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New Delhi: The Left may have staged protests during his visit but US President Barack Obama was "glad" to meet an Indian communist leader last evening. "I am glad to meet an Indian communist. I am told that communists have been part of the (Indian) political mainstream," Obama told CPM Politburo member Sitaram Yechury at the Rashtrapati Bhawan banquet as they were introduced and both shook hands. Yechury told Obama that the Indian communists have been in the political mainstream "throughout". Marking a departure from their past practice, leaders and MPs of the CPM and CPI, known for their anti-US...

Chris Bram is the author of the novel Gods and Monsters. Gore Vidal was famous for his hates: academia, presidents, whole portions of the American public and, most notably, Truman Capote. Yet he could be incredibly generous to other writer friends. He wrote beautiful, appreciative essays about Tennessee Williams and Dawn Powell. He was a man of many facets and endless contradictions. He achieved his first notoriety in 1948 when he was only 22, for his novel, The City and the Pillar. It was the fullest, most frank portrait of gay American life at that time. The book wasn't autobiographical...

American candidates for president have a predictable trajectory. [snip] "...Obama has been going off the standard script -- most recently by attacking capitalism in radical terms. Namely, "If you've got a business -- you (you didn't build that) Somebody else made that happen." Democratic senators are reportedly "horrified" by Obama's behavior.[snip] If Breitbart is right, the (Obama raising money in China)

It was billed to be an explosive tell-all about what 'really happened' during the affair that ended a marriage and the dreams of the man who was being pipped to be the next U.S. president. But after all the hype, it seems not that many people really wanted to hear Rielle Hunter's side of the story, as the book about her relationship with former senator John Edwards has sold just 6,000 copies. Due to poor sales, Hunter seems to have dropped under the radar and scheduled no additional tour dates despite an initial media blitz.

A Norwegian jihadist thought to have received Al-Qaeda training in Yemen was previously a left-wing radical who refused to believe that Osama Bin Laden’s network carried out the September 11th terrorist attacks, a newspaper said.The 33-year-old Norwegian now being hunted by a slew of international intelligence agencies associated in his youth with Oslo’s far-left Blitz movement, newspaper Dagbladet reports. Despite his one-time radical credentials, he later worked as a child minder at a daycare centre in Oslo, the city where he was born and raised, and did not have a history of violence, the paper said. He eventually became a...

Every America-hating leftists dream come true, being praised by Hanoi Jane. Jane Fonda, ‘Peace, Love and Misunderstanding’ Star, On The Occupy Movement and The Legacy Of ’9 To 5′ — HuffPo Huffington Post: Again, your character is a war protester. What’s your opinion of the Occupy movement? Jane Fonda: Right on! I say right on! It’s an important, wonderful movement. It doesn’t fit the mold. HP: Is that what you like about it? That it doesn’t fit the mold? Jane Fonda:I think that’s what allows it to be successful in its own way. Because it has no leader; it has...

Other issues on Ms. Barr’s platform include ending the Federal Reserve, stopping “debt slavery” by “forgiving all school loans,” withdrawing military support for Israel and making war “obsolete.” “Wars make the stock market go up and are fueled by profits. Where one puts their money is where one puts their energy,” Ms. Barr explains on her site. “The Military Industrial Complex is our shadow government.” She also is concerned about preserving the environment, particularly water resources. “Those that lead us have allowed the corporations to cross over the web of life and they have destroyed the genetic code,” she wrote....

IÂ’m not going to tell readers that IÂ’m Senator Orrin HatchÂ’s biggest fan, but I can tell you, I certainly understand why Sarah Palin has endorsed him, and agree with her 100%. After breaking the news on GretaÂ’s show, Governor Palin eloquently laid out her reasons for backing Senator Hatch on Facebook. Watch the video and read her note here. As Sarah notes, Orrin Hatch has consistently been the strongest, loudest voice, championing Conservative nominees to the Supreme Court. This is a big deal, as the next president will likely appoint two or as many as three new Justices to...

Jimmy Carter - Mass Murderer Pravda 16.05.2012 Boni pastoris est tondere pecus, non deglubere. - Tiberius By John Fleming   ... Jimmy Carter affects a superficial appearance of amiability and since leaving the White House, besides his well-known work for Habitat for Humanity, he has espoused time and again humanitarian causes. He has been appointed a diplomatic plenipotentiary time and again, especially under Clinton, and he made a well-publicized trip to Cuba and met Fidel Castro recently, where he, without mentioning the repression under corporate monopoly capitalism, in Georgia and everywhere else in the U.S., chided Castro in a would-be...

His reaction is priceless.

It took a month and a half after George Zimmerman executed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin before an arrest was made. Though special prosecutor Angela Corey asserts that an investigation had been ongoing, all the evidence and statements made by the police chief and others involved with the case make it very clear that, had it not been for a massive outpouring, especially from the Black community, George Zimmerman would still be walking free. It was fear of a rebellion that led to the state responding and to Zimmerman’s arrest. And not to be forgotten or glossed over were the resilience and...

Peace has a day in Court For those of you who know me and have been following my story, you know that part of my resistance to the US Empire is my refusal to pay income taxes. This morning (April 19th), a new episode unfolded in my ongoing struggle with the IRS and the Empire the agency is nestled in. I was subpoenaed to appear in the 9th Circuit court of the US Federal Court system in Sacramento, California—my state’s capitol. For background, I have had two meetings with the IRS agent assigned to my case where I expressed to...

In my estimation, the hallmark of the true politician, the true Washington insider, is the intentional evasion of responsibility and/or blame – the sin of omission. By this standard, Rick Santorum, in the end, is nothing but a typical two-bit political hack. For all his bloviating and posturing, painting himself as a true conservative, selling his alleged “genuineness”  and values – a regular Joe – Santorum has shown his true colors by failing to endorse when it could have made a difference. Plainly, he is avoiding the ire of the GOP establishment by not endorsing Gingrich, and he is avoiding...

I’ve known Rick Santorum for 22 years, having first met him in 1990 before he’d won his first campaign for Congress. I interviewed him on WORD-FM, an evangelical Christian radio station where I was a frequent guest host (and eventually a full-time host) early in his campaign. If I was not the first media personality to interview Rick, I was one of the first. I had Rick as a guest at the request of my friend, Mark Rogers, who was running Rick’s campaign. Over the years I interviewed Rick at least a dozen times and debated him several times as...

Former Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.) writes in a new book that President Obama ditched him in the 2010 election after he helped Obama win the biggest legislative victory of his term by passing healthcare reform. Specter also claims that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) did not uphold his promise to grant him seniority accrued over 28 years of service in the Senate as a Republican. Specter, who rocked Washington’s political establishment and made headlines around the country when he left the Republican Party to join Democrats in April of 2009, has kept quiet about these slights until now ...

CNN's Patrick Oppmann moves from Seattle to Havana, Cuba.

Yesterday, Mitt Romney said he’s “not going to say outrageous things about the president.” Trouble with that statement is that “outrageous” is a pretty subjective adjective. Outrageous to whom? Apparently, Romney meant to say he’s not going to say anything about the president that would outrage the left — because he doesn’t seem to be afraid to say something about the president that would outrage the right. In fact, he did just that earlier today, when he essentially said the president shouldn’t be held responsible for the high price of gas. “I think people recognize that the president can’t precisely...

“When you look that closely at someone, you almost always develop sympathy for them,” Rockwell says. “It's like sitting next to someone for a long bus ride. … I want to think about who these people are and why they made the choices they did. I want to share the results of my thoughts, which are my paintings, with other people.” She was particularly inspired to paint bin Laden. “We take for granted who he was and what he did and why, and stop thinking of him as a human being with profoundly human motivations. The war on terror is...

.. US filmmaker Sean Stone, son of Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone, converted to Islam on Tuesday in Iran, where he is making a documentary, he told AFP. "The conversion to Islam is not abandoning Christianity or Judaism, which I was born with. It means I have accepted Mohammad and other prophets," he said in a brief telephone call from the central Iranian city of Isfahan, where he underwent the ceremony. Sean Stone's famous father is Jewish, while his mother is Christian. The 27-year-old filmmaker did not say why he converted. According to Iran's Fars news agency, Sean Stone had become...

<p>I was taking photographs of the police arresting Occupy Wall Street demonstrators at the December 12 Winter Garden flash mob, which had been organized in solidarity with the port shutdowns on the west coast, when I found myself targeted. "That one," I heard a voice say in a brutal "New Yawk" accent, realizing that a senior police official was pointing me out over a row of people, "he goes. He goes."</p>