Robert Scheer writes, "You've got to hand it to Dick Cheney; no other modern politician has come so close to perfecting the theater of the absurd. Even as he protests his innocence of lying about matters of state, he lies about matters of state."

This short clip from John Pilger's documentary, Breaking the Silence, contains 2001 footage of Powell and Rice declaring that Iraq() is not a threat.

Enforcing intellectual property law in the digital age means fighting ever more effective and powerful new modes of creation made possible in part by collaborative development through the Internet. There is a concerted offensive by multinational corporations, patent offices, specialized legal consultants, the United States government and the European Union, working together to reinforce and extend property rights. Philippe Aigrain provides analysis. See also Ignacio Ramonet "The Spider in the Web" http://mondediplo.com/2005/11/01internet .

Takis Fotopoulos discusses the attempt of the 'transnational elite' to impose the New World Order for its energy needs in the Middle East through the encouragement of a series of civil wars in Iraq, Iran and Palestine. This strategy could involve a new military campaign against Iran (and possibly Syria). In fact, the propaganda to prepare public opinion for such a campaign has already begun in USA, Britain and elsewhere, through the mass media. Of course, Takis Fotopoulos concludes, it is the Arab peoples who will have the final word on these plans of the elites.

Nathan Egge from Baltimore found a yellow sticker under a canon in Federal Hill Park last night that was worth $10,000.

Takis Fotopoulos discusses the ideological globalization used to legitimize political and economic globalization and the corresponding role of mass media--which are also globalizing rapidly. The article shows how the mass media and particularly television are used to disorient the public on crucial issues, promoting the transnational elite's agenda.

Every U.S. soldier takes an express and solemn oath to "support and defend the Constitution." That oath, however, is a sham because the troops do not support or defend the Constitution. Instead, when it comes to war the troops follow another oath they take - to obey the orders of the president, and they do this without regard to whether such orders violate the Constitution.

The New Orleans catastrophe did not only show the real significance of the “American Dream”, which was promoted in the post-war period as the model of capitalist “development”. It also revealed the very essence of the market economy system and representative ‘democracy’ which, particularly in the USA, has met - better than anywhere else - the criteria of economic and political liberalism. This essence is summed up in economic and political inequality and the separation of society from the economy and polity established by a system in which it is not the citizen body itself which takes all the important economic and political decisions, but an economic and political elite. The rest of the population are condemned to a continuous struggle for economic survival . This implies that in an emergency situation not only does the economic, but even the physical survival of many people become impossible, not, of course, through any fault of their own -- as neo(liberal) ideologists have the nerve to suggest -- but because this system, by its own nature, cannot meet even the basic needs of all citizens. All this could be seen in practice in New Orleans. Takis Fotopoulos focuses on the 'systemic' dimensions of the problem, which are invariably ignored by neoliberal, social liberal and reformist Left analysts as a result of their direct or indirect adoption of the system.