Move Your Money: A New Year's Resolution
since April, the Big Four banks -- JP Morgan/Chase, Citibank, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo -- all of which took billions in taxpayer money, have cut lending to businesses by $100 billion.America's Main Street community banks -- the vast majority of which avoided the banquet of greed and corruption that created the toxic economic swamp we are still fighting to get ourselves out of -- are struggling. Many of them have closed down (or been taken over by the FDIC) over the last 12 months. The government policy of protecting the Too Big and Politically Connected to Fail is badly hurting the small banks, which are having a much harder time competing in the financial marketplace. As a result, a system which was already dangerously concentrated at the top has only become more so.
We talked about the outrage of big, bailed-out banks turning around and spending millions of dollars on lobbying to gut or kill financial reform -- including "too big to fail" legislation and regulation of the derivatives that played such a huge part in the meltdown. And as we contrasted that with the efforts of local banks to show that you can both be profitable and have a positive impact on the community, an idea took hold: why don't we take our money out of these big banks and put them into community banks? Our money has been used to make the system worse -- what if we used it to make the system better?
watch Eugene's amazing video, then go to www.moveyourmoney.info
America's Main Street community banks -- the vast majority of which avoided the banquet of greed and corruption that created the toxic economic swamp we are still fighting to get ourselves out of -- are struggling. Many of them have closed down (or been taken over by the FDIC) over the last 12 months. The government policy of protecting the Too Big and Politically Connected to Fail is badly hurting the small banks, which are having a much harder time competing in the financial marketplace. As a result, a system which was already dangerously concentrated at the top has only become more so.
We talked about the outrage of big, bailed-out banks turning around and spending millions of dollars on lobbying to gut or kill financial reform -- including "too big to fail" legislation and regulation of the derivatives that played such a huge part in the meltdown. And as we contrasted that with the efforts of local banks to show that you can both be profitable and have a positive impact on the community, an idea took hold: why don't we take our money out of these big banks and put them into community banks? Our money has been used to make the system worse -- what if we used it to make the system better?
watch Eugene's amazing video, then go to www.moveyourmoney.info
Wall Street Journal | Opinion Journal
A Cold-Blooded Foreign Policy
In the time of Barack Obama, "engagement" with Iran's theocrats and thugs trumps the cause of Iranian democracy.
( No mention of American assassination/kidnapping squads at work, CIA support for a former president responsible for attacks on Americans in his term to the tune of $400 million for the Twitter Revolution, sanction escalations,bank account freezes,oilfield equipment deprivation, and b.s. about 'suspecting' danger from a nation getting its supplies from Russia with approval of the neighbours and inspections by the IAEA : all established GOP practices.
Like the guy says : he talks a good fight. All of it makes a mockery of any idea of US support for Non Nuclear Proliferation by penalizing signatories of the NPT...just like Iraq. )
“The Era of Tolerance is Over”–Iran Warns Over Opposition Protests
Iran’s police chief has warned anti-government protesters to stay off the streets and threatened, “The era of tolerance is over. Anyone attending such rallies will be crushed.” Hundreds of prominent activists have been arrested since Sunday’s mass street protests, and between eight to thirty-seven people have been killed.
( Historical perspective :
The Shah's brutal secret police force, Savak, formed under the guidance of CIA (the United States Central Intelligence Agency) in 1957 and personnel trained by Mossad (Israel's secret service), to directly control all facets of political life in Iran. Its main task was to suppress opposition to the Shah's government and keep the people's political and social knowledge as minimal as possible. Savak was notorious throughout Iran for its brutal methods.
The interrogation office was established with no limit of using horrific torture tools and techniques to break the arrested dissenters to talk in a matter of hours.)
The interrogation office was established with no limit of using horrific torture tools and techniques to break the arrested dissenters to talk in a matter of hours.)
Hypnotist to put nation in a trance using Twitter and Facebook
"Within a minute of starting the session those listening to me won't be able to see anything, as they'll be put into a deep trance by my voice.
"Social networking sites are a great way to interact with people and I'm hoping that this will open people's eyes to the power of hypnotism.
"It's all about the power of suggestion, and the affect it can have on the unconscious."
2009 in Perspective: Glenn Greenwald on the Five Wars US Is Fighting in Muslim Countries
Glenn Greenwald discusses US foreign policy, including the escalation of the war in Afghanistan, drone strikes on Pakistan, cruise missile attacks on Yemen, operations in Somalia, the ongoing operation in Iraq, and much more.
The war in Afghanistan was escalated twice in 2009 by President Obama and, with it, the death toll of Afghans and US and NATO forces. US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay remains open, and human rights groups have decried what they call an Obama administration policy of preventive detention.
We are escalating our military presence and our aggression in numerous parts of the world, Afghanistan being only one of those cases.
When you count the number of countries, of Muslim countries where we’re actively engaged in some kind of warfare—Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and now Yemen—that’s five different Muslim countries where we are either occupying, invading or bombing. And that’s to say nothing of the conflicts that our primary client state in the Middle East, Israel, has with a whole bunch of other Muslim countries and the other Muslim countries that we’re threatening, such as Iran. So we are expanding the wars and aggression in the Muslim world.
When we shoot missiles into various sites in Yemen and kill civilians, as we did eight days ago—and there’s no question that—although there’s some question about what exactly our involvement was, because it’s a covert war, there’s no question we were involved heavily and enabled the attack. When we kill civilians or shoot missiles or drop Hellfire missiles into that country, and when we prop up the dictatorial oppressive regime that runs that country, we are unquestionably doing exactly that which al-Qaeda could wish for: we are helping al-Qaeda convert the population and bringing greater and greater sympathy to the cause of Islamic radicalism.
The problem is, is that by holding ninety people from Yemen in Guantanamo, without charges of any kind, indefinitely, and many of whom are clearly innocent and have done nothing wrong, that, too, exacerbates the anti-American anger and hostility that fuels terrorism. It’s a huge propaganda tool for al-Qaeda, as well. What we actually have been doing over the last nine years—and we don’t ever learn our lesson—is we’re actually expanding the pool of terrorists.
It’s generally assumed that there is a significant disparity between how we, as Americans or Westerners, perceive of all of these events and how the Muslim world perceives of these events. And that is true. There is a very great disparity. But generally, what we assume is that the reason there’s this great disparity is because we are rational and informed and educated and advanced and, most of all, free, and therefore we know the truth about what’s going on, whereas Muslims live in oppressive and primitive and backwards countries, they are consumed not by rationality but by religious fanaticism, and therefore they have very distorted and partial and propagandized views of the world, and that’s what accounts for this disparity.
Now the reality is exactly the opposite, because all of the things that we were just discussing about the effects of our air strikes in all of these Muslim countries, the fact that we are constantly waging war in an increasing number of their nations, and the fact that we routinely slaughter innocent men, women and children who are the victims of our air strikes, the Muslim—people in the Muslim world in those countries are very well aware of what we do, because the images are reported constantly. They’re informed about what we’re doing. And yet, if you look at American media coverage, it’s virtually never the case that the victims of our actions, of our air strikes and our military assaults, are discussed. Those things are kept from us.
Americans were not informed that we, as a government, imprisoned journalists without charges. W
e are being propagandized by our own media.
Whether his ( Obama's ) intentions are good, whether he has a purer heart, these things are impossible to know, but they’re really irrelevant. The reality is that the same dynamic continues.
Xinjiang adopts regional law to enhance ethnic unity
Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region has adopted a law to enhance unity among different ethnic groups, the first regional law of its kind in China.
The law on education for ethnic unity in Xinjiang was adopted on Tuesday at a regional legislature's session and would take effect on February 1, 2010, said an official with the Xinjiang Regional People's Congress, the local lawmaking body, Thursday.
The law spells out that it is an obligation for all citizens to work towards national unity and against secession, and defines the principles, ways and content of ethnic unity education with regards to all people in Xinjiang, said Eligen Imibakhi, chairman of the Standing Committee of the Xinjiang Regional People's Congress.
TPM
The End Of TheConservatives.Com: Wash Times Cancels Site
- ABC's Inaccurate Gitmo-Abdulmutallab Story Got Major Pickup
- GOP Rep Has No Explanation For GOP Hypocrisy
- REVEALED: See Going Rogue Event 'Banned List' Drawn Up By Todd Palin
- Ka-Ching! GOP Goes For Big Flight 253 Payday
- Polls Show No Political Backlash Against Obama After Flight 253 -- Even A Possible Improvement
- Media Instructions Including 'Banned List' For Palin Book Event, 12/22/09
- The End Of TheConservatives.Com: Wash Times Cancels Site
- The Case for Mind Control?
- NRSC: 'When A Foreigner Tries To Blow Up An Airliner,' It's Terrorism
- Conservative House Dems Coming Around On Health Care Reform?
Harsh lessons we may need to learn again
By Joseph E. Stiglitz (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-12-31 07:51
Already heavily burdened taxpayers saw their money - intended to help banks lend so that the economy could be revived - go to pay outsized bonuses and dividends. Dividends are supposed to be a share of profits; here it was simply a share of government largesse.
The justification was that bailing out the banks, however messily, would enable a resumption of lending. That has not happened. All that happened was that average taxpayers gave money to the very institutions that had been gouging them for years - through predatory lending, usurious credit-card interest rates, and non-transparent fees.
The bailout exposed deep hypocrisy all around. Those who had preached fiscal restraint when it came to small welfare programs for the poor now clamored for the world's largest welfare program. Those who had argued for free market's virtue of "transparency" ended up creating financial systems so opaque that banks could not make sense of their own balance sheets. And then the government, too, was induced to engage in decreasingly transparent forms of bailout to cover up its largesse to the banks. Those who had argued for "accountability" and "responsibility" now sought debt forgiveness for the financial sector.
Soy destroying the Amazon rainforest
How to satisfy the continually expanding demand for soybeans without clearing so much of the Amazon rainforest that it dries out and becomes vulnerable to fire.
The Amazon is being cleared both by soybean growers and by ranchers, who are expanding Brazil’s national herd of beef cattle. Oftentimes, soybean growers buy land from cattlemen, who have cleared the land and grazed it for a few years, pushing them ever deeper into the Amazon rainforest.
The Amazon rainforest sustains one of the richest concentrations of plant and animal biological diversity in the world. It also recycles rainfall from the coastal regions to the continental interior, ensuring an adequate water supply for Brazil’s inland agriculture. And it is an enormous storehouse of carbon.Although the deforestation is occurring within Brazil, it is the worldwide growth in demand for meat, milk, and eggs that is driving it.
The Amazon is being cleared both by soybean growers and by ranchers, who are expanding Brazil’s national herd of beef cattle. Oftentimes, soybean growers buy land from cattlemen, who have cleared the land and grazed it for a few years, pushing them ever deeper into the Amazon rainforest.
The Amazon rainforest sustains one of the richest concentrations of plant and animal biological diversity in the world. It also recycles rainfall from the coastal regions to the continental interior, ensuring an adequate water supply for Brazil’s inland agriculture. And it is an enormous storehouse of carbon.
| Indian super-compact car market overtakes Japan India will top Japan for the first time in sales of super-compact cars. It overtook Japan as the world's number one producer of basic cars in 2007.Nearly half of all cars sold in India - like Maruti Suzuki's Swift, GM's Spark and Hyundai's Santro - fall into the basic category. These are cars so small they're almost nonexistent in the US market.
Plot exposes fissure in U.S. intelligence community
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