eileen fleming

Mairead Maguire was shot by Israeli forces during a nonviolent demonstration in Bil'in in 2007, but it was USA Homeland Security who judged her a criminal in May 2009. After hosting and attending the Nobel Womens' Conference in Guatemala, to discuss, 'Redefining Democracy, Human Rights and Peace' the Nobel Peace laureate was detained for two hours, questioned, fingerprinted and photographed by Homeland Security at Houston Airport causing her to miss her flight home after the three day conference which was attended by over 150 feminist activists.

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Mary Shaw

An article in Thursday's New York Times reveals that some pro-choice groups are concerned that "Judge Sotomayor may not be a reliable vote to uphold Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 abortion rights decision."

The article quotes NARAL president Nancy Keenan as calling for the Senate to press the issue during the confirmation hearings:

"Discussion about Roe v. Wade will -- and must -- be part of this nomination process. As you know, choice hangs in the balance on the Supreme Court as the last two major choice-related cases were decided by a 5-to-4 margin."

This is an important issue, and NARAL's concern should not be too readily dismissed. But it's worth taking some time to research the court cases behind their concern.

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Rodrigue Tremblay

“I almost went down on my knees to beg [President] Herbert Hoover to veto the asinine Hawley-Smoot Tariff.”...“That Act intensified nationalism all over the world.” - Thomas Lamont, banker and economic adviser, June 1930

"Now is a time where we have to be very careful about any signals of protectionism." - President Barack Obama, February 19, 2009

“From the purely economic point of view nothing speaks against free trade and everything against protectionism.” - Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973), Austrian economist

When the economy is booming, foreign borrowings and imports of goods and services from other countries are most welcome. They allow for more spending without inflation and they raise living standards. It is a version of having your cake and eating it too. In an economic downturn, however, the political reflex of populist politicians is to turn protectionist and to become economic isolationists by raising trade barriers. In such an environment, foreign competition becomes a convenient scapegoat for the crisis, even though the causes of such crisis are most often purely domestic in nature.

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Rajesh Makwana

Despite the scientific consensus on the urgent need to address the causes of climate change, a stubborn attachment to economic growth by policymakers threatens to disrupt any effective response to the growing environmental crisis. Interim updates in the run up to December’s major Climate Conference in Copenhagen revealed that emissions and temperatures are accelerating more rapidly than expected - leading many to ask why governments and political leaders are doing so little to reduce emissions and mitigate climate change.

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Ellen Brown

“I understand that these cuts are very painful and they affect real lives. This is the harsh reality and the reality that we face. Sacramento is not Washington – we cannot print our own money. We can only spend what we have.” Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger quoted in Time, May 22, 2009

Christmas comes early, Governor. You CAN print your own money. Fiscally solvent North Dakota is doing it . . . and so can California. Now!!!

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Khalid Amayreh

There is always fresh evidence justifying the Israeli-Nazi analogy. In recent days and weeks, a number of Israeli officials and lawmakers proposed "draft laws" that would effectively formalize Israel's de facto racism and seriously restrict the human and civil rights of Israel’s non-Jewish citizens.

One of the proposals being discussed would criminalize the commemoration of Nakba by Palestinians holding the Israeli citizenship. Predictably, the brazenly racist proposal has infuriated Israel’s 1.5-million- strong Palestinian community.

One Israeli Palestinian parliamentarian compared the proposed law with an imagined promulgation by Germany of a law banning all Jewish activities commemorating the holocaust.

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Arthur Silber

The U.S. ruling class, almost all of American media, and virtually all commentators across the "respectable" political spectrum regard the "right" of the United States to dictate events around the globe as an axiomatic truth, never to be challenged or questioned in even the smallest particular. This quasi-religious belief, precisely identified by William Pfaff as the "unjustified utopianism" that permits "Americans [to] think that history has an ultimate solution, and that the United States is meant to provide it," has served as the foundation for American foreign policy for over a century, and it has become imperishably engraved in our profoundly distorted national self-conception in the decades following World War II.

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Raymond Ponzini

We have an absolute sham scam of a medical system in the United States. I am presently being hunted by a collection agent for a three-year-old medical bill for $290. Three years ago I took my wife to an emergency room after listening to days of howling about a small but painful rash she had developed at the base of the back of her neck. The fact that I even waited at all is outrageous, but we are too poor to afford a thousand a month for medical insurance, and we are at the mercy of an exploitive American system, which I and many other Americans dread dealing with.

We spent all of two hours at the hospital, ninety eight percent of it waiting to see a doctor. When they finally did see my wife the diagnosis was short and simple. “It’ s shingles. We can’t do anything go home and let it run it’s course.” After that we were directed to a row of desks where clerks working for the hospital made a pitch to us that if we paid our bill immediately it would only be $185 rather than $290. I wanted to do the right thing and the most economical thing so I paid the $185 for the five-minute consultation and went home with a clean conscience thinking I had paid the bill.

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Stephen Lendman

Some of the best ideas are often the simplest. When applied to the global economic crisis, the solution is easier than imagined. What's hard, in fact a Gordian Knot, is the political will to embrace it. But even matters that great can be solved by a bold stoke, and according to legend, Alexander the Great's "Alexandrian solution" was achieved with one stroke of his sword, cutting the Knot in half. Applied to the global economic crisis, it means addressing it with effective policies, not ones wrecking America and other troubled nations worldwide.

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Phil Rockstroh

...pleasing sound bites and rousing oratory from President Obama...

From time to time, events unfold that are so large in scope, so all-encompassing in their implications that one's initial response is muted by an inability to categorize it all within the realm of experience. Previous reference points prove of little service. One's image of oneself and one's place in the world is under seize, perhaps even in danger of being torn away. One stare's into the abyss, until the abyss removes its dark shades and makes direct eye contact. The mind buzzes; one's thoughts scuttle in circles like stunned insects. On a collective basis, we as a nation are living through such a time. At present, we are witnessing the descending spiral of Icarusian Capitalism; our sacred delusion of the perpetual ascendancy of a god-like market place lies broken in the dust. Malls and Mcmansions stand abandoned, desolate as the edifices of forgotten gods, as the come-ons of the salesmen of deregulated capitalism are churned to spittle amid a cacophony of collapsing market platitudes.

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