|
Latest Articles: Opinions/Editorials
Democracy In Libya? Don't Hold Your Breath
Post Date: 2011-08-24 16:53:26 by Brian S
0 Comments
Fouad Ajami, with characteristic disdain for political correctness, once described the Arab world as “caught between prison and anarchy”. But the vast majority of post-Saïdian anti-Orientalists, in characteristic submission to political correctness, have been telling us all for decades that in the vibrant civil society of the Arab world, democracy is around the corner, especially in Palestine. Indeed, and ironically, George Bush’s neocon inspired invasion of Iraq was based on the notion that, the dictator toppled and democracy introduced, democracy would spread like dominoes across the region. Despite the consistently repeated failure of these expectations, nothing seems ...
Rewrite, Sugarcoat, Ignore: 8 Ways Conservatives Misremember American History—for Partisan Gain
Post Date: 2011-08-24 13:16:36 by Brian S
1 Comments
The mortgage crisis began in 2006 and it’s all President Obama’s fault—at least according to Fox News host Sean Hannity. Hannity recently blamed [1] Obama—“his policies, his economic plan, his fault”—for the mortgage crisis, ignoring who was actually president (that would be George W. Bush) as the housing market slipped [2]. Hannity’s is just one example of the selective memory and historical revision frequently on display in the conservative movement. Right-wing pundits, politicians and pseudo-historians are nibbling away at objective historical truths to rewrite history for present-day purposes, and hardly any topic is off-limits: glorifying the ...
Christian Zionists Seek to Judaize Jerusalem, Says Arab MK
Post Date: 2011-08-23 19:01:48 by Brian S
0 Comments
MK Ibrahim Sarsour, the head of the Ra'am Ta'al Arab party, urged Arab and Muslim leaders to wage war on Israel in a letter Monday. He cited Christian Zionists as one of the elements conspiring to 'Judaize' Jerusalem. The letter was written to the Secretary General of the Arab League and to the Secretary General of the Organization for Islamic Cooperation on the 42nd anniversary of "the crime of the burning of Al Aqsa mosque." This refers to the attempt in 1969 by deranged non-Jewish Australian Dennis Michael Rohan to burn down the mosque. Sarsour wrote that "The greatest danger to Al Quds [Jerusalem – Ed.] is and will remain the Israeli occupation, and ...
Buchanan: Why Are We Baiting the Bear?
Post Date: 2011-08-23 12:15:30 by Brian S
0 Comments
Is the Senate trying to reignite the Cold War? If so, it is going about it the right way. Before departing for a five-week vacation, the Senate voted to declare Abkhazia and South Ossetia to be provinces of Georgia illegally occupied by Russian troops who must get out and return to Russia. The Senate voice vote was unanimous. What is wrong with Senate Resolution 175? Just this. Neither Abkhazia nor South Ossetia has been under Georgian control for 20 years. When Georgia seceded from Russia, these ethnic enclaves rebelled and seceded from Georgia. Abkhazians and Ossetians both view the Tblisi regime of Mikhail Saakashvili, though a favorite of Washington, with contempt, and both have ...
Gold's Dramatic Rise and Fall in 1980s - Why It's Important
Post Date: 2011-08-23 01:44:05 by lucysmom
5 Comments
First of all, I am not a gold bug and like Dennis Gartman, am not very comfortable when everyone becomes bullish on gold. Many analysts and journalists do all sorts of historical analysis for gold prices, looking back at the Q1 1980 high of $800 + (nominal price) and using this number in all sorts of statistical comparison. But what one has to be extremely careful about is the fact that this price was an extreme movement which didn't last for too long at that time. Gold moved above $700 and stayed there for just a couple of weeks before dropping into the $300-500 range (nominal) for most of the '80s. Here is some research I did to explore what caused Gold prices to rise (and ...
Shariah Coming To Libya
Post Date: 2011-08-22 19:41:44 by Brian S
1 Comments
The United States among other countries officially recognized the Libyan Transitional National Council (TNC) as the legitimate governing body of Libya back in July. The U.S. and it's allies is counting on the TNC to fill the current void in Libyan leadership since the country's dictator Col. Moammar Gadhafi of over 40 years was forced to relinquish his power by rebel forces and their allies over the weekend. Many are asking, though, who exactly is this group that the United States and others are trusting to lead Libya towards a Middle Eastern democracy? Although the United States is optimistic about working with the TNC, past analysis about the TNC from the White ...
Top Ten Myths about the Libya War
Post Date: 2011-08-22 12:54:28 by go65
19 Comments
The Libyan Revolution has largely succeeded, and this is a moment of celebration, not only for Libyans but for a youth generation in the Arab world that has pursued a political opening across the region. The secret of the uprising’s final days of success lay in a popular revolt in the working-class districts of the capital, which did most of the hard work of throwing off the rule of secret police and military cliques. It succeeded so well that when revolutionary brigades entered the city from the west, many encountered little or no resistance, and they walked right into the center of the capital. Muammar Qaddafi was in hiding as I went to press, and three of his sons were in custody. ...
Five bummer problems that make societies collapse
Post Date: 2011-08-21 12:07:48 by lucysmom
33 Comments
“If anyone tells you that there’s a single-factor explanation for societal collapse,” says collapse guru Jared Diamond, “you know right away that they’re an idiot. This is a complex subject.” So, forget about peak debt, peak oil, peak climate, peak Harry Potter or even peak everything as the single most important problem that could bring today’s whole pulsing, beaming and txt-mssgng mess down into a lifeless pile of shorted-out microchips, rusted carburetors and busted sporks from Taco Bell. In a TED talk that Diamond gave in 2003 with eerie relevance for this very minute, the author of two books on collapse, the solid-gold hit Guns, Germs and Steel and ...
Criminal Zionism Will Bring About Lasting Disaster Unto Jews
Post Date: 2011-08-20 19:55:30 by Brian S
1 Comments
Israeli leaders have nearly lost their composure, reacting to a rare resistance attack originating from the Sinai Peninsula near the southernmost town of Um al Rushrash, renamed by the Zionists as Elat. Appearing existentially anxious and morbidly hypochondriac, Israeli prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu was behaving in a conspicuously convulsive manner. He vowed to murder Palestinians, saying "we must kill those trying to hurt Jews." Netanyahu, an inherently dishonest and racist politician, thought that the only way Israel could prove her military might was by ganging up on nearly helpless and virtually undefended Gazans who are languishing under a lingering blockade that has ...
Thoughts from Taiwan [Full Thread]
Post Date: 2011-08-19 08:36:27 by jwpegler
163 Comments
I spent the last week in Taipei, Taiwan visiting a customer. I've been all over Asia, but this was my first trip to Taiwan, other than catching a connecting flight at the airport. I'm sitting here at Taiwan International Airport waiting for my 12 hour flight to Seattle, reflecting on my week. I love Taiwan and its people. The city is on the move. People are hustling and working hard. Yet, they are extraordinarily friendly and caring. Last night we went to Tower 101, which is one of the tallest buildings in the world. Until very recently, it also had the fastest elevator in the world. We climbed from the 5th floor to the observation deck on the 89th floor in a matter of seconds. ...
Tea Party: The Christian Right in Disguise?
Post Date: 2011-08-18 20:26:01 by Brian S
1 Comments
Aug 18, 2011 1:54 PM EDT New research confirms that the Tea Party firmly unites right-wing politics and evangelical Christianity, a fact so problematic that it can make even Christine O’Donnell speechless. Print Email Comments On Wednesday night, former Tea Party candidate Christine O’Donnell walked off the set of Piers Morgan Tonight after refusing to answer a question about gay marriage. She said she hadn’t come on the show to deal with “a rude talk- show host, but to talk about my book and talk about the issues I address in my book.” Meanwhile, Michele Bachmann, once an outspoken social conservative, has reduced her comments on gay ...
LIBERALS AREN'T FUNNY, THEY'RE A RIOT!
Post Date: 2011-08-18 16:04:44 by CZ82
2 Comments
LIBERALS AREN'T FUNNY, THEY'RE A RIOT! August 17, 2011 Like you, I've been horrified by the eruptions of mob violence around the globe this summer. But having spent the last two years researching and writing a book about mobs, I'm also grateful to the ruffians for taking to the streets so soon after my book was released. Thanks, you dirty animals. I knew you wouldn't let me down. When I decided to write about mobs, it was a relatively peaceful period. But as long as there is evil in the world, mobs will never be finally defeated. And as long as there are liberals, there will be some people stoking the mobs. It was only a matter of time, although even I didn't ...
David Stockman: GOP Candidates “Checked Out of Reality”
Post Date: 2011-08-18 12:05:02 by Brian S
8 Comments
Former Michigan Congressman and former Reagan official David Stockman is a vocal critic of President Obama's Keynesian policies but he's also not very pleased with his GOP cohorts running for the White House. As he details in the accompanying interview with Aaron Task, Stockman believes the Republicans are off base in their refusal to even discuss the notion of higher taxes at a time when the government faces an insurmountable debt burden. "I think it's absurd. It is willful ignorance of the facts of life." At the Iowa GOP debates last week all candidates in attendance said they would reject any debt reduction compromise featuring a 10 to 1 ratio of spending cuts to ...
Crashing the Tea Party
Post Date: 2011-08-17 13:24:52 by go65
5 Comments
GIVEN how much sway the Tea Party has among Republicans in Congress and those seeking the Republican presidential nomination, one might think the Tea Party is redefining mainstream American politics. But in fact the Tea Party is increasingly swimming against the tide of public opinion: among most Americans, even before the furor over the debt limit, its brand was becoming toxic. To embrace the Tea Party carries great political risk for Republicans, but perhaps not for the reason you might think. Polls show that disapproval of the Tea Party is climbing. In April 2010, a New York Times/CBS News survey found that 18 percent of Americans had an unfavorable opinion of it, 21 percent had a ...
Us Moral Authority Undercut By War On Terror
Post Date: 2011-08-17 12:13:30 by Brian S
0 Comments
The 9/11 attacks prompted an outpouring of international sympathy and support for the United States, but Washington's subsequent "war on terror" undercut the superpower's moral authority. Ten years later, analysts say, America has not fully recovered its standing as a steadfast defender of liberty and fierce protector of the rule of law, handing Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda at least a partial victory. Critics accused president George W. Bush of riding roughshod over civil liberties, signing off on torture, extraordinary rendition and warrantless surveillance as he waged his "war on terror" no matter what the cost. Sweeping into office in January 2009 on a ...
How Safe Are You? What Almost $8 Trillion In National Security Spending Bought You...
Post Date: 2011-08-16 20:00:43 by Brian S
1 Comments
The killing of Osama Bin Laden did not put cuts in national security spending on the table, but the debt-ceiling debate finally did. And mild as those projected cuts might have been, last week newly minted Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta was already digging in his heels and decrying the modest potential cost-cutting plans as a "doomsday mechanism” for the military. Pentagon allies on Capitol Hill were similarly raising the alarm as they moved forward with this year’s even larger military budget. None of this should surprise you. As with all addictions, once you’re hooked on massive military spending, it’s hard to think realistically or ask the ...
Straw Poll Winner - Obama
Post Date: 2011-08-16 19:53:08 by Brian S
2 Comments
Ames, Iowa - Strolling through the pageant of unhealthy food and unsound ideology that is the Iowa Straw Poll, amid the good-natured Republicans who swept Michele Bachmann to an impressive victory, I couldn't help but reflect that this quadrennial exercise is one crazy way to pick a major-party candidate for president. You'll note that I used the words "Michele Bachmann" and "president" in the same sentence. That someone with views as extreme as Bachmann's could win -- and that Ron Paul, who seems to inhabit his own little reality, could finish second -- would seem to rob the straw poll of all but comic value, making it analogous to the opening joke a dinner ...
Buchanan: Mitt's Dilemma
Post Date: 2011-08-16 11:18:02 by Brian S
0 Comments
Last week's Republican debate at Ames, Iowa, and the straw poll Saturday did more than sort out the Republican field for 2012. They have given the nation a good close look at a Republican Party that no longer resembles the Bush-McCain model. Consider. Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul, who garnered nearly 60 percent of the votes cast, were both among the two dozen House members who voted against the final bipartisan deal to raise the debt ceiling. Neither blanched at shutting down the U.S. government. At the debate, every Republican onstage raised his or her hand when asked whether he or she would reject a budget deal in which $10 in spending cuts were offered for every dollar in higher ...
Screw The Rich (Here’s How)
Post Date: 2011-08-16 07:20:14 by A K A Stone
15 Comments
Tax the rich. Those bastards.
I get why people who aren’t rich hate those that are. No one really cares what they have, they only care what they have relative to others. When there is inequality, and there always is, even the hyper intelligent call for a redistribution of wealth. It’s an enduring longing for us as a species, and no evidence to the contrary will convince people it just doesn’t work in any large group.
What I really didn’t understand until recently though is why so many rich Americans seem to loathe their richness as much as everyone else does. Many in Silicon Valley want to tax the rich into the middle class and let government spend and spend and spend. The super rich ...
ADL Tightens 'Domestic Terrorist' Noose Around Christians
Post Date: 2011-08-15 17:09:33 by Brian S
2 Comments
In attempting to end free speech and criminalize Christians, the Anti-Defamation League (architect of hate laws worldwide) is promoting two contradictory agendas. First, it warns Congress that Islam is highly vulnerable to extreme interpretation by Muslim terrorists. At the same time it derides “Islamophobe” Christians for fearing Islam and Sharia law! ADL characterizes anti-Jihadist evangelicals (even if they are staunchly pro-Israel) as “haters,” whose inflammatory criticism of Islam inspires anti-Islamic terrorists like Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik. Why ADL's conceptual schizophrenia?To pass Christian-persecuting “anti-terrorist” laws, ...
Americans Don't Realize Just How Badly We're Getting Screwed by the Top 0.1 Percent Hoarding the Country's Wealth
Post Date: 2011-08-15 14:12:52 by Brian S
7 Comments
With an unprecedented sum of wealth, tens of trillions of dollars, held within the top one-tenth of one percent of the US population, we now have the most severe inequality of wealth in US history. Not even the robber barons of the Gilded Age were as greedy as the modern-day economic elite. As American philosopher John Dewey said, “There is no such thing as the liberty or effective power of an individual, group, or class, except in relation to the liberties, the effective powers, of other individuals, groups or classes.”In my report, The Economic Elite vs. the People, I reported on the strategic withholding of wealth from 99 percent of the US population over ...
Bachmann-Perry Overdrive
Post Date: 2011-08-15 13:47:07 by go65
1 Comments
The fight for the Republican Presidential nomination is finally getting underway in earnest, with Texas Governor Rick Perry bull-riding his way into the race and Michele Bachmann winning Saturday's straw poll in Iowa. Both events show how unsettled the GOP contest still is, as voters search for a candidate who can beat a vulnerable President Obama. Mrs. Bachmann, the Minnesota Congresswoman, has emerged from cable-TV land in recent months to be a viable competitor. She is telegenic, a hard worker, and has planted herself at the front of the tea party parade in hostility to all things Washington. This posture matches the current public mood and helps to explain why she surpassed fellow ...
Why "business needs certainty" is destructive
Post Date: 2011-08-15 12:15:36 by lucysmom
13 Comments
If you read the business and even the political press, you've doubtless encountered the claim that the economy is a mess because the threat to reregulate in the wake of a global-economy-wrecking financial crisis is creating "uncertainty." That is touted as the reason why corporations are sitting on their hands and not doing much in the way of hiring and investing. This is propaganda that needs to be laughed out of the room. I approach this issue as as a business practitioner. I have spent decades advising major financial institutions, private equity and hedge funds, and very wealthy individuals (Forbes 400 level) on enterprises they own. I've run a profit center in a ...
America's Debt is Not Its Biggest Problem
Post Date: 2011-08-15 00:02:46 by go65
3 Comments
The debt crisis as it crests ultimately gives way to these growth-inhibiting, spending-contractionary secular forces. Having run up our credit card to keep on spending, we have reached market-enforced limits that force deleveraging. It is not the debt, however, but the lack of global aggregate demand that is at the heart of the crisis. As the entire world strives to put its own people to work before other nations do, policymakers constructively lower interest rates and delay sovereign, corporate and household defaults to provide breathing room. Fiscally, however, an anti-Keynesian, budget-balancing immediacy imparts a constrictive noose around whatever demand remains alive and kicking. ...
Once A Fringe Candidate, Paul Shaping 2012 Race
Post Date: 2011-08-14 18:33:02 by Brian S
0 Comments
Ron Paul, once seen as a fringe candidate and a nuisance to the establishment, is shaping the 2012 Republican primary by giving voice to the party's libertarian wing and reflecting frustration with the United States' international entanglements. The Texas congressman placed second in a key early test vote Saturday in Ames, coming within 152 votes of winning the first significant balloting of the Republican nominating contest. Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota won the nonbinding Iowa straw poll, but Paul's organizational strength and a retooled focus on social issues set him up to be a serious player in the campaign. "I believe in a very limited role for government. But ...
Latest [Newer] 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 [Older]
|
