by David Ray Griffin

In 2009, I published a little book entitled Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive?1 Much evidence, I showed, suggested that Osama bin Laden had died on or about December 13, 2001. (Although this book was ignored by the US press, it received major reviews in British newspapers,2 and it even provided the basis for a BBC special.3) Pointing out that the only evidence to the contrary consists of “messages from bin Laden” in the form of audiotapes and videotapes that have appeared since 2001, I devoted one chapter to an examination of the most important of these tapes, showing that none are demonstrably authentic and that some are almost certainly fakes.

by Finian Cunningham

Ethan McCord, a former US soldier, has shown great courage and integrity by exposing and condemning US war crimes in Iraq.

McCord’s courage and integrity has nothing to do with his US army training. In fact, his virtue and trenchant humanity is in spite of his US army training which, he says, systematically tried to turn him into a cold-blooded killing machine bereft of any morals or conscience. (1)

by Henry C.K. Liu

The financial crisis that broke out in the United States around the summer of 2007 and crested around the autumn of 2008 had destroyed US$34.4 trillion of wealth globally by March 2009, when the equity markets hit their lowest points.

by Daniel Wagner and Dan Strumpf

NEW YORK – As the U.S. housing turned downward in January 2007, a Goldman Sachs trader wrote in e-mails to a woman he apparently was courting that investments he had sold were “like Frankenstein turning against his own inventor.”

“I’m trading a product which a month ago was worth $100 and today is only worth $93,” wrote Fabrice Tourre, who was charged along with the bank in a civil complaint filed this month by the Securities and Exchange Commission. “That doesn’t seem like a lot but when you take into account … (the investments) are worth billions, well it adds up to a lot of money.”

by Sara Flounders

More than 150 years ago Karl Marx explained that “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle. Patrician and plebian, lord and serf, in a word oppressor and oppressed.” The struggle is an “uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight.” With modern society come “new conditions of oppression and new forms of struggle.”

A fierce struggle has gripped the Catholic Church for the past 25 years as some of the most oppressed survivors of childhood sexual abuse have increasingly demanded an accounting against individual priests and ultimately against the powerful church hierarchy, including bishops and cardinals who consistently protected the abusers.

by Mike Whitney

On Friday, two patrol cars were ambushed by armed gunman in downtown Ciudad Juarez. In the ensuing firefight, seven policemen were killed as well as a 17-year old boy who was caught in the crossfire. All of the assailants escaped uninjured fleeing the crime-scene in three SUVs. The bold attack was executed in broad daylight in one of the busiest areas of the city. According to the Associated Press:

by A Mohit

Thousands of teachers are about to lose jobs in many states. To manage massive budget deficits, several layoff notices were sent out to 22,000 teachers in California, 17,000 in Illinois, and 15,000 in New York. The numbers are expected only to increase in the coming months.

US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan indicated that between 100,000 and 300,000 public education positions in the US are in danger of being terminated. The American Association of School Administrators found in a study that 90 percent of school superintendents plan to cut jobs in the next fall. In addition, please be informed that the mass layoffs have the blessings of Obama administration.

by Rep. Ron Paul

Statement on Motion to Instruct Conferees on HR 2194, Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Divestment Act

April 23, 2010 “United States House of Representatives” — Mr. Speaker I rise in opposition to this motion to instruct House conferees on HR 2194, the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Divestment Act, and I rise in strong opposition again to the underlying bill and to its Senate version as well. I object to this entire push for war on Iran, however it is disguised. Listening to the debate on the Floor on this motion and the underlying bill it feels as if we are back in 2002 all over again: the same falsehoods and distortions used to push the United States into a disastrous and unnecessary one trillion dollar war on Iraq are being trotted out again to lead us to what will likely be an even more disastrous and costly war on Iran. The parallels are astonishing.

by Dr. John Jiggens

It was common during the opening of the Iraq war to see slogans proclaiming “No blood for oil!” The cover story for the war – Saddam’s links with Al Qaida and his weapons of mass destruction – were obvious mass deceptions, hiding a far less palatable imperial agenda. The truth was that Iraq was a major producer of oil and, in our age, the Age of Oil, oil is the most strategic resource of all. For many it was obvious that the real agenda of the war was an imperialistic grab for Iraqi oil. This was confirmed when Iraq’s state-owned oil company was privatised to western interests in the aftermath of the invasion.

by Michael Fumento

Having spread H1N1 swine flu hysteria for nearly a year, the World Health Organization’s “swine flu czar,” Keiji Fukuda, last week finally “fessed up” to agency wrongdoing. But it’s like listening to Enron admitting to a tabulation error. “I think we did not convey the uncertainty” about the risks of the flu strain, he said.

Sorry, but this was no poor communications problem. Indeed, earlier this year Wolfgang Wodarg, an epidemiologist with the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, accused the WHO of creating a “false pandemic” that’s “one of the greatest medicine scandals of the century.”