Mon 20 Oct 2008
By Chris Hedges Truthdig 10/20/08
Our oligarchic class is incompetent at governing, managing the economy, coping with natural disasters, educating our young, handling foreign affairs, providing basic services like health care and safeguarding individual rights. That it is still in power, and will remain in power after this election, is a testament to our inability to separate illusion from reality. (more…)
Mon 20 Oct 2008
“The largest financial theft in American history”
Must Listen Interview – – By Guns & Butter on ICH
Economist Dr. Michael Hudson on Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson’s “Plan” passed by Congress on October 3, 2008. We discuss what is being purchased, the congressional vote, what this means for the oligarchs, and what this means for the rest of us. (more…)
Wed 15 Oct 2008
Tomasz Pierscionek The Lancet, Student 10/13/08
During the 1970s, subsequent to the oil industry being nationalized, a centralised system of healthcare was established in Iraq (1). This government subsidised system was based upon a Western model. It enabled the entire Iraqi population to access free healthcare (more…)
Mon 13 Oct 2008
By Chris Hedges Truthdig 10/13/08
It is no longer our economy but our democracy that is in peril. It was the economic meltdown of Yugoslavia that gave us Slobodan Milosevic. It was the collapse of the Weimar Republic that vomited up Adolf Hitler. And it was the breakdown in czarist Russia that opened the door for Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Financial collapses lead to political extremism. (more…)
Sun 12 Oct 2008
by Joseph E. Stiglitz Vanity Fair November 2008
Describing how ideology, special-interest pressure, populist politics, and sheer incompetence have left the U.S. economy on life support, the author puts forth a clear, commonsense plan to reverse the Bush-era follies and regain America’s economic sanity. (more…)
Sun 12 Oct 2008
by Isabel Macdonald (of Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting) Commondreams 10/11/08
In the midst of remarkably cynical election-time mud-slinging, the Obsession campaign is truly in a class of its own. (more…)
Sat 11 Oct 2008
Kindhearts for Charitable Humanitarian Development sued the federal government in response to the Treasury Department freezing the group’s assets in 2006, requesting that the block is lifted while the group challenges the process used in designating organizations as terrorist groups. (more…)
See ACLU press release, Court Blocks Government From Designating Charity As “Terrorist”
Sat 11 Oct 2008
Walden Bello Focus on the Global South originally published in the Inquirer.net 10/10/08
NEW YORK – Flying into New York Tuesday, I had the same feeling I had when I arrived in Beirut two years ago, at the height of the Israeli bombing of that city – that of entering a war zone. The immigration agent, upon learning I taught political economy, commented, “Well, I guess you folks will now be revising all those textbooks?” (more…)