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TEDxWarwick - Noam Chomsky - The Global Shift in Power in Politics

Noam Chomsky is a highly influential American linguist, philosopher and political activist. He is professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is considered by many to be the father of modern linguistics. He has also become known as an influential political activist and critic of US foreign policy as well as that of other countries. In addition to this, he is a key figure in contemporary philosophy as well as being a prolific writer.

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Is current unemployment cyclical or systemic?

by James Surowiecki

The recession has been over for more than a year now, but so many people are out of work that it doesn’t feel like much of a recovery. In November, the economy added just thirty-nine thousand jobs. The failure to translate G.D.P. growth into job growth has given us an unemployment rate that remains near ten per cent (twice what it was in 2007), and has swelled the ranks of the long-term unemployed.

Why have new jobs been so hard to come by? One view blames cyclical economic factors: at times when everyone is cautious about spending, companies are slow to expand capacity and take on more workers. But another, more skeptical account has emerged, which argues that a big part of the problem is a mismatch between the jobs that are available and the skills that people have. According to this view, many of the jobs that existed before the recession (in home building, for example) are gone for good, and the people who held those jobs don’t have the skills needed to work in other fields. A big chunk of current unemployment, the argument goes, is therefore structural, not cyclical: resurgent demand won’t make it go away.

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What the Swiss Did Right

by Stefan Theil

During the financial panic of 2008, the Swiss had more reason than most to be frightened. The country’s banks, dominated by Credit Suisse and UBS, held assets worth an incredible 680 percent of Switzerland’s GDP (compared with U.S. commercial banks’ assets of 70 percent of GDP). No one knew how many of the Swiss holdings were toxic. What everyone knew was that these banks were far too big for tiny Switzerland to bail out in any full-blown banking crisis. Capital flight would crush the Swiss franc and the country’s economy right along with it. There were scary parallels to Iceland, another small nation with an independent currency and outsize global banks. After a severe blowout, Iceland is now in a deep recession and on life support from the IMF.

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Did the Germans invent Christmas?

by Rebecca K. Morrison

Roast goose and red cabbage, bratwurst, gingerbread, candles, hand-crafted wooden figures from the Erzgebirge, blown-glass baubles for the Christmas tree, The Nutcracker and “Silent Night”: these are some of the ingredients that create Gemütlichkeit (a kind of jovial cosiness), Geborgenheit (snug security) and Innigkeit (an inner warmth, awareness of soul) – three words treacherous to translate yet integral to a mood that sees millions flock to the Christmas markets of Berlin, Nuremberg, Dresden and Cologne. German Christmas receives uncharacteristically good press, capturing a lost world of innocence, some argue, a holiday celebrated thus since time immemorial.

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End the Fed as we know it

Jane D'Arista is a research associate with the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts, Amherst where she also co-founded an Economists’ Committee for Financial Reform called SAFER, i.e. stable, accountable, efficient & fair reform

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Interview with the man who "shoed" Bush

Muntadhar al-Zaidi (Arabic: منتظر الزيدي‎ Muntaẓar az-Zaydī) was an Iraqi broadcast journalist who served as a correspondent for Iraqi-owned, Egyptian-based Al-Baghdadia TV. Al-Zaidi's reports often focused on the plight of widows, orphans, and children in the Iraq War. On November 16, 2007, al-Zaidi was kidnapped by unknown assailants in Baghdad. He was also previously twice arrested by the United States armed forces. On December 14, 2008, al-Zaidi shouted "this is for the widows and orphans" and threw his shoes at then-US president George W. Bush during a Baghdad press conference

Why the Rich Are Getting Richer

By Robert C. Lieberman

The U.S. economy appears to be coming apart at the seams. Unemployment remains at nearly ten percent, the highest level in almost 30 years; foreclosures have forced millions of Americans out of their homes; and real incomes have fallen faster and further than at any time since the Great Depression. Many of those laid off fear that the jobs they have lost -- the secure, often unionized, industrial jobs that provided wealth, security, and opportunity -- will never return. They are probably right.
And yet a curious thing has happened in the midst of all this misery. The wealthiest Americans, among them presumably the very titans of global finance whose misadventures brought about the financial meltdown, got richer. And not just a little bit richer; a lot richer.
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Empire - Hollywood: Chronicler of War

Al Jazeera: Is it a case of art imitating life, or a sinister force using art to influence life and death?

Empire - Hollywood: The Pentagon calls the shots

Al Jazeera: Hollywood and the war machine: A look at the Pentagon's influence on the film industry

US: The decline of the death penalty

Executions have fallen by half since 1999. The number of new death sentences is about one-third what it was at the 1996 peak. Even in Texas, long the leading practitioner, death sentences are off by 80 percent. Several states that retain capital punishment have not administered a single lethal injection in the past five years.

The exoneration of 138 death row inmates has weakened public support for the ultimate sanction. In a recent Gallup poll, 64 percent of Americans endorsed it, down from 80 percent in 1994, while opposition has nearly doubled.

A survey commissioned by the Death Penalty Information Center found that 61 percent prefer that murderers get some sort of life sentence instead. As a budget priority, the death penalty was ranked seventh out of seven issues.

Read the editorial at the Chicago Tribune
Also read John Duty: human guinea pig in Oklahoma's cruel experiment

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Wikirebels - The Documentary

MORE ON WIKILEAKS HERE

Wikileaks: a Big Dangerous US Government Con Job?

by fotosera

It is almost too perfectly scripted to be true. A discontented 22-year old US Army soldier on duty in Baghdad, Bradley Manning, a low-grade US Army intelligence analyst, described as a loner, a gay in the military, a disgruntled “computer geek,” sifts through classified information at Forward Operating Base Hammer. He decides to secretly download US State Department email communications from the entire world over a period of eight months for hours a day, onto his blank CDs while pretending to be listening to Lady Gaga. In addition to diplomatic cables, Manning is believed to have provided WikiLeaks with helicopter gun camera video of an errant US attack in Baghdad on unarmed journalists, and with war logs from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Read the conspiracy at voltairenet.org

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11 Long-Term Trends That Are Absolutely Destroying The U.S. Economy

The U.S. economy is being slowly but surely destroyed and many Americans have no idea that it is happening. That is at least partially due to the fact that most financial news is entirely focused on the short-term. Whenever a key economic statistic goes up the financial markets surge and analysts rejoice.

Whenever a key economic statistic goes down the financial markets decline and analysts speak of the potential for a "double-dip" recession. You could literally get whiplash as you watch the financial ping pong ball bounce back and forth between good news and bad news. But focusing on short-term statistics is not the correct way to analyze the U.S. economy. It is the long-term trends that reveal the truth. The reality is that there are certain underlying foundational problems that are destroying the U.S. economy a little bit more every single day.

11 of those foundational problems are discussed below. They are undeniable and they are constantly getting worse. If they are not corrected (and there is no indication that they will be) they will destroy not only our economy but also our entire way of life. The sad truth is that it would be hard to understate just how desperate the situation is for the U.S. economy.

Long-Term Trend #1: The Deindustrialization Of America
Long-Term Trend #2: The Exploding U.S. Trade Deficit
Long-Term Trend #3: The Shrinking Middle Class
Long-Term Trend #4: The Growing Size Of The U.S. Government
Long-Term Trend #5: The Constantly Growing U.S. National Debt
Long-Term Trend #6: The Ongoing Devaluation Of The U.S. Dollar
Long-Term Trend #7: The Derivatives Bubble
Long-Term Trend #8: The Health Care Industry
Long-Term Trend #9: Financial Power Is Becoming Concentrated In Fewer And Fewer Hands
Long-Term Trend #10: Rampant Corruption On Wall Street
Long-Term Trend #11: The Growing Retirement Crisis That Threatens To Bankrupt America

Read Michael Snyder's in-depth analysis at businessinsider.com
photo by karpidis


Ping web site

Can the FCC rule the Internet?

The sound and fury over the Federal Communications Commission's attempt to exert regulatory power over the Internet largely ignores one important reality.

The legal footing for the authority the FCC has tried to claim with its Tuesday vote is so shaky as to make these rules a tenuous proposition at best.

It would be prudent for Congress to study the issue in hearings and come up with proposed changes in law that would give the FCC the legal wherewithal to take a light approach to regulating the Internet.

Of course, the political reality of Republicans taking control of the House might not make that idea very feasible, but that doesn't change the fact that Congress is the appropriate venue for the matter.

Read more:Editorial: Can FCC rule the Internet? - The Denver Posthttp://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_16922886#ixzz193cvXGKK

Gulf CEO: Oil May Near $150 a Barrel by Summer

Crude oil’s price could soar to nearly $150 a barrel by summer, Joe Petrowski, chief executive of Gulf Oil and the Cumberland Gulf Group, told CNBC Thursday.

"If we’re not producing it domestically, because we’re trying to achieve administratively what we don’t seem to want to pass legislatively, and our imports are going down and demand’s up, it sets the stages," he told CNBC.

“I think we'll be at $100 in the first quarter," he added, "and there’s one-in-four chance we’ll take out the $147 highs before Memorial Day.”

Oil shot to a more than two-year high for a second day in a row Thursday, and some analysts said a run at $100 a barrel is inevitable, as one key OPEC member expressed little alarm over the rally.

With ultra-cold weather stoking demand and helping drain U.S. stockpiles at the fastest pace in 12 years, traders are now looking for the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to signal when it might begin pumping more crude, Reuters reported.


Read more: Gulf CEO: Oil May Near $150 a Barrel by Summer
Also read: Oil price rise unlikely to slow developing growth

Was Jesus Born on December 25Th?

Was Jesus born on December 25th? No. The Roman Catholic Church adopted this date to take away from the worship of the pagan myth Saturn on this date (among other false gods that were supposedly born or celebrated on this date). It wasn't until A.D. 440 that they officially proclaimed December 25th as the birth date of Christ. 

But could Christ have been conceived on that date? Yes. The evidence to His birth date remains with the shepherds, who were keeping watch of their flocks. "And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night." (Luke 2:8) Shepherds, watching over their flocks in fields just east of Bethlehem, were the first people told of the birth of Jesus. In December Palestine is very cold. Shepherds were not in the fields during the winter time. They are in the fields early in March until early October. This would place Jesus' birth in the spring or early fall. It is agreed upon by most scholars that Jesus lived for 33.5 years and died at the feast of the Passover, which is at Easter time. He must therefore have been born six months the other side of Easter - making the date around the September/October time frames.

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Alex Abella: The RAND Corporation and the New World Order

Bitter Memories of War on the Way to Jail

by Chris Hedges

We reached the fence. The real prisoners, the ones who blindly serve systems of power and force, are the mandarins inside the White House, the Congress and the Pentagon. The masters of war are slaves to the idols of empire, power and greed, to the idols of careers, to the dead language of interests, national security, politics and propaganda. They kill and do not know what killing is. In the rise to power, they became smaller. Power consumes them. Once power is obtained they become its pawn. Like Shakespeare’s Richard III, politicians such as Barack Obama fall prey to the forces they thought they had harnessed. The capacity to love, to cherish and protect life, may not always triumph, but it saves us. It keeps us human. It offers the only chance to escape from the contagion of war. Perhaps it is the only antidote. There are times when remaining human is the only victory possible.

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Iran and Honduras in the Propaganda System: How the Left Climbed Aboard the Establishment's Bandwagon

by Edward Herman

What makes the Iran - Honduras comparison so telling are two sets of facts. The first, regarding Iran, is that Iran has been, and remains, under threat of a major military assault by the United States and Israel; that Iran has not advanced beyond its borders in the last century and beyond, and poses no threat of an offensive attack on the two countries that threaten it; and that while Iran's clerical regime is without question repressive, Iran is nowhere near as oppressed and  closed a society as are the U.S. allies in nearby Saudi Arabia and Egypt.  Furthermore, Iran held a presidential election in June 2009 that was seriously contested, even though the results were disputed and the belief that the presidency was stolen from the true victor triggered massive protests on a scale unseen since the overthrow of the Shah in 1979.  

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