Republicans have changed the reasons for their extorsionism; now it's budget cuts.

The US needs to increase government spending in order to get out of recession. For the past decade, spending has focused on war, which produces nothing that people really need, and isn't even good at creating jobs. Spending on clean energy would do wonders.

However, Obama has been weak on this front, and even adopted budget cuts as a goal, which is why we have the destructive sequester.

General Electric repeatedly gives the US the shaft, but the US government still panders to it.

40,000 anti-nuclear protesters marched in Tokyo demanding the end of nuclear power in Japan.

José Bustani, former head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, says Dubya engineered his ouster because he wanted to investigate Iraq to see if it had chemical weapons.

Clearly Bush did not want any facts getting in the way of his fictions. This will add to the case to convict Dubya of the crime of aggressive war, following the Nuremberg example.

The London riots were set off when thugs shot and killed Mark Duggan, whom they had found in a taxi. They say he was holding a gun and looked threatening. The taxi driver says Duggan had no gun, and was running away.

The driver also said that a thug threatened to shoot him if he kept looking at Duggan. It looks sounds like the thugs are testilying again.

The rioters were imprisoned for their rather small physical looting. The big looters, the companies that pay no taxes, have been left alone. Will the thugs be prosecuted at all?