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A Day of Reckoning for the USA
Norm Lowry
“The foundation of all Mental Illness is the unwillingness to experience legitimate suffering.” Carl Jung
Lately, I have been inordinately baffled. The combined government & media sources of the world tell the tale of whole countries sitting on the edge of fiscal insolvency; civil unrest now becoming commonplace; starvation & suicide deaths soaring; staggering rises in unemployment; food shortages; rising threats & escalating wars. In my country (USA), the stories are the same…maybe 46 of 50 States, 80% of US cities & 2 of 3 US banks are fiscally insolvent; likely 1 of 5 workers unemployed or working part-time (due to lack of suitable employment); home foreclosures up 80% in 2008 (worse yet expected in 2009).
Toxic Plans for Toxic Assets
Stephen Lendman
Exit Paulson, enter Geithner with the latest "no banker left behind plan" - aka whatever Wall Street wants, Wall Street gets. Yet, the reception was underwhelming. The Dow plummeted 382 points while investors took shelter in bonds and gold. AP reported that "the new bank rescue plan landed with a thud on Wall Street" as investors worried that no end to the crisis is in sight. Editorial and op-ed commentaries were near unanimously negative and some especially critical.
At a February 9 congressional briefing, lawmakers greeted Geithner with laughter and sarcasm, but most of it is just politics. Bailout opponent Brad Sherman (D, California) asked for details and a dollar amount, but instead got generalities about what he announced the next day - a plan to:
PROMISES, PROMISES AND OBAMESE SEDUCTION
Gaither Stewart
“To seduce also means to destroy”
I ran into a reference to The Fable of the Bees: or, Private Vices, Publick Benefits and found the suggestive old poem extensively reproduced and commented on line. The work consists of a poem, The Grumbling Hive, or Knaves Turn'd Honest, and an extensive prose commentary. The poem which first appeared in 1705 was intended as a commentary on England, as the Dutch Englishman, Bernard de Mandeville, saw it. Here is a stanza:
-
A Spacious Hive well stock'd with Bees,
That lived in Luxury and Ease;
And yet as fam'd for Laws and Arms,
As yielding large and early Swarms;
Was counted the great Nursery
Of Sciences and Industry.
No Bees had better Government,
More Fickleness, or less Content.
They were not Slaves to Tyranny,
Nor ruled by wild Democracy;
But Kings, that could not wrong, because
Their Power was circumscrib'd by Laws.
Obama, like Bush, is Throwing Public Money into a Black Hole
Rodrigue Tremblay
“The [financial] crisis was not a failure of the free market system and the answer is not to try to reinvent that system. ...Government intervention is not a cure-all." - President George W. Bush, Thursday November 13, 2008
"There is no cause to worry. The high tide of prosperity will continue." - Andrew W. Mellon, Hoover's Secretary of the Treasury. September 1929
"While the crash only took place six months ago, I am convinced we have now passed the worst and with continued unity of effort we shall rapidly recover. There is one certainty of the future of a people of the resources, intelligence and character of the people of the United States - that is, prosperity."
President Herbert Hoover, May 1, 1930
The Mossad’s Arab writers
Khalid Amayreh
“If good befalls you, it grieves them; but if some misfortune overtakes you, they rejoice at it. But if ye are constant and do right, not the least harm will their cunning do to you; for Allah Compasses round about all that they do” Surat A’ali Imran, (the House of Imran), III, v. 119
“I call on the Israeli army to crush these Palestinian terrorists who are at Iran’s beck and call; chase the rebels of Hamas, annihilate its lunatics and demented leaders who are disguised as men of faith, crush them and exterminate them and teach them a lesson which they will never forget just as you taught the terrorist Hizbullah a harsh lesson in 2006….So deliver Gaza from the grip of Hamas. These Palestinians, wherever they go, they take with them terror, corruption, trouble l, tumult and ingratitude…..!”
The Futility Of Not Creating Debt Free Currency
Eric V. Encina
U. S. President Obama is presenting all the positive sides of the "stimulus package" and pushing its ratification in the halls of Congress. Likewise, the Philippine President Marcapagal is carrying out a comparable program to uplift his own country's ailing economy, create jobs and save the financial system from total collapse. However, the problem with the stimulus packages created by these two leaders is that the money to be used to jumpstart business activities, obviously, provides a "band-aid remedy" coming from borrowings and taxes, which will create the same results of crisis in the long run except that it will be even bigger and more catastrophic. Therefore, the best kind of repair for the economic downturn is the creation of debt free money by governments' financial arms.
A Short History of US Government Handouts
Stephen Lendman
Global economies are withering while Washington conceives "Financial Recovery Plan(s) from Hell," according to economist Michael Hudson in his latest February 11 article. Bankers demand more trillions, "or (they'll) plunge the economy into financial crisis." What they want they'll get, and here's where things now stand.
On February 10, Bloomberg.com reported that Treasury Secretary Geithner "pledged government financing for as much as $2 trillion....to spur new lending and address banks' toxic assets, seeking to end the credit crunch hobbling the economy." Hudson calls it "Stage One of a two-stage plan," so far unannounced, to transfer trillions more to corrupt bankers who caused the problem in the first place, yet taxpayers will get little more back than the bill.
Mesmerized by Melodic Rhetoric
Joel S. Hirschhorn
"the elite Upper Class that stole the nation’s wealth in recent years with their
greed and political clout, and destroyed the global economic system, are
still sitting pretty in their McMansions, penthouses, private jets and yachts."
"I've been through Y2K and I've been through 9/11. I have never seen people so afraid as what we are seeing right now,” said gun shop owner Scott Moss recently. With more guns per capita – easily 250 million privately owned ones – and certainly more people in prisons than any other democracy, the intriguing question in this still worsening economic calamity is: If Americans found the courage for political rebellion now, would it preempt massive criminal violence, social havoc and armed rebellion later?
Love is love. Period. Deal with it.
Mary Shaw
I am writing this on February 14, Valentine's Day, when people in many parts of the world celebrate the phenomenon of love.
Sadly, in most parts of the world, some couples' love is still regarded as less genuine, less real, and less acceptable than others'. These days, same-sex couples are probably the hardest hit by this ridiculous double standard.
If a man can fall in love with a woman, why can't a woman fall in love with a woman? If a woman can fall in love with a man, why can't another man do the same? It's no less natural than heterosexual attraction, as clearly evidenced by the widespread occurrence of homosexual behavior in animals.
Israelis, in Crisis, Vote for a Government of War
Nicola Nasser
Dust of Tuesday’s voting battle settled down and the battle of forming the next Israeli government has just begun. With Benjamin Netanyahu poised for premiership and Avigdor Lieberman, leader of a “racist and fascist” party (as condemned by Talia Sasson of the Merez party) very well positioned to be the king or queen maker of the next ruling coalition, the Palestinian people and the whole region will have to brace as from next March for an Israeli government of war.
First on the agenda of the new government will be the approval of 2.4 billion shekels ordered on Monday by the outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to re-equip the army after the war on Gaza as well as an extra military funding of one billion shekels.
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