Auteur/autrice : Heidi Barathieu-Brun

Published on Dissident Voice, by Jan Oberg, June 6, 2014.

… It’s not always included in the definitions that democracy requires a reasonable level of knowledge and information, freely available. For instance, one often hears that India is the world’s biggest democracy but 26% of the people are still illiterate (287 million people).   Continuer la lecture de « Democracy’s Crisis in 10 points »

Published on Spiegel Online International, Interview with Reiner Klingholz, by Maximilian Popp, June 5, 2014 (Translated from the German by Charles Hawley):
In recent years, Germany has begun attracting large numbers of highly qualified immigrants. Demographics expert Reiner Klingholz says that the development could be vital to the country’s future, despite ongoing problems with integration … //

… SPIEGEL: Why do children and grandchildren of Turkish immigrants have such a difficult time in school and on the labor market?   Continuer la lecture de « Immigration to Germany: Better Qualified than the Domestic Population »

uploaded on YouTube by StormCloudsGathering:

The Psychology of Power, Part 1, 37.23 min, Jan 7, 2014;

Snowden, The NSA and a Crime of High Treason, 4.54 min, June 3, 2014 … //
… and 78 more videos in autoplay: The divide that separates the ruling class from from the people who actually keep society functioning keeps getting wider and wider. Nothing illustrates this fact quite like the « debate » over the NSA’s mass surveillance and Edward Snowden’s role in exposing it.
Sources and full transcript here.

Published on Intrepid Report, by Ellen Brown, June 4, 2014.

Funding infrastructure through bonds doubles the price or worse. Costs can be cut in half by funding through the state’s own bank.

“The numbers are big. There is sticker shock,” said Jason Peltier, deputy manager of the Westlands Water District, describing Governor Jerry Brown’s plan to build two massive water tunnels through the California Delta. “But consider your other scenarios. How much more groundwater can we pump?”   Continuer la lecture de « Infrastructure sticker shock: Financing costs more than building it »

Global Power Project: Part 4 of 4 Part Series – Published on Dissident Voice, by Andrew Gavin Marshall, June 1, 2014.
(Read Part 1 here; Part 2 here; Part 3 here).

… At the 1992 International Monetary Conference in Toronto, there was a general consensus among private bankers and public officials that, as a result of enormous over-lending to Latin America and developing countries throughout the previous debt-crisis decade, the task of financing “the transformation of the former Soviet Union to a market economy” could not be left to bank loans alone. Hilmar Kopper, the CEO of Deutsche Bank, told the conference attendees that commercial banks would only engage in large-scale financing if there were “government-guaranteed credits” and “an agreement on the old debt,” implying that the banks would essentially need the guarantee of a government bailout scheme if things got bad.   Continuer la lecture de « When Fat Cats Meet in Munich: Welcoming the International Monetary Confernce »