Henry Giroux - Youth in Revolt: The Plague of State-Sponsored Violence

Young people are demonstrating all over the world against a variety of issues ranging from economic injustice and massive inequality to drastic cuts in education and public services. At the moment, these demonstrations are being met with state-sanctioned violence and insults in the mainstream media rather than with informed dialogue, critical engagement and reformed policies. In the United States, the state monopoly on the use of violence has intensified since the 1980s and, in the process, has been increasingly directed against young people, poor minorities, immigrants and increasingly women. As the welfare state is hollowed out, a culture of compassion is replaced by a culture of violence, cruelty and disposability. Collective insurance policies and social protections have given way to the forces of economic deregulation, the transformation of the welfare state into punitive workfare programs, the privatization of public goods and an appeal to individual responsibility as a substitute for civic responsibility. Under the notion that unregulated market-driven values and relations should shape every domain of human life, the business model of governance has eviscerated any viable notion of social responsibility while furthering the criminalization of social problems and cut backs in basic social services, especially for the poor, young people and the elderly.(1) Within the existing neoliberal historical conjuncture, there is a merging of violence and governance and the systemic disinvestment in and breakdown of institutions and public spheres, which have provided the minimal conditions for democracy.

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http://www.truth-out.org/youth-revolt-plague-state-sponsored-violence/1331663173

Greg Smith - Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs

Today is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the firm — first as a summer intern while at Stanford, then in New York for 10 years, and now in London — I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.

To put the problem in the simplest terms, the interests of the client continue to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money. Goldman Sachs is one of the world’s largest and most important investment banks and it is too integral to global finance to continue to act this way. The firm has veered so far from the place I joined right out of college that I can no longer in good conscience say that I identify with what it stands for.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/opinion/why-i-am-leaving-goldman-sachs.html?_r=1

Barbara Ehrenreich - Rediscovering Poverty

It’s been exactly 50 years since Americans, or at least the non-poor among them, “discovered” poverty, thanks to Michael Harrington’s engaging bookThe Other America. If this discovery now seems a little overstated, like Columbus’s “discovery” of America, it was because the poor, according to Harrington, were so “hidden” and “invisible” that it took a crusading left-wing journalist to ferret them out.  

Harrington’s book jolted a nation that then prided itself on its classlessness and even fretted about the spirit-sapping effects of “too much affluence.” He estimated that one quarter of the population lived in poverty -- inner-city blacks, Appalachian whites, farm workers, and elderly Americans among them. We could no longer boast, as President Nixon had done in his “kitchen debate” with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in Moscow just three years earlier, about the splendors of American capitalism.

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http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175516/

Kathy Freston - Does Meat Kill More Americans Than Cigarettes Do?

For many years, tobacco companies were able to maintain a strong pro-tobacco façade. Smoking focuses the mind. It's good for you (doctors smoke!). It's great for weight loss. It's sexy. It's cool. The tobacco industry spent big bucks to keep these ideas in the mind of the public for as long as it could.

And for many years after the lethal effects were universally known and undeniable, some of our nation's smartest and most successful businessmen continued to believe, because it was in their interest to believe, that "nicotine is not addictive." (Watch the seven most powerful tobacco executives of 1994 make exactly that statement, under oath, to Congress -- not even two decades ago.)

I was reminded of how far tobacco has fallen reading the New York Times magazine interview with perhaps the most successful screenplay writer in history, Joe Eszterhas, who has lost 80 percent of his larynx to tobacco, and has apologized for his glamorization of smoking in such films as  Basic Instinct.

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http://www.alternet.org/story/154532/does_meat_kill_more_americans_than_cigarettes_do

Norm Chomsky - Are We About to Get Embroiled in a Nightmare War With Iran?

The January/February issue of Foreign Affairs featured the article “Time to Attack Iran: Why a Strike Is the Least Bad Option,” by Matthew Kroenig, along with commentary about other ways to contain the Iranian threat.

The media resound with warnings about a likely Israeli attack on Iran while the U.S. hesitates, keeping open the option of aggression – thus againroutinely violating the U.N. Charter, the foundation of international law.

As tensions escalate, eerie echoes of the run-up to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are in the air. Feverish U.S. primary campaign rhetoric adds to the drumbeat.

Concerns about “the imminent threat” of Iran are often attributed to the “international community” – code language for U.S. allies. The people of the world, however, tend to see matters rather differently.

The nonaligned countries, a movement with 120 member nations, has vigorously supported Iran’s right to enrich uranium – an opinion shared by the majority of Americans (as surveyed by WorldPublicOpinion.org) before the massive propaganda onslaught of the past two years.

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http://www.alternet.org/story/154540/chomsky%3A_are_we_about_to_get_embroiled_in_a_nightmare_war_with_iran

Glen Ford - Why Barack Obama is the More Effective Evil

No matter how much evil Barack Obama actually accomplishes during his presidency, people that call themselves leftists insist on dubbing him the Lesser Evil. Not only is Obama not given proper credit for out-evil-ing George Bush, domestically and internationally, but the First Black President is awarded positive grades for his  intentions  versus the presumed intentions of Republicans. As the author says, this "is psycho-babble, not analysis. No real Left would engage in it."

Glen Ford at the Left Forum

BAR executive editor Glen Ford made the following presentation at the Left Forum, Pace University, New York City, March 17. On the panel were Gloria Mattera, Margaret Kimberley (BAR), Suren Moodliar, John Nichols, and Victor Wallis. The discussion was titled,  The 2012 Elections: Lesser Evil or Left Alternative?

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http://www.opednews.com/articles/Why-Barack-Obama-is-the-Mo-by-Glen-Ford-120324-930.html

Soren Seelow - Monsanto, a half-century of health scandals

The giant U.S. agribusiness Monsanto was found guilty on Monday Feb. 13, after being sued by a small farmer from Charente who had been poisoned by a herbicide. This event is a first in France. On the scale of the history of the one-hundred-year-old multinational, this sentence constitutes just one more episode in an already long record of court procedures. 

PCBs, Agent Orange, dioxin, GMO, Aspartame, growth hormones, herbicides (Lasso and Roundup) ... a number of products that have made the fortune of Monsanto, have been marred by health scandals and trials sometimes leading to their prohibition. But nothing has so far hindered the irresistible rise of this former chemical giant who converted back to biogenetics and has mastered the art of lobbying. Portrait of a multinational multi-recidivist.

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http://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2012/02/16/monsanto-un-demi-siecle-de-scandales-sanitaires_1643081_3244.html

Brics move to unseat dollar as trade currency

SOUTH Africa will this week take some initial steps to unseat the US dollar as the preferred worldwide currency for trade and investment in emerging economies.

Thus, the nation is expected to become party to endorsing the Chinese currency, the renminbi, as the currency of trade in emerging markets.

This means getting a renminbi-denominated bank account, in addition to a dollar account, could be an advantage for African businesses that seek to do business in the emerging markets.

The move is set to challenge the supremacy of the US dollar. This, experts say, is the latest salvo in the greatest worldwide currency war since the 1930s.

In the 1930s, several nations competitively devalued their currencies to give their domestic economies an advantage over others.

And this led to a worldwide decline in overall trade volumes at the time.

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http://www.fin24.com/Economy/Brics-move-to-unseat-dollar-as-trade-currency-20120325

Kevin Ryan - SEPTEMBER 11, 2001: Failures of the US Secret Service on the Morning of 9/11: A Call for Transparency

Guest Post by Kevin Ryan, former Site Manager for Environmental Health Laboratories, a division of Underwriters Laboratories (UL). Mr. Ryan, a Chemist and laboratory manager, was fired by UL in 2004 for publicly questioning the report being drafted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) on their World Trade Center investigation. In the intervening period, Ryan has completed additional research while his original questions, which have become increasingly important over time, remain unanswered by UL or NIST.

The U.S. Secret Service failed to do its job on September 11, 2001 in several important ways. These failures could be explained if the Secret Service had foreknowledge of the 9/11 events as they were proceeding. That possibility leads to difficult questions about how the behavior of Secret Service employees might have contributed to the success of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Answering those questions will require the release of existing interview transcripts as well as follow-up questioning, under oath, of a few key people within the agency.

The most glaring example of Secret Service failure on 9/11 was the lack of protection for the President of the United States after it was well known that the country was facing terrorist attacks on multiple fronts.The interesting thing about this was that it was not a consistent approach. That is, the president was protected by the Secret Service in many ways that day but he was not protected from the most obvious, and apparently the most imminent, danger.

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http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=29956

Foods that Contain the Highest Amount of Pesticides

Much of the produce that is sold today in supermarkets is supplied from farmers who practice conventional farming methods. In other words, the produce has been grown using chemical fertilizers as well as pesticides and herbicides. Many scientific studies suggest that the effects of synthetic pesticides can be detrimental to our health; one study suggests that the consumption of pesticides may lead to ADHD in children; in some other cases, exposure can lead to many forms of cancers, infertility problems and birth defects. Along with the many other poor 'food like' products we are eating, there is an array of foreign substances that are entering our bodies. As we expose ourselves to these synthetic substances over the years, our bodies become overloaded, and our 'cleaning' mechanisms fail to work. As a result, many of us develop sickness and disease because our bodies cannot efficiently remove these toxins anymore. In order to help give your body a break from this chemical onslaught, we have suggested what foods should be eaten organically.  The foods listed below are some of the most toxic to our bodies if eaten from conventional sources. Based on the Environment Working Group (EWG), they contain the most pesticides, both on and within them, compared to other foods; so, if you are considering switching to organic, we would suggest taking account of the foods below as a first propriety in your transition. 

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http://greenmedinfo.com/blog/foods-contain-highest-amount-pesticides