This year, the president dispensed with the window dressing. No big deal about cuts -- except on the domestic side. While the administration's record $3.8 trillion budget cuts or freezes spending on domestic programs, it requests $708.3 billion for war. That's $14.8 billion more than we're spending now.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
The Defense Industry Is Pleased with Obama
by Laura Flanders from The Nation website.
Haiti, Still Starving 23 Days Later
by Bill Quigley from Counterpunch.
You can walk down many of the streets of Port au Prince and see absolutely no evidence that the world community has helped Haiti.
Twenty three days after the earthquake jolted Haiti and killed over 200,000 people, as many as a million people have still not received any international food assistance.
Non Farm Payrolls Benchmark Revision and the Unemployment Rate as Cruel Farce
from Jesse's Cafe Americain blog. This article provides a critical and more careful look at government employment stats.
The dark side of nitrogen
from Grist. Re the adverse effects of using nitrogen based fertilizers in farming.
Boiling Tea in America: Attitudes toward the Tea Party movement
by John Zogby from Global Research. The author furnishes some interesting polling data about this group.
John Zogby is president and CEO of Zogby International, a global polling and market research company. He is the author of The Way We'll Be: The Zogby Report on the Transformation of the American Dream (Random House, 2008)
The Planning of War Behind Closed Doors
by Rick Rozoff from Global Research. A closer look at The Empire as it makes war plans.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Consumption Fatigue and a Return to Citizenship
This is Chapter 6 of a draft of a book due to be published soon.
There are signs that the public are tired of waiting for politics and business to blink first. Across the world, community organisations and individuals are making efforts to effect profound changes to the way we live. Whether this is through the rise of Fairtrade and organic produce or the more active community projects that search for solutions to ecological problems, statistics show that more people are waking up to the social and environmental crises and are prepared to work for change.
No Direction Home: Pakistan and the Imperial Principle
by Chris Floyd from his blog, Empire Burlesque. More tales from The Empire.
The lynch-mob mentality
by Glenn Greenwald from Salon.
The fact that the Government labels Person X a "Terrorist" is not proof that Person X is, in fact, a Terrorist.
That proposition should be intrinsically understood by any American who completed sixth grade civics and was thus taught that a central prong of our political system is that government officials often abuse their power and/or err and therefore must prove accusations to be true (with tested evidence) before they're assumed to be true and the person punished accordingly.
Government Labor Statistics: Lies and Damned Lies
by Dave Lindorff from The Public Record.
Ah, but that begs the question: if the government numbers are that grotesquely wrong, what does that say about the government’s policy with regard to joblessness, about it’s policy towards economic stimulus, about the government’s policy towards alleviating the suffering of the struggling citizenry? After all, policies are supposed to be designed around a solid set of facts.
When independent journalists challenge US wars, government propagandists attack in the comments
from LA County Nonpartisan Examine. This is another way that the ruling class "manages consent".
We know in the present that government propagandists appeared over 4,500 times as “experts” in the PR run-up to the current war in Iraq, corporate media refuses to clearly communicate the essential news that ALL the claims for war were known to be false at the time they were told and US wars are “emperor has no clothes” obviously unlawful. The American public is recognizing the propaganda in corporate media by deserting them to embrace alternative sources.
Gene Patents Under Legal Attack
from Wired website. Capitalists "own" everything else--why not the basic elements of life? (sarcasm) So, what if commercial biotechnology vanished--does that mean that biotechnology would vanish too? Does someone have to "own" basic life forms and derive profit from "ownership" in order to study them, and for people to benefit from this research?
The Politics of Climate Denial
from Climate and Capitalism.
The mainstream media’s coverage of climate change must also share some of the blame. Despite the scientific consensus, “journalists continued to report updates from the best climate scientists in the world juxtaposed against the unsubstantiated raving of an industry-funded climate change denier — as if both were equally valid,” Hoggan said.
Obama's nuclear power policy: a study in contradictions?
from the Christian Science Monitor. The title would be more accurate if worded this way: "The ruling class's nuclear policy..." Obama is merely the Public Relations Officer for The Empire--well, I have to admit that he is more pleasant to listen to than Bush, Jr.
Portland promotes urban cycling, but costs will be high
from the Christian Science Monitor. The costs will be high? Really? As compared to what--building and maintaining more car roads?
A Nation of Suspects
by Sibel Edmonds, whistle-blower extraordinaire.
If you were to ask most ‘but why do they tap your phone line and capture your data or conversation? You the good citizen?‘ The common answer would be along these lines, ‘I don’t know. They must know something. I don’t understand how intelligence and police stuff like this works. They must know something, if they think tapping my phone and listening to my conversation helps to fight terrorists and keep us safe…I just do my own thing and since I don’t have anything to hide it doesn’t bother me. They’ve got to do what they’ve got to do to protect us…’
The Violence of Work: New Book Brings Work Out of the Shadows
a book review from Toward Freedom. The book, entitled Working In The Shadows, is about immigrant labor doing work in the US that even American wage slaves won't do.
Gulf firm seeks long-term lease on Tanzanian farmland
from This Day online newspaper based, I think, in Nigeria. The article illustrates a wider trend among rich countries to secure their food supplies even in a continent such as Africa where so many are malnourished or starving.
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