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law enforcement official says the FBI has opened an investigation into allegations media mogul Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. sought to hack into the phones of Sept. 11 victims. The official spoke Thursday to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly. New York City-based News Corp. has been in crisis mode because of a scandal that sank its UK newspaper the News of the World. A rival newspaper reported last week the News of the World had hacked into the phone of UK teenage murder victim Milly Dowler in 2002 and may have impeded a police investigation into her disappearance. More possible victims soon emerged, including former Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Murdoch says his media company will recover from any damage wrought by the phone-hacking and police bribery allegations. The FBI's New York office hasn't commented.

3rd War of Lyari, Criminals in Karachi, entered into fourth day on Monday, Private Television reported. At least 20 people were lost their lives during the three days battle. The Lyari area was stressed and protests against the action were taking place in different parts of the city. Lyari, known as the stronghold of current regime PPP is under fire since several months.

That Terrorism means nothing more than violence committed by Muslims whom the West dislikes has been proven repeatedly.  When an airplane was flown into an IRS building in Austin, Texas, it was immediately proclaimed to be Terrorism, until it was revealed that the attacker was a white, non-Muslim, American anti-tax advocate with a series of domestic political grievances.  The U.S. and its allies can, by definition, never commit Terrorism even when it is beyond question that the purpose of their violence is to terrorize civilian populations into submission.  Conversely, Muslims who attack purely military targets  -- even if the target is an invading army in their own countries -- are, by definition, Terrorists.  That is why, as NYU's Remi Brulin has extensively documented, Terrorism is the most meaningless, and therefore the most manipulated, word in the English language.  Yesterday provided yet another sterling example.

Exclusive: Former Vice President Dick Cheney's memoir is filled with accounts about the great and wonderful people who agree with him - and the evil buffoons who don't. But the book offers some unintentional insights into how the American Republic got into today's mess, writes Robert Parry.

"Capitalism has evolved in at least three different forms: corporate capitalism, speculator's capitalism, and, most recently, creative capitalism."

As soon as the news was reported that Gen. David Petraeus is succeeding soon-to-be-retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal as commander of the US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, the media narrative was set in stone: the super-general who won the war in Iraq with the so-called surge can now work his magic in another theater. It's hard to stop a locomotive meme-which is what the surge story has become. But the success of the surge in Iraq remains debatable to this day. Still, try injecting that point into media discussions of Iraq or Afghanistan. Yet with Petraeus taking over the Afghanistan war, it's worth noting the other side of the surge tale. So as a public service, here are a few analyses that question the surge hype.

Television is advertising. It is a medium whose purpose is to sell, to promote capitalism. In 1977, Jerry Mander, a former advertising executive in San Francisco, published Four Arguments For The Elimination Of Television. In the book, Mander reveals how the television networks and advertisers use this pervasive video medium for sales. Four Arguments talks about a lot more than just advertising. Mander attacks not only the contents of the television images, but the effects television has on the human mind and body. His discussion includes: The induction of alpha waves, a hypnotizing effect that a motionless mind enters. How viewers often regard what they see on television as real even though the programs are filled with quick camera switches, rapid image movement, computer generated objects, computer generated morphing and other technical events. The placement of artificial images into our mind's eye. And the effects that large amounts of television viewing have on children and the onset of attention deficit disorder. However, at the heart of Mander's arguments, lies advertising. In the words of writer Charles Bukowski: "[America is] not a free country -- everything is bought and sold and owned."

Like the Ancients, we arrogant humans who turn ourselves into objects of worship and build ruthless systems of power to control the world around us will get what we are due.  - 2010/09/27

WASHINGTON -- These days, when we think of George W. Bush, we think mostly of what a horrible mess he made of the economy. But his even more tragic legacy is the loss of our moral authority, and the transformation of the United States of America from global champion of human rights into an outlaw nation.

By Ralph Nader & Carl J. Mayer New York Times, April 9, 1988 Our constitutional rights were intended for real persons, not artificial creations. The Framers knew about corporations but chose not to mention these contrived entities in the Constitution. For them, the document shielded living beings from arbitrary government and endowed them with the right to speak, assemble, and petition. Today, however, corporations enjoy virtually the same umbrella of constitutional protections as individuals do. They have become in effect artificial persons with infinitely greater power than humans. This constitutional equivalence must end. Consider a few noxious developments during the last 10 years. A group of large Boston companies invoked the First Amendment in order to spend lavishly and thus successfully defeat a referendum that would have permitted the legislature to enact a progressive income tax that had no direct effect on the property and business of these companies. An Idaho electrical and plumbing corporation cited the Fourth Amendment and deterred a health and safety investigation. A textile supply company used Fifth Amendment protections and barred retrial in a criminal anti-trust case in Texas. The idea that the Constitution should apply to corporations as it applies to humans had its dubious origins in 1886. The Supreme Court said it did "not wish to hear argument" on whether corporations were "persons" protected by the 14th Amendment, a civil rights amendment designed to safeguard newly emancipated blacks from unfair government treatment. It simply decreed that corporations were persons. Now that is judicial activism. A string of later dissents, by Justices Hugo Black and William O. Douglas, demonstrated that neither the history nor the language of the 14th Amendment was meant to protect corporations. But it was too late. The genie was out of the bottle and the corporate evolution into personhood was under way. It was not until the 1970's that corporations

Love it or hate it, Fox News has shaken up the media establishment and achieved financial success by airing the views of strident conservative pundits. Yet while the network has never made any bones about the political slant of opinion shows hosted by the likes of Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity or Bill O'Reilly, executives often claim that its news coverage is "fair and balanced." A memo revealed this week by the liberal watchdog group Media Matters calls that into question.

Peak Oil is the point at which petroleum production reaches its greatest rate just before going into perpetual decline. In "Peak Oil and a Changing Climate," a new video series from The Nation and On The Earth productions, radio host Thom Hartmann explains that the world will reach peak oil within the next year if it hasn't already. As a nation, the United States reached peak oil in 1974, after which it became a net oil importer. Bill McKibben, Noam Chomsky, Nicole Foss, Richard Heinberg and the other scientists, researchers and writers interviewed throughout "Peak Oil and a Changing Climate" describe the diminishing returns our world can expect as it deals with the consequences of peak oil even as it continues to pretend it doesn't exist. These experts predict substantially increased transportation costs, decreased industrial production, unemployment, hunger and social chaos as the supplies of the  fuels on which we rely dwindle and eventually disappear. Chomsky urges us to anticipate the official response to peak oil based on how corporations, news organizations and other institutions have responded to global warming: obfuscation, spin and denial. James Howard Kunstler says that we cannot survive peak oil unless we "come up with a consensus about reality that is consistent with the way things really are." This documentary series hopes to help build that consensus. Click here to watch the introductory video, and check back here for new videos each Wednesday.

The U.S. Army illegally ordered a team of soldiers specializing in "psychological operations" to manipulate visiting American senators into providing more troops and funding for the war, Rolling Stone has learned - and when an officer tried to stop the operation, he was railroaded by military investigators.

To understand how so many average Americans can be duped into embracing right-wing positions that go against their own interests, you must look at  how Fox News (and right-wing media outlets) use faux populism and phony outrage as propaganda techniques, a topic explored by Danny Schechter in this guest essay.

Prompts in the environment make their way beneath your conscious radar and into your mind, affecting your mood and behaviour. Past research has shown that a briefcase, as opposed to a rucksack, on a table, leads people to behave more competitively. A wall poster featuring a pair of staring eyes increases people's use of an honesty box. And a 2009 study found that pictures of companionable dolls increased the likelihood that toddlers would help a stranger pick up sticks they'd dropped. Now Mark Rubin at the University of Newcastle has added to this literature with an adult study showing that pictures of companionship don't just increase the giving of help, they also increase the intention to seek help.

The 9/11 attacks have been used to destroy America in ways that no mere terrorist assault could ever do.   And that is the number one reason for a new, independent, unbiased investigation into the events of September 11, 2001.

The debt deal will hurt the poorest Americans, convinced by Fox and the Tea Party to act against their own welfare

The Washington Post brings the unsurprising news that Iraqi leaders have agreed to begin talks with the U.S. on allowing the foreign military occupation of their country to continue beyond this year - re-branded, naturally, as a mission of "training" and "support." The move comes after an increasingly public campaign by top White House and military officials to pressure Iraqi leaders into tearing up the Status of Forces Agreement they signed with the Bush administration, which mandates the removal of all foreign troops by the end of 2011.

Businesses have had at least 25 to 30 years near complete certainty -- certainty that they will pay lower and lower taxes, that they' will face less and less regulation, that they can outsource to their hearts' content (which when it does produce savings, comes at a loss of control, increased business system rigidity, and loss of critical know how). They have also been certain that unions will be weak to powerless, that states and municipalities will give them huge subsidies to relocate, that boards of directors will put top executives on the up escalator for more and more compensation because director pay benefits from this cozy collusion, that the financial markets will always look to short term earnings no matter how dodgy the accounting, that the accounting firms will provide plenty of cover, that the SEC will never investigate anything more serious than insider trading (Enron being the exception that proved the rule). So this haranguing about certainty simply reveals how warped big commerce has become in the US. Top management of supposedly capitalist enterprises want a high degree of certainty in their own profits and pay. Rather than earn their returns the old fashioned way, by serving customers well, by innovating, by expanding into new markets, their 'certainty' amounts to being paid handsomely for doing things that carry no risk. But since risk and uncertainty are inherent to the human condition, what they instead have engaged in is a massive scheme of risk transfer, of increasing rewards to themselves to the long term detriment of their enterprises and ultimately society as a whole.

Let me start by saying I'm a long-time admirer of Anthony Gregory's writing, and I'm as surprised as he is that this has turned into a significant disagreement.  Frankly, given our considerable areas of agreement, I'm having a hard time figuring out why my commentary piece ("Corporations are People?  So Was Hitler") set him off. Gregory's first objection, in "Contra Kevin Carson," is to my assertion that the profits of large corporations are disproportionately the result of state-enforced unequal exchange (monopolies, artificial property rights, entry barriers, etc.).