Slavoj Zizek: 'Now the field is open'

From the Middle East to the streets of London and cities across the US there is a discontent with the status quo. Whether it is with the iron grip of entrenched governments or the widening economic divide between the rich and those struggling to get by. But where are those so hungry for change heading? How profound is their long-term vision to transform society? Watch interview here

A Movement Too Big to Fail

Posted on Oct 17, 2011

By Chris Hedges

There is no danger that the protesters who have occupied squares, parks and plazas across the nation in defiance of the corporate state will be co-opted by the Democratic Party or groups like MoveOn. The faux liberal reformers, whose abject failure to stand up for the rights of the poor and the working class, have signed on to this movement because they fear becoming irrelevant. Union leaders, who pull down salaries five times that of the rank and file as they bargain away rights and benefits, know the foundations are shaking. So do Democratic politicians from Barack Obama to Nancy Pelosi. So do the array of “liberal” groups and institutions, including the press, that have worked to funnel discontented voters back into the swamp of electoral politics and mocked those who called for profound structural reform. Read entire article here

Pocono Medical Center workers: 'You can keep trying, but this union will not be broken!'

Workers at the Pocono Medical Center (PMC), members of SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania, are in the fight of their life to protect their union, their families and good jobs in the Poconos.

In October, a strong majority of PMC workers voted in a Federal government-supervised election to keep their union shop. One would think that the hospital would respect the workers' democratic vote and move forward toward ratification of the next contract. But instead, PMC has continued to intimidate workers and refused to settle a new contract if the workers don't deliberately weaken their own union. Read entire article here

Throw Out the Money Changers

Posted on Apr 18, 2011


Oisin Prendiville (CC-BY-SA)
By Chris Hedges

These are remarks Chris Hedges made in Union Square in New York City last Friday during a protest outside a branch office of the Bank of America.

We stand today before the gates of one of our temples of finance. It is a temple where greed and profit are the highest good, where self-worth is determined by the ability to amass wealth and power at the expense of others, where laws are manipulated, rewritten and broken, where the endless treadmill of consumption defines human progress, where fraud and crimes are the tools of business.

The two most destructive forces of human nature—greed and envy—drive the financiers, the bankers, the corporate mandarins and the leaders of our two major political parties, all of whom profit from this system. They place themselves at the center of creation. They disdain or ignore the cries of those below them. They take from us our rights, our dignity and thwart our capacity for resistance. They seek to make us prisoners in our own land. They view human beings and the natural world as mere commodities to exploit until exhaustion or collapse. Human suffering, wars, climate change, poverty, it is all the price of business. Nothing is sacred. The Lord of Profit is the Lord of Death. Read entire article here.

Rep. Alan Grayson on Kent State: "They Can't Kill Us All"

A Chorus of ‘I Told You So’

Bill Maher’s Pro-Western Culture Speech: “It Isn’t Just Different… It’s Better”

Legal Victory Raises Profile of an Atheist Group

MADISON, Wis. — Annie Laurie Gaylor clicked through a flurry of e-mail messages warning her to repent or she would burn in hell.

“Herod,” one messenger called her.

Ms. Gaylor leaned back and sipped from a cup of tea, unfazed and even a bit surprised at the relative tameness of the attacks. Fresh from her latest godless triumph, she had expected more vitriol.

“It used to be a lot worse,” said Ms. Gaylor, 54, an atheist whose organization, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, recently won a suit in federal court here that declared the National Day of Prayer to be a violation of the First Amendment. “Things are changing. Society is becoming more secularized. It’s becoming acceptable to be atheist and agnostic. And there are more of us.” Read entire article here

Notice to the people who take Glenn Beck seriously

You are all brainwashed morons! And you all suck!

This is bullshit: Jeff Jarvis TEDxNYED talk

Corporate Grinch: GE Threatens to Kill Christmas Rather than Negotiate with Workers in Good Faith

Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet at 4:27 PM on December 1, 2009.

So, it's a liberal War on Christmas, is it?

Press release:

NBC’s failure to bargain fairly with the union that represents nearly 3,000 of the network’s producers, writers and technicians has put the lighting of the world's most famous Christmas tree at serious risk. In an attempt to save the annual “Christmas in Rockefeller Center” special, the union launched a new website today – http://NBCStoleChristmas.com – that highlights the “Grinch” within NBC. Read entire article here.

If Nothing Else, Save Farming

It’s probably too late to prepare for peak oil, but we can at least try to salvage food production.

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 16th November 2009

I don’t know when global oil supplies will start to decline. I do know that another resource has already peaked and gone into freefall: the credibility of the body that’s meant to assess them. Last week two whistleblowers from the International Energy Agency alleged that it has deliberately upgraded its estimate of the world’s oil supplies in order not to frighten the markets. Three days later, a paper published by researchers at Uppsala University in Sweden showed that the IEA’s forecasts must be wrong, because it assumes a rate of extraction that appears to be impossible. The agency’s assessment of the state of global oil supplies is beginning to look as reliable as Mr Greenspan’s blandishments about the health of the financial markets. Read entire article here.

The Eviction of the Bird Lady

Most of us have been exposed to the dry refrain of the repetitively chanted statistics associated with the foreclosure crisis. Here is a snapshot of the reality of the crisis that millions are currently facing.

Written by Miki Aberle

The bird lady...bless her heart. She flagged me down after I was done running - she seemed about as out of breath as I was, and when she apologized for not having on a bra in her dishevelment, I told her it was okay because I had on two (true story). This was my attempt to make her smile because I've never seen anyone look so desperately sweet; (nearly) all of her belongings were strewn throughout her front yard and driveway - all except the iron-wired bird cages and wooden perches...

Apparently Paula, whose name I later learned, was being evicted according to the man with a badge standing in the midst of this woman's shattered life. She couldn't have been under 60 years-old. Everything had to be out of the house within the next hour if she wanted a chance of keeping it. The help she had earlier said they'd be back and failed to return, so she tirelessly drug everything she could out of what used to be her home.

The PT Cruiser in the driveway was momentarily acting as shelter to four tropical birds while their dismantled cage parts were scattered in various areas of the second floor of Paula's previous dwelling. She didn't have the strength to carry them down the stairs, which is where Miki comes in.

One by one I carried cage parts and what seemed like actual trees down the stairs, pretending to care for it all like I knew Paula did; if not, this 45 minute chore could have been strategically handled in much less time, and while the man with the badge watched me struggle and told me he was "sorry but couldn't help," I knew Paula was watching me too. I didn't want her to feel like yet another person didn't respect or care about what used to be her life.

Maybe that's why she told me I was an angel and should have my wings...(apparently she's into things that fly).

After the Billionaires Plundered Alabama Town, Troops Were Called in ... Illegally

By Mark Ames, AlterNet. Posted October 24, 2009

"We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all," says one Goldman Sachs adviser. But tell that to the people of Samson, Ala.

One of this year's more disturbing stories that were ignored was the illegal Army occupation of Samson, Alab., in March following a shooting spree that raged across two towns by a disgruntled worker, leaving 11 people dead. Read entire article here

Roger Eugene Ailes for President

Would it be wonderful to see Roger Ailes run for president? The smell of death is all around the Republican Party. Sara Palin or Roger Ailes, what leadership! The new Wig Party begins its decent into oblivion!

President Reagan Rests in Peace ... But Will His Voo-Doo Economics Ever Die?

Posted by Dave Johnson, Campaign for America's Future at 10:51 AM on July 31, 2009.

What are you going to believe, what “free market” ideologues tell you or your own lying eyes?

There are things you can see in front of your face, and then there are things that conservative “free market” ideologues tell you.

One example is when they talk about the minimum wage. (An increase in the national minimum wage goes into effect today.) Conservative “free market” ideologues tell you that raising the minimum wage “costs jobs.” They say that if employers have to pay a few cents more per hour they won’t employ as many people.

But then there is something you can see in front of your face: whenever the minimum wage is raised, things get better. Things obviously get a little better for the people who work at the minimum wage, and for their families. As this works its way up the food chain things get a little better for the people and stores these workers rent and buy from. But also, studies looking into the effect of what actually happens after the minimum wage is raised show that the net effect is no loss of jobs.

Here is why. Read entire article here!