Posted Mar 24, 2005 | Rolling Stone by JAMES HOWARD KUNSTLER A few weeks ago, the price of oil ratcheted above fifty-five dollars a barrel, which is about twenty dollars a barrel more than a year ago. The next day, the oil story was buried on page six of the New York Times business section. Apparently, the price of oil is not considered significant news, even when it goes up five bucks a barrel in the span of ten days. That same day, the stock market shot up more than a hundred points because, CNN said, government data showed no […]
Monthly Archives: March 2005
11 posts
22 March 2005 | Venezuelanalysis.com by Jonah Gindin Philip Agee is a former CIA operative who left the agency in 1967 after becoming disillusioned by the CIA’s support for the status quo in the region. Says Agee, ?I began to realize that what I and my colleagues had been doing in Latin America in the CIA was no more than a continuation of nearly five-hundred years of this, exploitation and genocide and so forth. And I began to think about what, until then would have been unthinkable, which was to write a book on how it all works.? The book, Inside […]
[ This is a chilling piece, drawing out a common parallel in uncommon detail. Thanks to J. Mock for passing it along. –BL ] 22 February 2005 | CommonDreams.org by Thom Hartmann This weekend – February 27th – is the 72nd anniversary, but the corporate media most likely won’t cover it. The generation that experienced this history firsthand is now largely dead, and only a few of us dare hear their ghosts. It started when the government, in the midst of an economic crisis, received reports of an imminent terrorist attack. A foreign ideologue had launched feeble attacks on a few […]
22 March 2004 | World Socialist Web Site by Jamie Chapman and Kate Randall Two recent reports cast light on the impact of growing social inequality in the US. The first, the annual inventory of the very rich compiled this month by the business magazine Forbes, tracks the wealth of the world’s billionaires, and their increasing numbers in the US. The second is the “report card” issued by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) on the state of the infrastructure in the United States. Together these studies provide a devastating exposure of the price being paid—in the form of […]
PHYSICIANS FOR SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY, accessed 21 March 2005 through their http://www.mercuryaction.org website Recent studies surveying contaminant levels in farmed and wild-caught salmon have shown that, on average, farmed salmon contain substantially higher concentrations of a variety of persistent organic contaminants such as PCBs, dioxins, and pesticides. These studies indicate that wild salmon, being generally lower in toxic contaminants, is a healthier choice for consumers. However, closer inspection reveals that contaminant levels in individual fish can vary widely across wild and farmed salmon of various species and from various geographic regions, so the issue is not black and white.
4 March 2004 | Scripps Howard News Service by Joan Lowy You are what you eat, even if you’re a fish. And fish that thrive on veggies tend to be less toxic than flesh eaters. With new studies showing PCBs, dioxin, and pesticides in salmon and mercury in canned tuna, consumers who find themselves struggling to figure out what’s safe to eat will find some species of fish are high in contaminants, while others are generally low. The reason is usually diet — some fish eat smaller fish, but other fish eat veggies and tiny organisms.
[ True to the pattern, ignorant Americans may again be duped by short-sighted politicians under the sway of large corporations which aim to hide the unsustainability of our energy consumption as long as possible. While recent U.S. government claims suggest that drilling for oil in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge will yield “up to” 1.4 billion barrels of oil, this is at best a stopgap measure: the U.S. consumes 20 million barrels a day; hence one way to quantify the net effect of the proposed destructive drilling is to think of it as a 50-day appeasement of our oil-greedy appetites […]
12 March 2005 | World Socialist Web Site by Bill Van Auken Dozens of Haitian men, women and children drowned when their rickety homemade craft went down in the waters of the Caribbean, the Associated Press reported Thursday. Some 50 people had crowded onto the boat, which sank under their weight. Three survivors made it ashore to tell of the disaster, while officials reported recovering nine bodies, which were buried in a mass grave. ?There?s nothing we can do,? said Cap-Haitien Mayor Apile Fleurent. ?We?re just waiting to see how many bodies are brought in by the waves.? While the […]
by Brendan Lalor Thanks to Oklahoma City writer Bob Nichols, I heard about the controversial U.N. anti-landmine campaign ad/PSA that CNN and other networks don’t want to air. The ad is well worth a look (click here); and here’s a piece on the topic from WorldNetDaily (6 March 2005).
[ FCNL is the Friends (Quaker) Committee on National Legislation. –BL ] FCNL Email | 11 March 2005 Tax day is April 15. Did you know that about 42% of our income taxes this year will go for military purposes? This figure is computed based on federal funds outlays in fiscal year 2004 (FY04) of $1.7 trillion. The federal funds budget includes spending for all discretionary programs (for which Congress appropriates funds each year) and for all mandatory programs such as Medicaid, food stamps, Earned Income Tax Credit, and other needs-based programs (which are paid for out of general revenues). The […]
[ One or more of the anti-democratic Reagan-era appointees in the State Department are responsible for barring anti-dictatorial, Sandinista movement leader Dora Maria Tellez from entering the U.S. Or perhaps John Negroponte himself has pulled strings to block her entry. After all, as ambassador to Honduras, Negroponte played a key role in running Reagan’s terrorist war against the popular Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Either way, this move only increases the Orwellian flavor of the times we live in here in the U.S.A.: Those who oppose U.S.-backed dictators are terrorists. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. –BL ] Writers and […]