Advertisement

Equal and opposite lunacy

As crashing economies and austerity measures slap ever more ferociously at the lives of the vulnerable and disenfranchised, the Western world, with all its hidden poverty and institutional racism, may continue to convulse.

The riots that broke out in London over the weekend and spread throughout Great Britain, triggered by the controversial police killing of a 29-year-old man, have sent shockwaves in all directions. Who knew things were so unstable, that Britain’s struggling neighborhoods were just one incident away from such destructive lunacy?

“On Twitter late last night, following the main bulk of the riots, I was astonished at the incomprehension generally expressed as to why they had occurred. There seemed to be an extraordinary lack of awareness that working class youth in Britain are being punished for the financial excesses of the banking collapse,” freelance British journalist Pennie Quinton wrote on Al-Jazeera.

Thailand's female Prime Minister faces hostile U.S.-trained military

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Parliament elected Yingluck Shinawatra as Thailand's first female prime minister on Friday (August 5), but she faces a hostile U.S.-trained military which toppled her brother from power in a 2006 putsch and crushed last year's anti-coup Red Shirt insurrection, resulting in 91 people killed and 1,400 injured.

Mrs. Yingluck (pronounced: "Ying-luck"), 44, was described as a sibling "clone" by her self-exiled authoritarian brother, former billionaire prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who now influences her from his base in Dubai.

Mrs. Yingluck is currently awarding ministerial posts to eager politicians, who especially covet the powerful defense, foreign, internal and finance ministries.

"Thaksin and other members of the family have no involvement" in her current choice of cabinet members for her new government, Mrs. Yingluck said on Thursday (August 4), trying to deflect opposition complaints that her popular brother runs her administration.

Republicans ban minor parties in Ohio: Battle on to repeal law

Ohio Secretary of State John Husted has banned all minor political parties in Ohio from the ballot. In an August 5, 2011 letter written to the Libertarian Party of Ohio, Husted made it clear that his interpretation of the draconian Ohio House Bill 194, passed by the Republican-dominated legislature, means that all minor parties have lost their official statewide party status effective September 30, 2011.

In a bizarre twist, Husted wrote that the bill "...included laws related to the requirements minor parties will have to satisfy in order to gain ballot access."

In Husted's reading of HB 194, the Libertarian, Green, Socialist and Constitution Parties that have been on the ballot since the 2008 election will have to start over to gain ballot access that they already held under a federal court ruling. In a similar situation, then-Secretary of State Ted Brown left minor parties on the ballot in 1970 and 1972 rather than revoking their ballot access due to a new election law.

Gaza, Somalia: Humanity lives on

I remember how exhilarated I felt when I was told I was old enough to fast for the month of Ramadan. My feelings had little to do with abstention from food and drink between dawn and sunset each day. For a child, there is little joy in that. The meaning and implications for me were much greater. I believed that the occasion signaled I had now become a man. I wanted to share this news with all my brothers, friends and neighbors.

Three days into the fast, lethargy set it. The end seemed near. Although I fared well in my first attempt at fasting for an entire month, I had my weak and reprehensible moments. I hid in dark corners with my favorite snacks: a cucumber, a tomato, a loaf of pita bread. To be caught would be shameful and degrading, a regression back into childhood, a terrible example to my younger siblings, and a ripe topic of ridicule from my older brothers.

The 'green' thing....

In the line at the store, the cashier told an older woman that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment.

The woman apologized to him and explained, "We didn't have the green thing back in my day." The clerk responded, " That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment."

He was right -- our generation didn't have the green thing in its day.

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled.

But we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.

But she was right; we didn't have the green thing in our day.

Tell President Obama: Stop the Keystone XL pipeline

"Essentially game over" for the climate. That's what climate scientist James Hanson calls the proposed Keystone XL pipeline — which would carry oil out of Canada's vast tar sands oil fields to Texas, where it will be refined, then burned across the globe, dealing a catastrophic blow to our chance of returning earth to a stable climate.

This project requires a presidential permit to start building — and it is President Obama's decision alone to grant or deny that permit. He will make the decision as soon as September.

Tell President Obama: Stop the Keystone XL pipeline. Click here to automatically sign the petition.

The Alberta tar sands are a carbon bomb. The 3rd largest oil field in the world, the difficult extraction and transportation of the tar sands oil ultimately produces up to three times the carbon emissions of traditional oil. (And extreme environmental devastation along the way.)1

Radio Interview with Dr. Sheila Parks

The reality of election fraud is discussed on Sara Schulz radio show We The People (Wisconsin) with Doctor Sheila Parks, Ed.D, who makes the case for secure hand-counted paper ballots elections.

Haiti

Obama on the Backs of the Poor

What are we to make of the Obama-brokered deal on debt and spending? It was certainly what the Germans call eine schwere Geburt (a difficult birth); it was one of the few times I would have favored abortion.

I am reminded of a sermon that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave during the turbulent 1950s, in which he peered into the future and issued a prescient warning:

“A nation or a civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on an installment plan.”

In promoting and then signing the so-called “deficit reduction” legislation, President Barack Obama has definitively confirmed that he stands in the ranks of those spiritual-death-dealing, “soft-minded” men about whom Dr. King warned so ominously.

In my view, even dyed-in-the-wool Obama supporters will now have to let the scales fall from their eyes. The new one-sided “compromise” so clearly promotes the interests of the wealthy over those of the poor that, in Biblical terms, it can readily be seen as a Goddamned deal.

Spain's 'Indignados' at the vanguard of a global nonviolent revolt

Last night Madrid's city centre offered a glimpse of what Western democracies have become, as thousands of unarmed nonviolent civilians with their hands up in the air shouting "these are our weapons" and "this is a dictatorship" were beaten by police commandos in full riot gear. This event was the culmination of a month of intense mobilizations across the country by the popular movement known as the 'Indignados'. People, whom despite being ignored by the government have made their voices heard, as banking cartels, European bureaucrats, rating agencies and the country's elites continue in their frantic push to sell-off Spain's remaining public wealth, and persist in the implementation of drastic cuts to the welfare state.

Pages

Subscribe to Freepress.org RSS