SPOTLIGHT
Fears Of A Second Crash Are Real, But Congress Lacks Appetite For Action by Danny Schechter
What will it take? What are they waiting for? What part of the reality of a systemic crisis that will get worse don't they get?
How is it possible that after near three years of economic turmoil, with possibly hundreds of TRILLIONs down the rabbit hole--not that anyone is counting or apparently can count--that the geniuses who run our economy still don't "get" that the sh*t has already hit the fan? How many more jobs and homes have to be lost?
Michael Moore is not the only one predicting a second crash. Paul Krugman is all out of words excoriating the Administration for its tepidness. Nouriel Roubini, who forecast the first meltdown, now says we are in serious danger of a "double-dip," a lethal combo of rising inflation and deeper recession.
Woe to us if we can't see the handwriting on so many walls.
The people in-the-know know that nothing has been fixed, that all the stimuli have barely stimulated, that the new jobs bill will never generate the number of jobs that are needed, and that the banks have obscenely been raking in oodles of money thanks to all the financing taxpayers pumped into their coffers.
LATEST
Toxic Shock: Delayed Reaction to the Oscars by Eileen Jones
I woke up for the second morning in a row with a vague feeling that something terrible had happened. Then I remembered I watched the Oscars.
Tupac Shakur: An Icon in Context by Quentin B. Huff
When Tupac Shakur was murdered in 1996, I was devastated. Not because I viewed Tupac as a “role model”, as is often assumed of young people. Certainly, the horror of murder is reason enough to be upset, but it was also because I felt the loss of Tupac’s potential. Such is the case with anyone who leaves this earth “too soon”, but the loss is especially acute when it involves someone with so much talent.
NEWS
Billionaires and Mega-Corporations Behind Immense Land Grab in Africa by John Vidal
We turned off the main road to Awassa, talked our way past security guards and drove a mile across empty land before we found what will soon be Ethiopia's largest greenhouse. Nestling below an escarpment of the Rift Valley, the development is far from finished, but the plastic and steel structure already stretches over 50 acres* -- the size of 20 soccer fields.
The farm manager shows us millions of tomatoes, peppers and other vegetables being grown in 1,500 foot rows in computer controlled conditions. Spanish engineers are building the steel structure, Dutch technology minimises water use from two bore-holes and 1,000 women pick and pack 50 tons of food a day. Within 24 hours, it has been driven 200 miles to Addis Ababa and flown 1,000 miles to the shops and restaurants of Dubai, Jeddah and elsewhere in the Middle East.
Ethiopia is one of the hungriest countries in the world with more than 13-million people needing food aid, but paradoxically the government is offering at least 7.5 million acres of its most fertile land to rich countries and some of the world's most wealthy individuals to export food for their own populations.
Am I a Rebel? Chris Hedges wouldn’t think so by Dave Belden
Chris Hedges put up another vehement piece on Truthdig on Monday: “Calling All Rebels.” Representative quotes:
There are no constraints left to halt America’s slide into a totalitarian capitalism… The old game of blaming the weak and the marginal, a staple of despotic regimes, will empower the dark undercurrents of sadism and violence within American society and deflect attention from the corporate vampires that have drained the blood of the country… The engines of social reform are dead…. The elites and their apologists call for calm and patience. They use the hypocritical language of spirituality, compromise, generosity and compassion to argue that the only alternative is to accept and work with the systems of power…. Those who do not rebel in our age of totalitarian capitalism and who convince themselves that there is no alternative to collaboration are complicit in their own enslavement. They commit spiritual and moral suicide.
Sarah Palin’s Canadian Health Care Link Has Critics Sick by Vancouver Sun
A weekend admission by former Alaskan governor and U.S. vice-presidential hopeful Sarah Palin over her family’s use of the Canadian health care system while growing up in Alaska has critics of the outspoken hockey mom crying foul online.
“My first five years of life we spent in Skagway, Alaska, right there by Whitehorse,” Palin said during a speech in Calgary on Saturday. “Believe it or not — this was in the ‘60s — we used to hustle on over the border for health care that we would receive in Whitehorse. I remember my brother, he burned his ankle in some little kid accident thing and my parents had to put him on a train and rush him over to Whitehorse and I think, isn’t that kind of ironic now. Zooming over the border, getting health care from Canada."
It was little surprise that Sarah Palin’s first visit to Canada would be in Calgary. And there was little shock that she was able to curry favour with the local Albertan crowd by speaking at length and with much authority about the Alaska government’s process of securing TransCanada for the Alaska Pipeline Project.
Daddy's Girl by Lee Siegel
Whatever happened to the psychological exploration of political leaders? I don’t mean the gossip about embarrassing behavior that passes for sophisticated psychological analysis nowadays, but the kind of probing studies of prominent psyches that writers like Norman Mailer and Garry Wills used to produce; think of Wills’ masterpiece, Nixon Agonistes. If ever a political mentality cried out for analysis, it’s the toxic gray matter lying between the ears of Liz Cheney, one of the de facto leaders of the American right wing.
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