Why would US leaders, lawmakers, intelligence and law enforcement agency administrators allow foreign intelligence and espionage agencies and their front companies unfettered, unexamined, long-term access to vast audiences of American children and young adults? And does not that question represent legitimate and vital concerns regarding privacy, public health, public safety, and national security?
Here in Switzerland, the train chugs along nicely between Geneva and Lausanne. The Alpine mountain range desperately fights to make its presence known despite the irritating persistence of low- hanging clouds. A friend had just introduced me to the music of J.J. Cale, but my thoughts were moving faster than the speed of the train. Time is too short to sleep, but never long enough to think.
By Yves Engler · December 4, 2013
Last week in Switzerland big money staved off an important challenge to big paychecks. But the sentiment that spurred a Swiss effort to tie executive compensation to common workers’ wages will not be defeated so easily.
Last week in Switzerland big money staved off an important challenge to big paychecks. But the sentiment that spurred a Swiss effort to tie executive compensation to common workers’ wages will not be defeated so easily.
“Control oil and you control nations,” said US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in the 1970s. ”Control food and you control the people.”
Global food control has nearly been achieved, by reducing seed diversity with GMO (genetically modified) seeds that are distributed by only a few transnational corporations. But this agenda has been implemented at grave cost to our health; and if the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) passes, control over not just our food but our health, our environment and our financial system will be in the hands of transnational corporations.
Lately we've come to the conclusion that the whole concept of billionaires is illegitimate and an existential threat to democracy. But, short of a guillotine, how do you protect society by getting rid of them? Progressive taxation is the obvious choice, of course.
In Switzerland a petition from 100,000 people, or about 1.25% of the population, creates a public referendum. By this means, last March, Swiss voters created strict limits on executive pay.
RT | October 6, 2013
Some 120,000 Swiss signatories have put their names to a petition demanding a monthly minimum wage of $2,800 (2,500 Swiss francs) for every single member of the working adult population. Enough names have been collected for a government vote.
Anything less than the proposed amount would be deemed illegal, even for people working in the lowest paid jobs. A typical fast-food worker in the US earns roughly $1,500 per month.
RT | September 18, 2013
On Sunday, the Swiss are voting on a proposal to abolish military conscription in favor of a voluntary army. The country with no clear foes and a long tradition of neutrality could find better ways of spending money than playing at war, proponents say.
