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“If a man has an apartment stacked to the ceiling with newspapers we call him crazy. If a woman has a trailer house full of cats we call her nuts. But when people pathologically hoard so much cash that they impoverish the entire nation, we put them on the cover of Fortune magazine and pretend that they are role models.”
-– B. Lester
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 | International: GMO Agribusiness and the Destructive Nature of Global Capitalism |
 By Colin Todhunter
Capitalism is based on managing its inherent crises. It is also based on the need to maximise profit, beat down competitors, cut overheads and depress wages. In the 1960s and 70s, in the face of increasing competition from abroad, the US began to outsource manufacturing production to bring down costs by using cheap foreign labour. Other countries followed suit. Even more jobs were lost through the impulse to automate. To provide a further edge, trade unions and welfare were attacked in order to suppress wages at home. Problem solved. Or was it?
Not really. As wages in the west stagnated or decreased and unemployment increased, the market for goods was under threat – if people have less money to buy things, then what to do? New problem, new ‘solution’ – lend people money and create a debt-ridden consumer society. Of course, it produced great opportunities for investors in finance, and all kinds of dubious financial derivatives and products were created, sold to the public and repackaged and shifted around the banking system. That market became saturated and the debt bubble burst. This time around the ‘solution’ is to print money and give bailouts to the banks to cover their gambling losses and to get them lending once again. With a huge hole appearing in state coffers due to the bailouts and national debt spiraling during the years of neo-liberalism, the current crisis has become an opportunity for the finance sector to exert long-term debt-related control over sovereign states, including public asset stripping via ‘austerity’. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Wednesday, February 20 @ 18:34:16 EST (265 reads)
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| International: The. Very. Best. Valentine. Ever. |
The United States is one of only seven countries not to ratify a landmark international agreement that affirms principles of fundamental human rights and equality for women.
By Don Kraus
This year I came up with the best Valentine’s Day gift ever for my wife and daughter. It’s inexpensive and, unlike a bouquet of flowers, should last beyond their lifetimes. They’ll love it! I can’t think of a better way to express how much I love them.
Rather than chocolates or jewelry, I am going to join a One Billion Rising rally to end the violence against women that has shattered lives and torn the fabric of societies around the world.
A billion women — one out of every three on the planet — will be raped or beaten sometime in their lifetime. That’s one billion moms, sisters, daughters, and friends violated, one billion lives shattered, one billion hearts broken, and one billion reasons to rise up and put an end to this violence. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Wednesday, February 06 @ 19:37:12 EST (173 reads)
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| International: Hogging the Global Pie |
The richest 100 people in the world are earning much more than enough to end the world's worst poverty.
By Sam Pizzigati
Apologists for inequality have a standard retort to anyone who calls for a more equal distribution of the world’s treasure. If you took all the wealth of the wealthy and divvied it up equally among all the poor, they claim, no one would gain enough to accomplish much of anything.
Oxfam International, one of the world’s premiere anti-poverty charitable organizations, begs to differ. The world’s top 100 billionaires now hold so much wealth, says a new Oxfam report, that just the increase in their net worth last year would be “enough to make extreme poverty history four times over.”
“Oxfam’s mission is to work with others to end poverty,” notes Oxfam analyst Emma Seery. “But in a world with limited resources, this is no longer possible without an end to extreme wealth.”
Oxfam timed its new analysis, The Cost of Inequality: How Wealth and Income Extremes Hurt Us All, to appear right on the eve of this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. This annual and earnest “issues” confab brings together a glittering array of global business and political leaders.
In today’s recession-ravaged world, these leaders are playing defense. They feel increasingly pressured to address the global economic inequality they’ve so long tried to sweep under the rug. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Wednesday, January 30 @ 20:50:26 EST (169 reads)
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| International: The Gandhian Movement of Empowerment: |
Revolutionary Acts at the Community Level
Leprosy: empowering some of India's most disadvantaged
By Colin Todhunter, Global Research
Like many others writers, much of my own writing is concerned with exposing the lies of imperialism, neo-liberalism and the globalist agenda. At times, such writing may appear to be laden with gloom and doom. However, social change is often incremental and revolutionary acts can often be small scale and at the community level. Such acts, instigated by ordinary folk, can impact people’s lives directly. Whether it’s the Occupy Movement, the Navdanya movement in India that seeks to support traditional agriculture and resist the influence of agri-business or the various community-based Transition Initiatives, all have the same goal – to ensure that people secure dignity and independence and freedom from exploitation.
While it would be extremely amiss to ignore the existence of state machinery and corporations and the apparatus they use to execute their enormous power, people throughout the world are realising that action at the community level goes some way towards developing self-sufficiency and taking power back.
Chengalpattu, 55 kms south of Chennai, may on the surface appear to be just another small, dusty south Indian town with its ‘meals’ restaurants, temples and concrete box buildings. But it’s not. There is something special about this town. Close by is Bindu Art School, and it’s not just any old art school. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Monday, October 15 @ 19:54:45 EDT (228 reads)
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| International: Iran in the Campaign's Crosshairs |
Mitt Romney is playing the same cynical game as Benjamin Netanyahu.
By Chris Toensing
The war of words over Iran's nuclear program keeps expanding.
It's now a multi-sided melee pitting Iran against the West and Israel, Israel against the Obama administration, Mitt Romney against Barack Obama, and neo-conservatives like William Kristol against the rest of the U.S. foreign policy establishment.
The rhetoric is more heated, too. President Obama swears that his administration "will do what we must to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon." It's his clearest indication to date that he would, if he deemed it necessary, order military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
Robert Gates, Obama's former defense secretary and a Republican, thinks such an attack would be "catastrophic, haunting us for generations in that part of the world." Yet Romney and his hawkish advisers are accusing Obama of coddling the Islamic Republic, which the GOP challenger claims "has never posed a greater danger to our friends, our allies, and to us." But neither he nor Obama will draw the "red line" for war that Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu demands. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Wednesday, October 10 @ 20:27:54 EDT (193 reads)
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| International: The Anti-Empire Report - October 2012 |
by William Blum, www.killinghope.org
Syria, the story thus far
"Today, many Americans are asking — indeed I ask myself," Hillary Clinton said, "how can this happen? How can this happen in a country we helped liberate, in a city we helped save from destruction? This question reflects just how complicated, and at times, how confounding the world can be." [1]
The Secretary of State was referring to the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya September 11 that killed the US ambassador and three other Americans. US intelligence agencies have now stated that the attackers had ties to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.[2]
Yes, the world can indeed be complicated and confounding. But we have learned a few things. The United States began blasting Libya with missiles with the full knowledge that they were fighting on the same side as the al-Qaeda types. Benghazi was and is the headquarters for Muslim fundamentalists of various stripes in North Africa. However, it's incorrect to claim that the United States (aka NATO) saved the city from destruction. The story of the "imminent" invasion of Benghazi by Moammar Gaddafi's forces last year was only propaganda to justify Western intervention. And now the United States is intervening — at present without actual gunfire, as far as is known — against the government of Syria, with the full knowledge that they're again on the same side as the al-Qaeda types. A rash of suicide bombings against Syrian government targets is sufficient by itself to dispel any doubts about that. And once again, the United States is participating in the overthrow of a secular Mideast government. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Wednesday, October 03 @ 19:31:06 EDT (205 reads)
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| International: Israel's War Plans to Attack Iran "Before the US Elections" |
 by Michel Chossudovsky, GlobalResearch.ca
Israel's Channel 10 suggests, in no uncertain terms, that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is "determined to attack Iran before the US elections" and that the "time for action is getting closer."
"Israel is now closer than ever to a strike designed to thwart Iran’s nuclear drive".
This timely report suggests that Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak firmly believe that President Obama "would have no choice but to give backing for an Israeli attack" were it to be waged before the November presidential elections:
The TV station’s military reporter Alon Ben-David, who earlier this year was given extensive access to the Israel Air Force as it trained for a possible attack, reported that, since upgraded sanctions against Iran have failed to force a suspension of the Iranian nuclear program in the past two months, “from the prime minister’s point of view, the time for action is getting ever closer.
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Asked by the news anchor in the Hebrew-language TV report how close Israel now was to “a decision and perhaps an attack,” Ben-David said: “It appears that we are closer than ever.
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He said it seemed that Netanyahu was not waiting for a much-discussed possible meeting with US President Barack Obama, after the UN General Assembly gathering in New York late next month — indeed, “it’s not clear that there’ll be a meeting.” In any case, said Ben-David, “I doubt Obama could say anything that would convince Netanyahu to delay a possible attack.” ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Wednesday, August 22 @ 19:26:39 EDT (241 reads)
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| International: The Anti-Empire Report -August 2012 |
by William Blum, www.killinghope.org
The United States and its comrade-in-arms, Al Qaeda. And other tales of an empire gone mad.
Afghanistan in the 1980s and 90s ... Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s ... Libya 2011 ... Syria 2012 ... In military conflicts in each of these countries the United States and al Qaeda (or one of its associates) have been on the same side. [1]
What does this tell us about the United States' "War On Terrorism"?
Regime change has been the American goal on each occasion: overthrowing communists (or "communists"), Serbians, Slobodan Milosevic, Moammar Gaddafi, Bashar al-Assad ... all heretics or infidels, all non-believers in the empire, all inconvenient to the empire.
Why, if the enemy is Islamic terrorism, has the United States invested so much blood and treasure against the PLO, Iraq, and Libya, and now Syria, all mideast secular governments?
Why are Washington's closest Arab allies in the Middle East the Islamic governments of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan, and Bahrain? Bahrain being the home of an American naval base; Saudi Arabia and Qatar being conduits to transfer arms to the Syrian rebels. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Monday, August 13 @ 13:17:45 EDT (255 reads)
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| International: Cold-Blood Mass Murder in Syria |
by the West's "Pro-Democracy Opposition"
by Finian Cunningham, Global Research.ca
They were dragged out to be executed in a small, dusty courtyard in blazing sunlight. The victims were half-naked, dazed, their underwear soaked in blood, their legs bleeding from torture inflicted earlier. The expectant crowd, some armed with guns, others holding up mobile phones to take what were presumably trophy photos, were baying for execution.
“God is greatest,” rang out the calls among the blood-lusting spectators. They also shouted slogans in support of the Free Syrian Army. This was summary “justice” by the armed opposition groups that the Western governments are striving to empower in “liberated” Syria.
New video footage [1] obtained by Agence France Presse shows a gruesome scene of cold-blooded murder of unarmed Syrians in Aleppo, the northwestern commercial city. It provides a glimpse of the Jihadi armed groups in Syria that are being funded, trained and directed by Washington, London, Paris and Berlin along with their Turkish, Israeli and Arab allies. These are the “heroic” groups that the Western political leaders and media have championed for the past 17 months as a “pro-democracy movement” against the “dastardly” government of Bashar Al Assad. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Friday, August 03 @ 12:45:49 EDT (482 reads)
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| International: The US-NATO War on Syria: |
Western Naval Forces Confront Russia Off the Syrian Coastline?
by Michel Chossudovsky, GlobalResearch.ca
"As I went back through the Pentagon in November 2001, one of the senior military staff officers had time for a chat. Yes, we were still on track for going against Iraq, he said. But there was more. This was being discussed as part of a five-year campaign plan, he said, and there were a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia, and Sudan."
Former Nato Commander General Wesley Clark
"Let me say to the soldiers and officials still supporting the Syrian regime -- the Syrian people will remember the choices you make in the coming days...."
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Friends of Syria conference in Paris' July 7, 2012
While confrontation between Russia and the West was, until recently, confined to the polite ambit of international diplomacy, within the confines of the UN Nations Security Council, an uncertain and perilous situation is now unfolding in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Allied forces including intelligence operatives and special forces have reinforced their presence on the ground in Syria following the UN stalemate. Meanwhile, coinciding with the UN Security Council deadlock, Moscow has dispatched to the Mediterranean a flotilla of ten Russian warships and escort vessels led by the Admiral Chabanenko anti-submarine destroyer. Russia's flotilla is currently stationed off the Southern Syrian coastline. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Friday, July 27 @ 22:04:16 EDT (666 reads)
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| International: Reviving the Rendition Debate |
By Nat Parry
An international body last week unanimously adopted a resolution condemning U.S. secrecy regarding the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program – secrecy that is effectively stonewalling a number of European investigations into the program of secret arrests and torture of terror suspects.
The OSCE Parliamentary Assembly – a 320-member organization comprising lawmakers from Europe, North America and Central Asia – adopted the resolution in plenary session on July 9.
Supporting the criminal investigation carried out by Polish authorities into the rendition program and welcoming attempts by British parliamentarians to ascertain the level of the United Kingdom’s involvement, the resolution “insists that the United States Government co-operates with European investigations” and “calls upon the United States to release any pertinent information to appropriate investigators.” ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Wednesday, July 18 @ 20:54:46 EDT (462 reads)
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| International: No Nukes Protests in Vermont & Scotland |
 Apanther writes "
Nuclear Submarines, Nuclear Power Targeted
By William Boardman, panthers007@comcast.net
Early Sunday morning in Scotland protestors serenaded workers arriving at the nuclear-armed Trident submarine base in Faslane. Later the same day in Vermont protestors serenaded police and private security at the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon. Each action was the latest in decades of resistance to these nuclear installations. Each was peaceful and ended with the arrest, citation, and release of dozens of protestors.
At Faslane, Brian Larkin succeeded in melding with the workers and getting inside the submarine base, where he was arrested and charged with breach of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (SOCPA), and then released.
At Vernon, about 300 people rallied on the Brattleboro Commons before trekking by bike and bus to the main gate of Vermont Yankee, which was defended by forty state troopers, a line of eight state police cruisers, and a rope with a “No Trespassing” sign. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Thursday, July 12 @ 19:28:38 EDT (948 reads)
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| International: Afghanistan's Corrupt Oligarchy |
By Jim Hightower
Our national leaders' rationale for investing so much money and so many boots on the ground in that awful war in Afghanistan was that we'd leave behind a stable, popular government to assure peace and prosperity for all.
That was 11 years ago. Now that America has begun withdrawing from Afghanistan, what are we actually leaving behind? Answer: a despised and corrupt oligarchy.
To put faces to it, look no further than the family of Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's incompetent, impossibly vain, and dishonest president. His brothers have amassed astonishing fortunes during his tenure from insider deals, drug trafficking, and the siphoning off untold millions of U.S. aid dollars. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Wednesday, June 27 @ 21:01:38 EDT (872 reads)
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| International: Sectarian Genocide in Syria: |
US-NATO and the GCC Preparing a Coup d’état
NATO preparing vast disinformation campaign
by Thierry Meyssan
If you want to prevent these crimes, you should act now: circulate this article on the Internet and alert your elected officials.
In a few days, perhaps as early as Friday, June 15, at noon, Syrians wanting to watch their national TV stations will see them replaced on their screens by TV programs created by the CIA. Studio-shot images will show massacres that are blamed on the Syrian Government, people demonstrating, ministers and generals resigning from their posts, President Al-Assad fleeing, the rebels gathering in the big city centers, and a new government installing itself in the presidential palace.
This operation of disinformation, directly managed from Washington by Ben Rhodes, the US deputy national security adviser for strategic communication, aims at demoralizing the Syrians in order to pave the way for a coup d’etat. NATO, discontent about the double veto of Russia and China, will thus succeed in conquering Syria without attacking the country illegally. Whichever judgment you might have formed on the actual events in Syria, a coup d’etat will end all hopes of democratization. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Wednesday, June 13 @ 22:10:44 EDT (239 reads)
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| International: Our Press Freedom is under Fire |
In its latest assessment, Reporters Without Borders ranked the United States No. 47 for media freedom.
By William A. Collins
Yes, the truth
Will set us free;
But it's not found
On NBC.
Freedom of the press, that inspired rallying cry of our democracy, is becoming a poignant memory. In its latest ranking of how such freedoms stack up worldwide, Reporters Without Borders ranked the United States No. 47. We certainly rate way better than China, which clocked in at No. 174 out of 179 countries, but this truly is a shameful grade.
"The crackdown on protest movements and the accompanying excesses took their toll on journalists," the organization noted in its explanation for the nation falling by 27 places in this annual ranking. "In the space of two months in the United States, more than 25 were subjected to arrests and beatings at the hands of police who were quick to issue indictments for inappropriate behavior, public nuisance or even lack of accreditation." ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Monday, June 11 @ 19:10:46 EDT (209 reads)
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