Fwd: The Corporate Betrayal of America
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Stephen Boyle
Apr 9, 2013, 6:34:37 AM4/9/13
to Community Trust, freed...@googlegroups.com, occupy...@googlegroups.com
I believe this online news source would be of interest to many people in the groups I'm forwarding to.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: NationofChange <in...@nationofchange.org>
Date: Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 12:28 PM
Subject: The Corporate Betrayal of America
To: fuzz...@gmail.com
From: NationofChange <in...@nationofchange.org>
Date: Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 12:28 PM
Subject: The Corporate Betrayal of America
To: fuzz...@gmail.com
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Thomas Magstadt, Op-Ed: “Throughout the Andes, glaciers are now melting so rapidly that scientists have grown deeply concerned about water supplies for the people living there. Glacial melt water is essential for helping Andean communities get through the dry season.” We can argue until…ahem…hell freezes over about the root causes of climate change, but there is no doubt whatsoever that the glaciers are melting. The only way anyone, even a total disbeliever in global warming, can be indifferent to this fact is to argue that freshwater is non-essential (absurd on its face), or the supply beneath the ground is so abundant that we don’t need water from the mountains.
Amy Goodman, Video Interview: Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has died at the age of 87. Thatcher was Britain’s first female prime minister, serving three terms in office. Known as the “Iron Lady,” Thatcher became synonymous with austerity economics as a close ally of President Ronald Reagan. She famously declared to critics of neoliberal capitalism that, “there is no alternative.” Her long-running battle with striking British miners dealt a major blow to the union movement in Britain and ushered in a wave of privatizations. On foreign policy, Thatcher presided over the Falklands War with Argentina, provided critical support to the Chilean Dictator Augusto Pinochet, and famously labeled Nelson Mandela a “terrorist” while backing South Africa’s apartheid regime.
Travis Waldron, News Report: In 2011, federal regulators said banks may have improperly foreclosed on more than 5,000 members of the military and violated the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, which provides certain financial protections to military members. Bank of America was also one of the five banks that reached a settlement with the federal government over widespread mortgage and foreclosure abuses. The Justice Department is still reviewing foreclosures from all five banks for violations of the Servicemembers act. In total, Bank of America will pay more than 300 military members.
Richard (RJ) Eskow, Op-Ed: No jobs. No growth. Falling income. Unaffordable colleges. A dying middle class. Young people without hope. The greatest economic inequality in modern history. And yet, in the midst of the Long Depression, we’re told that President Obama intends to cuts Social Security. According to reports, the new presidential budget proposal will also include job-killing spending cuts and a Medicare cost hike that will increasingly affect the middle class with every passing year. The president says this isn’t his “ideal plan,” but he doesn’t say what his ideal plan would look like—and he certainly isn’t fighting for a better one.
William Boardman, News Analysis: Death squads, torture, secret prisons in Iraq, and General David Petraeus are among the featured atrocities in a recently-released new British documentary—“James Steele: America’s Mystery Man in Iraq”—the result of a 15-month investigation by Guardian Films and BBC Arabic. They explored war crimes long denied by the Pentagon, but confirmed by thousands of military field reports made public by Wiki leaks. The hour-long film explores the arc of American counterinsurgency brutality from Vietnam to Iraq, with stops along the way in El Salvador and Nicaragua. James Steele is now a retired U.S. colonel who first served in Vietnam as a company commander in 1968-69.
Bill McKibben, Op-Ed: A few weeks ago, Time Magazine called the fight over the Keystone XL pipeline that will bring some of the dirtiest energy on the planet from Alberta, Canada, to the U.S. Gulf Coast the “Selma and Stonewall” of the climate movement. Which, if you think about it, may be both good news and bad news. Yes, those of us fighting the pipeline have mobilized record numbers of activists: the largest civil disobedience action in 30 years and 40,000 people on the mall in February for the biggest climate rally in American history.
Cora Currier, News Investigation: The U.S. drone war remains cloaked in secrecy, and as a result, questions swirl around it. Who exactly can be targeted? When can a U.S. citizen be killed? Another, perhaps less frequently asked question: What happens when innocent civilians are killed in drone strikes? In February, during his confirmation process, CIA director John Brennan offered an unusually straightforward explanation: “Where possible, we also work with local governments to gather facts and, if appropriate, provide condolence payments to families of those killed.”
Paul Buchheit, Op-Ed: Multinational corporations have built their businesses on the backs of American taxpayers. They’ve depended on government research, national defense, the legal and educational systems and our infrastructure. Yet they’ve turned around and mocked us with declining tax payments. They’ve cut workers. They’ve refused to invest their massive profits in job-producing research and development. And they’ve insulted existing employees with low wages and dwindling retirement support.
Ashfaq Yusufzai, News Report: The Taliban may have placed a ban on theatre, but women in Pakistan’s northern provinces won’t allow the threat of the militants’ reprisals to keep them off the stage. Meena Gul, a 32-year-old who made her debut in the recent production of Khushal Khan Khattak, a play based on the life of the 17th century Pashtun warrior poet, who promoted Afghan unity against the backdrop of Mughal rule, is one of these determined young actresses who has found her calling and will not give it up without a fight.
Arvind Subramanian, Op-Ed: While some observers argue that the key lesson of the eurozone’s baptism by fire is that greater fiscal and banking integration are needed to sustain the currency union, many economists pointed this out even before the Euro’s introduction in 1999. The real lessons of the euro crisis lie elsewhere—and they are genuinely new and surprising. The two key arrangements that most economists emphasized were fiscal transfers, which could cushion shocks in badly affected regions, and labor mobility, which would allow workers from such regions to move to less affected ones.
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