"–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government,… organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." ~The Declaration of Independence

How many more lies must we listen to? How many more political scandals must we endure? How many more of our young people have to be grievously wounded or die in unnecessary and illegal wars, and how many more trillions of dollars in economic waste must we clean up before we are sickened enough to demand effective changes in our government?

[Ed. note: With this post we're taking a hiatus for a few days; we'll be back...]

Return to Trickle Down
Bailing Out Wall Street Won't Save Main Street
By MOSHE ADLER

Wall Street must be saved for the sake of Main Street, Secretary Paulson and Chairman Bernanke tell us. First, everyone has toxic financial instruments in their 401k's; and second, these instruments are clogging the credit system. But in fact neither claim is true.

The first claim is not true simply because the majority of Americans don't have any retirement accounts at all. And the claim that the credit system is clogged is not true because there is no object that can be removed in order to clear it. What is true is that the securities that Wall Street invented are toxic. But this is precisely why they should remain where they belong, in the vaults of those who created and pushed them. Otherwise they will poison the rest of us, the poorest among us the most. The government can and should stave off the increase in unemployment, but the only way the government can accomplish this is by hiring workers itself. A bailout will make matters worse.

ECONOMY-US: National Protests Erupt Over Bailout Plan
By Haider Rizvi

NEW YORK, Sep 25 (IPS) - The George W. Bush administration's plan to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to rescue giant Wall Street firms from their current financial meltdown has unleashed a spontaneous wave of protests across the United States.

"Cash for trash," shouted activists who gathered near Wall Street to express their outrage at Bush's proposal to buy bad debts of financial institutions at the cost of 700 billion dollars of taxpayer money.

Shame on Us
The U.S. War on Unarmed Working Mothers
By BILL QUIGLEY

Is this what our nation has come to? War against unarmed working mothers? Have we no shame?

Dozens of petite young mothers gathered this week in the parking lot outside the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in Mississippi. Each wore a long dress or pants to hide their electronic ankle bracelets. Lift up a pants leg and you can see the black plastic band and monitor which is the size of a pack of cigarettes. Most wore sandals. Several were obviously pregnant.

Dichter: Jewish terrorists tried to murder Professor Zeev Sternhell
By Haaretz Correspondent and Agencies, By Jonathan Lis

Israel Prize winner Zeev Sternhell was lightly injured yesterday when a pipe bomb exploded outside his home in Jerusalem, in what police suspect could be a new campaign by right-wing extremists to target prominent left-wingers.

Public Security Minister Avi Dichter called the incident "a nationalist terror attack apparently perpetrated by Jews" and said the police would not rest until "those terrorists" were behind bars.

"We should see the explosive as aimed at killing," Dichter said, adding that the attack "takes us back to the days of [Prime Minister Yitzhak] Rabin's assassination."

Scientists warn US Congress of cancer risk for cell phone use

The potential link between mobile telephones and brain cancer could be similar to the link between lung cancer and smoking -- something tobacco companies took 50 years to recognize, according to US scientists' warning.

Scientists are currently split on the level of danger the biological effects of the magnetic field emitted by cellular telephones poses to humans.

However, society "must not repeat the situation we had with the relationship between smoking and lung cancer where we ... waited until every 'i' was dotted and 't' was crossed before warnings were issued," said David Carpenter, director of the Institute of Health and Environment at the University of Albany, in testimony before a subcommittee of the US House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Reform.

Has the U.S. won in Iraq?
The media-perpetuated image of peace and stability in Iraq hides deeper conflicts.
by Anthony Arnove

IF YOU'VE turned on the news lately, you probably heard a prominent politician exclaiming, "The surge...succeeded beyond our wildest dreams."

John McCain? George Bush? Sarah Palin? Dick Cheney?

No. Barack Obama.

Speaking on Fox News, Obama was at pains to find common ground with host Bill O'Reilly, the network's reactionary frontman, even if it meant ceding enormous ground to his opponent, John McCain, and George Bush, both of them advocates of the surge strategy in Iraq.

The plot unravels

The Bush administration and congressional Democrats are agreed on a bank-robbery-in-reverse to bail out the titans of Wall Street--but the Republican free-market madmen are getting in the way.

BY DAY, it looked like an honorable agreement among thieves--Democratic and Republican lawmakers joining together over a White House conference table to hammer out the basic points of a $700 billion bailout of the Wall Street financial system at the expense of the vast majority of Americans.

Chrysler 1979: Lessons from an early corporate “bailout”
By Tom Eley

In 1979, Chrysler Corporation, the third largest US automaker, hovered on the verge of collapse, a victim of sharply declining revenue and cash-on-hand that had reached the level of threatening daily operations. In August 1979, President Jimmy Carter’s Treasury Secretary, G. William Miller, proposed a government intervention in the form of $1.5 billion in guaranteed loans. The sum was considered an astonishing total. It was by far the largest government bailout in US history. On September 7, 1979 Chrysler formally petitioned the US government for the loans, and on December 20, 1979 Congress ratified the appropriation in the “Chrysler Corporation Loan Guarantee Act,” which Carter subsequently signed into law.

The Big Bank Job
The Insanity of the $700 Billion Giveaway
By MICHAEL HUDSON

The banksters’ plan now is for icing on the cake – to take Mr. Paulson’s $700 billion and run. It’s not a “bailout of the financial system.” It’s as giveaway – to insiders, to sell out all their bad bets. Companies across the board will get rid of their bad mortgages, and also their bad car loans, furniture time payments, credit-card loans, student loans – all the debts that any competent actuary could have told them never could have been paid in the first place.

America Pays the Piper, Big Time
By Robert Parry

After a 28-year binge of drunken optimism and blind nationalism – often punctuated by chants of “USA, USA!” and “We’re No. 1!” – Americans are waking up with a painful hangover, facing a grim “morning in America,” not the happy vision that Ronald Reagan famously sold them on.

As the United States begins to assess how the nation got into its trillion-dollar bailout mess, a true understanding must go back three decades or so when Reagan deployed his well-honed communications skills and the Republican Right mastered the dark arts of propaganda to get the American people to shed the annoying strictures of rationality.

How much will drilling offshore accomplish? This illustrates what is to be gained:

[Ed. note: We are clearly at the beginning of the end of the US empire. If foreign investors do not fund our wars and consumption, the Pentagon budget must be slashed and we can "look forward" to steep declines in our standard of living. Update: It's now reported this is not true.]

China banks told to halt lending to US banks-SCMP

[Ed. note: Could this lead to "Curing the Therapeutic State"?]

Doctors told to curb use of Ritalin in hyperactive children
by Mark Henderson

Children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) should be treated with drugs such as Ritalin only in severe cases and never when they are younger than 5, under official health guidelines issued today.

Widespread concerns that medication is used too freely to calm hyperactive children have been recognised by two clinical practice watchdogs, which are now advising doctors not to prescribe drugs whenever possible.

[Ed. note: In other words, your tax dollars are going to pay to deploy your army against you and your neighbors.]

Army deploys combat unit in US for possible civil unrest
By Bill Van Auken

For the first time ever, the US military is deploying an active duty regular Army combat unit for full-time use inside the United States to deal with emergencies, including potential civil unrest.

Beginning on October 1, the First Brigade Combat Team of the Third Division will be placed under the command of US Army North, the Army’s component of the Pentagon’s Northern Command (NorthCom), which was created in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks with the stated mission of defending the US “homeland” and aiding federal, state and local authorities.

The unit—known as the “Raiders”—is among the Army’s most “blooded.” It has spent nearly three out of the last five years deployed in Iraq, leading the assault on Baghdad in 2003 and carrying out house-to-house combat in the suppression of resistance in the city of Ramadi. It was the first brigade combat team to be sent to Iraq three times.

No Bailout for Ailing Peace Corps
by William Fisher

As the U.S. government continues its planning for a 700-billion-dollar bailout of the financial sector, the Peace Corps -- one of the United States' most successful foreign policy programmes -- is being cut back due to a budget shortfall of 18 million dollars.

In 2001, President George W. Bush announced he would double the size of the Peace Corps by fiscal 2007, to 14,000 volunteers. But the popular programme is currently some 6,000 volunteers short of that goal, and budgetary problems are forcing it to eliminate 400 new volunteers as well as postponing -- in some cases, indefinitely -- the deployment of volunteers already approved.

Why Thabo Mbeki was ousted

South African President Thabo Mbeki's resignation follows months of political turmoil in which Mbeki unsuccessfully sought to keep his main rival, Jacob Zuma, from taking over as head of the ruling African National Congress (ANC).

Mbeki was forced to resign as president by the ANC's National Executive Committee after a court found that government prosecutors mishandled their case against the ANC leader Zuma, who is accused of corruption in a $3.7 billion weapons contract involving South African and several European companies. (Zuma has also been tried for rape; he was acquitted in 2006.)

CAUCASUS: Media Guilty as 'Fog of War' Clears
By Catherine Makino

As the ‘fog of war’ clears over the Caucasus and the United Nations prepares to set up peace missions in Abhkazia and South Ossetia, what stands out is the apparently partisan role played by Western media in last month’s five-day armed conflict.

"I am surprised at how powerful the propaganda machine of the so-called West is. This is awesome! Amazing!" Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was quoted by the Interfax agency as saying on Thursday, while addressing Russia experts gathered at Sochi town for a meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club.

[Ed. note: Despite the humor, remember: any person can be arrested and charged with anything in the so-called "land of the free." Are you going to tolerate it or start demanding your rights?]

West Virginia Man Charged with Assaulting an Officer

A man arrested for driving under the influence in West Virginia got himself into a lot more trouble later at the police station.

Jose Cruz was pulled over Monday night on Route 60 in South Charleston for driving with his headlights off. He was subsequently arrested after failing a series of sobriety tests, according to WSAZ TV in Charleston.

OPINION: The Rosenberg case revisited: heroes and betrayers
Author: Susan Webb

The ugly days of the 1950s witchhunts returned to the headlines this month, hitting me in a very personal way.

Transcripts of grand jury testimony in the Ethel and Julius Rosenberg case were released to the public Sept. 11 following a lawsuit by the independent National Security Archive and a coalition of historians. The transcripts reveal that the claims used to convict Ethel — and thereby send the couple, parents of two young children, to the electric chair — were nowhere to be found in the original testimony.