I.N.N. World Report - real news the networks won't tell you

Bush family cleaning up on transfer of public lands to private hands

Journalist Wayne Madsen has learned that the Bush family is reaping windfall profits from the transfer of public federal and state lands to private ownership. The revelations represent the first evidence in a giant scheme to defraud federal and state governments, US taxpayers and Native Americans. The scheme is also at the center of the scandal surrounding jailed GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff who conspired to privatize federal lands to benefit his corporate clients. In 2004, George Bush signed the Western Shoshone Distribution Act, which violates the Ruby Valley Treaty of 1863 with the Shoshones. The US government compensated the Shosones a mere $135 million for 24 million acres of land illegally seized by the federal government. In Florida, under Governors Jeb Bush and Charlie Crist, the St. Joe Company, a firm with close ties to Jeb and George H. W. Bush, has steadily encroached on lands adjacent to state and federal wildlife preserves and national forests.
 
Pentagon Whistle Blower Found Dead

A whistleblower who testified in a Pentagon-sponsored arms deal was found dead in Albania Friday. Last year, Kosta Trebicka, provided The New York Times and US investigators with evidence about an American company accused of selling $300 million in shoddy ammunition to the U.S. government to supply the Afghan Army. The company, AEY Inc. was headed by 22-year-old arms dealer Efraim Diveroli. According to Treblicka, AEY bought aging Chinese cartridges for Afghanistan’s army and police forces, repackaged them and claimed the ammunition was from Albania. Treblicka’s accusations implicated officials in the Albanian government and the Pentagon. Last June federal prosecutors in Miami summoned the U.S. Ambassador to Albania to testify before a grand jury. Recently, Trebicka told reporters he feared for his life. He was found dead near his vehicle, and no cause of death was announced. Albanian investigators said an autopsy would be performed.
 
Nobel Prize Winning Economist: Crisis As Bad As Great Depression Or Worse

Two-time Nobel prizewinner and former World Bank chief economist Joseph Stiglitz has warned the current financial crisis will continue for at least eighteen months and represents a worse situation than the Great Depression. Stiglitz said: “The financial innovations that were supposed to manage risk, created a kind of non-transparency that is now so great no one knows exactly the magnitude of risk they face.” The same problems that occurred during the Great Depression, such as excessive leverage, pyramid schemes and bubbles, have happened again. Stilitz went on: “The problem is that much of the falsely optimistic news about the financial markets was coming from those who were making money out of the markets.” Stiglitz said the $3 trillion cost of the Iraq war has vastly increased the budget deficit and consumed resources that would otherwise promote growth. Stiglitz said: “This is the first war in American history totally financed on the credit card.”

 EPA Lets Electronic Waste Flow Freely, GAO Report Says

A Government Accountability Office report has found the Environmental Protection Agency has done little to curb the export of discarded electronic products. These products contain hazardous waste, much of which ends up in poorly regulated countries. The report is a scathing critique of the EPA's failure to control the export of used electronic equipment, which often is sent to China, India and other countries to be dismantled under unsafe conditions. U.S. authorities have yet to develop a national approach for handling electronic waste, which often contains toxic metals such as lead, mercury and cadmium. The GAO report says the EPA cannot identify where 80 percent of U.S. electronic waste is headed. Dozens of U.S. companies are circumventing the rules, while other electronics containing toxic materials are being sent overseas with no restrictions. Toxic materials in electronics do not leach while the products remain intact--only when they are disassembled.

Rising prices tip another 75 million towards starvation: FAO

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization said Wednesday 925 million people are suffering from acute hunger. Director-general Jacques Diouf said the number is likely to top one billion by the end of the year. Global food prices rose 50 percent over the first eight months of 2008. Diouf said: "Thirty billion dollars per year must be invested to double food production and eliminate hunger," calling the figure "modest" in comparison with the amount many countries spend on arms. The World Bank has estimated rising food prices have pushed 100 million people below the poverty line and have sparked riots in some parts of the world. Experts blame oil prices, biofuels and increased consumption of meat in emerging economies. The UN food relief agency has started a 200-million dollar program aimed at 16 "hunger hotspots". Half the aid is directed at 11 million people in 14 countries hard-hit by high food prices.

Witness Ties Colombian General to Paramilitaries

Gen. Mario Montoya, head of the Colombian army, has been accused of collaborating with death squads. A former paramilitary fighter has said in special judicial proceedings that Montoya collaborated with death squads that took control of Bogota’s poor neighborhoods from guerrillas a few years ago. His testimony, along with that of four paramilitary commanders, reveals the links between Colombia's U.S.-backed military and its brutal paramilitary proxies. The allegations could be highly damaging for President Álvaro Uribe, a strong ally of the Bush administration who has staunchly supported the general in the face of past allegations. Investigations into the ties between illegal paramilitary groups and the Colombian state have already implicated numerous allies of the president, including dozens of lawmakers and the former head of the secret police. Videotaped testimony by Luis Adrián Palacio has prompted the attorney general's office in Bogota to open a criminal investigation.


Bolivia and the Echoes of Allende: Morales Confronts the Insurrection

Global Research says an impending civil war between Bolivian President Evo Morales and the country’s right wing is taking place 35 years after Chilean president Salvador Allende was overthrown with the help of the US government. Early on, Morales--Bolivia’s first indigenous president--moved to exert greater control over Bolivia’s natural gas and oil resources, sharply increasing the hydrocarbon tax, and then using a large portion of this revenue to provide a universal pension to the mostly poverty-stricken and indigenous population. Bolivia’s four eastern departments have rebelled against these changes, demanding departmental autonomy and control of the hydrocarbon revenues, as well as an end to agrarian reform and even control of the police forces. Using words that evoked Allende’s last stand, Morales declared: “Dead or alive, I will have a new constitution for the country.” In a recall referendum, Morales won a resounding 67 percent of the vote.


Has the U.S. Invasion of Pakistan Begun?

A vigorous debate is now underway in the US military about the nature of the "next" American war and how to prepare for it. However, that "next war" may already be upon us. The Bush administration is launching a third war in the border regions of Pakistan. News trickles out almost daily of intensified American strikes -- by missile-armed drones, or commando raids from helicopters -- in the Pakistani tribal areas along the Afghan border. Reportedly this is only "phase one" of a three-phase Bush administration plan in which the American military "gloves" would "come off." Pakistan's sovereignty has been declared of no significance by Bush, and so, without a word from Congress, the American war that already stretches from Iraq to Afghanistan is threatening to widen in ways that are potentially dangerous. Anger is growing in Pakistan over the abrogation of national sovereignty and rising civilian casualties.