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“The Israeli President [Peres] warns us that Iran is on the
cusp of producing a nuclear weapon… Yet we reporters do not
mention that Shimon Peres, as Israeli Prime Minister, said
exactly the same thing in 1996… And we do not recall that the
current Israeli PM, Benjamin Netanyahu, said in 1992 that Iran
would have a nuclear bomb by 1999.”
– Robert Fisk
Colombians were given the opportunity to defend their position
as the Israelites of Latin America when, upon completion of
Uribe's presidential term in 2010, he was recycled into the
post of Vice-Chairman of the UN panel tasked with
investigating the flotilla massacre. The resulting report -
which determined that a group of flotilla activists had
engaged in an "extreme level of violence", and which upheld
the validity of the Israeli siege of Gaza in spite of the UN's
own classification of the siege as illegal - presumably
benefited from Uribe's professed notion that human rights
organisations often serve as fronts for terrorists.
–
Belen Fernandez, January 2012
Why were we even flying a drone over Iran? Why do we have to
bomb so many countries? Why do we have 900 bases in 130
different countries when we are totally bankrupt? I think this
wild goal to have another war in the name of 'defense' is a
dangerous thing. The danger is really in us overreacting.
–
Ron Paul
After the Second World War, when unemployment and poverty were
widespread in Europe, even right-wing governments felt obliged
to promise a better and more prosperous future. Today, all
European governments have nothing to offer the working
population apart from sacrifice and privation
–
Peter Schwarz, January 2012
Why does Maine pay double for turnpike improvements?
Improvements are funded by bonds issued by the Maine Turnpike
Authority, which collects the principal amounts, then pays the
bonds back with interest.
Over time, interest payments add up to about the original
principal, doubling the cost of turnpike improvements and the
tolls that must be collected to pay for them. The interest
money is shipped out of state to Wall Street banks.
Why not keep the interest money here in Maine, to the benefit
of all Mainers? This could be done by creating a state-owned
bank. State funds now deposited in low- or no-interest
checking accounts would instead be deposited in the state
bank.
Those funds would be used to buy up the authority bonds and
municipal bonds issued by the Maine Bond Bank. All of them.
Since all interest payments would flow into the state
treasury, we would end up paying half what we now pay for our
roads, bridges and schools.
North Dakota has profited from a state-owned bank for 90
years. Why not Maine?
–
Tom Hagan, December 2011
The fact that in the second decade of the 21st century the
United States is not able to maintain the basic level of mail
delivery that prevailed in the previous century is a stunning
expression of the putrefaction of American capitalism. In
dismantling the postal service, the American ruling class is
scrapping an institution that was established at the Second
Continental Congress of 1775 under the leadership of Benjamin
Franklin and enshrined in the US Constitution.
The degradation of the postal service is part and parcel of a
more general decay of basic social infrastructure. The richest
country in the world is one where almost routinely bridges
collapse, levees break, storms or high winds plunge thousands
and even millions of people into darkness. It is no accident
that the US is also the most unequal country.
–
WSWS, December 2011
The most common cancers in the UK are breast in women,
prostate in men, followed by lung and bowel among both sexes.
Prostate is one of very few cancers for which there is no
evidence of preventable cases. [...] Not eating the
recommended five fruit and vegetables per day accounted for an
unexpectedly high number of cancers – 20,000 cancers each year
– closely linked to mouth, throat and oesophagus tumours. Skin
cancer, one of the fastest-growing types of melanoma, is
almost entirely preventable by avoiding sunbeds and excessive
sunbathing. Exposure to hazardous chemicals such as asbestos
and pesticides at work, as well as shift and night working,
cause more than 11,000 cancers – two thirds among men.
–
Independent, December 2011
We're not fighting any political party [in Egypt], or the
army, or the Muslim Brotherhood – we're fighting a structure.
And that's what the liberal political elite don't seem to
understand. I'd much rather have the Muslim Brotherhood in
place and get rid of SCAF than I would have [liberal
figurehead] Mohamed ElBaradei running the government but leave
SCAF in power. The revolution against SCAF is now; there will
be time later to play the reformist, gradualist game where we
sit down and argue over minute policy differences.
–
Khalid Abdalla, November 2011
[Army Staff Sgt. Calvin] Gibbs is guilty of doing on an
individual basis—killing innocent men and cutting off fingers
and other body parts as grisly trophies—what the US war
machine generally does wholesale and remotely, using bombs,
missiles and other powerful weaponry to kill and dismember the
population of the country they are occupying.
His real crime, as far as the Pentagon and official Washington
are concerned, is that he failed to cover up his actions
successfully and thus dealt a blow to the propaganda campaign
which portrays the US military as a force engaged in the
“liberation” of the people of Afghanistan, rather than their
oppression and slaughter.
–
Patrick Martin, November 2011
Historically, the Democratic Party has been the graveyard of
social struggles of working people in the United States, going
all the way back to the Populist Movement of the late 19th
century, to the industrial union movement of the 1930s, to the
Civil Rights and the antiwar movements of the 1960s. All of
them were channeled into the Democratic Party and thereby not
only rendered harmless to the financial elite, but turned into
new props for capitalist rule.
–
WSWS, October 2011
Even more indicative of the state of social conditions in the
US, after more than two years of nearly double-digit
unemployment, is the fact that the average unemployed American
has been out of work for a longer period than at any time
since records began being kept in 1948—63 years ago. The
average duration of unemployment rose to 40.5 weeks in
September, up from 40.3 weeks in August.
To put this figure in perspective, through the end of the
1980s, the average length of joblessness ranged between 10 and
15 weeks. Until May 2009 it never exceeded 21.2 weeks, the
high point reached in the recession of the early 1980s. Today
it is nearly twice that.
–
Barry Grey, October 2011
Formed in the 1980s, with the financing and backing of
Colombia’s landowners and industrialists, the AUC and similar
right-wing paramilitary gangs—often working in close
collaboration with the military—were responsible for the bulk
of the massacres and assassinations carried out over the last
quarter century of civil war. These included the death squad
killings of tens of thousands of peasants, workers, left-wing
politicians, students and human rights advocates. The AUC and
other right-wing paramilitary outfits are also estimated to
have controlled some three quarters of the country’s cocaine
trade.
The deep involvement of the state and virtually all of its
institutions in these crimes became the defining feature of
the right-wing presidency of Alvaro Uribe, the closest US ally
in Latin America, between 2002 and 2010. During this period
Washington, touted Colombia as a success story in its combined
“war on drugs” and “global war on terror.”
–
Bill Van Auken, September 2011
It might be instructive to ask ourselves how we would be
reacting if Iraqi commandos had landed at George W Bush's
compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the
Atlantic (after proper burial rites, of course).
Uncontroversially, he was not a “suspect” but the “decider”
who gave the orders to invade Iraq - that is, to commit the
“supreme international crime differing only from other war
crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil
of the whole” for which Nazi criminals were hanged: the
hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees,
destruction of much of the country and its national heritage,
and the murderous sectarian conflict that has now spread to
the rest of the region. Equally uncontroversially, these
crimes vastly exceed anything attributed to bin Laden.
–
Noam Chomsky, September 2011
No meaningful regulations currently limit how much companies
can deduct from their taxes for the expense of executive
compensation. The more firms pay their CEO, the more they can
deduct off their federal taxes.
–
Executive Excess 2011: The Massive CEO Rewards for Tax Dodging
Evolution is fundamentally about the relationship between
organisms and their environments. Field studies - rather than
lab-based research - should form the foundation of research on
all species, humans included. Yet the vast majority of studies
in the human-related sciences are not based on field research,
and the most field-oriented disciplines, such as sociology and
cultural anthropology, have been least receptive to the modern
evolutionary perspective.
–
David Sloan Wilson, August 2011
The primary conflict of interest at Moody's is well known: The
company is paid by the same "issuers" (banks and companies)
whose securities it is supposed to objectively rate. This
conflict pervades every aspect of Moody's operations,
Harrington says. It incentivizes everyone at the company,
including analysts, to give Moody's clients the ratings they
want, lest the clients fire Moody's and take their business to
other ratings agencies. Moody's analysts whose conclusions
prevent Moody's clients from getting what they want,
Harrington says, are viewed as "impeding deals" and, thus,
harming Moody's business. These analysts are often
transferred, disciplined, "harassed," or fired.
–
Henry Blodget, August, 2011
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