Latest Top Scoops Headlines
Public Address 23 May 2013 - The Messenger God
Thursday, 23 May 2013, 4:02 pm | Public Address
Two weeks from today, on Thursday June 6, I’m hosting one of Auckland Museum’s 2013 LATE series, Gods and Men, with Judge David Harvey, Rosabel Tan of the excellent Pantograph Punch blog and the New Zealand Herald’s switched-on social media editor ... More >>
Lebanon’s Palestinians Are Being Pulled into Syria’s War
Thursday, 23 May 2013, 3:58 pm | Franklin Lamb
Historically, Palestinian refugees, wherever they have sought temporary sanctuary following the ethnic cleansing of their country by the 19th century Zionist colonial enterprise, and pending their return to Palestine, have insisted on avoiding local ... More >>
Martin Doyle cartoon: Hands off our Molotovs
Thursday, 23 May 2013, 1:10 pm | Martin Doyle
Both the Police and the people at the training camps need to come clean [in a non-actionable forum] to the public about just what was going on in the Urewera. In my cartoon, the Maori words say "Don't touch the explosion bottle" [ie Molotov cocktail]. The ... More >>
A Ruling Class vs. Revolutionary Response to Prostitution
Thursday, 23 May 2013, 1:00 pm | John Spritzler
A New York Times article today reports on how the economic misery inflicted on Greeks has forced many into prostitution in order to survive. Here is an excerpt: "With the country heading into the fifth year of economic depression, and unemployment ... More >>
Review: The Nokia 920 Family - part one
Thursday, 23 May 2013, 12:32 pm | Amanda Cropp
My husband and teenage sons claim I’m a techno-phobe which is not entirely fair: I’m not terrified of new technology; I’m just easily bamboozled by it. So when the idea of moving to a smartphone was mooted, I had my reservations, but owning ... More >>
Palestinian Deaths Proportional to Life of 2-State Solution
Thursday, 23 May 2013, 12:22 pm | Dan Lieberman
It is perilous and unbecoming to argue with and contradict the icons of our global society. Those who struggle courageously for the rights of others and speak eloquently with word and deed against war and tyranny deserve praise and comfort. They are beautiful ... More >>
Connecticut Advances Conversion from War to Peace Economy
Thursday, 23 May 2013, 11:19 am | David Swanson
The Connecticut legislature has sent to the governor to sign a bill that would create a commission to develop a plan for, among other things: "the diversification or conversion of defense-related industries with an emphasis on encouraging environmentally-sustainable ... More >>
Talk Nation Radio: Shutting Down the US Chamber of Commerce
Thursday, 23 May 2013, 11:10 am | David Swanson
Carl Gibson is currently engaged in a Green Jobs March from Philadelphia to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C., as part of a campaign called ShutTheChamber.org. You can join the march virtually by uploading a photo on their website, or you can ... More >>
The Government's List of "Anti-Government" People
Thursday, 23 May 2013, 11:07 am | David Swanson
Should the U.S. government be building a list of people whom a stranger has concluded based on as little as a moment's interaction are "anti-government"? Look at this photo of a U.S. Census laptop. There's a box to check if a respondent is reluctant ... More >>
Undernews: May 22, 2013
Thursday, 23 May 2013, 11:02 am | Undernews
The IRS official who first disclosed the service’s targeting of conservative organizations refused to answer questions during a House oversight hearing Wednesday, insisting that she has not broken any laws. More >>
Caution! Common Sense Needed Concerning Jolie
Wednesday, 22 May 2013, 5:29 pm | Debbie Lewis
Where has the common sense in this country gone? People don’t trust the media, yet when the media says something, the people react, instead of first thinking about what is going on. So it is with Angelina Jolie and the whole I-removed-my-breasts-because-I-MIGHT-get-cancer ... More >>
Review: Kon-Tiki, Snitch and Broken
Wednesday, 22 May 2013, 5:27 pm | Funerals and Snakes
Speaking as someone whose taste for adventure doesn’t stretch much further than going to the dairy in the rain, the reckless self-endangerment represented by Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg’s Kon-Tiki was a genuine eye-opener. More >>
Martin Doyle Cartoon: What's The Beef?
Wednesday, 22 May 2013, 4:25 pm | Martin Doyle
The new President of China appears to have put a freeze not just on our beef exports but also on any real dreams the Chinese people had of freedom of speech. More >>
Safe drinking water - an unfinished agenda
Wednesday, 22 May 2013, 3:41 pm | UN ESCAP
Without water there is no life. Clean drinking water and sanitation are basic human rights – essential to life and to all other rights. Lack of access to clean water and sanitation is a silent crisis that destroys livelihoods and claims more lives ... More >>
Be Clear On Housing Issues Nick Smith
Wednesday, 22 May 2013, 3:35 pm | Hugh Pavletich
The reason for getting the Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Surveys underway, with the first edition early 2005, was to illustrate clearly that if housing exceeds 3.0 times annual household income (requiring mortgage loads of ... More >>
Tea Party "Working The Refs" in IRS Scandal
Wednesday, 22 May 2013, 3:22 pm | Bill Berkowitz
Diogenes was a fifth century BC Greek philosopher, and a rather controversial one at that. Also known as Diogenes the Cynic, it is said that he took a vow of poverty and often lived in a barrel. He was a social critic long before social critics became ... More >>
Racism at the Heart of Fight among Buddhists and Muslims
Wednesday, 22 May 2013, 3:14 pm | Richard S. Ehrlich
Buddhists and Muslims are clashing with increasing ferocity in Myanmar, Thailand and Sri Lanka where minority Islamic ethnic groups blame racism by majority Buddhists more than religious intolerance. More >>
Humanitarian Disaster and Political Illusion
Wednesday, 22 May 2013, 3:09 pm | Alon Ben-Meir
The continuing carnage and atrocities sweeping across Syria and the savagery committed against innocent men, women and children defy the most nightmarish dehumanization committed by one against another. A government that slaughters its people and maims ... More >>
My Tea Party 'Taliban' Comment...What is the Lesson Here?
Wednesday, 22 May 2013, 3:06 pm | Julian Bond
I have always suspected that racists didn't like being called out for their racism. Now I have proof. When I told MSNBC's Thomas Roberts on May 14th that the Tea Party was "the Taliban wing of American politics", a firestorm erupted. More >>
Assault on Wall Street – A Review
Wednesday, 22 May 2013, 2:51 pm | Michael Collins
Assault on Wall Street glorifies the revenge killing of Wall Street big wigs by a seemingly decent man who lost everything, including his wife, due to the manipulation and fraud of those he gunned down. More >>
The Real Deal: Make Way for Killers & the Tax Haven Round Up
Wednesday, 22 May 2013, 1:04 pm | Catherine Austin Fitts
There are no scandals in Washington. There is simply a turnover. We are preparing for an escalation of the global financial war. The old team are simply being told to step aside. Make way for the killers. More >>
Solari Update: Coming Clean: The Geopolitics of Water
Wednesday, 22 May 2013, 12:54 pm | Catherine Austin Fitts
This week on The Solari Report I will be speaking to Terje Tvedt. I could not be more delighted that Tvedt has agreed to join us. The power and importance of water to the question of how we govern our resources - whether in a community or globally ... More >>
The Mining Myth: Sustainability and Development
Wednesday, 22 May 2013, 12:48 pm | Binoy Kampmark
It has been a fiction that has held sway for a time. Mining booms create trickledown wealth. It is tagged as “sustainable” when it is premised on temporariness. Natural resources work for countries that possess them in abundance. More >>
Jump Off the Treadmill of Defeat!
Wednesday, 22 May 2013, 12:10 pm | John Spritzler
Americans are on a treadmill of defeat. That's why things are getting worse, not better. Working class and "middle class" Baby Boomer parents know that things are getting worse. They know that that life is a lot harder today for their children ... More >>
CIA: An Idea Whose Time Has Gone
Wednesday, 22 May 2013, 12:02 pm | David Swanson
There's a contradiction built into every campaign promise about transparent government beyond the failure to keep the promises. Our government is, in significant portion, made up of secret operations, operations that include warmaking, kidnapping, torture, ... More >>
US-New Zealand Council Pacific Partnership Forum - Photos
Wednesday, 22 May 2013, 10:35 am | Connie Lawn with Charles Sneiderman
For many people, New Zealand is front and center in Washington for a few days. The Pacific Partnership Forum is underway, headed by William Maroni, President of the US - NZ Council; NZ Ambassador Mike Moore, and others. It promotes greater trade ... More >>
Bridges to safety
Tuesday, 21 May 2013, 2:08 pm | Martin Doyle
Let us hope that Simon Bridges' new safety agency is more than just window dressing, because the casualty list in our workplaces (released by CTU's Helen Kelly) is crying out for action. More >>
Gordon Campbell: Govt tramples on rights of family carers
Tuesday, 21 May 2013, 11:17 am | Gordon Campbell
Don’t want to be unduly alarmist about this, but we seem to have an outlaw government on our hands – if by that we mean a government willing to suspend the ability of citizens to seek the courts’ protection if and when the government violates freedoms ... More >>
A Global Fair Deal On Copyright, OurFairDeal.org | 500 Words
Tuesday, 21 May 2013, 10:52 am | Alastair Thompson
Yesterday I participated in the launch of OurFairDeal.org a new website home for global citizens coalition around the issue of copyright as it pertains to the internet. More >>
UN General Assembly Vote - Shift in Syrian Public Opinion
Tuesday, 21 May 2013, 10:52 am | Franklin Lamb
It’s not hard to find critics of the Assad government in the Governorate (Muhafazat) of Homs or for that matter, to varying degrees in Syria’s other thirteen Governorates according to Syrian analysts interviewed by this observer and reports from human ... More >>
The Goodman Affair: Monsanto Targets the Heart of Science
Tuesday, 21 May 2013, 10:44 am | Claire Robinson and Jonathan Latham
Richard Smith, former editor of the British Medical Journal, has jested that instead of scientific peer review, its rival The Lancet had a system of throwing a pile of papers down the stairs and publishing those that reached the bottom. More >>
PM Post-Cabinet Press Conference - 20 May 2013
Monday, 20 May 2013, 6:08 pm | Hamish Cardwell
Budget 2013 | Holdup on Meat Exports to China | Family Carers. More >>
Citizens for Legitimate Government: 19 May 2013
Monday, 20 May 2013, 1:00 pm | Citizens for Legitimate Government
The Pentagon's chief of irregular warfare still sees a war against al-Qaida that will last decades, all over the world -- a prospect that prompted astonishment and constitutional debate in the Senate. Asked at a Senate hearing today how long the ... More >>
Standing Tall for Landowner Rights
Monday, 20 May 2013, 12:21 pm | Walter Brasch
Julia Trigg Crawford of Direct, Texas, is the manager of a 650-acre farm that her grandfather first bought in 1948. The farm produces mostly corn, wheat, and soy. On its north border is the Red River; to the west is the Bois d’Arc Creek. More >>
Last Chance – Stop Florida’s HB 87 and ForeclosureGate II
Monday, 20 May 2013, 12:16 pm | Michael Collins
Florida Governor Rick Scott may have just one more day to veto Florida’s big-bank friendly foreclosure act, HB 87. Nearly 1,200 Floridians have signed the Veto Florida’s Foreclosure Act Petition, despite indifferent coverage by Florida’s mainstream ... More >>
Call to improve asthma care and control
Monday, 20 May 2013, 11:59 am | Citizen News Service
When there are evidence-based methods to control asthma effectively, then why is the disease burden growing over the past 30 years, particularly in the low- and middle-income countries? More >>
Parliament Sits On Saturday Morning
Saturday, 18 May 2013, 9:16 am | ParliamentToday.co.nz
The House resumed at 9am on Saturday to debate the last clauses of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill ’s committee stage. More >>
To The Midnight Hour
Friday, 17 May 2013, 7:22 pm | ParliamentToday.co.nz
The House sat into Friday evening under Urgency rules and looks set to come back on Saturday morning. More >>
San Onofre at the No Nukes Brink
Friday, 17 May 2013, 5:26 pm | Harvey Wasserman
In January, it seemed the restart of San Onofre Unit 2 would be a corporate cake walk. With its massive money and clout, Southern California Edison was ready to ram through a license exception for a reactor whose botched $770 million steam generator ... More >>
Israel's racist and ethnocentric view
Friday, 17 May 2013, 5:21 pm | Jamal Kanj
Palestinians are this week commemorating the 65th anniversary of Al Nakba (the disaster). On May 15, 1948, Israel was declared a nation on the ruins of more than 500 townships and 800,000 expelled Palestinians. More >>
No Koch News: A Movement to Unsubscribe
Friday, 17 May 2013, 5:17 pm | David Swanson
After years of mismanagement, the Tribune Company newspapers -- including the Chicago Tribune and L.A. Times -- are up for sale. And one of the potential buyers? The Koch brothers. And wow are people outraged! More >>
Drone Pilots Expose Politicians' Lies
Friday, 17 May 2013, 5:10 pm | David Swanson
Our elected and unelected officials tell us that drone strikes target top level enemies of the United States who are imminent threats to us, and that killing innocent people is avoided altogether or minimized. More >>
Hit and Stay
Friday, 17 May 2013, 5:04 pm | David Swanson
The CIA has been so busy consulting on Zero Dark Thirty, not to mention funding Hamid Karzai, bribing Russians, lying about weapons, and conducting humanitarian drone murders, that it didn't have any time at all to help out with Hit and Stay, and yet ... More >>
MPs Briefed On United Nations
Friday, 17 May 2013, 3:52 pm | ParliamentToday.co.nz
The Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee receives a briefing on UN reform and NZ's bid for a security council seat. More >>
Busy Week – Budget, Bills And Blue
Friday, 17 May 2013, 3:02 pm | ParliamentToday.co.nz
** ParliamentToday.co.nz is a breaking news source for New Zealand parliamentary business featuring broadcast daily news reports. More >>
Public Address 15 May 2013 - Introducing David Herkt
Friday, 17 May 2013, 11:45 am | Public Address
Like almost everyone in the Western world, I remember 9/11 vividly. I woke in the morning to the rolling TV coverage and the collapse of the Twin Towers on repeat. Terrorism met the Age of Spectacle in a purpose-planned event. More >>
Comie Lawn: Obama's Rain Press Conference With Turkish PM
Friday, 17 May 2013, 11:31 am | Connie Lawn
It rained on President Obama's rose garden news conference with the Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan. It was a fitting end to a very hard week for the President. Connie Lawn sends an audio report. More >>
Gordon Campbell on the 2013 Budget
Friday, 17 May 2013, 10:33 am | Gordon Campbell
The Budget lockup retains a symbolic value these days, but little more than that. This is the government’s best annual opportunity to bury its usual screw-ups and regale the public with power-pointed examples of its vision, shrewd thrift and judicious ... More >>
Parliament Resumes To Pass Budgets Bills
Friday, 17 May 2013, 9:14 am | ParliamentToday.co.nz
The House resumed on Friday under Urgency rules to debate a number of Budget related bills. More >>
Urgency Progress
Thursday, 16 May 2013, 9:03 pm | ParliamentToday.co.nz
A bill to fast track land supply particularly aimed at increasing Auckland’s housing supply has progressed under Urgency. More >>
Urgency Motion
Thursday, 16 May 2013, 5:39 pm | ParliamentToday.co.nz
The House went into urgency to debate Budget related legislation ranging from increasing petrol prices through to increasing land supply for housing in Auckland. More >>
Bill English’s Fifth Budget And Debate In Reply
Thursday, 16 May 2013, 5:05 pm | ParliamentToday.co.nz
** ParliamentToday.co.nz is a breaking news source for New Zealand parliamentary business featuring broadcast daily news reports. More >>
House Goes Into Urgency
Thursday, 16 May 2013, 4:59 pm | ParliamentToday.co.nz
The House has gone into urgency to debate Budget related legislation ranging from increasing petrol prices through to increasing land supply for housing in Auckland. More >>
Scoop Coverage of Budget Day 2013
Thursday, 16 May 2013, 4:24 pm | The Scoop Team
As always and especially after the managerial mishaps of the past few weeks and months, (e.g. Aaron Gilmore, the Mighty River Power share float, the GCSB mishaps) Budget Day 2013 was always going to be a pageant of reassurance. A promise that austerity ... More >>
Budget And Bills
Thursday, 16 May 2013, 2:03 pm | ParliamentToday.co.nz
Report from the Controller and Auditor-General, Central government: Result of the 2011/12 audits by the Finance and Expenditure Committee More >>
Budget Day And Urgency
Thursday, 16 May 2013, 10:13 am | ParliamentToday.co.nz
Budget 2013 will be delivered in the House on Thursday 16 May, after 2 p.m. More >>
Members Bills Progress, Blue Says Goodbye
Wednesday, 15 May 2013, 6:03 pm | ParliamentToday.co.nz
Todd McClay, who sponsored the Prohibition of Gang Insignia in Government Premises Bill , said gangs were a scourge on society and changes made in select committee would mean the ban on gang insignia would now include every school. More >>
Without Russia, World War II Goes On
Wednesday, 15 May 2013, 5:07 pm | John Stanton
Most Americans are ignorant of Russia’s incredible contribution to the defeat of Nazi Germany and Japan. Americans can barely remember the details of World War II and worse still they do not want to be bothered with more than a cursory review of ... More >>
United States: How Your Town Can Stop Drones
Wednesday, 15 May 2013, 4:56 pm | David Swanson
Local resolutions have helped advance many issues, including war opposition, when they've been passed in large numbers. When we passed a resolution in Charlottesville, Va., last year opposing any attack on Iran, I heard from numerous cities that wanted ... More >>
Fall and Rise of Khan: Pakistan General Elections 2013
Wednesday, 15 May 2013, 4:46 pm | Dr. Muhammad Aslam Khan
Empires rose and fell in the history but none fell before the rise. The empire (a metaphor) characterised by his appeal to the masses’ passion rather than territories that is christened by (Imran) Khan, a cricketer turned philanthropist and later a ... More >>



