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Showing posts from September, 2009

Obama's Hell-Ride to War on Iran

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Daniel McAdams LRC Blog September 26, 2009 Faced with the uncomfortable and politically unacceptable reality that there exists no evidence that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon, confirmed by his own intelligence community, President Obama has taken a page from the book of his predecessors FDR, LBJ, GWB, and so on: he simply made something really scary-sounding up to justify his push toward war. It is 2002 all over again, but worse. This time it is the artificially manufactured hype around an Iranian uranium enrichment facility that is under construction. Keep in mind that as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Iran, under Article IV of said treaty, has every right to enrich uranium to its heart’s content. The treaty clearly states: “Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination and in conformity

The Jobless and Recoveryless Recovery

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Reality Receding By James Howard Kunstler on September 14, 2009 6:33 AM Now that everybody in the USA, from the janitors in their man-caves to the president addressing congress, has declared the "recession" over, is exactly the moment when what's left of the so-called economy is most likely to implode. If there were still shoeshine boys on Wall Street, they'd be starting their own hedge funds now, and CNBC's Larry Kudlow would be toasting them in the Grill Room of The Four Seasons. What we've seen in the vaunted rally for the last six months is the triumph of wishing over facts, combined with the most arrant market manipulation by floundering banks backstopped by a panicked government -- all pounding sand down a rat-hole of hopeless non-performing debt, while pretending that the machinery of capital finance still grinds on. Despite what a few elderly Mr. Naturals may say about abolishing "capitalism," we're not going to have an advanc

The Marycrest Community Remembered --- and its Post-Vatican II Death

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A Vision on a Hill Recalling Marycrest, an inspiring experiment in Christian community By Jack Holland There is still only one road through Marycrest, the Catholic community that for more than 50 years has lain buried in the woods of Rockland County about 25 miles north of New York City. The woods have thinned somewhat since 1950, when the first Marycrest members dug the foundations for the first house. But the leafy canopy is thick enough on a summer’s evening to remind a visitor of what it must have been like five decades ago when they came, from the Bronx mostly, city slickers with a vision of a Christian life they thought they could realize here in the tranquility of the tree-covered countryside that was Rockland before it was a suburb. Of the 12 original members of the community who shared that vision, only three are still alive -– Alan Hudson, Jack Dermody and Phil O’Brien; two of them, Dermody and O’Brien, still live in Marycrest, in the homes they constructed with their own han

America's Widening Income Gap -- Not Then, Now!

The Widening Gap In America’s Two Tiered Society Emily Spence Thomas Paine’s Corner September 7, 2009 Americans, particularly ones from the middle class, need to realize that there are no core entitlements imparted by their government representatives, nor any other sources. They have none and should adjust their expectations accordingly. If the U.S. populace somehow imagines that its members are viewed any differently than any other populations across the world that are used to produce maximal profits for the top economic class, there’s a rude awakening in store ahead. Further, most legislators simply do not care whether middle and lower class interests are or aren’t well served as long as they, themselves, can somehow make out well in the times ahead. Besides, why should any Americans feel that they deserve to be treated more favorably by the transnational moneyed elites and their government backers than their counterparts across the rest of the world? As A. H. Bill reminds: “The rich
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