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All Blog Posts (138)

Wall Street's Bailout Hustle

If you're not angry, you're not paying attention.

MATT TAIBBI

Posted Feb 17, 2010 in Rolling Stone Magazine

Goldman Sachs and other big banks aren't just pocketing the trillions we gave them to rescue the economy - they're re-creating the conditions for another crash

On January 21st, Lloyd Blankfein left a peculiar voicemail message on the work phones of his employees at Goldman Sachs. Fast becoming America's pre-eminent Marvel… Continue

Added by Cromag on February 21, 2010 at 10:10pm — No Comments

Republicans at Highest Levels Really Want to Do Away with Democracy for All

By Mark Ames,

February 12, 2010, via AlterNet http://ow.ly/19w6a

While Tea Party movement followers ran around Nashville last week dressed up in their Paul Revere period costumes, blathering about their heroic struggle against Obama's Islamosocialist tyranny, the right-wing elite that nurtures them, and their paid libertarian ideologues, have been openly advocating the abolition… Continue

Added by Cromag on February 20, 2010 at 11:00am — No Comments

Investigation: USMC General Smedley Butler and the US Corporate Coup [VIDEO UPDATE]

Smedley Butler on Interventionism

-- Excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933, by Major General Smedley Butler, USMC.

War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.

I believe…

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Added by Cromag on February 14, 2010 at 8:00pm — No Comments

The Disadvantages of an Elite Education

Our best universities have forgotten that the reason they exist is to make minds, not careers

By William Deresiewicz

It didn’t dawn on me that there might be a few holes in my education until I was about 35. I’d just bought a house, the pipes needed fixing, and the plumber was standing in my kitchen. There he was, a short, beefy guy with a goatee and a Red Sox cap… Continue

Added by Cromag on February 12, 2010 at 10:00pm — No Comments

Where's The Movement?

Where's The Movement? by George Lakoff

In forming his administration, President Obama abandoned the movement that had begun during his campaign for deal-making and a pragmatism that hasn't worked. That movement is still possible and needed now. Here is look at what is required, and how a version of it is forming in California.

We begin with this week's triple whammy.

Freedom vs. The Public Option

Which would you prefer,…

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Added by Cromag on February 9, 2010 at 8:00pm — No Comments

How to Get Our Democracy Back - by Lawrence Lessig

If You Want Change, You Have to Change Congress

We should remember what it felt like one year ago, as the ability to recall it emotionally will pass and it is an emotional memory as much as anything else. It was a moment rare in a democracy's history. The feeling was palpable--to supporters and opponents alike--that something important had happened. America had elected, the young candidate promised, a transformational president. And wrapped in a campaign that had… Continue

Added by Cromag on February 7, 2010 at 10:24pm — No Comments

Doing Business but Suffering in Silence

According to the World Health Organisation, gender-based violence is a major public health and human rights problem throughout the world. Though the assault is carried on in the privacy of the home, the violation is widely seen as a "private" family affair, and for some - a normal part of life.

In Kenya, an estimated 49% of married women were physically abused by their husbands (Borwankar et. al, 2008). Though violence against women mainly occurs in the form of physical and sexual… Continue

Added by Fiona Mati on January 2, 2010 at 4:39am — No Comments

Political system earns a mulligan

Democracy allocates one vote to each eligible individual. Equality may be implied but in our form of representative democracy, inequality is guaranteed. Each individual vote is not of equal value.

There are but two truths about democracy. The first is the widespread delusion amongst the poor that we have one. The second is the chronic terror amongst the rich lest we get one.(1)

Gerrymandering of districts within the various states assures some 95% retention of incumbent… Continue

Added by Harold Hellickson on November 5, 2009 at 9:47am — 1 Comment

→What is the West and Should We Defend it As-is?

When asked what he thought of Western civilization, Mahatma Gandhi said, “I think it would be a good idea.” Much of the world’s envy towards the West comes from the misdirection and fear projected from the West by its’ deeds. These deeds are influenced by a collection of shared human needs and values. Philippe Nemo, Professor of Philosophy and the History of Political Ideas at the European School of Management, in his penetrating book, What is the West, questions “whether certain values… Continue

Added by Ice Goldberg on October 22, 2009 at 2:17pm — 3 Comments

What is the West's Responsibility?

by Ice Goldberg

June 22nd, 2009

”In fifty years –a single lifetime– the earth has been more radically changed than by all previous generations of humanity” [1]. Taken lightly, total ecological devastation could effectively arrive this century in the form of climate change due to –putting it simply– the global mismanagement of resources. It may even be too late to mitigate if we cannot come to some consensus in short order.

Today’s scientific community has reached a… Continue

Added by Ice Goldberg on October 22, 2009 at 2:06pm — 3 Comments

Dale Maharidge Interview: Covering The Economic Pain Of Real Americans

Is today's media built for these times? Is it capable of covering the widespread economic downturn in a way that conveys the pain so many Americans are feeling to the country and the world? And can it be done in a way that doesn't feel like a view of devastation from 30,000 feet up in the air? For insight, we turned to a man who is built to cover this crisis, Pulitzer-Prize-winning author and Columbia School of Journalism professor… Continue

Added by Cromag on October 3, 2009 at 9:30am — No Comments

The Powell Memo and the Teaching Machines of Right-Wing Extremists

"the need for a new kind of debate, one that is not limited to isolated issues such as health care, but is more broad-based and fundamental, a debate about how power, inequality and money constrict the educational, economic and political conditions that make democracy possible"

Thursday 01 October 2009

by: Henry A. Giroux, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Paul… Continue

Added by Cromag on October 2, 2009 at 8:00am — No Comments

Agriculture and Food in Crisis

An Outstanding Overview by Fred Magdoff and Brian Tokar Originally published in the Monthly Review - An Independent Socialist Magazine

Purchase a hardcopy HERE

“Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?,” asks the title of an article by Lester…

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Added by Cromag on September 22, 2009 at 4:30pm — No Comments

Inequality and the American Dream

Jun 15th 2006 From The Economist print edition

The world's most impressive economic machine needs a little adjusting

MORE than any other country, America defines itself by a collective dream: the dream of economic opportunity and upward mobility. Its proudest boast is that it offers a chance of the good life to everybody who is willing to work hard and play by the rules. This ideal has made the United States the world's strongest magnet for immigrants; it has also… Continue

Added by Cromag on September 21, 2009 at 8:09pm — 2 Comments

Words in the Service of Corporate Masters

By Ralph Nader

Ever wonder what's happening to words once they fall into the hands of corporate and government propagandists? Too often reporters and editors don't wonder enough. They ditto the words even when the result is deception or doubletalk.

Here are some examples. Day in and day out we read about “detainees” imprisoned for months or years by the federal government in the U.S., Guantanamo Bay, Iraq and Afghanistan. Doesn't the media know that the correct word is… Continue

Added by Cromag on September 21, 2009 at 8:07pm — 2 Comments

►Transcribed Speech Iraqi Shoe Thrower Gave on Release from Jail w/ VIDEO

My flower to Bush the occupier: the story of my shoe

"Here I am, free. But my country is still a prisoner of war," said Mutadhar al-Zaidi, the Iraqi who threw his shoe at George Bush, in this speech he gave on his release.

Firstly, I give my thanks and my regards to everyone who stood beside me, whether inside my country, in the Islamic world, in the free world.

There has been a lot of talk about the action and about the person who took it, and about the hero… Continue

Added by Cromag on September 21, 2009 at 5:30pm — No Comments

Corporate Crime (Nader/Gonzalez)

Corporate crime costs Americans hundreds of billions of dollars a year. Tens of thousands of Americans are killed each year and hundreds of thousands of Americans injured and sickened each year by preventable corporate-bred violence.

From pollution, medical negligence, procurement fraud, product defects, and financial fraud, to antitrust, public corruption, foreign bribery and occupational homicide, corporate crime is widely ignored by politicians – yet acutely felt by all… Continue

Added by Cromag on September 21, 2009 at 3:30pm — No Comments

Crisis and Hope

Theirs and ours

Noam Chomsky

Perhaps I may begin with a few words about the title. There is too much nuance and variety to make such sharp distinctions as theirs-and-ours, them-and-us. And neither I nor anyone can presume to speak for “us.” But I will pretend it is possible.

There is also a problem with the term “crisis.” Which one? There are numerous very severe crises, interwoven in ways that preclude any clear separation. But again I will pretend… Continue

Added by Cromag on September 21, 2009 at 3:00pm — No Comments

Obama Health Care Speech 09/09/2009 (transcribed)

Remarks of President Barack Obama – As Prepared for Delivery Address

to a Joint Session of Congress on Health Care

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

Washington, DC

Madame Speaker, Vice President Biden, Members of Congress, and the American people:

When I spoke here last winter, this nation was facing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. We were losing an average of 700,000 jobs per month. Credit was frozen. And our financial system was on the… Continue

Added by Cromag on September 9, 2009 at 10:19pm — No Comments

$2.3 Billion Pfizer Settlement Is NOT Enough to Deter Organized Crime in the Pharmaceutical Industry

Sept. 2, 2009

Statement of Sidney Wolfe, M.D., Director, Public Citizen’s Health Research Group

Today’s $2.3 billion settlement between Pfizer and the U.S. Justice Department for unlawful prescription drug promotion may sound large, but it’s not enough to ensure drug companies will curb their bad behavior. In fact, it just shows there is competition in the pharmaceutical industry. Pfizer has broken a record just set by Eli Lilly & Company in January for what was then… Continue

Added by Cromag on September 2, 2009 at 9:00pm — No Comments