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marmar
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December 3, 2013
from truthdig:
Welcome Back, Jesus
Posted on Dec 3, 2013
By Robert Scheer
Forget, for the moment, that he is the pope, and that Holy Father Francis’ apostolic exhortation last week was addressed “to the bishops, clergy, consecrated persons and the lay faithful.” Even if, like me, you don’t fall into one of those categories and also take issue with the Catholic Church’s teachings on a number of contested social issues, it is difficult to deny the inherent wisdom and clarity of the pontiff’s critique of the modern capitalist economy. No one else has put it as powerfully and succinctly.
It is an appraisal based not on “just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the pope,” as Rush Limbaugh sneered, but rather the words of Jesus telling the tale of the Good Samaritan found in Luke, not in “Das Kapital.” As opposed to Karl Marx’s emphasis on the growing misery of a much needed but exploited working class, Francis condemns today’s economy of “exclusion” leaving the “other” as the roadkill of modern capitalism: “Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless. As a consequence, masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape.”
It is a message that applies to disrupted worldwide markets in which massive unemployment is now common, as well as to the underemployed and working poor who are the new “normal” even in still wealthy America. They make up the bulk of those ejected from a once largely unionized industrial workforce, who are now left to compete for low paying Wal-Mart style jobs that require government handouts to avoid the extremes of poverty. They are the victims of what the pope refers to as “trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world.” It doesn’t, and instead “a globalization of indifference has developed.”
That is an obvious truth, whether divinely inspired or not. So too is Francis’ excoriation of “the new idolatry of money,” although here one can find evidence in Scripture that this idolatry is not so new given the description in Matthew 21:12 when Jesus “overthrew the tables of the moneychangers” in the temple. But the pope is clearly right when he links our recent economic crisis to the modern worship of the gods of finance capitalism:
The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/welcome_back_jesus_20131203
Robert Scheer: Pope’s appraisal of modern capitalism is the obvious truth, whether divinely .......
from truthdig:
Welcome Back, Jesus
Posted on Dec 3, 2013
By Robert Scheer
Forget, for the moment, that he is the pope, and that Holy Father Francis’ apostolic exhortation last week was addressed “to the bishops, clergy, consecrated persons and the lay faithful.” Even if, like me, you don’t fall into one of those categories and also take issue with the Catholic Church’s teachings on a number of contested social issues, it is difficult to deny the inherent wisdom and clarity of the pontiff’s critique of the modern capitalist economy. No one else has put it as powerfully and succinctly.
It is an appraisal based not on “just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the pope,” as Rush Limbaugh sneered, but rather the words of Jesus telling the tale of the Good Samaritan found in Luke, not in “Das Kapital.” As opposed to Karl Marx’s emphasis on the growing misery of a much needed but exploited working class, Francis condemns today’s economy of “exclusion” leaving the “other” as the roadkill of modern capitalism: “Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless. As a consequence, masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape.”
It is a message that applies to disrupted worldwide markets in which massive unemployment is now common, as well as to the underemployed and working poor who are the new “normal” even in still wealthy America. They make up the bulk of those ejected from a once largely unionized industrial workforce, who are now left to compete for low paying Wal-Mart style jobs that require government handouts to avoid the extremes of poverty. They are the victims of what the pope refers to as “trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world.” It doesn’t, and instead “a globalization of indifference has developed.”
That is an obvious truth, whether divinely inspired or not. So too is Francis’ excoriation of “the new idolatry of money,” although here one can find evidence in Scripture that this idolatry is not so new given the description in Matthew 21:12 when Jesus “overthrew the tables of the moneychangers” in the temple. But the pope is clearly right when he links our recent economic crisis to the modern worship of the gods of finance capitalism:
“One cause of this situation is found in our relationship with money, since we calmly accept its dominion over ourselves and our societies. ... The worship of the ancient golden calf has returned in a new and ruthless guise in the idolatry of money and the dictatorship of an impersonal economy lacking a truly human purpose. The worldwide crisis affecting finance and the economy lays bare their imbalances and, above all, their lack of real concern for human beings. ...”...........................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/welcome_back_jesus_20131203
December 2, 2013
Hope in the Age of Looming Authoritarianism
Monday, 02 December 2013 11:08
By Henry A Giroux, Truthout | Opinion
In the current historical moment, the line between fate and destiny is difficult to draw. Dominant power works relentlessly through its major cultural apparatuses to hide, mischaracterize or lampoon resistance, dissent and critically engaged social movements. This is done, in part, by sanitizing public memory and erasing critical knowledge and oppositional struggles from newspapers, radio, television, film and all those cultural institutions that engage in systemic forms of education and memory work. Historical consciousness has been transformed into uplifting narratives, box-office spectacles and lifestyle stories fit for the whitewashed world of the Disney musketeers. As Theodor W. Adorno puts it, "The murdered are [now] cheated out of the single remaining thing that our powerlessness can offer them: remembrance." The relentless activity of thoughtlessness - worship of celebrity culture, a cravenly mainstream media, instrumentalism, militarism or free-roaming individualism - undermines crucial social bonds and expands the alleged virtue of believing that thinking is a burden.
Civic engagement appears increasingly weakened, if not impotent, as a malignant form of casino capitalism exercises ruthless power over the commanding institutions of society and everyday existence, breathing new life into old clichés. Under casino capitalism, fantasy trumps logic, if not rationality. A sucker is still born every minute, and the house still wins. Looming dreams of riches and fame invariably descend into disappointment, defeat or addiction. Uncertainty and precariousness breed fear and insecurity instead of much-needed social reforms and a belief in a more just future. Austerity policies function as a form of trickle-down cruelty in which the poor are punished and the rich rewarded. Totalitarianism, once visible in its manifest evil, now hides in the shadow of a market logic that insists that each individual deserves his or her fate, regardless of the larger structural forces that shape it.
A savage market fundamentalism relentlessly denigrates public values, criminalizes social problems, and produces a manufactured fatalism and culture of fear while waging a fundamental assault upon the very conditions that make politics possible. Politics is now sapped of its democratic vitality just as traces of authoritarianism have seeped deeply into the economic and cultural structures of American life. As American society incorporates authoritarian elements of the past into its dominating ideology, modes of governance and policies, justice withers, and it becomes increasingly difficult for the American people to translate matters of civic literacy, social responsibility and the public good "back into the language of society."
Americans are increasingly inspired to think uncritically, disregard critical historical narratives, and surrender to pedagogies of repression. Under the Bush-Obama administrations, American education has been cleansed of any effort to produce students who have the power to think critically and imaginatively and is now preoccupied with producing young people unaware and unwilling to fight for the right to decent employment, access to a good life, decent health care, social justice and a future that does not mimic a corrosive and morally bankrupt present. The organized culture of forgetting, with its immense disimagination machines, has ushered in a permanent revolution marked by a massive project of distributing wealth upward, the militarization of the entire social order and an ongoing depoliticization of agency and politics itself. We no longer live in a democracy, which, as Bill Moyers points out provides the formative culture and economic conditions that enable people "to fully claim their moral and political agency." This disembodied form of politics is not merely about the erasure of the language of public interests, informed argument, critical thinking and the collapse of public values, but a full-fledged attack on the institutions of civic society, the social contract and democracy itself. Under such circumstances, the United States has succumbed to forms of symbolic and institutional violence that point to a deep-seated hatred of democracy. .........................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/20307-hope-in-the-age-of-looming-authoritarianism
Hope in the Age of Looming Authoritarianism
Hope in the Age of Looming Authoritarianism
Monday, 02 December 2013 11:08
By Henry A Giroux, Truthout | Opinion
I can understand pessimism, but I don't believe in it. It's not simply a matter of faith, but of historical evidence. Not overwhelming evidence, just enough to give hope, because for hope we don't need certainty, only possibility.
-- Howard Zinn
In the current historical moment, the line between fate and destiny is difficult to draw. Dominant power works relentlessly through its major cultural apparatuses to hide, mischaracterize or lampoon resistance, dissent and critically engaged social movements. This is done, in part, by sanitizing public memory and erasing critical knowledge and oppositional struggles from newspapers, radio, television, film and all those cultural institutions that engage in systemic forms of education and memory work. Historical consciousness has been transformed into uplifting narratives, box-office spectacles and lifestyle stories fit for the whitewashed world of the Disney musketeers. As Theodor W. Adorno puts it, "The murdered are [now] cheated out of the single remaining thing that our powerlessness can offer them: remembrance." The relentless activity of thoughtlessness - worship of celebrity culture, a cravenly mainstream media, instrumentalism, militarism or free-roaming individualism - undermines crucial social bonds and expands the alleged virtue of believing that thinking is a burden.
Civic engagement appears increasingly weakened, if not impotent, as a malignant form of casino capitalism exercises ruthless power over the commanding institutions of society and everyday existence, breathing new life into old clichés. Under casino capitalism, fantasy trumps logic, if not rationality. A sucker is still born every minute, and the house still wins. Looming dreams of riches and fame invariably descend into disappointment, defeat or addiction. Uncertainty and precariousness breed fear and insecurity instead of much-needed social reforms and a belief in a more just future. Austerity policies function as a form of trickle-down cruelty in which the poor are punished and the rich rewarded. Totalitarianism, once visible in its manifest evil, now hides in the shadow of a market logic that insists that each individual deserves his or her fate, regardless of the larger structural forces that shape it.
A savage market fundamentalism relentlessly denigrates public values, criminalizes social problems, and produces a manufactured fatalism and culture of fear while waging a fundamental assault upon the very conditions that make politics possible. Politics is now sapped of its democratic vitality just as traces of authoritarianism have seeped deeply into the economic and cultural structures of American life. As American society incorporates authoritarian elements of the past into its dominating ideology, modes of governance and policies, justice withers, and it becomes increasingly difficult for the American people to translate matters of civic literacy, social responsibility and the public good "back into the language of society."
Americans are increasingly inspired to think uncritically, disregard critical historical narratives, and surrender to pedagogies of repression. Under the Bush-Obama administrations, American education has been cleansed of any effort to produce students who have the power to think critically and imaginatively and is now preoccupied with producing young people unaware and unwilling to fight for the right to decent employment, access to a good life, decent health care, social justice and a future that does not mimic a corrosive and morally bankrupt present. The organized culture of forgetting, with its immense disimagination machines, has ushered in a permanent revolution marked by a massive project of distributing wealth upward, the militarization of the entire social order and an ongoing depoliticization of agency and politics itself. We no longer live in a democracy, which, as Bill Moyers points out provides the formative culture and economic conditions that enable people "to fully claim their moral and political agency." This disembodied form of politics is not merely about the erasure of the language of public interests, informed argument, critical thinking and the collapse of public values, but a full-fledged attack on the institutions of civic society, the social contract and democracy itself. Under such circumstances, the United States has succumbed to forms of symbolic and institutional violence that point to a deep-seated hatred of democracy. .........................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/20307-hope-in-the-age-of-looming-authoritarianism
December 2, 2013
Published on Monday, December 2, 2013 by Common Dreams
Fast Food Giants Gorge on Subsidies
Thanks to a loophole that subsidizes CEO pay, McDonald's, Yum Brands, Wendy's, Burger King, Domino's, and Dunkin' Brands trimmed $64 million from their tax bills in 2011 and 2012.
by Sarah Anderson
The fast food industry is notorious for handing out lean paychecks to their burger flippers and fat ones to their CEOs. What’s less well-known is that taxpayers are actually subsidizing fast food incomes at both the bottom — and top — of the industry.
Take, for example, Yum Brands, which operates the Taco Bell, KFC, and Pizza Hut chains. Wages for the corporation’s nearly 380,000 U.S. workers are so low that many of them have to turn to taxpayer-funded anti-poverty programs just to get by. The National Employment Law Project estimates that Yum Brands’ workers draw nearly $650 million in Medicaid and other public assistance annually.
Meanwhile, at the top end of the company’s pay ladder, Yum Brands' CEO David Novak pocketed $94 million over the years 2011 and 2012 in stock options gains, bonuses and other so-called “performance pay.” That was a nice windfall for him, but a big burden for the rest of us taxpayers.
Under the current tax code, corporations can deduct unlimited amounts of such “performance pay” from their federal income taxes. In other words, the more corporations pay their CEO, the lower their tax burden. Novak’s $94 million payout, for example, lowered YUM’s IRS bill by $33 million. Guess who makes up the difference?
My new Institute for Policy Studies report calculates the cost to taxpayers of this “performance pay” loophole at all of the top six publicly held fast food chains — McDonald’s, Yum, Wendy’s, Burger King, Domino’s, and Dunkin’ Brands. .............................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/12/02-8
Fast Food CEO Welfare Queens
Published on Monday, December 2, 2013 by Common Dreams
Fast Food Giants Gorge on Subsidies
Thanks to a loophole that subsidizes CEO pay, McDonald's, Yum Brands, Wendy's, Burger King, Domino's, and Dunkin' Brands trimmed $64 million from their tax bills in 2011 and 2012.
by Sarah Anderson
The fast food industry is notorious for handing out lean paychecks to their burger flippers and fat ones to their CEOs. What’s less well-known is that taxpayers are actually subsidizing fast food incomes at both the bottom — and top — of the industry.
Take, for example, Yum Brands, which operates the Taco Bell, KFC, and Pizza Hut chains. Wages for the corporation’s nearly 380,000 U.S. workers are so low that many of them have to turn to taxpayer-funded anti-poverty programs just to get by. The National Employment Law Project estimates that Yum Brands’ workers draw nearly $650 million in Medicaid and other public assistance annually.
Meanwhile, at the top end of the company’s pay ladder, Yum Brands' CEO David Novak pocketed $94 million over the years 2011 and 2012 in stock options gains, bonuses and other so-called “performance pay.” That was a nice windfall for him, but a big burden for the rest of us taxpayers.
Under the current tax code, corporations can deduct unlimited amounts of such “performance pay” from their federal income taxes. In other words, the more corporations pay their CEO, the lower their tax burden. Novak’s $94 million payout, for example, lowered YUM’s IRS bill by $33 million. Guess who makes up the difference?
My new Institute for Policy Studies report calculates the cost to taxpayers of this “performance pay” loophole at all of the top six publicly held fast food chains — McDonald’s, Yum, Wendy’s, Burger King, Domino’s, and Dunkin’ Brands. .............................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/12/02-8
December 2, 2013
Hope in the Age of Looming Authoritarianism
Monday, 02 December 2013 11:08
By Henry A Giroux, Truthout | Opinion
In the current historical moment, the line between fate and destiny is difficult to draw. Dominant power works relentlessly through its major cultural apparatuses to hide, mischaracterize or lampoon resistance, dissent and critically engaged social movements. This is done, in part, by sanitizing public memory and erasing critical knowledge and oppositional struggles from newspapers, radio, television, film and all those cultural institutions that engage in systemic forms of education and memory work. Historical consciousness has been transformed into uplifting narratives, box-office spectacles and lifestyle stories fit for the whitewashed world of the Disney musketeers. As Theodor W. Adorno puts it, "The murdered are [now] cheated out of the single remaining thing that our powerlessness can offer them: remembrance." The relentless activity of thoughtlessness - worship of celebrity culture, a cravenly mainstream media, instrumentalism, militarism or free-roaming individualism - undermines crucial social bonds and expands the alleged virtue of believing that thinking is a burden.
Civic engagement appears increasingly weakened, if not impotent, as a malignant form of casino capitalism exercises ruthless power over the commanding institutions of society and everyday existence, breathing new life into old clichés. Under casino capitalism, fantasy trumps logic, if not rationality. A sucker is still born every minute, and the house still wins. Looming dreams of riches and fame invariably descend into disappointment, defeat or addiction. Uncertainty and precariousness breed fear and insecurity instead of much-needed social reforms and a belief in a more just future. Austerity policies function as a form of trickle-down cruelty in which the poor are punished and the rich rewarded. Totalitarianism, once visible in its manifest evil, now hides in the shadow of a market logic that insists that each individual deserves his or her fate, regardless of the larger structural forces that shape it.
A savage market fundamentalism relentlessly denigrates public values, criminalizes social problems, and produces a manufactured fatalism and culture of fear while waging a fundamental assault upon the very conditions that make politics possible. Politics is now sapped of its democratic vitality just as traces of authoritarianism have seeped deeply into the economic and cultural structures of American life. As American society incorporates authoritarian elements of the past into its dominating ideology, modes of governance and policies, justice withers, and it becomes increasingly difficult for the American people to translate matters of civic literacy, social responsibility and the public good "back into the language of society."
Americans are increasingly inspired to think uncritically, disregard critical historical narratives, and surrender to pedagogies of repression. Under the Bush-Obama administrations, American education has been cleansed of any effort to produce students who have the power to think critically and imaginatively and is now preoccupied with producing young people unaware and unwilling to fight for the right to decent employment, access to a good life, decent health care, social justice and a future that does not mimic a corrosive and morally bankrupt present. The organized culture of forgetting, with its immense disimagination machines, has ushered in a permanent revolution marked by a massive project of distributing wealth upward, the militarization of the entire social order and an ongoing depoliticization of agency and politics itself. We no longer live in a democracy, which, as Bill Moyers points out provides the formative culture and economic conditions that enable people "to fully claim their moral and political agency." This disembodied form of politics is not merely about the erasure of the language of public interests, informed argument, critical thinking and the collapse of public values, but a full-fledged attack on the institutions of civic society, the social contract and democracy itself. Under such circumstances, the United States has succumbed to forms of symbolic and institutional violence that point to a deep-seated hatred of democracy. .........................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/20307-hope-in-the-age-of-looming-authoritarianism
Hope in the Age of Looming Authoritarianism
Hope in the Age of Looming Authoritarianism
Monday, 02 December 2013 11:08
By Henry A Giroux, Truthout | Opinion
I can understand pessimism, but I don't believe in it. It's not simply a matter of faith, but of historical evidence. Not overwhelming evidence, just enough to give hope, because for hope we don't need certainty, only possibility.
-- Howard Zinn
In the current historical moment, the line between fate and destiny is difficult to draw. Dominant power works relentlessly through its major cultural apparatuses to hide, mischaracterize or lampoon resistance, dissent and critically engaged social movements. This is done, in part, by sanitizing public memory and erasing critical knowledge and oppositional struggles from newspapers, radio, television, film and all those cultural institutions that engage in systemic forms of education and memory work. Historical consciousness has been transformed into uplifting narratives, box-office spectacles and lifestyle stories fit for the whitewashed world of the Disney musketeers. As Theodor W. Adorno puts it, "The murdered are [now] cheated out of the single remaining thing that our powerlessness can offer them: remembrance." The relentless activity of thoughtlessness - worship of celebrity culture, a cravenly mainstream media, instrumentalism, militarism or free-roaming individualism - undermines crucial social bonds and expands the alleged virtue of believing that thinking is a burden.
Civic engagement appears increasingly weakened, if not impotent, as a malignant form of casino capitalism exercises ruthless power over the commanding institutions of society and everyday existence, breathing new life into old clichés. Under casino capitalism, fantasy trumps logic, if not rationality. A sucker is still born every minute, and the house still wins. Looming dreams of riches and fame invariably descend into disappointment, defeat or addiction. Uncertainty and precariousness breed fear and insecurity instead of much-needed social reforms and a belief in a more just future. Austerity policies function as a form of trickle-down cruelty in which the poor are punished and the rich rewarded. Totalitarianism, once visible in its manifest evil, now hides in the shadow of a market logic that insists that each individual deserves his or her fate, regardless of the larger structural forces that shape it.
A savage market fundamentalism relentlessly denigrates public values, criminalizes social problems, and produces a manufactured fatalism and culture of fear while waging a fundamental assault upon the very conditions that make politics possible. Politics is now sapped of its democratic vitality just as traces of authoritarianism have seeped deeply into the economic and cultural structures of American life. As American society incorporates authoritarian elements of the past into its dominating ideology, modes of governance and policies, justice withers, and it becomes increasingly difficult for the American people to translate matters of civic literacy, social responsibility and the public good "back into the language of society."
Americans are increasingly inspired to think uncritically, disregard critical historical narratives, and surrender to pedagogies of repression. Under the Bush-Obama administrations, American education has been cleansed of any effort to produce students who have the power to think critically and imaginatively and is now preoccupied with producing young people unaware and unwilling to fight for the right to decent employment, access to a good life, decent health care, social justice and a future that does not mimic a corrosive and morally bankrupt present. The organized culture of forgetting, with its immense disimagination machines, has ushered in a permanent revolution marked by a massive project of distributing wealth upward, the militarization of the entire social order and an ongoing depoliticization of agency and politics itself. We no longer live in a democracy, which, as Bill Moyers points out provides the formative culture and economic conditions that enable people "to fully claim their moral and political agency." This disembodied form of politics is not merely about the erasure of the language of public interests, informed argument, critical thinking and the collapse of public values, but a full-fledged attack on the institutions of civic society, the social contract and democracy itself. Under such circumstances, the United States has succumbed to forms of symbolic and institutional violence that point to a deep-seated hatred of democracy. .........................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/20307-hope-in-the-age-of-looming-authoritarianism
December 2, 2013
These suspected drug dealers got high. Really high.
But the marijuana they allegedly hoped to deliver won't be getting anyone high.
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection found more than 260 pounds of marijuana bundled tightly together in San Diego last Monday, and arrested two men who allegedly showed up to claim the prize, NBC Bay Area reported.
Officials say an ultra-light aircraft coming from Mexico dropped the massive payload -- which was tied to a large metal cage used to hold cargo -- in a field near Brown Field Airport. The Office of Air and Marine tracked the plane as it crossed the border. .......................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/02/pot-falls-from-sky_n_4371283.html?ncid=txtlnkushpmg00000037&ir=Politics
It's Raining Weed !!!!
These suspected drug dealers got high. Really high.
But the marijuana they allegedly hoped to deliver won't be getting anyone high.
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection found more than 260 pounds of marijuana bundled tightly together in San Diego last Monday, and arrested two men who allegedly showed up to claim the prize, NBC Bay Area reported.
Officials say an ultra-light aircraft coming from Mexico dropped the massive payload -- which was tied to a large metal cage used to hold cargo -- in a field near Brown Field Airport. The Office of Air and Marine tracked the plane as it crossed the border. .......................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/02/pot-falls-from-sky_n_4371283.html?ncid=txtlnkushpmg00000037&ir=Politics
December 2, 2013
Others might argue, though, that Glassman’s emphasis on the long-run record of market economies misses the forest for the trees. In his Apostolic Exhortation, Pope Francis warned against ideologies “which defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation. .....................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://blogs.marketwatch.com/thetell/2013/12/02/j-p-morgan-economist-scolds-pope-francis-on-capitalism-and-poverty/
Wall Street freak's response to the Pope's scathing critique of capitalism:
Pope Francis’s criticism of unfettered capitalism isn’t going down well on Wall Street or in Washington’s conservative think tanks — at least not if a post on the American Enterprise Institute’s blog is anything to go by.
James Pethokoukis, a blogger at AEI, is making much of a note by J.P. Morgan economist James Glassman. Although Glassman doesn’t mention the pontiff by name, Pethokoukis is convinced Glassman had the pope in mind when he penned a note defending the record of market economies in lifting people out of poverty.
AEI quotes Glassman as saying:
Those concerned about global poverty have more to be thankful today than to complain about. The commonly-heard complaints that today’s economic systems fail to address the plight of the poor ignore several fundamental facts.
Poverty is not a modern phenomenon. Second, the developed economies are still recovering from deep recessions and in time will reach their full potential. That is, of course, why central bank policies remain so stimulative. Those hurt by the recession will be restored as the developed economies continue to recover. And third, despite the cyclical problems of the developed economies, the average global living standard is at a record high—the highest known in the records compiled by economists and still climbing, thanks to the support from the developed economies.
In other words, market-oriented economic systems are doing more to cure global povertythan any other effort in the past.
Others might argue, though, that Glassman’s emphasis on the long-run record of market economies misses the forest for the trees. In his Apostolic Exhortation, Pope Francis warned against ideologies “which defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation. .....................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://blogs.marketwatch.com/thetell/2013/12/02/j-p-morgan-economist-scolds-pope-francis-on-capitalism-and-poverty/
December 2, 2013
http://www.businessinsider.com/temperature-inversion-creates-rare-sight-at-the-grand-canyon-2013-12#ixzz2mKNrIOo1
On Friday, a rare weather phenomenon created an incredible sight at the Grand Canyon.
The canyon was filled with fog due to something known as "temperature inversion," according to the Grand Canyon National Park Facebook page, which posted photos to its website.
"We are currently experiencing an after Thanksgiving treat," a photo caption read. "No, it's not more pumpkin pie. It's a once in a lifetime, outstanding, crazy, amazing, mind blowing inversion. Enjoy."
Here's A Mind-Blowing Picture Of The Grand Canyon That Only Happens Once Every 10 Years
http://www.businessinsider.com/temperature-inversion-creates-rare-sight-at-the-grand-canyon-2013-12#ixzz2mKNrIOo1
On Friday, a rare weather phenomenon created an incredible sight at the Grand Canyon.
The canyon was filled with fog due to something known as "temperature inversion," according to the Grand Canyon National Park Facebook page, which posted photos to its website.
"We are currently experiencing an after Thanksgiving treat," a photo caption read. "No, it's not more pumpkin pie. It's a once in a lifetime, outstanding, crazy, amazing, mind blowing inversion. Enjoy."
December 2, 2013
Amazon is experimenting with drones that will deliver packages within 30 minutes. CEO Jeff Bezos made the announcement in a "60 Minutes" interview Sunday night with Charlie Rose.
Bezos expects the drones to be fully autonomous and in operation within four or five years. He said there are numerous tests and regulations to deal with in the meantime. Amazon calls the drone delivery service Prime Air. No humans are involved. The small plastic package containing your items are loaded underneath a drone, which Amazon calls an octocopter, and automatically flown to your house.
CBS teased the "60 Minutes" segment repeatedly during football games Sunday, with Bezos saying he had a "big surprise" to share with everyone.
Here's a video of the Amazon drones in action:
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-60-minutes-surprise-2013-12#ixzz2mKMhNF6Z
It's an 'i, Robot' kinda world
Amazon is experimenting with drones that will deliver packages within 30 minutes. CEO Jeff Bezos made the announcement in a "60 Minutes" interview Sunday night with Charlie Rose.
Bezos expects the drones to be fully autonomous and in operation within four or five years. He said there are numerous tests and regulations to deal with in the meantime. Amazon calls the drone delivery service Prime Air. No humans are involved. The small plastic package containing your items are loaded underneath a drone, which Amazon calls an octocopter, and automatically flown to your house.
CBS teased the "60 Minutes" segment repeatedly during football games Sunday, with Bezos saying he had a "big surprise" to share with everyone.
Here's a video of the Amazon drones in action:
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-60-minutes-surprise-2013-12#ixzz2mKMhNF6Z
December 2, 2013
(Guardian UK) Australia's surveillance agency offered to share information collected about ordinary Australian citizens with its major intelligence partners, according to a secret 2008 document leaked by the US whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The document shows the partners discussing whether or not to share "medical, legal or religious information", and increases concern that the agency could be operating outside its legal mandate, according to the human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC.
The Australian intelligence agency, then known as the Defence Signals Directorate (DSD), indicated it could share bulk material without some of the privacy restraints imposed by other countries, such as Canada.
"DSD can share bulk, unselected, unminimised metadata as long as there is no intent to target an Australian national," notes from an intelligence conference say. "Unintentional collection is not viewed as a significant issue." ...................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/02/revealed-australian-spy-agency-offered-to-share-data-about-ordinary-citizens
Australian spy agency offered to share data about ordinary citizens
(Guardian UK) Australia's surveillance agency offered to share information collected about ordinary Australian citizens with its major intelligence partners, according to a secret 2008 document leaked by the US whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The document shows the partners discussing whether or not to share "medical, legal or religious information", and increases concern that the agency could be operating outside its legal mandate, according to the human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC.
The Australian intelligence agency, then known as the Defence Signals Directorate (DSD), indicated it could share bulk material without some of the privacy restraints imposed by other countries, such as Canada.
"DSD can share bulk, unselected, unminimised metadata as long as there is no intent to target an Australian national," notes from an intelligence conference say. "Unintentional collection is not viewed as a significant issue." ...................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/02/revealed-australian-spy-agency-offered-to-share-data-about-ordinary-citizens
December 2, 2013
from truthdig:
The Saboteurs
Posted on Dec 1, 2013
By Chris Hedges
CALGARY, Canada—Oil and natural gas drilling in the province of Alberta has turned Calgary in a boomtown. Glittering skyscrapers, monuments to the obscene profits amassed by a fossil fuel industry that is exploiting the tar sands and the vast oil and natural gas fields in Alberta, have transformed Calgary into a mecca for money, dirty politics, greed and industry jobs. The city is as soulless and sterile as Houston. The death of the planet, for a few, is very good for business.
The man who waged North America’s first significant war against hydraulic fracturing was from Alberta, an eccentric, messianic Christian preacher named Wiebo Ludwig who died last year. He, with his small Christian community in the remote north of the province, sabotaged at least one wellhead by pouring cement down its shaft and blew up others. The Canadian authorities, along with the oil and gas barons, demonize Ludwig as an ecoterrorist, an odd charge given that they are the ones responsible for systematically destroying the environment and the planet. And as the ecosystem deteriorates—and the drive by corporations to extract the last remaining natural resources from the earth, even if it kills us all, becomes more and more relentless—the resistance of Wiebo Ludwig is worth remembering.
“Wiebo felt that our society was in a spiritual crisis, rather than an environmental or an economic crisis,” David York, whose film “Wiebo’s War” is a nuanced portrayal of Ludwig and his fight with the oil and gas industry, told me when I reached him in Toronto by email. “He felt that our addiction to fossil fuels, rampant consumerism and materialism, addictions, breakdown of family units were all symptoms of a society that has lost its root connection to God. Further, he felt that we are in a kind of end times state, where the forces of good are in a terrible struggle with the forces of evil. He wasn’t so crass as to put a timetable on it, but in his view ‘any fool can see the times.’ ”
That one of our era’s most effective figures of resistance against the oil and gas industry was a devout Christian is perhaps not coincidental. I do not share Ludwig’s Christian fundamentalism—his community was a rigid patriarchy—but I do share his belief that when human law comes into conflict with God’s law, human law must be defied. Ludwig grasped the moral decadence of the consumer society, its unchecked hedonism, worship of money and deadening cult of the self. He retreated in 1985 with his small band of followers into the remoteness of northern Alberta. His community, called Trickle Creek, was equipped with its own biodiesel refinery, windmills and solar panels—which permitted it to produce its own power—a greenhouse and a mill. Its members, who grew their own food, severed themselves from the contaminants of consumer culture. But like the struggle of Axel Heyst, the protagonist in Joseph Conrad’s novel “Victory,” Ludwig’s flight from evil only ensured that evil came to him. .....................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_saboteurs_20131201
Chris Hedges: The Saboteurs
from truthdig:
The Saboteurs
Posted on Dec 1, 2013
By Chris Hedges
CALGARY, Canada—Oil and natural gas drilling in the province of Alberta has turned Calgary in a boomtown. Glittering skyscrapers, monuments to the obscene profits amassed by a fossil fuel industry that is exploiting the tar sands and the vast oil and natural gas fields in Alberta, have transformed Calgary into a mecca for money, dirty politics, greed and industry jobs. The city is as soulless and sterile as Houston. The death of the planet, for a few, is very good for business.
The man who waged North America’s first significant war against hydraulic fracturing was from Alberta, an eccentric, messianic Christian preacher named Wiebo Ludwig who died last year. He, with his small Christian community in the remote north of the province, sabotaged at least one wellhead by pouring cement down its shaft and blew up others. The Canadian authorities, along with the oil and gas barons, demonize Ludwig as an ecoterrorist, an odd charge given that they are the ones responsible for systematically destroying the environment and the planet. And as the ecosystem deteriorates—and the drive by corporations to extract the last remaining natural resources from the earth, even if it kills us all, becomes more and more relentless—the resistance of Wiebo Ludwig is worth remembering.
“Wiebo felt that our society was in a spiritual crisis, rather than an environmental or an economic crisis,” David York, whose film “Wiebo’s War” is a nuanced portrayal of Ludwig and his fight with the oil and gas industry, told me when I reached him in Toronto by email. “He felt that our addiction to fossil fuels, rampant consumerism and materialism, addictions, breakdown of family units were all symptoms of a society that has lost its root connection to God. Further, he felt that we are in a kind of end times state, where the forces of good are in a terrible struggle with the forces of evil. He wasn’t so crass as to put a timetable on it, but in his view ‘any fool can see the times.’ ”
That one of our era’s most effective figures of resistance against the oil and gas industry was a devout Christian is perhaps not coincidental. I do not share Ludwig’s Christian fundamentalism—his community was a rigid patriarchy—but I do share his belief that when human law comes into conflict with God’s law, human law must be defied. Ludwig grasped the moral decadence of the consumer society, its unchecked hedonism, worship of money and deadening cult of the self. He retreated in 1985 with his small band of followers into the remoteness of northern Alberta. His community, called Trickle Creek, was equipped with its own biodiesel refinery, windmills and solar panels—which permitted it to produce its own power—a greenhouse and a mill. Its members, who grew their own food, severed themselves from the contaminants of consumer culture. But like the struggle of Axel Heyst, the protagonist in Joseph Conrad’s novel “Victory,” Ludwig’s flight from evil only ensured that evil came to him. .....................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_saboteurs_20131201
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