The Project for the New American Century

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The Project for the New American Century.


The People versus the Powerful is the oldest story in human history. At no point in history have the Powerful wielded so much control. At no point in history has the active and informed involvement of the People, all of them, been more absolutely required.

The Project for the New American Century, or PNAC, is a Washington-based think tank created in 1997. Above all else, PNAC desires and demands one thing:

The establishment of a global American empire to bend the will of all nations.

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The Truth About the 2009 Gaza Massacre

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With the United Nations now acknowledging that Israel's actions in Gaza amounted to war crimes, Obama's video statements of unquestioning support for Israel are in essence a confession that he too is a war criminal.

Please forward and repost this everywhere!

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"Profit Before Justice", Say 30 Republican US Senators

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30 Senators Gang Rape Justice

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Behold, 30 U.S. senators who don't give a damn about battered women

We turn our gaze to the gaping hellmouth that is the U.S. Senate, that drab cauldron of grumpy old men, defeminized women and tiny handful of rebellious dissenters, all of whom claim to have your best interests at heart but mostly only really give a damn about which lobbyist will help them best make their next boat payment.

Do I sound a little bitter? I cannot imagine why. Let us watch the senate and see if we can figure it out.

Look at them shuffle and sneer, hem and haw!

Watch as they willingly eat their own souls with an ice pick and some turpentine, then step up to the media microphones and try to sound ennobled and magnanimous when in fact they only make everyone within earshot feel lost and fatalistic.

So cute.

It's the same old spectacle, isn't it?

There they go, tossing around the health care reform issue like it didn't affect millions of humans every single day, throwing in massive compromises and snags just so the GOP can fellate its pals in the insurance industry and a gaggle of aggrieved Democrats can get their egos fluffed and you still won't be able to get a decent dental plan for your family.

But now, just for fun, let's take it a step further. Or rather, darker.

Let's go ahead and step right onto one of those large, rusty nails sticking up from the senate floor, so painful as to make your stomach turn, a bit of your lunch jump back into your throat.

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Fraudulent Afghan Election Raises Odds Against U.S. “Success”

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Given the eight destructive years of the illegal U.S. occupation in Afghanistan, the indiscriminate bombings, the thousands of innocent people killed, arrested, detained without legal rights, and tortured, the use of polluting radioactive ammunition, the fraudulent election of puppet Karzai (previously a long-time U.S. resident), and the worsening conditions of daily life, plus the tragic losses to American troops stationed there, it ill behooves President Obama to pursue the war President Bush started one day longer.

Afghanistan is now Obama’s War and Obama’s disgrace.

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Limbaugh: I am not racist (but that's not the issue, Rush)

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Rush can pine away all he wants about how he's not a racist but it doesn't matter; a lot of people simply don't believe him, and they have good reason to feel that way.

Are they right? Doesn't matter. Rush has made a career out of making controversial statements and if you live by that sword, sometimes you have to die by it.

It's not about conservatism; as was said elsewhere, if John McCain or Mike Huckabee wanted to buy in on an NFL franchise ownership, no one would bat an eye; Rush has to know this, but on the air (or in print) he's not about to make that concession.

He can't; it wouldn't fit the audience expectation of him as a defender of conservative values and principles.

The irony, of course, is that conservatives like to say they're champions of accountability and that liberals constantly make excuses, constantly place blame on everything and everyone but themselves and their own liberal values and principles.

Yet, here's Rush blaming everyone but himself for his own setback.

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White House "Ordered" Congress to Conceal Torture Photos

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(Photo Illustration: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t, Adapted From: bright-political / flickr)

Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-New York) said in a floor statement that the provision to amend the Freedom of Information Act was stripped from an earlier version of the bill, but the language was quietly reinserted in recent weeks, "apparently under direct orders from the administration."

The Obama administration will likely drop its Supreme Court petition challenging the release of photographs showing US soldiers abusing prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan now that lawmakers are set to pass legislation authorizing the government to continue to keep the images under wraps.

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US anger over 'torture file' ruling

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The future of intelligence sharing between Britain and the US is under threat [claim the US and UK Governments] after judges ruled secret evidence relating to the treatment of a former Guantanamo detainee should be released.

US government officials said they were "not pleased" at a decision to reveal information surrounding the treatment of UK citizen Binyam Mohamed by the CIA.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband said the Government was "deeply disappointed" by the High Court judgment and immediately announced an appeal.

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Sarah Palin’s Nemesis Hits The Gym And Moose Meat For Playgirl Shoot

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Borat believes that outside of his cow "Elsie" and his sister, Sarah is the hottest woman in Kazakhstan. "After I heard about Sarah and lipstick on a pig, I put lipstick on Elsie", commented Borat

How does Levi Johnston keep to the high-protein diet he needs to prepare for a Playgirl photo shoot?

"Moose meat is very good for you, high in protein and very lean," his trainer, Marvin Jones, tells PEOPLE. "He's an avid hunter, so he has his own."

The 19-year-old father of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's grandchild has adopted a 3,500-calorie low-carb diet as part of a grueling regimen to ready him for next month's photo shoot.

Johnston works out three hours a day in the gym, six days a week, followed by cardio training and then a rest in the sauna, says Jones.

"I'm not trying to give him a body builder's look. He's going to be more toned and more defined," says Jones, 46, who plans on training with him until the first or second week of November. "I'd like to see him with rounder and more muscular shoulders, with a fuller chest. We're going to firm his abs up, [and give him a] smaller waist."

Jones says Johnston is committed to the training sessions, which even caused Johnston get sick during his second week of working out.

"I know that's something he wants to do and we're having fun training," says Jones, who is training him in Anchorage, Alaska. "We're looking forward to revealing all his hard work!"

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Cheney, Cheney & Cheney

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Daisy Chain of Cheneys

It’s hard to believe that the Bush dynasty, which limped away in disgrace after smashing our economy and the globe, has spawned another political dynasty.

But Jason Horowitz reported in The Washington Post that Mary Cheney, the younger daughter of the former vice president, is starting a consulting firm modeled on Kissinger Associates.

Since it involves the Cheneys, it’s shrouded in unnecessary secrecy.

But Mary’s friends say her plan is to make it Cheney cubed, bringing in her dad and big sister, Liz, when those two finish cleaning out the Augean stables of Dick Cheney’s legacy for his memoir.

Mary is expecting her second child with her partner, Heather Poe, next month.

The influence-peddling firm will be wildly successful, no doubt, because if anyone has shown a golden touch, it’s Dick Cheney.

And there are bound to be oodles of clients who want coaching on how to make things look totally the opposite of what they are.

Saudis, right-wing dictators and Bernie Madoff calling for image makeovers?

Scooter Libby calling to see how to get his career back after taking the fall for his scheming boss?

Rush Limbaugh calling to strategize about how to buy an N.F.L. team with black players as he says offensive things about blacks?

Rupert Murdoch seeking tips on how to merge Fox and NBC into Brian O’Hannity?

You can hear a receptionist chirping: “Cheney, Cheney & Cheney. Who would you like to target today?”

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Thirty senators vote against rape liability bill

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Click on cartoon to enlarge

The amendment was proposed after Jamie Leigh Jones claimed she was gang raped by her co-workers while working for a contractor in Iraq.

When she attempted to sue her employer KBR, Inc., a subsidiary of Haliburton, she was told that she had to resolve her claim through arbitration.

It would seem that if anything could get bi-partisan support it would be the Franken Anti-Government Contractor Rape Liability bill.

This democratically sponsored bill, which did pass in the Senate 68 to 30, still had 30 senators who could not support it.

And no, it is not because the language of the bill has something sneaky stuck in, it really does what it claims to do and nothing else.

So, why the 30 Republican Nay's, including our fair Senators from Tennessee?

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Louisiana judge denies marriage license to interracial couple

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In a shocking display of prejudice for this day and age, Louisiana state Justice of the Peace Keith Bardwell refused to perform a marriage ceremony or sign a marriage license for an interracial couple on October 15, 2009 (yes, you read that right, 2009).

Bardwell explained that he never performs ceremonies for interracial couples because of his “concern…for the children.”

According to Bardwell, who says he is not a racist, “most interracial marriages don’t last long,” and the biracial children of such a union suffer rejection by both black and white society.

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Israel under pressure over Gaza 'war crimes'

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Israel is under pressure from its Western allies to investigate UN allegations of war crimes in the Gaza Strip.

The US, Britain and France all say the Jewish state should look into findings published last month by a UN mission led by South African jurist Richard Goldstone.

The report accused both Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas of war crimes during the December-January war in Gaza. Both sides have rejected the charges in his report, which is more critical of Israel than Hamas.

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Truthout Interview With Ralph Nader: "Only the Rich Can Save Us"

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Ralph Nader will always be remembered by his critics as the man whose bid for the White House in 2000 gave us eight years of George W. Bush.

The disdain many liberals have for Nader still runs deep nearly a decade later.

But there's no denying the positive impact his activism has had on this country over the past half-century.

Without Ralph Nader there wouldn't be an Environmental Protection Agency, an Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a Consumer Product Safety Commission, a Safe Drinking Water Act and so on.

Recently, I sat down with Nader to discuss his latest doorstopper of a book, "Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us" a fictional account involving real-life public figures, including Warren Buffet, Ted Turner, Yoko Ono and Phil Donahue, who set off to start a progressive revolution using their enormous wealth.

Although fictional, Nader does not refer to this highly readable tome as a novel. Rather, he describes it as a "practical utopia."

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Judge Confirms Detainee Tortured to Make False Confessions

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A declassified ruling by a federal court judge reveals that Fouad al-Rabiah, an innocent Kuwaiti prisoner who was ordered released from Guantanamo three weeks ago, was brutally tortured into making false confessions by US interrogators and repeatedly threatened until he confessed to terrorist activities in which he was not involved.

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The Freaky Science of SuperFreakonomics

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It is still nearly a week before the follow-up to Freakonomics—the award-winning pop economics tome by journalist Stephen Dubner and University of Chicago economics professor Steven Levitt—hits the shelves.

Yet already the book is generating controversy. A chapter on climate change—a new subject for the authors—has attracted the ire of Joe Romm, an outspoken expert on the subject.

But with the provocative title SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance, perhaps that's what the authors intended.

The chapter on climate is titled "What do Al Gore and Mount Pinatubo have in common?".

The author's answer to this quixotic question is that both Gore and Mt. Pinatubo present solutions to global warming—but that Mt. Pinatubo's are better.

Dubner and Levitt conclude that Gore-style proposals to cap carbon emissions are ineffective and prohibitively costly.

But they see the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo—a volcano in the Philippines that spewed 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, lowering average global temperatures by half a Celsius degree for two years—as an example of the best way to combat climate change.

The authors don't advocate blowing up more volcanoes to avert a climate catastrophe, but rather geoengineering a similar result.

The concept of geoengineering—a low cost but high-risk remedy to climate change—is highly controversial.

And a closer reading of the chapter prompts a number of questions about the scientific evidence the authors cite to make their case.

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Did The CIA Have More Motive than Oswald To Kill JFK?

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For the life of me, I still don’t understand what Lee Harvey Oswald’s motive was for killing President John F. Kennedy.

The lone-assassin theorists say that he was a lonely and disgruntled communist sympathizer who sought glory and fame for killing someone as powerful as the president of the United States.

But if that’s the case, why would Oswald deny that he killed the president?

Why would he claim that he was “a patsy,” i.e., someone who had been set up to take the fall?

Why wouldn’t he proudly admit that he had killed the president of the United States?

If he were seeking glory and fame, how would that be achieved through a successful denial of having committed the act?

Moreover, if Oswald intended to deny commission of the offense, I’ve never understood why he would leave such an easy trail behind him, such as the purchase receipt for the Carcano rifle found in the Texas School Book Depository.

If he was going to deny killing the president, wouldn’t he have been better off simply going to a gun shop and purchasing a rifle with cash? There were no background checks back then.

I’m no expert on the Kennedy assassination but it seems to me that many of the things that people point to in support of Oswald’s guilt are also consistent with his having served in a deep undercover role for the CIA or other U.S. intelligence, as many people have alleged.

In fact, early on there were assertions that Oswald was a federal undercover agent.

According to a biographical sketch of Waggoner Carr, the Texas Attorney General who led the investigation in Texas into the assassination and worked with the Warren Commission, “Carr testified that Lee Harvey Oswald was working as an undercover agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and was receiving $200 a month from September 1962 until his death in November, 1963.

However, the Warren Commission preferred to believe J. Edgar Hoover, who denied Carr’s affirmations.”

Yet, the problem is that Hoover could be expected to lie about such an association and thus, his denial is meaningless.

Hunt's Deathbed Confession Reveals JFK Killers

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Nobel jury speaks out in defense of Obama prize

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One judge noted with surprise that President Barack Obama "didn't look particularly happy" at being named the Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Another marveled at how critics could be so patronizing.

In a rare public defense of a process normally shrouded in secrecy, four of the Nobel jury's five judges spoke out this week about a selection they said was both merited and unanimous.

To those who say a Nobel is too much too soon in Obama's young presidency, "We simply disagree ... He got the prize for what he has done," committee chairman Thorbjorn Jagland told The Associated Press.

Jagland singled out Obama's efforts to heal the divide between the West and the Muslim world and scale down a Bush-era proposal for an anti-missile shield in Europe.

"All these things have contributed to — I wouldn't say a safer world — but a world with less tension," he said.

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A Better Job For George Bush

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LAW ABIDING CITIZEN - HD TRAILER

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Sarah Palin Enters the Fourth Dimension

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Just recently, it was announced that Sarah Palin’s new autobiography “Going Rogue: An American Life” would be coming out several months earlier than scheduled. It was also announced that this still unpublished book has hit number one on the bestseller lists. That’s impressive.

…You do still remember who Sarah Palin is, correct? Of course you do. If you don’t, here’s a magazine cover to jog your memory. It features Mrs. Palin herself, looking all sexxxy:

Hey! Sarah Palin… more popular than halibut! Isn’t that a nice magazine cover? Sure it is. “…But wait,” you’re saying to yourself. “I see all of these words together, but they do not make any sense. …Sarah Palin? Alaska? Governor? …I don’t understand. What the zurg?”

Well, good question, you! Except that “zurg” is not a real word, but I forgive you.

See, that magazine cover above is months old. Sarah Palin used to be the governor of a state called Alaska. Then she quit because the Alaskan wind was messing up her hair. If you don’t believe me, you can look up all of this stuff. “…No… no. I believe you. I think I remember… most of that.”

Sarah Palin is no longer the governor of anything. Instead, she is a mere rumor, a wisp, an idea, a thing floating along on the wind.

She embodies contradiction. She’s one of the most famous women in America, but she’s also one of the most invisible. You’ll notice, for instance, that this entire article about Sarah Palin will not contain a single quote from Sarah Palin. Why?

Because Sarah Palin no longer gives interviews, or talks to the media, or to reporters (even though she’s considering running for President¹ in 2012).

Why doesn’t she talk to the media? Because she hates it and she’s bad at it. Wait. …I’m sorry. I just loused up my metaphor there. Why doesn’t Sarah Palin talk to the media? Because she exists, and yet she does not exist. She is everything… and yet she is nothing.

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Obama Administration Accused Again of Concealing Bush-Era Crimes

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Photo Illustration: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted From: penmachine / flickr and hoder / flickr

President Obama promised to usher in a new era of government transparency when he was sworn into office nine months ago.

On January 21, Obama signed an executive order instructing all federal agencies and departments to "adopt a presumption in favor" of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and promised to make the federal government more transparent.

But since that time, the Obama administration has sought to conceal information in several high-profile court cases, in an effort that civil libertarians say amounts to covering up crimes committed by the Bush administration.

Last week, in a federal courthouse in New York, Obama's Justice Department attorneys again argued in favor of secrecy.

The case involved 23 lawyers representing detainees at Guantánamo Bay who alleged in court papers that they were targets of the Bush administration's so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program(TSP), an initiative operated by the National Security Agency (NSA) that Obama called "unlawful and unconstitutional" during his presidential campaign in 2007.

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Credit card companies raise fees before new law

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If you hold a Discover credit card, you're in luck -- the company has decided to freeze interest-rate hikes until a new credit card consumer protection bill takes effect in February.

Chuck and Jeanne Lane of Ohio have excellent credit, but their monthly credit card bill more than doubled.

Bank of America was the first company to freeze its rates. Both moves come after outrage over credit card companies jacking up rates, increasing minimum payments and raising penalty fees before the new consumer protection law -- which would bar sudden increases -- is phased in.

Rep. Betsy Markey, D-Colorado, and 17 other lawmakers sent letters to credit card banks asking them voluntarily to freeze their rates while Congress decides whether to move up the phase-in date for the new law to December.

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Awarding the Third Non-Bush Nobel Prize

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"Take this, Nobel Peace Prize Committee!"

The Nobel Peace Prize awarded to U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday was greeted with astonishment as much as any other emotion, even among many of his admirers.

Our own reaction is bemusement at the Norwegian decision to offer what amounts to the world’s first futures prize in diplomacy, with the Nobel Committee anticipating the heroic concessions that it believes Obama will make to secure treaties that will produce a new era of global serenity.

Maybe he really is The One.

George W. Bush may have retired from public life, but the Europeans want the Yanks to know that they never want to see his likes again.

Counting Jimmy Carter in 2002 and Al Gore in 2007, this is the third Nobel Non-Bush Peace Prize.

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Diet Soda

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