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Kosovo War: “Humanitarian Interventionism” Ten Years Later
March 24 marks the tenth anniversary of the start of the bombing of Yugoslavia by a U.S.-led NATO force. The bombing continued until June 10, 1999. DAVID N. GIBBS Author of the soon-to-be-released book First Do No Harm: Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, Gibbs is an associate professor of history and political science…
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Saving Money on Health Care
RONALD LIND, M.D. An anesthesiologist in St. Charles, Iowa, Lind is a member of Physicians for a National Health Program and will be at the forum today. Lind will be speaking at a news conference beforehand. He said today: “The single payer ‘Medicare for All’ proposal put forward by Rep. John Conyers had over 90…
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Beyond the AIG Bonuses
SARAH ANDERSON Anderson is director of the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, which just released the report “Beyond the AIG Bonuses: The Taxpayer Subsidies for Executive Excess That Haven’t Yet Hit the Headlines.” Her past pieces include “Executive Pay and the Stimulus Bill,” “The CEO Pay Debate: Myths v Facts” and…
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Former Senator: “Let the Republicans Filibuster”
MIKE GRAVEL In the D.C. area this week, Gravel is a former two-term senator from Alaska who ran for president last year. He is author of the book A Political Odyssey. He said today: “Whenever something comes up that [Senate minority leader] Mitch McConnell is adamantly opposed to, he just threatens a filibuster. Then [Senate…
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Iraq War Anniversary
LORETTA ALPER Alper is the producer and co-director of “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death,” a film that documents a pattern of falsehoods disseminated by successive administrations and major media to go to war, as well as a series of rationalizations to keep wars going. The film highlights the…
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Assessing the El Salvador Election
The Los Angeles Times reported: “Mauricio Funes, an affable political moderate running on behalf of the leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, or FMLN, claimed victory after nearly complete returns gave him a lead that experts said was insurmountable.” The following are in El Salvador and are reachable via Jesse Stewart [[email protected]], who works with…
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Can Single Payer Get a Fair Hearing?
DEB RICHTER Chair of Vermont Health Care for All, Richter is a physician in rural Vermont. She said today: “Vermont Governor Jim Douglas and Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick have been asked by President Obama to host a regional New England health care summit at the University of Vermont on Tuesday, March 17. We do not…
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How to Stop AIG’s Bonuses
Four leading analysts on finance Monday issued a statement outlining how to stop the AIG bonuses: “AIG’s decision to pay out at least $165 million in bonuses takes the bank bailout program’s abuse of the public trust to a whole new level. “This act simply cannot be allowed to stand. The only question is how…
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What Should the Global Economy Look Like?
Finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of 20 countries are gathering for meetings in Britain. HA-JOON CHANG In the U.S. until Sunday, Chang will then be in the UK where he is Cambridge University economics professor. He is author of Bad Samaritans — The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of…
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Beyond Madoff
The cartoonist Tom Toles makes the point that a main difference between Bernard Madoff and other Wall Street “charlatans” is that he’s admitting guilt. CHUCK COLLINS Collins, senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, is co-author of “Paying For a Strong Economy: Seven New Revenue Sources That Can Revitalize America and Reduce Financial Speculation.”…