contributions

U.S. Is Bankrupt and We Don’t Even Know It: Laurence Kotlikoff
By Laurence Kotlikoff - Aug 11, 2010
Aug. 11 (Bloomberg) — Laurence Kotlikoff, an economics professor at Boston University, talks about the state of the U.S. economy. Kotlikoff speaks with Erik Schatzker on Bloomberg Television’s InsideTrack." (Source: Bloomberg)
Let’s get real. The U.S. is bankrupt. Neither spending more nor taxing less will help the country pay its bills.
What it can and must do is radically simplify (…)

The euphoria of Wall Street (and by extrapolation from the rest of world stock) following the results of so-called "stress test" of financial institutions conducted by the U.S. administration and the drip of negative economic data below the most pessimistic forecasts would have helped the overweight green shoots of the economy (estimated 3% of GDP by 2010 and substantial improvement in results of the Banks and Wall Strett).
It would thus produced a change in market expectations, there are (…)

By David Glenn Cox
Winston Churchill once said, “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they’ve tried everything else.” The old boy had us dead to rights, as a nation we don’t learn and we don’t take advice. Churchill’s bromide could be applied to Wall Street as well with one slight alteration. “You can always count on Wall Street to do the right thing when pigs fly and chickens sing opera.”
Wall Street is a one eyed monster that like organized religion hides by (…)

If Opium Funds Terrorism then Arrest the Queen of England
Sep 8th, 2009 | By Keelan Balderson
A lot of recent headlines in the mainstream press have discussed the vast amount of poppy fields in Afghanistan that are under Taliban control. The assertion is that these fields which produce ingredients used in opium and heroin production are being cultivated by the Taliban to fund their various terrorist operations.[1]
It is a fact that Afghanistan had a 95% monopoly over the world’s opium (…)

Posted at 03:54 on 09 August, 2010 UTC
Amnesty International says New Zealand’s new aid policy is sending the wrong message to the Pacific.
The group’s Pacific researcher Apolosi Bose says the Vanuatu Women’s Centre is one NGO facing difficulties under New Zealand’s change of direction.
The centre says without the 100 thousand US dollars in annual assistance, the organisation will have to shut its doors in Luganville.
“Wrong messages are being sent to the Pacific internationally, (…)

Australia’s post-Coup, pro-war, pro-coal, pro-gas, pro-Zionist Labor PM Julia Gillard appeared in a stultifying episode of the TV Question and Answer TV program "Q&A" but 50 Elephant in the Room questions (listed below) were not put - the unspoken narrative of the current election campaign in Murdochracy and Lobbycracy Australia (right wing Libs versus right wing Labs, with the anti-war, pro-environment Greens hoping for 15% of the vote) is "Don’t mention the war".
The (…)

By David Glenn Cox
Rage is born of desperation; it is incubated and nurtured by ignorance and neglect. It’s fathered by the unfeeling and uncaring, the safe and secure. Its mother is the destitute and hungry, the needy, those too easily cast off from society as mere statistics. It is a genie that once released from its bottle will summon up all the forces of hell to seek vengeance upon guilty and innocent alike.
"If a modern state is to rest upon a firm foundation its citizens must not (…)

On Friday evening, Aug. 6, 2010, at the Bufano Sculpture Garden, on the campus of the Johns Hopkins U., in Baltimore, MD, a remembrance ceremony was held by the “Hiroshima-Nagasaki Commemoration Committee.” One of the participants in the event was David Eberhardt. He is a peace and social justice activist, an author and poet. See: http://davideberhardt.webs.com/farewelltophil.htm Mr. Eberhardt read his remake of James Russell Lowell’s hymn, “Once to Every Man and Nation.” Check out: (…)

By Chris Patten Published on August 8, 2010
IT IS easier to enter a maximum-security prison than it is to enter the strip of land – 45 kilometres long and maybe eight wide – that is home to Gaza’s 1.5 million Palestinians. Surrounded by a forbidding wall, watchtowers, and deadly buffer zones, I entered with a hard-to-obtain visa at the Erez crossing – iron gates, an interrogation by bored young immigration officers and scanners. On the other side is a kilometre-long caged walkway that (…)

“Free Bradley Manning Rally” at Quantico, VA from William Hughes on Vimeo.
A spirited rally was held in a park, on Sunday afternoon, August 8, 2010, in the town of Quantico, VA, in support of Private Bradley Manning. Currently, he is incarcerated in a prison at the Quantico Marine Base. It surrounds the town, which borders on the Potomac River. Private Manning is charged with releasing a video which showed, “the killing of civilians and journalist in Iraq,” by U.S. forces, according to a (…)