Good Housing for All and Rent Madness (tags)
Apartment rents have increased faster thant he incomes of wage earners. Real estate decays to an object of speculation. Capital seeks lucrative investments. Hectic activity and bustle replaces inactivity and idleness since the protests of renters cannot be ignored any more.
The Driving Force of Global Inequality (tags)
Behind closed doors, a powerful industry has developed worldwide since the 1980s: tax avoidance. Taxes that are avoided must be compensated by higher taxation of households with lower incomes.
Tax Havens: Threat for Public Budgets (tags)
The common good is abused. The struggle against tax havens is a struggle for the rule of law and democracy. Apple, Google, Amazon, Boeing and GE shift tens of billions to tax havens. According to a 2013 article, one building in Delaware has 285,000 mailbox firms.
How Is All That In The Interest Of US Taxpayers? (tags)
Our democracy here in America has brought many positive things. It has brought positive things for Americans and for people living abroad. It has inspired others to try and have a more equal and free system of government in their own nations. It has inspired the best and the brightest from other nations to come to our nation seeking a better life for themselves, thus contributing something to their lives and to our nation. Positive things no doubt.
World Economies on Life Support (tags)
class war
MF Global Looted Customer Accounts (tags)
grand theft
The Face of Privatization (tags)
Under the present rule of neoliberal privatization, the all-embracing principle is conquest of the world transformed into rights of private property.. After destruction of the privatization myth, we need real democratization.
The New World Order's ObamaNation (tags)
Matt Taibbi has written an important article in this month's Rolling Stone magazine. In it he explains to the reader, in layman's terms, just what happened, how it happened, and who benefited from the massive taxpayer bailouts of Wall Street's biggest firms. But, most importantly, he hits the nail on the head by saying that the Republic is officially dead (and we do hear the dirge) -- there is no more pretense that we live in a democracy under the rule of law, because now the lawless ones have "officially" taken over the apparatus of the state and given us the finger in the process. Yes, as Taibbi's says: "We are royally fucked." Congress is now a collection of rubber stampers, and the people -- Wall Street slaves.
Stars and Award Organizers Asked to Boycott Tainted Leviev Diamonds at Oscars (tags)
Adalah-NY and Jews Against the Occupation-NYC (JATO-NYC) have called on 16 Hollywood PR firms and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to ensure that no stars wear Leviev diamonds at this Sunday’s Academy Awards. In a two week campaign involving letters and dozens of phone discussions with PR firms, the groups drew attention to Leviev’s violations of human rights and international law in the occupied West Bank where his companies build Israeli settlements, and in the diamond industry in Angola and Namibia. Leviev reportedly controls one third of the world’s diamond mines.
No One Can Escape the Crisis (tags)
From a long-term perspective, the crisis could bring about a radical rethinking in politics and the economy away from the mantra of shareholder value and the pursuit of short-term profits. The neoliberal model of the Washington consensus has revealed its fundamental weaknesses.
OMG, the stats are right ! check them out for yourself. (tags)
Wondering about rumors and exaggerations, we checked some stats and found these... see what they say about you, us, and 'them" too
Banks dictate conditions of US financial bailout (tags)
The 936 point rise on the US stock market yesterday was the American ruling elite’s initial verdict on the extraordinarily favorable terms the government is granting to financial firms in the $700 billion bailout passed by Congress on October 3. Far from heralding improving economic conditions for working people, the Wall Street surge reflects the financial establishment’s success in extorting massive sums of money from taxpayers.
GREEDY U.S.Banks & Real Estate Cos."Created" this Financial Apocalypse!!! (tags)
In fact the "corruption and blatant greed" of big American banks and real estate companies precipitated today's financial crisis!
Foreign countries will not finance US wars and US consumption for ever. The US must accept the new reality that countries want to diversity, not accumulate dollars. What becomes of a country that refuses systemic criticism and sets missions and agendas above facts and realities?
Bail-Out, Economic Democracy and the Socialist Path (tags)
David Schweickart, political philosopher, discusses the financial crisis, what it exposes about capitalism, how it can set the stage for economic democracy, and open the socialist path.
Israelis jailed for spyware espionage (tags)
London-based Michael Haephrati, who honed his computer skills during three years' military service in the Israeli army, developed the spyware Trojan horse, while his wife, Ruth, marketed it to several private investigation firms who bought the code and installed it onto the computers of its clients' rivals.
Bishop Huber on the Increasing Cisis of Trust in Society (tags)
Responsibility for fellow-workers is just as important as responsibility for profits. The growing mistrust toward the economic elite changes directly into mistrust toward our political system. To find ourselves and affirm human limits, we need persons who share our hopes and suffering
Military in hot pursuit of NPA insurgents (tags)
The military mounted a new operation against communist insurgents who raided a mining firm in Compostela Valley, officials said Friday. Suspected members of the New People’s Army, reports said, attacked the Apex Mining Co. late Thursday near Masara village in the town of Maco. Gunmen, numbering more than 50, disarmed the security guards and carted their weapons, said Col. Benito Antonio de Leon, spokesman for the Army’s 10th Infantry Division. He said the NPA torched several equipment owned by the mining firm before escaping under cover of darkness. “Troops are pursuing the rebels and we are awaiting reports from ground commanders and so far there have been no clashes between soldiers and rebels,” De Leon told The Manila Times.
U.S. law firms could help shape Afghanistan's future — for price (tags)
Law firms that contribute money to the U.S. effort towards an effective and transparent justice system in Afghanistan will be given a say in the carrying out of those policies. Bigger contributors will have more involvement, including the opportunity to go on official trips to Afghanistan. Donations by law firms will be tax deductible, but they can't earmark donations for specific uses.Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says the plan is "essential to the country's success" in combating corruption, drug trafficking and other major problems in the nation.
Stop SLAPPing Filipino environmental defenders (tags)
-Green progressive watchdog Kalikasan People's Network for the Environment (Kalikasan PNE) today noted the rise of lawsuits against environmment advocates, warning that this could be a dangerous precedent by large mining firms and landowning families to stifle opposition to their interests. In a press conference held at Quezon City, Kalikasan PNE National Coordinator Clemente Bautista presented three case studies of non-government environmental advocates, including individuals and organizations, facing a variety of SLAPP lawsuits from foreign firms accused of engaging in environmental and anti-people practices in communities where they operate.
Bush Orders Military To Begin Jailing All Civilian Protestors To War (tags)
In yet another shocking prelude towards becoming a Total Police State, Russian Intelligence Analysts are reporting today that the American War Leaders have issued orders to the United States Military Northern Command authorizing the jailing, and military tribunals, for any American citizen critical of the ‘war effort’.
Firms lose P43 million in damage from NPA attacks (tags)
PROPERTY destroyed by the New People’s Army (NPA) amounted to P43 million in the first quarter of the year. According to a study conducted by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), NPA rebels inflicted the damage on business firms that refused to pay the underground movement the so-called revolutionary tax.
FILIPINO TECH-VOC GRADS END UP WITH LOW PAY (tags)
Technical vocational courses supply the pool of skilled reserve labor that services multinational firms which transferred the labor-intensive part of their production processes to low-wage countries like the Philippines according to the militant labor center Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU).
Who hired ex-CIA agents to snoop around the city attorney?
The Social State is Affordable (tags)
That "we" can no longer afford the social state is gossip. Thinking this gossip will end is wishful thinking. In truth, we cannot afford the prevailing financial policy.
Who is smearing Ralph Nader? Corporate law firms and lobbyists tied to big business! (tags)
The progressives and peace activists who are helping to stop Ralph Nader and Peter Miguel Camejo don't realize it but they are being used by people who represent the corporate interests, especially the military-industrial complex, of the two major parties.
Fascist Mercenaries Come to Iraq (tags)
Previously, I posted an article about fascist mass murderers and torturers from Latin America's "dirty wars" being employed by Blackwater. Now, it seems members of South Africa's secret police, who murdered black activists during apartheid, are also mercenaries in Iraq.
. In the New York Times (October 14, 2002), Leslie Wayne described how a very old war praxis is revived in the pentagon with the war against terror: the hiring of mercenaries. Today they are called “private military contractors”. Some of these mercenary firms are sub-contractors of corporations from the Fortune 500 list (the 500 largest in assets). “The Pentagon cannot wage war without them… Private military contractors are the new business face of war.” These agencies have their people in Bosnia, Nigeria, Macedonia, Colombia and elsewhere. MPRI, one of the leading military firms, boasts of “more generals per square foot than the Pentagon”. In peace times, they can carry out secret missions with the exclusion of the public. Without any chain of command, they are not accountable to the US Congress, only to their clients, the Pentagon or the State Department.
Ending The Good Times - Exporting America’s High-Wage Jobs (tags)
The growing ability of U.S. employers to substitute cheaper foreign labor for U.S. labor is putting pressure on U.S. wages and salaries. On April 26 the New York Times reported that the real earnings of those in the top ten percent fell 1.4% over the last year. The real weekly pay for the median worker fell 1.5 percent.
Carving Up the Homeland Security Pie (tags)
Only to the most naive did the Department of Homeland Security sound promising. To seasoned observers of government, the idea of a new $40 billion DC bureaucracy means only one thing: billions for those who somehow manage to get their hands on the cash.
Oil had nothing to do with Washington's motives for the invasion, we were told. "The only interest the United States has in the region is furthering the cause of peace and stability, not in [Iraq's] ability to generate oil," said press secretary Ari Fleischer in late 2002. But at a January briefing an unnamed "senior Defense official" revealed that Gen. Tommy Franks and his staff "have crafted strategies that will allow us to secure and protect those fields as rapidly as possible in order to preserve those prior to destruction...
SUNDAY HERALD DISCOVERS 'SMOKING GUN' DOCUMENT ABOUT AMERICA'S ATTACK ON IRAQ (tags)
The Sunday Herald, which broke the story about the Project for a New American Century document advocating a global American Empire, now uncovers a document which is another SMOKING GUN revealing the real reasons for the proposed US attack on Iraq. This reason--in case anybody still believes the lies about 'Weapons of Mass Destruction,' Terrorism, or 'Saddam as a new Hitler'--can be spelled O-I-L.
How Anti-Smoking HELPS the Cig Industry (tags)
The best way for corporate criminals AND Globalization forces to Limit Protest and to Control the Debate is...to Pretend to Be Their Own Enemy. Working well, so far.