides of her personality and poetry into a single complete face.

Link to source: http://activistteacher.blogspot.com/2010/08/roundabout-as-conflict-avoidance-versus.html

In the present essay I introduce the general notion of “roundabout” as a mechanism of conflict avoidance used by privileged social justice activists. I then contrast this pseudo-liberation activism with the needed true liberation activism of Malcolm X, which I argue to be consistent with the model of liberation of Freire.

INTRODUCTION

The now familiar concept of “pacifism as pathology” was introduced by Ward Churchill as the central characteristic of First-World middleclass so-called social justice activism. Churchill argued from history that all liberations were leveraged through violence and proposed that pacifism as cowardice was pathology. [1]

Gandhi stated that it was better to practice armed resistance than to use pacifism as an excuse for cowardice [2]. Both men (Churchill and Ghandi) saw acceptance of and self-justification for one’s (legal or circumstantial) slavery as pathology.

Link to source: http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/08/israel-threatens-war-with-lebanon.html

Palestine is belligerently occupied. Threats continue against Iran and Syria as well as Lebanon, specifically Hezbollah, elected partner in the nation's unity government, bogusly designated a US State Department Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), what Israel also calls it, repeating veiled and overt warnings, suggesting violence or an impending attack.

Why not, after so many earlier in 1978, 1982, 1993, 1996, and 2006. Also numerous incidents besides:

-- refusing to comply with UN Security Council Resolution 425 by occupying South Lebanon belligerently and illegally for 18 years until mostly, but not entirely, withdrawing in May 2000 - still holding Sheba Farms, the 14-square mile water-rich land near Syria's Golan, also illegally occupied since 1967; in addition, Ghajar, the Lebanese village bordering Golan;

-- during its occupation, using a proxy Christian South Lebanon Army as enforcer, UNIFIL Blue Helmets giving them and the IDF free reign instead of maintaining peace, how UN forces always operate, as paramilitaries against people they're supposed to protect; and

-- for over 40 years, repeatedly violating Lebanon's territory, often daily, including 12 Israeli jet overflights on August 19.

Link to source: http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/show-me-money-waste-and-fraud-iraq-start

The Associated Press ran an article Sunday that focused on the wasted funds during the US reconstruction efforts in Iraq. There were stories of an unused children's hospital, a prison for 3,600 that will never open, and the diversion of reconstruction funds to pay off Sunni fighters to turn on al Qaeda.

AP failed to mention that the main reason that we have to rebuild Iraq is that the United States government invaded it and destroyed everything it could in a display of shock and awe. Also unmentioned were the unique post invasion strategies of no security for sites like power plants that keep the country running and the dissolution of the 400,000 man army, the main institution that kept order in the country before the invasion. But I digress.

Anyone paying attention should know that financial controls and accountability went out the window from the very first days following the defeat of Saddam Hussein's military.

Henry Kissinger protégé, US Ambassador to Iraq Paul Bremer promised that, "As steward for the Iraqi people, the CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) will manage and spend Iraqi funds, which belong to the Iraqi people, for their benefit. … (the funds) shall be managed in a transparent manner…" in accordance with international law. Aug 19, 2003

Link to source: http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2010/08/30/israel-will-not-choose-to-attack-iran-ha

Adnan Oktar, internationally known by his pen name Harun Yahya, is a Turkish public intellectual, writer and speaker. He is a proponent of Islamic creationism and anti-Zionism. He condemns Zionism and denounces Darwinism as the source of terrorism. He runs the Turkey-based Science Research Foundation and Foundation to Protect National Values. He has written numerous best-selling books including "The Atlas of Creation", "The Muslim Way of Speaking", "Allah's Miracles in the Quran" and "The Errors the American National Academy of Sciences". Yahya's books have been translated in more than 20 languages.

He has been interviewed by several international media outlets, newspapers, TV channels and online magazines including Catholic Radio International, Russia's Pravda, Qatar's Aljazeera, Tehran Times, Saudi Arabia's Arab News and Swedish National Radio.

Here is the complete text of interview with Mr. Yahya in which the latest developments of the Middle East, Israel's war threats against Iran, the prospect of Iran-Turkey relations and the ordeal of Palestinian nation under the Israeli oppression have been discussed.

Link to source: http://venezuelanalysis.com/images/5599?b=1

Sembrando Luz, or “Sowing Light,” is a government anti-poverty program that brings electricity to the country’s most geographically isolated towns by installing solar panels and training the community to use and maintain them. The first phase began in 2007. By the end of 2009, more than 800 systems were installed in 550 communities, along with 110 solar powered water purification systems and 30 water pumps, benefitting an estimated 200,000 people. The second phase began this year in the community of El Quinó and a handful of other Andean towns. To read more about the program, click here. Photos by James Suggett and Sembrando Luz.