World Prout Assembly

650,000 Americans Joined Credit Unions Last Month - More Than In All Of 2010 Combined

Sun, 06 Nov 2011 03:39:29 -0500

To put that in perspective, there were only 600,000 new members for credit unions in all of 2010. "These results indicate that consumers are clearly making a smarter choice by moving to credit unions where, on average, they will save about $70 a year in fewer or no fees, lower rates on loans and higher return on savings," said CUNA President Bill Cheney.

Irom Sharmila Solidarity Campaign Growing In India

Sun, 06 Nov 2011 03:36:38 -0500

She caught the imagination of the nation on October 2, 2006, when she held hunger strike at the historic Jantar Mantar, New Delhi and was joined by the students, human rights activists and other concerned citizens. She was arrested by the Delhi police for attempting suicide. Since then support to her is growing steadfastly. On June 25, 2011, a candle light solidarity prayer was held at the Rajghat New Delhi where approximately 200 people participated from all walks of life. It is part of this growing support that Irom Sharmila Solidarity Campaign is being launched in India and under it various programmes and action are being organized through out the country.

Chicago 1968, Seattle l999, And Now Occupy 2011

Sun, 06 Nov 2011 03:26:30 -0500

Two of the strongest scenes in the film involve that policeman and one of the activist leaders. The policeman chases the young man and beats him without mercy, as revenge for his child's death, until another policeman pulls him off,. He later goes to the jail to apologize. "I don't blame you," the activist says, facing a third strike and life in prison. He stays on the high ground. His target is the WTO, not the police. "If you don't stand up and fight, everything that is beautiful will be taken away," one of the women jailed in the Seattle film says to her partner, both of them bleeding from the police brutality.

Solidarity Statement from Cairo

Sun, 06 Nov 2011 03:19:48 -0500

"Those who said that the Egyptian revolution was peaceful did not see the horrors that police visited upon us, nor did they see the resistance and even force that revolutionaries used against the police to defend their tentative occupations and spaces: by the government's own admission; 99 police stations were put to the torch, thousands of police cars were destroyed, and all of the ruling party's offices around Egypt were burned down. Barricades were erected, officers were beaten back and pelted with rocks even as they fired tear gas and live ammunition on us. But at the end of the day on the 28 th of January they retreated, and we had won our cities."

Cornered in Free Libya

Sun, 06 Nov 2011 03:07:05 -0500

"Raise your head, you're a free Libyan", the group chanted before a stage set up for the recent celebrations. That's the very slogan that became almost an anthem for the rebels who rose against Gaddafi. Tempers flared amid the group of armed soldiers guarding the central square. "I should kill you all for what you did to us in Misrata," shouted a young man in camouflage fatigues. The protesters are from Tawargha, 60 km south of Misrata, that was known as a Gaddafist base.

Vicious Triangle Forming Against Iran

Sun, 06 Nov 2011 02:59:13 -0500

In the final analysis, the US hidden agenda in creating Iranophobia is to raise a specter of a nuclear apocalypse in the world, invade the country in alliance with Israel and the UK and other nefarious powers and eventually get their hands on Iran's myriad resources which they have coveted for so long. - Ismail Salami

Arrests follow Occupy Oakland demonstrations

Sun, 06 Nov 2011 02:38:58 -0500

There have now been more than three thousand arrests since the Occupy movement began in September. Elsewhere in the US on Wednesday, protesters in Rochester and Seattle were arrested by police under the Democratic mayors of those cities. Police in Rochester, New York arrested 16 protesters on Wednesday and over 50 since last Friday. In Seattle under Democratic Mayor Michael McGinn, at least three people protesting the CEO of JPMorgan Chase at a Sheraton Hotel where he was a keynote speaker were arrested, and six people were arrested earlier that day outside a Chase Bank. In both cases, the police made heavy use of pepper spray on large groups of protesters. -David Brown

The Fattening of the Nation: The Politics of Obesity

Sun, 30 Oct 2011 17:11:11 -0500

This overweight population breaks down as follows: 34.2 percent are overweight, 33.8 percent are obese and 5.7 percent are extremely obese. Scarier still, approximately 17 percent (or 12.5 million) of children and adolescents aged 2 to 19 years are obese. One can only assume, as the economic crisis deepens, this situation is getting worse. Obesity has social consequences. The Archives of Internal Medicine reported in 2010 that the U.S. spends an estimated $147 billion annually treating obesity-related illnesses. A half-century ago, President Eisenhower identified the military-industrial complex as a threat to the nation; it now dominates politics and the economy. As the 21st century unfolds, an obesity-industrial complex can be identified. Like its military compatriots, its influence on America's body politic is no less consequential. - David Rosen

Dick Cheney's Song of America

Sun, 30 Oct 2011 16:53:02 -0500

The Plan was published in unclassified form most recently under the title of Defense Strategy for the 1990s, (pdf) as Cheney ended his term as secretary of defense under the elder George Bush in early 1993, but it is, like "Leaves of Grass," a perpetually evolving work. It was the controversial Defense Planning Guidance draft of 1992 - from which Cheney, unconvincingly, tried to distance himself - and it was the somewhat less aggressive revised draft of that same year. This June it was a presidential lecture in the form of a commencement address at West Point, and in July it was leaked to the press as yet another Defense Planning Guidance (this time under the pen name of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld). It will take its ultimate form, though, as America's new national security strategy - and Cheney et al. will experience what few writers have even dared dream: their words will become our reality. - David Armstrong

Occupy The World.. And The Values Revolution

Sun, 30 Oct 2011 12:26:46 -0500

The "Occupy" crowd is beautifully named. They want to "occupy" their space, their time, their lives. They--we--do not measure our lives' worth in terms of the billions of dollars we have never amassed. We ask: How is money made? ("Right Livelihood," we recall, is one of the essential aspects of Buddha's Noble Eight-fold Path!) What good has come of the wealth? ("Lay not up worldly treasures," the Essene Jesus advised.) What lives were improved? How? Was the planet made more liveable, more beautiful? We ask: What is the measure of a life worth living; and, yes--what is the meaning of life? It's a question as old as Plato and Aristotle, as old as the Hebrew prophets and the Sumerian cuneiform tablets. It is a much greater question than the question of happiness... because enduring happiness depends on it. - Gary Corseri

How the 99 Percent Really Lost Out - in Far Greater Ways Than the Occupy Protesters Imagine

Sun, 30 Oct 2011 09:20:21 -0500

The truly central and demanding question is obviously this: If most of what we have today is attributable to knowledge advances that we all inherit in common, why, specifically, should this gift of our collective history not more generously benefit all members of society? The top 1 percent of US households now receives far more income than the bottom 150 million Americans combined. The richest 1 percent of households owns nearly half of all investment assets (stocks and mutual funds, financial securities, business equity, trusts, nonhome real estate). A mere 400 individuals at the top have a combined net worth greater than the bottom 60 percent of the nation taken together. If America's vast wealth is mainly a gift of our common past, how, specifically, can such disparities be justified? - Gar Alperwitz

Elders a (Labor) Force for Social Change

Sun, 30 Oct 2011 09:14:41 -0500

How about inventing a gap year for grown-ups, a time when they could take a break, volunteer at home or abroad, or try a new career direction? A gap year--perhaps financed by a new tax-exempt savings vehicle we could call the Individual Purpose Account-- could be a source of renewal for those embarking on a new career chapter. What about midlife fellowships for those seeking roles that combine purpose with a paycheck? And why stop there: Let's rethink our entire education system. Why cram so much learning into our teens and early 20s when we may want to move in a whole new direction in our 50s, 60s, and 70s?

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 22:57:14 -0500

For those who think the references to slavery and use of the 13th Amendment are excessive, remember the words of Frederick Douglass, the great abolitionist and former slave. Douglass often made direct comparisons between the treatment and use of other animals and that of himself. "When purchased, my old master probably thought as little of my advent, as he would have thought of the addition of a single pig to his stock! Like a wild young working animal, I am to be broken to the yoke of a bitter and life-long bondage. Indeed, I now saw, in my situation, several points of similarity with that of the oxen. They were property, so was I; they were to be broken, so was I; Covey was to break me, I was to break them; break and be broken - such is life." - A. Cockburn

The New Libya: Assassination, Ruination, Broken Promises and Body Snatching...

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 15:44:35 -0500

If events of the past few days are anything to go by, the UN-NATO insurgent allies are set to bring a grim, lawless, murderous and fundamentalist future to the "New Libya." Polygamy is set to return as the disenfranchisement of women, the West's new friend and interim leader, Mr Jalil has declared. (He didn't put it quite like that, but the particular interpretation of Sharia Law he espouses, does.) A country which had health, education and welfare services of which most could only dream(i) is also set to instantly revert fifty years. Flying King Idris' flag, Libya is being plunged seamlessly back to his era of illiteracy and neglect. It will not get better. Britain is already demanding that bombarded, bereaved, largely broken Libya, pay compensation for its "liberation." No, not satire, see:ii. - Felicity Arbuthnot

OWS Has Lessons to Learn From Past Movements

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 22:31:15 -0500

In challenging the 1%, OWS has taken the moral high ground at a time when our country seems to have lost its moral compass. The growing movement holds corporate elites and their political representatives responsible for the moral failings exposed by the great and growing inequalities between the 1% and the 99%, and the widespread suffering of mass unemployment and home foreclosures in the midst of highly concentrated personal wealth and political power. OWS challenges the deep immorality and total unacceptability of the economic and political arrangements that generate and secure this inequality. - Michael Zweig