More on war and peace

From the website of Dennis Kucinich:

Unbelievable. First they want to redistrict me to get me out of Congress. Now the GOP led Congress voted last week to eliminate all funding for the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) - one of the few programs in the budget dedicated to conflict prevention and non-violence - while they added another $158 billion in the same budget for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The two wars will consume $42.7 million - the entire budget for the USIP - in 142 minutes. It's a one-two punch to our efforts to promote peaceful conflict resolution over war.
And now a few facts from Harper's Index (March 2011):
Estimated percentage change since 2000 in the U.S. defense budget, not including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: +80% Number of American civilians who died worldwide in terrorist attacks last year: 8 Minimum number who died after being struck by lightning: 29 Estimated spending by Afghans on bribes last year: $2,500,000,000 Portion of the country's GDP to which this figure is equivalent: 1/4

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Matt Taibbi asks: “Why isn’t Wall Street in jail?”

At DemocracyNow, Matt Taibbi discusses why, on Wall Street, Nobody goes to jail."

Every single former investigator or current investigator that I talked to said the same thing: Madoff went to jail because the wrong people suffered. You know, it was famous actors. It was, you know, the glitterati in New York. If these were teachers and firemen and all the usual suspects—you know, look at the—we have a million people in foreclosure in this country right now, and a lot of them are there because of predatory lending and because of this fraud scheme, but there are no criminal prosecutions. I think that’s the reality now, is that we don’t see anybody being criminally targeted unless their victims were powerful people themselves. We have two-and-a-half million people in jail this country, you know, more than a million who are in jail for nonviolent crimes. And yet, we couldn’t find a single person on Wall Street to do even a day in jail for losing 40 percent of the world’s wealth in a criminal fraud scheme? And that tells you that we have—this goes beyond the cliché that rich people have better lawyers and they have an advantage. This is a step beyond that. This is a situation where the system is completely corrupted, and it’s true regulatory capture. The SEC and the Justice Department are essentially subsidiaries of Wall Street.

Continue ReadingMatt Taibbi asks: “Why isn’t Wall Street in jail?”

Student thwarts Bush-Cheney attempt to sell federal Utah land adjoining parks

Tim DeChristopher posed as a bidder at a Bureau of Land Management auction, "purchasing" 22,000 acres of beautiful Utah land to protect it from oil and gas companies. He now faces a stiff prison sentence. You'll find his story here, including his discussion with Amy Goodman of DemocracyNow (plus statement by Robert Redford).

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The sordid details of the NBC and Comcast merger

Here's how it happened. If you read the entire account by Peter White, you'll be dismayed, though not surprised:

Comcast met behind closed doors with the FCC to map out the future of broadband service and video streaming over the Internet. Anyone who wonders how federal banking regulators got captured by the financial industry, or how lawmakers got neutered by the insurance companies on the health care bill, or how big money is going to buy the next presidential election, should study the Comcast merger. It is a cautionary tale of things gone awry in Washington, where corporate speech is heard and heeded and the voices of actual citizens are ignored.

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Turning toward science?

According to this article by M. Mitchell Waldrop, the Templeton Foundation (endowment of $2B) seems to be making an adjustment away from religion and toward traditional science:

Towards the end of Templeton's life, says Marsh, he became increasingly concerned that this reaction was getting in the way of the foundation's mission: that the word 'religion' was alienating too many good scientists. This prompted a rethink of the foundation's research programme — a change most clearly seen in the organization's new website, launched last June. Gone were old programme names such as 'science and religion' — or almost any mention of religion at all (See 'Templeton priorities: then and now'). Instead, the foundation has embraced the theme of 'science and the big questions' — an open-ended list that includes topics such as 'Does the Universe have a purpose?'

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