The true picture of the American economy is that in 2007 there were 146 million Americans employed, or 63% of the working age population. Today, there are 139.9 million Americans employed, or 58.5% of the working age population. Over this time frame, an additional 7.1 million Americans entered the working age population. In 2007 there were 26.3 million Americans on food stamps, or 8.6% of the US population. Today there are 44.2 million Americans on food stamps, or 14.3% of the US population. To call the current economic disaster a recovery is to practice the art of the Big Lie.
"These are some of the things that keep American
conservatives awake at night.
Modern American conservatism is based on an almost endless
series of grievances. Author Thomas Frank coined a term for it: the conservative
"plenty-plaint" -- a long and ever-evolving list of personal and cultural gripes
dressed up as an ideology.
But there's also fear! And while it spans the breadth of the
movement, this is the year of the Tea Party revolt, when the grassroots right,
disgusted with the idea of semi-affordable health-care and tepid financial
reforms is rebelling against even its own establishment. And the divide between
the grassroots base and its leadership extends to the very fears that animate
them. As we'll see, the conservative movement's business-attired hacks and the
hard-Right tea Party types waving misspelled signs out in the streets have some
very different causes for alarm.
So, here are ten of the most interesting things that absolutely
terrify Wingnuttia. First, a few terrors of the real hard-core Right. For the
Tea Partier, the midterm GOP primary voter, it's not just the anxiety over
social change that typifies more traditional conservatism. A broad chunk of the
GOP base today is animated by wildly unrealistic terrors -- monsters stalking
them as the sun sets, perhaps hovering just beyond their peripheral vision."
Brown warns of enduring al-Qaida threat to UK
Prime minister says 60,000 civilians have been trained to deal with terrorist incidents
Gordon Brown today warned that al-Qaida remains the biggest security threat to the UK, as he revealed that tens of thousands of civilians have been trained to deal with terrorist attacks as part of a new strategy to combat extremists.
Some 60,000 civilians, including shop managers and council workers, have been trained to cope with the threat."Today, not only the police and security and intelligence officers and our armed forces, but also the emergency services, local councils, businesses and community groups are involved in state-of-the-art civil contingency planning,"
By 2011, Britain will be spending £3.5bn a year on counter-terrorism, Brown said. The imprisonment of 80 terrorists in Britain in the last two years was hitting the morale of al-Qaida. Part of the new strategy would address the longer-term causes of terrorism by "understanding what leads people to become radicalised, so we can stop the process".Brown said that more than two-thirds of the plots threatening the UK are linked to Pakistan.
By Ralph Nader & Carl J. Mayer
New York Times, April 9, 1988
Our constitutional rights were intended for real persons, not artificial creations. The Framers knew about corporations but chose not to mention these contrived entities in the Constitution. For them, the document shielded living beings from arbitrary government and endowed them with the right to speak, assemble, and petition.
Today, however, corporations enjoy virtually the same umbrella of constitutional protections as individuals do. They have become in effect artificial persons with infinitely greater power than humans. This constitutional equivalence must end.
Consider a few noxious developments during the last 10 years. A group of large Boston companies invoked the First Amendment in order to spend lavishly and thus successfully defeat a referendum that would have permitted the legislature to enact a progressive income tax that had no direct effect on the property and business of these companies. An Idaho electrical and plumbing corporation cited the Fourth Amendment and deterred a health and safety investigation. A textile supply company used Fifth Amendment protections and barred retrial in a criminal anti-trust case in Texas.
The idea that the Constitution should apply to corporations as it applies to humans had its dubious origins in 1886. The Supreme Court said it did "not wish to hear argument" on whether corporations were "persons" protected by the 14th Amendment, a civil rights amendment designed to safeguard newly emancipated blacks from unfair government treatment. It simply decreed that corporations were persons.
Now that is judicial activism. A string of later dissents, by Justices Hugo Black and William O. Douglas, demonstrated that neither the history nor the language of the 14th Amendment was meant to protect corporations. But it was too late. The genie was out of the bottle and the corporate evolution into personhood was under way.
It was not until the 1970's that corporations
The 30-minute speech I gave last month at the Symphony Space in New York is now available on video, and is posted below in three YouTube segments (the first segment also contains the 4-minute introduction of my speech). The speech pertains to the evolution of my views on media criticism, the nature of media propaganda and what drives it, and what can be done to combat it. A DVD of the entire event -- featuring the three other speeches: from Amy Goodman, Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore -- is available at FAIR's website.
I want to note one example, from today, that vividly illustrates many of the themes I discussed in that speech. It is found in the following passage from this Reuters article on Obama's escalation of the covert war in Yemen and his targeting of U.S. citizen Anwar Awlaki for assassination:
A U.S. official confirmed to Reuters that a U.S. strike last Friday killed Abu Ali al-Harithi, a midlevel al Qaeda operative, which followed last month's attempted strike against Anwar al-Awlaki, the leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
Whether Awlaki has any operational role in Al Qaeda at all is a matter of intense controversy. The U.S. Government has repeatedly asserted that he does, but has presented no verifiable evidence to support that accusation. But what is not in dispute is the notion that Awlaki is "the leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula." He unquestionably is not, and never has been, as multiple Yemen experts have repeatedly noted. The Reuters claim is factually and entirely false.
Whatever one's views are on Obama's assassination program, targeting U.S. citizens without due process obviously raises extraordinary and vitally important questions. As The New York Times' Scott Shane put it when confirming Awlaki's inclusion on Obama's hit list: "The Obama administration has taken the extraordinary step of authorizing the targeted killing of an American citizen. . . . It is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an America
A new (supposedly) NASA-funded study postulating that aliens may attack humans over climate change had all the ingredients for a perfect Fox faux controversy - it bolstered their anti-science narrative, painted their opponents as clownish radicals, and highlighted wasteful government spending on a supposedly liberal casue. Fox reported the "news from NASA" several times several times today, presenting it as official "taxpayer funded research." A chyron on Fox and Friends read: "NASA: Global warming may provoke an [alien] attack."
But as Business Insider pointed out, they're "wrong" - "That report was not funded by NASA. It was written by an independent group of scientists and bloggers. One of those happens to work at NASA." NASA distanced itself from the report as well, calling reports linking the agency to it "not true." Host Megyn Kelly finally corrected the record this afternoon, saying, "I was making that up."
But before she did, she was so bemused by the study that she directed her viewers to complete a poll on her website which asked how we should respond to the study: "Immediately increase efforts to curb greenhouse gases," "Develop weapons to kill the Aliens FIRST," or "Gently suggest scientists research how to create job."
Not surprisingly, most suggested they research something else. But more than six times as many respondents (19 percent to 3 percent) said we should focus on building weapons to kill aliens before curbing greenhouse gases. Watch a compilation:
"We will fight it through all available means […] To quote what they say every day on Libya, all options are on the table."
That's what the chief lobbyist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce told the New York Times after hearing the White House may issue an executive order requiring corporations that do business with the government to disclose their political spending.
The Chamber's pledge to fight tooth and nail to keep the American people in the dark about conflicts of interest in government is appalling, but not surprising.
If corporations and their executives are spending on politicians in an effort to "win" government contracts, the American people should know.
Urge President Obama to stand up to the U.S. Chamber and fight for disclosure. Sign the petition today!
The Australian communications regulator says it will fine people
who hyperlink to sites on its blacklist, which has been further
expanded to include several pages on the anonymous whistleblower
site Wikileaks.
The move by the Australian Communications and Media Authority
comes after it threatened the host of online broadband discussion
forum Whirlpool last week with a $11,000-a-day fine over a link
published in its forum to another page blacklisted by ACMA - an
anti-abortion website.
ACMA's blacklist does not have a significant impact on web
browsing by Australians today but sites contained on it will be
blocked for everyone if the Federal Government implements its
mandatory internet filtering censorship scheme.
Already, a significant portion of the 1370-site Australian
blacklist - 506 sites - would be classified R18+ and X18+, which
are legal to view but would be blocked for everyone under the
proposal. The Government has said it was considering expanding the
blacklist to 10,000 sites and beyond.
Dr. Moeed Pirzada bring fresh episode of Dunya Tv & talk with Lt. Gen. (R) Hamid Nawaz Khan,Zahid Hussaon Analyst, Syed Munawar Hasan, Haroon Rasheed Analyst.
The multinational manufacturing giants were trying to cope with changes in technology and demographics which threatened to make them obsolete.
Top managements in publicly owned US companies, regardless of size and performance, cowered under the threat of the corporate raider and his ultimate weapon, the junk bond.
Corporate capitalism promised that the large corporation would be run in the interests of the greater number of stakeholders. Instead, it was being pushed into a subordinate role – away from its market standing, its technology, and its basic wealth-producing capacity and into immediate earnings and next week’s stock price. A Marxist would call this turn of events “speculator’s capitalism.”
Meantime, Bill Gates has come up with a solution as to how billions of dollars generated through capitalism can help people in the poor nations which the world has forgotten. He termed it creative capitalism. He believed that some corporations have identified brand-new markets among the poor for life-changing technologies like cell phones. Others have seen how they can do good and do well at the same time.
social entrepreneurs are starting companies rather than non-profit organizations, to capitalize on public benefit. To top it all, some of these entrepreneurs choose a new corporate structure that requires enterprises to build into their foundation strong social and environmental standards for their operations.
Through Bono’s persistence, the (RED) campaign was launched and today Gap, Hallmark, and Dell, among others, sell (RED)-branded products and donate a portion of their profits to fight AIDS.
Corporate America has discovered that social responsibility attracts investment capital as well as customer loyalty, creating a virtuous cycle. Companies are now talking about a triple bottom line – profit, planet, and people – that focuses on how to run a business while trying to improve environmental and working conditions. Some companies have embraced the new ethos.
None of this could have happened without consumer demand. In a survey conducted, half of Americans polled said that protecting the environment should be given priority over economic growth – to think that the survey was done amidst a recession and unprecedented record unemployment.
Consumers are doing their own calculations and they would prefer comparatively more expensive cars that get better gas mileage, will save them money in the long run, and make them feel good in the process. Walmart, once the poster child of ruthlessness, a retailer whose business in the past was to undercut all its competitors, has resolved to change its way of doing business for the sake of the future of the planet.
These days, some companies are cutting back on their philanthropy but not on their Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives