Michael Moore: America's teacher

On September 17, in the midst of the publicity blitz for his cinematic takedown of the capitalist order, Moore talked with Nation columnist Naomi Klein by phone about the film, the roots of our economic crisis and the promise and peril of the present political moment.

Michael Moore: America's teacher | rabble.ca

Summit of the South: African and South American leaders meet

Creating a new Radio of the South, formalizing the Bank of the South, criticizing the make-up of the UN Security Council and supporting Honduran President Manuel Zelaya were among the outcomes at the second Africa-South American Summit (ASA) that was held this weekend on Margarita Island, Venezuela.


Summit of the South: African and South American leaders meet | rabble.ca

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Michael Moore on Democracy Now!. Good interview!

Spoiling Manuel Zelaya's homecoming

Now that Manuel Zelaya has returned to Honduras, the coup government – after first denying that he was there – has unleashed a wave of repression to prevent people from gathering support for their elected president.

This is how US secretary of state Hillary Clinton described the first phase of this new repression Monday night in a press conference: "I think that the government imposed a curfew, we just learned, to try to get people off the streets so that there couldn't be unforeseen developments."

Spoiling Manuel Zelaya's homecoming | Mark Weisbrot | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

G-20: Globalization Goes Bankrupt

Chris Hedges writes about the upcoming G20 meeting in Pittsburgh.


“The leaders of the G-20 are meeting to try and salvage their power and money after everything that has gone wrong,” said Benedicto Martinez Orozco, co-president of the Mexican Frente Autentico del Trabajo (FAT), who is in Pittsburgh for the protests. “This is what this meeting is about.”

G-20: Globalization Goes Bankrupt

Happy birthday, Brigitte Bardot

After the internation uproar and scandal provoked by the 1956 film And God Created Woman, Brigitte Bardot said she wished she had never been born. Now, as Bardot – "the French export as important as Renault cars" according to Charles de Gaulle – turns 75 on Monday, exhibitions at national museums and private galleries, alongside tributes at fashion weeks in Paris, London and New York, are throwing the spotlight back on to one of the last living icons of the 20th century.

Happy birthday, Brigitte Bardot | Film | The Guardian

'shock therapy' for world leaders on environment

The United Nations is planning a form of diplomatic shock therapy for world leaders this week in the hope of injecting badly needed urgency into negotiations for a climate change treaty that, it is now widely acknowledged, are dangerously adrift.

As the digital counter ticking off the hours to the Copenhagen summit – which had been supposed to seal the deal on climate change – hit 77 days today, progress at the UN summit in New York is seen as vital. Nearly 100 heads of state and government are to attend the summit, for which a pared-down format has been devised.

Climate change: UN plans 'shock therapy' for world leaders on environment | Environment | The Observer

Why I Threw the Shoe | CommonDreams.org

by Muntazer al-Zaidi

I am free. But my country is still a prisoner of war. There has been a lot of talk about the action and about the person who took it, and about the hero and the heroic act, and the symbol and the symbolic act. But, simply, I answer: what compelled me to act is the injustice that befell my people, and how the occupation wanted to humiliate my homeland by putting it under its boot.

Why I Threw the Shoe | CommonDreams.org

Everyone Seems to Be Agreeing with Bin Laden These Days

Robert Fisk in the Guardian today.

No wonder Osama bin Laden decided to address "the American people" this week. "You are waging a hopeless and losing war," he said in his 9/11 eighth anniversary audiotape. "The time has come to liberate yourselves from fear and the ideological terrorism of neoconservatives and the Israeli lobby."


Everyone Seems to Be Agreeing with Bin Laden These Days | CommonDreams.org

A Virtuous Tax

by Robert Kuttner

One prime cause of the financial collapse is that financial trading markets have become speculative worlds unto themselves. Instead of adding efficiency to the real economy, they mainly add risk that the rest of us now have to pay for.

There are many ways to damp down financial speculation, but a very effective strategy is to tax it. Given the huge costs of the clean-up (now being borne mainly by taxpayers) it would make a lot more sense to require financial markets to pay for their own bailout.

One very neat way of doing this is through a very small tax on all financial transactions. Ordinary retail sales are taxed, as are wages. But oddly enough, financial transactions are exempt from tax.

A Virtuous Tax | CommonDreams.org

Charles Darwin film 'too controversial for religious America' - Telegraph

Image by Colin Purrington via Flickr

so it seems that time IS plastic. the US is seemingly living circa: 1850. evolution is to controversial there for a film on that subject to be shown.

The film was chosen to open the Toronto Film Festival and has its British premiere on Sunday. It has been sold in almost every territory around the world, from Australia to Scandinavia.

However, US distributors have resolutely passed on a film which will prove hugely divisive in a country where, according to a Gallup poll conducted in February, only 39 per cent of Americans believe in the theory of evolution.

Charles Darwin film 'too controversial for religious America' - Telegraph

20,000 March In Berlin As Protests Erupt Against European Surveillance

Over twenty thousand people today marched through the German capital of Berlin protesting against the rise of surveillance legislation in their country and the European Union in recent years. Under the motto “freedom not fear,” 167 organisations, including major trade unions, associations of lawyers, judges, journalists, doctors and civil rights activists, called on the German public to raise their voices against communication data retention legislation, biometric passports, video surveillance and the new German system for internet content filtering based on domain-name system re-direction.



Intellectual Property Watch » Blog Archive » 20,000 March In Berlin As Protests Erupt Against European Surveillance

BBC Documentary: Iran and the West - Iran Press Watch

three part BBC doc on history of Iraq from the fall of the Shah to present.

BBC Documentary: Iran and the West - Iran Press Watch

Dr. John rocking at Montreau

where's waldo?

Deficit and Debt Phobia

by Andrew Jackson


We seem set to go into the next election - which could be in a matter of days - with both the Conservatives and Liberals firmly committed to bringing the federal Budget back into balance in a relatively short time frame, with no tax increases. There appears to be no sign of a break in the conventional wisdom that “exit strategies” from temporary fiscal stimulus should be pursued as a matter of urgency, and I fear that the NDP may well be pushed in the same direction.


The Progressive Economics Forum » Deficit and Debt Phobia

Good Billions after Bad- investigation of TARP handout

Good Billions After Bad

As the Bush administration waned, the Treasury shoveled more than a quarter of a trillion dollars in tarp funds into the financial system—without restrictions, accountability, or even common sense. The authors reveal how much of it ended up in the wrong hands, doing the opposite of what was needed.

By Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele

October 2009

October 2009: Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele on the U.S. Treasury | vanityfair.com

Thin-Film Solar Startup Debuts With $4 Billion in Contracts

A startup with a secret recipe for printing cheap solar cells on aluminum foil debuted today, in what could end up a milestone for the industry.

Nanosolar’s technology consists of sandwiches of copper, indium, gallium and selenide (CIGS) that are 100 times thinner than the silicon solar cells that dominate the solar photovoltaics market. Its potential convinced Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page to back the company as angel investors in its early days.

Two big announcements marked its coming out party: The company has $4 billion in contracts and can make money selling its products for $1 per watt of a panel’s capacity. That’s cheap enough to compete with fossil fuels in markets across the world.

Thin-Film Solar Startup Debuts With $4 Billion in Contracts | Wired Science | Wired.com

Solar power flares up

Intelligent highways painted with solar cells anyone? Bringing needed work to small communities? Solar resources to explore and keep keep you posted. Look within.
For a long time, only the economic elite could afford the hefty cost of solar energy. But in recent years, creative and affordable solar power technologies have been developed, creating a truly viable fossil fuel alternative.

Weekly Mulch: Solar power flares up | rabble.ca

Canadian Copyright Consultation shows Canadians overwhelmingly support moderate, fair copyright - Boing Boing

The Canadian government's copyright consultation has received over 4,000 submissions from Canadians (it's not too late to send yours!). Of these, the overwhelming majority are in favour of more liberal copyright, against extending the term of copyright, against stiffer penalties for infringement (only three submissions advocated this) and against US-DMCA-style rules protecting DRM.

There have been three recent attempts to reform Canadian copyright law without public consultation, and each one provided for stricter copyright enforcement, protection for DRM, stiffer penalties, etc -- in other words, each one tried to implement a law that was the opposite of what the Canadian public asked for, when it was given a chance.

Canadian Copyright Consultation shows Canadians overwhelmingly support moderate, fair copyright - Boing Boing

Moscow in Slo-Mo

Slow Moscow from Andrey Stvolinsky on Vimeo.

New Japanese Leadership Causes Discomfort in the U.S. | The Progressive

The new Japanese leadership is causing palpitations within the U.S. establishment.

There is deep anxiety that the incoming government of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama is questioning two lodestars of U.S. foreign policy: free-market neoliberalism and its security alliances worldwide.

In an astonishingly strong op-ed penned for the New York Times on the eve of his victory, Hatoyama savaged “market fundamentalism” for the current parlous state of the Japanese economy.

New Japanese Leadership Causes Discomfort in the U.S. | The Progressive

US halts aid to Honduras

The administration of US President Barack Obama has stopped all non-humanitarian aid to Honduras, after the country's de facto government refused to accept the reinstatement of the ousted president.

Al Jazeera English - Americas - US halts aid to Honduras

Erasing Katrina: Four Years on, Media Mostly Neglect an Ongoing Disaster

A look at U.S. news coverage of the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. The findings- almost nothing.

by FAIR

August 29 marked the fourth anniversary of the day Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. The devastation wrought by both the hurricane itself and the government's inept response prompted remarkably critical corporate media coverage that promised to fight for Katrina survivors and change the way we talk about poverty and race (FAIR Media Advisory, 9/9/05).

As NBC's Brian Williams told the St. Petersburg Times (3/1/06), "If this does not spark a national discussion on class, race, the environment, oil, Iraq, infrastructure and urban planning, I think we've failed." But four years later, corporate media outlets seem to have largely forgotten about Katrina and its survivors, let alone the conversations about race and poverty that were supposed to accompany it.

Erasing Katrina: Four Years on, Media Mostly Neglect an Ongoing Disaster | CommonDreams.org

11 Fascinating Fractals in Nature

11 Fascinating Fractals in Nature - Oddee.com (fractals, natural fractals)

'South of the Border" - a film by Oliver Stone

• also includes a trailer for the film.
  

Oliver Stone: 'The truth about Hugo Chávez'

South of the Border is Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone's record of a trip to Venezuela to meet the president, Hugo Chávez. Ahead of the film's premiere at the Venice film festival on Monday, Stone writes about his hopes for the film, and the future of US foreign policy in the region

'The truth about Hugo Chávez' | Film | guardian.co.uk