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By Randall Erickson / Special to the OB Rag
PARIS, FRANCE. In my last dispatch, I gave some practical examples of how «socialism» or the welfare state, if you will, functions.
I should add that the price of visiting a doctor is about 30 dollars. Specialists cost a bit more. Doctors can stay in the government system or go independent and charge more, but that extra may or may not be taken up by the mutual.
By Juan Cole / Informed Consent / August 22, 2011
The Libyan Revolution has largely succeeded, and this is a moment of celebration, not only for Libyans but for a youth generation in the Arab world that has pursued a political opening across the region. The secret of the uprising’s final days of success lay in a popular revolt in the working-class districts of the capital, which did most of the hard work of throwing off the rule of secret police and military cliques. It succeeded so well that when revolutionary brigades entered the city from the west, many encountered little or no resistance, and they walked right into the center of the capital.
By Randall Erickson / Special to the OB Rag
PARIS, FRANCE. My previous dispatch may give a too idealistic image of life in France.
There are major and minor problems. Yes, like the United States, France has homeless individuals and families. They cannot afford available housing and may have trouble paying for food or even finding a school for their children because they don’t have an address.
Editor: Here are two articles from Europe about the state of America today – since the so-called “debt crisis” was resolved. One is from Der Spiegel – one of the most well-respected German newspapers -, and the other from the Guardian in Britain. The pictures of our country that these articles paint is extremely terrible : the German believes that the U.S. is no longer part of the “West”, and the British view is that there’s been a “billionaires’ coup” in America.
by Jakob Augstein / Der Spiegel (Germany) / August 4, 2011
This week, the United States nearly allowed itself to succumb to economic disaster. Increasingly, the divided country has more in common with a failed state than a democracy.
(Come inside for the remainder of this article.)
By George Monbiot/ Guardian UK (Britain) / August 2, 2011
Anger and deceit has led the US into a billionaires’ coup. The debt deal will hurt the poorest Americans, convinced by Fox and the Tea Party to act against their own welfare.
(Come inside for the remainder of this article.)
By R. Erickson / Special to the OB Rag / July 27, 2011
PARIS, FRANCE: Americans who manage to avoid «American Idol» and see some films from France, see some photos or commercials of Paris, or even travel there, might have the image of women in flowing spring skirts or dresses, or in professional skirt suits.
By Mike Davis / TomDispatch.com / July 26, 2011
When my old gang and I were 14 or 15 years old, many centuries ago, we yearned for immortality in the fiery wreck of a bitchin’ ’40 Ford or ’57 Chevy. Our J.K. Rowling was Henry Felsen, the ex-Marine who wrote the bestselling masterpieces Hot Rod (1950), Street Rod (1953), and Crash Club (1958).
Officially, his books — highly praised by the National Safety Council — were deterrents, meant to scare my generation straight with huge dollops of teenage gore. In fact, he was our asphalt Homer, exalting doomed teenage heroes and inviting us to emulate their legend. One of his books ends with an apocalyptic collision at a crossroads that more or less wipes out the entire graduating class of a small Iowa town. We loved this passage so much that we used to read it aloud to each other.
It’s hard not to think of the great Felsen, who died in 1995, while browsing the business pages these days.
There is a growing movement in America that equates godliness with hatred of our government — in fact, hatred of our country.
By Frank Schaeffer / AlterNet
The Norwegian police on Saturday charged a 32-year-old man, whom they identified as a Christian fundamentalist with right-wing connections, over the bombing of a government center and a shooting attack on a nearby island that together left at least 91 people dead.
It has taken me more than 30 years as a journalist to ask myself this question, but this week I find that I must: is the Left right after all? You see, one of the great arguments of the Left is that what the Right calls “the free market” is actually a set-up.
The rich run a global system that allows them to accumulate capital and pay the lowest possible price for labour. The freedom that results applies only to them. The many simply have to work harder, in conditions that grow ever more insecure, to enrich the few. Democratic politics, which purports to enrich the many, is actually in the pocket of those bankers, media barons and other moguls who run and own everything.
Sean Hoare, the former News of the World showbiz reporter who was the first named journalist to allege Andy Coulson was aware of phone hacking by his staff, has been found dead, the Guardian has learned.
Hoare, who worked on the Sun and the News of the World with Coulson before being dismissed for drink and drugs problems, is said to have been found dead at his Watford home.
By Kit-Bacon Gressitt / Excuse Me, I’m Writing
You know that thing we used to have to do at the end of summer, the thing that whopped you upside the head with the brutal inevitability that vacation was over, that tar-bubble popping adventures and rhubarb-sucking loll-abouts were done, done and gone with the finality of a bee between your naked foot and the clover that enticed the insect to its death and you, to your hopping pain?
By Karla Adam / Washington Post / June 30, 2011 LONDON– Airports, courts and more than 10,000 schools were among…
In response to a deadly Border Patrol shooting by this week in the Tijuana River Valley, Mexico’s president confronted Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over the incident, and later demanded punishment for whomever was responsible.
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