Mahler's Prodigal Son

Lawrence Davidson is a retired professor of history from West Chester University in West Chester PA.    In an op-piece on Information Clearing House he makes out a compelling case for why the USA has, in effect, let the Saudis off the hook both in relation to its involvement in 9/11 and other terror-related actions. "On 27 November 2002 a bipartisan commission was established by Congress to investigate the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. By the time the commission was created, President George W. Bush had characterized the attacks as “acts of war,” adding that “freedom and democracy are under attack.” It was therefore to be expected that anyone who was actually, or even imagined to be, involved in these attacks was going to be labeled as an enemy. However, when on 22 July 2004, after two years of investigation, the 9/11 Commission’s report was released, something was missing. Twenty-eight pages had been withheld from publication. Thes...

Gideon Levy writes op-ed pieces for Israel's Haaretz newspaper.   He takes no prisoners in his trenchant criticism of Israeli politicians and the country's policies, notably towards Israeli Arabs and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. In one of his latest columns he is no less severe in his criticism of his own country.    It is evil, he declares.   He concludes: "A great many of the decisions of the occupation regime that decides the fates of individuals, families, communities, villages and cities cannot be explained without evil. The list is as long as the occupation. The extortion of sick people from Gaza to enlist them as collaborators, the blockades on cities and towns for weeks, the Gaza blockade, the demolition of homes – all evil. Banal or not, its existence must be acknowledged and it must be recognized as one of the most influential values in Israel. Yes, there is an evil regime at work in Israel, and therefore it is an evil state."...

Credited to Nick Anderson

Can anyone really want to vote for this low-life?    Leave aside, for the moment, whether Trump is a "crook" as Michael Bloomberg described him the other day when speaking at the DNC, but to stoop as low as Trump did, as detailed below in a report in The New York Times (reprinted in The Age newspaper) shows Trump to be what really is - a loud-mouth sleazeball. "Donald Trump has suggested that the Muslim mother of a US soldier killed in Iraq had let her husband do all the talking at the Democratic National Convention because she was not "allowed" to speak. Trump's comments, in an interview with ABC News that will air on Sunday, local time, were his most extensive remarks since Khizr Khan delivered one of the most powerful speeches on Thursday at the convention in Philadelphia.   In the speech, Khan spoke about how his 27-year-old son, Humayun Khan, an army captain, sacrificed his life in a car bombing in 2004 in Iraq as he tried to save other troops. K...

The title of this post may intrigue, but the stat revealed in the piece, below, is startling... "The global cost of physical inactivity for 2013 has been calculated at $US67.5 billion ($A90 billion), in a world-first study by the University of Sydney. Key points: The findings, published in the journal Lancet, include the cost burden of lifestyle diseases on health budgets as well as the cost of premature death relating to physical inactivity. The burden in developing countries was calculated differently because the consequences of lifestyle diseases is often premature death. Sydney University senior research fellow Melody Ding said the cost included the healthcare expenses linked to chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart disease. "These are the diseases associated with physical inactivity," Dr Ding said. "It also includes the cost of productivity losses when people die prematurely because of physical inactivity." The study included data from 14...

Dylan Voller is hooded and strapped to a restraining chair in the footage aired on Four Corners With praise due to it, Australia's ABC program "Four Corners" on Monday night aired revelations of children (yes, children, as young as 10) being abused, tortured, held in solitary confinement in a particular correction facility in Australia's Northern Territory. This piece in The Sydney Morning Herald provides the background . The outrcry has been huge.   The Federal Government has announced a Royal Commission.    There cannot be any doubt that this is a scandal of monumental proportions.    No better than Gitmo or what was revealed as happening at Abu Ghraib in Iraq.

Food!   We all need it to nourish our bodies.    But then again to put it bluntly, we waste a hell of a lot of it..... "Americans say they feel bad about the 130 billion pounds of food (PDF) the nation wastes every year. But not badly enough to do anything about it. More than half the respondents in a new national survey said they are aware of the scale of this $160 billion (PDF) problem. Almost 80 percent said they feel guilty when throwing food away, but 51 percent said it would be difficult to reduce household food waste. And 42 percent said they don’t have enough time to worry about it. The study, published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE, found that responses from wealthier Americans showed them less willing to be inconvenienced, said Dana Gunders, a food-waste expert at the National Resources Defense Council who wrote the first major report about food waste in 2012. Gunders wasn't involved with the study released on Thursday. “I’ve always thoug...