be the change you want to see in the world

For decades critics of the current American economic paradigm have warned that the prosperity of the middle class is fabricated and illusory. They have said that the gap between rich and poor was widening, that things are getting worse for the average person, not better. That deficits, both personal and state - will catch up with subsequent generations.

Now the situation is finally coming to a head, and reality is showing its face… as documented in the New York Times of all places.

The underlying problem has been building for decades. America’s median hourly wage is barely higher than it was 35 years ago, adjusted for inflation. The income of a man in his 30s is now 12 percent below that of a man his age three decades ago. Most of what’s been earned in America since then has gone to the richest 5 percent.

Yet the rich devote a smaller percentage of their earnings to buying things than the rest of us because, after all, they’re rich. They already have most of what they want. Instead of buying, and thus stimulating the American economy, the rich are more likely to invest their earnings wherever around the world they can get the highest return.

The problem has been masked for years as middle- and lower-income Americans found ways to live beyond their paychecks. But now they have run out of ways.

Nothing this big is accidental. So now we begin the run-up to the November presidential elections. The Democrats are still deciding which of their candidates will take the nomination, but the Republican race is sewn up. John McCain, a hawk, will be the nominee. All of a sudden, six and half years after the Sept. 11th attacks, a show trial begins.

Hartmann said Mohammed is accused of being “the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks,” which he allegedly proposed to bin Laden as early as 1996. According to the charges, he obtained the funding for the plot and oversaw the entire operation, including the training of the hijackers in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Hartmann said the trials will be “as open as possible” and that the accused will have the right to call their own witnesses, cross-examine prosecution witnesses and see the evidence presented against them.

“There will be no secret trials,” he said.

The trials will not be televised, but families of the victims will be given access to video of the trials. Undoubtedly that video will leak out and be the hottest thing on YouTube since Britney went nuts and shaved her head.

Prosecutors will seek the death penalty. The timing of these executions will be interesting.

Life in Saudi Arabia, the fascist dictatorship the US protects with the blood of their youth while pretending to promote democracy and freedom in the Middle East. The Wahabist oppressions as recounted by a female US national who went to a Starbucks with a male colleague so they could continue to work during a power outage.

She settled into a booth with a male colleague and opened her laptop. Moments later, she was arrested.

“Some men came up to us with very long beards and white dresses. They asked, ‘Why are you here together?’ I explained about the power being out in our office. They got very angry and told me what I was doing was a great sin,” Yara recalled.

The men were from Saudi Arabia’s Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, a 10,000-strong police force charged with enforcing dress codes, sex segregation and the observance of prayer times.

Yara said they grabbed her mobile phone and pushed her into a taxi bound for Riyadh’s main prison. There she was interrogated, strip-searched and forced to sign and fingerprint confessions of guilt.

Later, she was made to stand before a judge who condemned her behavior, telling her she would “burn in hell.”

She said she spent hours in a filthy prison cell with dozens of other women who had been arrested by the religious police, before her husband used his political connections to secure her release.

I can’t believe how many people hate - I mean viscerally hate - Hillary Clinton. I don’t get it - or maybe I get it too well. I have set up a blog Hillary Hatred in order to get to the bottom of this. Are Americans just a bunch of haters? She’s a super successful woman who has tried to bring universal health care to the last civilized country without it. She has worked for children’s causes for 35 years. I mean, c’mon. Save your hatred for Osama bin Laden or someone worthy. You don’t have to vote for her, but why hate her anyway?

In recent months the US military has continued to slaughter Iraqi civilians - men, women and children - non-combatants who just “get in the way.” I have written about this before, but I recently came across an excellent short essay on this subject.

It is the ‘price to pay’, the ‘sacrifice’ that has to be made as we fight terrorism, the ‘cost’ of this war against evil forces. That is what we say to justify these killings. But those of us who speak of this price to be paid, this sacrifice to be made, do not pay this price, do not make this sacrifice. Our own country is not being destroyed, attacked, occupied. Our own children are not being blown up, our civilians are not becoming homeless by the millions. Those who speak of the necessity of this sacrifice, would they be prepared to pay such a price? In their own country? With the blood of their own families?

The Price of Loss
How the West values civilian lives in Iraq

by Lily Hamourtziadou