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Holiday Season Hypocrisy
by Stephen Lendman
Most Christians celebrate Christmas on December 25. For Eastern Orthodox faith adherents, it's January 7. It commemorates Christ's birthday, even though it's widely acknowledged not to be that day.
Many African Americans also celebrate Kwanzaa from December 26 - January 1 to reconnect to their cultural and historic heritage. In addition, Jews commemorate Hanukkah. The eight-day Festival of Lights observes the rededication of Jerusalem's Holy Temple at the time of second century BC the Maccabean Revolt.
Beginning the day after Thanksgiving, the season also involves obsessive consumerism. Merriam Webster calls it "the promotion of the consumer's interests; the theory that an increasing consumption of goods is economically desirable; (and/or) a preoccupation with and an inclination toward buying consumer goods."
EU Protests Israeli Occupation Policies
by Stephen Lendman
On December 23, Haaretz writer Barak Ravid headlined, "EU voices protest over Israeli policies in East Jerusalem, West Bank," saying:
"A day after four European Union members of the UN Security Council strongly criticized Israel's decision to speed up construction of settlements."
Deepening Global Financial Trouble
by Stephen Lendman
Desperate times call for desperate measures, especially for troubled Eurozone economies.
Trapped under euro straightjacket rules, everything tried so far failed, despite hooplas announcing each new plan.
On December 21, the big overnight news highlighted demand for long-dated European Central Banks (ECB) loans drawing 489 billion euros, more than expected. A total of 523 banks borrowed money. In response, Capital Economics' chief European economist Jonathan Loynes said:
"While this might help to address recent signs of renewed tensions in credit markets and support bank lending, we remain skeptical of the idea that the operation will ease the sovereign debt crisis as banks use the funds to purchase large volumes of peripheral government bonds."
Medicare Privatization Plans
by Stephen Lendman
The idea's been around for years. More recently, bipartisan support's been growing. Various plans have circulated.
A 2006 Congressional Budget Office (CBO) study assessed "Designing a Premium Support System (PSS) for Medicare." It discussed pros, cons, other choices and implications in terms of costs and recipient benefits.
In 1995, Henry Aaron and Robert Reischauer first proposed PSS based on managed competition principles. Numerous variations followed with differing public support amounts.
All plans have six common features:
Kristallnacht in Palestine
By Stephen Lendman
Virtually daily, Israeli security forces attack, kill, or injure Palestinian civilians with impunity. They also destroy their property by bombing, shelling, bulldozing and uprooting it.
At the same time, Israeli authorities wink and nod, occasionally decry, yet do nothing to deter extremist settler crimes against Palestinian civilians.
Most often, they're given license to terrorize, vandalize and commit physical violence with impunity. Rarely ever is anyone held accountable. The same holds for its own security forces, no matter how outrageous their crimes.
So imagine Defense Minister Ehud Barak's hypocrisy. In response to days of settler attacks against Palestinian property, he shamelessly called them "Jewish terrorists."
Banker Occupation and Europain
By Stephen Lendman
Bankers rule the world. A new Swiss Federal Institute of Technology study says so. Written by Stefania Vitali, James Glattfelder and Stefano Battiston, it's titled "The network of global corporate control," saying:
"We find that transnational corporations from a giant bow-tie structure and that a large portion of control flows to a small tightly-knit core of financial institutions. This core can be seen as an economic 'super-entity' that raises new important issues both for researches and policy makers."
The study says 147 powerful companies control an inordinate amount of economic activity - about 40%. Among the top 50, 45 are financial firms. They include Barclays PLC (called most influential), JPMorgan Chase, UBS, and other familiar and less known names.
Twenty-four companies are US-based, followed by eight in Britain, five in France, four in Japan, and Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands with two each. Canada has one.
Grim Holiday Season Tidings
by Stephen Lendman
New global data show grim results. China's real estate was especially bleak. It reported 70% of its 70 largest cities experiencing home price deflation, up from 47% in October. Rarely ever does this bode well for economic prospects or banking.
As a result, copper is down 0.7% and 25% in 2011. The base metals complex also dropped 1%.
In Japan, department store sales were down 1.9% year over year, the fifth consequence negative reading. In October, Spain's service sector declined 2.7% year over year.
In America, recent data reflect downtrends in restaurants, clothing, jewelry, department, grocery, and drug store sales, household appliances, clothing, chemical products, electrical and communication equipment, machinery, paper and wood products, semiconductors, and computers and accessories.
Political Washington Abolishes Due Process Protections
by Stephen Lendman
Main Street Europe and America face protracted Depression conditions. As a result, millions lost jobs, homes, incomes, and futures.
Human misery is growing. So is public anger. Rage across America and Europe reflect it. Gerald Celente explains the stakes, saying:
"When people lose everything and have nothing else to lose, they lose it."
Draconian police state provisions were enacted to contain them. Hundreds of secret Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) camps may hold them. Martial law may authorize it, claiming "catastrophic emergency" conditions. Senators blew their cover calling America a "battleground."
Tarek Mehanna: Victimized by Racist Injustice
by Stephen Lendman
Post-9/11, Mehanna is one of hundreds of Muslim Americans victimized, vilified, and persecuted for their faith, ethnicity, prominence, activism, and at times charity.
On October 21, 2009, an FBI press release said:
"A Sudbury, Mass. man was charged today in federal court with conspiracy to provide support to terrorists."
Maliciously and spuriously, Mehanna was accused of "conspir(ing) with Ahmad Abousamra and others to provide material support and resources for use in carrying out a conspiracy to kill, kidnap, main or injure persons or damage property in a foreign country and extraterritorial homicide of a US national."
Frito-Lay sued for labeling its GMO-filled snacks as “All Natural”
By Rady Ananda
Less than a year after Frito-Lay announced plans to make half their products without “any artificial or synthetic ingredients,” the $13 billion company was sued last week in federal court for fraudulently marketing the snacks that contain genetically modified ingredients.
Somehow, “artificial” and “synthetic” doesn’t include “genetically modified” in Frito’s mind.
In its April 2011 “Seed-to-Shelf” disclosure campaign, Frito-Lay promised to inform consumers about each individual snack’s ingredients, even setting up an app for smartphone users to swipe the product’s barcode and read about it. Ann Mukherjee, Frito-Lay’s senior vice president and chief marketing officer, gushed:
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