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BANKS PROFIT FROM NEAR-ZERO INTEREST RATES: ANOTHER REASON FOR STATES TO OWN THEIR OWN BANKS
Ellen Brown
While individuals, businesses and governments suffer from a credit crisis created on Wall Street, the banks responsible for the crisis are tapping into nearly-interest-free credit lines and using the money to speculate or to make commercial loans at much higher rates. By forming their own banks, states too can tap into very low interest rates, and can buffer themselves from another Lehman-style credit collapse.
Keeping interest rates low is considered the first line of defense for central banks bent on easing the credit crisis and getting banks to lend again. The Federal Reserve’s target for the federal funds rate -- the overnight interest rate that banks charge each other – has been kept at a rock-bottom 0% to 0.25% ever since December 2008. A growing number of economists now think it could stay there well into 2011 or even 2012, prompted by fears that a spreading debt crisis in Europe could hurt a budding U.S. recovery.
Dirk van Dijk, writing for the investor website Zacks.com, explains what a good deal this is for the banks:
We must not accept holocaust propaganda in our schools
Commentary by Khalid Amayreh
Some circles within UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Work Agency, have been trying to introduce “the holocaust” into Palestinian school curricula in the Gaza Strip. In so doing, the organization is trying to appease certain Zionist-minded groups in North America, and to a lesser extent in Europe, which have been lambasting the UN body for “conditioning” the Palestinian school system to Arab ideological and political trends.
Needless to say, the rationale behind such calls for introducing the conspicuously controversial and highly-propagandistic subject into the world of Palestinian youngsters has very little to do with any educational merits. But it has every thing to do with a virulent Zionist propensity to brainwash Palestinians, particularly young generations, into accepting or at least understanding Zionism, a hateful fascist political ideology that has much in common with Nazism, both in terms of theory and practice.
Israel falls back on lies
Khaled Amayreh writes in Jerusalem
While its propaganda machine ramped up to full pace following its attack on the Gaza humanitarian convoy, the truth of Israel's brutality is hard to conceal.
The Israeli government has embarked on a disinformation campaign to justify its act of piracy against the ships carrying humanitarian goods to Gazans starving for the fourth successive year under Israel's illegal blockade.
The activists, representing more than 40 nationalities, were bringing humanitarian materials included powdered milk, wheelchairs and a symbolic shipment of cement and other building materials to help Gazans rebuild homes destroyed during Israel's onslaught on the coastal territory more than 18 months ago.
Name in the news: Sheikh Raed Salah
Khaled Amayreh in occupied Jerusalem
Initially reported wounded on the Freedom Flotilla, Sheikh Raed Salah -- a beacon of the struggle against Israeli oppression -- is unharmed.
As an outspoken opponent to the Israeli occupation, especially Jewish attempts to gain a foothold at Islamic holy places in East Jerusalem, Sheikh Raed Salah Mahajneh has been a thorn in Israel's side for many years, for his tireless but peaceful protests against Israeli repression of the Palestinians.
Disturbed by his views and non-violent opposition, the Israeli authorities arrested and imprisoned the 52-year-old Islamic activist a number of times, mostly on frivolous or totally concocted charges such as "endangering the state of Israel," "aiding a terrorist organisation" or "incitement against the state."
United States of Ecocide: Spilling and Consuming Way to Oblivion
Dr. Glen Barry
A great, free nation remains immobilized in the face of ecological collapse
The United States of America is an epic experiment, as despite great accomplishments and numerous imperfections, we share a long history of constantly striving to improve our union. As Americans settle in for Memorial Day to remember veterans of all stripes - from great wars of world defense to more recent military adventurism - it is appropriate to consider what the current Gulf Oil Spill says about the American way of life. Plainly, our addiction to oil and consumption in general threatens to destroy regional and global ecosystems - the water, air, land and oceans -upon which Americans, humanity and all species depend upon for habitat and life.
America is truly exceptional. Yet it is not because of our materially excessive lifestyles, as best demonstrated by our wide girths and ample posteriors. There is more to America than consumption. Our greatness is primarily due to our wavering, imperfect yet unique commitment to freedom and liberty. Over two hundred years ago a just revolution was fought asserting individual liberties from monarchial authoritarianism. The principles of freedom and liberty were a gift to the world. This is what truly has set us apart. And despite two decades of consistent roll-backs in civil and human rights, Americans remain for now free peoples to prosper or expire.
Where Corporations Learn How to 'Manipulate' the Media
by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy
The word 'manipulate' was used by Edward Bernays to describe how big corporations, like BP and Exxon, should harness the 'organized habits and opinions of the masses'. Bernays considered such 'manipulation' to be essential in a democratic society. BP's recent oil spill --now threatening the U.S. Gulf Coast, indeed, the entire Gulf of Mexico --is an occasion in which corporations will apply the principle of 'manipulation' referred to by Bernays.
"The conscious and intelligent manipulation [emphasis mine, LH] of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society.
--Edward Bernays
The world as crack house
Crack house: "A place "where people make, deal and smoke crack cocaine. This could be a house, an apartment, or a shack to name a few…" Urban Dictionary
The G-20 and big oil treat the earth as though it were a crack house. They set up shop, trash the premises, without regard to the surroundings -- all for the purpose of creating and selling a substance that people simply can't do without.
In fact, these oligarchs are far worse than crack dealers. Users can get off of crack. They can do the hard work of getting clean and do just fine. The oligarch crack daddies made sure that once we were hooked on oil, there was no way out. We either get well every day or we'll collapse as a society. You'd think there would be a law against it? (Images 1 & 2)
'R'Oil Indignation
by Walter Brasch
The British are upset with the United States. That's not too unusual. There was this revolution thing a couple of centuries ago.
But America's Number 1 ally is upset that Americans are blaming BP for that nasty little oil spill in the Gulf. You know, the one where as much as 1.7 million gallons of crude oil a day has given us new species of no-flight pelicans and black-skinned dolphins.
The Brits' FaceBook pages, blogs, radio comments, and letters to newspapers are full of nasty comments about how America is over-reacting, how Americans are unjustly blaming Britain and all that is holy about corporate incompetence. Boris Johnson, the conservative mayor of London, told BBC Radio he worried about "anti-British rhetoric . . . that seems to be permeating from America." Ian Cowie, London Daily Telegram feature columnist, bluntly wrote, "Much of the rhetoric from other American politicians is plainly jingoistic claptrap with a beady eye on their own chances in the U.S. midterm elections." He is partially accurate; many American politicians, more than a few of whom were in the bed of the oil companies throughout their political careers, may be grandstanding. But, there is truly justifiable outrage by all Americans and all politicians.
Psycho-biological basis for image leverage and the case of Israel
by Denis G. Rancourt
Psycho-biological basis for image leverage – General model
Family and friends keep the First World financial-corporate elite bosses from murdering brown people in the developing world. Not directly of course but via a psycho-biological survival reflex: We don’t feel secure living with overt psychopaths.
In other words, for the elite bosses to continue practicing genocidal predation for power and profit it is necessary that the predation be cast in a false cover of humanitarian aid, democratic development, solidarity, progress, and the like, and that the most overtly murderous practices be cast as necessary in a fight against evil.
US Media's Pro-Israeli Bias: Response to the Freedom Flotilla Slaughter
by Stephen Lendman
In promoting his 2008 book, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," Jimmy Carter said one reason for writing it was "to provoke (unbiased) discussion, which is very rarely heard in this country" on the question of Israel. In America, "any sort of debate back and forth, any sort of incisive editorial comment in the major newspapers, is almost completely absent....There are no significant countervailing voices" to deter Israel from getting away with murder, an illegal blockade, aggressive wars, and the most extreme crimes against humanity; its latest, of course, the massacre of peace activists taking aid to besieged Gazans.
Besides coming from officials and their spokespersons, Israel's propaganda arm, Israel Politik, said "Israel had no choice but to stop the flotilla from breaking the blockade....While Israel was forced to take action in international waters, its actions are supported by international maritime law."
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