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Five reasons why Americans won't resist
Mickey Z.
Protest (American, definitely not a verb): Wait for UFPJ or ANSWER to stage a parade (I mean, demonstration) on a weekend afternoon so no one misses work or school or in any way disrupts the flow of commerce. Don’t make a sign; the organizers will make one for you. March in an orderly fashion, be polite to the occupying army (I mean, cops), and be sure to stay in designated free speech zones. Blame the Republicans. Wear costumes. Make puppets. Exclude anarchists. Hold a candlelight vigil. Sign a petition. Chant. Vote for a Democrat and hope for change. Need I continue?
The biggest Ponzi scheme of all
Xymphora
I keep reading well-informed Americans complaining that the real scandal isn't bonuses to corrupt/overpaid/incompetent executives, but the funnelling of American taxpayer money to counterparties, many of them foreign banks. I don't think Americans are ever going to understand it. First of all, it isn't taxpayer money. No American taxpayer is going to pay more taxes over this, at least not directly. The treasury is just going to run the printing presses a bit longer.
The United States is the world's largest Ponzi scheme. Americans buy stuff they don't have the money to pay for (because the generators of wealth, the factories, have been shifted overseas by the American oligarchs), and pay for it with IOUs. The rest of the world plays along, because it likes the short-term profits to be made from the insatiable greed of American consumers, and because it has no clue of how to make the merry-go-round stop. Neither the American government nor the United States itself can ever possibly pay what it owes. Never. Yet the prosperity of the rest of the world depends on financiers accepting the American accounts receivable and the American debt paper as being worth close to its face value.
"Down the Memory Hole," Alan Greenspan Style
Stephen Lendman
He's back and in denial in a March 11 Wall Street Journal op-ed headlined: "The Fed Didn't Cause the Housing Bubble." He lied, the way he did throughout his career and for 18.5 years as Fed chairman. How else could he have kept the job, be knighted in the UK for his "contribution to global economic stability, wisdom and skill," then afterwards be extolled by the Money Trust he enriched.
So now he's preserving his "legacy" by expunging its dark side the way Orwell described in 1984 - "down the memory hole," a convenient slot for "any document....due for destruction," politically inconvenient truths to be erased to preserve only sanitized versions for the public. It's called historical revisionism, but even some on the right aren't convinced.
Jimmy Carter promised to end prohibition in 1976, should Obama deliver in 2009? Will we finally reclaim our freedom?
by chycho
“In 1973 Oregon became the first state to modify its law and decriminalize marijuana use, which meant possession became a civil offense punishable by a fine. A key reason for this legislative change was pressure exerted by the National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws (NORML), a private citizens group founded in 1971 that believed drug laws were unfair to recreational users. The American Medical Association (AMA) ad the American Bar Association (ABA) also supported marijuana law reform – the AMA came out in favor of dropping penalties for possession of insignificant amounts of marijuana in 1972, while the ABA recommended decriminalization in 1973.
The lost memories
Najwa Sheikh
Our childhood memories are the events, experiences that we lived with our sisters and brothers; they are the special events that no one can ignore, or forget, the experiences that can be only shared by those have the bounds of brotherhood and not by anybody else.
The memories I had with my sisters and brothers are only for us, and only we as a family will enjoy recalling them, and living again that old experience. However, this can happened when we live together in the same area, or even had the chance to meet again over the years to recall these dear memories of our childhood.
Was the bailout itself a scam?
Paul Craig Roberts
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Professor Michael Hudson (CounterPunch, March 18) is correct that the orchestrated outrage over the $165 million AIG bonuses is a diversion from the thousand times greater theft from taxpayers of the approximately $200 billion “bailout” of AIG. Nevertheless, it is a diversion that serves an important purpose. It has taught an inattentive American public that the elites run the government in their own private interests.
Americans are angry that AIG executives are paying themselves millions of dollars in bonuses after having cost the taxpayers an exorbitant sum. Senator Charles Grassley put a proper face on the anger when he suggested that the AIG executives “follow the Japanese example” and “resign or go commit suicide.”
Yet, Obama’s White House economist, Larry Summers, on whose watch as Treasury Secretary in the Clinton administration financial deregulation got out of control, invoked the “sanctity of contracts” in defense of the AIG bonuses.
But the Obama administration does not regard other contracts as sacred. Specifically: labor unions had to agree to give-backs in order for the auto companies to obtain federal help; CNN reports that “Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki confirmed Tuesday [March 10] that the Obama administration is considering a controversial plan to make veterans pay for treatment of service-related injuries with private insurance”; the Washington Post reports that the Obama team has set its sights on downsizing Social Security and Medicare.
Land Day 2009 and BDS Global Week of Action Against the Crisis and War
eileen fleming
The Global Week of Action; a call for BDS/Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions begins March 28th through April 4, 2009. March 30, 2009 will commemorate the 33rd annual Land Day nonviolent solidarity demonstrations and actions in Palestine and the diaspora.
On July 9, 2004, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel's Wall- where ever it was built on occupied Palestinian territory- was illegal and must fall. People of conscience all over the world have united to do what governments do to out of control regimes: use money to do the talking.
The ‘Game’ Called War
Steve Amsel
My understanding of a war is two opposing nations fighting each other to the death. I have never seen a war where it was not armies that were involved in such conflicts….. at least not until I moved to Israel.
Israel has created an enemy of a nation which it claims does not even exist. It has, for the past 61 years, occupied the land belonging to that nation. It has denied them every basic human right guaranteed them by the United Nations. It has ignored every condemnation against them by the World Body as well as a handful of other nations.
It has waged war against this nation….. a nation without an army. Who then are the targeted ones? The civilians….. innocent children and mothers. They justify these actions by claiming that every one of the victims is a potential terrorist. They have gotten away with these actions with the support of much of the western world. The Israelis have a network of support that no other nation enjoys. This network seems to have the world convinced that any criticism or condemnation of Israel is nothing but anti Semitism.
ISRAEL’S DAYS AS A JEWISH STATE ARE NUMBERED
Linda S. Heard
The future of Israel as a Jewish state is in jeopardy, according to a leaked CIA study destined for certain eyes only. According to author and lawyer Franklin Lamb, it predicts an inevitable shift away from a two-state solution to the pursuance of one state. Its estimations also include the emigration to the US of 2 million Israelis within the coming 15 years, along with another 1.5 million to Europe and Russia.
This may sound radical but it appears that the outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert agrees. “If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights, then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished,” he said in January.
The State of Israel is at war with the Palestinian people, people against people, collective against collective
Uri Avnery
The most important sentence written in Israel this week was lost in the general tumult of exciting events.
Really exciting: In a final act of villainy, typical of his whole tenure as Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert abandoned the captive soldier, Gilad Shalit.
Ehud Barak decided that the Labor Party must join the ultra-right government, which includes outright fascists.
And this, too: the former President of Israel was officially indicted for rape.
In this cacophony, who would pay any attention to a sentence written by lawyers in a document submitted to the Supreme Court? The judicial debate concerns one of the most revolting laws ever enacted in Israel.
It says that the wife of an Israeli citizen is not allowed to join him in Israel if she is living in the occupied Palestinian territories or in a “hostile” Arab country.
The Arab citizens of Israel belong to Hamulas (clans) which extend beyond the borders of the state. Arabs generally marry within the Hamula. This is an ancient custom, deeply rooted in their culture, probably originating in the desire to keep the family property together. In the Bible, Isaac married his cousin, Rebecca. -The “Green Line”, which was fixed arbitrarily by the events of the 1948 war, divides families. One village found itself in Israel, the next remained outside the new state, the Hamula lives in both. The Nakba also created a large Palestinian Diaspora.
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