Pages: << 1 ... 1259 1260 1261 1262 1263 1264 1265 1266 1267 1268 1269 ... 1326 >>
Deb Reich / Abu Ghosh
The following essay was written by a very dear friend. She has been involved in solidarity work involving Palestinians and Israelis for many years…. she speaks from the heart. [Steve Amsel]
Most people will say I’m delusional; that’s okay. I will say what I have to say anyway. When your opinion is way out on the periphery, it may mean you are delusional - or it may just mean that the so-called center has gradually drifted closer and closer to a very high cliff, and finally fallen off the edge, while the majority of the population follows along like a horde of doomed lemmings. In that scenario, someone needs to stake out a position at the other extreme and drag the locus of the center back from oblivion. So here goes.
Steve Amsel
The ballots have been counted…… yet there is no government. This has been the norm in Israel since Menachem Begin stepped down as Prime Minister in 1983. There have been ‘rotations’, coalitions, but no real governing body.
As I write this the two leading Parties, Kadima and Likud, are desperately seeking ways to form a coalition with those Parties willing to work with them. Common denominator being the continuation of the occupation, the expansion of illegal settlements, and the draining of resources belonging to other countries.
Norm Lowry
“The foundation of all Mental Illness is the unwillingness to experience legitimate suffering.” Carl Jung
Lately, I have been inordinately baffled. The combined government & media sources of the world tell the tale of whole countries sitting on the edge of fiscal insolvency; civil unrest now becoming commonplace; starvation & suicide deaths soaring; staggering rises in unemployment; food shortages; rising threats & escalating wars. In my country (USA), the stories are the same…maybe 46 of 50 States, 80% of US cities & 2 of 3 US banks are fiscally insolvent; likely 1 of 5 workers unemployed or working part-time (due to lack of suitable employment); home foreclosures up 80% in 2008 (worse yet expected in 2009).
Stephen Lendman
Exit Paulson, enter Geithner with the latest "no banker left behind plan" - aka whatever Wall Street wants, Wall Street gets. Yet, the reception was underwhelming. The Dow plummeted 382 points while investors took shelter in bonds and gold. AP reported that "the new bank rescue plan landed with a thud on Wall Street" as investors worried that no end to the crisis is in sight. Editorial and op-ed commentaries were near unanimously negative and some especially critical.
At a February 9 congressional briefing, lawmakers greeted Geithner with laughter and sarcasm, but most of it is just politics. Bailout opponent Brad Sherman (D, California) asked for details and a dollar amount, but instead got generalities about what he announced the next day - a plan to:
Gaither Stewart
“To seduce also means to destroy”
I ran into a reference to The Fable of the Bees: or, Private Vices, Publick Benefits and found the suggestive old poem extensively reproduced and commented on line. The work consists of a poem, The Grumbling Hive, or Knaves Turn'd Honest, and an extensive prose commentary. The poem which first appeared in 1705 was intended as a commentary on England, as the Dutch Englishman, Bernard de Mandeville, saw it. Here is a stanza:
Rodrigue Tremblay
“The [financial] crisis was not a failure of the free market system and the answer is not to try to reinvent that system. ...Government intervention is not a cure-all." - President George W. Bush, Thursday November 13, 2008
"There is no cause to worry. The high tide of prosperity will continue." - Andrew W. Mellon, Hoover's Secretary of the Treasury. September 1929
"While the crash only took place six months ago, I am convinced we have now passed the worst and with continued unity of effort we shall rapidly recover. There is one certainty of the future of a people of the resources, intelligence and character of the people of the United States - that is, prosperity."
President Herbert Hoover, May 1, 1930
Khalid Amayreh
“If good befalls you, it grieves them; but if some misfortune overtakes you, they rejoice at it. But if ye are constant and do right, not the least harm will their cunning do to you; for Allah Compasses round about all that they do” Surat A’ali Imran, (the House of Imran), III, v. 119
“I call on the Israeli army to crush these Palestinian terrorists who are at Iran’s beck and call; chase the rebels of Hamas, annihilate its lunatics and demented leaders who are disguised as men of faith, crush them and exterminate them and teach them a lesson which they will never forget just as you taught the terrorist Hizbullah a harsh lesson in 2006….So deliver Gaza from the grip of Hamas. These Palestinians, wherever they go, they take with them terror, corruption, trouble l, tumult and ingratitude…..!”
Eric V. Encina
U. S. President Obama is presenting all the positive sides of the "stimulus package" and pushing its ratification in the halls of Congress. Likewise, the Philippine President Marcapagal is carrying out a comparable program to uplift his own country's ailing economy, create jobs and save the financial system from total collapse. However, the problem with the stimulus packages created by these two leaders is that the money to be used to jumpstart business activities, obviously, provides a "band-aid remedy" coming from borrowings and taxes, which will create the same results of crisis in the long run except that it will be even bigger and more catastrophic. Therefore, the best kind of repair for the economic downturn is the creation of debt free money by governments' financial arms.
Stephen Lendman
Global economies are withering while Washington conceives "Financial Recovery Plan(s) from Hell," according to economist Michael Hudson in his latest February 11 article. Bankers demand more trillions, "or (they'll) plunge the economy into financial crisis." What they want they'll get, and here's where things now stand.
On February 10, Bloomberg.com reported that Treasury Secretary Geithner "pledged government financing for as much as $2 trillion....to spur new lending and address banks' toxic assets, seeking to end the credit crunch hobbling the economy." Hudson calls it "Stage One of a two-stage plan," so far unannounced, to transfer trillions more to corrupt bankers who caused the problem in the first place, yet taxpayers will get little more back than the bill.
Joel S. Hirschhorn
"I've been through Y2K and I've been through 9/11. I have never seen people so afraid as what we are seeing right now,” said gun shop owner Scott Moss recently. With more guns per capita – easily 250 million privately owned ones – and certainly more people in prisons than any other democracy, the intriguing question in this still worsening economic calamity is: If Americans found the courage for political rebellion now, would it preempt massive criminal violence, social havoc and armed rebellion later?
<< 1 ... 1259 1260 1261 1262 1263 1264 1265 1266 1267 1268 1269 ... 1326 >>