Happiness in Slavery
Link: http://revoltoftheplebs.wordpress.com/2010/01/25/happiness-in-slavery-4/
“America’s Impending Master Class Dictatorship”, Mr. Dougherty crunches some numbers for us and finds: “According to the Federal Reserve’s most recent report on wealth, America’s private net worth was $53.4 trillion as of September, 2009. But at the same time, America’s debt and unfunded liabilities totaled at least $120,000,000,000,000.00 ($120 trillion), or 225% of the citizens’ net worth. Even if the government expropriated every dollar of private wealth in the nation, it would still have a deficit of $66,600,000,000,000.00 ($66.6 trillion), equal to $214,286.00 for every man, woman and child in America and roughly 500% of GDP. If the government does not directly seize the nation’s private wealth, then it will require $389,610 from each and every citizen to balance the country’s books.”
PermalinkAfter Massachusetts: Obama fakes anti-Wall Street stance
Link: http://wsws.org/articles/2010/jan2010/obam-j25.shtml
In a public statement criticizing the major banks Thursday, followed by a speech on jobs in the industrial town of Elyria, Ohio, Friday, President Barack Obama has begun a transparent effort to posture as the defender of the people against corporate interests. In what media pundits and White House insiders have described as a “pivot to populism,” Obama has responded to the shock defeat of the Democratic Party in the US Senate election in Massachusetts with a round of verbal bashing of Wall Street.
War on Goldstone now deploys human-rights orgs and, you guessed it, the Holocaust
Link: http://www.uruknet.info/index.php?p=m62560&hd=&size=1&l=e
The war that was launched this past weekend against the Goldstone report in the New York Times is aimed at the mildmannered Sec’y General of the United Nations. So Norman Finkelstein tells me, and this Haaretz piece confirms. On February 5, Ban Ki-moon will report to the General Assembly on the progress of the report (which was published last summer by the UN Human Rights Council). Before then Ban will have gotten the Israeli gov’t’s response to the Goldstone report–its effort to nullify the findings–and Haaretz says the goal is to get Ban to say, I accept the Israeli response to the charges, let the Israelis investigate the Gaza slaughter.
Japan 'May Rethink' US Futenma Air Base After Poll
Link: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/01/25-5
Japan's Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has said the result of a weekend mayoral poll could fuel a major rethink about US military bases in Japan. Residents of the Japanese city of Nago, on Okinawa, chose a candidate opposed to the hosting of an American air base.
World's glaciers continue to melt at historic rates
Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/25/world-glacier-monitoring-service-figures
Glaciers across the globe are continuing to melt so fast that many will disappear by the middle of this century, the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS) said today.
Italian official condemns Haiti earthquake relief as 'vanity parade'
Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/25/italy-condemns-haiti-earthquake-relief-effort
Link to this video The Italian government official who led the country's response to the L'Aquila earthquake has condemned relief efforts in Haiti as a disorganised "vanity parade", ahead of an international conference on rebuilding the devastated country.
Israeli Information Minister Slams All Reports on Gaza War as Anti-Semitic
Just days before Israel is expected to release its own report on the January 2009 invasion of the Gaza Strip, Israeli Information Minister Yuli Edelstein declared that the UN report on the war, and every other report since the war ended, “are simply a type of anti-Semitism.”
Shrimp's Dirty Secrets: Why America's Favorite Seafood Is a Health and Environmental Nightmare
Americans love their shrimp. It's the most popular seafood in the country, but unfortunately much of the shrimp we eat are a cocktail of chemicals, harvested at the expense of one of the world's productive ecosystems. Worse, guidelines for finding some kind of "sustainable shrimp" are so far nonexistent.
The Obama Brand: Feel Good While Overlords Loot the Treasury and Launch Imperial Wars
Link: http://djapollo2k.livejournal.com/33616.html
"Barack Obama is a brand. And the Obama brand is designed to make us feel good about our government while corporate overlords loot the Treasury, armies of corporate lobbyists grease the palms of our elected officials, our corporate media diverts us with gossip and trivia, and our imperial wars expand in the Middle East. Brand Obama is about being happy consumers. We are entertained. We feel hopeful. We like our president. We believe he is like us. But like all branded products spun out from the manipulative world of corporate advertising, this product is duping us into doing and supporting a lot of things that are not in our interest."
Gazan women search for gravel to feed their children
The four-year-old Israeli siege on Gaza has caused unemployment to soar and basic supplies to be expensive and scarce. Seeking a little income any way they can, Gaza women are being forced to dig for gravel, a basic construction material that can then be sold.
CAMBODIA: 'Abuse Rampant in Drug Detention Centres’ – Human Rights Watch
Link: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50090
A staff member "would use the cable to beat people. On each whip, the person’s skin would come off and stick on the cable," said M’noh*, 16, of his detention in Choam Chao Youth Rehabilitation Centre, a government-run facility for drug dependents in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh.
Will Obama Put Muscle Into the White House's New Populist Play?
Link: http://www.counterpunch.org/hudson01252010.html
At stake now is President Obama’s credibility as an agent for change. Voters see his main “change” thus far to have been favoritism to Wall Street. Jay Leno jokes that Obama has done the impossible: resurrected the seemingly dying Republican Party and given it the coveted label of the “Party of Change,” running against Wall Street.
'Chemical Ali' executed in Iraq
Link: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/01/201012514645847464.html
Al-Majid was involved in a campaign in which 182,000 Iraqi Kurds were killed. Ali Hassan al-Majid, the cousin of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, has been executed in Iraq for crimes against humanity, a government spokesman said.
Q+A-Blame game over record US deficit set to intensify
Link: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2312679920100125
In President Barack Obama's first year in office, fellow Democrats and Republicans traded pot-shots over who was to blame for the record U.S. deficit. In 2010, an election year, these are set to become broadsides.
Why are the US and UK Governments creating mass hysteria!! Part 1
Why in a period of only two days has the security level been upgraded from Substantial (an attack is a strong possibility) to Severe (an attack is highly likely) even though our Home Secretary stressed that there was no intelligence suggesting an attack is imminent. It's all down to the four P's Pursue, Prevent, Protect, and Prepare or should that read Panic People and Prevent Privacy?
Exodus as Haiti toll passes 150,000
Link: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/01/20101250950705108.html
More than 150,000 people have been confirmed dead in the Port-au-Prince area alone following Haiti's devastating earthquake, the country's communications minister says.
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