Thisistheendoftheworldasweknowit.com | Once upon a time, the United States was a land of unparalleled freedom.  The rest of the world envied the freedom that ordinary Americans had to think, say and do what they wanted.  But all of that has changed.

NY Times | Internal documents from one of Mexico’s largest and most profitable drug trafficking cartels help explain why the group’s leader remains at large, nearly a decade after he boldly escaped from a maximum-security prison by hiding in a laundry cart.

Infowars.com | The dizzy honeymoon created by the EU and IMF pledge yesterday to throw a trillion dollars at eurozone debt has faded as predicted. Investors realize the “fiscal tightening” — pensions looted, social services slashed, standards of living sent into free fall — will negatively impact growth in the euro zone and result in central bankers cranking up interest rates in anticipation of looming default.

RawStory.com | The journalist who helped break the story that detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were being tortured by their US jailers told an audience at a journalism conference last month that American soldiers are now executing prisoners in Afghanistan.

TruthOut.org | Two weeks ago, Goldman Sachs was on the Congressional hot seat, grilled for fraud in its sale of complicated financial products called "synthetic CDOs." Last week the heat was off, as all eyes turned to the attack of the shorts (bets that a stock will decline in value) on Greek sovereign debt and the dire threat of a sovereign Greek default. By Thursday, Goldman's fraud had slipped from the headlines and Congress had been cowed into throwing in the towel on its campaign to break up the too-big-to-fail banks.

ABC News | With a tank full of BP unleaded I left my hotel in Hammond, Louisiana, and drove about 20 minutes up the road to the Unified Area Command in Robert, La. It's the same trip taken each day by workers from BP, contracting firms, Transocean, the Coast Guard, MMS and all the other agencies and companies trying to control the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Demotix.com | Palestinian patients at the Artificial Limbs and Polio Centre in Gaza, receive help with the adjustment of their artificial limbs. Demand for the center's services has increased dramatically after the late war of 2008-2009 in Gaza.

Forbes.com | The Weiss Group returned to the ratings game last week, and the research firm's chairman has already made a provocative challenge to the dominant credit rating agencies: strip the AAA-rating from U.S. government debt.

Washington's Blog | The Feds are launching criminal and civil investigations into manipulation of the silver market by JP Morgan.

Reuters | Nearly 40 million Americans received food stamps -- the latest in an ever-higher string of record enrollment that dates from December 2008 and the U.S. recession, according to a government update.

Infowars.com | Last week several Morgan Hill, California, students were sent home on Cinco de Mayo for wearing U.S. flag apparel that offended Latino students. The following day, on May 6, several Latino students walked out of school in response and held a rally in a nearby park.

NewsWithViews.com | The Tea Party in Utah flexed its muscle over the weekend and booted longtime establishment Republican senator, Bob Bennett, from office. Hooray! (Now, Arizona, please do America a favor and show John McCain the door!) Unfortunately, Tea Party activists were unsuccessful in Indiana, as longtime establishment Republican, Dan Coats, defeated the principled patriot, John Hostettler. Boo!

Infowars.com | The EU apparatchiks are in crisis mode. European Union boss Jose Manuel Barroso told us not to worry, though. They’re on it.

RawStory.com | Elena Kagan, President Barack Obama's latest nominee to the Supreme Court, helped protect the Saudi royal family from lawsuits that sought to hold al Qaeda financiers responsible in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

NY Post | Federal agents have launched parallel criminal and civil probes of JPMorgan Chase and its trading activity in the precious metals market, The Post has learned.