The Old Hippie's Groovy Blog
Thoughts & Observations, on Sociological, Environmental, And Political Happenings (Best View = 1024x786)
posted by The Old Hippie @ 11:53 PM
1 comments
 {-The Way Many Picture Me-} | “But He’s A Muslim!” - No, he is not - “Okay-Okay, but he was raised as a Muslim!” - No, he was not - “Okay-Okay, but he attended a madrasa, an Islamic school!” |
posted by The Old Hippie @ 5:35 AM
3 comments
“STOCKHOLM, Aug 22 (IPS) - A spectre is haunting the cities and villages of most developing nations, warns a senior official of a World Bank-affiliated organisation. “It’s the spectre of a food, fuel and water crisis,” says Lars Thunell, executive vice president of the Washington-based International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank group.
“I believe we are at a tipping point,” he said, because the scarcity of water poses a threat to the food supply just when the agricultural sector is stepping up production in response to riots over food prices, growing hunger, and rising malnutrition.
Speaking at the conclusion of the weeklong Stockholm International Water Conference Friday, Thunell said the growing demand for water is outpacing supply.
Patti Lynn, campaigns director of Corporate Accountability International, on the role of the private sector. . .
The crisis stems from a confluence of problems, but perhaps no contributing factor is more insidious and correctable than the privatisation of the resource,” she told IPS. “When people’s access to clean drinking water is reliant on the profit interests of a handful of transnationals, all of us pay a premium and because of this many of the world’s poor go thirsty.”
Asked if the international community will meet the MDGs relating to water and sanitation by 2015, she said: “Not if we don’t change immediate course.”
For one, she said, the World Bank needs to stop making water privatisation a condition for their loans.
“And probably the most boring. But then again, when I told that to my students- Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7 - Part 8 -
and had them give me feedback, most said that if you followed along with what
the presenter, (a professor emeritus of Physics at Univ. of Colorado-Boulder,)
is saying, it's quite easy to pay attention, because it is so compelling.”
posted by The Old Hippie @ 5:19 AM
0 comments
His guest for the show, (Aug.15, 2008,) was Andrew J. Bacevich, a West Point graduate, and a retired colonel with 23 years in the Army, and author of several books, including...
The Limits Of Power: The End Of American Exceptionalism, just released this week.
posted by The Old Hippie @ 6:17 AM
0 comments
| - “We” Export 1.8 Million Barrels Of Oil A Day. → Export ← The oil corporatists are selling ‘our’ oil to others... → not to us ← You do understand this profits their-very-few... → and not us. ← Why do we continue to ‘allow’ their blatant crimes, and sneers?!? - “The Long Emergency” What's going to happen as we start running out of ... gas to guzzle? - “Senate Republicans Block Big Oil Windfall Profits Tax Bill” Since 2001, $½+ trillion in profits, to them - Prices doubled, to us. |  |
posted by The Old Hippie @ 4:10 AM
0 comments
 | - I Spent Years as a POW with John McCain, and His Finger Should Not Be Near the Red Button. -- By Phillip Butler, Military.com The original piece was published five months ago in the Military Times and was totally ignored by everyone in the media until yesterday (8/20/06). - China’s “Charm Offensive” -and- “Out of Mao’s Shadow” The Olympics have gone to China, exposing the many contradictions within Chinese society... What’s really going on? What kind of country is China becoming? Two new books help provide answers. |
“North Pole Will Be Ice Free for First Time This Summer”
“We’re actually projecting this year that the North Pole may be free of ice for the first time [in history],” David Barber, of the University of Manitoba, told National Geographic News aboard the C.C.G.S. Amundsen, a Canadian research icebreaker.
And a new updated (ABC News, BBC News, et al,) video - Linked Here.
posted by The Old Hippie @ 9:56 AM
0 comments
“The Obama Nation” was written and printed because major American publishing houses have decided that there’s money to be made in funding right-wing boutique imprints modeled after the Washington-based Regnery, which has made a small fortune stoking the hard-right furnace with combustible prose. Corsi’s book is published by Threshold Editions, a division of Simon & Schuster, which hired right-wing political operative Mary Matalin to edit the imprint. Random House has a similar imprint in Crown Forum, and Penguin Group USA has Sentinel. Their business model -- and this is all about business -- is predicated on the existence of an echo chamber of right-wing radio and television shows willing to promote these publishers' products -- however noxious. Beyond that is a network of conservative book clubs and organizations willing to place the sort of advance bulk orders for controversial books that will guarantee them a place on the bestseller lists.
It’s just that sort of order that made “The Obama Nation” No. 1 on Sunday’s New York Times bestseller list, and essentially “laundered” Corsi onto the respectable broadcast media’s guest list.
posted by The Old Hippie @ 9:23 AM
0 comments
“The meaning of words had no longer the same relation to things, but was changed by them as they thought proper. Reckless daring was held to be loyal courage; prudent delay was the excuse of a coward; moderation was the disguise of unmanly weakness; to know everything was to do nothing. Frantic energy was the true quality of a man.”
“I don't mean that GOP politicians are, on average, any dumber than their Democratic counterparts. What I mean, instead, is that know-nothingism — the insistence that there are simple, brute-force, instant-gratification answers to every problem, and that there's something effeminate and weak about anyone who suggests otherwise — has become the core of Republican policy and political strategy. The party's de facto slogan has become: Real men don't think things through.”
posted by The Old Hippie @ 6:10 AM
0 comments
Start by reading the headlines at all of the corporate mainstream media web sites, like Fox, ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, and print corporate media like Washington Times, New York Post, Newsweek, U.S. Today, Wall Street Journal, any Clear Channel radio station, et al...
Now - take in the headlines at the non-corporatist independent media web sites, like AlterNet, CommonDreams, Crooks and Liars, Cursor, Democracy Now!, F.A.I.R., The Free Press, Independent Media Centers, Mother Jones, OhMy News, One World, Pacific News Service, Real News!, TruthDig, TruthOut, WorldWatch, The Daily Show and Colbert Report, et al...
posted by The Old Hippie @ 5:33 AM
0 comments
| - “This is the Olympics the West Wanted” “games where the grandest prize is not a gold medal but a glittering entree to China’s seemingly endless army of potential consumers. This is the reason that George W. Bush will attend the opening... - “Who's Really Running Iraq?” “The demographic balance in the capital has shifted. . .” - “This Week In "Insurance Company Rules"” Tracking the latest in insurance corporations’ tricks and tactics. | |
The dramatic hearing on presidential crimes and abuses of power held on Friday by the House Judiciary Committee was both a staged farce, and at the same time, a powerful demonstration of the power of a grassroots movement in defense of the Constitution. It was at once both testimony to the cowardice and self-inflicted impotence of Congress and of the Democratic Party that technically controls that body, and to the enormity of the damage that has been wrought to the nation’s democracy by two aspiring tyrants in the White House.
[Most mainstream media outlets] have blacked out news of impeachment. Incredibly, the New York Times, for example, has not even reported on Friday’s hearing, even as a news “brief.” Those news organizations, like the Washington Post and the Philadelphia Inquirer, that did report on the hearings did so only in short, inside articles. Though the hearing was aired in full on C-Span, many Americans don’t even know it happened.
posted by The Old Hippie @ 12:23 PM
0 comments
| - “If We Drill in the U.S., We Don't Get the Oil” Oil from offshore drilling will belong to multinational corporations - not us. - “The Scorpion, the Frog, and the Corporation” Two Cheers for Capitalism. Thank God for Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and Bill Gates, and the millions of others who have immeasurably improved our lives. But I withhold that third cheer as I view with foreboding, the dangers of capitalism and corporatism unconstrained and running wild. |
For nearly a week now, Republicans, including John McCain, his surrogates, and his aides, have been mocking the notion that routine auto maintenance can contribute to fuel efficiency. Yesterday, at an event in Ohio, Barack Obama struck back.
“There is nothing more terrifying to corporate America than the prospect of dealing with its workforce on an even playing field, and, along with allies on the Right, it’s pulling out all the stops to keep that from happening. At stake is much more than the usual tax breaks, trade deals and relentless deregulation; corporations are gearing up for a fight to preserve a status quo in which the largest share of America’s national income goes to profits and the smallest share to wages since the Great Depression -- in fact, since the government started tracking those figures.”
posted by The Old Hippie @ 5:54 AM
1 comments
{-The Way Many Picture Me-} | “Follow This Dime” is an excerpt from a book by Thomas Frank concerning ‘a how-to history of the conservative era -- specifically how to destroy a government, leave Americans in the lurch, and enrich yourselves all at the same time...’ |
posted by The Old Hippie @ 2:03 AM
0 comments
 |
|
posted by The Old Hippie @ 9:38 PM
0 comments
“To offer a bit of context for Chalmers Johnson’s latest post on the privatization of U.S. intelligence, it’s important to know just how lucrative that intelligence “business” has become. According to the latest estimate, the cumulative 2009 intelligence budget for the 16 agencies in the U.S. Intelligence Community will be more than $55 billion. However, it’s possible that the real figure in the deeply classified budget may soar over $66 billion, which would mean that the U.S. budget for spooks has more than doubled in less than a decade. And as Robert Dreyfuss points out at his invaluable blog at the Nation, even more spectacularly (and wastefully), much of that money will end up in the hands of the “private contractors” who, by now, make up a mini intelligence-industrial complex of their own.”
posted by The Old Hippie @ 9:57 AM
0 comments
67, over-educated tree-hugging music-loving deadhead retired old-happy-hippie
My blog is worth $10,161.72.
How much is your blog worth?
For anyone that cares...
My Google Page Ranking
Also note that between 8/1/08 and
8/9/08 this meter was completely
non-functional to the point of
blocking the page from surfers.
