Via Occupy Wall Street:

Greetings World.

We are Anonymous. We hereby call forth this May 1st a Global Day Of Resistance. We call upon every person in the world, every city or town, every country; Unite, rise up - and take back the public commons from the oppressors. March in your streets, occupy public space - be free and reclaim your world. And stay. Become part of a world-wide "Global Spring". From Idle No More in Canada to the pro-democracy protesters in Bahrain, on May 1st let us shake the world and the very foundations of all power and authority.

Anonymous will use all the tools at our disposal to facilitate and encourage this Global Day of Awakening. We are tired of having activists around the world hunted, jailed - and abused. We are tired of watching our own fall. And so Anonymous will stand with our freedom loving comrades all over the world and in unity raise our fist to the sky and shout: We Are Not Afraid!

We Are Anonymous.

We Are Everywhere.

We Are Legion.

We Do Not Forgive.

We Do Not Forget.

Expect Us.

Webchat: http://bit.ly/11k8pgw

Network: irc.cyberguerrilla.org

Port(s): 6667 — SSL(6697)

Channel: #MayDay

Website: http://MayDay.tk/

For over a decade the CIA has been delivering money to the offices of Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, in the shadiest ways possible: suitcases, backpacks, and plastic bags full of cash. The New York Times reports that tens of millions of dollars have gone to Karzai’s office. And it doesn’t seem like the CIA is getting what it wants for its money: much of it is used to pay off warlords and politicians, many with ties to the drug trade, fueling the corruption U.S. diplomats have been trying to fight. “The biggest source of corruption in Afghanistan,” an American official told the Times, “was the United States.”

NYT:

For more than a decade, wads of American dollars packed into suitcases, backpacks and, on occasion, plastic shopping bags have been dropped off every month or so at the offices of Afghanistan’s president — courtesy of the Central Intelligence Agency.

All told, tens of millions of dollars have flowed from the C.I.A. to the office of President Hamid Karzai, according to current and former advisers to the Afghan leader.

“We called it ‘ghost money,’ ” said Khalil Roman, who served as Mr. Karzai’s deputy chief of staff from 2002 until 2005. “It came in secret, and it left in secret.”

The C.I.A., which declined to comment for this article, has long been known to support some relatives and close aides of Mr. Karzai. But the new accounts of off-the-books cash delivered directly to his office show payments on a vaster scale, and with a far greater impact on everyday governing.

Moreover, there is little evidence that the payments bought the influence the C.I.A. sought. Instead, some American officials said, the cash has fueled corruption and empowered warlords, undermining Washington’s exit strategy from Afghanistan.

“The biggest source of corruption in Afghanistan,” one American official said, “was the United States.”

The United States was not alone in delivering cash to the president. Mr. Karzai acknowledged a few years ago that Iran regularly gave bags of cash to one of his top aides.

At the time, in 2010, American officials jumped on the payments as evidence of an aggressive Iranian campaign to buy influence and poison Afghanistan’s relations with the United States. What they did not say was that the C.I.A. was also plying the presidential palace with cash — and unlike the Iranians, it still is.

When word of the Iranian cash leaked out in October 2010, Mr. Karzai told reporters that he was grateful for it. He then added: “The United States is doing the same thing. They are providing cash to some of our offices.” (See the video above)

At the time, Mr. Karzai’s aides said he was referring to the billions in formal aid the United States gives. But the former adviser said in a recent interview that the president was in fact referring to the C.I.A.’s bags of cash.

UPDATE!

From Rachel Rivera, the mom who started the petition to keep Sandy families from being evicted"

"My family and other families displaced by Sandy will sleep tight tonight knowing that, at least for the time being, we won’t be evicted from our hotels. This evening, just before the city’s arbitrary deadline to evict us, a Manhattan Supreme Court Judge ordered the city to extend the hotel program for families like mine for 15 days as a result of a lawsuit filed by Legal Aid. NYCC members will continue to fight to secure long term affordable housing for all families displaced by Sandy."

Read more about this great victory in the Wall Street Journal, click here.

Thanks to all who signed the petition!
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Six-months after Superstorm Sandy, shore towns are rebuilding, but recovery is slow. Remnants of Sandy's destruction are clearly visible. Towns are working hard to complete boardwalk projects to draw tourists back in time for summer, notes the Associated Press. But while the media wonders where tourists will spend the vacations, 600 families who fell victim to Sandy are wondering if the only place left for them to call "home" is the streets.

The following message is from Rachel Rivera and her petition pleading for the NYC Department of Homeless services not to throw her and her 7-year-old daughter out on the street.

Via CREDO, and New York Communities for Change:

Families who were displaced by Sandy and are living in hotels need long-term affordable housing, not to be thrown out into the streets for the second time since the storm. Extend the April 30th deadline until all displaced families are placed into apartments that they can afford.

Why is this important?

My seven year old daughter Marisol and I have called our room in the Holiday Inn Express on 29th Street home for the past six months since the roof in our apartment collapsed during Hurricane Sandy. But in a few days, we are going to lose our home again—this time because of an arbitrary deadline set by the Department of Homeless Services. No one wants to call a hotel home, but the only other option we’ve been given by the city is the streets.

My daughter and I are not alone. Hundreds of Sandy victims, living in hotels throughout New York City will be evicted from our rooms on Tuesday April 30th. Like Marisol and I, many of those families have nowhere else to go. The number of New Yorkers sleeping in homeless shelters is at an all-time high and families like mine are about to join them. We are victims of natural disaster and deserve to be treated with dignity.

Sign my petition demanding that DHS Commissioner Seth Diamond postpones the April 30th deadline to evict Sandy families living in hotels until there is a plan to find us all housing that we can afford for the long term.

Please sign Rachel's petition to the Department of Homeless services commissioner, Seth Diamond.

For more information about the impending eviction of 600 Sandy families, click here.

After enduring a traumatic childhood and two years in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, Tom Faunce made an oath to spend the rest of his life helping those in need. Four decades later, he discovers a mysterious man in Southeast Asia claiming to be an American Special Forces soldier listed as 'Killed In Action.' Working against government forces trying to cover up the story, Tom struggles to prove the lost soldier's identity and reunite him with his family.

A new documentary called Unclaimed claims to introduce the world to former Army Sergeant John Robertson, lost over Vietnam in 1968 and left behind for over four decades.

The Toronto Star reports:

Special Forces Green Beret Master Sgt. John Hartley Robertson had forgotten how to speak English over the 44 years since he was left behind in the Vietnam War. But he never forgot that he was a father, husband and an American soldier, born in Alabama, shot down over Laos in a 1968 classified mission.

Had Hollywood told the story of the discovery of a long-forgotten soldier, found miraculously still alive in Vietnam after surviving a horrific helicopter attack and crash, it would have involved a dramatic and dangerous jungle rescue followed by a homecoming parade.

Instead, in Emmy-winning Edmonton filmmaker Michael Jorgensen’s documentary Unclaimed, we meet a slightly stooped, wiry 76-year-old man living in a remote village in south-central Vietnam who trembles with frustration or pounds his forehead when he is unable to remember his birthday or his American children’s names. He is only able to speak Vietnamese.

Unclaimed has its world premiere at Toronto’s 20th Hot Docs festival on April 30.

Robertson says he was confined to a bamboo cage in the jungle by North Vietnamese captors and, accused of being a CIA spy, was tortured for a year. Confused and badly injured, he was released and married the Vietnamese nurse who helped care for him. He assumed the name of her dead husband. They had children.

The filmmaker struggled with roadblocks along the way from the military -- especially when it came to contacting Robertson’s family -- to be convinced that, as one high-placed government source told him, “It’s not that the Vietnamese won’t let him (Robertson) go; it’s that our government doesn’t want him.”

There is also a video interview with Michael Jorgensen on the Toronto Star's website, here,

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President George W. Bush’s former chief strategist Matthew Dowd on Sunday lashed out at Congress for moving so quickly to fund air traffic controllers because lawmakers were personally "about to get delayed at the airports," while they couldn't pass background checks to protect children from mass shootings.

During a panel discussion on ABC's This Week, Democratic political strategist Donna Brazile noted that Congress had rushed through a bill to avert air traffic controller furloughs caused by automatic budget cuts in the so-called sequester, but ignored the pain the cuts were causing less-wealthy Americans.

"This sequester will have real impact on real people in real time, not just members of Congress, but people that work for the park service, medical research as the NIH begin to make those cuts, it's impacting Meals on Wheels, kids who are in kindergarten," Brazile explained. "So I really do think that Congress needs to take a second look at this."

Former Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, however, called the air traffic controller bill "a real victory for fiscal conservatism" because Congress moved funds around, instead of undoing any budget cuts.

"Doesn't that mean the politically weakest are going to bear the biggest burden?" ABC host George Stephanopolous wondered.

"Not necessarily," Gingrich insisted. "It may mean the most corrupt are going to bear the biggest burden. It may mean the dumbest are going to bear the biggest burden. When you look at a $4 trillion government, you can find lots of really stupid things to quit paying for."

But Dowd found it "amazing" that the bitterly partisan Congress could only find a way to work together when they personally faced the possibility of spending some additional time on the tarmac.

"The only way they're bipartisan is to do something for themselves," he quipped. "It's amazing the speed at which they did that. We have this horrible shooting where all these children die in Connecticut, we can't pass gun control legislation. But oh by the way, you're about to get delayed at the airport through some small budget cuts -- which I still don't understand why we make policy the way we make policy. Everybody knows there's a fiscal crisis in this country, everybody knows we don't have the revenue to meet the expenses in this country, somebody has to bear pain, but we act in Washington like nobody has to bear any pain. So as soon as anybody bears any pain, we're going to take it back from them."

"I think many members of Congress have bought into a myth that doesn't exist anymore," he added. "I think most of what's gong on in gun control is there's not this huge vehement group of people saying I'm going to defeat you if you vote for background checks, I'm going to defeat you if you vote for high-capacity magazines... What there is, though, is a group of folks in Washington that are scared of their shadow on this issue, both some Democrats and a lot of Republicans."

"The myth doesn't exist anymore, but they're afraid to go launch themselves through it and do something about it."

Monday, Monday... A very happy birthday to Senator Debbie Stabenow!

As the Senate holds its first-ever public hearing on drones and targeted killings, we turn the second part of our interview with Jeremy Scahill, author of the new book, "Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield." Scahill charts the expanding covert wars operated by the CIA and JSOC, the Joint Special Operations Command, in countries from Somalia to Pakistan. "I called it 'Dirty Wars' because, particularly in this administration, in the Obama administration, I think a lot of people are being led to believe that there is such a thing as a clean war," Scahill says. He goes on to discuss secret operations in Africa, the targeting of U.S. citizens in Yemen and the key role WikiLeaks played in researching the book. He also reveals imprisoned whistleblower Bradley Manning once tipped him off to a story about the private security company Blackwater. Scahill is the national security correspondent for The Nation magazine and longtime Democracy Now! correspondent. For the past several years, Scahill has been working on the "Dirty Wars" film and book project, which was published on Tuesday. The film, directed by Rick Rowley, will be released in theaters in June.

Full transcript of the discussion available here.

There may be some in the nation who have forgotten the Bush years, explaining his recent bump in a recent Washington Post approval poll, but groups like CODEPINK, Iraq Veterans Against the War, and Veterans for Peace and others were on hand at the opening ceremony of the G.W. Bush Library in Dallas on Thursday morning to remind everyone of those 8 years of hell.

Via:

"During the opening dedication ceremony of the George W. Bush Library & Policy Center in Dallas, Texas, Dennis Trainor Jr. of Acronym TV and Gary Egelston of Iraq Veterans Against the War wearing Bush and Cheney papermache impressions, were brutally arrested for walking off the curb. The Bush and Cheney characters were in the custody of CODEPINK Co-founder Medea Benjamin, dressed as a pink police, who was forced back to the sidewalk while the Dallas police dragged Trainor and Egelston to the ground. "It was an appalling use of brutal force immediately. What happened to a warning or a request 'Sir, hands behind your back'?" said Medea Benjamin, who is still recovering from the whiplash of the event."

"Photographer Bill Perry of Veterans for Peace followed the action into the street and was also arrested. He is just recovering from an illness so fellow Veterans were pleading with the police to release him, but to no avail."

"Gary Egelston is a resident of Dallas/Ft Worth area and has served 2 tours of duty in Iraq."

"CODEPINK activists and allies have been using the opportunity of the opening of the new George W. Bush Library & Policy Center in Dallas to bring attention to the injustices committed by former president George W. Bush and his administration, particularly the invasion and destruction of Iraq and the use of torture directed from his office."

Other protesters included ex-talk show host Phil Donahue, who was executive producer of the anti-war documentary Body of War.

Dozens of others wore signs listing the names of those who died in wars launched by the Bush administration.

"We refuse to allow the Bush Library to be a Bush Lie Bury. If anything, it is a monument to folly and should be filled with the biographies of the lives ended, ruined or injured, the principles abandoned, the resources wasted, and the time lost" says Bill Moyer, executive director of The Backbone Campaign.

All three of the arrested protesters were charged with misdemeanors and released after 13 hours in custody.

Good morning, today is Sunday, April 28, 2013. Happy Birthday Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan!

The Faulkner County Citizens Advisory Group conducted independent tests on the air and water from Lake Conway in response to the Exxon tar sands oil spill, and presented the findings during a Townhall gathering in Mayflower, Arkansas this week. Residents were alarmed by what they heard.

KTHV 11:

John Hammons lives near an area known as "The Cove," a body of water sitting across from Lake Conway in Mayflower.

"We can smell it. So I know it's there," Hammons said, who is concerned about his three children and wife, who is seven months pregnant.

"She's broken out in hives, had nose bleeds, (and) respiratory problems," he explained.

The Hammons were among a group of concerned people in the area who met for the town hall meeting.

Chemist Wilma Subra said ExxonMobil is being attentive to those inside the Northwoods subdivision, where thousands of gallons of heavy crude oil spilled nearly one month ago, but others in the area have suffered with little attention.

"There's a population all around that's been made very, very sick by the emissions," Subra said.

To evaluate the situation, Subra independently analyzed air and water data captured from the Lake Conway area, claiming the carcinogen Benzene is present in the region.

While Exxon denies the claims, State health officials are saying the same thing as Exxon -- that "all air quality tests returned safe levels for people in the area."

Yet Subra's claims were echoed by Scott Smith of OPFLEX Solutions, a company that offers solutions for absorbing oil. Smith's preliminary findings indicate the presence of tar sands oil in Lake Conway, both in "the cove" of Lake Conway and in the larger lake beyond the cove.

Also, InsideClimate News has reported that the oil spill probe has fallen to an understaffed governmental agency with close ties to the oil industry, including PHMSA administrator Cynthia Quarterman, for example, having served as legal counsel for Enbridge, the culprit in the Michigan spill, before moving to her current position at the federal agency.

You can view a series of recordings taken by an attendee of Mayflower's Town Hall meeting if you just click here.