Opinion

Recession Schmecession!
"45,000 Troops Ready to Shop!"

Does this make you feel better about society and the economy, or not?

And no, it isn’t out of “apathy.”

Despite making a combined $18 billion in profits last quarter alone, major banks are still doing all that they can avoid new consumer protection legislation – and, we might add, new legislation hasn’t made it too difficult for them.

Much like the recent CARD Act, banks are quickly finding loopholes in the new legislation to recoup any of their potential losses. A new Bank of America program in Georgia, for example, is now charging customers to simply receive bank statements in the mail.

Amongst other plans in the works, banks may begin raising arbitrary “minimum balance requirements” for consumers, charging people for simply not having enough money in their accounts.

New Oversight:

When the Olympia Coop Board courageously and rightly decided on July 15 to
join the Boycott of Israeli products and remove them from their shelves,
many of us who have been involved in Middle East policies for a number
of years were expecting some type of negative response. 

Livio Pandora Internet Radio

Published on Monday, March 8, 2010 by TruthDig.com
Calling All Rebels

by Chris Hedges

Haiti and Humiliation: Gauze Not Guns
Sun, January 31, 2010 11:00:49 AMFrom: swaneagle harijan View Contact
To: wononorb@gmail.com

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Haiti and Humiliation: Gauze Not Guns by swaneagle harijan

I just recently started reading about the Luzurne County Judges charged with the inappropiate incarceration of the young people who come before them and their favoring the juvinile prisons, known as PA Child Care and Western PA Child Care.

While these types of Juvilile Facilities, as they like to call themslves are necessary in some instances, they are very unessary for a first time offender and can do more harm then good.

Someone please define "free market".

I was taught in Economics that at best, the "market" was an abstraction. The supply and demand mythology of Classical and Neo-Classical Economics are such a gross misrepresentation of reality that they can only be viewed as marginally helpful abstractions.

There is no such thing as a "free-market economy".

"Command and control" is an incendiary propaganda term for Communist economies. When a Capitalist Fascist is considered "a strong leader", a Communist, who is good at getting people to work together, "rules with an iron-fist".

GLOBAL WARMING TO HEAT UP
Thomas Riggins

Well we have learned lately that we have a global warming crisis and we must do something about carbon emissions (CO2 and other greenhouse gases) or else the earth is doomed.

But we also know that capitalism exists to make profits and that given the choice of making money now and killing off the planet in a hundred years or so, profit now wins.

Environmentalists who had hoped the high coast of oil and gas would limit consumption and help reduce pollution will be disappointed. All over the world governments and companies are turning to coal for new power plants. Coal is the worse of all the carbon based pollution sources-- much worse than oil and gas.

"Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran" McCain's Chant Becomes Closer to Fruition Thomas Riggins I remember a few months back seeing McCain on TV doing this little chant for his fellow moral defectives at a rally. Our intelligence agencies seemingly put the kibosh on this when they announced it looked like Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program, if it ever had one, several years ago. Then the International Atomic Energy Agency said they had no evidence of an arms program and that Iran was cooperating. Israel continued to insist the Iranians were trying to make the bomb and so did the Bushites here at home. The fact there is no evidence of the bomb is itself evidence of the bomb and the cleverness of the deceitful Iranians. So goes the logic of imperialism.

PHILIP BOBBITT’S “TERROR AND CONSENT: THE WARS FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY”
Thomas Riggins

Bobbitt is a distinguished professor of constitutional law holding degrees from Princeton, Yale and Oxford. He has served in important government positions under Presidents Carter, Bush 1 and Clinton. He is now at both the University of Texas and Columbia University. His theories on history and the origins of terrorism are widely respected and his books are used as college texts. His views have influenced not only Hillary Clinton but also John Howard the former Prime Minister of Australia. There is an informative article about his career and ideas in Wikopedia and also about his earlier work “The Shield of Achilles" (900 pages).

STEVEN PINKER'S "THE STUFF OF THOUGHT"

Thomas Riggins

This is a reflection on a review by Barbara King, a biological anthropologist at the College of William and Mary of Steven Pinker’s new book, “The Stuff of Thought” in the April 11, 2008 issue of TLS. Pinker is a very influential cognitive scientist who made a name for himself with his 1994 book “The Language Instinct.”

by Thomas Riggins

There is an excellent review of John Bolton's new book, "Surrender is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad" by Brian Urquhart (a former UN under-secretary general) in the March 6, 2008 issue of The New York Review of Books ("One Angry Man").

Urquhart points out that Bolton was unhappy with the Bush administration's change of course in its second term (from gung ho go it alone militarism to some limited recognition that cooperation with US allies and the broader international community
was in order).