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Archive for May 20th, 2009

A land is a terrible thing to waste

Posted by Charles II on May 20, 2009

Mel Frykberg, IPS News and International Federation of Environmental Journalists:

Israel has found a cheap and easy way to get rid of its waste, much of it hazardous: dump it into the West Bank. A few Palestinians can be bought, the rest are in no position to complain.


For several years Israeli companies have been dumping solid and hazardous waste there [in Shuqbah],” Mtoor told IPS. “The subsequent burning of toxic waste including items such as x-ray films releases carcinogens into the environment, and this has affected the population, with many people developing asthma and related illnesses.”

The Israelis earlier buried the carcasses of thousands of chickens infected with the avian flu virus near Nablus in the northern West Bank, said Mtoor. The PEA also uncovered 500 barrels of insecticide in Hebron in the southern West Bank.


Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in environment, israel | 1 Comment »

When I Hear The Words “Austrian Economics”…

Posted by Phoenix Woman on May 20, 2009

…I reach for my SPLC references.

For people wondering who is behind “Austrian economics” or the Mises Institute, check out the Southern Poverty Law Center’s research thereon:

Ludwig von Mises Institute
www.mises.org

The Ludwig von Mises Institute, founded in 1982 by Llewellyn Rockwell Jr. and still headed by him, is a major center promoting libertarian political theory and the Austrian School of free market economics, pioneered by the late economist Ludwig von Mises. It publishes seven journals, has printed more than 100 books, and offers scholarships, prizes, conferences and a major library at its Auburn, Ala., offices.

It also promotes a type of Darwinian view of society in which elites are seen as natural and any intervention by the government on behalf of social justice is destructive. The institute seems nostalgic for the days when, “because of selective mating, marriage, and the laws of civil and genetic inheritance, positions of natural authority [were] likely to be passed on within a few noble families.”

But the rule of these natural elites and intellectuals, writes institute scholar Hans-Hermann Hoppe, is being ruined by statist meddling such as “affirmative action and forced integration,” which he said is “responsible for the almost complete destruction of private property rights, and the erosion of freedom of contract, association, and disassociation.”

A key player in the institute for years was the late Murray Rothbard, who worked with Rockwell closely and co-edited a journal with him. The institute’s Web site includes a cybershrine to Rothbard, a man who complained that the “Officially Oppressed” of American society (read, blacks, women and so on) were a “parasitic burden,” forcing their “hapless Oppressors” to provide “an endless flow of benefits.”

“The call of ‘equality,'” he wrote, “is a siren song that can only mean the destruction of all that we cherish as being human.” Rothbard blamed much of what he disliked on meddling women. In the mid-1800s, a “legion of Yankee women” who were “not fettered by the responsibilities” of household work “imposed” voting rights for women on the nation. Later, Jewish women, after raising funds from “top Jewish financiers,” agitated for child labor laws, Rothbard adds with evident disgust. The “dominant tradition” of all these activist women, he suggests, is lesbianism.

Institute scholars also have promoted anti-immigrant views, positively reviewing Peter Brimelow’s Alien Nation.

(If you’re wondering what brought this on, it’s the efforts being made by the Alabama Slammers to mainstream themselves and their racism as legitimate, using Ron Paul as the conduit.)

Posted in economy, eedjits, race in America, racism, rightwing moral cripples | 9 Comments »

Will Any Of The TradMed Sources Currently Uncritically Repeating GOP Nonsense About Pelosi…

Posted by Phoenix Woman on May 20, 2009

…ever stop to notice that Fred Malek, the first prominent Republican to endorse Mitt Romney for 2012, is the same guy who pulled off the infamous “Jew count” — which led to the demotion of two Jewish employees — at the Bureau of Labor Statistics under Richard Nixon?

Then again, the traditional media largely ignored this little blot on Malek’s escutcheon when he and other persons with bigoted histories were hired by John McCain’s campaign in 2007 — even though they were in the throes of pretending that Obama’s campaign had a “Jewish problem”.

Posted in anti-Semitism, Barack Obama, GOP/Media Complex, Pelosi, Republicans, Republicans acting badly, Republicans as cancer, rightwing moral cripples, Silly Republicans, The smear industry, torture, working the refs | Comments Off on Will Any Of The TradMed Sources Currently Uncritically Repeating GOP Nonsense About Pelosi…

 
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