“The Israeli President [Peres] warns us that Iran is on the cusp of producing a nuclear weapon… Yet we reporters do not mention that Shimon Peres, as Israeli Prime Minister, said exactly the same thing in 1996… And we do not recall that the current Israeli PM, Benjamin Netanyahu, said in 1992 that Iran would have a nuclear bomb by 1999.” – Robert Fisk

Colombians were given the opportunity to defend their position as the Israelites of Latin America when, upon completion of Uribe's presidential term in 2010, he was recycled into the post of Vice-Chairman of the UN panel tasked with investigating the flotilla massacre. The resulting report - which determined that a group of flotilla activists had engaged in an "extreme level of violence", and which upheld the validity of the Israeli siege of Gaza in spite of the UN's own classification of the siege as illegal - presumably benefited from Uribe's professed notion that human rights organisations often serve as fronts for terrorists.
– Belen Fernandez, January 2012

Why were we even flying a drone over Iran? Why do we have to bomb so many countries? Why do we have 900 bases in 130 different countries when we are totally bankrupt? I think this wild goal to have another war in the name of 'defense' is a dangerous thing. The danger is really in us overreacting.
– Ron Paul

After the Second World War, when unemployment and poverty were widespread in Europe, even right-wing governments felt obliged to promise a better and more prosperous future. Today, all European governments have nothing to offer the working population apart from sacrifice and privation
 – Peter Schwarz, January 2012

Why does Maine pay double for turnpike improvements? Improvements are funded by bonds issued by the Maine Turnpike Authority, which collects the principal amounts, then pays the bonds back with interest.
Over time, interest payments add up to about the original principal, doubling the cost of turnpike improvements and the tolls that must be collected to pay for them. The interest money is shipped out of state to Wall Street banks.
Why not keep the interest money here in Maine, to the benefit of all Mainers? This could be done by creating a state-owned bank. State funds now deposited in low- or no-interest checking accounts would instead be deposited in the state bank.
Those funds would be used to buy up the authority bonds and municipal bonds issued by the Maine Bond Bank. All of them. Since all interest payments would flow into the state treasury, we would end up paying half what we now pay for our roads, bridges and schools.
North Dakota has profited from a state-owned bank for 90 years. Why not Maine?
– Tom Hagan, December 2011

The fact that in the second decade of the 21st century the United States is not able to maintain the basic level of mail delivery that prevailed in the previous century is a stunning expression of the putrefaction of American capitalism. In dismantling the postal service, the American ruling class is scrapping an institution that was established at the Second Continental Congress of 1775 under the leadership of Benjamin Franklin and enshrined in the US Constitution.
The degradation of the postal service is part and parcel of a more general decay of basic social infrastructure. The richest country in the world is one where almost routinely bridges collapse, levees break, storms or high winds plunge thousands and even millions of people into darkness. It is no accident that the US is also the most unequal country.
– WSWS, December 2011

The most common cancers in the UK are breast in women, prostate in men, followed by lung and bowel among both sexes. Prostate is one of very few cancers for which there is no evidence of preventable cases. [...] Not eating the recommended five fruit and vegetables per day accounted for an unexpectedly high number of cancers – 20,000 cancers each year – closely linked to mouth, throat and oesophagus tumours. Skin cancer, one of the fastest-growing types of melanoma, is almost entirely preventable by avoiding sunbeds and excessive sunbathing. Exposure to hazardous chemicals such as asbestos and pesticides at work, as well as shift and night working, cause more than 11,000 cancers – two thirds among men.
–  Independent, December 2011

We're not fighting any political party [in Egypt], or the army, or the Muslim Brotherhood – we're fighting a structure. And that's what the liberal political elite don't seem to understand. I'd much rather have the Muslim Brotherhood in place and get rid of SCAF than I would have [liberal figurehead] Mohamed ElBaradei running the government but leave SCAF in power. The revolution against SCAF is now; there will be time later to play the reformist, gradualist game where we sit down and argue over minute policy differences.
– Khalid Abdalla, November 2011

[Army Staff Sgt. Calvin] Gibbs is guilty of doing on an individual basis—killing innocent men and cutting off fingers and other body parts as grisly trophies—what the US war machine generally does wholesale and remotely, using bombs, missiles and other powerful weaponry to kill and dismember the population of the country they are occupying.
His real crime, as far as the Pentagon and official Washington are concerned, is that he failed to cover up his actions successfully and thus dealt a blow to the propaganda campaign which portrays the US military as a force engaged in the “liberation” of the people of Afghanistan, rather than their oppression and slaughter.
– Patrick Martin, November 2011

Historically, the Democratic Party has been the graveyard of social struggles of working people in the United States, going all the way back to the Populist Movement of the late 19th century, to the industrial union movement of the 1930s, to the Civil Rights and the antiwar movements of the 1960s. All of them were channeled into the Democratic Party and thereby not only rendered harmless to the financial elite, but turned into new props for capitalist rule.
– WSWS, October 2011

Even more indicative of the state of social conditions in the US, after more than two years of nearly double-digit unemployment, is the fact that the average unemployed American has been out of work for a longer period than at any time since records began being kept in 1948—63 years ago. The average duration of unemployment rose to 40.5 weeks in September, up from 40.3 weeks in August.
To put this figure in perspective, through the end of the 1980s, the average length of joblessness ranged between 10 and 15 weeks. Until May 2009 it never exceeded 21.2 weeks, the high point reached in the recession of the early 1980s. Today it is nearly twice that.
– Barry Grey, October 2011

Formed in the 1980s, with the financing and backing of Colombia’s landowners and industrialists, the AUC and similar right-wing paramilitary gangs—often working in close collaboration with the military—were responsible for the bulk of the massacres and assassinations carried out over the last quarter century of civil war. These included the death squad killings of tens of thousands of peasants, workers, left-wing politicians, students and human rights advocates. The AUC and other right-wing paramilitary outfits are also estimated to have controlled some three quarters of the country’s cocaine trade.
The deep involvement of the state and virtually all of its institutions in these crimes became the defining feature of the right-wing presidency of Alvaro Uribe, the closest US ally in Latin America, between 2002 and 2010. During this period Washington, touted Colombia as a success story in its combined “war on drugs” and “global war on terror.”
– Bill Van Auken, September 2011

It might be instructive to ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos had landed at George W Bush's compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic (after proper burial rites, of course). Uncontroversially, he was not a “suspect” but the “decider” who gave the orders to invade Iraq - that is, to commit the “supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole” for which Nazi criminals were hanged: the hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, destruction of much of the country and its national heritage, and the murderous sectarian conflict that has now spread to the rest of the region. Equally uncontroversially, these crimes vastly exceed anything attributed to bin Laden.
– Noam Chomsky, September 2011

No meaningful regulations currently limit how much companies can deduct from their taxes for the expense of executive compensation. The more firms pay their CEO, the more they can deduct off their federal taxes.
– Executive Excess 2011: The Massive CEO Rewards for Tax Dodging

Evolution is fundamentally about the relationship between organisms and their environments. Field studies - rather than lab-based research - should form the foundation of research on all species, humans included. Yet the vast majority of studies in the human-related sciences are not based on field research, and the most field-oriented disciplines, such as sociology and cultural anthropology, have been least receptive to the modern evolutionary perspective.
– David Sloan Wilson, August 2011

The primary conflict of interest at Moody's is well known: The company is paid by the same "issuers" (banks and companies) whose securities it is supposed to objectively rate. This conflict pervades every aspect of Moody's operations, Harrington says. It incentivizes everyone at the company, including analysts, to give Moody's clients the ratings they want, lest the clients fire Moody's and take their business to other ratings agencies. Moody's analysts whose conclusions prevent Moody's clients from getting what they want, Harrington says, are viewed as "impeding deals" and, thus, harming Moody's business. These analysts are often transferred, disciplined, "harassed," or fired.
 – Henry Blodget, August, 2011