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THE NEW CLASS AND THE WORKERS
Gaither Stewart
(Rome) Protests, broken heads and hundreds of arrests at the G20 in London, bloody demonstrations in Kehl and Baden Baden and Strasbourg at celebrations marking the 60th anniversary of NATO, workers uprisings across the face of France, and on Saturday in Rome’s Circus Maximus a mammoth manifestation organized by the CGIL trade union underline the abyss separating the New Class of capital from labour. The current and spreading revolt of labour against capital seems to mark the second phase of the crisis of capitalism, as a consequence of the financial crisis caused by the New Class of an elite that has illogically chosen to separate itself from labour in the Occidental world.
Obama, you ungrateful hypocrite, your online audience are the ones that raised half a billion dollars to put you in power
by chycho
Last week I posted an article asking two very important questions. We just got the answer to the first, and we anxiously await the answer to the second.
The first question was; would Obama finally fulfill the US administrations promise to end prohibition, a promise that was made by President Jimmy Carter over 30 years ago. It was a legitimate question, since this is exactly what Obama promised when he made the following statement:
“The war on drugs has been an utter failure, and I think we need to rethink and decriminalize our marijuana laws.”
Unfortunately, however, on 26 March 2009, during an Interactive Town Hall Meeting, Obama stated that:
Obama's War on Labor
Stephen Lendman
Voters expecting change keep getting rude reminders of what kind, none they can believe in reiterated again on March 30 in Obama's remarks to the auto giants. While stating "We cannot....must not (and) will not let (this) industry vanish," he laid down a clear marker. Labor, not business, is targeted. More on that below.
"We (won't) excuse poor decisions," he said. "We cannot make the survival of our auto industry dependent on an unending flow of taxpayer dollars." In rejecting their aid request, he added: "These companies - and this industry - must ultimately stand on their own, not as wards of the state....What we are asking is difficult. It will require hard choices by the companies. (Their plan doesn't go) far enough to warrant the substantial new investments these companies are requesting."
Pseudo Theologian Rep. Peter T. King Sounds Off
William Hughes
“Thou shalt keep thy religion to thyself.” - George Carlin
He was just in time for April Fools’ Day, 2009! His name is Peter T. King and he’s
a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Long Island, NY. And, for the last eight years, he was one of the prime enablers of the worst excesses of the Bush-Cheney Gang in the Congress. Now, with the financial meltdown ongoing, Rep. King has jumped onto the national stage to add unintended comic relief for the millions in shock over their fast-vanishing 401(k)s. He solemnly pronounced that the idea of Notre Dame U. granting President Barack Obama an honorary degree was a “tacit acceptance of the president’s abortion views.” Then, Rep. King, a la Thomas Aquinas, added that it would also be “antithetical to ‘Catholic moral teaching’ on the sanctity and value of human life.” (1) Thank you “Father,” I mean, Rep. King.
A writer of the wildest fiction couldn’t make this crap up. Rep. King’s politics have been to the right of Genghis Khan. He was one of the biggest cheerleaders for the immoral war in Iraq! He was also a gofer for the whacky Dubya on just about every U.S. Constitution-shredding measure the then-President dreamt up, including the torturing of detainees, NSA’s surveillance of citizens, and the enactments of the USA Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act. Isn’t torture a sin, according to Holy Catholic doctrine? It appears, too, that the notion of jailing, forever, a so-called “enemy combatant” didn’t offend Rep. King’s “Catholic” sensitivities. (2) Don’t forget, also, that his No. 1 hero, Dubya, ran up $10.3 trillion in debt before he left the oval office and was given a ceremonial “boot” by the outraged citizenry. (3)
Escaping the Nixon Drug War Quagmire: Can Obama Face Up to the Issue?
Kevin Zeese
Reform of the Rockefeller Drug Laws Brings Up Another Drug War Republican – Richard Nixon and the Drug War Trap He Put America In
The passage of major reforms in the Rockefeller drug laws last week – the notorious 1973 mandatory sentencing laws that filled New York’s prisons but have not prevented long-term growing drug-related problems – demonstrates the challenge the United States faces in getting out of the drug war trap.
Nelson Rockefeller served as governor of New York from 1959 to 1973. He spent millions in attempts to win the Republican presidential nomination in 1960, 1964, and 1968 and became Vice President in 1974. Rockefeller was known as a liberal Republican in a party led by people like Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon.
THE WEB OF PRECARIOUSNESS “Chi non lavora, non fa l’amore”
Gaither Stewart
Precariousness looms like a black cloud over the continent of Europe. The fragility of human life and of the life style generations of westerners are accustomed to today rages like a modern plague. Precariousness is a contagious disease. It leaps from worker to worker, from class to class. No wonder that life in our times has never seemed more temporary. Permanence belongs to another age.
(Rome) A popular Italian evergreen from the 1970s depicts a contemporary conundrum for many Europeans: “Chi non lavora, non fa l’amore” go the lyrics. The woman tells her man, “If you don’t work, there will be no love-making in this house. If you strike and don’t bring home pay, I will strike too. No love-making here!” The worker goes back to his job and strikers beat him up and call him a scab. No sex if he strikes, beatings if he works. He is truly the superfluous and precarious man. His only hope is that the capitalist boss relents and grants the pay increases the union demands and lets love into his house again. But that, he must realize, is highly unlikely.
GMO Proliferation Bills
Stephen Lendman
Four in all so far plus another authorizing funding under a 2009 Omnibus Appropriations Act. One is HR 875: "Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009." Introduced in the House on February 4 by Rep. Rosa DeLauro, (D, CT) whose husband has ties to Monsanto, with 39 co-sponsors, it's been referred to the Agriculture and Energy and Commerce Committees for consideration as follows:
-- discussion,
-- possible hearings,
-- "mark-up" to make changes and add amendments,
-- then a vote on further action - to either table or send to the full chamber for a vote, the regular procedure for House and Senate legislation.
The bill's text is deceptively innocuous. Its header reads:
Death squad leader 'was top CIA agent'
Gabriel Ronay
President Milosevic (left), Jovica Stanisic (center).
The late President Milosevic's secret police chief and organiser of Serb death squads during the genocidal ethnic cleansing of disintegrating Yugoslavia was the United States' top CIA agent in Belgrade, according to the independent Belgrade Radio B92.
The claim that from 1992 until the end of the decade, Jovica Stanisic, head of Serbia's murderous DB Secret Police, was regularly informing his CIA handlers of the thinking in Milosevic's inner circle has shocked the region.
Stanisic is said to have loyally served his two masters for eight years. He is facing war crimes charges at the International Criminal Court at The Hague.
In the terrifying years of Yugoslavia's internecine wars, he acted as the willing "muscle" behind Milosevic's genocidal campaigns in Croatia, Kosovo and Bosnia, including Sebrenica. According to the charges he faces, Stanisic was "part of a joint criminal enterprise that included former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic and other Serbian politicians".
Fake faith and epic crimes
John Pilger
These are extraordinary times. With the United States and Britain on the verge of bankruptcy and committing to an endless colonial war, pressure is building for their crimes to be prosecuted at a tribunal similar to that which tried the Nazis at Nuremberg. This defined rapacious invasion as “the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole”. International law would be mere farce, said the chief US chief prosecutor at Nuremberg, Supreme Court justice Robert Jackson, “if, in future, we do not apply its principles to ourselves”.
That is now happening. Spain, Germany, Belgium, France and Britain have long had “universal jurisdiction” statutes, which allow their national courts to pursue and prosecute prima facie war criminals. What has changed is an unspoken rule never to use international law against “ourselves”, or “our” allies or clients. In 1998, Spain, supported by France, Switzerland and Belgium, indicted the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, client and executioner of the West, and sought his extradition from Britain, where he happened to be at the time. Had he been sent for trial he almost certainly would have implicated at least one British prime minister and two US presidents in crimes against humanity. Home Secretary Jack Straw let him escape back to Chile.
Student Merna foils Israeli bid to wreck family’s education hopes
Stuart Littlewood
Photo: "Merna in Azzeh Camp where she lives. The bright smile hides
a steely determination."
Bethlehem University has been closed a dozen times by Israeli storm-troopers and shelled by their tanks, but it remains one of those magical places in the Holy Land where you always feels good 'vibes'.
Meeting the students is a continual source of inspiration, as so many apply themselves to their studies with cheerful determination in spite of difficult family circumstances and almost insurmountable obstacles put in their way by the Occupation. So I enjoy the newsletters the Brothers regularly send me.
Their latest includes the heart-rending story of a young girl, Merna, an honors student in her final year majoring in English. For most people studying for a degree is tough enough, but this youngster also has to battle against armed intruders who invade her home and have systematically destroyed her family life.
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