Author's posts
Dec 31 2009
Monkey Nuts Open Thread
A Capuchin Monkey uses a a rock and a log as hammer and anvil to crack palm nuts for food in the cerrado of Brazil.
Banger in a comment today laments the widespread lack of use of simple rules of logic and science among humans lately.
Dec 30 2009
Crony Capitalism, Part 2
Yesterday in Crony Capitalism we heard Dr. Robert Johnson of the United Nations Commission of Experts on International Monetary Reform under the Chairmanship of Joseph Stiglitz, and Executive Director of the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), talking with Real News CEO Paul Jay about the causes of the economic crisis and about some of his suggestions for banking and financial reform.
Today in Part 2 Johnson and Jay continue the discussion addressing the question of whether the White House governs Wall Street or whether it’s the other way around…
Real News Network – December 30, 2009
Wall St: More complicated means more profitable
Robert Johnson: Does the White House govern wall street or the other way around?
Dec 29 2009
Crony Capitalism
Dr. Robert A. Johnson currently serves on the United Nations Commission of Experts on International Monetary Reform under the Chairmanship of Joseph Stiglitz. He is also the Director of Economic Policy for the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute (FERI) in New York. Dr. Johnson was previously a managing director at Soros Fund Management where he managed a global currency, bond and equity portfolio specializing in emerging markets. Prior to that time, Dr. Johnson was a managing director of Bankers Trust Company managing a global currency fund. He also served as Chief Economist of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee under the leadership of Chairman William Proxmire (D. Wisconsin) and before that, he was Senior Economist of the U.S. Senate Budget Committee under the leadership of Chairman Pete Domenici (R. New Mexico).
Here Johnson talks with Paul Jay of The Real News about how we got into the current and continuing economic mess, and makes some suggestions for banking and financial reform and a way out of the mess.
Real News Network – December 29, 2009
Crony capitalism unchanged
Robert Johnson: Only public money pushed the economy back from the cliff; it can all happen again
Dec 24 2009
The ragged men in ragged clothes,
Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow.
Now I think I know what you tried to say to me,
How you suffered for your sanity,
How you tried to set them free.
Dec 22 2009
Goodman & Greenwald On The Senate HCR Bill
HCR Bill Reinforces Corrupt Monopoly Status Health Insurance Industry
Glenn Greenwald talks with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now and breaks down in detail where the HCR bill stands now…
Health Bill Passes Key Senate Hurdle; Legislation Restricts Abortion Funding, Stripped of Public Option, Medicare Expansion
The Senate took a big step toward passing its sweeping healthcare bill early [Monday]. Shortly after 1am, the Senate voted 60-40 along party lines to break a Republican filibuster and approve a motion to move the legislation to final passage later this week. The legislation has no public option, no expansion of Medicare eligibility and includes restrictions on the use of federal funding for abortions. We speak with Salon.com blogger, Glenn Greenwald.
This is apparently Part 1, with Part 2 yet to come…
Dec 21 2009
“Block This Bill”: No Public Option, No Bill
David Swanson, Washington Director of Democrats.com, talks with Paul Jay of The Real News, dissecting the politics of health care reform and the roadblocks in the way of getting to a real reform that serves peoples needs rather than politicians needs and the fact that politicians, even democrats and so-called “progressive” politicians and not just republicans, are the major roadblocks.
Real News Network – December 21, 2009
No public option, no bill?
David Swanson: Will progressives shoot down a healthcare bill that lacks a public option
David Swanson is the creator of ImpeachCheney.org, co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org and Washington Director of Democrats.com A writer and organizer, Swanson has worked for ACORN, the International Labor Communications Association, Dennis Kucinich’s 2004 presidential campaign and many others. Swanson is the author of the new book “Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union” by Seven Stories Press. You can order it and find out when his tour will be in your town: http://davidswanson.org/book.
Dec 20 2009
On The Nature Of Consciousness: It’s ALL Your Responsibility
Samadhi and the God-laugh of creation I found myself one night sitting back with my eyes closed and witnessing what I could never truly describe but what I can best suggest as the dynamic, uncreated, convulsing, primordial energy of the universe; the fiery, orgiastic rippling cauldron of molten prima materia, cascading about within me, and then pouring out into the world as form; and it was upon opening my eyes that I recognized what I had never conceived as plausible- that I was carrying within myself this living, undulating, cosmic clay which I was projecting out and thus manufacturing the world; which is to say, I knew then that …I was God, and that we are all God, effortlessly producing a world yet without a clue of how we are doing it. I was making everything that night. The whole thing. That is, I was making the world, but not the I who the world thought I was, not even the nobody who I was, but the I which lives before the me in all of us; the original self, casting out the glowing, red, swirling energy of creation, out of the core, out of the mind of God, out into the realm of form, figure, and content.
And let me tell you I was laughing. I was laughing a laugh I had never laughed before in my life. I was laughing God’s laugh- the God-laugh which has never known care, nor worry, nor entrapment; the God-laugh which sprays out the universe from the immanent, infinite, incomprehensible bliss of formless consciousness; the great, emancipating God-laugh of hilarious nonexpectation, disbelief, and ambitionless wonder at the impossibility and unavoidable realization that I, God, was creating the miracle of creation.
I had come to exist in the non-existent space. An infinite bridge across a finite chasm. A flame within an inferno. A drop inside the storm.
I was in the storm. I was the storm. And everything else sped up and catapulted through the living stasis of my soul. It was an exhilarating, innocent act of creation; I gave ground in the hollow of my wonder and the world grew through that infinite hole. The unworldly, horrible stillness in which I basked seemed impossibly to produce the song of everything else. How is that possible I haven’t a clue. Not one.
I can only presume that the whole shmeer about becoming what you are, or what you could be- but as yet you never have been- eventually comes right back to where it started- to you. But when it gets there- and let me tell you it gets there, with all the fire and brimstone of your day- there is no ‘you’ left to conceive of it. Because, instead, you conceive it, immaculately conceive it.
That night the prisoner and the warden had changed places. Good and Evil fused into one. And God leapt up for joy inside of me.
The primitive understandings which had so embalmed me all my terrible and fabulous life instantly vaporized away, and the Creator’s eyes …looked through me. The pulsing, primal, fluid medium flowed out of me, I did not know what I was making, nor how I was doing it, but to be sure it was me.
When finally you encounter the Great Soul, you will not hesitate to call it I. You are the source of all things. All of it. Like the root-stock of a great underground rhizome, when you stick your head finally out of the ether, whoever is around you …is you.
Samadhi and the God-laugh of creation, by Jack Haas
Dec 19 2009
Copenhagen: Feeble, Meaningless, and Shameful Climate Sham
President Obama announced on Friday that negotiations among the the world’s nations had resulted in a “meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough” on climate change.
One administration official, however, acknowledged in remarks to the Associated Press that it was only a first step and not sufficient in itself to head off global warming. Going by other reactions to the deal, that would appear to be an understatement.
The Guardian obtained a leaked draft of the agreement and reported that “it says countries ‘ought’ to limit global warming to 2C, but does not bind them to do so.”
The Toronto Star explains, “It is not binding and it does not set new greenhouse-gas reduction targets. Instead, countries are to set their own emission reduction commitments, which would not be legally binding. Those commitments will be the subject of further negotiation, with the aim of a final deal at next year’s summit in Mexico.”
A Greenpeace representative told The Guardian, “This latest draft is so weak as to be meaningless. It’s more like a G8 communique than the legally binding agreement we need. It doesn’t even include a timeline to give it legal standing or an explicit temperature target. It’s hard to imagine our leaders will try to present this document to the world and keep a straight face.”
A representative of World Development Movement used even stronger language, saying, “This summit has been in complete disarray from start to finish, and now appears to be culminating in a shameful and monumental failure that will condemn millions of people around the world to untold suffering. The leaders of rich countries have refused to lead and instead sought to bribe and bully developing nations to sign up to the equivalent of a death warrant.“
Adele Morris, Fellow, Global Economy and Development and Policy Director for Climate and Energy Economics, Global Economy and Development at The Brookings Institution and Kurt Davies, research director at Greenpeace USA, talk to Paul Jay about the Copenhagen “Climate Sham”:
Real News Network – December 19, 2009
Without US commitment Copenhagen breaks down
Dec 19 2009
What Is This Thing?
The UK Telegraph Friday December 18, 2009
UFO pyramid reported over Kremlin
A giant pyramid which appears to be a UFO hovering over the Kremlin has caused frenzied speculation in Russia that it is an alien spacecraft.
The object has been compared to an Imperial Cruiser in the Star Wars films and witnesses estimated it could be up to a mile wide.
Two film clips exist which appear to show the same object and footage has been repeatedly playing on Russian television news channels.
The shots, one taken at night from a car and one during the day, were both filmed by amateurs.
The ‘craft’ was said to have hovered for hours over Red Square in the Russian capital.
The clips of the ‘invasion’ have gone to the top of the country’s version of YouTube.
The identity of the shape has not been confirmed. Russian reports ruled out a UFO but police refused to comment.