Wikipedia indicates that the United States has almost always been at war. Bill Maher points to this undeniable fact of U.S. warmongering and, despite the excellent comedy, makes a serious challenge to U.S. politicians.
Was Cyprus a one-off situation? At Alternet, Ellen Brown says no, and she indicates that the repeal of Glass-Steagall, "too big to fail" and the subsequent $230 trillion derivatives boondoggle should make many of us wary.
The Cyprus bail-in was not a one-off emergency measure but was consistent with similar policies already in the works for the US, UK, EU, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, as detailed in my earlier articles here and here. “Too big to fail” now trumps all. Rather than banks being put into bankruptcy to salvage the deposits of their customers, the customers will be put into bankruptcy to save the banks. The big risk behind all this is the massive $230 trillion derivatives boondoggle managed by US banks . . . The tab for the 2008 bailout was $700 billion in taxpayer funds, and that was just to start. Another $700 billion disaster could easily wipe out all the money in the FDIC insurance fund, which has only about $25 billion in it.Under the guise of protecting taxpayers, Dodd-Frank makes depositors of failing institutions are to be de-facto subordinated to interbank claims. Brown writes: "The FDIC was set up to ensure the safety of deposits. Now it, it seems, its function will be the confiscation of deposits to save Wall Street." The urgent solution, is to repeal the super-priority status of derivatives, so that the banks themselves lose out to the security of the depositors.
At Alternet, Valerie Tarico argues that the Internet is shriveling memberships in religions. She gives six reasons:
1. Radically cool science videos and articles. 2. Curated collections of ridiculous beliefs. 3. The kinky, exploitative, oppressive, opportunistic and violent sides of religion. 4. Supportive communities for people coming out of religion. 5. Lifestyles of the fine and faithless. 6. Interspiritual okayness.
Almost half of Americans fall within one or more of the descriptions in the DSN5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual--5th edition). Why so many? Because, according to the Slate article titled "Abnormal is the New Normal," we diagnose mental illness more accurately, because more of us are mentally ill and because we've expanded the definition of what constitutes mental illness. "Caffeine intoxication," anyone?
From an Alternet article by Steven Rosenfeld:
Whistleblowers are not spies or traitors, as the Bush and Obama administration’s lawyers have alleged. They are patriotic and often conservative Americans who work inside the government and with military contractors, and who find unacceptable—and often life-threatening—or illegal behavior goes unheeded when they report it through the traditional chain of command. They worry about doing nothing and feel compelled to go to the press, even if they suspect they may lose their jobs. What they don’t realize is that their lives will never quite be the same again, because they underestimate the years of government persecution that follows. [T]he whistleblower [is] a special kind of American hero—one whose importance is easily forgotten in today’s infotainment-drenched media. Since the Vietnam War in the 1960s, whistleblowers have been part of many history-changing events: questioning the war in Vietnam by releasing the Pentagon Papers on military’s failings; exposing the Watergate burglary that led to President Richard Nixon's resignation; exposing the illegal nationwide domestic spying program by the George W. Bush administration after 9/11; revealing the military’s failure to replace Humvees in Iraq and Afghanistan with better bomb-deflecting vehicles, leading to hundreds of deaths and maimings . . .