AGAMBEN TOYS PlayGo’s My First ATM, available from Sears. Money doesn’t grow on trees; it comes out of ATMs! Teach your little one money-counting and the value of saving with the PlayGo® My First ATM play set. Supermarket debit-card touch-pad that blinks ‘Declined’ while other customers look on impatiently sold separately. A collection of complete building instructions for four truly impressive, 1:1-scale replicas of the world’s most iconic firearms: LEGO Heavy Weapons will show you how to build brick-based models of: A massive Desert Eagle handgun, with working blowback actionThe compact but deadly AKS-74U assault rifle with folding stockA bolt-action Lee Enfield rifle (a.k.a. Buy from Amazon today! Badass LEGO Guns shows you how to build five impressive weapons entirely from LEGO Technic parts. The models range from sophisticated to simple, and builders of all ages will find something enjoyable. Buy from Amazon today! Buy it from Amazon today! Matchbox Skybusters Missions SB94 Drone. WARNING! Buy it here.
Where Are The Media's Iraq War Boosters 10 Years Later? | Research On the tenth anniversary of the American-led invasion of Iraq, Media Matters looks back at the work of some of the media's most prominent pro-war voices. Instead of facing consequences for backing the invasion based on information that turned out to be false and criticizing war opponents, many of these media figures continue to hold positions of influence and continue to provide foreign policy reporting and commentary. Fred Barnes Richard Cohen Thomas Friedman Paul Gigot / Wall Street Journal Editorial Page Sean Hannity Stephen Hayes Fred Hiatt / Washington Post Editorial Page Bill Keller Charles Krauthammer Bill Kristol Judith Miller Joe Scarborough Fred Barnes Position At The Time Of Iraq Invasion : Executive editor and co-founder of The Weekly Standard and Fox News contributor. Barnes: Iraq Has WMD And A Delivery Vehicle "Called Al Qaeda." Barnes: "[W]inning The War In Iraq" Is "Going To Be Easy." Barnes: Military Will Find WMD. Where Is Barnes Now? Richard Cohen Where Is Cohen Now? Sean Hannity
Jonathan Kozol On Kids Who Survive Inner Cities Copyright © 2012 NPR. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required. I'm Michel Martin and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. But first we want to spend a few minutes talking about something that many of us spend more time thinking about at this time of year when many celebrate their good fortune. Our next guest is Jonathan Kozol, a man who's brought the stories of the nation's poor out of the shadows through his many best-selling books. His latest is called "Fire in the Ashes." Jonathan Kozol, thank you so much for speaking with us. JONATHAN KOZOL: Thanks so much, Michel. MARTIN: You start the book telling us about two young men, Eric and Christopher, and I was hoping you could just briefly lay out their stories. KOZOL: OK. You know, I kind of predicted that would happen, but I didn't realize, in these two cases, that it would lead to really tragic results. MARTIN: What did happen to them? KOZOL: That might have... MARTIN: No. KOZOL: Yes.
the capitalist network that runs the world - physics-math - 19 October 2011 AS PROTESTS against financial power sweep the world this week, science may have confirmed the protesters' worst fears. An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy. The study's assumptions have attracted some criticism, but complex systems analysts contacted by New Scientist say it is a unique effort to untangle control in the global economy. The idea that a few bankers control a large chunk of the global economy might not seem like news to New York's Occupy Wall Street movement and protesters elsewhere (see photo). "Reality is so complex, we must move away from dogma, whether it's conspiracy theories or free-market," says James Glattfelder. The Zurich team can. The work, to be published in PLoS One, revealed a core of 1318 companies with interlocking ownerships (see image). So, the super-entity may not result from conspiracy. 1.
The Shock Doctrine In THE SHOCK DOCTRINE, Naomi Klein explodes the myth that the global free market triumphed democratically. Exposing the thinking, the money trail and the puppet strings behind the world-changing crises and wars of the last four decades, The Shock Doctrine is the gripping story of how America’s “free market” policies have come to dominate the world-- through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries. At the most chaotic juncture in Iraq’s civil war, a new law is unveiled that would allow Shell and BP to claim the country’s vast oil reserves…. Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly out-sources the running of the “War on Terror” to Halliburton and Blackwater…. After a tsunami wipes out the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts.... International Editions
free-market-has-turned-us-into-matrix-drones-2064799 Dr Chang's 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism is one of a spate of tomes published in recent weeks that question the future of the current system, including Capitalism 4.0 by Anatole Kaletsky, and Ian Bremmer's The End of the Free Market. Economists are keen to tap into the market for popular books on seemingly impenetrable subjects – highlighted by the runaway success of Freakonomics, which has sold more than four million copies since it was published in 2005 and is about to be made into a film. South-Korean born Dr Chang aims to disprove what he sees as economic myths, including the idea that people are paid what they are worth, that the "trickle down" effect of increasing wealth among the rich helps the poor, and that education makes countries more prosperous. One of the modern idols Dr Chang seeks to bring down is the internet. "If you had everything, then I'm in favour of it. What his peers say... Dr Ruth Lea, Economic advisor to Arbuthnot Banking Group
26 September 2002 New York Times Advertisement Here is an HTML version of an advertisement from the op-ed page of the New York Times of 26 September 2002, signed by 33 scholars of international relations. As scholars of international security affairs, we recognize that war is sometimes necessary to ensure our national security or other vital interests. We also recognize that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and that Iraq has defied a number of U.N. resolutions. But military force should be used only when it advances U.S. national interests. Saddam Hussein is a murderous despot, but no one has provided credible evidence that Iraq is cooperating with al Qaeda.Even if Saddam Hussein acquired nuclear weapons, he could not use them without suffering massive U.S. or Israeli retaliation.The first Bush administration did not try to conquer Iraq in 1991 because it understood that doing so could spread instability in the Middle East, threatening U.S. interests. Robert J. Brandeis University Richard K. Columbia University Dale C. Michael C. George C.
£13tn: hoard hidden from taxman by global elite | Business | The Observer A global super-rich elite has exploited gaps in cross-border tax rules to hide an extraordinary £13 trillion ($21tn) of wealth offshore – as much as the American and Japanese GDPs put together – according to research commissioned by the campaign group Tax Justice Network. James Henry, former chief economist at consultancy McKinsey and an expert on tax havens, has compiled the most detailed estimates yet of the size of the offshore economy in a new report, The Price of Offshore Revisited, released exclusively to the Observer. He shows that at least £13tn – perhaps up to £20tn – has leaked out of scores of countries into secretive jurisdictions such as Switzerland and the Cayman Islands with the help of private banks, which vie to attract the assets of so-called high net-worth individuals. Oil-rich states with an internationally mobile elite have been especially prone to watching their wealth disappear into offshore bank accounts instead of being invested at home, the research suggests.
Turning Policemen Into Soldiers, the Culmination of a Long Trend Ferguson, Mo. police watching over their city (Reuters) The images from Missouri of stormtrooper-looking police confronting their citizens naturally raises the question: how the hell did we get to this point? When did the normal cops become Navy SEALs? What country is this, anyway? There will be more and more mainstream coverage of the modern militarization of the police, a phenomenon mainly of the post-9/11 years. For reference/aggregation purposes, here is a guide to further reading: 1) The Book on this topic: Rise of the Warrior Cop, by Radley Balko. 2) "Lockdown Nation," a Peter Moskos review of Balko's book last year in PS magazine. 3) "How the War on Terror Has Militarized the Police," an Atlantic dispatch by Arthur Rizer and Joseph Hartman three years ago. 4) "Tanks in Small Towns," a web item I did in 2011 on signs of this trend, including this photo of a police force in South Carolina: And this one from a small town in Virginia: And this from Florida: "Self-damage"?
Data Mining Reveals a Global Link Between Corruption and Wealth One question that social scientists and economists have long puzzled over is how corruption arises in different cultures and why it is more prevalent in some countries than others. But it has always been difficult to find correlations between corruption and other measures of economic or social activity. Michal Paulus and Ladislav Kristoufek at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic, have for the first time found a correlation between the perception of corruption in different countries and their economic development. The data they use comes from Transparency International, a nonprofit campaigning organisation based in Berlin, Germany, and which defines corruption as the misuse of public power for private benefit. Instead, it gathers information from a wide range of sources such as the African Development Bank and the Economist Intelligence Unit. The result is the Corruption Perceptions Index ranking countries between 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean).
The End of World Violence? - Print View Psychologist Steven Pinker talks about his provocative new book that argues the decline of violence with Sam Harris. They talk about who was the bloodiest dictator—and what we should still fear. Steven Pinker is a professor of psychology at Harvard University, the author of several magnificent books about the human mind, and one of the most influential scientists on earth. He is also my friend, an occasional mentor, and an adviser to my nonprofit foundation. Steve’s new book is The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. I suspect that when most people hear the thesis of your book—that human violence has steadily declined—they are skeptical: wasn’t the 20th century the most violent in history? Probably not. The burning of heretics, gruesome executions, blood sports, slavery, debtors’ prisons, foot-binding, eunuchism, and wars between developed states won’t make a comeback any time soon. Second, Nazism and Fascism were not atheistic in the first place. It depends. Thank You!
The Financial Crisis Was Foreseeable … Thousands of Years Ago Economists, Military Strategists and Others Warned Us … Long Ago We’ve known for 4,000 years that debts need to be periodically written down, or the entire economy will collapse. And see this. We’ve known for 2,500 years that prolonged war bankrupts an economy. We’ve known for 1,900 years that rampant inequality destroys societies. We’ve known for thousands of years that debasing currencies leads to economic collapse. We’ve known for hundreds of years that the failure to punish financial fraud destroys economies, as it destroys all trust in the financial system. We’ve known for hundreds of years that monopolies and the political influence which accompanies too much power in too few hands is dangerous for free markets. We’ve known for centuries that companies will try to pawn their debts off on governments, and that it is a huge mistake for governments to allow corporate debt to be backstopped by government. We’ve known for 80 years that inflation is a hidden tax.