AP is reporting: “Ousted Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo fought back Sunday against the politicians who engineered his dismissal, setting up an alternative government and pledging to upstage Paraguay’s new leaders at an upcoming regional summit.” KREGG HETHERINGTON, krether at gmail.com Professor at Dalhousie University in Canada and author of Guerrilla Auditors: Transparency, Democracy and Rural…

Title IX was signed on June 23, 1972 by President Richard Nixon and became law on July 1, 1972. JOANNE SMITH, jsmith at ggenyc.org Smith, founder and executive director of Girls for Gender Equity, Smith said today: “I benefited from Title IX’s opening up college athletics as many women and girls did, but that’s a…

The Miami Herald reports: “More than 50,000 people and representatives of more than 120 countries gather in Rio de Janeiro for the opening of the Rio+20 conference on sustainable development. Topics include the destruction of the rain forest, vanishing coral reefs, land grabs, the need for food security, clean water, the role of women in…

Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers (top-secret government documents that showed a pattern of governmental deceit about the Vietnam War) today signed a petition calling on Ecuador to grant political asylum to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Ellsberg stated: “Political asylum was made for cases like this. Freedom for Julian in Ecuador would serve the…

PHILIP RIZK, rizkphilip at googlemail.com, @tabulagaza Rizk is an independent blogger and filmmaker based in Cairo. He has been warning of the actions of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces since the uprising last year. See Institute for Public Accuracy news release: “From Cairo: Egypt’s Military Leading the Counter-Revolution?” Also, see: “Egypt One Year…

Al Jazeera reports: “The decision comes two months after Gilani, the nation’s longest-running prime minister, was convicted of contempt for refusing to ask Swiss authorities to reopen corruption cases against President Asif Ali Zardari. … The allegations against Zardari date back to the 1990s, when he and his late wife, former president Benazir Bhutto, are…

LACY MacAULEY, lacymacauley at gmail.com, @lacymacauley MacAuley is an Occupy D.C. activist currently at the People’s Summit in La Paz, Mexico. She said today: “La Paz is the closest that activists can get to the G20 Summit. The town of Cabo San Lucas is under heavy security. No one can travel to or from Cabo…

RICHARD WOLFF, rdwolff at att.net Wolff is author of the new book Occupy the Economy: Challenging Capitalism. He is professor of economics emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and currently a visiting professor in the Graduate Program for International Affairs at the New School University in New York City. He said today: “Recent elections…

The Guardian headlines their Mideast blog “Egypt’s Transition Plunged into Chaos.” The Wall Street Journal reports: “Egypt’s highest court ruled on Thursday to allow a former regime loyalist to run in presidential elections starting Saturday and to dissolve both houses of Egypt’s parliament, in verdicts that could add another pressure point to Egypt’s already fraught…

Los Angeles Times reports: “The ‘King of Wall Street’ returns to Capitol Hill today, this time to explain how JPMorgan Chase & Co. sustained a $2-billion hole in its ‘fortress balance sheet.'” THOMAS FERGUSON, thomas.ferguson at umb.edu Ferguson is professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, senior fellow of the Roosevelt Institute,…