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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:
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.
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.
READING LENIN IN MODERN ROME
Gaither Stewart
A little bit of Leninism for breakfast gives you the strength of a hundred camels in the courtyard.
(My adaptation of a Paul Bowles’ Arab adage)
And then this, straight out of the horse’s mouth:
“It is more pleasant and useful to go through the experience of the revolution than to write about it.” (Vladimir Lenin)
(Rome) Leftists like to cite Lenin. To quote Marx is to delve into the theory of Socialism/Communism. But Lenin is another cup of tea. You get into Lenin and you’re already in revolution. When you read Lenin’s The State and Revolution, which contains the core of Leninist thought, you are no longer in the world of socio-economic theory. This powerful text offers insights into Leninist policies and elaborated Lenin’s interpretation of Marxism, above all the class conflict, but also the crushing of the bourgeois state and the establishment and role of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Procuring Academics for Empire: The Pentagon Minerva Research Initiative
James Petras
The Pentagon’s military strategists have recognized that they have suffered political losses, with strategic consequences in their recent military invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. US military support for the Israeli invasions of Lebanon and Gaza, the US-sponsored Ethiopian occupation of Somali, the coup attempts in Venezuela (2002) and Bolivia (2008), have also failed to defeat popular incumbent regimes. Worse still, civilian, family, community and national networks have reinforced the anti-colonial movements providing essential logistical support, intelligence, recruits and legitimacy.
How close is the United States of America to becoming a failed state?
Economies around the world are unravelling, and governments are failing.
Since 2005 the United States think-tank, the Fund for Peace and the magazine Foreign Policy, have been publishing an annual index called the Failed States Index.
“The index's ranks are based on twelve indicators of state vulnerability - four social, two economic and six political. The indicators are not designed to forecast when states may experience violence or collapse. Instead, they are meant to measure a state's vulnerability to collapse or conflict. All countries in the red, orange, or yellow categories display some features that make parts of their societies and institutions vulnerable to failure. Some in the yellow zone may be failing at a faster rate than those in the more dangerous orange or red zones, and therefore could experience violence sooner. Conversely, some in the red zone, though critical, may exhibit some positive signs of recovery or be deteriorating slowly, giving them time to adopt mitigating strategies.”
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