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Bill Totten | 26 May 14:33
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[BillTottenWeblog] There Is a Way!

Beyond the Big, Bad Corporation

by Tara Lohan

AlterNet (May 21 2012)

As our political system sputters, a wave of innovative thinking and bold experimentation is quietly
sweeping away outmoded economic models. In New Economic Visions, a special five-part AlterNet series
edited by economics editor Lynn Parramore in partnership with political economist Gar Alperovitz of the
Democracy Collaborative, creative thinkers come together to explore the exciting ideas and projects
that are shaping the philosophical and political vision of the movement that could take our economy back.

In September 2011, two Appalachian women traveled to Delaware to deliver a petition to the state's
Attorney General Beau Biden. Betty Harrah and Lorelei Scarbro represented thousands who believed that
the business charter for coal-mining company Massey Energy should be repealed. The company, mostly
operating in Appalachia but incorporated in Delaware, has violated the Clean Water Act 60,000 times. An
investigation commissioned by the governor of West Virginia found Massey could have prevented the
explosion that claimed the lives of 29 miners, among them Harrah's brother, at the Upper Big Branch Mine in 2010.

Massey, they contended, was simply too dangerous to be in business. But their pleas fell on deaf ears. The
company plugs along, despite its shoddy environmental and safety records, churning out profits for its
parent company, Alpha Natural Resources.

To many, Massey is not simply one bad apple, but part of an economic system heavy with rotten fruit.
Companies like Lehman Brothers, Bank of America, Countrywide, BP, and Walmart epitomize the relentless
drive of corporations to maximize profit above everything else, including safety, fair working
conditions, clean air and water, healthy communities, and common decency. In doing so, the very word
"corporation" has become a dirty word.

Forget bad apples, perhaps we should just raze the entire orchard, right?
(Continue reading)

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Suzanne de Kuyper | 26 May 12:13
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Fwd: Imposing White "Eurocentric" Education on Mexican-American Students in Tucson: The Suppression of History

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Suzanne de Kuyper <suzannedk <at> gmail.com>
Date: Sat, May 26, 2012 at 12:12 PM
Subject: Fwd: Imposing White "Eurocentric" Education on Mexican-American
Students in Tucson: The Suppression of History
To: a-list <at> greenhouse.economics.utah.edu

This is a form of the genocidal erasure of the American Indian, the
Hawaiian chieftains and society, the erasure of a strong, proud African
American  culture beside the Anglo American one, not behind it. It is a
powerful form of genocide as if Mexican-American identity is one poisonous
to the world that must be eradicated!  Not unlike what the Third Reich and
French President Sarkozy have done to the Roma peoples. What the US, the EU
and Israel are doing to the two billion Islamists.  We are one human
species, Fascism is species instinct, not ethnic.  Fascism tied to nuclear
becomes extinction of the whole species.  The laws that the US is insisting
must be removed must be reinstated.  The US must be stopped. Arizona is as
good a place to start as any.  Suzanne

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: <suzannedk <at> yahoo.com>
Date: Sat, May 26, 2012 at 12:40 AM
Subject: Imposing White "Eurocentric" Education on Mexican-American
Students in Tucson: The Suppression of History
To: suzannedk <at> gmail.com

pass

http://truth-out.org/news/item/9374-imposing-white-eurocentric-education-on-mexican-american-students-in-tucson-the-suppression-of-history#.T8AKasY4GZg.email
(Continue reading)

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Suzanne de Kuyper | 26 May 11:24
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Fwd: Mitt Romney May Place Top Oil Lobbyist in Charge of His White House

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Suzanne de Kuyper <suzannedk <at> gmail.com>
Date: Sat, May 26, 2012 at 11:24 AM
Subject: Fwd: Mitt Romney May Place Top Oil Lobbyist in Charge of His White
House
To: a-list <at> greenhouse.economics.utah.edu

Remember the Gulf of Mexico below-sea cavern oil eruption, no spill, that
went on and on and on?  Remember the chemicals spread by US military
planes, Corex, banned in any E.U. ocean use as pure poison, dropped by the
ton to join with and force the oil to sink, often in the dead of night so
doing so could not be filmed with the tons of dead sea-life, such as whales
and porpoises, clogging the waters for miles?  How too, not to be filmed,
were the plane operations to lift the tons of dismembered sea-life into
wide body U.S. Navy planes to take to incinerators that burned the bodies
up for weeks? Also at the dead of night, fighter planes on guard to shoot
them down, in case an inquisitive camera or two came by? By Obama's order,
for sure, but what would Mitt do?  Ron Paul might do something sane and of
common sense to protect us and the world.  What an incredible shocker of a
gift that would be!  "Shock and Awe" for real.   Suzanne

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: <suzannedk <at> yahoo.com>
Date: Sat, May 26, 2012 at 12:38 AM
Subject: Mitt Romney May Place Top Oil Lobbyist in Charge of His White House
To: suzannedk <at> gmail.com

http://truth-out.org/news/item/9381-mitt-romney-may-place-top-oil-lobbyist-in-charge-of-his-white-house#.T8AJ3eIxo7g.email

---
(Continue reading)

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Bill Totten | 26 May 03:41
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[BillTottenWeblog] It's a Rich Man's World

How billionaire backers pick America's candidates

by Thomas Frank

Harper's Magazine Essay (April 2012)

While visiting Kansas City last December, I read a local newspaper story lamenting the gradual
transformation of Missouri into a reliably Republican citadel - a red state, as we like to say. In the past,
I read, Missouri had been different from its more partisan neighbors. It had been a "bellwether" state
that "reflected national trends", rather than delivering votes for any particular party. But now all
that was over, and I assumed the article would go on to mourn the death of judicious public reason - the
tradition of giving rival arguments a hearing and testing them with that famous "Show Me" skepticism.

I was wrong. Forget the death of open-mindedness. What was actually being mourned that day in the Kansas
City Star was a possible loss of advertising revenue by the state's TV stations. If Missouri was no longer a
battleground state, then the two parties and their various backers would no longer fight their expensive
electronic war over the airwaves between Saint Louie and Saint Joe, and "spending on TV ads in the state
[would] plummet".

This was the concern, not some airy nonsense about ideology or polarization. That would have been a mere
matter of opinion, while this was so hard and so real it came with a price tag. Here is what Missouri's
creeping Kansification was going to cost: in the last election cycle, the national candidates and their
allied PACs blew almost $21 million on advertising in the state. Given Missouri's tilt to the right, every
last penny of a similar windfall might be lost. Even worse: Missourians had squandered their
battleground status just before what promises to be the biggest-spending political year ever. As the
paper noted, campaign expenditures are predicted to skyrocket between now and November.

Thanks to their own ideological stubbornness, Missourians - or, more accurately, Missouri broadcasters
- will now miss out on all that. The Star reassured readers chat the hammer blows inflicted on their local
FCC license holders "would not be fatal". Yet the ultimate lesson was clear: political conviction comes
(Continue reading)

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Suzanne de Kuyper | 25 May 19:22
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Fwd: The man with too many faces

Real power never has to ask, never.  Looks like he went too far and power
has been pulled.  Suzanne

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Suzanne de Kuyper <suzannedk <at> gmail.com>
Date: Fri, May 25, 2012 at 7:20 PM
Subject: Fwd: The man with too many faces
To: a-list <at> greenhouse.economics.utah.edu

Well, well, no wonder Steve Jobs is no longer with us billions who loved
and lionised him.  Suzanne

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Brasscheck TV <news <at> brasschecktv.com>
Date: Thu, May 24, 2012 at 11:03 AM
Subject: The man with too many faces
To: Suzanne <suzannedk <at> gmail.com>

===========================================
NOTE to Brasscheck TV subscribers:
Anytime you want to unsubscribe just click
the link at the very bottom of this e-mail.
===========================================

Suzanne,

There's President Obama, Candidate Obama, Obama the Author, even a
Rebellious Youth Obama, and more.

But these different personas don't demonstrate the evolution of a
(Continue reading)

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Suzanne de Kuyper | 25 May 07:30
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Fwd: GE Apples Coming to Canada?

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Suzanne de Kuyper <suzannedk <at> gmail.com>
Date: Fri, May 25, 2012 at 7:30 AM
Subject: Fwd: [R-G] GE Apples Coming to Canada?
To: a-list <at> greenhouse.economics.utah.edu

Rejecting these GE seeds and seedlings is almost impossible to stop they
are so far along.  Draconian, universal, laws must be made to criminalise
the process by which they are made. Then create the forces needed to stop
them and reverse the present damage, although that may no longer be
possible. One of the things needed most is a free and open internet world
wide, which the US made ACTA, TPP, SOPA ect. will ensure does not remain
available just in order to sell those very seeds world wide!  Think that
one through, please. Suzanne

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Richard Menec <bookfind <at> mymts.net>
Date: Fri, May 25, 2012 at 2:58 AM
Subject: [R-G] GE Apples Coming to Canada?
To: Suzanne de Kuyper <suzannedk <at> gmail.com>
Cc: RAD TIMES <resist <at> comcast.net>, RAD GREEN <
rad-green <at> greenhouse.economics.utah.edu>, ICH <emailtom <at> cox.net>, ALTERNET <
feedback <at> alternet.org>, COMMON DREAMS <editor <at> commondreams.org>,
COUNTERCURRENTS <editor <at> countercurrents.org>

http://climate-connections.**org/2012/05/24/ge-apples-**
coming-to-canada-apples-that-**wont-go-brown-coming-soon/<http://climate-connections.org/2012/05/24/ge-apples-coming-to-canada-apples-that-wont-go-brown-coming-soon/>

BY GLOBAL JUSTICE ECOLOGY PROJECT | MAY 24, 2012
(Continue reading)

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Suzanne de Kuyper | 25 May 07:20
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Fwd: The largest demonstration in Canadian history

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Suzanne de Kuyper <suzannedk <at> gmail.com>
Date: Fri, May 25, 2012 at 7:20 AM
Subject: Fwd: [R-G] The largest demonstration in Canadian history
To: a-list <at> greenhouse.economics.utah.edu

This is the first serious challenge to the Israeli/Harper Government.  I
categorise this government Israeli as they have come out more than the US
to champion all Israeli wish lists that now dominate the US/EU world agenda
forcing the five hundred million of the EU and the 300 million of the US to
wage nuclear, regime change, genocidal, wars on the Middle East, Africa,
Russia, and China, or on an approximate total of 6 billion humans by less
than one billion humans.  A war that will only be won by species
extinction.  I think the Montreal students got that. Twenty-first century
empire means just this, no-one will survive.

Bhopal, The Gulf of Mexico BP oil eruption, Chernoble and Fukushima, large
drones, butterfly drones, the nuclear bombs dropped as normal munitions by
European Union North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member vassal states of
the United States with the full approval of the United Nations set up to
promote peace, the seeds of life, seeds engineered genetically to kill all
who live on their produce sold as if normal by the US State Department
itself. The most powerful country in the world.  We in the streets are the
only chance to stop the inevitable end of the species.  The brain dead
infants of Fallujah, Iraq from the US Uranium bombs in 2003-2004 will be
repeated in the infants born after the 2011 tons of enriched Uranium bombs
dropped by the US/NATO/UK in 2011.  They are our future.

Canada was where the US war protestor students used to flee 30 years ago
the induction into the US military machine in order to survive and have
(Continue reading)

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Suzanne de Kuyper | 25 May 06:39
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Fwd: 'Non-polio' paralysis increases after polio vaccinations

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Suzanne de Kuyper <suzannedk <at> gmail.com>
Date: Fri, May 25, 2012 at 12:21 AM
Subject: Fwd: 'Non-polio' paralysis increases after polio vaccinations
To: a-list <at> greenhouse.economics.utah.edu

An example of the common and careless homicidal tendencies of the US
International Corporations.  Just as Westinghouse makes Nuclear reactors
just for export, more cheaply made with short cuts in making it to shave
expenses, like the defective ones they had built in Fukushima 40 years ago,
medical corporations do the same thing, with the same results, horrible
deaths.  They have never, ever, been held accountable. Just imagine what
our globe will look like after one thousand years of Corporate rule.
 Please.  Suzanne

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Brasscheck TV <news <at> brasschecktv.com>
Date: Thu, May 24, 2012 at 6:35 PM
Subject: 'Non-polio' paralysis increases after polio vaccinations
To: Suzanne <suzannedk <at> gmail.com>

===========================================
NOTE to Brasscheck TV subscribers:
Anytime you want to unsubscribe just click
the link at the very bottom of this e-mail.
===========================================

Suzanne,

Even as they tell us that polio is being eradicated largely due to
(Continue reading)

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Richard Menec | 25 May 02:58

GE Apples Coming to Canada?

http://climate-connections.org/2012/05/24/ge-apples-coming-to-canada-apples-that-wont-go-brown-coming-soon/

BY GLOBAL JUSTICE ECOLOGY PROJECT | MAY 24, 2012

GE Apples Coming to Canada?
Apples that won't go brown coming soon?

Note: A new movement against GMO foods, trees and other crops is emerging 
just in time to confront industry's attempts to shove more unlabeled 
engineered foods down our throats.  What will be the impact of these GE 
apples on children?  This is unknown.  The GE industry doesn't test for the 
risks and the government rarely requires them to, which is why citizen 
vigilance is crucial.  See the previous post about the town of Richmond, BC 
rejecting GMO foods and trees.

-The GJEP Team

Cross-Posted from the Toronto Sun, MAY 23, 2012

A new genetically engineered apple may be making its way to Canada. 
(Handout) Apples that won't go brown could be could be planted in Canada as 
early as 2014.

Canadian biotech company Okanagan Specialty Fruits Inc. has applied to the 
Canadian Food Inspection Agency for permission to grow and market its 
'arctic granny' and 'arctic golden' apples.

The genetically engineered fruit, initially developed in Australia, was 
created with its gene responsible for enzymatic browning turned off, or 
"silenced."
(Continue reading)

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Bill Totten | 25 May 01:51
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[BillTottenWeblog] False Choices

by Damien Perrotin

A Breton's perspective on the world

The view from Brittany (March 10 2012)

It is election time in France. Five weeks from now, we will elect our president for the next five years and
unless he does something really stupid, the socialist pretender, Francois Hollande, will win in a
landslide - albeit not necessarily with the insane margin polls predict. The most striking feature of
this election, however, is not the unpopularity of the incumbent president but the similarity of their worldview.

French Presidents are chosen in a two-round runoff election, with the candidates falling into four
categories. First you have the two or three contenders, who have a realistic chance of being elected.
Generally those are the candidate of the Socialist Party and whoever dominates the moderate right at that
particular moment. This time it will be Francois Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy.

Then you have the outsiders who most probably won't make it to the second round, but might under the right
circumstances. This time, it will be Francois Bayrou (center), Jean-Luc-Melenchon (Left Front) and
Marine Le Pen (National Front).

Behind them stand the marginal candidates : Eva Joly (Greens), Jacques Cheminade (the local Larouchie)
Nathalie Arthaud (troskyist), Philippe Poutou (another brand of troskyism) and Dominique de Villepin
(moderate right, with a serious grudge against Sarkozy).

Finally, there are those who will be denied ballot access because they don't have at least 500 signed
presentations from elected officials. They are too numerous to be listed and their programs are often
masterworks of involuntary comedy.

All of them, however, want to restart growth.
(Continue reading)

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Bill Totten | 24 May 15:24
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[BillTottenWeblog] The Twilight of Protest

by John Michael Greer

The Archdruid Report (May 16 2012)

Over the last four months or so, as this blog has sketched out the trajectory of empires in general, and then
traced the intricate history of America's empire in particular, I've been avoiding a specific issue.
That avoidance hasn't come from any lack of awareness on my part, and if it had been, comments and emails
from readers asking when I was going to get around to discussing the issue would have taken care of that in
short order. No, it's simply a natural reluctance to bring up a subject that has to be discussed sooner or
later, but is guaranteed to generate far more heat than light.

The subject? The role of protest movements in the decline and fall of the American empire.

That's an issue sufficiently burdened with tangled emotions and unstated agendas that even finding a good
starting place for the discussion is a challenge. Fortunately I have some assistance, courtesy of Owen
Lloyd, who is involved with an organization called Deep Green Resistance and recently wrote a review {1}
of my book The Blood of the Earth (2012). It's by no means a bad review. Quite the contrary, Lloyd made a
serious effort to grapple with the issues that book tried to raise, and by and large succeeded; where he
failed, the misunderstandings were all but inevitable, given the differences between his views and
mine. Thus it's all the more striking that his review points up so precisely the reasons why protest
movements have by and large been spinning their wheels in empty air for thi
 rty years, and will almost certainly continue to do so while America's empire crashes and burns around them.

The point that matters here is the review's denunciation of one of the central points of the book, which is
that those who want to change the world need to start by changing their own lives. According to Lloyd, we
don't have time for that, since the biosphere is in dire peril; what's needed instead are the standard
tools of contemporary activism - "direct action, community building, and outreach", in his convenient
summary. His reasoning is logical enough, as far as it goes; if your house is on fire, after all, it's a
little late to install sprinklers and smoke alarms. If the situation is as urgent as Lloyd claims, all
other considerations have to take a back seat to an all-out effort to deal with the immediate crisis with
(Continue reading)

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