Notes from the Surf
keyboardr
http://keyboardr.com/
Incremental Googling.
UBS whistleblower asks why he is going to prison
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5BT4DJ20091230
Birkenfeld's former boss, a Swiss citizen and an alleged mastermind of the conspiracy, was... held for four months on a material witness warrant before he was quietly allowed to leave the country... "And I am the only one going to prison. Out of 19,000 accounts and no Swiss bankers," Birkenfeld responds.
The top 10 stories not brought to you by mainstream news media in 2009
http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A407460&
"Peter Phillips, director of Project Censored for 13 years, says he's finished with reform. It's impossible, he said in a recent interview, to try to get major news media outlets to deliver relevant news stories that serve to strengthen democracy."
1% of population controls six times combined financial wealth of 80% of people
http://www.mybudget360.com/top-1-percent-control-42-percent-of-financial-wealth-in-the-us-how-average-americans-are-lured-into-debt-servitude-by-promises-of-mega-wealth/
"The bottom 90 percent have been saddled with 73 percent of all debt... Debt is slavery for many... Bondholders have been protected at all costs during this crisis. Goldman Sachs through AIG received 100 cents on the dollar for their horrible bets. The banks have unlimited back stops thanks to taxpayers. This is how the top 1 percent rule the new feudal state."
Political Myths We Live By
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/23403
"If ‘democracy' means ‘rule by the people', it isn't. It is an oligarchic system of elected political elites tightly enmeshed with the unelected economic elites in industry, state bureaucracy and the media. These, often discordant, elites together make up the ruling class."
Argentine 'Dirty War' defendants on trial
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=114798§ionid=351020706
Among the defendants on trial now are some of the dictatorship's most notorious figures, including former Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla, who led the junta that governed after a 1976 coup, and Argentina's last dictator, Reynaldo Bignone. There is also Alfredo Astiz, nicknamed "Blond Angel of Death." More trials are due next year for those charged with involvement in “Operation Condor,” in which dictatorships across much of South America cooperated in hunting down and killing leftists.
Honduras: The Coup That Never Happened
http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/290.php
"state henchmen shot Alejandro Villatoro, the owner of Radio Globo – one of the few media outlets brave enough to speak out against the coup... Radio Globo had by that point resorted almost exclusively to broadcasting online from secret locations... Some, like Canal 36, have shut down altogether after having equipment destroyed, signals interrupted, offices ransacked and editors assassinated."
Speech by War Veteran
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akm3nYN8aG8
"I feel guilty any time I see a mother with her children, like the one who cried hysterically, and screamed that we were worse than Saddam as we forced her from her home... Millions in this country without health care, jobs, or access to education must watch this government squander over $450 million a day on this occupation... I threw families on to the street in Iraq only to come home and find families thrown on to the street in this country."
Cleveland’s Worker-Owned Boom
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/the-new-economy/clevelands-worker-owned-boom
"Instead of luring outside corporations with promises of tax breaks and lax standards for labor and environmental practices, the Evergreen strategy develops home-grown worker-owned enterprises... The Fund is modeled in part on Spain’s Caja Laboral bank, with initial funding from foundations. But as they grow, the Evergreen co-ops will be an increasingly important source of funding for other co-ops"
Worker Cooperative Productivity
http://trustcurrency.blogspot.com/2009/12/worker-cooperative-productivity.html
"participation is most conducive to enhancing productivity when combined with... the conditions that will prevail under Economic Democracy... most find worker self-managed firms more productive than similarly situated capitalist firms."