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Written by Sandy LeonVest
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Wednesday, 03 September 2008 |
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The days when the US could kill, drill and consume its way out of crisis may have ended. That new reality is made clear by the current conflict between Russia and Georgia, which is looking more and more like one between Russia and the US. The exact moment in history marking the last gasp of the American Empire will likely be debated by historians for years. But there is little doubt that August 7, 2008 will be viewed as a turning point in that history. Georgia’s invasion of South Ossetia, followed by Russia’s predictable response, may have faded from the US media spotlight, but it is on the front pages of much of the international press - and for good reason. |
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Written by Rebecca Trotzky Sirr
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Monday, 01 September 2008 |
Minneapolis, MN–At 9:17pm on August 29th, Ramsey county sheriff department entered a St Paul Convergence space for anti-RNC demonstrators, handcuffing over a hundred community members engaged in movie watching, meetings and potluck meals. Guns in hand, yelling "Get on the floor!" police attempted to preemptively prevent Republican National Convention (RNC) protests. |
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Written by Greg Guma
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Monday, 01 September 2008 |
Three days after the 2008 presidential election, no matter which political party takes the White House, a convention will be held in Vermont's Statehouse to consider more radical solutions to the problems facing the nation. The organizing group is the Second Vermont Republic, a citizens' network that aims to dissolve the United States and, in particular, return Vermont "to its status as an independent republic." |
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Written by Kari Lydersen
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Friday, 29 August 2008 |
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 Bobby Koezuna Holds Tusks Hunting walrus is an age-old tradition for the Inupiat Eskimo Native people of King Island, a tiny rugged piece of land jutting out of the Bering Sea off Alaska. The walrus provides meat for the long, dark, frigid winters, and its tusks, skin, blubber, intestines and other body parts serve other crucial functions, including making watertight parkas and "pokes" to store berries. Watching the sky and sea for signs of the coming walrus migration is an art still passed on from elders to the young generation. Now, indigenous people across the Arctic region say, due to the effects of climate change, they can no longer predict important climactic changes and events like they used to, leading some to freeze to death caught in storms or stranded on ice; or face privation as their traditional hunts are interrupted. |
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Written by Benjamin Dangl
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Tuesday, 26 August 2008 |
This US election year an unprecedented number of voters will likely head to the polls to cast their ballots in an exercise that should take just a few minutes to complete. But what about the rest of the minutes left in the year? Author and activist Chris Carlsson has some suggestions for social change beyond voting in Nowtopia, a new book about modern day rebels who, in his words, "aren’t waiting for an institutional change from on-high but are getting on with building the new world in the shell of the old." |
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Written by Al Huebner
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Tuesday, 26 August 2008 |
 Plane Over London Neighborhood Until a few decades ago noise was seen as no more than a nuisance of modern urban life. Then research began to show that loud, but not uncommon, noise could damage hearing. And numerous studies indicated that many widespread sources of sound near schools impaired children's ability to learn. More recently the World Health Organization (WHO), using data from pioneer studies done in several European countries, including Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, has demonstrated that noise can be a major killer. |
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Written by Susan Linn
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Monday, 25 August 2008 |
Comparing the marketing of yesteryear to the marketing of today is like comparing a BB gun with a smart bomb. These days it’s honed by child psychologists, made possible by incredible technology and brought to us by huge amounts of money. In 1983, companies were spending about $100 million annually marketing to children, mostly on television. Today, they are spending about $17 billion, and there are so many more ways for them to target children. |
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Written by Aziz Choudry
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Wednesday, 20 August 2008 |
In the late 1990s, well before Bush’s ‘war on terror’, New Zealand TV screened a particularly awful US action drama called ‘Soldier of Fortune Inc.’, about an elite team (composed of former US Marines, Delta Force, CIA, British SAS personnel) who performed ‘unofficial’ covert missions for the US Government. They would get a briefcase full of money from a shadowy military liaison and head to the Middle East, Latin America, Haiti, or the Balkans, or smoke out foreign agents and assorted enemies within the USA, missions for which Washington could claim plausible deniability because none were active duty soldiers. It was a dirty job, but someone had to do it to keep ‘US democracy’ safe, for a price. Sounds familiar? |
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Written by Cyril Mychalejko
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Tuesday, 19 August 2008 |
 Police Force in Miami, 2003 Five years ago this November, the Miami police department, with the assistance of Homeland Security, the FBI and other federal government agencies, unleashed a violent paramilitary occupation of Miami in order to curtail protests against the now defunct proposal to create a Free Trade Area of the Americas. This same anti-protest model will be applied at the September 1-4 Republication National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota. |
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