Author: Quiet Mike

Palestine Upgraded at the UN, Degraded by Canada and the U.S.

Palestinians took to the streets of Gaza and the West Bank last Thursday to celebrate their historic, but symbolic victory at the United Nations. In a vote of 138 – 9, the general assembly decided to grant Palestine non-member observer status. Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank likened the overwhelming majority vote to a Palestinian birth certificate. The world knows that Palestinian independence can only come through negotiations with Israel, but the vote was a huge step as it acknowledged the legitimacy in the international community of a future Palestinian country…

Wal-Mart: Helping to Keep America Poor

Last week, Wal-Mart employees took to the picket lines to protest low wages and poor benefits on the busiest shopping day of the year. Black Friday protests took place in over a hundred cities in 47 States and attracted thousands of other activists outside of the company. The nationwide, yet semi-isolated strikes may have brought a little more awareness toward the general public, but it did very little to dissuade Americans from partaking in one of their favorite pastimes; shopping…

Another Election – Another Assault on Gaza

In the run up to American Elections on November 6th, Palestinians and Israelis enjoyed relative peace for weeks. Israeli airstrikes and rocket launches in Gaza were nonexistent, just the way it had been four years earlier. Back in the summer of 2008, Egypt brokered a truce between Hamas and Israel. The armistice lasted until Nov 4th, the same day as Barack Obama’s first election victory…

2012 Election Results: Progress in Baby Steps

So, almost two years and four billion dollars later and it looks like nothing is going to change in the senate, house and presidency, but that’s only what we see on the surface. Many see the results of Tuesday’s election as a shift toward liberalism. True or not, Republicans must feel like they just left the doctor’s office after a prostate exam. Well, at least they no longer have to pay for it. President Barack Obama won re-election despite mass voter suppression attempts in Ohio, Florida and elsewhere. He won in the face of a vast amount of money being dumped into Republican Super-PACs and he won in spite of some of his own failings. It wasn’t easy to be sure…

Super Sandy to the Rescue?

Last week, Superstorm Sandy devastated the east coast with high winds, record storm surges and rain. The storm left millions without power, thousands homeless and over a hundred dead, if there was anything positive to come out of this calamity it was that climate change was finally front page news again. Unfortunately the only time climate change is mentioned by the powers that be or the media is in the immediate aftermath of a natural disaster. We saw it after Hurricane Katrina and after the Tsunamis in the Indian Ocean and the Coast of Japan, but talk of climate change didn’t last a month after these events. With the general election in the US this Tuesday, I suspect talk of climate change this time will barely last a week.

Election 2012: The Final Countdown

If the polls are to be believed (and they shouldn’t), the political landscape the day after the election will probably look similar to the day before and things will likely carry on much as it has for the past four years. However, there are some variables that these polls don’t take into account and I don’t just mean the weather.

Total Recall

Thanks in part to government imposed austerity and corporate influence over our public health officials; we no longer know what we are eating, more importantly we don’t really know if it’s healthy. Government cuts in food inspections, deregulation of industry and corporate greed are keeping us in the dark when we go to the grocery store or the butcher shop

Let the People Decide

Political debates are a series of opinions disputed between politicians. These opinions can range in topic from social issues, to economics, to foreign policy. Debates are routinely used by candidates to try and sway the undecided voters to cast their ballet for them. Undecided voters typically avoid paying attention to politics and are therefore uninformed and susceptible to the media’s influence. In close elections this makes the debates all that more important.

To Protect and Serve

No system of government has done more for the welfare of its people than democracy, but now modern day free market capitalism is threatening a new age of feudalism. The “New Deal” of the 1930’s brought unimaginable prosperity to the industrialized world; the greatest generation was given decent working hours, good wages, social security, and eventually Medicare & welfare, etc. These middle class citizens in good turn passed it down to their kids; the baby boomers, who over the last thirty years have decided to keep it all for themselves.