Archive for the 'Elite' Category
Is Britain on the Slippery Slope to Dictatorship?
June 26th, 2008Falling headfirst into the abyss would be more accurate. Via: Guardian: Aesthetically, at any rate, it does feel as if some of our science fiction dystopias are gradually coming true. In an estate near me, George Orwell’s CCTV cameras are actually trained on the residents’ doors and driveways. Ray Bradbury’s wall-sized TVs flicker in small […]
Supreme Court Cuts Exxon Punitive Damages for Valdez Oil Spill by 80%
June 26th, 2008Via: San Francisco Chronicle: The Supreme Court, winding up a term of victories for businesses, cut punitive damages for Alaskans harmed by the Exxon Valdez oil spill by 80 percent today in a ruling that may signal new limits on damage awards for victims of corporate wrongdoing. In a 5-3 decision, the justices reduced punitive […]
George Carlin Dies
June 23rd, 2008Via: Time: When the culture began to change in the late 1960s — when the old one-liner comics on the Ed Sullivan Show were looking pretty tired and irrelevant to a younger generation experimenting with drugs and protesting the War in Vietnam — George Carlin was the most important stand-up comedian in America. By the […]
Socialists Made Eugenics Fashionable
June 21st, 2008If you have ever wondered why the crackpot left seems as terrifying as the crackpot right, it’s because they’re both products of the same nuthouse—run by the wealthiest people [sic] on this planet. Via: National Press: An exhibition of the history of those scientific ideas that gave a grimy intellectual veneer to the Nazi genocide […]
Brown Pushes EU to Allow More GMO Animal Feeds
June 20th, 2008Grim. Via: Independent: Gordon Brown is calling on the European Union to relax its rules on importing genetically modified animal feed in a further sign of the Government’s willingness to embrace the controversial technology. Mr Brown believes GM crops are vital to the attempt to cut spiralling food prices. His proposal comes the day after […]
Wealthy Investors Shift Funds from Global Banks to Reduce Risks
June 19th, 2008Via: Bloomberg: High-net worth individuals, those coveted financial-services customers with at least $2 million to invest, are shifting assets from brokerages and large global banks to smaller, more conservative alternatives. “For the first time in my career, I saw concern about the location of one’s assets,” said Robert Balentine, the head of Wilmington Trust Corp.’s […]
Giant Oil Companies to Return to Iraq Under No Bid Contracts
June 19th, 2008Imagine my complete and total shock. Via: IHT: Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power. Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners in […]
Ireland to EU: Enough
June 13th, 2008Via: Telegraph: Ireland has voted No to the Lisbon Treaty, plunging the European Union into a new crisis. With results coming in from across the country, a final result of 52 per cent against and 48 per cent in favour of the treaty was rapidly hardening. A final declaration is not expected until after 4 […]
Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population
June 11th, 2008Via: ieet.org: Connelly decisively confronts the historical baggage of reproductive rights by detailing the confluence of social Darwinists, Malthusians, racist eugenicists, public health advocates and feminists who coalesced around the century-long effort to control world population. Like Betsy Hartman’s pioneering critique Reproductive Rights and Wrongs: The Global Politics of Population Control, Connelly’s principal narrative is […]
New York Fed Chief Urges Global Bank Framework
June 9th, 2008Why now? Below is a screen shot of Total Borrowings of Depository Institutions from the Federal Reserve: So, what happens after the banks default on the loans that they’ve taken out from the Federal Reserve (that unprecedented, nearly vertical blue line on the chart above)? Ah, yes. The phrase, Global Bank Framework might make a […]
