DRUGI DOM

Bjorn Lomborg zamenjal ploščo pri globalnem segrevanju

The world’s most high-profile climate change sceptic is to declare that global warming is ”undoubtedly one of the chief concerns facing the world today” and ”a challenge humanity must confront”, in an apparent U-turn that will give a huge boost to the embattled environmental lobby. Climate change sceptic’s U-turn

Tudi Leading Climate Change Skeptic Recants, Wants $100B to Fight Warming

Never have so few, done so little, and made so much, while screwing so many

Guest Post: The Age of Mammon

In 2005, the top 25 hedge fund managers “earned” $9 billion, or an average of $360 million. One year after a financial collapse caused by the financial innovations peddled by Wall Street, the top 25 hedge fund managers paid themselves $25 billion, or an average of $1 billion a piece. For some perspective, there were 7 million unemployed Americans in 2006. Today there are 14.6 million unemployed Americans. While the country plunges deeper into Depression, the barbarians pick up the pace of their plundering and looting of the remaining wealth of the nation. Bill Bonner and Lila Rajiva pointed out a basic truth in 2007, before the financial collapse.

“On the Forbes list of rich people, you will find hedge fund managers in droves, but no one who made his money as a hedge fund client.” – Mobs, Messiahs and Markets

The Legionaries of Christ

Zanimivo, podobne patrone so običajno kaznovali s svetništvom (Opus Dei). Verjetno trenutek ni najbolj ugoden.

The Legionaries of Christ, the Roman Catholic group that combines an estimated £21bn fortune with intense moral turpitude and extreme conservatism, is facing its nemesis this month. For years the organisation was protected by John Paul II, the Polish pope, and his former secretary Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, Archbishop of Krakow. Now the reputation of Father Marcial Maciel, a Mexican who founded the group in 1941 when he was studying for holy orders, is at last falling victim to the reforming drive of John Paul II’s German successor, Benedict XVI.

Incestuous father of three – or perhaps six – children, serial paedophile, morphine addict, lover of la dolce vita, and pretend CIA agent, Maciel, who died in 2008, aged 87, built up a huge religious empire.
…
Benedict is tacitly repudiating the attitudes of John Paul II and Archbishop Dziwisz. The late pope had called Maciel “an efficacious guide to youth”, and applauded his gift for attracting young men to the depleted ranks of the priesthood. Pope acts against incest priest’s group

Odločitev o “Prop 8″ – skoraj kot predstavitev novega iPhona

Včerajšnja odločitev sodnika Walkerja, da je t.i. Prop 8, s katerim so kalifornijski volivci prepovedali poroke med istospolnimi pari, neustaven, je na internetu povzročila skoraj takšen buzz kot takrat, ko Steve na plano postavi nov iPhone. Spletne strani so pokleknile, Twitter pa je verjetno postavljal nove dnevne rekorde.

Odločitev skriva mnogo resnic, ki bi si jih morali še kako ogledati tudi v teh krajih (“fundamental rights may not be submitted to [a] vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.”), najbolj oseben in čustven odziv pa so s serijo fotografij po mojem skromnem mnenju pridelali na boston.com. Vredno ogleda.

Darlene Garner, left, holds her partner, Candy Holmes, of Washington, as she cries after the couple obtained their marriage license Wednesday, March 3, 2010, the first day possible for gay couples since the District of Columbia legalized gay marriage in Washington, DC. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

I give up

Etnično čiščenje po sionistično

Izrael je nedavno obeležil 62. obletnico svojega obstoja. Večini Judov trpljenje Palestincev na okupiranih ozemljih in v koncentracijskem taborišču Gaza seveda ni moglo pokvariti veselja ob prazniku, ki ga v Palestini imenujejo Nakba, katastrofa. In to z razlogom: kakor v svoji zadnji knjigi, brilijantni analizi dogajanja v obdobju 1947-1949, ugotavlja izraelski zgodovinar Ilan Pappe, je rojstvo Izraela neločljivo povezano z eno izmed najbolj učinkovitih, krvavih in terorističnih kampanj etničnega čiščenja v zgodovini.

Rasistični teror nad Palestinci – vključno z množičnimi izgoni, zaplembami premoženja, kolonizacijo, rušenji celotnih vasi, eksekucijami, masakri, plenjenjem, posilstvi, množičnimi aretacijami in mučenjem – v režiji ljudi, ki zavzemajo najsvetejša mesta v judovskem političnem panteonu, seveda ni nekaj, kar bi sploh lahko našlo pot v izraelske zgodovinske učbenike. Treba je pogledati samo, kako je v slovenski družbi potekalo soočanje z državljansko vojno v letih 1941-1945, pa se ta ne po krutosti, ne po cinizmu ne more primerjati s tem, kar so Judje zagrešili nad palestinskim narodom.

Bolj presenenča dejstvo, da tudi zunaj Izraela veliko tistih, ki so z vso pravico podprli posega zveze Nato v Bosni in na Kosovu ter, prav tako upravičeno, obtožujejo mednarodno skupnost tihega pristanka na genocida in etnični čiščenji v Rwandi in Darfurju, ne zmore jasno obsoditi izraelske okupacijske politike. Ta je, kakor pravi Pappe, nadaljevanje politike etničnega čiščenja iz let 1947-1949, a z drugimi sredstvi.

Kaj se je torej zgodilo v teh letih? Judovska kabala pod vodstvom očeta naroda Davida Ben-Guriona je zgolj uresničila tisto, kar je rasistična in kolonialistična ideologija sionizma trobentala že od konca 19. stoletja – da je treba Palestino očistiti Arabcev in tam izgraditi domovino židovskega naroda.

Ko so Ben-Gurion in njegovi oprode po umiku Britancev iz Palestine 14. maja leta 1948 (izraelski dan neodvisnosti) dobili priložnost, se niso obotavljali. Tri leta po Auschwitzu so iz domov pregnali 800.000 Palestincev (na Zahodni breg, v Libanon, Gazo, Jordanijo), pri tem pa izpraznili 530 vasi ter uničili 11 palestinskih sosesk v večjih mestih.

Sledila je razlastitev: zemlja je postala last države, ki jo je nato poceni razprodala Židom, palestinska podjetja so propadla, palestinski prihranki v bankah so bili zaplenjeni.

V luči teh dejstev je celoten “mirovni” proces slaba šala. Judje namreč brutalnega etničnega čiščenja, zločina proti človeštvu, ki je ob rojstvu judovske države čez njene čez meje pognal več kot polovico palestinskega naroda, ne priznavajo. Vrnitev beguncev na svoje domove, vrnitev ukradene zemlje – to sta dve stvari, o katerih se Judje niso pripravljeni pogovarjati, medtem ko je za Palestince priznanje teh zločinov in pravična odškodnina za te grozote  nujen predpogoj za kakršen koli mirovni sporazum.

To je lepo pokazala zavrnitev sporazumov iz Osla: razlog ni bil palestinski ekstremizem, ampak preprosto dejstvo, da se je Fatah Jaserja Arafata uklonil Izraelu in ZDA ter begunce in zemljo zamenjal za vodilno vlogo v palestinskih bantustanih na Zahodnem bregu in Gazi. Vzpon Hamasa je v veliki meri posledica nezadovoljstva Palestincev nad korupcijo, avtokratskim stilom in kolaboracijo Fataha z izraelskim okupatorjem. Povedno je tudi dejstvo, da mednarodna skupnost od Hamasa ne zahteva le, da se odpove terorizmu, ampak tudi, da prizna vse “mirovne” sporazume, ki jih je Fatah sklenil z Izraelom.

Sporočilo demokratičnega in svobodnega sveta Palestincem je torej nadvse cinično: Dokler boste volili skrajneže, ki vrnitev beguncev in vrnitev ukradene zemlje postavljajo kot pogoj za začetek mirovnih pogajanj, boste pač stradali.

Bye bye, middle-class

What, then, is the future of the American Dream? Michael Spence, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, whom the World Bank commissioned to lead a four-year study into the future of global growth, admits to a sense of foreboding. Like a growing number of economists, Spence says he sees the Great Stagnation as a profound crisis of identity for America.

For years, the problem was cushioned and partially hidden by the availability of cheap debt. Middle-class Americans were actively encouraged to withdraw equity from their homes, or leach from their retirement funds, in the confidence that ­property prices and stock markets would permanently defy gravity (a view, among others, promoted by half the world’s Nobel economics prize winners, Spence not included). That cushion is now gone. Easy money has turned into heavy debt. Baby boomers have postponed retirements. College graduates are moving back in with their parents.

The barometer is economic. But the anger is human and increasingly political. “I have this gnawing feeling about the future of America,” says Spence. “When people lose the sense of optimism, things tend to get more volatile. The future I most fear for America is Latin American: a grossly unequal society that is prone to wild swings from populism to orthodoxy, which makes sensible government increasingly hard to imagine. Look at the Tea Party. People think it came from nowhere. While I don’t agree with their remedies, most Tea Party members are middle-class Americans who have been suffering silently for years.” The crisis of middle-class America by Edward Luce

Propad vrednot

Mnogi ga iščejo; tukaj ga imate.

This past month, Senate Republicans filibustered against a bill to extend jobless benefits to over 2 million unemployed Americans, saying they were fiscally unwise and irresponsible given the current national deficit. It’s too bad all of these Republicans voted for Bush’s tax cuts:

Cost of Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy for fiscal year 2010: $200 billion (Note: This only covers one year of the cost of Bush’s tax cuts, which are estimated to cost the US Treasury over $2.2 trillion if extended to 2020).

Cost of jobless benefits for fiscal year 2010: $34 Billion Vir

Econopocalypse: the Marxist animated whiteboard explanation

Naravnost odlično.

Marxist sociologist David Harvey gave a great presentation analyzing the econopocalypse in Marxist terms at London’s Royal Society for the Arts. The talk is animated with high-speed whiteboard doodles from Cognitive Media, a treatment that is really a top notch of augmenting complex lecture.

Via boingboing

Stiglitz o paničnem krčenju javne porabe: This is really risky, really scary

Then why have we not learned from all that? Because politicians like George Osborne are driven by ideology; the national deficit is an excuse to shrink the state because that is what he wanted anyway. Because the financial market only cares about one thing – getting repaid. And because other European governments are panicking because of the market’s wild attack on Greece and Spain, and they don’t want to be next.

“But cutbacks in Germany, Britain and France will mean all of Europe will suffer. The cuts will all feed back negatively. And if everyone follows this policy, their budget deficits will get worse, so they will have to make more cuts and raise taxes more. It’s a vicious downward spiral. We’re now looking at a long, hard, slow recovery with the possibility of a double dip if everybody cuts back at the same time. The best scenario is long and hard … and the worst is much worse. If any one of these countries is forced into default, the banking system is so highly leveraged that it could cause real problems. This is really risky, really scary.” Osborne’s first Budget? It’s wrong, wrong, wrong!