As noted on Cedar Lounge Revolution, a stunning story about how big tabacco manufacturers used a front organisation to lobby intensively to shape EU policy making.
One of the biggest tobacco manufacturers in the world led a group of chemical, food, oil, pharmaceutical and other firms in a successful long-term lobbying strategy to shape European Union [...]

Michael Burke | Who Benefits from Current Government Policy
According to Sean Quinn of the Quinn Group and Jim O’Hara of Intel, the most significant employers in the country, nothing is being done to prevent prolonged unemployment and mass emigration – clearly a situation that they consider needs to be avoided. So who is current government [...]

YouTube movies: the diamonds among the debris | Joe Queenan | Film | The Guardian
Stumbling upon a jewel such as A Working Mom amid so much flotsam and jetsam drove home the point that the internet's most enticing feature may be its randomness. Stupidity comes at you from every direction. Vulgarity, too. And fascism. But [...]

US Policy in Haiti Over Decades “Lays the Foundation for Why Impact of Natural Disaster Is So Severe”
Democracy Now discuss the situation in Haiti following Tuesday’s massive earthquake, as well as the history of Haiti, with two guests who have spent a lot of time there: Bill Quigley, the legal director at the Center for [...]

Howard Zinn | Three Holy Wars
On May 2nd last year Howard Zinn delivered a speech as part of the 100th Anniversary of the Progressive Magazine. It’s one that he has been delivering all over the US since, most recently in Boston University last November and filmed by Democracy Now. Below is the original speech presented [...]

BBC - Adam Curtis Blog: YEMEN - THE RETURN OF OLD GHOSTS
Adam Curtis, the BBC documentary film maker responsible for The Century of Self & The Mayfair Set is writing in his blog about Yemen in the wake of the Underpants bomber story. As he points out in this piece, much of what is happening [...]

Raytheon to close its plant in Derry | The Irish Times
THE US defence software company Raytheon confirmed yesterday that it is to close its plant at Springtown in Derry following several years of anti-war protests inside and outside its premises.
A representative for the Derry Anti-War Coalition, which organised the protests claiming the Derry plant was [...]

Europe’s OK; the euro isn’t - Paul Krugman Blog - NYTimes.com
Paul Krugman on why the Euro was a bad idea:
Europe lacks both the centralized fiscal system and the high labor mobility. (Yes, some workers move, but not nearly on the US scale).
To be sure, America has at least minor-league versions of the same problems: we [...]

The Theory Strikes Back | afoe | A Fistful of Euros | European Opinion
P.O'Neill quotes FT's Martin Wolf on that bad Euro idea and the trouble for Ireland (and other less powerful EU economies):
But instead of belaboring this point, take a look at another superb Martin Wolf column in the FT and his bracing conclusion [...]

New Statesman | David Blanchflower | Hold on tight, it’s the double-dip
But why has the UK labour market outperformed the US, where unemployment has risen to over 10 per cent? Wages are not more flexible in the UK and the shock has been greater over here, because of the relatively large size of the financial [...]