Archive for January, 2009
Posted by seumasach on January 27, 2009
“Our only hope now is a peaceful transition from a corrupt plutocracy to the responsible liberal democracy we had fooled ourselves into believing we already had.”
Concealed within the forms and norms of Western democracy lurk “a small group of megalomaniacs” ,”a corrupt plutocracy” who subvert its workings. The revolution in the West consists in large part of the removal of these miscreants from all proximity to the reins of power.
Iris Erlingsdottir
Huffingdon Post
23rd January, 2009
Icelandic Prime Minister Geir Haarde, leader of the Independence Party, announced at a press conference today that he was stepping down for health reasons and called for parliamentary elections on May 9th. Foreign Minister Ingibjorg Solrun Gisladottir, leader of the Social Democratic Alliance, which formed the other faction in the ruling coalition government, also stated that she favored spring elections.
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Posted in Financial crisis, Revolution in Iceland | Tagged: bankrupt iceland, Iceland, Revolution in Iceland | 1 Comment »
Posted by seumasach on January 27, 2009
Alda Sigmundsdottir
Guardian
26th January, 2009
Shortly after 1pm today, Iceland’s prime minister, Geir Haarde, announced to reporters that the coalition between the conservative Independence party and the Social Democratic Alliance (SDA) had collapsed.
The Icelandic nation had been waiting for an announcement with bated breath since last night, when the leaders of the two parties declared that today would determine the future of the government, which has been under fire since reconvening last week after its Christmas recess.
The announcement comes hot on the heels of a series of dramatic events. Last Friday the prime minister announced that the public’s increasingly violent demands for elections would be met this spring. This was a remarkable turnaround from his earlier position, as a mere few days earlier he had stated that he had no intention of calling elections. At the same press conference on Friday he announced that he had been diagnosed with a malignant tumour of the oesophagus.
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Posted in Financial crisis, Revolution in Iceland | Tagged: Revolution in Iceland | Leave a Comment »
Posted by smeddum on January 27, 2009
Obama: Regime Rotation
By Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
January 26, 2009 “Information Clearinghouse“ — The arrival of the Obama administration will not fundamentally alter the course of military expansion accelerated during the Bush era. The origins of these policies do not lie uniquely in neoconservative ideology. While the election of President Obama may offer new opportunities for progressive forces to delimit the damage, their space for movement will ultimately be constrained by deep-seated structural pressures that will attempt to exploit Obama to rehabilitate American imperial hegemony, rather than transform it. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: "War on Terror", Obama, Obama's foreign policy | 1 Comment »
Posted by seumasach on January 26, 2009
BBC Headquarters Occupied in Scotland
Written by Stop the War Admin
Sunday, 25 January 2009
Over 100 supporters of Scottish Stop the War Coalition and Palestinian groups occupied the BBC headquarters in Glasgow today demanding that the BBC reverse its decision not to broadcast an emergency aid appeal for Gaza.
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Posted in Palestine | Tagged: Gaza, Palestine | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on January 26, 2009
BBC
26th January, 2009
So Brown thinks he can still exploit the crisis to project anglo-american power globally. The “deglobalisation threat” is a codeword for the kind of sovereign oppostion to the empire which we are seeing throughout the world. Brown is deluded, the empire is over, and his failure to recognise this fact preventing a rational response to the crisis in the UK and the USA.
The economic crisis should be treated as “the difficult birth-pangs of a new global order”, with new rules introduced on trade, Gordon Brown says.
The prime minister set out a series of actions designed to “replace fear with confidence” and warned against just “muddling through as pessimists”.
During a speech defending his handling of the crisis he also warned against the “deglobalisation threat”.
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Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: End of empire, new world order | Leave a Comment »
Posted by smeddum on January 26, 2009
‘RESCUED’ CITI BUYING $50M JE
New York Post
By JENNIFER GOULD KEIL and CHUCK BENNETT
STILL ‘HIGH’ ON THE HOG: Citigroup, fresh off its $45 billion rescue, is going ahead with the purchase of a Dassault Falcon 7X.
Clcik to enlarge
Last updated: 10:06 am
January 26, 2009
Beleaguered Citigroup is upgrading its mile-high club with a brand-new $50 million corporate jet – only this time, it’s the taxpayers who are getting screwed. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by smeddum on January 26, 2009
LONDON (Reuters) – Global pension fund assets in the 11 major pension markets fell by $5 trillion in 2008 hit by volatile markets, a Watson Wyatt (WW.N) report said on Monday.
The study said that over 2008, global pension assets fell to $20 trillion from $25 trillion, a fall of 19 percent which took assets below 2005 levels. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Financial crisis | Tagged: pensions shortfall | Leave a Comment »
Posted by smeddum on January 26, 2009
Resistance to Housing Foreclosures Spread Across the Land
Friday 23 January 2009
Truthout
by: Ben Ehrenreich, The Nation
Local grassroots groups are taking action and putting the pressure on federal regulators for a “real, comprehensive” solution to the mortgage crisis that has led to millions of foreclosures across the nation.
Community-based movements to halt the flood of foreclosures have been building across the country. And they’re not the usual suspects. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: fight foreclosues, housing crisis | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on January 26, 2009
Asia Times
26th January, 2009
Precise, quick, deadly – the skills of a soldier are modest. But then, US Central Command chief General David Petraeus is more than a soldier. The world is getting used to him as somewhere more than halfway down the road to becoming a statesman. Sure, there may be warfare’s seduction over him still, but he is expected to be aware of the political realities of the two wars he conducts, in Iraq and Afghanistan.
That is why he tripped last Tuesday when he said while on a visit to Pakistan that the American military had secured agreements to move supplies to Afghanistan from the north, easing the heavy reliance on the transit route through Pakistan. “There have been agreements reached, and there are transit lines now and transit agreements for commercial goods and services in particular that include several countries in the Central Asian states and Russia,” Petraeus said.
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Posted in Afghanistan | Tagged: "War on Terror", Petraeus, Russian diplomacy | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on January 26, 2009
| PressTV
25th January, 2009
US commanders say they had consulted President Barack Obama before launching recent drone attacks on Pakistan’s tribal belt near the Afghan border.
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: "War on Terror", Obama, Obama agenda | 1 Comment »
Posted by seumasach on January 26, 2009
PressTV
26th January, 2009
Georgia’s former UN ambassador has called for early presidential elections to bring the country out of the current political crisis.
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Georgia, Irakli Alasania | Leave a Comment »
In These New Times 