Yes, there is a class war, Warren Buffett once said, and my class is winning. The IRS study of taxes paid in 2007 makes his point. The top 1% of taxpayers averaged about $138 million in income, and paid taxes at a rate of 16.6%. As Buffett says, their secretaries pay a higher rate. COTO Report: The Economic Elite Have Engineered an Extraordinary Coup, Threatening the Very Existence of the Middle Class. AWIP/Stephen Lendman: Selling Out America to Wall Street.

Foreign and Afghan quisling forces have taken no pains to avoid civilian casualties in the operation. Civilian deaths and injuries during the Afghan war during airstrikes, raids and so-called "escalation of force" confrontations at checkpoints have undermined NATO efforts to get Afghans on their side. CBS "News": Marines Under Sniper Fire.

US states are imposing major cuts to Medicaid, the health insurance program for low income Americans jointly funded with the federal government. The cuts are being enacted in response to huge budget deficits in states throughout the country and a sharp increase in enrollment fuelled by the unemployment crisis.

This photo evokes so much of what I love about Uzbekistan and its people. Unfortunately it is not the officially approved image of Gulnara Karimova's shiny new conference centres and resorts. The photographer, Umida Akhmedova, has therefore been charged with "Defaming Uzbekistan". It carries a potential 6 year prison sentence. The offence cited is publishing these photographs, and making a short documentary film critical of the traditional custom that girls have to prove their virginity on their wedding day.

Obama's envoy Richard Holbrooke is currently visiting Tashkent to agree new military cooperation agreements between the Karimov regime and the USA. To help the campaign for Umida and other political prisoners in Uzbekistan, please contact Amnesty International. Abolish Torture: Please support Uzbek photographer Umida Akhmedova, who has been charged with defamation for publishing photos of the everyday lives of the Uzbek people. AWIP/IPWRStaff: Uzbek Authorities Move Against Top Photographer.

Report for the UN into the activities of the world's 3,000 biggest companies estimates one-third of profits would be lost if firms were forced to pay for use, loss and damage of environment. The cost of pollution and other damage to the natural environment caused by the world's biggest companies would wipe out more than one-third of their profits if they were held financially accountable, a major unpublished study for the United Nations has found. The report comes amid growing concern that no one is made to pay for most of the use, loss and damage of the environment, which is reaching crisis proportions in the form of pollution and the rapid loss of freshwater, fisheries and fertile soils.

“Climate changes are proven fact’’ is more advocacy than assessment. Vague terms such as “consistent with,’’ “probably,’’ and “potentially’’ hardly change this. Certainly climate change is real; it occurs all the time. To claim that the little we’ve seen is larger than any change we “have been able to discern’’ for a thousand years is disingenuous. Panels of the National Academy of Sciences and Congress have concluded that the methods used to claim this cannot be used for more than 400 years, if at all. Even the head of the deservedly maligned Climatic Research Unit acknowledges that the medieval period may well have been warmer than the present.

The Environmental Protection Agency, responding complaints about its December findings about the threat of greenhouse gases, issued a statement Friday saying that the "science is settled" and "greenhouse gases pose a real threat to the American people." The statement comes after after Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli filed a petition with the EPA and a challenge in federal appeals court over the EPA's conclusions. With climate scientists in the hot seat recently over an e-mail scandal and mistakes in a prominent U.N. report, Cuccinelli argues the EPA should "restart the process and this time use rigorous, defensible science." Daily Telegraph: Climategate: the official cover-up continues: If there’s one thing that stinks even more than Climategate, it’s the attempts we’re seeing everywhere from the IPCC and Penn State University to the BBC to pretend that nothing seriously bad has happened, that “the science” is still “settled”, and that it’s perfectly OK for the authorities go on throwing loads more of our money at a problem that doesn’t exist.

After he was fired from the teaching post he had held for many years, Ward Churchill sued the University and its Board of Regents alleging that he was unconstitutionally terminated because of a controversial and unpopular essay he had written concerning the events on September 11. In April 2009, a jury agreed that Churchill was fired for expressing his personal opinions, which is a clear violation of his First Amendment rights. However, a judge denied Churchill’s petition to be reinstated to his job, essentially denying him any relief for the blatant denial of his rights. Churchill is appealing that decision to the Colorado Court of Appeals. The ACLU, ACLU of Colorado, AAUP and NCAC filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting reversal of the trial court’s decision, arguing that plaintiffs whose constitutional rights have been violated must be provided with a remedy, and that in this case, Churchill should be reinstated to the job from which he was wrongly fired. “Denying a remedy to people whose rights have been violated amounts to gutting the Constitution,” said Mariko Hirose, a legal fellow with the ACLU First Amendment Working Group. “The court has a responsibility to ensure the University of Colorado rights its wrong and reinstates Professor Churchill immediately.” "Unless the trial court's ruling is corrected, university professors will receive the chilling message that silence is smart and voicing unpopular views can be fatal to their careers," said Mark Silverstein, ACLU of Colorado Legal Director. "The First Amendment right to speak out is meaningful only if it is enforceable in court."

'We know nothing', say ambassadors called for talks over how assassins who killed Hamas leader were holding foreign passports Dubai yesterday explicitly accused Mossad of assassinating Hamas military commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh on its soil, as David Miliband declared the use of British passports in the plot "an outrage" and demanded "full co-operation" from Israel in finding out what had happened. AWIP: After Dubai, Israelis question Mossad methods.

Justice department finds John Yoo and Jay Bybee guilty of poor judgment but not professional misconduct. An inquiry by the US justice department last night reprimanded two senior Bush era lawyers who approved the use of torture at Guantánamo Bay. The department found the two lawyers, John Yoo and Jay Bybee, guilty of poor judgment but not professional misconduct. Chris Floyd: Teach Your Children Well: There is No Law but Might and Murder.

The Dutch government has collapsed over disagreements within the governing coalition on extending troop deployments in Afghanistan. After marathon talks, Christian Democratic Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende announced that the Labour Party was quitting the government. Mr Balkenende has been considering a Nato request for Dutch forces to stay in Afghanistan beyond 2010.

A UN nuclear watchdog report suggests Iran could be developing a nuclear bomb, apparently confirming long-held suspicions in the West. But Tehran denies the claims, again insisting that its atomic intentions are peaceful. Michel Chossudovsky, who's from an independent Canadian policy research group, believes that what Iran says hardly matters, because the U.S. is planning for war...AWIP: Europe's Five "Undeclared Nuclear Weapons States".

Pakistan will not turn over the Afghan Taliban’s second-in-command and two other terrorists captured this month to the US, but may deport them to Afghanistan, Interior Minister Rehman Malik said on Friday. Malik said Pakistani authorities were still questioning Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar and two other terrorists, arrested with US assistance in separate operations this month. “First we will see whether they have violated any law,” Malik said.