Stephen Lendman

When economic stimulus and productive investment are most needed, public spending cuts are coming, G20 governments agreeing to cut deficits and balance budgets, what economist Michael Hudson calls "fiscal suicide, (months into) a carefully orchestrated financial war against the 'real' economy."

Begun in Washington, Obama, in his first State of the Union address, announced plans to "freeze government spending for three years," starting in 2011, and said he'll establish a bipartisan fiscal commission by executive order, to cut the deficit by imposed austerity - social spending cuts, including Medicare, not defense, banker bailouts, or other handouts to corporate favorites, how Washington works under both parties, anti-populist by any standard, anti-productive when large stimulus is needed to revive the cratering economy.

Yet on February 18, 2010, a White House press release announced the commission's establishment - a "bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform," co-chaired by two deficit hawks, former Republican Senate Whip Alan Simpson and former Clinton administration White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles, heading an 18-member team stacked with like-minded members, Democrat and Republican austerity advocates against Medicare, Social Security, and other social spending.

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The American Dream

Are we really a free nation? The truth is that it is really hard to argue that we are "free" when our currency system and our economy are run by an unelected privately-owned central bank. You see, the truth is that the U.S. government does not "print money" whenever it wants. Under the current system, in order to get more U.S. currency, the U.S. government has to borrow it. The Federal Reserve creates the new currency out of thin air and then either keeps the "U.S. Treasury bonds" they get in return from the U.S. government or they sell them off to others. But what kind of sense does that make? Why does a "free government" have to go into debt to print its own currency? It is the U.S. government that should be printing U.S. currency - not a privately-owned bank called the Federal Reserve. The truth is that the Federal Reserve is about as "federal" as Federal Express is. And no unelected private central bank should be "running" our economy. Actually the free market should be running our economy, but if anyone is going to run it, it should at least be the government that we have elected. But instead we have a group of unelected bureaucrats making our interest rate decisions, determining our money supply levels and deciding which of their friends get big bailouts. That isn't the American Dream! What kind of "democracy" and "freedom" is that? The sad truth is that as long as we allow an unelected privately-owned central bank to run our economy we will not be truly free.

The reality is that the Federal Reserve desperately needs to be audited. The Federal Reserve has never undergone a true comprehensive audit since it was created back in 1913. The truth is that we have very little idea of what is really going on inside that institution. And yet they control our currency and our economy.

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Stephen Lendman

[Detailed information about him can be accessed through THIS link.]

He's the 1967-founded Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine's (PFLP) General Secretary, one of thousands of Palestinian political prisoners, sentenced in 2002 to 30 years in prison "for a range of 'security-related' political offenses,' " including his prominence in a prohibited organization, a 1993 document stating that:

"The strategic aim of the PFLP's struggle alongside the other forces of the Palestinian revolution is to liberate Palestine from Zionist colonial occupation. The PFLP aims for the establishment of a democratic state on the entire Palestinian land, with its capital in Jerusalem. This state would guarantee legal rights and equality of opportunity to all citizens, without discrimination on the grounds of religion, sex, belief or color. It would oppose Zionism and imperialism and be oriented towards democratic unity with other Arab countries."

"Achieving this aim presupposes a radical solution for the Palestinian national cause and readiness to wage a prolonged, complicated and difficult struggle (against Zionism), a racist, aggressive, expansionist, settler-colonial entity which aims at elimination of our people." Great sacrifices are needed to prevent it."

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Mohamed El-Moctar El-Shinqiti

Aggression immersed in victimhood is a striking reality of the Israeli
discourse [Getty]

An American academic once told me: "Many people in the Islamic world think America does not believe in human rights, but they are wrong; America believes in human rights indeed, the problem is the American definition of human."

In other words: the American definition of 'human' is not a universal one. This is not purely an American characteristic; every culture faces the challenge of broadening its cultural limits and universalising its moral norms.

But among all human cultures and ideologies, the Israeli case is unique in its double standard.

Criminality wrapped in self-righteousness and aggression immersed in victimhood are a few striking characteristics of the Israeli reality and discourse.

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Larry Pinkney

“You must be the historians who keep this lesson alive because this story isn’t about one day, one event, one person, or even one lifetime… Pass this knowledge. Don’t forget. Not ever.” ~ Leonard Peltier

A vast amount of this nation’s populace is as addicted to media hype as they are to oil. In this instance however, it is the government and the corporate media who are the kingpin pushers and the U.S. populace who are their hooked junkies.

Corporate government media spin, subterfuge, diversion, and outright lies are the continuing hallmarks of this nation’s institutions and of this present dishonest and insidiously pathetic Barack Obama presidency of unmitigated disaster. The Government and corporate media would not tell the truth even if their lives depended on it. Unfortunately, it is not their lives but those of everyday Black, Red, Brown, White, and Yellow peoples in this nation and throughout the world, who daily are being sacrificed on the bloody alter of chicanery and political expediency, on behalf of the wealthy elite.

Pertaining to the election and installment of Barack Obama as U.S. president almost a year and a half ago, a recent article disingenuously lamented that “we voted for a [hybrid Toyota] Prius but instead got a tank.” However, the fact is that the instant that virtually the entire U.S. corporate media and corporate / military establishment began throwing their support behind the then U.S. presidential candidacy of Barack Obama, even a dead man could have smelled a rat. In yet another recent article, a so-called ‘progressive’ bemoaned the lack of serious coverage of the U.S. Social Forum in Detroit, Michigan, by the “mainstream” media, totally disregarding the obvious reality that this nation does not have a “mainstream” media. It has an embedded corporate-stream one.

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