Guest Posted April 17, 2004 Report Share Posted April 17, 2004 Wal-Mart, a Nation Unto Itself http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/17/arts/17WALM.html In the 19th century, he said, the standard-setting company was the Pennsylvania Railroad; in the mid-20th century, it was General Motors; and in the late 20th century, it was Microsoft. Today's prototypical company, he declared in opening the conference, is Wal-Mart, which, he said, rezones American cities, sets wage standards and even conducts diplomacy with other nations. "In short, the company's management legislates for the rest of us key components of American social and industrial policy," Mr. Lichtenstein said. Wal-Mart has created a very different model from General Motors, he added, noting that G.M. helped build the world's most affluent middle class by paying wages far above the average and by providing generous health and pension plans. Mr. Lichtenstein said G.M.'s wage pattern spurred other companies to raise compensation levels, while Wal-Mart's relatively low wages and benefits ? its workers average less than $18,000 a year ? were doing just the opposite. The company's pay scale and hard-nosed labor practices, said Simon Head, a fellow at the Century Foundation and author of "The New Ruthless Economy: Work and Power in the Digital Age" (Oxford University Press, 2003) mean that "Wal-Mart is certainly a template of 21st-century capitalism, but a capitalism that increasingly resembles a capitalism of 100 years ago." He added, "It combines the extremely dynamic use of technology with a very authoritarian and ruthless managerial culture." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted April 17, 2004 Report Share Posted April 17, 2004 FBI Whistle-Blowers Go Unheard ??By James Ridgeway ??The Village Voice ??Wednesday 14 April 2004 9-11 Commission disregards survivor families' interests. ??WASHINGTON D.C. ? Despite the best efforts of the Jersey Girls, leaders of the 9-11 Family Steering Committee, no member of the 9-11 commission this afternoon asked FBI chief Robert Mueller embarrassing questions about two former FBI translators who claim to have knowledge bearing on the attacks. One of them says she is being suppressed and can't talk because Attorney general John Ashcroft has placed a gag order on her. ??Instead, the commissioners lauded Mueller for his running of the agency, which only yesterday they were bitterly attacking as incompetent and ineffective. Today one commissioner after another lavished praise on Mueller. ??Commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste briefly alluded to accusations by the translators, and said he would pursue it in private. ??In particular the Jersey Girls wanted the commission to closely question Mueller about Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI translator, who is openly challenging the agency's veracity in the 9-11 investigation. Attorney General John Ashcroft has put a gag order on Edmonds by making her internal complaint to the inspector general secret. Soon after she came out publicly, Edmonds was fired. ??She subsequently told the commission that the FBI had information that an attack using airplanes was being planned before September 11. "Some of our group has met several times with Edmonds, and from what we can tell, we think her claims are extremely credible," Lori van Auken, one of the leaders of the Jersey Girls, told The Voice. "So much so that some of our group hand walked her in to testify before the 9-11 commissioners." ??They are also eager to find out more about the unconfirmed story of a second FBI linguist, Behrooz Sarshar, who claims he translated for an FBI informant with information on a supposed Al Qaeda plot to attack the U.S. with planes back in April 2001. "Some of the group have also met with Sarshar," said van Auken. "His claims seem to back up what Edmonds is saying." ??Edmonds came to attention most recently following Condoleezza Rice's assertion in a Washington Post op-ed piece that the White House had no specific information on a domestic threat or one involving planes as "an outrageous lie. And documents can prove it's a lie," according to Edmonds. http://truthout.org/docs_04/041604A.shtml Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted April 17, 2004 Report Share Posted April 17, 2004 Hear No Evil, Read No Evil, Speak Drivel ?Bush, in fact, does not read his President's Daily Briefs, but has them orally summarised every morning by the CIA director, George Tenet. President Clinton, by contrast, read them closely and alone, preventing any aides from interpreting what he wanted to know first-hand. He extensively marked up his PDBs, demanding action on this or that, which is almost certainly the likely reason the Bush administration withheld his memoranda from the 9/11 commission. ??"I know he doesn't read," one former Bush national security council staffer told me. Several other former NSC staffers corroborated this. It seems highly unlikely that he read the national intelligence estimate on WMD before the Iraq war that consigned contrary evidence and caveats that undermined the case to footnotes and fine print. Nor is there any evidence that he read the state department's 17-volume report, The Future of Iraq, warning of nearly all the postwar pitfalls, that was shelved by the neocons in the Pentagon and Vice-President Cheney's office. ??Nor was Bush aware of similar warnings urgently being sounded by the military's top strategic anal cysts. One monograph, Reconstructing Iraq, by the US Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute, predicted in detail "possible severe security difficulties" and conflicts among Iraqis that US forces "can barely comprehend". I have learned that it was suppressed by the Pentagon neocons, and only released to US central command after Senator Joseph Biden, the ranking Democrat on the foreign relations committee, directly intervened. A revolt within the military against Bush is brewing. Many in the military's strategic echelon share the same feelings of being ignored and ill-treated by the administration that senior intelligence officers voice in private. "The Pentagon began with fantasy assumptions on Iraq and worked back," one of them remarked to me. http://truthout.org/docs_04/041604B.shtml Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lock Limit Down Posted April 17, 2004 Report Share Posted April 17, 2004 Sinclair.... "So what the Fed and the US government have done is to build the greatest edifice of debt ever seen by one country in history. And this debt continues to build. For the US government, the debt build-up is continuing at the rate of over $13 billion a WEEK. The current rising trend in interest rates will bear down on this ocean of debt"... http://www.jsmineset.com/home.asp Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brian4 Posted April 17, 2004 Report Share Posted April 17, 2004 link Last week I posted that Arch Crawford and other Astrologers were all a twitter about the date April 19. I never dismiss what they say because over the years I have seen them to be right more often than wrong. Nothing is a 100% certainty-lets hope they are wrong on this one! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrStool Posted April 17, 2004 Report Share Posted April 17, 2004 The End Is Nigh Long Term Forecast Update Your Anals are loaded. Take a subscribatory and download RIGHT NOW! 30 Day Intro Subscribatory. Just $16.99! Get In RIGHT NOW! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Black Prince Posted April 17, 2004 Report Share Posted April 17, 2004 Is it just me, the Annals is totaly BLANK Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted April 17, 2004 Report Share Posted April 17, 2004 Is it just me, the Annals is totaly BLANK yup...blank Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrStool Posted April 17, 2004 Report Share Posted April 17, 2004 The problem of the empty Anals has been rectumated. The Anals are now loaded, ready, and urgently waiting for download. Tanks to Black Prince for bringing the problem to my attention. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrStool Posted April 17, 2004 Report Share Posted April 17, 2004 The golf sirens call. I am going to chop up some turf. Possibly hit a few balls, birds, and other golfers in the process. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted April 17, 2004 Report Share Posted April 17, 2004 I'll alert the media. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Icky Twerp Posted April 17, 2004 Report Share Posted April 17, 2004 it's an ill-wind that blows no good, sez who? Halliburton scrutiny on hiatus More likely respite than change of public opinionBy NELSON ANTOSH Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle WASHINGTON ? For months Halliburton Co. was a staple for comedians' punch lines and Democrats' speeches attacking the Bush administration's corporate connections. However, since the capture of seven employees of the Houston-based company in the recent uprising in Iraq, the airwaves have gone all but silent on the topic. The reason is simple: Those contracts to do billions of dollars worth of work to rebuild Iraq's energy sector and support the troops there no longer look like cozy arrangements, as the death toll stands at about 30 employees of Halliburton and its subcontractors, according to the company. "The emphasis now is on the human tragedy, not any corporate tragedy," said Garth Jowett, a University of Houston communications professor. "People are just thinking that you can't make fun of Halliburton." Coverage no longer plays up details like the company formerly being run by Vice President Dick Cheney, or the company's no-bid contract to rebuild oil production. The change has been noticed inside the company. In a show of support, more than 1,000 people have sent messages to the company Web site since Monday thanking and encouraging its employees in Iraq and Kuwait, spokeswoman Wendy Hall said. "We have had plenty of equal-opportunity critics," she said in a prepared statement. "Our goal is to make sure that soldiers have food and everything they need to be more comfortable in a war zone." Houston has had the advantage of being the staging area for employees headed to Iraq. "We're the ones who see them as real people," Jowett said. In a national sense, the company now has real faces that the public can attach to the company that are apt to make a different impression than Chief Executive Officer Dave Lesar going on talk shows or showing up in newspaper stories, said University of Pennsylvania communications professor Kathleen Hall Jamieson. The sympathy for the people who were captured likely will hold off any off-the-cuff remarks for the time being, she said. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobertTheBruce Posted April 17, 2004 Report Share Posted April 17, 2004 U.S. shot ambulances in Fallujah http://www.underreported.com/modules.php?o...rticle&sid=1281 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nobody Posted April 17, 2004 Report Share Posted April 17, 2004 17000 Iraqi casualties. Seventeen thousand people who no longer fear the murdering Saddam. The Iraqi people must be grateful. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted April 17, 2004 Report Share Posted April 17, 2004 ? Australia to print U.S. money; U.S. to print other countries' money Posted by: Admin on Saturday, April 17, 2004 - 01:11 PM GMT ? ? According to securency.com.au: Securency is the recognised world leader in polymer substrate technology and the supplier of a range of unique substrates which are used for the printing of banknotes and other security documents. Formed in 1996, Securency is a joint venture between the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), Australia's central bank, and UCB, a Belgian multi-national films, chemicals and pharmaceuticals company. With all the U.S. money to come from Australia, what will become of the U.S.'s printing presses? Why, they'll be printing money for other countries. According to HR 3786 which has already passed the U.S. House of Representatives: To authorize the Secretary of the Treasury to produce currency, postage stamps, and other security documents at the request of foreign governments on a reimbursable basis. When a country lets another country control its currency, it gives up soverignty. Sovereign nations are quickly becoming a thing of the past. http://www.underreported.com/modules.php?o...order=0&thold=0 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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