America // Current TV

Hidden truth - Assange and the Attack on the Republic of Ecuador

Today we talk of geo-politics and the freedom of information. But what is happening... more

worrg
added this
8 months ago
|
1 comment

Ref's Don't Matter: The Fix Is In

How much of your life have you spent watching televised sports, attending games,... more

rodstradamus
added this
8 months ago
|
2 comments

High noon in the garden of polite and evil: the ugly truth about “Southern hospitality” (by a guy who grew up there)

I’ve traveled all over the US on business and pleasure. I have lived in the... more

hoosierdaddy
added this
8 months ago
|
0 comments

Now the attack on the U.S. embassy in Yemen, the U.S. sent warships to Libya

After Egypt and Libya have attacked the U.S. embassy in Yemen

simran1990
added this
8 months ago
|
0 comments

Los Angeles Bank Robbers Throw Money Out Of Car During Pollice Chase

David Spates Shows & talks about One of the craziest Police chases in Los Angeles... more

davidspates
added this
8 months ago
|
0 comments

This is not America – Oh yes it is…

This is NOT America. We live in a nation that is no longer what it once was. From time... more

joeeddy
added this
9 months ago
|
0 comments

"Enough!" First TV ad for Green Party presidential campaign

Help us break through the media blackout and get this ad in front of millions of... more

JanforGore
added this
9 months ago
|
24 comments

Bill Moyers: Invisible Americans get the silent treatment

It’s just astonishing to us how long this campaign has gone on with no discussion of what’s happening to poor people. Official Washington continues to see poverty with tunnel vision – “out of sight, out of mind.”

And we’re not speaking just of Paul Ryan and his Draconian budget plan or Mitt Romney and their fellow Republicans. Tipping their hats to America’s impoverished while themselves seeking handouts from billionaires and corporations is a bad habit that includes President Obama, who of all people should know better.

Remember: for three years in the 1980’s he was a community organizer in Roseland, one of the worst, most poverty-stricken and despair-driven neighborhoods in Chicago. He called it “the best education I ever had.” And when Obama left to go to Harvard Law School, author Paul Tough writes in The New York Times, he did so, “to gain the knowledge and resources that would allow him to eventually return and tackle the neighborhood’s problems anew.” There’s a moving line in Dreams from My Father where Obama writes: “I would learn power’s currency in all its intricacy and detail” and “bring it back like Promethean fire.”

Oddly, though, for all his rhetorical skills, Obama hasn’t made a single speech devoted to poverty since he moved into the White House.

Five years ago, he was one of the few politicians who would talk about it. Here he is in July 2007, speaking in Anacostia, one of the poorest parts of Washington, D.C.:

“The moral question about poverty in America — How can a country like this allow it? — has an easy answer: we can’t. The political question that follows — What do we do about it? – has always been more difficult. But now that we’re finally seeing the beginnings of an answer, this country has an obligation to keep trying.”

Barack Obama the candidate said he wanted to spend billions on a nationwide program similar to Geoffrey Canada’s Harlem Children Zone in New York City, widely praised for its focus on comprehensive child development. In the last three years, only $40 million have been spent with another $60 million scheduled for local community grants.

Obama’s White House team insisted their intentions were good, but the depth of the economic meltdown passed along by their predecessors has kept them from doing more. And yes, billions have been spent on direct aid to families in the form of welfare, food stamps, housing vouchers and other payments. What’s needed, as Paul Tough at the Times and others say, is a less scattershot, more comprehensive program that gets to the root of the problem, focusing on education and mentoring. Not easy to do when a disaffected middle class that votes says hey, what about us? — and the wealthy one percent who lay out the fat campaign contributions simply say, so what?

Just a few days ago, The Chronicle of Philanthropy issued a report on charitable giving. Among its findings: “Rich people who live in neighborhoods with many other wealthy people give a smaller share of their incomes to charity than rich people who live in more economically diverse communities.” Responding to that study, social psychologist Paul Piff told National Public Radio, “The more wealth you have, the more focused on your own self and your own needs you become, and the less attuned to the needs of other people you also become.”

Those few who dedicate themselves to keeping the poor ever in sight realize how grave the situation really is. The Associated Press reports that, “The number of Americans with incomes at or below 125 percent of the poverty level is expected to reach an all-time high of 66 million this year.” A family of four earning 125 percent of the federal poverty level makes about $28,800 a year, according to government figures.

That number’s important because 125 percent is the income limit to qualify for legal aid, but although that family may qualify for help, budgets for legal services have been slashed, too, and pro bono work at the big law firms has fallen victim to downsizing. So it’s not surprising, the AP goes on to say, that there’s a crisis in America’s civil courts because people slammed by the financial meltdown — overwhelmed by foreclosure, debt collection and bankruptcy cases – can’t afford legal representation and have to represent themselves, creating gridlock in our justice system — and one more hammer blow for the poor.

We know, we know: It is written that, “The poor will always be with us.” But when it comes to our “out of sight, out of mind” population of the poor, you have to think we can help reduce their number, ease the suffering, and speak out, with whatever means at hand, on their behalf and against those who would prefer they remain invisible.

Speak out: that means you and me, and yes, Mr. President, you, too. You once told the big bankers on Wall Street that you were all that stood between them and the pitchforks of an angry public. How about telling the poor you will make sure our government stands between them and the cliff?It’s just astonishing to us how long this campaign has gone on with no... more

JanforGore
added this
9 months ago
|
67 comments

Paul Craig Roberts: Amerika’s Future is Death

"The day we see truth and do not speak is the day we begin to die." - Martin... more

Vierotchka
added this
9 months ago
|
28 comments

This Is What We Are Facing

At this very moment, your body is under direct assault. At the cellular level, your biology is being attacked in such a manner that it is actually altering your very genetic coding. Your DNA is under consistent bombardment through not only the food you are eating, but by environmental factors that are literally ripping apart your DNA. Fragmenting your genetic blueprint, the ‘fingerprint’ of your humanity.

It’s all been admitted in peer-reviewed research that is continually ignored by the mainstream medical establishment. In fact, major government groups backed by financial corporate interests are actually streamlining the very biology-crushing technology that is to blame for an explosive rate of disease across the nation. Despite being linked to sterility, infant mortality, organ damage, depletion of micro-organisms within the biosphere (essential for the cultivation of food on our planet), mutant insects and ‘super’ weeds, the USDA has actually decided to fast-track biotechnology giant Monsanto’s approval process.

Upwards of 90 plus percent of many different crops are already genetically modified and placed on your dinner plates — a number that is not satisfactory for Monsanto, who now seeks to dominate 100% of the entire agricultural industry with its genetic manipulation.

Chemicals like BPA line the plastics used by millions worldwide, and despite being linked in hundreds of studies to cancer (particularly breast cancer), the FDA has repeatedly sided with the multi-billion dollar BPA industry, who will generate over 8 billion dollars by creating more than 4.7 million metric tons of death-linked BPA this year. This is a chemical that has peer-reviewed research has tied to diabetes, heart disease, cancer, behavioral disorders, and many other conditions.

The healthcare juggernaut that is the mainstream medical establishment also continues to pump out pharmaceutical drugs that are now known to kill more people per year than traffic-related fatalities. In 2009, it was conservatively estimated that pharmaceutical drugs trumped traffic fatalities with around 37,485 deaths nationwide. The overall death toll regarding known pharmaceutical drug deaths and medical mistakes alone, only around 10% of which are believed to accurately be reported, comes in at 783,936 per year.

On average, a pharmaceutical drug contains 70 side effects. Many contain around 525. These side effects may include death, or in the case of drugs like Prozac, suicidal thoughts and tendencies. Of course the link between Prozac and suicide was covered up for decades by the drug maker Eli Lilly & Co. In 2005 it was revealed by a Hardvard-based whistle blower who released the information to the public, proving to the world that Eli Lilly lied for over 15 years and covered up studies linking Prozac use to suicide. In his own words, he said the public was being treated like ‘guinea pigs’.

The same events can be interchanged with virtually any drug company, many of which are now being forced to pay millions for false advertising and the resulting deaths that came from the use of their products.

In the realm of chemotherapy, it is now being admitted that the procedure actually kills patients more quickly and destroys the body itself.

I am not here to scare you into isolation. I am not here to sell you a solution in a bottle. This is what we are facing.

It is up to YOU to sound the alarm and restore order to the medical paradigm. We now have the opportunity to either sit idly by and allow ourselves to succumb to the healthcare juggernaut that lives within the United States or take back our health. The information surrounding the healing power of natural herbs and whole food items is bountiful, with studies finding that turmeric and ginger alone shrink tumors by anywhere from 50-81% in a number of weeks. Alternative cancer treatment centers are being targeted by the United States government and natural healers are being imprisoned for selling organic herbs from their own farms.
The time is now to reclaim our health freedom, and it requires YOUR involvement.

This post first appeared at Natural SocietyAt this very moment, your body is under direct assault. At the cellular level, your... more

rodstradamus
added this
9 months ago
|
33 comments

Muslim woman suing Disney

Wow Mickey this is not very nice!!!!... more

Dravenlee77
added this
9 months ago
|
11 comments

The Refounding Father - Ron Paul

Paul's presidential campaign stump speeches, and his tone in general, tend to... more

Radical_Centrist
added this
9 months ago
|
0 comments

Communist Propaganda

This is a 1950's propaganda piece about propaganda...a wheel within a wheel... more

jubal
added this
10 months ago
|
11 comments

Harvard Study Finds Fluoride Lowers IQ - Published in Fed Journal

NEW YORK, July 24, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Harvard University... more

rodstradamus
added this
10 months ago
|
0 comments

Africa could hold the answer to America's drought woes

The world's poorest continent could offer clues to how America's farmers might cope with a hotter, drier climate, leading agriculture experts say.

In the African Sahel -- the belt of semiarid savanna running from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea -- farmers have successfully fought back an expanding Sahara and turned once dry, uncultivated scrub into highly productive farmland.

The key to their success has been allowing trees to grow, where they once cut them down, and adopting agricultural techniques that took full advantage of scarce water resources (ClimateWire, March 12). Now experts say it is time for American farmers to recognize the benefits that trees can bring to even the most arid plots of land.

Integrating trees in farmland has transformed parts of Africa, and now some experts think it could also work in the United States. Photo courtesy of the World Resources Institute.

"Given the situation in the U.S. Corn Belt," said Chris Reij, a sustainable land management specialist at Free University Amsterdam who has worked in Africa since 1978, "these practices might help farmers in Kansas and Iowa to adapt to more extreme weather, help make their crops more resistant to drought."

The scale and mechanization of U.S. agricultural production could not be more different than in Africa. Yet the current year's drought highlights the American sector's vulnerability to extreme heat and lack of rain -- a situation not unlike the one that plagued the African Sahel for decades.

Reij points out that trees are scattered across pastures of the Sahel and are the result of natural regeneration. That wouldn't work in the United States, where farmers and ranchers tend to cultivate or graze their herds on vast, open pastures that have been denuded of trees for as long as 200 years.

Robert Winterbottom, director of the Ecosystem Services Initiative at the World Resources Institute, concurred.

"[The Corn Belt] wouldn't look like a Sahelian landscape," he said, "but it's the principles related to more sustainable and climate-smart agriculture that were applied in the Sahel rather than the specific techniques that could be of use in the U.S."

Instead, they both explained, trees could be planted in rows between crops or bordering fields, providing many of the same benefits found in Africa: improved soil and water quality and windbreaks that keep dry topsoil from going airborne.

More at the linkThe world's poorest continent could offer clues to how America's farmers... more

JanforGore
added this
10 months ago
|
15 comments

VOTE for The Toast of America!

America has NO official toast (it's true- "Cheers" is British. Tell Ted... more

ToastofAmerica
added this
10 months ago
|
0 comments

“Is America Anti-Intellectual?” – 1959 – Past Daily Weekend Gallimaufry « Past Daily

You have to ask?

Gordonskene
added this
10 months ago
|
0 comments

An Artificially Awake America: Lone Gun Men Are Robbing Us of Our Illusions

Is it safe?

Angel_Rodrigues
added this
10 months ago
|
0 comments

Imprisoned US Drug Offenders Skyrockets from 41,000 to 507,000 in 30 Years

No wonder states like California and others experienced a boom in prison construction... more

rodstradamus
added this
10 months ago
|
0 comments

Ideology and Vanity and The Stupid, OH MY!

When I came across the below article the other day, I thought, My Guinness, it's amazing how little has changed in Washington DC since the Founding Fathers put forth a new beginning for those who cherish freedom and liberty for everyone.(except for the slaves they owned) Even without the Tea Party they bickered and fought each other. (Of course Tea Party mentality of 'It's My Way or the Highway', was always around just went by a different title back then) The difference of then and now, IMAO, is the forefathers didn't try to cater to 'The Stupid' like they do today and eventually through all the Vanity, Ideology and Shortsightedness these great men of the past were able to come together and create something that would be good for All,
Even The Stupid.

Please read the short article below and hope that our leaders will once again rediscover the proven formula of sense, greatness, learning and 'COMPRIMISE'. thinkingblue
---
Leaders, Try Greatness Not Meanness
History tells us Washington can accomplish great things setting aside vanity and shortsightedness

Each night in Washington as dusk settles along the Potomac River, floodlights brighten our national icons: The Washington Monument stands eloquently gazing over at the beautiful Jefferson Memorial, where the statue of the great statesman looks across the Tidal Basin toward the imposing White House, whose first tenant was John Adams. Next door, the Treasury Department's southern portico is graced by a statue of Alexander Hamilton.

In life these four great men did not like one another. Journals of that time are full of stories of their conniving and their bitter rivalries.

Yet look at what they accomplished when they set aside their vanity, ideology and shortsightedness: a federation of distinct regional and economic interests bound by core principles and liberties upon which a carefully balanced national government could function and thrive.

We're deep into a campaign season that amounts to a 21st-century explosion of vanity, ideology and shortsightedness. Angry divisions with no interest in compromise have picked sides and launched a seemingly endless barrage of costly and inflammatory advertising. Politicians' campaigns reflect our political process, something Allegheny College President James H. Mullen Jr. calls a "disgraceful stew of invective … a continuing contest in which each side of the partisan divide sees itself as right and the other as evil, uncaring or, worst of all, unpatriotic."

That's hardly an atmosphere for confronting a gigantic challenge to our federal finances. Consider the context: At a time when the federal government is spending $3.6 trillion a year, just over $1 trillion is on the table before Jan. 1. Tax cuts and tax breaks expire, a financial supplement for doctors treating Medicare patients ends, automatic cuts take effect in domestic and defense programs. And the national debt limit must again be addressed, an event that virtually paralyzed Washington a year ago. To do nothing all but guarantees a second recession, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. MORE HERE: http://www.aarp.org/politics-society/government-elections/info-07-2012/history-politics-civility-achieved-greatness.htmlWhen I came across the below article the other day, I thought, My Guinness, it's... more

thinkingblue
added this
10 months ago
|
5 comments

select your country

Community Spotlight

TAGS

tagged w/ America

top videos

find current on tv

find current online

recent comments

© 2013 Current TV, LLC All Rights Reserved

the basics

follow us online

tools

stay in touch

© 2013 Current TV, LLC
All Rights Reserved