Monthly Archives: May 2012

Written by Russ Baker Next year will be a half-century since the death of JFK. And the Obama Administration thinks we need to keep secret the records on the matter….a little longer yet. Believe it or not, more than 50,000 pages of JFK assassination-related documents are being withheld in full. And an untold number of documents have been partially withheld, or released with everything interesting blacked out. But why? Since the government and the big media keep telling us there was no conspiracy, and that it was all Lee Harvey Oswald acting on his own, why continue to keep the wraps on? We don’t have an answer, but in understanding this and any number of other mysteries, we can begin looking for patterns in the way the administration handles information policy. We Want to Hear From You (But That’s It—We Just Want to HearFrom You)

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Written by Chris McGreal for The Guardian UK A federal appeals court has struck down the Defense of Marriage Act – Congress’s key legislation to block gay marriage – as unconstitutional in a ruling that will propel the issue to the Supreme Court. ]

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Why do I hear a Barbara Streisand mock-alike singing a modified refrain of The Way Things Were as I start to type? “Things were so simple then! We claim that every time And if they could screw us once again… Would they? Could they?” (Then Cenk Uygur yelling: “Of coooooooooooooouuuurseeeee!”) Saddam made up BS then invaded Kuwait. Well… caveat: some say we invited him, did a backflip then got outraged after we wink, winked him into thinking it was, “OK.” But let’s stick with the official story for now, though there sure seem to be a hell of a lot of “official” stories that have smelled quite ripe for many, many years now. So, like Hitler and Poland before, and the natives in America before that… (Further song for this mock-musical/movie running in my head: Custer look-alike singing, “And I’ll get to Little Big Horn before ya!”) Saddam invaded to “protect himself” from those who were supposedly planning to attack him.

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Written by Michael Fumento for Salon.com Gosh! When did I end up in bed with Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber? Could it be because I did specialize in blowing things up while serving my country for four years as an airborne combat engineer? I also watched human beings blown up. I had friends andNavy SEALs I was in battle with blown up. My own intestines exploded on the first of my four combat embeds, three in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. Took seven operations to fix the plumbing. I later suffered other permanent injuries.

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Only part II appears here at OEN because part 1 was very local in nature. For part one please go to adirondackexpress.com-OEN Written by Mart Allen for The Adirondack Express   There was a time when every human being lived off the land literally. Millions of people in other cultures still do. Most Americans have to depend on others to grow their food and the rest of life’s necessities. There are however many who pride themselves on being able to sustain themselves to some extent with little or no help from others. There is a certain satisfaction in procuring your staples on your own and, if you are a locavore, gathering them as close to home as possible. The word locavore may throw some of you reading this as it did the spell checker in the Microsoft Word program on my computer. A locavore is anyone who eats food from the local area. It was named the 2007 word of the year in many circles. It is one of the latest green things to hit the scene. It is one of the segments of the green movement everyone can agree on.

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Image courtesy newspitter.com. Written by Frances Robles for McClatchy Newspapers MIAMI – The fight between George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin began with two people huffing and puffing in the dark, and then a brief exchange of bitter words. It wasn’t long before the two were wrestling on the ground, and one of them let out such gut-wrenching howls that several people in the neighborhood thought they might have come from dogs. Witnesses said the tussle grew louder as it made its way up a dark pathway, past several patios, from the concrete back on to grass. From there, witness accounts diverge.

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Image from rawstory.com Written by Charles M. Blow for The NYT “Louisiana is the world’s prison capital. The state imprisons more of its people, per head, than any of its US counterparts. First among Americans means first in the world. Louisiana’s incarceration rate is nearly triple Iran’s, seven times China’s and 10 times Germany’s.” That paragraph opens a devastating eight-part series published this month by The Times-Picayune of New Orleans about how the state’s largely private prison system profits from high incarceration rates and tough sentencing, and how many with the power to curtail the system actually have a financial incentive to perpetuate it. The picture that emerges is one of convicts as chattel and a legal system essentially based on human commodification.

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