BOMB AT BOSTON MARATHON KILLS 3 PEOPLE, INCLUDING 1 CHILD AND THERE IS AN OUTPOURING OF U.S. SYMPATHY FOR THE VICTIMS. A secret C.I.A. counter-terrorist raid in Afghanistan kills 17 people, including 12 children. Sympathy out-pouring?—not so much, at least in the U.S. Not so, however, in Afghanistan itself, where the PM Hamid Karzai [...]
WHY DOES BARACK OBAMA HATE FDR? Despite facing slurs of “socialist” and “leftist” from his conservative opponents, President Obama is beginning to irritate fellow Democrats by seemingly turning against the party’s roots. In the same budget that guts Social Security, the centerpiece of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, the president has proposed privatizing the Tennessee Valley [...]
“MONSANTO PROTECTION ACT” BRINGS IMMUNITY TO REGULATION OF FOOD TO YOUR DINNER TABLE. It was done quietly last week, an obscure provision slipped into a congressional spending bill, the passage and presidential signing of which averted a government shutdown. The so-named provision allows Monsanto and other corporate food processors exemption from federal regulation by [...]
Net neutrality and other efforts to promote internet fairness and prevent a corporate stranglehold on Americans’ access to the web and other telecommunication technology may be at risk thanks to a prospective new head of the agency that oversees the nation’s telecom industry. President Obama’s first chairman of the Federal Communications Commission announced last week [...]
Tough gun control is dead in Congress as the assault weapons ban dies on the political vine despite strong public support. Senate Democrats have pulled the plug on the most sweeping reforms proposed following the Newtown tragedy, a little more than three months after one of the worst mass shootings in American history had seemingly [...]
CUBA IN A TIME OF CHOLERA. The Raul Castro government tends to deny the scope of the outbreak of the disease and resist some of the public health measures required to deal with it. This denial seems to be based on a desire not to hurt Cuba’s “reputation” as a desirable tourist destination, but [...]
A decade-long sea change in the world’s largest retailer has transformed Wal-Mart from solely a purveyor of cheap Chinese goods into a behemoth whose business model and profits now rely on groceries, much of it sourced within our own borders. But while the shift towards what the company insists is “locally sourced” foods may sound [...]
“A LACK OF EMPATHY, CONSCIENCE, THE INCAPACITY TO FEEL GUILT, AS WELL AS A CALLOUS DISREGARD FOR SAFETY OF OTHERS.” This is part of the DSM-IV manual of illnesses in describing a psychopathic personality. It is, as well, a good working definition of the “personality” of international corporations which, once they were (in 1896) [...]
The world’s largest purveyor of sugary drinks has made an unprecedented public embrace of its own culpability in America’s struggle with obesity and the costs associated with an overweight population. A new video released by Coca-Cola to considerable buzz bluntly labels obesity the “issue of this generation” and makes a vague admission that calories from [...]
‘STUDENTS-FIRST’ HAS AN AGENDA; AND IS A HARSH GRADER OF U.S. STATES ON THEIR COMPLIANCE WITH THAT AGENDA. Michelle Rhee, former Chancellor of Washington D.C. schools, heads the advocacy group that pushes an “education reform” movement based on downgrading of teacher tenure and promotion of teacher evaluation based on student performance on standardized tests. [...]
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