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US- Canadian political impasse: The patient is dead
Eric Walberg
The disastrous Bush years have left a legacy of war and financial collapse. They have also brought North America to a political impasse, bemoans Eric Walberg
The really extraordinary political event in North American politics as 2008 came to a close was not the albeit remarkable election of the first US black president, but the collapse of Canada’s parliamentary system. Canada’s first-past-the-post electoral system allowed the Conservatives to form a minority government during the past three years with about 1/3 of the popular vote, supported by the Canadian equivalent of the Bushites (hardcore rightwingers -- Bible-thumpers and the very rich).
The Salvation Army's red kettle of trouble
Mary Shaw
It's that time of year again. Outside the shopping malls and supermarkets we encounter the bell-ringing representatives of the Salvation Army, dressed in paramilitary uniform, with their big red kettles, begging for a share of our holiday dollars.
And, as I do every year, I will ignore them.
Not because I am selfish or stingy. In the past few weeks, I have contributed a healthy sum in end-of-year donations to the non-profit agencies that I choose to support.
But I choose not to support the Salvation Army. My reasons? Read on.
The Causes of Human Suffering and a Solution
Raymond Ponzini
At the top of the list is monetary greed and megalomania
Along with this comes ruthless exploitation of human beings, the environment, plant and animal species. Greed grinds up our earth and all life. Millions of innocent human beings are killed in wars that profit the international Federal Reserve banking system, the military industrial complex and the oil companies. The vast wealth created by war and human exploitation is not in any way used to benefit humanity or our earth. The super rich buy mansions all over the world, fleets of private jets and expensive cars, but most of the money they accumulate is stashed away in vast hoardes and used to acquire more slaves more power and more wealth. The cycle of power and exploitation is perpetual, and for humanity it is self-consuming. Obviously a world based on war and greed will end in a World War fought over dwindling commodity resources.
THE S*H*I*T HAS HIT THE FAN IN CANADA
From J
( NOTE: The following is the text of the video. The video itself has been blocked from every source we have. Maybe someone can find it for us. Thank you. ----PHB) Canada right now is going through major political up...
Canada right now is going through major political upheaval. Our current Prime Minister (equivalent to your President) released a new budget, in his budget he did not put in a stimulus package which all other political parties were calling for. The only thing he did was on numerous fronts cut the funding to all our other political parties. This was a very calcuated move on his part. By doing what he did, he forced the other parties in our Parliment to form a coalition to oust him as the leader. Why would he do that? Well, as Prime Minister, when he feels Parliment (same as your congress) is disjoined he can call a prorogation, a prorogation is a closing of Parliment (congress). In doing this, he has NO oversight by them, and can do as he pleases. He has called for and received his prorogation. The Prime Minister has 6 weeks before he has to call Parliment back - Which takes us to January 27, 2009. Now, lets move onto some key facts that are relevant:
Good at Being Gods
Caleb Crain
In the recent Pixar movie Wall-E there is a conflict between two different visions of technology. From one angle, technology appears to be humanity’s overlord: the movie imagines that in the future a megacorporation called Buy N Large will so exhaust and pollute the planet that it will have to whisk its customers away on a luxury outer-space cruise ship for their own protection. From another angle, technology appears to be the only thing capable of saving humanity’s soul. Wall-E, a scrappy, pint-sized robot left behind to tidy up Earth, scavenges for mementos of human culture, finds evidence of resurgent plant life and falls in love. The two visions are inconsistent but inextricable: Wall-E is himself a Buy N Large product.
A similar ambivalence colours the reputation of the 20th-century designer Buckminster Fuller. You might say that Fuller aspired to engineer a post-apocalypse outer-space cruise ship but in the end managed only to get himself adopted as technology’s mascot. The harmless side of Fuller is what a visitor saw first at ‘Buckminster Fuller: Starting with the Universe’, a show mounted over the summer at the Whitney Museum of American Art and memorialised in this reverential and lavishly illustrated catalogue. Parked in a niche on the museum’s ground floor was the only surviving model of Fuller’s Dymaxion car, a paramecium-shaped tricycle with a Ford V8 engine. Beside it, a black and white video showed the Dymaxion car slinking past a row of box-like Depression-era Fords and sidling with UFO-like ease into a parking space its own exact size. Fuller intended to add what he called ‘jet stilts’ to the vehicle someday, so it could fly, but they never got invented. Like most of his projects, the car failed utterly as a commercial enterprise. In the absence of jet stilts, one was left to contemplate the harmony between a man and his car – a tableau as homely and unthreatening as a boy and his dog.
Cluster Bomb Treaty and the World’s Unfinished Business
Ramzy Baroud
The United States, Russia and China are sending a terrible message to the rest of the world by refusing to take part in the historic signing of a treaty that bans the production and use of cluster bombs. In a world that is plagued by war, military occupation and terrorism, the involvement of the great military powers in signing and ratifying the agreement would have signaled – if even symbolically - the willingness of these countries to spare civilians’ unjustifiable deaths and the lasting scars of war.
Illinois Citizens Deserve Corrupt Government
Joel S. Hirschhorn
The current Illinois governor, Rod Blagojevich, recently charged with crimes by the federal government, just follows in the footsteps of previous convicted Illinois governors and a huge number of other Illinois officials convicted of crimes. What is remarkable is that in the 2008 election Illinois voters had the opportunity to recognize that they needed to use their constitutional convention opportunity to reform state government. They voted not to use it.
Which raises the question: How stupid or brainwashed are most Illinois citizens?
Collapsing the Economy in the Buildup to World War III: 11 of the Most Important Economic Events of the Last 11 Years
chycho
The following is an update of “10 of the Most Important Economic Events of the Last 10 Years: Collapsing the Economy in the Buildup to World War III ”, which in turn was an update of “7 of the Most Important Economic Events of the Last 7 Years: Collapsing the Economy in the Buildup to World War III.”
For those who have been following this series, minor updates were made to events 1 through 10 and the Implications section, and event 11, the Short selling ban, was added. I also reformatted the piece and have supplied permalinks for ease of reference.
Since 1999, the following events have either caused or been the symptom of the present economic crises:
America Concedes
Patrick Cockburn
On 27 November the Iraqi parliament voted by a large majority in favour of a security agreement with the US under which its 150,000 troops will withdraw from Iraqi cities, towns and villages by 30 June next year and from all of Iraq by 31 December 2011. The Iraqi government will take over military responsibility for the Green Zone in Baghdad, the heart of American power in Iraq, in a few weeks’ time. Private security companies will lose legal immunity. US military operations will only be carried out with Iraqi consent. No US military bases will remain after the last American troops leave in 2011 and in the interim the US military is banned from carrying out attacks on other countries from within Iraq.
The Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), signed after eight months of rancorous negotiations, is categorical and unconditional. America’s bid to act as the world’s only super-power and to establish quasi-colonial control of Iraq, an attempt that began with the invasion of 2003, has ended in failure. There will be a national referendum on the new agreement next July, but the accord is to be implemented immediately, so the poll will be largely irrelevant. Even Iran, which had denounced the first drafts of the SOFA, fearing that any agreement would enshrine a permanent US presence in Iraq, now says that it will officially back the new security pact after the referendum: a sure sign that America’s main rival in the Middle East sees the accord as marking the end of the occupation and the end of any notion of Iraq being used as a launching-pad for military assaults on its neighbours.
Why Noam Chomsky is Dead Wrong About 911!
Len Hart
"I mean even if it [US GOVERNMENT COMPLICITY IN THE 9/11 ATTACKS] were true, which is extremely unlikely, who cares? I mean it doesn't have any significance." -Noam Chomsky
Noam, I care! And I care because the very document that created the United States --the US Constitution --tells us in precise and legal language that the American people are 'sovereign'. If the US government --the 'hired hands' whom we, the people, have tasked with the day to day job of governance --are in any way complicit in the attacks of 911, then the crimes of mass murder and high treason have been perpetrated against us! If 911 was an inside job, then we have no legitimate government! I call that 'significance'!
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