SOTU Anticipation

President Obama's Inequality Story...
by Dean Baker - January 27, 2014

The advance word is that inequality is going to be the central theme in President Obama’s State of the Union Address on Tuesday.  That’s certainly good news, since it is a huge problem.  The question is whether President Obama is prepared to talk about inequality in a way that gets to the core of the problem as opposed to just clipping away at the edges.

It’s a safe bet that we will see the latter.  . . .

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As always with Truthout.org, this article is a damn good read,
and an excellent perspective of our shared Pax Americana reality.

Have you noticed how many articles I link from Truthout.org?
It's because they do an excellent job of allowing truth to be authority,
rather than like FOX, where authority is manipulatively displayed as truth.

And like Alternet, Truthdig, Commondreams, et al, the "Comments" section is
quite often as enlightening as the article’s themselves, sometimes even more so.

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Best Article of the Year, (so far)

What Obama Really Meant Was ...
by Chris Hedges - January 19, 2014

Throughout American history, intelligence services often did little more than advance and protect corporate profits and solidify state repression and imperialist expansion.  War, for big business, has always been very lucrative and used as an excuse to curtail basic liberties and crush popular movements.  “Inter arma silent leges,” as Cicero said, or “During war, the laws are silent.”

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As always with Truthdig.com, this article is a damn good read,
and an excellent perspective of our shared Pax Americana reality.

Have you noticed how many articles I link from Truthdig.com?
It's because they do an excellent job of allowing truth to be authority,
rather than like FOX, where authority is manipulatively displayed as truth.

And like Alternet, Truthout, Commondreams, et al, the "Comments" section is
quite often as enlightening as the article’s themselves, sometimes even more so.

Read the Rest of this Posting    →  Below The Fold  ←                  (Permanent Link Here)

Reality Links. . .

Some Have The Ability To See The Actual Reality - Here Are But A Few...
by The Old Hippie Because So Many Are Still ‘Allowing’ The Corporatist Lies...

-  A Ripley's Believe It or Not National Security State       It has won the undying fealty of Congress, embraced the power of the presi- dency, made itself into a jobs program for the American people, and been largely free to do as it pleased with almost unlimited taxpayer dollars.   -  “The Last Gasp of American Democracy”       The object of efficient totalitarian states, as George Orwell understood, is to create a climate in which people do not think of rebelling, a climate in which gov- ernment killing and torture are used against only a handful of unmanageable ren- egades.

“Defending What's Mine: A Critique of 'Prepper' Philosophy”
As a wilderness-therapy guide, survival school teacher, and naturalist educator who has been living and working in the harsh deserts of the American Southwest for the last several years, I feel that I have a unique outlook on this topic in that I understand what it would actually take to survive and thrive in a post-apocalyptic scenario.

“As long as the greatest crime of the 21st century remains unprosecuted,
we all...  can only blame ourselves, and deserve our collective fates.”

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A“Below The Fold” bonus Article -

Shell Game: It Will Take More Than Goodwill and Greenwash to Save The Biosphere

“Nor would Van der Veer give me a straight answer to another straight question: “Is there any investment you would not make on ethical grounds?”  I asked this six times.  He was unable to furnish me with an example.  It's not hard to see why.  As well as exploiting the tar sands, which means destroying forest and wetlands, polluting great quantities of water and producing more CO2 than conventional petroleum production, Shell is still flaring gas in Nigeria, at great cost to both local people and the global climate.  It has been fiercely criticised for its secret negotiations with the Iraqi government, which led last year to the first major access for a western company to Iraq’s gas reserves.  It is prospecting for oil in some of the Arctic’s most sensitive habitats.

All this makes my question difficult to answer.  Aside from the greenwash, it is not easy to spot the practical difference between this civilised, progressive company and the Neanderthals at Exxon.”

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