Stephen Lendman

Photo above of Rep. Chaka Fattah, right, watching a woman in
his district receive discounted heating oil from Joseph P. Ken-
nedy II, chairman and president of Citizens Energy Corporation,
as part of the CITGO-Venezuela heating oil program. (AP photo
by Matt Rourke)

On February 23, HR 4646: Debt Free America Act was introduced "To establish a fee on transactions which would eliminate the national debt and replace the income tax on individuals."

Sponsor Representative Chaka Fattah's (D. PA) same day press release said:

The bill offers a "simple new approach to paying off the debt now escalating past" $13.6 trillion as of late October. "The breakthrough legislation proposes a 1 percent fee (on) all payment instruments including cash transactions, checks, credit cards, those processed through the Federal Reserve Bank, and those collected at the point of sale."

"In addition, taxpayers would receive a 1 percent tax credit for gross income up to $250,000 to offset the impact of the fee," supposedly helping middle and lower-earning households. The bill will also establish a Bipartisan Task Force for Responsible Fiscal Action "to control and limit federal spending." Once the debt "is paid down...broad-based tax reform" would follow.

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Ian Cobain

Exclusive: Methods devised in secret in recent years may breach international law

The British military has been training interrogators in techniques that include threats, sensory deprivation and enforced nakedness in an apparent breach of the Geneva conventions, the Guardian has discovered.

Training materials drawn up secretly in recent years tell interrogators they should aim to provoke humiliation, insecurity, disorientation, exhaustion, anxiety and fear in the prisoners they are questioning, and suggest ways in which this can be achieved.

One PowerPoint training aid created in September 2005 tells trainee military interrogators that prisoners should be stripped before they are questioned. "Get them naked," it says. "Keep them naked if they do not follow commands." Another manual prepared around the same time advises the use of blindfolds to put prisoners under pressure.

A manual prepared in April 2008 suggests that "Cpers" – captured personnel – be kept in conditions of physical discomfort and intimidated. Sensory deprivation is lawful, it adds, if there are "valid operational reasons". It also urges enforced nakedness.

More recent training material says blindfolds, earmuffs and plastic handcuffs are essential equipment for military interrogators, and says that while prisoners should be allowed to sleep or rest for eight hours in each 24, they need be permitted only four hours unbroken sleep. It also suggests that interrogators tell prisoners they will be held incommunicado unless they answer questions.

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Glen Ford
Black Agenda Report

What a guy! Barack Obama has neutralized Blacks, the white left, and the majority of his own party in service to Wall Street, and some still call him “liberal” (The insane call him “socialist.”) With Social Security and Medicare in his sights, “the stage is set for a performance of presidential political gymnastics that will make Bill Clinton, once known as the Great Triangulator, bow down to the master.”

“Obama invented the deficit reduction commission as his customized vehicle to subvert his own party’s cherished ‘entitlement’ programs.”

One thing is certain: the corporations will win and civilization will lose on November 2nd. The outcome is foreordained, since the dwindling electoral forces of civilization don’t have enough candidates in contention even to fill an effective caucus.

With 83 nominal members, the Progressive Congressional Caucus is, on paper, the largest of the House ideological groupings, but has been neutered since Barack Obama entered the White House. The Congressional Black Caucus has not been a coherent force for progressive change for most of this century, and now behaves as if lobotomized by the presence of a Black chief executive. Having allowed themselves to be whipped, kicked and scorned by a White House concerned only for the president’s most narrow interests and schemes, “left” Democrats are at their nadir of legislative influence, despite their chairmanships.

Whether the GOP actually wins one or both chambers of Congress or not, the people’s interests are in deep trouble. The most immediate threat looms, not from the Tea Party, which will no doubt have its own little caucus in the next Congress, but from Barack Obama and his President’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. When the right-heavy commission makes its recommendations in early December, the stage will be set for a performance of presidential political gymnastics that will make Bill Clinton, once known as the Great Triangulator, bow down to the master. Barack Obama will triangulate himself.

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