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Hard Times in Illinois
by Stephen Lendman
With America's worst budget crisis per capita, Illinois reflects the crushing nationwide burden facing most states. As a result since 2008, they raised taxes, made big cuts in health care (including Medicaid), education and other social services. They also laid off thousands of state workers, cut pay and benefits for others, and plan more of the same going forward.
Collectively in FY 2011, state governments face about a $140 billion deficit, besides major shortfalls in large and small cities. In fact, according to Nick Johnson of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, this year "will actually be the most difficult budget year for states ever," and 2012 may be as or more challenging.
The Greatest Recovery, Part II
Mark Provost
In a January 2009 ABC interview with George Stephanopoulos, then President-elect Barack Obama said fixing the economy required shared sacrifice, "Everybody’s going to have to give. Everybody’s going to have to have some skin in the game." (1)
For the past two years, American workers submitted to the President’s appeal—taking steep pay cuts despite hectic productivity growth. By contrast, corporate executives have extracted record profits by sabotaging the recovery on every front—eliminating employees, repressing wages, withholding investment, and shirking federal taxes.
The global recession increased unemployment in every country, but the American experience is unparalleled. According to a July OECD report, the U.S. accounted for half of all job losses among the 31 richest countries from 2007 to mid-2010. (2) The rise of U.S. unemployment greatly exceeded the fall in economic output. Aside from Canada, U.S. GDP actually declined less than any other rich country, from mid-2008 to mid 2010. (3)
Wars and the Cycle of Violence They Beget at Home and Abroad
Larry Pinkney
“The only change came from America, as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept, and without popular support. All the while the people read our leaflets and received the regular promises of peace and democracy and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs...Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.
“In order to rally people, governments need enemies. They want us to be afraid, to hate, so we will rally behind them.” -Thich Nhat Hanh
In human beings, more often than not, violence is externally ingrained. It does not come about by mere osmosis.
Perhaps the most sordid hypocrisy of all is committed by those “leaders” who profess disgust and surprise at the ever-present rampant physical violence in this nation, while simultaneously ordering or supporting targeted assassinations, bombings, and drone missile attacks, etc. upon populations abroad. This disconnect is cognizant dissonance. It is a form of sustained societal insanity which the leadership of this nation utterly refuses to forthrightly and honestly address.
THE FED HAS SPOKEN: NO BAILOUT FOR MAIN STREET
Ellen Brown
The Federal Reserve was set up by bankers for bankers, and it has served them well. Out of the blue, it came up with $12.3 trillion in nearly interest-free credit to bail the banks out of a credit crunch they created. That same credit crisis has plunged state and local governments into insolvency, but the Fed has now delivered its ultimatum: there will be no “quantitative easing” for municipal governments.
On January 7, according to the Wall Street Journal, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke announced that the Fed had ruled out a central bank bailout of state and local governments. "We have no expectation or intention to get involved in state and local finance," he said in testimony before the Senate Budget Committee. The states "should not expect loans from the Fed."
Occupiers who became victims of their Military Occupation Broke the Silence
eileen fleming
“Occupation of the Territories” is being published in Hebrew and by Breaking the Silence, “a group of Israeli ex-soldiers with an established record of gathering first-person accounts of IDF operations. The information was meticulously checked and re-checked for accuracy; there is no mistaking the ring of truth in the reports, which reveal consistent patterns, and thus have a powerful cumulative force. To read them is to see the profound moral corruption of the occupation in all its starkness. They show us ordinary, decent young soldiers, caught up in an impossible situation, sometimes trying desperately to make sense of that situation, but mostly following their orders without question. In a number of cases, those interviewed have clearly been psychologically and spiritually scarred by their participation in horrific events of which they had little understanding at the time.
What’s the difference between Nazi and Zionist war criminals?
By Alan Hart
Short answer: Great effort is made to hunt down and prosecute suspected Nazi war criminals, no effort is made to bring Zionist war criminals to justice.
On 13 January, the BBC’s World News web site had a lengthy story with the headline Global Nazi investigations rise for a second year. The writer of it was one Mario Cacciottolo who, quick research informed me, “Runs a photography website, plays poker, is a BBC journalist and grew up in Malta's red-light district.” (His other 50 listed stories for the BBC include “Brilliant” news for lesbian couples and What sort of man wears mantyhose?)
Post-Quake Haiti: One Year Later
by Stephen Lendman
On January 12, 2010 at 21:53 GMT, 4:53PM in Haiti, the earth massively shook. For affected Haitians, it never stopped. The combination of initial shock, devastating destruction, vast loss of life, injuries, suffering, and human misery disrupted millions of Haitians already overwhelmed by crushing hardships.
A year ago, people wandered the streets dazed, searching for loved ones. Lost power cut communications except by satellite phone. Haiti's quake vulnerability was well known but little reported, and no advance precautions were taken.
Roots of Arizona's Violence
by Stephen Lendman
As expected, America's major media won't explain it. Nation magazine editor Katrina vanden Heuvel ducked the issue, saying it's "a time for grief, not grievance." Blaming a "crazed act of a clearly unstable man," she called it "an assassination of democracy....shut(ting) down speech to slay those seeking its exercise," then added "we still don't know whether (violent rhetoric) was responsible for last weekend's horror."
The Last Days of the Jewish State
Gilad Atzmon
A few minutes ago, I came across a press release written by Left Israeli MK Nitzan Horowitz.
Horowitz, a member of Mertz Party, disclosed the new suggestions made by the McCarthyite Knesset Commission of Inquiry into Human Rights Organizations.
According to Horowitz, the commission is now considering the following measures:
Christian Arabs’ Plight: Foreign ‘Protection’ Counterproductive
By Nicola Nasser*
Suddenly, the U. S. - European alliance is acting to protect the “existence” of the Christian Arab minority against the Muslim Arab majority whose very existence is besieged and threatened by this same alliance, drawing on a wide spread Islamophobia while at the same time exacerbating Islamophobia among western audiences whom the international financial crisis is now crushing to the extent that it does not spare them time or resources to question the real political motives of their governments, which have been preoccupied for decades now with restructuring the Arab world geographically, demographically, politically and culturally against the will of its peoples with a pronounced aim of creating a “new Middle East.”
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