Palestine can be won in a street fight - Opinion. Palestine has always been the underdog, a country slowly being wiped off the map, a society daily and methodically being dismantled by Israel.
As a principally unarmed and oppressed indigenous population, Palestinians are perceived as powerless against the military supremacy of Israel's technological death industry, persistently outmanoeuvred by Israel's political cunning and endlessly bullied by a Western world that has made a game of diplomacy and intrigue from our miserable fate. We've lost so much to Israel's boundless plunder. Over and over, we lose. Chilean Tax Reform Shifts Toward Income Redistribution. Economy & Trade, Featured, Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean, Regional Categories, TerraViva United Nations, Trade & Investment One of the aims of the tax reform is to finance an overhaul of Chile’s education system, the chief demand of mass street demonstrations.
Credit: Claudio Esparza/IPS - Chilean President Michelle Bachelet’s proposed tax reform is seen as the cornerstone of her ambitious social programme and a sign of a new shift in fiscal policy towards redistribution of income. U.S. Blasted on Failure to Ratify IMF Reforms. Economy & Trade, Eye on the IFIs, Featured, G20, Global Geopolitics, Global Governance, Headlines, North America, Regional Alliances, TerraViva United Nations, World - While Republicans complain relentlessly about U.S.
President Barack Obama’s alleged failure to exert global leadership on geo-political issues like Syria and Ukraine, they are clearly undermining Washington’s leadership of the world economy. That conclusion became inescapable here during this week’s in-gathering of the world’s finance ministers and central bankers at the annual spring meeting here of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. The delays are clearly damaging Washington’s global economic and geo-political agenda: persuading other G20 countries to adopt expansionary policies and punish Moscow for its moves against Ukraine. The message was echoed by the Group of 24 (G24) caucus, which represents developing countries, although, unlike the G20, its communique didn’t mention the U.S. by name.
Advocates want social security cap lifted, wealthiest to pay more. Social Security advocates delivered a petition to Congress on Thursday urging legislators to remove a tax cap that allows the U.S.’ wealthiest people to cease payments into the system after a certain threshold is met.
The petition, which netted 120,000 signatures, was delivered to Republican House Speaker John Boehner by Social Security Works, the Campaign for Community Change and the Service Employees International Union. Under Social Security’s “Old-Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance” program, an annual limit based on changes to the national average wage index determines the maximum amount of taxes that can be taken out of an individual’s salary for Social Security. 01-26-14 Activist Newsletter. Jan. 26, 2014, Issue 198 jacdon@earthlink.net 1.
The ineptness of geopolitics - Opinion. Between 1814 and 1815, ambassadors from five great European countries sat together in the Congress of Vienna to find a balance of power in Europe after the Napoleonic Wars.
They succeeded, and set a model for diplomacy and managing state interests that persists to this day. Hank Aaron Compares Obama's GOP Opposition To KKK. Isn't It Time to Try Something New? The shambolic US-led "peace process" between Israel and the Palestinian Authority is finally getting the kind of recognition it deserves.
After nearly a dozen fruitless visits to the region, Secretary of State John Kerry announced that it was time to take stock, while Israel's chief negotiator Tzipi Livni complained that too much time is wasted negotiating with Americans rather than Palestinians. Meanwhile, for exercising its legal rights (nonviolently), the New York Times labeled the Palestinian Authority "defiant," more evidence that many of the so-called mainstream journalists serve as their governments enablers, if not participants, in pursuing this ridiculous diplomatic pageantry.
Cynical as I may seem, I base my views as an observer to America's commandeering of Arab-Israeli peacemaking, having spent two years researching for a book on the failure of the peace talks at the end of President Bill Clinton's tenure. So how has all that bias been working out? India's polls: Corporations under scrutiny - Opinion. The new shock doctrine: 'Doing Business' with the World Bank - Opinion. One of the problems with neoliberal economic policy is that it's tough to get countries to agree to it; especially democratic ones.
It has often required quite extreme measures, such as invasion - the classic example being the US-backed coup against Chile's democratically elected president - or debt bondage and structural adjustment led by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Both are effective ways of forcing countries to deregulate their markets. But neither of these methods has been very popular. It turns out that most people don't like it when sovereign nations are invaded for corporate gain, as the global protests against the Iraq war made clear.
And structural adjustment proved to be so damaging and inspired so many riots that the IMF was forced to step back from it - at least ostensibly - in the early 2000s. To avoid these messy PR nightmares, the latest approach has been to get countries to impose neoliberalism on themselves. The new world order? Part 1 - Opinion. There is no more reliable guardian of entrenched conventional wisdom than The Economist.
And so its cover recently proclaimed "the new world order", and removed any ambiguity from its intentions, by its portrayal of Russian President Vladimir Putin as a shirtless tank commander with menacing features. No such iconography accompanied the last notable invocation of the phrase by George H W Bush in mobilising support for a forcible response to the Iraqi invasion and annexation of Kuwait in 1990, the dirty work of Saddam Hussein.
There the elder Bush was seeking to suggest, with the Cold War winding down, that finally the UN Security Council (UNSC) could act, as originally intended, and meet Iraqi aggression with a collective response. With some reluctance the Security Council mandated the use of force to repel Iraq, and restore Kuwaiti sovereignty. In this central respect, there was some merit in claiming newness for this latest response to provocative moves by Russia. White House denies 'Cuban Twitter' ZunZuneo programme was covert. The White House is claiming that a secret programme to build a carefully-disguised “Cuban Twitter”, in order to foment political opposition to the Castro regime, was “not covert” but rather a “discreet” form of humanitarian assistance.
Attempts by Barack Obama’s administration to downplay the nature of ZunZuneo, a social-media website it hoped would facilitate protests in Cuba, are at odds with a major investigation by the Associated Press published on Thursday. The AP revealed how the programme, engineered by the US Agency for International Development (USAid), was intended to encourage “flash mobs” in Cuba, emulating social media-based protests that had been occurring organically in countries such as Iran, the Philippines and Moldova.
America: Most corrupt democracy money can buy. By David Hoffman It's official! Thanks to five reprobates-Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and Kennedy-who comprise a majority on the United States Supreme Court, America is now the most corrupt democracy money can buy. What these so-called "justices" did in their 2010 Citizens United decision, and recently in McCutcheon v. Venezuela arrests generals 'plotting coup' - Americas. Three Venezuelan air force generals accused of plotting a coup against the leftist government of President Nicolas Maduro have been arrested amid a widening crackdown on the opposition.
The unidentified generals were in contact with opposition politicians and "were trying to get the Air Force to rise up against the legitimately elected government," Maduro said on Tuesday, in a meeting of South American foreign ministers. "This group that was captured has direct links with sectors of the opposition and they were saying that this week was the decisive week," Maduro said. The disclosure comes after more than six weeks of street protests that have left at least 34 dead. The generals have been summoned before a court martial, Maduro said, adding that the plot was uncovered because other officers came forward to say they were being recruited. The Untold History of Ukrainian Nationalist Movement and Jews. By Sam Craine If you ask an American Jew their background, chances are they will respond "Russian Jew.
" That is not entirely correct. The majority of American Jewish families came over from the Ukraine. By the same token, the largest wave of immigration from Ukraine to the United States was Jewish. Yet, a trip to the Ukrainian museum in New York will leave you with the impression that there are, and never were, any Jews in Ukraine. The intelligent citizen - Opinion. Political crises around the world are casting doubt on representative democracy and the Western model of government. A quarter century after the demise of the Soviet Union, and declarations about the inevitability of liberal democracies, that paradigm is under serious threat.
From the economic crises in Europe, to revolutions in the Arab world and beyond, a shadow has been cast on the efficacy of Western systems. There are other camps. Business as usual for Mexico's drug trade - Features. Analysis: Trimming US military might - Features. With tensions running high between the US and Russia over the latter's military intervention in Ukraine's Crimea peninsula, US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel has advised his Russian counterparts to be cautious. Debunking some myths about Israel's water politics - Opinion. On data disclosure rules - Opinion. The Obama administration has announced data disclosure rules, allowing companies such as Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Facebook to be more open about when the government demands access to user information. Whose version of 'diversity' did the Oscars celebrate? - Opinion. In many ways, Hollywood is a fenced-off community. Saving al-Aqsa mosque - Opinion.
An honest Israeli Jew tells the Real Truth about Israel. The Federal Reserve - Zionist Jewish Private Bankers. Who Owns The Federal Reserve? This article was first published by Global Research in October 2008 “Some people think that the Federal Reserve Banks are United States Government institutions. Right of revolution. Bill of Rights Institute. Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Towards another coup in Venezuela? - Opinion. Five days after violent anti-government incitement in Venezuela led to the deaths of three people, the US State Department issued a press statement declaring: "The allegations [by President Nicolas Maduro] that the United States is helping to organise protestors… is baseless and false.
Prostate cancer gene test nearer for identifying high-risk men. Scientists believe they have come a step closer to devising genetic tests that can identify men with prostate cancer who have a high risk of dying from the disease, enabling them to be monitored throughout their lives, and other men to avoid unnecessary treatment. In some men, prostate cancer is so slow-growing that it will not cause them any harm in their lifetime – they will die with it, rather than of it. But in others, it is aggressive and a killer. Because side-effects of treatment can include impotence and incontinence, it has long been recognised that there is a need for tests to establish which men are in real danger and which are not. Scientists at the Institute of Cancer Research in London, who have been screening men from families with a history of prostate cancer, have established that 14 mutations in known cancer genes can predict life-threatening disease.
They also found that men with these mutations were likely to have more aggressive disease. Towards another coup in Venezuela? - Opinion. Chris Hedges: The Myth of Human Progress and the Collapse of Complex Societies - Chris Hedges. Socio-economic mobility in the United States.
By the Numbers: The Incredibly Shrinking American Middle Class. The Fed: At a crossroads - Opinion. PETER SCHIFF & GOLD CONFISCATION. 911 Pearls. The economic impact of local living wages.