World-News

"People often remark on the perversity of popular support for estate-tax repeal. A majority wants to abolish the tax, even though only the richest 2 percent of households have ever had to pay it. Sabastian Mallaby writes, "Yet this shoot-your-own-foot weirdness is easily explained: Most people just don't know that, under the law's current provisions, a couple can bequeath $4 million without paying a penny to the government."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/060506P.shtml

http://www.counterpunch.org/dotson06032006.html


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

The governmental habit

Foundation for Economic Education
by Sheldon Richman

06/02/06

In 1977 the late economic historian Jonathan R. T. Hughes published a book called The Governmental Habit (updated in 1991 as The Governmental Habit Redux). It showed how pervasive government intervention in the economy has been since colonial times. The title captures an important phenomenon. People are in the habit of looking to government -- the only agency that may legally wield or threaten force against non-aggressors -- to get what they want. While earlier generations of Americans were hesitant to ask the local, state, or national government to do certain things (although perhaps not as hesitant as we thought), few modern Americans have any such scruples...

http://www.fee.org/in_brief/default.asp?id=519


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

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Terrorism: Made in the U.S.A.

By Sheldon Richman

It's a perilous world, as our so-called leaders love to remind us. And for a change they're right. It is a perilous world. But guess who is most responsible for the peril to Americans? Those very same "leaders" and a long line of predecessors.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25700.htm



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Sheldon+Richman

The Federal Election Commission has determined that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's 2000 Senate campaign violated federal campaign finance laws.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/060206K.shtml

Cursor
by Marc W. Herold

05/30/06

A growing disconnect exists between the daily reality of war experienced by the common Afghan and how this war is represented to the American general public by the corporate media, many non-governmental organizations favoring 'humanitarian interventions' around the globe (e.g., Human Rights Watch), and the U.S. military and its defense minions. The war in Afghanistan -- as most other wars beginning with Vietnam -- is waged both on the ground there and in the living rooms here. The recent midnight assault upon the small village of Hajiyan (also called Alizi) along the Arghandab River in Panjwayi District of Kandahar Province provides a case study to explore this disconnect. No doubt many similar cases exist, but the U.S. military media strategy to contain, isolate and stonewall succeeded there. A very graphic way -- a picture is worth a thousand words -- is simply to contrast photos of how the U.S. military is portrayed with Afghan children...

http://cursor.org/stories/grabnews.html



Memo to the victims: You yourself will pay for the crimes of the ruling class

The Power of Narrative
by Arthur Silber

06/18/10

One aspect of the profoundly evil system that has been destroying us for over a hundred years — and make no mistake, it is deeply evil in design, intent and effect, if by evil we designate those actions which destroy the very possibility of thriving life — is especially awful. The authoritarian-corporatist-militarist system victimizes untold millions of individual human beings, as well as many other forms of life as we see again today, both here and abroad. That would be a momentous evil in itself, but this particular evil is unsatisfied with only this first form of destruction. Thus, the victims are targeted a second time, and they are forced to become collaborators in their own destruction...

http://tinyurl.com/26aj9zk


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



http://sharenews.twoday.net/topics/Afghanistan/
http://sharenews.twoday.net/search?q=Kandahar
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Vietnam
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=ruling+class
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=military+complex
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Marc+W.+Herold
http://sharenews.twoday.net/search?q=Arthur+Silber

In These Times
by Silja J. A. Talvi

06/01/06

In May, I traveled to McNeil Island Corrections Center, a medium-custody men's prison in Washington state. I made the journey out there because I had been invited to experience the Native American prisoners' annual Pow Wow, which brings together spiritual elders, prisoners and their families, for a powerfully intense four-hour ceremony. The biggest challenge, as I quickly discovered, wasn't taking in all of the emotion surrounding the event, but having even the briefest moment of privacy for thinking, taking notes, or taking to prisoners. Increasingly, American prison life doesn't allow for privacy -- not even for outsiders like myself. ... I could barely endure it for the half a day I was there. Millions of Americans don't have that choice. Of course, many prisoners are indeed guilty of precisely the crimes they've been charged with -- or some version of the crime for which they've been sentenced. And some are absolutely innocent, doing time on trumped up charges, or because a snitch got out of prison time by 'rolling' on some of his friends...

http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2680/


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Intellectual Conservative
by George de Poor Handlery

06/01/06

The customary reason given for the multiplication of the present's 'asymmetric wars' is that they pit a low technology force against one equipped with the means produced by an advanced economy. This definition limps a bit. Regardless of its emphasis on modernization, the Soviet Union had a third world economy fielding first world weapons. Furthermore, it is true that outfits such as al-Qaeda have currently simple tactical weapons making their activities truly 'asymmetrical.' There are, however, good reasons to assume that 'low-tech' arms will not remain characteristic of the equipment of comparable outfits...

http://tinyurl.com/jbuzw


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

John Nichols discusses the Dixie Chicks' new album as they climb their way back up to number one after taking major hits for speaking out against the invasion of Iraq, ten days before the war began in 2003.

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/060106WA.shtml

Many Russians, don't care much for Americans these days. Like most of the rest of the world.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13456.htm