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Obama's Anti-Populist Budget
by Stephen Lendman
Despite its flaws and failures during America's Great Depression, FDR's New Deal was remarkable for what it accomplished. It helped people, put millions back to work, reinvigorated the national spirit, built or renovated 700,000 miles of roads, 7,800 bridges, 45,000 schools, 2,500 hospitals, 13,000 parks and playgrounds, 1,000 airfields, and various other infrastructure, including much of Chicago's lakefront where this writer lives. It cut unemployment from 25% in May 1933 to 11% in 1937, before declaring victory too early and letting it spike before early war production revived economic growth and headed it lower.
Moreover, his key legislation included:
-- the landmark 1935 Social Security Act - to this day, the single most important federal program keeping millions of seniors from poverty or easing it for those already poor;
TEA PARTY CRASHES: THE MOST UNPATRIOTIC ACT
By Susan Lindauer, 9/11 Whistleblower indicted on the Patriot Act
I confess that since November I've been holding my breath, watching the clock for how long Tea Party newcomers could hold out against the entrenched Republican elite on Capitol Hill. Collapse was inevitable, however I admit to feeling bitterly surprised at how rapidly they have thrown in the towel.
For the record, most of the Tea Party quit their principles of liberty on February 14, 2011—20 days into the new Congress—when Tea Party leaders abruptly abandoned their opposition to the Patriot Act and voted to extend intrusive domestic surveillance, wire tapping and warrantless searches of American citizens. In so doing, they exposed the fraud of their soaring campaign promises to defend the liberty of ordinary Americans, and fight government intrusions on freedom. All those wide eyed speeches that flowed with such thrilling devotions, all of it proved to be self-aggrandizing lies.
EGYPT: SOCIAL MOVEMENTS,THE CIA AND MOSSAD
James Petras
The Limits of Social Movements
The mass movements which forced the removal of Mubarak reveal both the strength and weaknesses of spontaneous uprisings. On the one hand, the social movements demonstrated their capacity to mobilize hundreds of thousands, if not millions, in a successful sustained struggle culminating in the overthrow of the dictator in a way that pre-existent opposition parties and personalities were unable or unwilling to do.
Egypt's Revolution - Labor Arbitrage and Rubin's Folly
By Numerian posted by Michael Collins
The forces of globalization are increasingly and in surprising places and ways under attack. Globalization did not happen by accident; it was the result of policies put in place by people with a particular agenda.
Matt Stoller, a former policy advisor to Rep. Alan Grayson, has posted this morning his insights into the Egyptian Revolution – insights that are quite different from the usual take on these events. They can be found here at the Naked Capitalism blog managed by Yves Smith.
Stoller dismisses the fanciful praise of social networks as a driving force behind the revolution – a story the mainstream media are plugging rigorously. He focuses instead on the participation of young men and women who labor anonymously in the new cheap-labor factory mills set up in Egypt under the direction of Gamal Mubarak, the president’s son and anointed successor. These are the workers who organized the first protests – who responded at great risk to the call for demonstrations, who continued to occupy Tahrir Square despite the provocations from the government, and whose focus on civil liberties was motivated by the repressive police tactics used by the government to enforce the discipline demanded by the mostly-foreign corporations that run the labor mills.
All free speech systems are works in progress: Prof. Craig LaMay
Interview by Kourosh Ziabari
Craig LaMay is an associate professor of journalism at the Northwestern University. H is a former editorial director of the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center and editor of Media Studies Journal; and a former newspaper reporter. LaMay's articles and commentaries have appeared on New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Newsweek, Communication and the Law and a number of other media outlets.
LaMay has published several books on journalism and mass media of which we can name Journalism and the Problem of Privacy (2003), Commercial Transformation of the Nonprofit Sector, with Burton Weisbrod (1998) and Abandoned in the Wasteland: Children, Television and the First Amendment with Newton Minow (1995).
Prof. LaMay joined me in an exclusive interview to discuss the constraints of journalism in the United States, freedom of speech in the EU, the performance of local magazines as opposed to the national news outlets and the gradual disappearance of traditional media with the emergence of new internet-based technologies.
What follows is the complete text of my interview with Prof. Craig LaMay of the Northwestern University.
Memo to Congress: Show Us the M-O-N-E-Y! (Part 2 of 3)
Geraldine Perry
Like the Fed, states and local governments appear to be between a rock and a hard place, and like the Fed's QE2 program now aimed at Main Street, solutions for state and local governments have been so far less than palatable. One such solution known as “infrastructure privatization” has been rapidly gaining momentum in recent years and involves the sale and/or lease of public assets to private interests. These assets include such things as airports, parking meters and parking garages, public water and utility systems, toll roads and bridges, sea ports, zoos and other outdoor spaces, and more - all originally built by taxpayers and paid for with taxpayer monies.
Metered municipal street and garage parking spaces are among the most popular of recent municipal privatization schemes with one of the first taking place in Chicago "where the city received $1.16 billion in 2008 to allow a consortium led by Morgan Stanley to run more than 36,000 metered parking spaces for 75 years." Essentially Chicago residents and visitors will for the foreseeable future be paying Morgan Stanley and cohorts for the privilege of using parking meters that had already been built and paid for by taxpayers – the income from which heretofore had been used primarily for governmental operating expenses.
Always do the right thing (because 99 is not 100)
Mickey Z.
Da Mayor: Always do the right thing.
Mookie: That's it?
Da Mayor: That's it.
Mookie: I got it. I'm gone.
If every American were to make every single lifestyle change suggested in the film, An Inconvenient Truth, it would only result in a 21% decrease in carbon emissions. In fact, while the average human produces 2500 pounds of waste per year, the average per capita waste output is 26 tons…because 97% of waste is produced by agriculture and industry.
Individual lifestyle changes won't do anything to "save the planet," so why bother?
Arab Street Celebrates Mubarak's Ouster
by Stephen Lendman
On February 12, AFP headlined, 'Euphoria sweeps Arab cities as Mubarak ousted," saying:
As news spread, jubilant crowds responded. "Across the Middle East and north Africa, loudspeakers on mosques called on citizens to rejoice in their own cities....In Lebanon, where the Cairo protests (were) reminiscent of mass anti-Syrian" 2005 demonstrations, "convoys bearing Egyptian flags blared their horns as fireworks went off across the country." Thousands came out to celebrate, a scene repeated in many Arab countries.
Hezbollah and Hamas observed Egypt's "historic victory." Crowds turned out in Beirut, across Lebanon, and "en masse (throughout) Gaza....joyfully shooting in the air and honking their car horns." Hamas' armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, also rallied in support.
Americans are Being Lied To
By Timothy V. Gatto
The recent Revolution in Egypt is not complete. The Army still has control of the country and it is yet to be seen if they will give in to the demands of the people that fomented the revolution. This will take time and we will see sooner than later if the people of Egypt can be patient. Change comes in increments. We can only hold our collective breath and hope that change does come to these brave citizens of Egypt.
Meanwhile Americans are forgetting that our situation is not that different than the situation in Egypt. We to are under the control of forces that don’t have the majority of Americans interests at heart. The truth is that the Pentagon is one of the key players in our supposed “Democracy”. The Executive branch is almost subservient to military. Between the lobbyists that represent the Military-Industrial-Complex and the right wing that is in power in the House, the President seems to be between the rock and the hard place.
Egypt: Another colored revolution or a people’s revolution
Frank Koeksal
A lot has been said about the events that have unfolded in the Middle East and in particular Egypt over the last few weeks. Shades of another coloured revolution in a similar form that took place in the former Soviet Republics has been mused about in the various corporate owned mainstream media. Nothing, though has been reported about the intelligence communities’ contribution to these coloured revolutions and for that matter the events in the Middle East.
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