politics for the 99%

Gallup’s just-released poll showing a majority of Americans support the drug’s legalization isn’t quite true … at least not yet – Published on The Guardian, by Harry J. Enten, Oct 23, 2013.

Ever feel like you’re experiencing deja vu? I’m sure it’s happened to those of you who have smoked cannabis – you know, grass, marijuana, or, as the cool kids might say, weed. And while I’m not personally smoking the stuff, I get the same feeling when talking about marijuana polling.

It was big news Tuesday when Gallup released a poll showing that a record high 58% of Americans believe marijuana should be legalized. But the proof that a majority of Americans are in favor of cannabis legalization is, as I wrote earlier this year, simply not there yet. Take the Gallup poll, and the trend in it over the past few years.  Continue Reading…

The Coming Era of Tiny Wars and Micro-Conflicts – Published on ZNet (first on TomDispatch), by Tom Engelhardt, Oct 23, 2013.

In terms of pure projectable power, there’s never been anything like it … //

… Despite this stunning global power equation, for more than a decade we have been given a lesson in what a military, no matter how overwhelming, can and (mostly) can’t do in the twenty-first century, in what a military, no matter how staggeringly advanced, does and (mostly) does not translate into on the current version of planet Earth.   Continue Reading…

Published on World Socialist Web Site WSWS, by Barry Grey, Oct 23, 2013.

A series of reports released over the past several days document the killing of thousands of people, including hundreds of non-combatant civilians, in US drone strikes in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and other countries. The reports, issued by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, 105 pages, on Tuesday and the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions last Friday, expose as lies the claims of President Obama and administration officials that the drone strikes are “surgical” attacks that kill few civilians.  Continue Reading…

Published on truthdig, by Chris Hedges, Oct 20, 2013.

“The rich are different from us,” F. Scott Fitzgerald is said to have remarked to Ernest Hemingway, to which Hemingway allegedly replied, “Yes, they have more money.”

The exchange, although it never actually took place, sums up a wisdom Fitzgerald had that eluded Hemingway. The rich are different. The cocoon of wealth and privilege permits the rich to turn those around them into compliant workers, hangers-on, servants, flatterers and sycophants. Wealth breeds, as Fitzgerald illustrated in “The Great Gatsby” and his short story “The Rich Boy,” a class of people for whom human beings are disposable commodities.   Continue Reading…

Published on VOX.org, by Knut Are Aastveit, Gisle James Natvik, Sergio Sola, October 19, 2013.

Many analysts blame uncertainty for at least part of advance nations’ poor economic performance since the crisis. This column discusses new research showing that the economic impact of monetary policy is dampened when uncertainty is high. This means that high uncertainty forces monetary policymakers into a trade-off between acting decisively and acting correctly as policy must be more aggressive than otherwise in order to stabilise economic activity. The finding is particularly stark when uncertainty measures from financial markets are utilised.   Continue Reading…

• on Outside The Box/on YouTube-search, an UK Column hosted by Jason Liosatos, uploaded by ukcolumn: Patrick Henningsen as guest – Episode 1: 38.36 min, September 19, 2013; Episode 2: 51.16 min, Sept 20, 2013;
• on Red Ice Radio: Patrick Henningsen, Hour 1 Syria …, 59.35 min, uploaded by jack jill, Sept 11, 2013: (Homepage);
• on On The Edge: Patrick Henningsen, 47.49 min, uploaded by OfficialEdgeMediaTV, May 10, 2013: (Series 3, Episode 32 – Homepage);
• on News For The Waking Generation: Patrick Henningsen of Info Wars & Russia Today, 81.36 min, uploaded by Videos From The Underground,Nov 5, 2012 (Homepage).

Published on Civil Eats, by Bob St Peter and Raj Patel, October 18, 2013.

Imagine a country where ideologues bent on land reform turn agriculture into the plaything of the world’s richest investors, and poor local farmers are locked out of millions of acres prime agricultural land. Then stop imagining some African country run by a despot and his friends and start picturing the United States. Rural America is on the cusp of one of the greatest transfers of land in its history and no one’s talking about it.   Continue Reading…

Published on Dissident Voice (first on AlterNet), by Anna Simonton, October 18, 2013.

From the narrow windows of New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center, 24-year-old anarchist Jerry Koch can see the last place he stood as a free person.  Continue Reading…

Published on Spiegel Online International, an essay by Erich Follath, October 16, 2013.

China, India and Brazil are taking the global economy by storm, becoming more politically confident on their way. But even as they form a front against the West, they will have to tackle slower growth and major domestic problems that their newly prosperous citizens are no longer willing to tolerate … //

… Getting in on Western Commerce:   Continue Reading…

Published on Russia Today, Oct 16, 2013.

Toiling in terrible conditions, no salaries for months, passports confiscated by employers – that’s the horrendous reality for migrant workers helping with preparations for the World Cup 2022 in Qatar, as revealed by German filmmaker, Peter Giesel.

He and his cameraman were detained and imprisoned after they tried to investigate the story. The two went to Qatar following the publication of a report in the Guardian, claiming that workers are enduring appalling labor abuses.   Continue Reading…

Published on Xinhuanet News, by Liu Chang, Oct 13, 2013.

As U.S. politicians of both political parties are still shuffling back and forth between the White House and the Capitol Hill without striking a viable deal to bring normality to the body politic they brag about, it is perhaps a good time for the befuddled world to start considering building a de-Americanized world.   Continue Reading…

as Washington stalls … join it and celebrate it – Published on ZNet (first on AlterNet), by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, October 14, 2013.

… In fact, change takes time and is not linear; it is not an ever-rising crescendo but in fact comes in stages. Lakey describes this as a “Living Revolution” and sees five stages: Continue Reading…

Published on Global Research.ca (first on Zero Hedge), by Tyler Durden, Oct 14, 2013.

We assume it is a coincidence that on the day in which we demonstrate China’s relentless appetite for gold, driven by what we and many others believe is the country’s desire to have a call option on a gold-backed reserve currency when the time comes, just posted in China’s official press agency, Xinhua, is an op-ed by writer Liu Chang in which he decries the “US fiscal failure which warrants a de-Americanized world” Continue Reading…

Watch the video, 25.00 min, published on AlJazeera, Oct 12, 2013.

(Europeans are very keen on data protection, maybe because of their history. The trust in what is done with your personal data is not very high, and that might be the reason why data protection as a must, as an obligation, is inscribed in our fundamental laws, in our treaties, in our charter of fundamental rights. So for Europeans it is a basic value and a fundamental right).

Millions of emails and phone calls have been registered, in secret, by US intelligence agencies. It seems the US government is now keeping an eye on all of us – regardless of our citizenship.  Continue Reading…

Google Inc. is now aligned with the notorious ALEC – Published on ZNet, by Norman Solomon, October 10, 2013.

… In the process, Google has signed onto an organization that promotes such regressive measures as tax cuts for tobacco companies, school privatization to help for-profit education firms, repeal of state taxes for the wealthy and opposition to renewable energy disliked by oil companies.   Continue Reading…

Published on Global Research.ca, by Prof. John McMurtry, October 04, 2013.

“There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul”, Nelson Mandela says, “than the way in which it treats its children”. Who would disagree? Yet today children may be assaulted, diseased, or killed by pervasive corporate drugs, junk-foods and beverages, perverted by mindless violence in multiple modes, deployed as dead-end labour with no benefits, and then dumped into a corporate future of debt enslavement and meaningless work. How could this increasing systematic abuse be publicly licensed at every level? What kind of society could turn a blind eye to its dominant institutions laying waste the lives of the young and humanity’s future itself?

The abuse is built into the system. All rights of child care-givers themselves – from parent workers to social life support systems – are written out of corporate ‘trade’ treaties which override legislatures to guarantee “investor profits” as their sole ruling goal.  Children are at the bottom, and most dispossessed by the life-blind global system. Continue Reading…

• Foreigners reportedly train Syrian rebels in Afghanistan to use chem weapons – Lavrov, on Russia Today, Oct 11, 2913;
• No compromise: Obama refuses to raise debt ceiling for 6 weeks, on Russia Today, Oct 11, 2913;
• March against Monsanto: Global movement plans 2nd protest, on Russia Today, Oct 11, 2913;
• Brazilian lawmakers press Greenwald for greater detail on Snowden’s NSA leaks, on Russia Today RT, Oct 10, 2013;
• UK intimidation forces Guardian, New York Times into press freedom partnership, on Russia Today RT, August 23, 2013;
• Snowden ‘not the source’ of Middle East surveillance leak – Guardian, on Russia Today RT, August 23, 2013;  Continue Reading…

… and inflate security myth for frightened population – Interview with Noam Chomsky, 19.05 min, published on Russia Today RT, Oct 10, 2013.

The United States is not the first superpower to act as if it’s exceptional and will likely not be the last, although US leaders could be squandering a fruitful opportunity for improved international relations, Noam Chomsky said in an interview with RT … //

… (transcript excerpt): ‘Exceptional in its right to use force and violence‘    Continue Reading…

• Video Interview with Noam Chomsky, 29.47 min, published on ZVideo (first on Singularity Webblog), Oct 8, 2013 (also on YouTube as: Noam Chomsky, The Singularity is Science Fiction, uploaded by Nikola Danaylov, Oct 4, 2013);
• Ray Kurzweil on Singularity 1 on 1, 63.38 min, uploaded by Nikola Danaylov, Oct 12, 2012.

Video-Links in French / Liens pour videos en français:

Connexion Age, un website interessant: Continue Reading…

Published to Russia Today RT, Oct 7, 2013.

The top Republican in the House of Representatives warned President Barack Obama over the weekend that he’s ready to let the United States default — and that the White House is to blame.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday that Republicans in his chamber would not immediately honor the White House’s request to raise the US debt ceiling, setting the stage for what would be the first ever federal default in the history of the country.   Continue Reading…

Published on Intrepid Report, by Nick Egnatz and Jamie Walton, October 7, 2013.

… The confusion the banking class has spread over the nature of money is largely responsible for the inability of our leaders to get it right.

There are basically three types of money:

• “Money as a commodity” Gold and silver coins and paper money backed by 100% gold and silver reserves in the vault.
• “Debt money created by banks”—This is the system we have now and is the cause of the problems we have now. Bills and coins make up only about 2 1/2% of our total money supply. The rest of our money supply is conjured up out of thin air by private banks when they make loans, with a private tax (interest) added on top.   Continue Reading…

… is at highest for 300m years: Overfishing and pollution are part of the problem, scientists say, warning that mass extinction of species may be inevitable – Published on The Guardian, by Fiona Harvey, Oct 3, 2013.

The oceans are more acidic now than they have been for at least 300m years, due to carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels, and a mass extinction of key species may already be almost inevitable as a result, leading marine scientists warned on Thursday.

An international audit of the health of the oceans has found that overfishing and pollution are also contributing to the crisis, in a deadly combination of destructive forces that are imperilling marine life, on which billions of people depend for their nutrition and livelihood.  Continue Reading…

Published on Real-World Economics Review RWER, issue no 65, by Bryant Chen and Judea Pearl, September 27, 2013.

Abstract:

This report surveys six influential econometric textbooks in terms of their mathematical treatment of causal concepts. It highlights conceptual and notational differences among the authors and points to areas where they deviate significantly from modern standards of causal analysis.  We find that econonometric textbooks vary from complete denial to partial acceptance of the causal content of econometric equations and, uniformly, fail to provide coherent mathematical notation that istinguishes causal from statistical concepts. This survey also provides a panoramic view of the state of causal thinking in econometric education which, to the best of our knowledge, has not been surveyed before … // Continue Reading…

Publié dans Presse Citron, par AXEL-CERELOZ, 18 juillet 2013:

Quels sont les sujets autour desquels les contributeurs de Wikipédia se livrent une guerre de l’édition ? Une équipe de l’université d’Oxford a décidé de se pencher sur la question, elle nous livre un top dix de ces sujets controversés … //

… les voilà:  Continue Reading…

Published on Russia Today RT, Oct 4, 2013.

Improved surveillance, takedown of opposition websites for “illegal content” and paid pro-government commentators are among the increasingly sophisticated tools used by authorities to restrict internet freedom, a new report claims … //

… Many countries are also moving from technological to legal solutions in their battle against freedom of expression.   Continue Reading…