POWERFUL MULTI-NATIONAL AGRIBUSINESS CORPORATIONS AND A COMPLIANT AND CORRUPT LOCAL GOVERNMENT: RECIPE FOR WORLD LAND GRABS. (Foreign Policy in Focus) Recent protests in African country of Sierra Leone highlight a world pattern: the acquisition for mono-culture cultivation of tracts of land removed from the control of local farmers. Around 20% of the country’s arable land [...]
The world’s most popular — and profitable — social networking brand is increasingly coming under fire for its questionable tax practices even as it is earning praise and adulation from Wall Street on the day it becomes a publicly traded company. The Facebook stock IPO (initial public offering) has become a media and market phenomenon, [...]
WHAT’S THAT IN THE SKY? A BIRD? A PLANE? “NOPE, JUST OUR LOCAL POLICE DEPARTMENT’S 25-POUND DRONE…” (Business Week) Unprecedented police control of the nation’s skies appears imminent after the Federal Aviation Administration and the Obama administration gave hearty approval to the request of undetermined “public safety agencies” to place unmanned drones weighing up [...]
HOW DOES A CAPITALIST COUNTRY DEAL WITH A CRISIS IN EMPLOYMENT? BY CUTTING UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS, OF COURSE. (World Socialist) A political “deal” between the Obama administration and a Republican congress is now coming home to roost as some 200k American workers are slated to be cut off from “extended” unemploymet benefits—half of them in the [...]
STUDENTS IN QUEBEC AGREE TO BE SCREWED BY THE GOVERNMENT. (World Socialist) Once again labor unions in the province betray the interest of the people whose union they supposedly represent. The government undertakes “austerity” measures to place the burden of deficit reductions on the backs of students through drastic tuition hikes. Violent student protest is finally muted [...]
` OBAMA AND HIS FRIENDS LAUNCH NEW ERA OF FRANCO-AMERICAN RELATIONS WITH A LESS-THAN CONCILIATORY TAKE ON THE NEW FRENCH SOCIALIST PRESIDENT. (Buzz Feed) ` The overwhelming defeat on Sunday of incumbent French President Nicolas Sarkozy has already sent “ripples” across the pond to America, where Sarkozy’s successor, Socialist Francois Hollande, has received a decidedly chilly reception [...]
As economic instability continues to roil world markets and threaten the marginal sliver of a recovery since the global recession of 2008, the pace of income inequality has quickened as the rich really are getting richer — a lot richer. On both sides of the Atlantic, the gap between prosperity and financial hardship is growing [...]
ETCHING THE TOMBSTONE OF EUROPEAN-STYLE AUSTERITY: “THE STRATEGY OF AUSTERITY HAS…BEEN COUNTERPRODUCTIVE…” (The Globe & Mail) ` A new report from the International Labor Organization lays out in raw statistics the destruction and “devastating consequences” of the austerity programs imposed on most of Europe and, to a somewhat lesser extent, the United States. The [...]
“WE HAD TO DESTROY THE VILLAGE IN ORDER TO SAVE IT.” (Common Dreams) This “idiotic” statement of a U.S. Army Major to explain the bombing of the Ben Tre hamlet during the Vietnam war seems to be the “thinking” as well behind the current “education reform” movement directed to destroying public education in order to [...]
EUROPE IS DYING, BRICS IS ASCENDING AND WHAT DOES DR. ZBIG ADVOCATE FOR MAINTAINING U.S. FULL SPECTRUM DOMINANCE IN THE WORLD? AN EXPANDED (AND RE-ENERGIZED) EUROPE AS THE KEY U.S. ALLY. (Tom Dispatch) Pepe Escobar assays the international geo-political situation, noting the economic crisis of “old” Europe and the rising economic strength of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, [...]
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