By Saul Landau
Have mainstream politicians grown so out of synch with the needs of the people that only comedians address the issues? Traditionally, the court jester dared shine a satiric light on imperial problems. In our society, standup comics and “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report”, under the guise of clowning, get away with exposing corporate rip offs and self-serving government agencies. The mainstream media accept these thug operations as national axioms.
Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert don’t joke about tens of millions of people moaning, not whining, from pain of economic ...
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José Luís Fiori
Taken from ALAI-AMLATINA
"One might ask why a strong State would wish to attack a weaker State, but that's not the point. The decisive fact is that, at an interstate level, the larger unit can attack the weaker groups. Since there's no one around who can prevent those attacks, the weaker human groups live in a constant and unavoidable state of insecurity." Norbert Elias, Involvement and Alienation, Bertrand Publishers, Rio de Janeiro, 1990, pg. 214.
The reactivation of the U.S. Navy's Fourth Fleet in the South Atlantic will provoke a radical and permanent change in the United States' military relationship with Latin America. For that reason, the first U.S. explanations made about the fleet's reactivation (it was created in 1943 and dismantled in 1950) to the effect that it was a simple "administrative" decision made for "peaceful, humanitarian and ecological" objectives, were so surprising.
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Cuban radar
Fannie
and Freddie
“Whatever
their sins, Fannie [Mae] and Freddie [Mac] clearly couldn’t
be allowed to fail, but
that’s no argument for letting them go on as they are. Either they
should be forced to make it as private companies or they should be
nationalized. […] If Fannie and Freddie are going to run
up a tab and stick taxpayers with the bill,
why should shareholders profit?”
-- James Surowiecki, The New Yorker