By konnie, March 2 at 6:29 pm #

wouldn’t it just be too karmic!  watch dick cheney’s head implode…............see limballs burst into flames….....hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

~~~~~

This made me laugh - OUT LOUD!!!

Thanks konnie. I’d love to watch this karmic explosion.

I second PatrickHenry where media are concerned.  I continue to fight the good fight in bringing attention to Al Jazeera English.  I would like to see it on my cable service, but Comcast still does not think they signify.  (In that respect they are in the same boat with BBC World Service Television News.)  Further thoughts on the matter at:

http://therehearsalstudio.blogspot.com/2009/02/in-search-of-both-news-and-opinion.html

Islamic banks time has come as well as Islamic newspapers and owned media. 

I for one would like to see diversity in our media and financial institutions, the way it was meant to be.

wouldn’t it just be too karmic!  watch dick cheney’s head implode…............see limballs burst into flames….....hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Whether or not this is a good idea (a point that deserves serious deliberation), it provides us with a useful assertion to warrant that proposition that the institutions of “modern society” need not necessarily be rooted in “Western civilization,” suggesting that we should hold some of our other institutions up to similar scrutiny:

http://therehearsalstudio.blogspot.com/2009/03/beyond-vantage-point-of-western.html

Doesn’t mean a thing as the corporate, political and economic interests here in the ‘wonderful’ USA will not allow such a thing to grow here in this ‘wonderful’ country where the real and true capitalism we believe we use is based on competition is really based on crushing the competition. It is articles such as this that brings ever again to my attention just how much the ‘capitalist’ system stuffed down our throats is nothing but a plate of grease and a load of crap. We, here in america, elect people, supposedly smart and caring people, to go to washington and our state capitols to keep the world in an order conducive for large, actually way over large, groups of people to have that inalienable right for a life with less stress and hardships but now that so many criminals are in the system a major change will come to repair the damage. It’s coming. Here we discuss only the money part of things, what is coming is the effects of overshoot that nobody wants to consider. It won’t happen tomorrow nor next month or year but within a couple of decades, unless a major turnaround in how the people allow this world to be managed, life will be put to a test as to how and what to do to survive and that will be either ruled by orwellian/huxlian control or go back to the smaller communities and local affairs.

There is also a western, secular alternative to banks: credit unions.

Credit unions are non-profit institutions that provide banking services to millions in the US, and as Ralph Nader explains in an article at Counterpunch, they have weathered the current crisis relatively well:

“They [credit unions] are well-capitalized because of regulation and because they do not have an incentive to go for high-risk, highly leveraged speculation to increase stock values and the value of the bosses’ stock options as do the commercial banks.

“Credit Unions have no shareholders nor stock nor stock options; they are responsible to their owner-members who are their customers.”

http://counterpunch.org/nader02232009.html

For centuries in Europe, Christians and Jews operated in a cynical and hypocritical symbiosis: Christians forbade the practice of charging interest - the now quaint sin of “usury” - but they couldn’t figure out how to get along without banks, or run them according to their Christian principles.

So what did we get? The Jews ran the banking system, charging interest of course, and the Christians hypocritically persecuted the Jews for doing so.

Islam came up with a third way; maybe we could learn from this.

Altlic,

I must add my kudos to yours. I studied the Islamic structure a few years ago, and of course that was in the height of the created Islamophia here, so needless to say, I would never have expected to read of this here and now. (or ever).

So I add my congrats to Truthdig for sharing this news. A whole lot of us, (including me) would be in far better shape (ie not homeless) if we had members in such a system, as opposed the capitalist system that operates here, with full approval and support or dominant ‘religion’, Judeo-Christianity.

Well done truthdig! One thing that nobody in government wants to talk about is the aggressive financial practices at the root of capitalism that have been perfected in America with pernicious effects around the world and culminating in the current orgy of greed and rape of the common man.

All religions are against usury! Or were until it became convenient to join in the plunder.

And by extension, most states are kept afloat by unethical lotteries (taxing the poor) and other gambling income.

People are talking about Wall Street being a big Ponzi scheme, but this is a welcome next step. Now let’s see if we can get this discussed on the national stage.

We must end the rule of the international financial mafia, including the Fed.