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Transforming the Economy
GAR ALPEROVITZ, KEANE BHATT, via John Duda, jduda at democracycollaborative.org, @GarAlperovitz, @KeaneBhatt Alperovitz and Bhatt just wrote the piece “What Then Can I Do? Ten Ways to Democratize the Economy.” Alperovitz is professor of political economy at the University of Maryland. He is the author of What Then Must We Do? Straight Talk About The…
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UN: NSA Scandal, Syria, Iran, Congo’s Dead Millions
MARK WEISBROT, beeton at cepr.net At the start of the UN General Assembly meeting, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff attacked the U.S. government’s global spying network. She told the UN: “We must establish multilateral mechanisms for the world wide web” to ensure “freedom of speech; multi-lateral governance with transparency; the principle of universality and non-discrimination; cultural…
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Kenya and Pakistan Violence
JAMES JENNINGS, jimjennings at earthlink.net President of Conscience International, a humanitarian aid organization that worked during the worst of the Somalia famine in 2010-11 in the refugee camp at Bokolmayo on the Ethiopia-Somalia border as well as in the giant Daadab Camp for Somalia refugees in Kenya. The group also has a representative on the…
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Pope Francis: Less Birth Control, More Peace
America Magazine and other Jesuit journals around the world simultaneously published an interview with Pope Francis Thursday. Among his remarks: “We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible. I have not spoken much about these things, and I was reprimanded for that.…
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* Re-Purposing Military * Stop Arming Syria Rebels * Admitting Israel Nukes
MIRIAM PEMBERTON, miriam at ips-dc.org A research fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, Pemberton just co-wrote the piece “Beating Swords Into Solar Panels: Re-Purposing America’s War Machine.” DAVID SWANSON, davidcnswanson at gmail.com, @davidcnswanson Swanson is with RootsAction.org, which recently launched a petition, now at over 22,000 signatories: “We helped prevent U.S. missile strikes on…
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Greece: Assassination of Hip-Hop Artist and Rise of Neo-Nazi Party
“The murder of Greek anti-fascist activist and musician Pavlos Fyssas by a supporter of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party is the latest reminder of the threat to Greek democracy that this party, as well as the brutal austerity policies that have fueled its meteoric rise in the last two years, represents. Fyssas’ murder is only…
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With Record Number in Poverty; Food Stamp Cuts?
“The poverty report for 2012 just released by the Census Bureau indicates that the poverty rate was 15.0 percent in 2012, the same as in 2011, but well above the 12.3 percent rate in 2006, the year prior to the beginning of the ‘Great Recession.’ The 15 percent rate was the fourth highest in the…
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Poverty: “Utterly Unresponsive” Economy and Political System
The national poverty figures were released today by the Census Bureau. JENNIFER JONES AUSTIN, Bich Ha Pham, bhpham at fpwa.org Executive director of the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, Austin said today: “Today’s release of the national poverty figures shows that 21.8 percent of our nation’s children and 15 percent of the population overall are…
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What About the U.S. and Russia’s Massive WMD Stockpiles?
Vice President Joe Biden claimed over the weekend that Syria has the “largest stockpile in the world of chemical weapons.” Nass runs the Anthrax Vaccine blog and has been regularly debunking false claims about biological and chemical weapons. She said today: “First, the U.S. stockpile is admittedly three times larger than Syria’s. The Army says…
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Two Years Later, What Happened to Occupy Wall Street?
“Occupy has been both a surprising success and a disappointing failure. It succeeded in drastically expanding the political imagination of a generation, but doing so set up expectations that could never be reached in such a short time. Now, the remnants of the movement are dispersed and frustrated, though many are continuing on in struggles…