Natasha Lennard May 24, 2011 http://www.salon.com/news/politics/barack_obama/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2011/05/24/obama_2008_gaffe Does Barack Obama wish he could go back to 2008? Wild extrapolation from a gaffe today would suggest so. When signing the guestbook during his visit to London’s Westminster Abbey, the president wrote the date as “24 May 2008.” According to Sky News, “Obama …
Justin Elliott
May 24, 2011
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/05/24/netanyahu_standing_ovations/index.html
Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu got 29 standing ovations during his speech before a joint meeting of Congress today. That compares to just 25 for President Obama’s last State of the Union address, ABC points out.
Most members of Congress attended the speech, with a few notable exceptions (such as Sen. Rand Paul). So it’s a worthwhile exercise to take a quick look at what members were clapping about during the roughly 50-minute speech. Here’a a quick guide to the lines that drew standing Os, with some explanation and context for just what Netanyahu was talking about:
1. I see a lot of new friends of Israel here as well. Democrats and Republicans alike!
There are increasing signs, even among hardline pro-Israel types of both parties, that the Mideast conflict is becoming a partisan issue. Netanyahu wants to stress, at least publicly, the overwhelming bipartisan support in the U.S. for Israel and its policies.
This short film illustrates the power of words to radically change your message and your effect upon the world.
By Danny Schechter
Author of The Crime Of Our Time
This week the financial crisis finally went prime time in the form of a big budget HBO docudrama called “Too Big To Fail.”
It was a well-acted docudrama focused on the BIG Men and some women in the banks and in government who tried to put Humpty Dumpty back together again up on that wall to prevent a total economic collapse when panic dried up credit and financial institutions faced failure.
Based on the work of a New York Times reporter, it offered a skillfully-made but conventional narrative which, like most TV shows, showcase events but miss their deeper context and background.
We heard all the explanations, save one.
There was greed, ambition, ego and money lust. There were personal rivalries and ideological battles, parochial agendas and narrow self-interest. There was panic on THE Street and in the halls of mighty institutions. In many ways, the program recycled and made an official narrative compelling viewing. In the end, everyone was to blame so no one was to blame.
By Danny Schechter
Author of The Crime Of Our Time
This week the financial crisis finally went prime time in the form of a big budget HBO docudrama called “Too Big To Fail.”
It was a well-acted docudrama focused on the BIG Men and some women in the banks and in government who tried to put Humpty Dumpty back together again up on that wall to prevent a total economic collapse when panic dried up credit and financial institutions faced failure.
Based on the work of a New York Times reporter, it offered a skillfully-made but conventional narrative which, like most TV shows, showcase events but miss their deeper context and background.
We heard all the explanations, save one.
There was greed, ambition, ego and money lust. There were personal rivalries and ideological battles, parochial agendas and narrow self-interest. There was panic on THE Street and in the halls of mighty institutions. In many ways, the program recycled and made an official narrative compelling viewing. In the end, everyone was to blame so no one was to blame.
Yesterday’s Show
|
A Better World on Progressive Radio Network
|
|||||||
Radio shows are archived on www.abetterworld.net, some include video stream archives
TV shows are aired in Manhattan every Tuesday ay 10:30PM EST on ch.57 (RCN: ch.84 / Fios: ch.35)
Finding Peace in an Age of War
When you’ve been raised within a context of war and taught that we fight wars to protect Democracy, instead of being one of the lowest expressions of human activity, war starts to look like a good thing. Young men grow up watching movies of WWI and WWII, listen to “war-stories” and are intrigued by the thrill and adventure of it all. Not to mention that “the good guys get to defeat the bad guys”. When you add it all up, there is a glamorization and romance associated in the minds of people, especially the youth who are more impressionable that says something like “War is a good thing, it’s always been with us, and it’s a price we have to pay to protect our Democracy and way of life”.
We are programmed from an early age to honor war and war heros. And what comes with these pictures is the idea that violence is a good, surely acceptable, way to resolve human conflict. Not through discussion, intellectual dialogue or diplomacy, but that brawn is more powerful than brain. In fact, the part of our brain that is being most honored is that most primitive of parts, the brain stem, also known as the reptilian brain. So the architects of Empire, the businesses that perpetrate war, are also encouraging regressive, not progressive, or evolutionary behavior in the people of a nation. From the point of view of control, of crafting values that are imposed upon people who consider themselves “free”, this is a very powerful, effective intervention. It’s worked. We know because there are so many young people who have fallen for the fallen idea that “war is good when it protects our Democracy and way of life”, even when the basis, causes and effects of that ‘way of life’ go unexamined.
This kind of programming by the media, which has been in no insubstantial part, owned by military equipment and armament manufacturers, is very lucrative. Anyone who wants to make a bundle of money but didn’t come into this life with a heart, soul or conscience, this is a great career, business and livelihood. If you own the means to program, the “perception creators” and you have products you want to sell, it’s a perfect marriage. The only problem is that your own kids may get duped too and want to sign up to protect oil interests/military interests, I mean Democracy, too, and you may lose them in the fog of war. Oh well, you can always manufacture a few more.
But if you’ve had any love in your early childhood, if you’ve been cared for and felt the love of mother and father, even of siblings and friends more than you felt anger, competitiveness, insult, despair or loneliness, the tendency to breed more mammalian love is ever-present. The desire to hurt, maim or kill is really non-existent, it’s off the radar. Killing a flea or cockroach, takes an emotional toll, but at a certain point, one toughens oneself up to perform these upsetting but sometimes necessary acts.
Here’s a particularly nasty sign that the economy is still weaker than Donald Trump’s presidential run was: The United States still counts a depressing 24 million unemployed currently hunting for a full-time job, and the only employment sector really catching fire is unpaid jobs and internships, which have steadily increased to fill the undignified void. Whether you’re a new college graduate or an unemployed veteran of the pre-recession employment landscape, you’re now either fighting for a shrinking pool of new low-paying positions or plenty of gratis gigs where you won’t ever see a dime for your earnest blood, sweat and tears.
Last week, the Department of Labor announced a minuscule drop in unemployment insurance claims to 409,000, barely below the annual average’s wheelhouse of 412,000 but well above 2011′s low of 375,000. For those who graduated college long ago, peak oil and climate change have continued to initiate obvious yet still destabilizing price increases in commodities like food and oil. Health insurance hikes continue unabated and unjustified, and over half of Americans think the housing market is moribund.
International Business Times, Monday, May 23, 2011 6:50 AM EDT
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/150164/20110523/china-gold-demand-united-states-fort-knox-holder-reserve-biggest-india-russia-investment-qe.htm
By Jijo Jacob
The solid demand for gold is not supported just by private individuals and panicky investors, but countries like China, India and Russia are ramping up investment in the yellow metal.
“… that the world’s biggest and fastest growing national economies are in the midst of an historic push to build up their stores of the precious metal,” according to Wealth Daily’s Luke Burgess.
“Today, the biggest buyers of gold aren’t private citizens or hedge-funds. Instead, nations like China, India, and Russia have moved forward to grab up every loose ounce of the metal…,” Burgess says.
There have been reports that the Chinese are buying gold assets to cover against rising inflation risk and global macroeconomic uncertainties. Beijing has long complained that the U.S. Federal Reserve’s policy of Quantitative Easing (QE) results in exporting America’s inflation to China. Hence the propensity to hedge against the runaway costs in the domestic market by stacking up gold assets.
By Rick Rozoff
Podcast Powered By Podbean Download this episode (right click and save) Mickey Huff is Professor of History at Diablo Valley College, CA, as well as new Director of Project Censored (PC) and the Media Freedom Foundation. Both support media democracy, First Amendment freedoms, and investigative research to communicate real news and …
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (0.0KB) | Embed
Podcast Powered By Podbean Download this episode (right click and save) Jack Rasmus is Professor of Political Economy at St. Mary’s College and Santa Clara University, CA. He’s also a freelance journalist, frequent speaker, a playwright and author, including his latest book titled, “Epic Recession: Prelude to Global Repression.” His forthcoming …
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (0.0KB) | Embed
Podcast Powered By Podbean Download this episode (right click and save) Diane Wilson is a long-time environmental, social justice and peace activist, arrested more than fifty times for her principled civil disobedience. She’s also co-founder of CodePink, the Texas Jail Project, and Texas Injured Workers, as well as founder of Calhoun …
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (0.0KB) | Embed
As we reported earlier this month, there are often deep financial ties [1] between professional medical societies and the drug and medical device industries. This week, other news outlets chimed in, detailing how recommendations made by two medical societies raise at least the appearance of a conflict of interest.
Professional groups represent physicians in specialized areas of medicine. They are responsible for writing the guidelines that those physicians use to decide on treatments and care. The organizations also lobby for the interests of their members. But recent [2] reports [3] question whether some of the groups’ recommendations are in the best interests of patients or are tainted by industry support.
The National Lipid Association, for example, has been working on recommendations for the screening and treatment of a group of genetic disorders that can lead to premature coronary artery disease. It turns out the development of those recommendations was supported by $112,500 in grants [4] from six drug companies that stand to profit from the results, according to the website Cardiobrief [2]. Many societies explicitly ban such funding for guideline writing because of the appearance of conflict.
Over the past few years, it’s become an article of faith among progressives that we’re living through a second Gilded Age — you know, an era in which great fortunes accrue to powerful business leaders and institutions and the nation’s wealth is concentrated at the very top. In the past few months, as Republicans have proposed budgets that would cut taxes still further on the backs of the middle and working class, progressives have hammered away at the statistics — like that the top 1 percent of Americans hold 34.6 percent of the nation’s wealth; the bottom 90 percent, just 26.9 percent.
But the growth in inequality and decline of the middle and working class, though exacerbated by Bush administration economic policies, isn’t a recent phenomenon — it’s been in progress for decades. Which begs the question: why on earth did it take so long for the Left to take notice? How did we end up with inequality reaching levels not seen since before the Depression without waging anything approximating a real fight against it? Surely the trends of decreasing social mobility and increasing social stratification in the supposed “land of opportunity” call for serious resistance — where has it been? As thoroughly reprehensible as the Right’s slavishness to wealth and power is, the fact that it took a financial meltdown for economic justice to even begin to replace welfare reform on the political agenda suggests progressives need to do a bit of navel-gazing.
by Mike Adams
http://www.naturalnews.com/032487_hemp_seeds_food_inflation.html#ixzz1NCCL9hGs
(NaturalNews) Food inflation is hitting the superfood industry right where it hurts — in the wallet. Thanks to several factors you’ll read about here, prices on hemp seeds, hemp oils, coconut oil and other superfoods are set to skyrocket beginning in just a few days. One of the largest superfood suppliers in the USA, Nutiva, has announced an 11% price increase coming May 27th, and that may be just the beginning of an accelerating trend in steady increases.
In anticipation of this price increase, we’ve taken on a huge inventory of Nutiva’s Certified Organic Hemp Seed and Hemp Oil at the old prices, and we have a generous supply available to NaturalNews readers who want to beat the price increase (see below).
Why hemp and coconut oil prices are heading into the stratosphere
In a letter sent to us by Nutiva, founder John Roulac explains that the price of coconut oil has doubled in the last six months. While coconut oil suppliers are able to absorb some of this cost in the short term, they cannot do so on a permanent basis. This means that the prices consumers pay for coconut oil are headed sharply higher.