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The Biggest Heist in History
Len Hart
The bailout is the biggest overt theft in history. Only healthy banks get funding --so why do they get a bailout? The 'bailout' is yet another monumental instance in which 'wealth is spread around' to those who do not need it, did not create it, did not earn it, and did not do anything productive to create it! Why doesn't Bush and his 'base' just load up a convoy of armored trucks at Ft. Knox --then drive like hell to the border?
Most big recipients of 'bailout monies' are using the 'bailout' to gobble up smaller, less favored banks. In simpler times, we might have called them the "Savings and Loan". In "It's a Wonderful Life" with Jimmy Stewart, it was called the "Building and Loan". If you've seen this classic film, you will recall that when the Great Depression came, it was the "Building and Loan" that was faced with collapse --not Potter, the richest man in town who sought to own it all.
Laying Palin's Wardrobe Bare
Mathew Maavak
The US presidential campaign has already descended into a make-believe world of cosmetic saturnalia, and in this looney world, one should not be surprised if the Republicans pull off another White House coup on Nov 4.
This campaign has been disrobed to the level of slipshod slip-ups.
The initial kerfuffle generated by the $150,000 spent on the Palin wardrobe has now degenerated into a scandalous $22,800 paid to the vice presidential candidate's make-up artiste, Amy Strozzi.
Remember Remember the Fourth of November
Gabriele Zamparini
"Everything has to change so that nothing changes." - Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa, Il Gattopardo
The color of money. Senator Barack Obama's campaign has now raised more than $600 million, almost equaling what all the candidates from both major parties collected in private donations in 2004.
Where do you think that awful lot of money comes from?
"Many of these large donors come from industries with interests in Washington. A New York Times analysis of donors who wrote checks of $25,000 or more to the candidates' main joint fund-raising committees found, for example, the biggest portion of money for both candidates came from the securities and investments industry, including executives at various firms embroiled in the recent financial crisis like Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and AIG. (...) More than 600 donors contributed $25,000 or more to [Obama] in September alone, roughly three times the number who did the same for Senator John McCain."
Chomsky, Zinn, and Obama
Mickey Z
"You don't stick a knife in a man's back nine inches, and then pull it out six inches, and say you're making progress." - Malcolm X
Another Election Day approaches and I’m reminded of something the late Pakistani dissident, Eqbal Ahmad said about Noam Chomsky in the book, Confronting Empire (2000): “He (Chomsky) has never wavered. He has never fallen into the trap of saying, ‘Clinton will do better.’ Or ‘Nixon was bad but Carter at least had a human rights presidency.’ There is a consistency of substance, of posture, of outlook in his work.”
This Time Is Different
Stephen Lendman
Whatever we know about today's financial crisis. Think we know. Eventually will know in the fullness of time. This time is really different. In 1922, Henry Ford put it this way in his book titled "My Life and Work:"
"The (economy's) primary functions are agriculture, manufacture, and transportation. Community life is impossible without them. They hold the world together....The great delusion is that one may change the foundation. The foundations of society are the men and means to grow things, to make things, and to carry things." Real enterprise producing value. Tangible products. Not casino capitalism. Computerized gambling. The illusion of wealth. Disappearing once liquidity dries up. Or even now when it's abundant. With a keyboard click, or when investors fear an approaching economic storm.
Now the Cost of War Really Matters
By Kevin Zeese
The Finance Crisis Means the U.S. Can No Longer Continue Two War-Quagmires and Must Reconsider Military-Based Foreign Policy
Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz predicts the Iraq war will cost the United States $3 trillion. Nouriel Roubini, the economist who predicted today’s financial crisis in 2006, predicts the U.S. will suffer its worst recession in 40 years, lasting up to two years with 9% unemployment and another 15% drop in housing prices. He predicts we are seeing only the first round of government injection of funds into the finance system.
The Peter Principle Playoffs
Sheila Samples
We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men~~George Orwell So here we sit, our heads jerking back and forth so rapidly most of us are suffering severe whiplash. Will the US attack Iran? Will Israel attack Iran? Or will the two war-mongering bullies join forces and "bomb, bomb, bomb" that belligerent twit-nation into subservience?
It's a great game. A deadly game. The momentum to attack Iran has been building for so long that we're conditioned to watching it like some grotesque international tennis competition. It's the Peter Principle Playoffs, with neoconsters and ziomonsters out on the court milling around, working at their highest "levels of incompetence," feverishly plotting Iran's destruction. Foul lines mean nothing to them. There are no rules, no officials, no scores, no accountability.
World Food Day: Global Crises’ Double Standards
Ramzy Baroud
The 25th annual World Food Day, marked on 16 October, was an occasion whose arrival and passing received little media attention or governmental fanfare. Evidently, much of the world media and governments are consumed with an economic crisis of epic proportions, which is perceived in the US as the worst such upheaval since the Great Depression. In the rest of the world, it's depicted as the worst economic crisis in recent memory or, as the BBC termed it, "the most tumultuous times on record in the global financial markets."
Have Fun Bending Over for the Catch 22
Les Visible
Tap, tap, tap….. Hmmmm… finger drumming on the table top… restless stretching and reaching… got an itch under my shoulder blade… confusion… a little I guess. Like ‘tells’ in poker, I’m getting some reads but the betting doesn’t reflect the hands I’m seeing when I call. What’s going on? I guess I can’t ask Marvin Gaye. You know what? I think I’m just going to take a little walk through my head and see what the ping pong ball has to say. I know it’s used to going back and forth and then there’s the spin thing. I’m pretty good at ping pong and the other things you learn growing up on military bases and being locked up for long periods of time. I’m not the sort of person you want to play Nine Ball with.
Having your head handed to you since before you could walk will make you scared of everything for awhile. Sooner or later you get angry and people die, maybe you die too or you learn to channel it. I guess I’m lucky that way. As erratic as I have been getting to where I am… I think it’s safe to say I learned on the way or I wouldn’t be here now.
Laws should protect animals
Dan Kapelovitz, Jill Ryther and Jaimie Bryant
Assembly Bill 2296’s punishment of speech may lead activists to more violence to make their voices heard
Members of the campus community recently received an e-mail from UCLA Chancellor Gene D. Block extolling the virtues of Assembly Bill 2296, a new law that restricts the speech of animal-rights activists (whom he calls “anti-animal research extremists”) in order to protect animal researchers. As this law moved toward passage, much was said about the fear animal researchers feel when confronted by protestors. By contrast, few have commented on the pain and terror experienced by animals used in experiments or have explained why there is protest against animal research at UCLA and other institutions in the first place.
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