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For 50 years defenders of the Warren Report have claimed that JFK conspiracy theorists simply cannot accept that a little man killed a great man.

Really?

Let’s see now. John Lennon was a great man. Oh sure, he was monitored and spied on by the U.S. national-security state but that was only because national-security state officials were convinced that anyone who opposed what the national-security state was doing during the Cold War was a communist or communist sympathizer and part of the world-wide communist conspiracy to take over the United States, not to mention, of course, a grave threat to “national security.”

Yet, despite how the national-security state viewed Lennon, most everyone would agree, I think, that Lennon was great man and that his assassin, a man named Mark David Chapman, was a little man.

Yet, I don’t see a huge number of people saying that Lennon was the victim of the U.S. national-security state and that Chapman was nothing more than a “patsy” for the assassination. In fact, I don’t see many assassination researchers saying that about the assassination attempts against Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford.
Thanksgiving Day — a day of family gatherings to give thanks for our many blessings — has evolved into a day of turkey and football, as the NFL’s Thanksgiving Day rivalries fill the TV. Now, it threatens to be taken over by a shopping spree. This year, Wal-Mart has announced it will open its stores at 6 p.m. on Thursday to begin its “Black Friday” sales. Macy’s, Target, Kmart and others are all moving up their opening times on Thursday. Suddenly, Thanksgiving dinner itself is at risk.

This lust for stuff is a stark contradiction to the origins of Thanksgiving. Days of thanksgiving were celebrated in England from the 1500s as part of the Protestant Reformation. This country traces a thanksgiving feast back most famously to 1621, when the Puritans in Plymouth Colony gave thanks for a bountiful harvest. In 1789, President George Washington issued the first national proclamation declaring a day of “thanksgiving and prayer.”

What goes around comes around . . . and around, and around.

Last month, the day after I left Santa Rosa, Calif., a 13-year-old boy carrying a toy replica of an AK-47 was shot and killed on the outskirts of that town by a Sonoma County deputy sheriff with a reputation for being trigger-happy. The officer had ordered the boy to drop the “gun,” then in a matter of two or three seconds opened fire, giving him no chance to comply.

This is not an isolated incident, which is why it’s yet one more tragedy I can’t get out of my mind — one more logical consequence of the simplistic militarism and mission creep that’s eating us alive. This is gun culture running unchecked from boyhood to manhood, permeating national policy both geopolitically and domestically. This is the trivialization of peace. It results in the ongoing murder of the innocent, both at home and abroad, at the hands of government as well as criminals and terrorists.

More than ever, Israel is isolated from world opinion and the squishy entity known as “the international community.” The Israeli government keeps condemning the Iran nuclear deal, by any rational standard a positive step away from the threat of catastrophic war.

In the short run, the belligerent responses from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are bound to play badly in most of the U.S. media. But Netanyahu and the forces he represents have only begun to fight. They want war on Iran, and they are determined to exercise their political muscle that has long extended through most of the Washington establishment.

While it’s unlikely that such muscle can undo the initial six-month nuclear deal reached with Iran last weekend, efforts are already underway to damage and destroy the negotiations down the road. On Capitol Hill the attacks are most intense from Republicans, and some leading Democrats have also sniped at the agreement reached in Geneva.

Hello Everyone,
We have yet to get a response from the UN on our petitions. We'll continue gathering signatures until we do. Our request that Tepco be replaced by a global team is more urgent than ever.

Why? Because news from Fukushima & the Pacific continues to worsen. Please look at the on-going coverage as linked at Nuke Free.

Tepco has brought down some unused fuel rods from Unit 4. Next come those that were exposed. Remember that Units Three, Two & One may have even worse problems.

The whole world is trying to watch....so Tepco has complained that the media is actually photographing their operations! With a state secrets act on its way, we anticipate a formal crackdown. Tepco wants to open four other reactors in Japan and pursues overseas investments while toying with the fate of the Earth at Fukushima.

NILES, Ohio — Two Youngstown community members were arrested today at a nonviolent protest of an injection well, which was attended by about 50 protesters from around Ohio and Pennsylvania. The two protesters who were arrested stood in front of the well gate and blocked trucks from entering, holding a sign that read “Fracking Hurts Communities.” Meanwhile, the rest of the protesters participated in a spiritual ceremony led by Reverend Monica Beasley-Martin. The well where the protests took place is the first in the Niles area; it is less than a mile from the downtown areas.

On the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F Kennedy, the airwaves are awash with coverage which is contradictory, confusing, and dishonest. It is clear that President Kennedy was killed by the National Security State (CIA and Pentagon). The assassination marked the rise of the military industrial complex, the American Empire and the permanent warfare state.

This fact is highly troubling for Americans who have not studied the political assassinations of the 1960's nor the many subsequent crimes perpetuated by the National Security State since 1963. People want to trust their government.

As news seeped out that American troops could be stationed in Afghanistan through the year 2024 “and beyond,” questions began to proliferate toward the Obama administration. Over the course of a couple years the mantra has been that America’s presence in Iraq is over and the U.S. footprint in Afghanistan is fading away. With these recent revelations stemming from Afghanistan that speak directly to the contrary, this narrative is now on trial. Further, if the reaction from the State Department is any indication, then we are in store for a very confusing trial.

Indeed, the amount of confusion has become so great between the U.S. and Afghanistan that the words of Afghan President Karzai are now apparently unreliable. Karzai reportedly said in a recent private meeting that he wishes to have the next president of Afghanistan sign the Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA), as opposed to himself. The position of the U.S., in the meantime, has always been to have the BSA signed and completed by the year’s end. Since the Afghan election would make such an American aim impossible, this puts the Obama administration in a bind to say the least.

In Switzerland a petition from 100,000 people, or about 1.25% of the population, creates a public referendum. By this means, last March, Swiss voters created strict limits on executive pay.

On November 24, the Swiss will vote on whether to take a further step -- limiting executive pay to no more than 12 times the lowest salary in the company. Such a maximum wage policy allows the CEO pay increases, but only if workers get at least a twelfth as much.

A movement in the U.S. is asking: If Switzerland can do it, why can't we?

The Swiss are also set to vote, on a date yet to be set, to create a guaranteed basic income of $2,800 (2,500 Swiss francs) per month for every adult. That's about $16 per hour for a full-time worker, but it's guaranteed even for those who can't find work.

You know what country can afford such a measure even more easily, given its vast supplies of wealth? The United States of America.

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