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thinkahol *

Former Military Interrogator Matthew Alexander: Despite GOP Claims, "Immoral" Torture "... - 0 views

www.democracynow.org/...ator_matthew_alexander_despite

Former Military Interrogator Matthew Alexander: Despite GOP Claims Immoral Torture Slowed Down Effort to Find Osama bin Laden

shared by thinkahol * on 07 May 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 07 May 11
     
    The death of Osama bin Laden has sparked a debate over whether torture of suspects held at places such as the U.S. military base at Guantánamo Bay helped track down and kill the al-Qaeda leader. Some claim the mission vindicated controversial Bush policies on harsh interrogation techniques. We speak with Matthew Alexander, a former senior military interrogator in Iraq. "The laying of the groundwork, if you will, of these [Bush-era] techniques, I believe wholeheartedly, slowed us down on the road towards Osama bin Laden and numerous other members of al-Qaeda," Alexander says. "I'm convinced we would have found him a lot earlier had we not resorted to torture and abuse." [includes rush transcript]
Martin Cruz

The Curious Case of the Slow Speedster - 0 views

fatmantoday.blogspot.com/...us-case-of-slow-speedster.html

toyota accessories driver training Manila driving manila hacks street

shared by Martin Cruz on 12 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • Martin Cruz on 12 Sep 12
     
    This happened to me a couple of weeks ago while I was on my way home one early morning. I was on a jeepney, riding through Sampaloc en route to Pandacan, via Vicente Cruz street. It was around 5AM, and everybody I was riding with was either sleepy or drunk (there's a Padi's Point near SM San Lazaro, the terminal of this jeepney route), and all in all, you could say that it was a very idyllic ride. But that turned out to be a mistaken assumption.
Thomas Sullivan

Obama's Post-Recession Economy a Failure - 0 views

bit.ly/adjseH

recession economy Obama jobs unemployment

shared by Thomas Sullivan on 02 Jul 10 - Cached
  • Thomas Sullivan on 02 Jul 10
     
    The Obama economy is tanking, its growth rate is slowing, businesses are shedding jobs and a wave of pessimism has sent U.S. stock markets into a nose dive, threatening recovery.
Skeptical Debunker

Top Fed Official Warns Jobs Will Be Scarce As 'Paradigm Shift' Slows Hiring - 0 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...fficial-warns-jo_n_471681.html

Federal Reserve official jobs outlook dim

shared by Skeptical Debunker on 22 Feb 10 - Cached
  • In remarks at the University of San Diego, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco President Janet Yellen said that rather than experiencing a "V-shaped recovery," the economy will continue to be sluggish and won't be operating at its full potential until 2013. As reasons, she cited consumer anxiety due to the high unemployment rate; a housing sector that "could weaken again"; "very nervous and exceedingly cost-conscious" businesses; and a commercial real estate market that won't contribute to growth "for some time." For workers, though, her prognosis was particularly dire: the labor market will be slow to recover because businesses have learned that they can cut workers yet maintain output.
  • Skeptical Debunker on 22 Feb 10
     
    A top Federal Reserve official warned Monday that even as the economy starts to grow again, employers are likely to continue squeezing more productivity out of workers rather than start hiring new ones, thereby prolonging the economic crisis for the millions of unemployed.
thinkahol *

Economist's View: "The Greatest Increase in Poverty and Hardship Produced by Any Law in... - 0 views

economistsview.typepad.com/...-law-in-modern-us-history.html

Economist's View: The Greatest Increase in Poverty and Hardship Produced by Any Law in Modern U.S. History

shared by thinkahol * on 03 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 03 Aug 11
     
    Mathew Yglesias: CBPP Analysis of John Boehner's Plan: The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities concludes that if enacted, John Boehner's debt ceiling plan "could well produce the greatest increase in poverty and hardship produced by any law in modern U.S. history." That sounds to me like something that would create strong incentives to not be poor and, indeed, to fully incentive richness. Consequently, we'll have massive economic growth. Right? Think of all the old people who will be willing to do odd jobs, whatever, in order to pay for health care. No more free-riding from grandma and grandpa to slow the economy down. The CBPP adds: This may sound hyperbolic, but it is not. The mathematics are inexorable. ... In short, the Boehner plan would force policymakers to choose among cutting the incomes and health benefits of ordinary retirees, repealing the guts of health reform and leaving an estimated 34 million more Americans uninsured, and savaging the safety net for the poor. It would do so even as it shielded all tax breaks, including the many lucrative tax breaks for the wealthiest and most powerful individuals and corporations. As for the way the debt ceiling talks are going, what a disaster.
thinkahol *

AFP: UN warns of 70 percent desertification by 2025 - 0 views

www.google.com/...M5gpEL4aRMhxPRfbFmtV6ZY701wmFQ

AFP: UN warns of 70 percent desertification by 2025

shared by thinkahol * on 03 Aug 11 - Cached
  • thinkahol * on 03 Aug 11
     
    Drought could parch close to 70 percent of the planet's soil by 2025 unless countries implement policies to slow desertification, a senior United Nations official has warned. "If we cannot find a solution to this problem... in 2025, close to 70 percent could be affected," Luc Gnacadja, executive secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, said Friday. Drought currently affects at least 41 percent of the planet and environmental degradation has caused it to spike by 15 to 25 percent since 1990, according to a global climate report. "There will not be global security without food security" in dry regions, Gnacadja said at the start of the ninth UN conference on the convention in the Argentine capital. "A green deal is necessary" for developing countries working to combat drought, he stressed. The next meeting on the convention is scheduled to take place in South Korea in 2010.
thinkahol *

Robert Reich (Why This is Exactly the Time to Rebuild America's Infrastructure) - 0 views

robertreich.org/10677190938

Robert Reich (Why This is Exactly the Time to Rebuild America's Infrastructure)

shared by thinkahol * on 27 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 27 Sep 11
     
    Seems like only yesterday conservative nabobs of negativity predicted America's ballooning budget deficit would generate soaring inflation and crippling costs of additional federal borrowing.  Remember Standard & Poor's downgrade of the United States? Recall the intense worry about investors' confidence in government bonds - America's IOUs?  Hmmm. Last week ten-year yields on U.S. Treasuries closed at 1.83 percent. In other words, they were wrong. In fact, it's cheaper than ever for the United States to borrow. That's because global investors desperately want the safety of dollars. Almost everywhere else on the globe is riskier. Europe is in a debt crisis, many developing nations are gripped by fears the contagion will spread to them, Japan remains in critical condition, China's growth is slowing.  Put this together with two other facts: Unemployment in America remains sky-high. 14 million Americans are out of work and 25 million are looking for full-time jobs. The nation's infrastructure is crumbling. Our roads, bridges, water and sewer systems, subways, gas pipelines, ports, airports, and school buildings are desperately in need of repair. Deferred maintenance is taking a huge toll. Now connect the dots. Anyone with half a brain will see this is the ideal time to borrow money from the rest of the world to put Americans to work rebuilding the nation's infrastructure.  Problem is, too many in Washington have less than half a brain. 
Joe La Fleur

OBAMAS MESS: NATO's Slow Genocide in Libya: Syria is Next - BlackListedNews.com - 0 views

www.blacklistednews.com/...M.html

nato genocide libya syria

shared by Joe La Fleur on 21 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • Joe La Fleur on 21 Apr 12
     
    BARAK OBAMA DEFIED CONGRESS AND WENT TO WAR WITHOUT CONGRESSIONAL APPROVAL.
Bakari Chavanu

Robert Reich: David Brooks is Dead Wrong About Inequality | Alternet - 0 views

www.alternet.org/...ks-dead-wrong-about-inequality

shared by Bakari Chavanu on 22 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Such is the case with his New York Times  column last Friday, arguing that we should be focusing on the “interrelated social problems of the poor” rather than on inequality, and that the two are fundamentally distinct.
    • Bakari Chavanu
      Bakari Chavanu on 22 Jan 14
       
      It's the old blame the poor argument.
  • Once the middle class has exhausted all its coping mechanisms – wives and mothers surging into paid work (as they did in the 1970s and 1980s), longer working hours (which characterized the 1990s), and deep indebtedness (2002 to 2008) – the inevitable result is fewer jobs and slow growth, as we continue to experience.
  • Third, America’s shrinking middle class also hobbles upward mobility. Not only is there less money for good schools, job training, and social services, but the poor face a more difficult challenge moving upward because the income ladder is far longer than it used to be, and its middle rungs have disappeared.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • o the contrary, as wealth has accumulated at the top, Washington has reduced taxes on the wealthy, expanded tax loopholes that disproportionately benefit the rich, deregulated Wall Street, and provided ever larger subsidies, bailouts, and tax breaks for large corporations. The only things that have trickled down to the middle and poor besides fewer jobs and smaller paychecks are public services that are increasingly inadequate because they’re starved for money.
Skeptical Debunker

Prudential-AIG Deal Another Case of Corporate Empire Building - 0 views

moneymorning.com/...prudential-aig

AIG Prudential deal analysis

shared by Skeptical Debunker on 05 Mar 10 - Cached
  • In spite of its new whizz-bang CEO, Prudential is a slow-moving but very reliable organization with a level of integrity that is trusted by policyholders. Frankly, that's what you want in an insurance company. I have had a modest U.K. pension with one of its competitors since 1980, and I am constantly worried that some leveraged buyout (LBO) artist will step in, take it over, change the computer system so that information gets lost, outsource customer service, and drive the company into bankruptcy. If you're buying life insurance or pension services, you want a company that's not going to disappear in the next 30 years, and doesn't change its address or computer system too often. Avoid a company like the plague if it is run by whiz kids. However, that's what AIG was like. We know how AIG operated; a guy who thought betting the ranch on the credit default swap market was a good idea ran it. Its Asian operation is no doubt full of similarly clever ideas. Even in the unlikely event that everything there is on the level, the cultural clash with an old-fashioned British insurance company is huge. And why would you pay a PREMIUM for an AIG operation? Like the Kraft/Cadbury deal, Prudential's takeover of AIA is value-destroying. Also like Kraft/Cadbury, it looks likely to destroy a valuable part of the British economy that millions of people have relied upon for generations - only this time the destruction will be caused by the buyer rather than the target. As shareholders we need a new form of corporate governance. Those in management are hired hands. In the old days, large shareholders used to treat management as they would have treated their butler - and management was equally deferential to the owners of substantial percentages of the company's capital. That's how capitalism is supposed to work - with resources deployed in the interests of the owners of capital. We know that system works; economics shows us why it works. The alternative, with resources deployed to satisfy the egos and fill the pockets of the hired hands, has no theoretical justification and little practicality - just as a big country house run in the interests of the butler would be a mess. As capitalists, we must work together to restore capitalism!
  • Skeptical Debunker on 05 Mar 10
     
    To inattentive observers, the recent announcement that the British insurance company Prudential PLC (NYSE ADR: PUK) would pay $35.5 billion for American International Group Inc.'s (NYSE: AIG) Asian insurance operation, AIA, might seem like just another belated expansion of the old British Empire - a strange contrast to the sale of the premier British chocolate company Cadbury PLC (NYSE ADR: CBY) to Kraft Foods Inc. (NYSE: KFT) last month. Yet in reality both deals are examples of Empire-building that for shareholders is much more dangerous than the benign British variety - Empire-building by corporate management that runs contrary to capitalist ideals.
  • Skeptical Debunker on 05 Mar 10
     
    Monopolies - BAD (Adam Smith even said so!) Companies controlled and run by management (as if it were their own personal fiefdom and with their hands always in the "cookie jar"), rather than shareholders - BAD. BOTH ANTI-CAPITALISTIC. Both the "norm" for "the titans" of "modern [anti] capitalism". We no longer have capitalism (if that, like communism, ever existed in a more or less "pure" form!). We have a kleptocracy of the rich and corporate aristocracy (as incestuously intertwined as the European nobles ever were!).
thinkahol *

Chomsky: Is the World Too Big to Fail? The Contours of Global Order | World | AlterNet - 0 views

www.alternet.org/...l_the_contours_of_global_order

Chomsky: Is World Too Big to Fail? The Contours of Global Order | AlterNet

shared by thinkahol * on 22 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • What exactly is the Iranian threat? An authoritative answer is provided by the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence. Reporting on global security last year, they make it clear that the threat is not military. Iran's military spending is "relatively low compared to the rest of the region," they conclude. Its military doctrine is strictly "defensive, designed to slow an invasion and force a diplomatic solution to hostilities." Iran has only "a limited capability to project force beyond its borders." With regard to the nuclear option, "Iran's nuclear program and its willingness to keep open the possibility of developing nuclear weapons is a central part of its deterrent strategy." All quotes.
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