be just

Why Oil Prices Are So High | Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace | AlterNet : "In the late 1990s, we had the stock market bubble. That popped. Then we had the housing market bubble. And that popped. Last week the market for crude oil bubbled to an all-time high, nearly $140 per barrel. We seem today to be forever blowing bubbles. Maybe we should stop and ask why. After all, back in the middle of the 20th century, our economy didn’t careen from one bubble to another. Why now all the bubbles — and busts? Here’s why. We’ve become too unequal. We have too much wealth concentrated in too few pockets"

Worse Than Fascists: Christian Political Group 'The Family' Openly Reveres Hitler | Rights and Liberties | AlterNet : "Did you know that the National Prayer Breakfast is sponsored by a shadowy cabal of elite Christian fundamentalists? Jeff Sharlet's new book, 'The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power,' offers a rare glimpse of this remarkable network, which is known variously as the Family, the Fellowship and the International Foundation. The Family was founded 70 years ago by Abraham Vereide, a Norwegian immigrant evangelist based in Seattle. In 1935, Vereide said, God appeared to him in a vision and revealed where Christianity had gone wrong: preoccupation with the poor, the weak and the suffering. The down-and-out were in no position to bring about the Kingdom of God, Vereide realized. Some Christians believe that the rapture is imminent, but not the Family. They're convinced that Jesus won't return until we get our collec...

ei: The fallacy of Islamic "national suicide" : "A new buzzword is arising from the network of Israeli think tanks and security-oriented academic departments bent on instigating a US attack on Iran: 'national suicide.' The term describes a supposed Arab Muslim tradition of politically motivated suicide at the national, not just individual, level. Arab Muslim regimes have purportedly launched ruinous wars they could not have reasonably hoped to win, condemning their nations to destruction. The notion of an 'irrational' and thus untrustworthy Iranian regime has already been widely discussed in the US. It is regularly invoked by Sen. John McCain on the stump. The term 'national suicide' advances the notion and gives it a patina of academic respectability. Israeli jurist and former Knesset member Amnon Rubinstein recently editorialized on 'national suicide' in The Jerusalem Post. Citing Israeli army Lt. Col. Ari Bar Yossef, Rubinstein offered ...

American Civil Liberties Union : Supreme Court Restores Rule Of Law To Guantánamo NEW YORK - In a stunning blow to the Bush administration's failed national security policies, the Supreme Court ruled today 5-4 that the U.S. Constitution applies to the government's detention policies at Guantánamo. The Court concluded that detainees held at Guantánamo have a right to challenge their detention through habeas corpus. The following can be attributed to Steven R. Shapiro, Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union: "Today's decision forcefully repudiates the essential lawlessness of the Bush administration's failed Guantánamo policy. It should also mark the beginning of the end of the military commission process, which permits the use of coerced evidence and hearsay and thus cannot survive the constitutional scrutiny that today's decision demands. It is time to close Guantánamo, end indefinite detention without charge and restore the rule of law."