Stephen Lendman

Time magazine's May 28 cover features "King Bibi: He's conquered Israel. But will Netanyahu make peace - or war?"

Managing editor Richard Stengel titled his profile "Bibi's Choice." Readers got him sanitized, not accurately presented. Omitted was what they most need to know.

Time included, America's scoundrel media feature managed news and information. Truth and full disclosure are excluded and prohibited.

Netanyahu heads Israel's worst ever government. Bipartisan MKs are racist, hardline rogues. What little opposition exists is weak-kneed. Most go along to get along.

Netanyahu exceeds the worst of Ariel Sharon and previous hardline leaders. He's an embarrassment to democratic governance.

Israel is more hypocrisy than democracy. Few benefit. Most don't. Arab citizens are entirely denied. Arundhati Roy calls India a "limbless, headless, soulless torso left bleeding under the butcher's clever with a flag driven deep into her mutilated heart."

Netanyahu's Israel replicates it. Rogue government rules. Official policies reflect belligerence, violence, racist hate, exploitation, occupation harshness, neoliberal rapaciousness, and war when Israel chooses.

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Ellen Brown

The Social Security program…represents our commitment as a society to the belief that workers should not live in dread that a disability, death, or old age could leave them or their families destitute.
– President Jimmy Carter, December 20, 1977.

[This law] assures the elderly that America will always keep the promises made in troubled times a half century ago…[The Social Security Amendments of 1983 are] a monument to the spirit of compassion and commitment that unites us as a people.
– President Ronald Reagan, April 20, 1983

So said Presidents Carter and Regan, but that was before 1996, when Congress voted to allow federal agencies to offset portions of Social Security payments to collect debts owed to those agencies. (31 U.S.C. §3716). Now we read of horror stories like this:

I’m a 68 year old grandma of 2 young grandchildren. I went to college to upgrade my employment status in 1998 or 1999. I finished in 2000 and at that time had a student loan balance of about 3500.00.

Could not find a job and had to request forbearance to carry me. Over the years I forgot about the loan, dealt with poor health, had brain surgery in 2006 and the collection agents decided to collect for the loan in 2008.

At no time during the 6-7 year gap did anyone remind me or let me know that I could make a minimum payment on the loan. Now that I am on Social Security (have been since I was 62), they have decided to garnishee my SS check to the tune of 15%.

I have not been employed since 2004 and have the two dependents...I don’t dispute that I owed them the $3500.00 but am wondering why they let it build up to somewhere around $17,000/20,000 before they attempted to collect.

Her debt went from $3500 to over $17,000 in 10 years?! How could that be?

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Ellen Brown

Written for Alternet as part of a five-part series titled “New Economic Visions”.

According to both the Mayan and Hindu calendars, 2012 (or something very close) marks the transition from an age of darkness, violence and greed to one of enlightenment, justice, and peace. It’s hard to see that change just yet in the events relayed in the major media, but a shift does seem to be happening behind the scenes; and this is particularly true in the once-boring world of banking.

In the dark age of Kali Yuga, money rules; and it is through banks that the moneyed interests have gotten their power. Banking in an age of greed is fraught with usury, fraud, and gaming the system for private ends. But there is another way to do banking, the neighborly approach of George Bailey in the classic movie “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Rather than feeding off the community, banking can feed the community and local economy.

Today the massive too-big-to-fail banks are hardly doing George Bailey-style loans at all. They are not interested in community lending. They are doing their own proprietary trading—trading for their own accounts—which generally means speculating against local interests. They engage in high-frequency program trading that creams profits off the top of stock market trades; speculation in commodities that drives up commodity prices; leveraged buyouts with borrowed money that can result in mass layoffs and factory closures; and investment in foreign companies that compete against our local companies.

We can’t do much to stop them. They’ve got the power, especially at the federal level. But we can quietly set up an alternative model, and that’s what is happening on various local fronts.

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