politics
When we talk about the Tao, what we are talking about isn't really the Tao, it's just a name. Names aren't reality, they are just names. Everything in the world comes from the nameless. When we learn to think of things as separate from other things, we give them names.
Lao-Tzu's Tao: Universal Dialectic
Your federal taxes consist of federal income tax and FICA tax (or SECA self-employment tax for self-employed individuals). FICA (Federal Insurance Contributions Act) tax is a payroll (or employment) tax imposed equally on both employees and employers to fund Social Security and Medicare . Your personal federal tax burden includes only your (employee) share, or 1/2 of your FICA total.
federal tax receipt
The children of Falluja Link to video: The children of Falluja Doctors in Iraq 's war-ravaged enclave of Falluja are dealing with up to 15 times as many chronic deformities in infants, compared to a year ago, and a spike in early life cancers that may be linked to toxic materials left over from the fighting. The extraordinary rise in birth defects has crystallised over recent months as specialists working in Falluja's over-stretched health system have started compiling detailed clinical records of all babies born.
birth defects fallujah
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On July 6th, 2010, the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH) released a study titled, “Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005–2009." The study implicates the US military's use of depleted uranium munitions as causing similar but even worse damage to the people of Fallujah than fallout from the atomic bombing of Hiroshima did to the survivors of that bombing. Friday, August 6th, marked the sixty-fifth anniversary of the day the United States’ dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima killing some 140,000 people and bringing the second world war to a quick and brutal end. The anniversary was covered in The New York Times and many other major news outlets across the US. This years’ anniversary was especially notable because for the first time ever a US government official, US ambassador to Japan John Roos, attended the remembrance ceremonies in Hiroshima.
Illustration: Steve Brodner. Click here for a larger version of this illustration . to make a political lie work: a powerful person or institution willing to utter it, and another set of powerful institutions to amplify it. The former has always been with us: Kings, corporate executives, politicians, and ideologues from both sides of the aisle have been entirely willing to bend the truth when they felt it necessary or convenient. So why does it seem as if we're living in a time of overwhelmingly brazen deception?
gop fact-free nation
Jon Stewart gives up! The Daily Show host took aim last night at companies who lawyer their way out of paying federal taxes, while still blithely shipping jobs overseas. Like General Electric, for example, who posted $14.2 billion in profits in 2010, yet actually received $3.2 billion in tax benefits — and still cut a fifth of its U.S. workforce. Stewart laments that the president and network news, both well-suited to point out G.E.’s hypocrisy, don’t seem to care very much.
g.e. no taxes - jon stewart
I wrote this poem this week after listening to an American soldier talk about his deep regret over his part in the Iraqi war and his sorrow over his role in the destruction and loss of so many lives. After the poem, please have a listen to John Gorka’s powerful song, “The Road of Good Intentions.” This is followed by a short audio interview with Thich Nhat Hanh on the unseen and hidden costs of the Persian Gulf war—or any war. The war justifiers say no matter what mistakes were made Iraq is a better place without Saddam, the people better off. I wonder… if you could somehow take a poll of the 100,000—some say 600,000, some say even more— dead Iraqis I wonder what they would say?
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