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Destabilizing PakistanPublished by AlterNet.
Let's hope the American people don't buy the propaganda of anti-government groups calling for the overthrow of the very institutions that protect all of us from tyranny.
As I continue to read the goings on at the Tea Party Convention, I am overwhelmed by my disbelief that this is a serious movement. However, when I step back to take a rational look, I completely get it. Humankind has a long history of rallying around hate and propaganda. If you recall the Frank Capra films used by our country to rally the nation during World War II, you understand that we have a rich history of being taken in by effective messaging. The American Right Wing movement over the last thirty years has known exactly when to pounce on any deep-seated fears in order to gain political advantage. In the guise of patriotism and our so-called freedom, the public has been hoodwinked into believing that government is evil and government services are only for the poor or someone else. The roads we use, the mass transit we ride, the public schools that serve our children and yes, the air we breathe, can only work with an effective and well-organized government. To say over and over again that government is evil and actually believe it is the most Un-American rhetoric anyone could buy into. [more]
National Priorities Project Tallies Cost of War through September 30, 2010Join PDA's End War and Occupations, Redirect Funding Issue Organizing Team (IOT); learn more here.
Published by TomDispatch.Almost every day, reports come back from the CIA’s “secret” battlefield in the Pakistani tribal borderlands. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles--that is, pilot-less drones--shoot missiles (18 of them in a single attack on a tiny village last week) or drop bombs and then the news comes in: a certain number of al-Qaeda or Taliban leaders or suspected Arab or Uzbek or Afghan “militants” have died. The numbers are often remarkably precise. Sometimes they are attributed to U.S. sources, sometimes to the Pakistanis; sometimes, it’s hard to tell where the information comes from. In the Pakistani press, on the other hand, the numbers that come back are usually of civilian dead. They, too, tend to be precise. [more]
Lobbyists Retreat but Never SurrenderTake Action: Eat lunch for peace--become a "brown-bagger"
Published by NPP.Congress has appropriated an additional $136.8 billion for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for the 2010 fiscal year. National Priorities Project estimates that for this fiscal year, $64.5 billion is directed to Iraq and $72.3 billion to Afghanistan. Bills that included war-related funding were the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act (H.R. 2892) passed on October 28, 2009; the Consolidated Appropriations Act (H.R. 3288) passed on December 16, 2009; and the Department of Defense Appropriations Act (H.R. 3326) passed on December 19, 2009. [more]
Russia and U.S. Lead Calls to Reduce Nuclear ArsenalsTake Action: Visit MovetoAmend--Sign the motion | Get involved at Free Speech for People
Published by Common Dreams.
George Washington's birthday is approaching and with it will come the attendant mythology: hatchet and cherry tree, wooden teeth, throwing a silver dollar across the Potomac River--or the Rappahannock.
Of course, as the old joke goes, a dollar went a lot further then. Today, if you tried to hurl a silver dollar across the Potomac, chances are some member of Congress would snatch it in flight like one of those nature film grizzly bears grabbing a salmon in mid-leap. [more]
Sarah Says It's "Absurd Not to Consider" a Palin PresidencyPublished by The New York Times.
MUNICH — For many years, the Munich Security Conference has been dominated by rivalry and suspicion between Russia and the United States. The suspicion continues to be fueled by Russian hatred of the idea of NATO expansion even further eastward, eventually admitting Ukraine.
But at the conference this weekend, the atmosphere was markedly different. On arms control, both sides tried to determine whether it was at all possible for President Barack Obama to realize his vision of a world without nuclear weapons. The debate was free of polemics and recriminations. [more]
The Terror-Industrial ComplexPublished by The Nation.
Sarah Palin fed the Teapartisans in Nashville an appetizer of warmed over one-liners about taxes, spending and deficits that add up to "generational theft."
Then she gave the meat eaters what they paid for. [more]
Smoke the Bigots Out of the ClosetJoin PDA's Accountability and Justice Issue Organizing Team (IOT); learn more here.
Published by Truthdig.The conviction of the Pakistani neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui in New York last week of trying to kill American military officers and FBI agents illustrates that the greatest danger to our security does not come from al-Qaida but the thousands of shadowy mercenaries, kidnappers, killers and torturers our government employs around the globe.
The bizarre story surrounding Siddiqui, 37, who received an undergraduate degree from MIT and a doctorate in neuroscience from Brandeis University, often defies belief. Siddiqui, who could spend 50 years in prison on seven charges when she is sentenced in May, was by her own account abducted in 2003 from her hometown of Karachi, Pakistan, with her three children—two of whom remain missing—and spirited to a secret U.S. prison where she was allegedly tortured and mistreated for five years. The American government has no comment, either about the alleged clandestine detention or the missing children. [more]
No We Can'tPublished by The New York Times.
A funny thing happened after Adm. Mike Mullen called for gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the military: A curious silence befell much of the right. If this were a Sherlock Holmes story, it would be the case of the attack dogs that did not bark.
John McCain, commandeering the spotlight as usual, did fulminate against the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” But the press focus on McCain, the crazy man in Washington’s attic, was misleading. His yapping was an exception, not the rule. [more]
Obama's Budget Reveals the Bankruptcy of American CapitalismPublished by The Rolling Stone.
Obama had millions of followers eager to fight for his agenda. But the president muzzled them--and he's paying the price
"Staff are replaceable. A mass of dedicated volunteers is not." —David Plouffe
As the polls were closing in Massachusetts on the evening of January 19th, turning Ted Kennedy's Senate seat over to the Republicans for the first time in half a century, David Plouffe was busy reminiscing about the glory days. [more]
The Quiet RevolutionTake Action: Tell Congress "Improve the real economy, support the TRADE Act"
Published by the World Socialist Web Site.There is one overriding message in the budget proposal released by the Obama administration Monday: American capitalism is in decline and faces national bankruptcy.
The budget forecasts the doubling of the US national debt over the next few years, even on the assumption of a rapid recovery from the financial crisis and slump. It projects that high, long-term unemployment will become a permanent fixture of American life. [more]
Why We Can't Afford to Let Obama Give Bush's War Criminals a Free PassPublished byThe New Republic.
Obama has reinvented the state in more ways than you can imagine.
These days, liberals don’t know whether to feel betrayed by or merely disappointed with Barack Obama. They have gone from decrying his willingness to remove the public option from his health care plan to worrying that, in the wake of Democrat Martha Coakley’s defeat in Massachusetts, he won’t get any plan through Congress. On other subjects, too, from Afghanistan to Wall Street, Obama has thoroughly let down his party’s left flank. [more]
The Winter of America's DiscontentJoin PDA's Accountability and Justice Issue Organizing Team (IOT); learn more here.
Published by AlterNet.
Punishing the guilty for deeds they committed in the past is the only way to show the world that we are truly on a new path.
In a week when one-year report cards on the Obama administration were piling up and not all the grades were good, Americans searching for the real change we heard so much about on Obama's campaign trail were hit with some news that would send his grades plummeting. Late last Friday, we learned that Obama's Department of Justice plans to go easy on John Yoo and Jay Bybee—the two assistant attorney generals under Bush who penned the infamous torture memos. For those who have been working long and hard in the accountability movement to make sure no one—not even presidents or their top advisors—is above the law, this was a serious setback. [more]
The Free Market FetishPublished by The Los Angeles Times.
Dissatisfaction with both political parties runs deep.
It has been more than four decades since the Congress of the United States has been able to summon the will to pass a major piece of social legislation. Not since 1965, when Medicare and the Voting Rights Act both overcame decades of opposition to become law, has Congress proved itself up to the task.
Significant healthcare reform is all but dead for this session, and the chances of substantively addressing the regulatory breakdown that allowed Wall Street's irresponsible speculation to precipitate the worst global financial crisis since the Depression seem to recede with each passing day. So too the prospects for passage of further stimulus measures to remedy the crisis of unemployment and underemployment that continues to ravage the lives of families in states from Michigan to California. [more]
Published by CounterPunch.Why Costa Rica Scores Well on the Happiness Index
Garbage In, Garbage Out
Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan answered that he had placed his trust in a flawed theory when he was called before Congress to explain why he, Goldman Sachs Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and Deputy Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, prevented Brooksley Born, head of the Commodity Futures Trading Corporation, a government regulatory agency, from doing her job of regulating over-the-counter derivatives.
The efficient markets theory is that unregulated markets are efficient and rational. According to this theory in which Greenspan placed his trust, unregulated markets produce the best possible result. Any regulatory interference worsens the outcome. [more]
Take Action: Healthcare NOT Warfare--Windmills NOT Weapons
Published by BBC News.
Costa Rica—green and happy?
Whatever the outcome of the presidential elections on Sunday, one thing seems certain. The country will continue to break the mold.
Central America is a region still associated with coups and civil strife, but Costa Rica has no army. It was abolished in 1949. [more]
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