Is This Land Made for You and Me – or for the Super-Rich?

truth-out Thursday 12 January 2012

by: Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, Moyers & Co. | Op-Ed

The traveling medicine show known as the race for the Republican presidential nomination has moved on from Iowa and New Hampshire, and all eyes are now on South Carolina. Well, not exactly all. At the moment, our eyes are fixed on some big news from the great state of Oklahoma, home of the legendary American folk singer Woody Guthrie, whose 100th birthday will be celebrated later this year.

Woody saw the ravages of the Dust Bowl and the Depression firsthand; his own family came unraveled in the worst hard times. And he wrote tough yet lyrical stories about the men and women who struggled to survive, enduring the indignity of living life at the bone, with nothing to eat and no place to sleep. He traveled from town to town, hitchhiking and stealing rides in railroad boxcars, singing his songs for spare change or a ham sandwich. What professional success he had during his own lifetime, singing in concerts and on the radio, was often undone by politics and the restless urge to keep moving on. “So long, it’s been good to know you,” he sang, and off he would go.

What he wrote and sang about caused the oil potentates and preachers who ran Oklahoma to consider him radical and disreputable. For many years he was the state’s prodigal son, but times change, and that’s the big news. Woody Guthrie has been rediscovered, even though Oklahoma’s more conservative than ever – one of the reddest of our red states with a governor who’s a favorite of the Tea Party.

Read article at truth-out Thursday 12 January 2012

Christmas Is No Time to Talk About War and Peace

truthout Sunday 25 December 2011

by: ,

When I heard the president speak to returning troops last week, my mind flashed back to an article I once wrote for our local newspaper. Each week, a different member of the local clergy would write a column, and I had been asked to write the piece for Christmas.

That year, all I could hear was the drumbeat leading toward a war with Iraq. I racked my brain trying to think of a way to put faces on the people we were about to bomb. Looking at a nativity scene, I thought, “The people we are about to kill look like that.” Maybe a reframed Christmas story could help Americans stop hating Saddam long enough to care about the people who will pay the real cost of this invasion. I submitted the following article, covering the Christmas story the way the US press was covering the buildup to the Iraq war. Looking back, I should have known what was about to happen.

Christmas Cancelled as a Security Measure

Ellis Island – The three wise men were arrested today attempting to enter the country. The Iraqi nationals were carrying massive amounts of flammable substances known as “frankincense” and “myrrh.” While not explosives themselves, experts revealed that these two substances could be used as a fuse to detonate a larger bomb. The three alleged terrorists were also carrying gold, presumably to finance the rest of their mission.

Also implicated in the plot were two Palestinians named Joseph and Mary. An anonymous source close to the family overheard Mary bragging that her son would “bring down the mighty from their thrones and lift up the lowly.” In what appears to be a call to anarchy, the couple claims their son will someday “help prisoners escape captivity.”

“These people match our terrorist profile perfectly,” an official source reported.

All of the suspects claimed they heard angels singing of a new era of hope for the afflicted and poor. As one Wall Street official put it, “These one-world wackos are talking about overturning the entire economic and political hierarchy that holds the civilized world together. I don’t care what some angel sang; God wants the status quo – by definition.”

Read more at truthout

Well, it’s anther Christmas in Hooland and “The Grinch” just can’t stand it. With copious amounts of unpremeditated gall, he re-affirms his alliance with AIPAC, and CUFI “Christians United for Israel, Reverand John Hagee’s religious empire that has heavy ties with the occupation of Jerusalem. The old Grinch has decided to go sledding again, and we better be ready for him…G%

OpEdNews December 22, 2011

By Bob Johnson

Newt Gingrich, as a Washington insider, knows who to please in order to promote his political career. Top on the sycophant’s list of who to please, as it is of virtually all of the politicians regardless of political party, is the powerful Israel lobby.

The very first act Newt would make as United States President is not to address homelessness, unemployment, bank corruption, etc. No, it would instead be to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to the international, but Israeli occupied, city of Jerusalem. This would help Newt win more Jewish support for his political career even though it is very likely to cause much more unrest and even new violence. It is also in direct violation of international law, in particular United Nations Resolution 478. (It’s interesting to see the priorities of politicians in America. The last on their list of importance is the well-being of their voting cattle — the American people! U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, from Florida, after winning his election went straight to Israel! For anyone with more than two braincells working it’s very painfully obvious that the Jewish state of Israel takes great precedence over America and the American people in the minds and hearts of the U.S. politicians of both parties.)

Read article at OpEdNews

The Great Dictator is a comedy film by Charlie Chaplin released in October 1940. Like most Chaplin films, he wrote, produced, and directed, in addition to starring as the lead. Having been the only Hollywood film maker to continue to make silent films well into the period of sound films, this was Chaplin’s first true talking picture as well as his most commercially successful film.[1] More importantly, it was the first major feature film of its period to bitterly satirize Nazism and Adolf Hitler.

At the time of its first release, the United States was still formally at peace with Nazi Germany. Chaplin’s film advanced a stirring, controversial condemnation of Hitler, fascism, antisemitism, and the Nazis, whom he excoriates in the film as “machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts”.

Wikipedia

via:  Think Progress
HERE

Bloomberg: Secret Fed Loans Gave Banks $13 Billion

By Bob Ivry, Bradley Keoun and Phil Kuntz – Nov 27, 2011 4:01 PM PT
Bloomberg Markets Magazine

Nov. 28 (Bloomberg) — The Federal Reserve and the big banks fought for more than two years to keep details of the largest bailout in U.S. history a secret. No one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market rates, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue. Betty Liu reports on Bloomberg Television’s “In the Loop.” (Source: Bloomberg)
Enlarge image Kenneth D. Lewis Former CEO of Bank of America Corp.

On Nov. 26, 2008, then-Bank of America Corp. Chief Executive Officer Kenneth D. Lewis wrote to shareholders that he headed “one of the strongest and most stable major banks in the world.” He didn’t say that his firm owed the central bank $86 billion that day. Photo: Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg

The Federal Reserve and the big banks fought for more than two years to keep details of the largest bailout in U.S. history a secret. Now, the rest of the world can see what it was missing.

The Fed didn’t tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day. Bankers didn’t mention that they took tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy. And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market rates, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue.

More:

VIDEO: Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations hearing of May 5, 2009.

by G: Nov. 21, 2011

Here’s the latest news on terrorism in NY. It’s sharing the headlines with the recent demonstrations in Egypt, where, according to the NY Times   at least 23 people had been killed and more than 1,500 people had been wounded.

It concerns a Muslim sympathizer  that the NYPD has had under surveillance for 2 1/2 years. They followed him and an informant to the dollar store and a Home Depot, where Pimentel bought a clock, christmas tree lights and some pipe elbows. Pimentel has a website, uses Blogger and Youtube and allegedly was building a bomb using material from matches as the explosive.  According to NYPD, he was assembling it at the informants house, where he was drilling holes in pipe. He was arrested at that point and given a public defender. The bomb was never assembled, but a mock-up of the bomb was shown, while the testimony of the informant told of his intentions. Looks like they really have the goods on this guy and it will, undoubtedly be an open and closed case. Homeland Security, once more, defeats terrorism and justice is done.

This is a feel good movie

Global Warfare: Targeting Iran: Preparing for World War III

Global Research, November 3, 2011

by Michel Chossudovsky

The military deployment of US-NATO forces is occurring in several regions of the World simultaneously.

Militarization at the global level is instrumented through the US military’s Unified Command structure: the entire planet is divided up into geographic Combatant Commands under the control of the Pentagon. According to (former) NATO Commander General Wesley Clark, the Pentagon’s military road-map consists of a sequence of war theaters: “[The] five-year campaign plan [includes]… a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan.”

This from…. Newsmax

By Edward Koch

This week I sent a note to President Obama. I sent a similar note to the major Republican candidates for president. The following is the statement.

Dear Mr. President:

I am attaching a statement issued by former Mayor of New York City Rudy Giuliani and myself.

It provides the reasons why we believe you should put Iran on notice that an attack by it upon Saudi Arabia or Israel would be considered an attack upon the U.S. to which the U.S. would immediately respond.

We have asked the Republican candidates for president to support you on such a decision. I personally believe that your doing this is in the best interests of our country and would deter Iran from initiating a war against either or both Saudi Arabia and Israel.

All the best.
Ed Koch

Statement by Former Mayors
Edward I. Koch and Rudolph Giuliani
October 28, 2011