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POPSThe Peace Dividend: Myth and Reality Despite America's fiscal recklessness in the 1980s, the sudden end of the cold war has provided the nation at least a modest opportunity to improve its economic health without raising taxes or cutting already anemic social spending. The nation has wasted such opportunities in the past, notably after Viet Nam. It could all too easily squander its savings again. Washington should provide leadership on this issue, not pliancy to every special-interest group. The worst outcome would be for the U.S. to beat its swords into more credit cards.
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POPSPolling Oxymoron It is not a polling oxymoron, it is hard wired within the American psyche. In essence, we are saying that we want peace but that we are not willing to lay down our arms,nukes,mercenaries and drones to accomplish it. We trust(and believe) Obomba when he says that it is too soon to withdraw. The fact that he is still in the White House after all he has failed to do so far, shows where we stand(kneel) on war(and domestic) issues. Namely, we worship John Wayne as opposed to MLK. BO preaches on the airwaves that this war is a "just war" and if we are not among those who swallow it hook, line and sinker, we are among those who either throw up their hands in resignation, those who haven't been informed, or those who thrive as status quo bootlickers.
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POPSWhere will the drones go in 2010? Perhaps more important, they can, to steal a Star Trek line, boldly go where no man has gone before. Since the first drone assassination attack of the Global War on Terror -- in Yemen in 2002 -- in which several men, reputedly al-Qaeda militants, were incinerated inside a car, drones have been taking war into new territory. They have already struck in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and possibly Somalia. As the first robot terminators of our age, they symbolize the loosing of American war-making powers from the oversight of Congress and the American people. In principle, they have made borders (hence national sovereignty) increasingly insignificant as assassination attacks can be launched 24/7 against those we deem our enemies, on the basis of unknown intelligence or evidence.
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POPSTop 25 Censored Stories for 2009 # # 16 Annual Survey on Trade Union Rights # # 17 UN’s Empty Declaration of Indigenous Rights # # 18 Cruelty and Death in Juvenile Detention Centers # # 19 Indigenous Herders and Small Farmers Fight Livestock Extinction # # 20 Marijuana Arrests Set New Record # # 21 NATO Considers “First Strike” Nuclear Option # # 22 CARE Rejects US Food Aid # # 23 FDA Complicit in Pushing Pharmaceutical Drugs # # 24 Japan Questions 9/11 and the Global War on Terror # # 25 Bush’s Real Problem with Eliot Spitzer
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POPSAre Americans a Broken People? Does knowing the truth of their abuse set people free when they are deep in these abuse syndromes? Has such a demoralization happened in the U.S.?Do some totalitarians actually want us to hear how we have been screwed because they know that humiliating passivity in the face of obvious oppression will demoralize us even further? What forces have created a demoralized, passive, dis-couraged U.S. population? Schools and Universities: Mental Health Institutions: Television: Commericalism of Damn Near Everything: Can anything be done to turn this around?
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POPSInstant Karma: New US Target Gets Its Own Terror Icon Well, now they have their answer, by God! Alleged attempted terrorists allegedly trained in Yemen! What else do you need -- a freaking warrant or something? We would obviously be justified in nuking that desert hell-hole and everybody in it! Just think of it -- some guy with some kind of something on an airplane, right there in the Heartland! You gonna stand for that? Exterminate the brutes!
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POPSBalance of Terror: From Detroit City to Ghazi Khan Perhaps most significantly, the non-igniting of the homemade device has "rejuvenated debate ... over the proper balance between security and privacy," the New York Times informs us -- while quoting several "experts" who let us know just which way this "balance" is now going to tilt. These "experts" include Bush retreads like ex-Homeland Security commissar Michael Chertoff, who now dabbles profitably in the "risk management and security consulting" industry -- yet another of our great and good for whom every act of terror (real or imagined, successful or unsuccessful) means boffo box office
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POPSNineteen Eighty-Four As literary science fiction, 1984 is a classic novel of the social science fiction sub-genre, thus, since its publication in 1949, the terms and concepts of Big Brother, doublethink, thoughtcrime, Newspeak, et cetera, became contemporary vernacular, including the adjective Orwellian, denoting George Orwell's writings and totalitarianism as exposited in Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm (1945).
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POPSUS Town Utilizes Local Currency Let’s say you spend a dollar with Chatham Wireless. That’s a local Internet service provider. They will use part of that dollar to pay their folks. They live here. Part of it may go to their bookkeeper. Part might go to an advertisement in our local media. They might use their money to get a massage, lunch at Angelina’s Kitchen, or dinner at the General Store Cafe. Part of that dollar might go to buy groceries at Chatham Marketplace which will then buy produce from the local farmer, who will then go buy some Internet access from Chatham Wireless. The longer that dollar stays in our community, the more enriched we become.
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POPSNESTLE BOYCOTT By Cee Miracles Wanting to do right by their babies, mothers used the formula. When they ran out, they had to buy the formula and most of them were too poor to do so. By that time also their breast milk had dried up. So they skipped feedings and/or added more water. Often the water was contaminated. Babies died; their growth was stunted; their brains damaged, they succumbed to simple diseases, etcetera. NESTLE also gave their formula to nursing mothers in other poor countries, e.g., in Africa and South and Central America. This formula lacked nutritional ingredients that were in the regular formula, with the same or similar results as above.
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POPSObama-Geithner Plan to Restart the Bubble Economy The new twist is a variant on the IMF “stabilization” plans that lend money to central banks to support their currencies – for long enough to enable local oligarchs and foreign investors to move their savings and investments offshore at a good exchange rate. The currency then is permitted to collapse, enabling currency speculators to rake in enough gains to empty out the central bank’s reserves. Speculators view these central bank holdings as a target to be raided – the larger the better. The IMF will lend a central bank, say, $10 billion to “support the currency.” Domestic holders will flee the currency at a high exchange rate. Then, when the loan proceeds are depleted, the currency plunges. Wages are squeezed in the usual IMF austerity program, and the economy is forced to earn enough foreign exchange to pay back the IMF.
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POPSLeonard Peltier: Parole Denied and despite his advanced age and deteriorating health, the Parole Commission today informed Mr. Peltier that his “release on parole would depreciate the seriousness of your offenses and would promote disrespect for the law” and set a reconsideration hearing in July 2024.
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POPS14-Defining Characteristics of Fascism 3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc. 4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.
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POPSThe Oligarchy and Their Minions
Chauvinistic nationalism is a real problem here in the US and will not go away any time soon. The media preaches it day and night as does the administration.The recruiters preach it to the young ones who can't find jobs. There is just too much of the population willing to cut your head off rather than listen to socialist ideas, too many willing to solve problems with the butt of a gun or the heel of a boot. Too many Ramboes! So, don't dismiss civil war because, yes, it can happen here. Every freedom we lose, no matter how small, brings us one day closer to a face-off between the haves and the have-nots, between those who have property and those who don't.Every wall we build like those in Vietnam,Mexico and now Gaza shows us how to build them here on our own soil. The country was established to protect the propertied. The Bill of Rights was voted down unanimously(Massachusetts abstained). It finally was squeaked into the first ten amendments by the power of the people. So,the people wer
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POPSShell To The Rescue!!! Iraq now desperately needs "help" from other countries to plunder their "dilapidated"(extensively shelled) oil fields.
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POPSThe US Bill of Rights was an Afterthought So the Bill of Rights was not a gift from that illustrious gaggle of rich merchants, land and currency speculators, and slaveholders known as our “Founding Fathers.” It was a product of class struggle. The same was true of the universal franchise. It took mass agitation from the 1820s to the 1840s by workers and poor farmers to abolish property qualifications and win universal White male suffrage. Almost a century of agitation and struggle was necessary to win the franchise for women. And a bloody civil war and subsequent generations of struggle were needed to win basic political rights for African Americans, a struggle still far from complete.
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