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Reviewing Danny Schechter's The Crime of Our Time
by Stephen Lendman
Danny Schechter is a media activist, critic, independent filmmaker, and TV producer as well as an author of 10 books and lecturer on media issues. Some call him "The News Dissector," and that's the name of his popular blog on media issues. He's also the co-founder of Media Channel.org that covers the "political, cultural and social impacts of the media," and provides information unavailable in the mainstream.
Schechter's books include The More You Watch The Less You Know, Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity and the Subprime Scandal, and his newest and subject of this review, The Crime of Our Time: Was the Economic Collapse "Indeed, Criminal?"
As a form of economic terrorism, indeed so says Schechter and many others. Ellen Brown, author of Web of Debt, writes: Schechter "establishes the crime's elements, identifies the players, and exposes the weapons that have turned free markets into vehicles for mass manipulation and control."
“Global Imbalances” versus Internal Inequalities (Understanding the World Economy)
By James Petras
Introduction
The deep and ongoing crises of leading capitalist countries, especially the United States, has provoked a debate over the causes, consequences and appropriate policies to remedy it.
The debate has revealed a deep division over the causes and remedies, with Anglo-Franco American (AFA) politicians, columnists and economists on one side and their Asian-German (AG) counterparts on the other. In general terms the AFA spokespeople put the blame for the crises on external factors, or more specifically they point their finger at the positive trade surpluses, dynamic export sectors and high investment rates in productive sectors and low levels of consumption in the AG countries as the cause of ”unbalances” or “disequilibrium” in the world economy.
Constitutional Hypocrisy
Joel S. Hirschhorn
Millions of Americans are politically informed, smart, active and angry. They see many wrongs in our political and government system. They are fed up with politics as usual, meaning corrosive corruption of politicians by corporate and other special interests. They see little good in either the Democrat or Republican parties. And they almost always share a common bond: They love and honor the US Constitution, even though they may see some flaws in it. Yet they are also constitutional hypocrites.
Why do I say this? Because Americans are overwhelmingly ignorant or misinformed about the constitutional paths for amending the Constitution. Too many, in fact, seem to miss the profoundly important point that the Founders and Framers knew that they had not created a perfect document and blueprint for the US. That is why they placed two specific paths for amending the Constitution.
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman glorifies American militarism
Patrick Martin
In one particularly cynical passage, he urges Obama to sing the praises of “the American soldiers who stand guard today at outposts in the mountains and deserts of Afghanistan to give that country, and particularly its women and girls, a chance to live a decent life free from the Taliban’s religious totalitarianism.” Thousands of Afghan women and girls have been incinerated, dismembered or maimed by American missiles and bombs: presumably a small price to pay for their “liberation” from religious oppression.
In the Sunday edition of the New York Times, the newspaper’s chief commentator on foreign affairs, Thomas L. Friedman, devotes his entire column to a grotesque celebration of the role of the American military, presenting its operations, particularly in Afghanistan and Iraq, as humanitarian and liberating.
He takes the occasion of the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Barack Obama to suggest the US president go to Oslo in December, decline the award for himself, and then declare, “I will accept it on behalf of the most important peacekeepers in the world for the last century—the men and women of the US Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps.”
The Rising Cost of Idiocy
by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy
The dumbing down of America began with Ronald Reagan who made idiots feel good about being idiots. Reagan proved that not only was intelligence not required to be President, it might even be a handicap.
Reagan proved that any politician ignoring the 'idiot' voting block [the GOP] imperils his/her political future. Thus, Sarah Plain, who became an expert on Russia by observing its coast line from across the Bering Strait, is assured a growing constituency: the growing legion of idiots! She is the poster bimbo of idiocy. It's champion.
The occupation is `a war on the Afghan people' An interview with Malalai Joya
Steven Littlewood
[Sydney protest against the Afghanistan war, October 8, 2009, organised by the Stop the War Coalition. See Malalai Joya's message to the protesters below the interview.]
Malalai Joya interviewed by Steven Littlewood
Malalai Joya has been described as “the bravest woman in Afghanistan”. A long-term opponent of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) presence in her country, Malalai Joya first rose to prominence through a heartfelt and controversial speech in 2003 that was an indictment of the powerful positions gifted to Afghan warlords by the US-led coalition. She was elected to the Afghan parliament in 2005 and continued her campaign against war criminals and fundamentalists there until being suspended in 2007 for criticising fellow MPs. Activists Noam Chomsky and Naomi Klein are amongst those who have called for her reinstatement.
In spite of four attempts on her life and having to live under constant protection, Joya continues her campaign against the government of Hamid Karzai, its fundamentalist allies and its Western backers. I spoke to her during the recent presidential election, which is still in contention and has been condemned by international observers.
Tel Aviv, Peace and the Obama Prize
Jeff Gates
The Nobel Committee again piqued the interest of those who marvel at the impact of an annual ritual of global branding that in 1973 labeled Henry Kissinger a peace laureate! As with many aspects of unconventional warfare, what emerges in the foreground often obscures behavior that remains concealed in the background.
Anyone paying attention knows that pro-Israelis manipulated the intelligence that induced the U.S. to invade Iraq. That same source is now hoping to expand this war to Iran—without being detected. In an irony of epic proportions, this award may enable that deceit.
At What Cost the Israel Lobby?
By: Jeff Gates
More than 46 years ago, President John F. Kennedy sought to preclude a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. In June 1963, he wrote the last in a series of insistent letters to Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. Those letters sought what Israel now demands of Iran: international inspections of its nuclear facilities. The key difference: Kennedy knew for certain that Israel, while portraying itself a friend and ally, repeatedly lied to Kennedy about its nuclear weapons development at the Dimona reactor in the Negev Desert.
Best estimates point to sometime between 1962 and 1964 when Israel produced its first weapon in what is now a vast nuclear arsenal estimated at 200-400 warheads. Kennedy’s letter to Ben-Gurion was anything but friendly. The words he chose were drawn not from diplomacy but from the instructions that a judge gives a jury on criminal culpability. In that brusque letter, the U.S. commander-in-chief insisted that this purported ally prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” that the Zionist enclave was not developing nuclear weapons.
PLANETARY BOUNDARIES: THE CO2 <350 PPM UPPER LIMIT OF HUMAN HABITATS
Andrew Glikson
THE RISE OF ATMOSPHERIC CO2 ABOVE 350 PPM AT THE CURRENT RATE OF 2 PPM/YEAR IS TRANSCENDING ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS WHICH ALLOWED THE DEVELOPMENT OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION AND, WITH LAG EFFECTS, IS LEADING TOWARD AN ICE-FREE EARTH AND A MASS EXTINCTION OF SPECIES
Climate change is tracking toward levels which transcend the planetary boundaries which allowed the development of humans over the last 3 million years [1]. These limits have already been crossed in terms of the rise in greenhouse gases (CO2, methane, Nitric oxide) and extensive loss of species [1]. Given lag effects, looming threats include (A) ocean acidification and phosphorous flux, collapse of coral reefs and the marine food chain; (B) availability of freshwater; (C) conversion of natural forests to cropland, i.e. the Amazon; (D) ozone depletion; (E) atmospheric aerosol loading and (F) chemical pollution by metals, plastics, radioactive nuclei etc.
Critics of ‘holy Israel’ targeted by Christian Zionists
Stuart Littlewood
Christianity too has its extremists and none worse than the Christian Zionists.
A prize example is His Eminence The Very Reverend Charles J. Edgbaston, DD, PhD, Chair, Christians for Moses Ministries Inc. and Rector, Zion College of Canada.
At least, that is what he calls himself.
This person has just declared me an Enemy of Israel. He says he will broadcast the sentence of his church court to the media and my family. His disciples are “empowered to facilitate” my removal from my place of work. He is applying to the Home Office to revoke my passport and warns that medical and pension benefits may be stopped and my bank accounts frozen. And he has ordered his goons to put me under close surveillance.
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