Why I Am a Socialist
By Chris Hedges
The corporate forces that are looting the Treasury and have plunged us into a depression will not be contained by the two main political parties. The Democratic and Republican parties have become little more than squalid clubs of privilege and wealth, whores to money and corporate interests, hostage to […]

Just back from a visit with rural family (no internet)… so apologies for any inconveniences. Thanks to De for modding.
Hat tip to De for this post, btw, and gratitude. De made me a gift of The Rivers North of the Future - The Testament of Ivan Illich, which I am preparing to mark […]

WIKILEAKS PRESS RELEASE
Fri Dec 12 22:07:22 GMT 2008
For Immediate Release.
“Human Terrain Team”
The end may be nigh for the US military’s controversial and sometimes
fatal attempt to embed hundreds of anthropologists and social
scientists into military units under the “Human Terrain Program”
or HTS. Yesterday saw two major releases from Wikileaks and the
journal Nature relating to the effort.
Wikileaks […]

Most people who end up in prison come from a variety of life-long difficulties that include growing up in environments of poverty, low levels of formal education, childhood abuse, limited options and a lack of role models for earning a living honestly. The prison system rarely fills in the missing blanks in prisoners’ lives to […]

As crowds of shoppers and ice skaters passed, a squad of camouflaged Iraq vets “detained” “suspects,” at two tables at an outdoor cafe in Union Square, in downtown San Francisco. The squad pulled almost a dozen “suspects” from their chairs, put them on the ground, cuffed, then herded the “suspects” to their knees on the […]

Since a coupla reg’lars asked, here it is. A thread on that key intangible.
Jose expressed interest in my own conversion(s) in light of this question — what speaks to us about right and wrong, in thought and action? Catlady was at the Oregon ferals gathering (and Kim sent me some pictures, but I […]

Antonia Juhasz has more than earned our attention over the last few years as an oil industry watchdog… including being on point to raise the alarm about the Iraqi “hydrocarbon law.” This reply (written by her) to a Washington Post hit-piece against her book is as good a recommendation as I can give for […]

I’m linking two articles here, one emphasizing the secular trends themselves, and one that links those trends to the kinds of activism that each issue demands. The reason this falls into the category of boundaries of executive power is fairly obvious, but I’ll reiterate what they have in common in this regard. (1) […]

“Our Trash for Your Cash”
By Michael Hudson
The financial press has been negligent in reporting how last week’s two top financial stories are linked: first, the testimony by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and his evasive Interim Assistant Secretary Neel Kashkari defending why they followed a completely different giveaway plan to the banks (their own Wall Street […]

…As with the auto industry in Detroit, some of the credit-card industry’s current problems have been years in the making. Over the past decade, U.S. households have been loading up on debt, with credit-card balances rising 75% since 1999. Yet families’ real wages have increased only slightly — by just 4% during that same time […]