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POPSModern day slavery Check the source for ways to help end modern day slavery. "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Martin Luther King Jr.,
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POPSAbsinthe Goes From Banned Drug to Legal Liquor Breaux's research — finally published this spring in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry (.pdf) — and that Wired story have helped change absinthe's image from drug to drink. The US has been slowly peeling away its ban, and in March, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau approved the sale of absinthes that were "thujone free" (containing less than 10 parts per million).
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POPSDoes Bush understand who we're fighting? Comments on the State of the Union address, in which Bush lumped together all sorts of groups and events that have no connection to one another as "the enemy." Reflects this administration's dangerously superficial understanding of what's going on in the world and an overriding reluctance to think critically about what causes violence.
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POPSAs Adam Smith rolls in his grave... The WTO provides simply the latest example of how far we have drifted from the Capitalism of Adam Smith. Smith was a product of the enlightenment, and clearly envisioned capitalism as practiced by a society of enlightened humanists. The restraint that this would bring serves to vouchsafe the truly free market. When corporate collusion places profit margins ahead of the basic well-being of the people, then who could say this market is truly free? Are we not at their mercy? An economy controlled by corporate elites is no better than one controlled by the state. The Savage Capitalism of the WTO is different from communist or fascist economics in name and execution only. The resultant inequities in society are the same. Is this really the ideal to which we have committed so much blood and treasure?
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POPSHundreds arrested in Istanbul during May Day 30 years ago, on May 1st 1977, 34 people were killed at Taksim Square, Istanbul, during the May Day meeting, after some "unknown" provocators leaked in the crowd and created a panic. Today, the official state ideology and its despotic-minded defenders didn't even allow people to commemorate the victims at Taksim Square. Still a very long way to walk, towards democracy, free speech and tolerance.
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POPSHate Us For WHAT? "Spying without warrants or probable cause, free speech zones, indefinite detentions, torture, a commission to investigate unapproved belief systems, a media that functions as state propaganda, and an empire stretching from Atlantic to Pacific the long way: is this what the rebels braved the holiday season at Valley Forge for?"
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POPS10 things all economists believe "If economics is finally a science, what, exactly, does it teach? With the help of Columbia University economist Pierre-André Chiappori, I have synthesized its findings into ten propositions. Almost all top economists—those who are recognized as such by their peers and who publish in the leading scientific journals—would endorse them (the exceptions are those like Joseph Stiglitz and Jeffrey Sachs, whose public pronouncements are more political than scientific). The more the public understands and embraces these propositions, the more prosperous the world will become."
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POPSThe Lies Behind 'Free Trade' This book on disastrous trade policies makes clear that it's time to dismantle the barriers that keep so much of the world so poor. Neoliberalism is a rerun of what economists suffering from "historical amnesia" believe were the key characteristics of the international economy in the golden age of liberalism (1870-1913). The Third World was not always poor and economically stagnant. Throughout the golden age of capitalism, from the Marshall Plan (1947) to the first oil shock (1973), the United States was a Good Samaritan and helped developing countries by allowing them to protect and subsidize their nascent industries. forced to adopt neoliberal policies and to open their economies to much more powerful foreign competitors on unequal terms, their growth rate fell to less than half of that recorded in the 1960s . Apologists for neoliberalism have also revived an old 19th century and neo-Nazi explanation for developmental failure - namely, culture.
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POPSChange in food prices, 1985-2000 The prices for fruits, vegetables, and cereals has gone up, while the prices for sweets, fats, and soft drinks has gone down. I wonder what free-market advocates would make of this pattern. Taken from a factsheet published by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.
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POPS Former NSA Director: "By any measure the US has long used terrorism"
More Moreover, recently declassified documents show that in the 1960's, the American Joint Chiefs of Staff signed off on a plan to blow up AMERICAN airplanes (using an elaborate plan involving the switching of airplanes), and also to commit terrorist acts on American soil, and then to blame it on the Cubans in order to justify an invasion of Cuba. If you view no other links in this article, please read the following ABC news report; the official documents; and watch this interview with the former Washington Investigative Producer for ABC's World News Tonight with Peter Jennings (click link entitled "Joint Chiefs Guilty-Northwoods"). In addition, the FBI had penetrated the cell which carried out the 1993 world trade center bombing, but had -- at the last minute -- cancelled the plan to have its FBI infiltrator substitute fake power for real explosives, against the infiltrator's strong wishes (summary version is free; full version is pay-per-view).
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POPSThe Broad- science free trade zone “My rough estimate is that a scientific paper emerges about once every three days from collaborations that have come out of this institute,” Dr. Lander said. (Eric S. Lander, the founding director of the institute and a leader of the Human Genome Project, which sequenced the human genome.) Collaboration is possible...
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POPSWilliam Wilberforce He spent most of his life fighting for social change. He spent 20 years leading the fight to abolish slavery in the British empire.
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POPSPaperToys These are Really good. find 1 and print it if you don't believe me
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POPSThe Internet is a WMD The internet is a de facto WMD against the poor people of Africa. Though I can see his point, ALL things can be exploited (always have and always will) the internet can also bring great good, also to Africa. It enables people to become sponsors for orphaned children, to help feed and educate them via click-for-free charity sites, to send emails and faxes and petitions to governments to try and stop oppression, wars etc. The internet is not ALL that bad IMO. Here's an example. Just scroll down and give a click. There's also e.g. Virtual Volunteering. I also know someone who's getting ready to get an exchange student from overseas, found through the internet. Naaah, the internet is not ALL bad. ;)
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POPSChicken-Egg Question Cracked : I sounds Logical Don't shoot me first , just read it. I like this bit. Quote Papineau, an expert in the philosophy of science, argued that the first chicken must have emerged from an egg even though it was laid by a different species of bird, but it was still a chicken egg because it had a chicken in it. Unquote
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POPSAgriculture 2.0 In 2007, Agriculture 2.0 will appear at the following three levels. First, it will appear at the multilateral level, Doha Development Agenda in World Trade Organization. Second, it will appear at the regional level, Free Trade Agreements in East Asia. Finally, it will appear at the national level, General Elections in Japan.
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POPSBeware The Lame Duck "This president pursues a war without demanding of his generals either success or victory and accepts the sacrifice of our brave young men and women in uniform while asking nothing of our people or the nation at a time of war. Sadly, this president has diminished a great nation and may diminish it further."
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POPSFood Riots Erupt Worldwide The real culprits are the economic ideologies of free trade and interest driven growth which, masquerading as science, drive disastrous policy decisions.
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POPSNAFTA's Impact on Mexico If the current trend continues with the FTAA, at BEST, over a five year time period, 350,000 more jobs will be lost in Mexico's agricultural sector and that number could go up to 750,000. The Institute for Policy Studies says that NAFTA has taken a toll on Mexican jobs. It argues that NAFTA has destroyed Mexico's small farmers, bringing in an influx of subsidized U.S. food imports. Carnegie Endowment for International peace says that 1.3 million farm jobs have been lost since 1993. The Carnegie report also concluded that the pact has generated few new jobs in Mexico and might only be credited for a "very small net gain" in jobs in the U.S. "NAFTA has been a disaster for us," remarks pig farmer Julian Aguilera to Business Week.jobs.
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POPSDid Iraq lose you democratic Latin America too?
"Alarmed at the possibility that democracy, as reflected by recent events in Latin America, is undermining neo-liberal policies in the region, bourgeois neo-liberal policy wonks are pointing their fingers at Bush and wondering how the US capitalist class can put the preverbal Jennie back into the “U.S. hegemonic” bottle; they are not encouraged by the prospects. "In order to make Latin America and the Caribbean safe for US capitalist exploitation, US-imperialism must confront the fact that democracy in Latin American is contrary to US corporate interest in North America. "The Latin American democratic dominos are falling fast, and there is no Soviet Union bug-a-bear to scare the folks at home, so the imperialist apologists must deal with the issue head on. That is what Peter Hakim, the author of the above cited Foreign Affairs article, has tried to do. Hakim is President of the Inter-American Dialogue, a neo-liberal organization and think-tank that promotes free trade in the Lati
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