Al-Jazeera (May 4) - from Nikolas Kosmatopoulos's provocative Op-Ed just prior to this Sunday's elections, May 5:

Urban myth has it that a slogan by the Spanish protesters in Puerta del Sol fuelled the spark for the Greek Tahrir - Syntagma Square - in spring 2011: "Be silent or you will wake up Greece".
 

The "Greek crisis" has had at least two side effects so far: it demonstrated that official politics has no vision whatsoever, and that mainstream journalism has no shame...

While workers and pensioners throughout the country are deprived of basic means for survival, both parties ask them to be patient and make sure they do not die until May 6.

In the face of all this, it appears essential to ask whether, instead of drafting an electoral program, it would be more useful to craft everyday programs of population mobilisation against elite-driven violence and misery.

Read the entire piece (photo: BBC).

Google Japanese version here !

Reposted from 2008....plus ca change..... -nymole

The True Cost of War

Aida Edemariam | Feb. 29, 2008

The Guardian - Fitful spring sunshine is warming the neo-gothic limestone of the Houses of Parliament, and the knots of tourists wandering round them, but in a basement cafe on Millbank it is dark, and quiet, and Joseph Stiglitz is looking as though he hasn't had quite enough sleep.

For two days non-stop he has been talking - at the LSE, at Chatham House, to television crews - and then he is flying to Washington to testify before Congress on the subject of his new book.

Whatever their reservations - and there will be a few - representatives will have to listen, because not many authors with the authority of Stiglitz, a Nobel prize-winner in economics, an academic tempered by four years on Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers and another three as chief economist at the World Bank (during which time he developed an influential critique of globalisation), will have written a book that so urgently redefines the terms in which to view an ongoing conflict.

The Three Trillion Dollar War reveals the extent to which its effects have been, and will be, felt by everyone, from Wall Street to the British high street, from Iraqi civilians to African small traders, for years to come.

Just as they thought it was safe to go into the water.....

(FT) -Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs may face civil charges for allegedly misleading investors in the sale of mortgage-backed securities, marking the next phase of cases tied to the financial crisis.

The two banks said in their annual reports that they had received “Wells” notices from the Securities and Exchange Commission, alerting them that the staff planned to recommend civil charges. more at the link

see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!

Thanks for the food, now go away.

The full "Cats of the World" set can be seen here.

_{(courtesy NASA)}

"To be, or not to be, that is the question"

_{(older newsthread on Irene here)}

What living US citizen would you trust to be President of the US today?

ABC - In a speech to a Peace Corps audience in the 1960s, Shriver described his take on life and death.

"The politics of death is bureaucracy, routine, rules, status quo," he said. "The politics of life is personal initiative, creativity, flair, dash, a little daring. The politics of death is calculation, prudence, measured gestures.

"The politics of life is experience, spontaneity, grace, directness. The politics of death is fear of youth. The politics of life is to trust the young to their own experiences."

via Prometheus6 blog

Dropped in without a beta.

Now Day 5 of
"indexed by ip address/
indexed just for you- /
don't try to find anything you're not expected to"

BBC News Web design blues

and still clueless (see comments)

The dumbing-down is terrifying-
What would BBC America's 'Iraq invasion' have buried in the index?

Still, they're aiming for more traffic!

FAQ's on some important content changes below the fold.

For any of you who count yourselves as Lady Day lovers:
Wednesday WKCR (Columbia University's student-run radio station)'s programming is all Billie Holiday...

Live broadcast here

Larry Derfner | December 30

Jerusalem Post - There's a question we Israelis won't ask ourselves about the Palestinians, especially not about Gaza. The question is taboo. Not only won't anyone ask it out loud, but very, very few people will dare ask it in the privacy of their own mind

However, I think it's time we start asking it, privately and in public. If we don't, I think there's going to be Operation Cast Lead II, then Operation Cast Lead III, and each one is going to be worse than the last, and the consequences for Palestinians and Israelis are going to be unimaginable.

The question we have to ask ourselves is this: If anybody treated us like we're treating the people in Gaza, what would we do?

We don't want to go there, do we? And because we don't, we make it our business not to see, hear or think about how, indeed, we are treating the people in Gaza.

Interesting that it is by a Jerusalem Post columnist

This year's theme is "Bach, Around the World" .

Why not listen and chill, in whatever dose your mood prescribes, to wkcr.org(Columbia University) student radio's annual Bach festival streaming over the internet  24 hours a day from 9:55 AM December 21 - Tuesday December 31 6PM...

A schedule  of what's played when is available at the site for those whose interests or schedule are more finally honed.

Powerful, historic snowstorm pasting Washington DC metro region

_{(NYT photo)}

What's your best song title for this weekend in Washington?

Perhaps "Send in the Clowns?"

Chill out and post away!

October 24

Salon - Something very unusual happened on The Washington Post Editorial Page today.

They deigned to address a response from one of their readers, who "challenged [them] to explain what he sees as a contradiction in [their] editorial positions": namely, the Post demands that Obama's health care plan not be paid for with borrowed money, yet the very same Post Editors vocally support escalation in Afghanistan without specifying how it should be paid for.

"Why is it okay to finance wars with debt, asks our reader, but not to pay for health care that way?"

September 17

Ian Welsh -One constant theme which needs dealing with is the idea that the country is more conservative than liberal and that centrists are needed to hold off horrible conservative things from happening...

When I look at the US what I see is a banana republic. And then I see people who think that the Senate, or even the House, actually does what the American people want...Oh, Congress will sometimes do what the majority want—when that’s what it was going to do anyway. The plan to fix this is simple enough and always has been. Obama was a right wing democrat and this was clear early... Once he was chosen as the nominee I told people ... to take their time and money and spend it on electing progressive members of Congress, where that amount of money and volunteers could be decisive.

People who hold progressive and liberal policy views are a much larger proportion of the population than the right wing crazies are, they are in fact a majority of the population, though you’d never know it from listening to the gnashing of teeth of some folks.

If the right wing crazies could capture the Republican party, liberals and progressives, who already make up the largest block in the House, and who massively outnumber Blue Dogs, can certainly do the same to the Democratic party.

September 18

Media Matters - The [Acorn "brothel"] story at this point really has a lot more to do with Fox News and conservative media activism than with ACORN.

The undercover videos first appeared on BigGovernment.com, founded by Andrew Breitbart, a protégé of Matt Drudge and a conservative with a long record of highly partisan and inflammatory statements. Giles, daughter of conservative blogger Doug Giles, attended the National Journalism Center in Washington, one of the many right-wing institutions conservatives have established to flood the field with young, motivated, and rabidly partisan "reporters."

On the offense, Breitbart has lashed out at the mainstream media for supposedly burying the story... Many mainstream reporters were indeed worthy of criticism, but for the opposite reason that Breitbart cited. Their real failure was discussing the ACORN issue on Fox News' terms and ignoring the network's role in pushing the smears.

The New York Times covered up conservatives' well-documented ACORN obsession in its reporting. In their reports, all three network evening news broadcasts -- ABC's World News, NBC's Nightly News, and the CBS Evening News -- left out substantive facts about the incidents that mitigate the accusations, exonerate ACORN employees, or undermine the credibility of the filmmakers. Moreover, none reported that Fox News, in its aggressive promotion of this story, had made false accusations.  more

Boise Liberal Examiner (snips) | July 21

Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, with the assistance of political strategist Bob Shrum, has published a moving account on the subject of health care reform, which I recommend to everyone.

What I find so disturbing is the tone of so many critics of health care reform, including Republicans, the media, and many Democrats. No one ever talks about the moral imperative, the disgrace of leaving tens of millions uninsured and threatening virtually everyone else with at least the possibility of losing their coverage during critical times in their lives, like after getting sick or losing their jobs. Whenever the Congressional Budget Office issues another dreary, depressing cost projection, the media and Republicans seize on it, trumpet it with obvious relish, as if to say, "See? We were right all along. We can't reform the system. It's too expensive."

Which of course is code for the fact that the haves will have to pony up for the have-nots. The money is there, one way or another. How can we afford useless, wasteful wars, but not health care for our people? Except for a few, the attitude is one of looking for an excuse, any excuse, to perpetuate this disastrous system, and to push our obscene failure to treat all citizens fairly and compassionately away from our collective consciousness.

a columnist from the heartland gets furious at the health care killers

The Economy Is Still at the Brink

Sandy B Lewis and William D. Cohan | June 6

NYT -Mr. Obama thinks that the way to revive the economy is to restore confidence in it...

We have both spent large chunks of our lives working on Wall Street, absorbing its ethic and mores. We’re concerned that nothing has really been fixed. We’re doubly concerned that people appear to feel the worst of the storm is over — and in this, they are aided and abetted by a hugely popular and charismatic president and by the fact that the Dow has increased by 35 percent or so since Mr. Obama started to lay out his economic plans in March. But wishing for improvement and managing by the Dow’s swings are a fool’s game. more at the link

NYT - IPanic-
Image after the jump. Larger image at link.

Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett | May 23

NYT - President Obama's Iran policy has, in all likelihood, already failed. On its present course, the White House’s approach will not stop Tehran’s development of a nuclear fuel program — or, as Iran’s successful test of a medium-range, solid-fuel missile last week underscored, military capacities of other sorts. It will also not provide an alternative to continued antagonism between the United States and Iran — a posture that for 30 years has proved increasingly damaging to the interests of the United States and its allies in the Middle East.

What do Agonistas think of this NYT op-ed piece?

The Onion - Calling it an essential step toward securing the Texas border and protecting his people's way of life, Gov. Rick Perry announced Tuesday the completion of a 1,953-mile wall designed to keep out millions of unwanted Americans.

According to Perry, the 75-foot-high barricade running along the northern boundary is the culmination of more than 160 years of escalating tensions between Texas and the United States. Though a protective barrier has been under consideration for decades, the Texas Legislature voted unanimously to begin construction on the project immediately following the 2008 presidential election.

"As governor, it is my responsibility to do whatever's necessary to maintain the territorial integrity of Texas," Perry told reporters during a press conference held inside a sniper tower overlooking Oklahoma. "If you are a Texas citizen, you shouldn't have to worry about some American coming in here, using your goods and services, and taking away your job."

plus

Guantánamo Closure Delayed

"Maybe if we leave it open just one more week, we'll find out if they did it."

I know, it's not Friday yet, but the last few days have been torture difficult.

An update on the US financial crisis in Onion video here

Pauline Chen, MD | April 17 (snips)

NYT - Not long ago I finished reading the 1992 memoir "The Puzzle People" by Dr. Thomas E. Starzl, regarded by many as one of the fathers of transplantation.

Beginning with his childhood in LeMars, Iowa, Dr. Starzl describes his education and training under some of the legendary doctors and scientists of the 1940s and ’50s. He tells us of his failures and successes, up through his retirement from the operating room just before turning 65. It is an account of one of the most exciting periods in modern surgery, written in lucid and unflinching prose by a man who not only had a front row seat but also frequently dominated the stage...

I recently spoke with Dr. Starzl, who at 83 continues to be involved in transplantation research and with patients (he excused himself from one of our conversations to take a call from a patient). He shared some of his thoughts on the patient-doctor relationship, health care reform, and on being a patient and doctor. MORE

really worth reading if you've become completely cynical about doctors ~nymole