Archive for October 2009
Perils of Positive Thinking
Perils of Positive Thinking: Author Ehrenreich Points out the Negative Influence of the Constantly Upbeat
Nancy R. Care2
I saw author Barbara Ehrenreich speak on Friday about her newest book, Bright Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America. In Ehrenreich’s view, the opposite of positive is realist.
Video: Report – Big Pharma has 2.3 lobbyists for every lawmaker
By David Edwards and Daniel Tencer the raw story
Thursday, October 22nd, 2009
Drugmakers’ victories in Washington could keep health costs high, trade office warns
The pharmaceutical industry spent $110 million in just the first half of 2009 in its efforts to influence health care reform, part of a booming lobbying effort that now has 2.3 drug lobbyists on Capitol Hill for every member of Congress, a new investigative report reveals.
Gaza 2009: Operation Cast Lead
An Israeli human rights group B’Tselem says many more Palestinian civilians were killed in the Israeli military’s campaign in Gaza than the army admits. |
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Portal:Real Economy Project
Vist the Center for Media and Democracy Portal for the latest news, profiles and resources; and check out their Bankster campaign for economic justice.Toxic Assets Getting You Down?
The big banks on Wall Street have blown a hole in the economy that will take many years to repair. Since the recession began in December 2007, the number of unemployed Americans has risen from 7.6 million to 15.1 million. The formal unemployment rate is rapidly approaching double digits and many of these lost jobs are being permanently shipped overseas. Americans are losing health care benefits at a rapid clip and the historic stimulus package passed by the Obama administration is beginning to run out of steam. We are in a big hole and it is going to take big ideas to climb out of it. The goal of our www.BanksterUSA.org website and our larger “Real Economy Project” is to simplify these complex issues and give you a voice in the debate surrounding proposed public policy fixes. As policymakers get ready to tackle much needed financial-sector reforms, your voice is essential if the needs of Main Street America are to be prioritized over the narrow interests of Wall Street.
This fully-sourced research companion to BankstersUSA.org is a collection of editable wiki profiles of the bankers, financial companies, lobbyists, reformers, front groups, issues and legislation related to the financial crisis and the bank bailout. Don’t let the Banskters write the history of this tumultuous time in America! You can help us build this library and document the people and policies behind the financial crisis by visiting the “Help Out” section below. Our motto is “fair, accurate and documented.”(About/contact)
| Take action to reform of the finance industry at CMD’s BanksterUSA site. |
Israel wants laws of war changed
No, this is not a bad joke. They want to be exempted from the standards of decency, written after the ghastly persecutions of WWII. Now that Israel claims status as a Colonial Power, what’s a little genocide flavored with white phosphorus? (nothing is really bad when they do it….)
America is for WarLovers
By Robert Aber
Me and my dad used to play a game: ”Who’s the best President since FDR?”
Ike always won. This from the dad who took the nine-year old me to a 1948 Henry Wallace For President rally at Gilmore Field – now CBS Television City. We signed the Stockholm Peace Petition and put both our asses on J. Edgar Hoover’s shit-list. Dad had made J. Edgar’s list by the 1930s. I was new.
Obama Sides with Republicans; PATRIOT Act Renewal Bill Passes Senate Judiciary Committee Minus Critical Civil Liberties Reforms
It looks like most of the Senators on the Judiciary Committee weren’t swayed by last week’s New York Times editorial, which suggested they consider USA PATRIOT Act renewal a “critical chance to add missing civil liberties and privacy protections, address known abuses and trim excesses that contribute nothing to making America safer.” Instead, the Committee passed a bill to renew all of the PATRIOT powers that were set to expire at the end of the year, with only a handful of the original reforms that were first proposed by Senators Feingold and Durbin’s JUSTICE Act and Committee Chairman Leahy’s original PATRIOT renewal bill.
No, rather than adding more protections to the bill, the Committee voted to accept seven Republican amendments to the USA PATRIOT Act Sunset Extension Act to remove the few civil liberties protections left in the bill after it was already watered down at the previous Committee meeting. Surprisingly and disappointingly, most of those amendments were recommended to their Republican sponsors by the Obama Administration.
Questioning authority? you must be crazy
Is straying from the herd, questioning conventional wisdom, and trying to figure out things for yourself– a sign of “mental illness”? The increasingly Stalinist stance of many pundits makes one wonder if a Gulag may be in our future.
While it is still acceptable to notice “spin” and agenda-driven explanations that challenge physical realities, it is evidently no longer acceptable to question the conclusions of the spinners and explainers.
Steve Watson details in his Alex Jones article Salon Hit Piece Implies Truth Seeking Is A Mental Illness examples of this “labeling as mentally disturbed anyone who is skeptical or open to the possibility that conspiracies may have a basis in reality.”
He focuses particularly on Salon’s Cary Tennis, who acknowledges a past of addiction related problems. (Tennis advises that teenagers visiting Alex Jones’ website may be psychologically unstable….)
I wonder if Tennis has considered that the efforts to swallow conventional wisdom against the bounds of one’s innate common sense, may be what drive many to self-medicate in the first place??
A Media Failure Compounds The Financial Failure
The Press Is Still Missing The Story Of Fraud and Economic Decline Ahead
By Danny Schechter Global Research, October 8, 2009
We know that Wall Street has not learned much from the crash it helped instigate. We know that our government, whatever its stated desire to clean up the markets and reform the financial behemoths, lacks the willingness and perhaps the clout to rein in the real power centers. We are not sure if they have been “captured” by them, or just lack the guts to take on institutions and individuals that helped fund their rise to power.
But do we know that, even now, much of our media, despite the sheer volume of coverage may be missing the real story? Do we know that if we want to find missing facts and the real context we have to turn away from the failed media system that never really investigated the failed financial system.
Flu Vaccines and the Risk of Cancer
Flu vaccines are increasingly manufactured in cell lines that are actually or potentially oncogenic, and FDA guidelines allow high levels of contamination and no spot checks are carried out.
Dr. Sherri J Tenpenny The Institute of Science in Society
Much concern has been generated over the new swine flu H1N1 vaccines that are being rushed to market. Clinical trials have been short – less than three weeks – and there is also the possibility of adding toxic oil-in-water adjuvants at the last minute to stretch the vaccine supply (see [1] Fast-tracked Swine Flu Vaccine under Fire, SiS 43). Those are not the only concerns. The new manufacturing process for flu shots, called cell-line technologies, are little understood and have the potential for serious, long term consequences.
