Archive | May, 2012

Ron Paul’s waging a cagy race that may have surprising results

3 May

Writing in Salon, Steve Kronacki reports that Repuiblic honchos are getting worried:

…the political world stopped paying attention to Paul about two months ago, and the threat of him bolting the GOP and running as an independent – a scenario long feared by Republicans – passed long ago.

And yet, the RNC’s chief counsel felt the need this week to issue a warning to the Nevada state GOP about the Paul campaign. At issue is this weekend’s Nevada Republican convention, where delegates to the national convention will be chosen. The state’s caucuses in February were a truly messy (that’s the polite word) affair, but Romney was the clear and overwhelming winner.

On Saturday, though, Paul supporters are expected to flood the state convention and could account for the lion’s share of attendees. This is what prompted the RNC’s counsel to warn the state party that its delegation might be denied seating in Tampa if it’s dominated by Paul-ites. Continue reading →

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Private Prison Corporations Are Modern Day Slave Traders | | AlterNet

3 May

But, for a better analogy, we must go back to the American slave system, a thoroughly capitalist enterprise that reduced human beings to units of labor and sale. The Corrections Corporation of America’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission read very much like the documents of a slave-trader. Investors are warned that profits would go down if the demand for prisoners declines. That is, if the world’s largest police state shrinks, so does the corporate bottom line. Dangers to profitability include “relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws.” The corporation spells it out: “any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them.” At the Corrections Corporation of America, human freedom is a dirty word.

via Private Prison Corporations Are Modern Day Slave Traders | | AlterNet.

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Liberty, lost among the weeds

2 May

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Occupy Activists Resurrect May Day for Americans | The Nation

2 May

In April, a coalition of unions, environmental groups, community organizing networks — including National People’s Action, PICO, the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, Jobs with Justice, National Domestic Workers Alliance, Rainforest Action Network, SEIU, United Food and Commercial Workers, AFL-CIO, Communication Workers of America, MoveOn, Unite Here, Common Cause, the Steelworkers union Public Campaign, Public Citizen, Health Care for America Now, the United States Students Association, and others—began a series of protest actions major banks and corporations, and trained close to 100,000 new recruits in civil disobedience tactics.

In April they showed up (and some got arrested) at Cigna, General Electric and Wells Fargo shareholder meetings. In the next month, they plan to make their voices heard at Verizon, Bank of America, Hyatt, Tesoro, Sallie Mae, Walmart and other corporate annual meetings. They will commemorate May Day with actions at several corporate headquarters and stockholder meetings as part of this ongoing “99% Spring/99% Power” campaign that will continue throughout the summer and into the election season with demands that corporations pay their fair share of taxes, big banks end the epidemic of foreclosures and reduce “underwater” mortgages to their fair market values, and that banks and Congress unleash college students from unprecedented debt from student loans. By keeping the heat on, and gaining visibility, they hope to inject these issues into the upcoming election season.

via Occupy Activists Resurrect May Day for Americans | The Nation.

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Obama and Romney Vie for Mayor Bloomberg’s Endorsement – NYTimes.com

2 May

This pretty much says it all: These days, plutocrats rule!

In an election year when partisanship has burned white hot and the economy has sputtered, two presidential candidates who agree on very little, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, have reached a rare consensus: they are both determined to score the endorsement of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, whose name is all but synonymous with Wall Street clout and nonpartisan politics.

Now, their pursuit of the billionaire mayor is headed into overdrive, with both campaigns making the kind of conspicuous ring-kissing gestures that are reserved for their most sought-after political allies, even though the candidates publicly disagree with the mayor on a range of issues.

via Obama and Romney Vie for Mayor Bloomberg’s Endorsement – NYTimes.com.

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Goodbye, Davos man, Globalism has lost its shine

2 May

Writing in Salon, Michael Lind tells of the decline of globalization:

But the voters of the industrial democracies are not listening to the elite transatlantic chattering class.  The late political scientist Samuel Huntington coined the term “Davos Man,” after the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, to symbolize the post-national, anti-populist global elite. Davos Man still exists, but he is in danger of going the way of Neanderthal Man. The Davos vision of a dawning post-national free market utopia was cracked by the al-Qaida attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and then shattered by the global financial crash of 2008. Free market globalism continues to be the  orthodoxy in elite economic and journalistic circles, but in politics it has been in retreat for years. It is increasingly clear that libertarian globalism was never the wave of the future, but merely a temporary blip in history between the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the fall of the twin towers in 2001.

Hello economic nationalism: Continue reading →

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Arrests on Lower East Side as May Day Protests Spread – NYTimes.com

1 May

And that’s not all. Action in California too:

The May Day demonstrations took place across the country and in countries across the globe.

In the Bay Area in California, marches and protests snarled traffic and caused road closures. Hundreds marched through Oakland, temporarily closing streets and bank branches and clashes with officers in riot gear, who deployed tear gas on crowds.

Service to the Golden Gate Ferry service, used by many commuters from Marin County, Calif. to San Francisco, was shut down after workers in bitter contract negotiations over health insurance coverage went on strike and picketed ferry terminals.

via Arrests on Lower East Side as May Day Protests Spread – NYTimes.com.

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Roseanne Barr: Put the “Pal” Back Into Palestinian

1 May

Truth and Traditions Top Five

1 May

1. Declaration of Independence

219 years ago our originators “brought forth upon this continent a new nation: conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Today we have less liberty. Inequality has reached obscene proportions as millions die of preventable diseases and starvation each year, and over a billion children suffer sociogenic brain damage worldwide, as the rich get ever richer.
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2. Parable of the Unforgiving Servant

David Graeber recounts the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant (Matthew 18:21-35). As an exercise you might want to read the story as one about the recent mortgage mess in the United States.

3. David Brooks, Fooled by Inequality

He’s at it again, being reasonable out of one side of his mouth while makin’ it up out of the other. I’m talking about David Brooks, Mr. Reasonable, the Mr. Blizzard of plausible risibility. His column, The Wrong Inequality, is a masterpiece of rhetorical legerdemain and misdirection.

4. Truth and Traditions Defined

The inconvenient truths of peak oil now, peak drinkable water now, peak everything on the horizon, as far as the eye can see. The many, many ugly truths of war and waste have been systematically unexamined by our corporate owned mass media who stand to profit by ignoring news unfit for them to print or speak. . . . Those thousands of animistic traditions that peoples all over the world lived by for 99.8% of human existence: feeling the “spirit” in all life forms, honoring reciprocities and gift circulation, maintaining hospitality and generosity, sharing tools and talents in daily life, replanting three trees for every tree cut down, minimizing division of labor, maximizing individuation and Self-expression.

5. Wall Street: The Dead Face of Domination

IMGP4452rd - The Face of Domination

Those buildings are in New York City’s financial district (aka Wall Street). That’s where the captains of finance manipulate our world while playing ‘King of the Hill’ against one another. Those buildings are machines. They are the Borg. We ARE living in The Matrix. We are nothing but feedstock for the adolescent games those machines play with one another.

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Ex-CIA Interrogator: Obama’s War on Terror Is Less Ethical Than Bush’s – Global – The Atlantic Wire

1 May

The former head of the CIA’s Clandestine Service Jose Rodriguez says President Obama is waging the nation’s war against radical Islam in a far more brutal manner than his predecessor President George W. Bush.

“We don’t capture anybody any more,” Rodriguez told 60 Minutes’ Lesley Stahl on Sunday. “Their default option of this Administration has been to … take no prisoners … How could it be more ethical to kill people rather than capture them? I never understood that one.”

via Ex-CIA Interrogator: Obama's War on Terror Is Less Ethical Than Bush's – Global – The Atlantic Wire.

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