Health Care Now
By PAUL KRUGMAN, NY TIMES
The whole world is in recession. But the United States is the only wealthy country in which the economic catastrophe will also be a health care catastrophe — in which millions of people will lose their health insurance along with their jobs, and therefore lose access to essential care. Which raises a question: Why has the Obama administration been silent, at least so far, about one of President Obama’s key promises during last year’s campaign — the promise of guaranteed health care for all Americans?
Let’s talk about the magnitude of the looming health care disaster.
Just about all economic forecasts, including those of the Obama administration’s own economists, say that we’re in for a prolonged period of very high unemployment. And high unemployment means a sharp rise in the number of Americans without health insurance.
After the economy slumped at the beginning of this decade, five million people joined the ranks of the uninsured — and that was with the unemployment rate peaking at only 6.3 percent. This time the Obama administration says that even with its stimulus plan, unemployment will reach 8 percent, and that it will stay above 6 percent until 2012. Many independent forecasts are even more pessimistic.
Link to con.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Latest US economic data confirms accelerating contraction
By Patrick O’Connor
Figures released yesterday on US unemployment, home sales, and business capital investment all proved significantly worse than economists' prior forecasts. The Commerce Department reported that new single-family home sales for December plunged 14.7 percent from a month earlier, or about 45 percent on an annualized basis. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had forecast an average 2.9 percent monthly fall. December's sales decline was the largest recorded since such data was first kept in 1963. In 2008, home sales totaled 482,000, the lowest number since 1982 and sharply below the 776,000 homes sold in 2007.
The Commerce Department also issued data yesterday on December's durable goods investment. Orders for durable goods—such as computers, vehicles, tools, and construction equipment—fell 2.6 percent, or 4.9 percent excluding military purchases. This was the fifth monthly decline in a row. Orders for computers and electronics fell by 7.2 percent, machinery by 5 percent, and primary metals by 6.9 percent. Total orders for durable goods in 2008 fell by a total of 5.7 percent.
Link to con.
By Patrick O’Connor
Figures released yesterday on US unemployment, home sales, and business capital investment all proved significantly worse than economists' prior forecasts. The Commerce Department reported that new single-family home sales for December plunged 14.7 percent from a month earlier, or about 45 percent on an annualized basis. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had forecast an average 2.9 percent monthly fall. December's sales decline was the largest recorded since such data was first kept in 1963. In 2008, home sales totaled 482,000, the lowest number since 1982 and sharply below the 776,000 homes sold in 2007.
The Commerce Department also issued data yesterday on December's durable goods investment. Orders for durable goods—such as computers, vehicles, tools, and construction equipment—fell 2.6 percent, or 4.9 percent excluding military purchases. This was the fifth monthly decline in a row. Orders for computers and electronics fell by 7.2 percent, machinery by 5 percent, and primary metals by 6.9 percent. Total orders for durable goods in 2008 fell by a total of 5.7 percent.
Link to con.
The rising tide of economic nationalism
As the global economic crisis continues to deepen, the unmistakable stench of economic nationalism is on the rise around the world. Confronted with collapsing industries and growing anger over job losses, governments are reaching for protectionist measures despite the disastrous consequences of such beggar-thy-neighbour policies in the 1930s.
At the G-20 summit in mid-November, the leaders of the world’s largest economies pledged not to raise barriers to trade and investment—even those allowed under World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules—for a year. The joint communiqué also promised to restart the failed Doha round of trade talks as a means of boosting world trade.
Link to con.
As the global economic crisis continues to deepen, the unmistakable stench of economic nationalism is on the rise around the world. Confronted with collapsing industries and growing anger over job losses, governments are reaching for protectionist measures despite the disastrous consequences of such beggar-thy-neighbour policies in the 1930s.
At the G-20 summit in mid-November, the leaders of the world’s largest economies pledged not to raise barriers to trade and investment—even those allowed under World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules—for a year. The joint communiqué also promised to restart the failed Doha round of trade talks as a means of boosting world trade.
Link to con.
An Interview with Wes Jackson
Future Farming
By ROBERT JENSEN
As everyone scrambles for a solution to the crises in the nation’s economy, Wes Jackson suggests we look to nature’s economy for some of the answers. With everyone focused on a stimulus package in the short term, he counsels that we pay more attention to the soil over the long haul.
“We live off of what comes out of the soil, not what’s in the bank,” said Jackson, president of The Land Institute. “If we squander the ecological capital of the soil, the capital on paper won’t much matter.” Jackson doesn’t minimize the threat of the current financial problems but argues that the new administration should consider a “50-year farm bill,” which he and the writer/farmer Wendell Berry proposed in a New York Times op/ed earlier this month.
Central to such a bill would be soil. A plan for sustainable agriculture capable of producing healthful food has to come to solve the twin problems of soil erosion and contamination, said Jackson, who co-founded the research center in 1976 after leaving his job as an environmental studies professor at California State University-Sacramento.
Link to con.
Future Farming
By ROBERT JENSEN
As everyone scrambles for a solution to the crises in the nation’s economy, Wes Jackson suggests we look to nature’s economy for some of the answers. With everyone focused on a stimulus package in the short term, he counsels that we pay more attention to the soil over the long haul.
“We live off of what comes out of the soil, not what’s in the bank,” said Jackson, president of The Land Institute. “If we squander the ecological capital of the soil, the capital on paper won’t much matter.” Jackson doesn’t minimize the threat of the current financial problems but argues that the new administration should consider a “50-year farm bill,” which he and the writer/farmer Wendell Berry proposed in a New York Times op/ed earlier this month.
Central to such a bill would be soil. A plan for sustainable agriculture capable of producing healthful food has to come to solve the twin problems of soil erosion and contamination, said Jackson, who co-founded the research center in 1976 after leaving his job as an environmental studies professor at California State University-Sacramento.
Link to con.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Attenborough reveals creationist hate mail for not crediting God
Sir David Attenborough has revealed that he receives hate mail from viewers for failing to credit God in his documentaries. In an interview with this week's Radio Times about his latest documentary, on Charles Darwin and natural selection, the broadcaster said: "They tell me to burn in hell and good riddance."
Telling the magazine that he was asked why he did not give "credit" to God, Attenborough added: "They always mean beautiful things like hummingbirds. I always reply by saying that I think of a little child in east Africa with a worm burrowing through his eyeball. The worm cannot live in any other way, except by burrowing through eyeballs. I find that hard to reconcile with the notion of a divine and benevolent creator."
Attenborough went further in his opposition to creationism, saying it was "terrible" when it was taught alongside evolution as an alternative perspective. "It's like saying that two and two equals four, but if you wish to believe it, it could also be five ... Evolution is not a theory; it is a fact, every bit as much as the historical fact that William the Conqueror landed in 1066."
Link to con.
Sir David Attenborough has revealed that he receives hate mail from viewers for failing to credit God in his documentaries. In an interview with this week's Radio Times about his latest documentary, on Charles Darwin and natural selection, the broadcaster said: "They tell me to burn in hell and good riddance."
Telling the magazine that he was asked why he did not give "credit" to God, Attenborough added: "They always mean beautiful things like hummingbirds. I always reply by saying that I think of a little child in east Africa with a worm burrowing through his eyeball. The worm cannot live in any other way, except by burrowing through eyeballs. I find that hard to reconcile with the notion of a divine and benevolent creator."
Attenborough went further in his opposition to creationism, saying it was "terrible" when it was taught alongside evolution as an alternative perspective. "It's like saying that two and two equals four, but if you wish to believe it, it could also be five ... Evolution is not a theory; it is a fact, every bit as much as the historical fact that William the Conqueror landed in 1066."
Link to con.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Greek farmers protest government and EU policies
Greek farmers protested for most of last week against the agricultural policy of the conservative government led by Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis. Their anger is directed against drastically falling prices for their products, which have drastically undermined their incomes. They are demanding state subsidies and tax exemptions for their products.
Beginning last Tuesday, several thousand farmers blocked important traffic junctions across the country and at border crossings. On Friday traffic was brought to standstill at 20 important junctions on the Greek mainland and on the island of Crete. The most important north-south transport route between Athens and the port of Thessaloniki was closed in several places with drivers forced to make time-consuming detours over mountain roads. Farmers also temporarily occupied the main airport on Crete outside its capital city Heraklion, resulting in a total of 17 flights being cancelled.
Link to con.
Greek farmers protested for most of last week against the agricultural policy of the conservative government led by Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis. Their anger is directed against drastically falling prices for their products, which have drastically undermined their incomes. They are demanding state subsidies and tax exemptions for their products.
Beginning last Tuesday, several thousand farmers blocked important traffic junctions across the country and at border crossings. On Friday traffic was brought to standstill at 20 important junctions on the Greek mainland and on the island of Crete. The most important north-south transport route between Athens and the port of Thessaloniki was closed in several places with drivers forced to make time-consuming detours over mountain roads. Farmers also temporarily occupied the main airport on Crete outside its capital city Heraklion, resulting in a total of 17 flights being cancelled.
Link to con.
The capitalist market and Obama’s stimulus plan
Even before the Obama administration's economic stimulus package comes to a vote, the rapidity and scale of job losses in the US makes it clear that it will be woefully inadequate. On Monday alone, corporations including Caterpillar, Pfizer, Home Depot, SprintNextel and GM, announced 74,000 new job cuts.
Even if the White House were to achieve its aim of creating or saving 3-4 million jobs over the next two years, it would not make up for job losses that could be twice as large by the end of 2010. The pace of job-cutting has sharply accelerated since the end of 2008—a year that saw 2.6 million jobs lost, the highest number since 1945.
Link to con.
Even before the Obama administration's economic stimulus package comes to a vote, the rapidity and scale of job losses in the US makes it clear that it will be woefully inadequate. On Monday alone, corporations including Caterpillar, Pfizer, Home Depot, SprintNextel and GM, announced 74,000 new job cuts.
Even if the White House were to achieve its aim of creating or saving 3-4 million jobs over the next two years, it would not make up for job losses that could be twice as large by the end of 2010. The pace of job-cutting has sharply accelerated since the end of 2008—a year that saw 2.6 million jobs lost, the highest number since 1945.
Link to con.
Some heavy metal with that sweet roll?
The FDA sat on evidence of mercury-tainted high-fructose corn syrup
High-fructose corn syrup rose from obscurity to ubiquity starting in the late 1970s, borne up by an informal public-private partnership between grain-processing giant Archer Daniels Midland and the federal government. For me, HFCS is at best a highly processed, lavishly subsidized, calorie-heavy, nutritional vacuum.
I recently visited a public high school in Boone, N.C. The main hall literally hummed with machines peddling variations on Coca-Cola's formula for success: fizzy water with artificial flavor, artificial color, added caffeine, and a jolt of HFCS. Other machines displayed snack "foods" tarted up with HFCS. Why are we feeding our kids this crap, again?
Now comes news that makes even an HFCS cynic like me do a spit-take over my home-brewed morning coffee. Turns out that HFCS is commonly tainted with mercury -- a highly toxic substance -- according to a peer-reviewed report published by Environmental Health
Link to con.
The FDA sat on evidence of mercury-tainted high-fructose corn syrup
High-fructose corn syrup rose from obscurity to ubiquity starting in the late 1970s, borne up by an informal public-private partnership between grain-processing giant Archer Daniels Midland and the federal government. For me, HFCS is at best a highly processed, lavishly subsidized, calorie-heavy, nutritional vacuum.
I recently visited a public high school in Boone, N.C. The main hall literally hummed with machines peddling variations on Coca-Cola's formula for success: fizzy water with artificial flavor, artificial color, added caffeine, and a jolt of HFCS. Other machines displayed snack "foods" tarted up with HFCS. Why are we feeding our kids this crap, again?
Now comes news that makes even an HFCS cynic like me do a spit-take over my home-brewed morning coffee. Turns out that HFCS is commonly tainted with mercury -- a highly toxic substance -- according to a peer-reviewed report published by Environmental Health
Link to con.
The Torture Ban that Doesn't Ban Torture:
Obama's Rules Keep It Intact, and Could Even Accord With an Increase in US-Sponsored Torture Worldwide.
By Allan Nairn
If you're lying on the slab still breathing, with your torturer hanging over you, you don't much care if he is an American or a mere United States - sponsored trainee. When President Obama declared flatly this week that "the United States will not torture" many people wrongly believed that he'd shut the practice down, when in fact he'd merely repositioned it. Obama's Executive Order bans some -- not all -- US officials from torturing but it does not ban any of them, himself included, from sponsoring torture overseas.
Indeed, his policy change affects only a slight percentage of US-culpable tortures and could be completely consistent with an increase in US-backed torture worldwide. The catch lies in the fact that since Vietnam, when US forces often tortured directly, the US has mainly seen its torture done for it by proxy -- paying, arming, training and guiding foreigners doing it, but usually being careful to keep Americans at least one discreet step removed. That is, the US tended to do it that way until Bush and Cheney changed protocol, and had many Americans laying on hands, and sometimes taking digital photos.
Link to con.
Obama's Rules Keep It Intact, and Could Even Accord With an Increase in US-Sponsored Torture Worldwide.
By Allan Nairn
If you're lying on the slab still breathing, with your torturer hanging over you, you don't much care if he is an American or a mere United States - sponsored trainee. When President Obama declared flatly this week that "the United States will not torture" many people wrongly believed that he'd shut the practice down, when in fact he'd merely repositioned it. Obama's Executive Order bans some -- not all -- US officials from torturing but it does not ban any of them, himself included, from sponsoring torture overseas.
Indeed, his policy change affects only a slight percentage of US-culpable tortures and could be completely consistent with an increase in US-backed torture worldwide. The catch lies in the fact that since Vietnam, when US forces often tortured directly, the US has mainly seen its torture done for it by proxy -- paying, arming, training and guiding foreigners doing it, but usually being careful to keep Americans at least one discreet step removed. That is, the US tended to do it that way until Bush and Cheney changed protocol, and had many Americans laying on hands, and sometimes taking digital photos.
Link to con.
Bolivia sets new global high mark for indigenous rights
A new constitution approved handily Sunday also risks dividing the nation.
By Sara Miller Llana
Bolivia's first indigenous president, Evo Morales, easily won his campaign for a new constitution Sunday – promising vast new powers to the country's indigenous majority and bolstering his political clout. Critics say Mr. Morales is dangerously dividing the nation and merely following in the footsteps of populist leftist allies Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Rafael Correa in Ecuador, who have also rewritten their constitutions to invest the executive branch with more power.
True or not, something more is happening: This is a victory for Latin American indigenous groups marginalized since the Spanish conquest 500 years ago, say analysts, and some see it as a global human rights and racial-equity landmark. "Bolivia's successful referendum process is precedent-setting with respect to indigenous empowerment worldwide," says Robert Albro, an expert on social and indigenous movements in Latin America at American University in Washington.
Link to con.
A new constitution approved handily Sunday also risks dividing the nation.
By Sara Miller Llana
Bolivia's first indigenous president, Evo Morales, easily won his campaign for a new constitution Sunday – promising vast new powers to the country's indigenous majority and bolstering his political clout. Critics say Mr. Morales is dangerously dividing the nation and merely following in the footsteps of populist leftist allies Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Rafael Correa in Ecuador, who have also rewritten their constitutions to invest the executive branch with more power.
True or not, something more is happening: This is a victory for Latin American indigenous groups marginalized since the Spanish conquest 500 years ago, say analysts, and some see it as a global human rights and racial-equity landmark. "Bolivia's successful referendum process is precedent-setting with respect to indigenous empowerment worldwide," says Robert Albro, an expert on social and indigenous movements in Latin America at American University in Washington.
Link to con.
(A good video, a bit slow but the info is very interesting and frightening)
Outlawed: Extraordinary Rendition, Torture and Disappearances in the 'War on Terror'
Human rights groups and several public inquiries in Europe have found the U.S. government, with the complicity of numerous governments worldwide, to be engaged in the illegal practice of extraordinary rendition, secret detention, and torture. The U.S. government-sponsored program of renditions is an unlawful practice in which numerous persons have been illegally detained and secretly flown to third countries, where they have suffered additional human rights abuses including torture and enforced disappearance. No one knows the exact number of persons affected, due to the secrecy under which the operations are carried out.
Link to video
Outlawed: Extraordinary Rendition, Torture and Disappearances in the 'War on Terror'
Human rights groups and several public inquiries in Europe have found the U.S. government, with the complicity of numerous governments worldwide, to be engaged in the illegal practice of extraordinary rendition, secret detention, and torture. The U.S. government-sponsored program of renditions is an unlawful practice in which numerous persons have been illegally detained and secretly flown to third countries, where they have suffered additional human rights abuses including torture and enforced disappearance. No one knows the exact number of persons affected, due to the secrecy under which the operations are carried out.
Link to video
Monday, January 26, 2009
Are We Civilized Enough to Hold Our Leaders Accountable for War Crimes? The World Is Watching
By John W. Dean, FindLaw.com.
Remarkably, the confirmation of President Obama's Attorney General nominee, Eric Holder, is being held up by Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn, who apparently is unhappy that Holder might actually investigate and prosecute Bush Administration officials who engaged in torture. Aside from this repugnant new Republican embrace of torture (which might be a winning issue for the lunatic fringe of the party and a nice way to further marginalize the GOP), any effort to protect Bush officials from legal responsibility for war crimes, in the long run, will not work.
It is difficult to believe that Eric Holder would agree not to enforce the law, like his recent Republican predecessors. Indeed, if he were to do so, President Obama should withdraw his nomination. But as MSNBC "Countdown" anchor Keith Olbermann stated earlier this week, even if the Obama Administration for whatever reason does not investigate and prosecute these crimes, this still does not mean that the Bush Administration officials who were involved in torture are going to get a pass.
Link to con.
By John W. Dean, FindLaw.com.
Remarkably, the confirmation of President Obama's Attorney General nominee, Eric Holder, is being held up by Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn, who apparently is unhappy that Holder might actually investigate and prosecute Bush Administration officials who engaged in torture. Aside from this repugnant new Republican embrace of torture (which might be a winning issue for the lunatic fringe of the party and a nice way to further marginalize the GOP), any effort to protect Bush officials from legal responsibility for war crimes, in the long run, will not work.
It is difficult to believe that Eric Holder would agree not to enforce the law, like his recent Republican predecessors. Indeed, if he were to do so, President Obama should withdraw his nomination. But as MSNBC "Countdown" anchor Keith Olbermann stated earlier this week, even if the Obama Administration for whatever reason does not investigate and prosecute these crimes, this still does not mean that the Bush Administration officials who were involved in torture are going to get a pass.
Link to con.
Bad Faith Economics
By PAUL KRUGMAN, NY Times
As the debate over President Obama’s economic stimulus plan gets under way, one thing is certain: many of the plan’s opponents aren’t arguing in good faith. Conservatives really, really don’t want to see a second New Deal, and they certainly don’t want to see government activism vindicated. So they are reaching for any stick they can find with which to beat proposals for increased government spending.
Some of these arguments are obvious cheap shots. John Boehner, the House minority leader, has already made headlines with one such shot: looking at an $825 billion plan to rebuild infrastructure, sustain essential services and more, he derided a minor provision that would expand Medicaid family-planning services — and called it a plan to “spend hundreds of millions of dollars on contraceptives.”
But the obvious cheap shots don’t pose as much danger to the Obama administration’s efforts to get a plan through as arguments and assertions that are equally fraudulent but can seem superficially plausible to those who don’t know their way around economic concepts and numbers. So as a public service, let me try to debunk some of the major antistimulus arguments that have already surfaced. Any time you hear someone reciting one of these arguments, write him or her off as a dishonest flack.
Link to con.
By PAUL KRUGMAN, NY Times
As the debate over President Obama’s economic stimulus plan gets under way, one thing is certain: many of the plan’s opponents aren’t arguing in good faith. Conservatives really, really don’t want to see a second New Deal, and they certainly don’t want to see government activism vindicated. So they are reaching for any stick they can find with which to beat proposals for increased government spending.
Some of these arguments are obvious cheap shots. John Boehner, the House minority leader, has already made headlines with one such shot: looking at an $825 billion plan to rebuild infrastructure, sustain essential services and more, he derided a minor provision that would expand Medicaid family-planning services — and called it a plan to “spend hundreds of millions of dollars on contraceptives.”
But the obvious cheap shots don’t pose as much danger to the Obama administration’s efforts to get a plan through as arguments and assertions that are equally fraudulent but can seem superficially plausible to those who don’t know their way around economic concepts and numbers. So as a public service, let me try to debunk some of the major antistimulus arguments that have already surfaced. Any time you hear someone reciting one of these arguments, write him or her off as a dishonest flack.
Link to con.
BBC documentary takes on Obama's plans for American health care system
Nick Cargo
A January 19 episode of BBC One's Panorama, the world's longest running television documentary show, tackles the dismal state of health care in the United States, the lengths to which its estimated 45 million uninsured citizens will go to in pursuit of care, the pharmaceutical industry's rigged pricing against the American patient, and the insurance industry's efforts to deny care whenever possible.
The documentary opens in rural Kentucky, where people have driven within a 200-mile radius to wait in line in the early morning for a spot in line to see a volunteer doctor thanks to the efforts of Remote Access Medical, who originally set out to help people in the Amazon jungle, but now focus 60% of their time on Americans.
"The need is enormous," said the organization's founder Stan Brock. "We discovered...there are people here that need help just as much as they do in Guatemala or in the Amazon and all these other places we go to."
Link to continue and for clips of doc.
Nick Cargo
A January 19 episode of BBC One's Panorama, the world's longest running television documentary show, tackles the dismal state of health care in the United States, the lengths to which its estimated 45 million uninsured citizens will go to in pursuit of care, the pharmaceutical industry's rigged pricing against the American patient, and the insurance industry's efforts to deny care whenever possible.
The documentary opens in rural Kentucky, where people have driven within a 200-mile radius to wait in line in the early morning for a spot in line to see a volunteer doctor thanks to the efforts of Remote Access Medical, who originally set out to help people in the Amazon jungle, but now focus 60% of their time on Americans.
"The need is enormous," said the organization's founder Stan Brock. "We discovered...there are people here that need help just as much as they do in Guatemala or in the Amazon and all these other places we go to."
Link to continue and for clips of doc.
Notes From The American Lunatic Asylum
By Sherwood Ross
By Sherwood Ross
If America ever is going to stop making aggressive war, Americans will first have to get into contact with reality. That’s because U.S. administrations for the past century have periodically frightened the public out of their collective wits. And a frightened nation is a malleable nation, one whose people are susceptible to being led into any struggle. Reversing this is really President Obama's most critical task.
Fear: There’s usually been some evil outside force lurking to take away what we have. There was the “Red Scare” during the Wilson administration and Joe McCarthy’s terror during the Truman and Eisenhower years. President George W. Bush gave fear a new twist with his “War on Terror” in which innocent nations were illegally invaded and tens of thousands imprisoned and hundreds of thousands of innocent people killed. In his speech of September 20, 2001, Bush claimed terrorists attacked America because they “hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.”
Those who believe this whopper will never deal with the reality that we might just be hated throughout the Middle East because the CIA at Eisenhower’s behest overthrew the democratically elected government of Iran in 1953. Or that we might be hated for taking Israel’s side in its ongoing efforts to displace the Palestinians. Or for taking Iraq’s side in its war of aggression against Iran and supplying it with poison gas. Or for subsequently waging an illegal war of aggression against Iraq. The idea that Muslim extremists attacked America out of envy lacks any connection to reality, especially when much of the Arab world has long made known its vehement opposition to U.S. support of Israel.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Brew Pubs Gain an Unlikely Following in Utah
IN the 1980s, a good beer was hard to come by in Utah. Although the state wasn’t dry, its alcohol laws were strict, a reflection of a traditional Mormon culture that frowns on drinking. But masses of skiers were invading, bringing their thirst into Utah along with their boots and poles. Greg Schirf, a ski bum who had been making his own beer at home, saw opportunity.
He went commercial, opening Wasatch Brewery, the state’s first modern craft brewery, in ski-centric Park City in 1986. That much was easy enough, but adding a cozy après spot where patrons could relax and imbibe proved harder. Brew pubs were illegal. Most of the state legislature shied away from challenging the status quo, but eventually Mr. Schirf found a sympathetic legislator from a small mining town in central Utah who was willing to sponsor a bill. It passed, and Wasatch opened its brew pub in 1989. A new beer scene was born.
Wasatch is the granddaddy, but these days other brewers’ craft beers are thriving, too. And around Salt Lake City a string of inventive small breweries make for an inviting, if unexpected, tasting tour.
Link to con.
IN the 1980s, a good beer was hard to come by in Utah. Although the state wasn’t dry, its alcohol laws were strict, a reflection of a traditional Mormon culture that frowns on drinking. But masses of skiers were invading, bringing their thirst into Utah along with their boots and poles. Greg Schirf, a ski bum who had been making his own beer at home, saw opportunity.
He went commercial, opening Wasatch Brewery, the state’s first modern craft brewery, in ski-centric Park City in 1986. That much was easy enough, but adding a cozy après spot where patrons could relax and imbibe proved harder. Brew pubs were illegal. Most of the state legislature shied away from challenging the status quo, but eventually Mr. Schirf found a sympathetic legislator from a small mining town in central Utah who was willing to sponsor a bill. It passed, and Wasatch opened its brew pub in 1989. A new beer scene was born.
Wasatch is the granddaddy, but these days other brewers’ craft beers are thriving, too. And around Salt Lake City a string of inventive small breweries make for an inviting, if unexpected, tasting tour.
Link to con.
Noam Chomsky: Obama’s Stance on Gaza Crisis “Approximately the Bush Position”
In a visit to the State Department Thursday, President Obama made his first substantive comments on the Middle East conflict since Israel’s attack on Gaza. Obama first mentioned his commitment to Israel’s security, without affirming his commitment to Palestinian security. He condemned Palestinian rocket attacks on southern Israeli towns, but didn’t criticize the US-backed Israeli bombings of densely populated Gaza. But in a departure from the Bush administration, Obama acknowledged Palestinian suffering and said Gaza’s borders should be opened to aid. We speak with MIT professor, Noam Chomsky. [includes rush transcript]
Link to video and transcript
In a visit to the State Department Thursday, President Obama made his first substantive comments on the Middle East conflict since Israel’s attack on Gaza. Obama first mentioned his commitment to Israel’s security, without affirming his commitment to Palestinian security. He condemned Palestinian rocket attacks on southern Israeli towns, but didn’t criticize the US-backed Israeli bombings of densely populated Gaza. But in a departure from the Bush administration, Obama acknowledged Palestinian suffering and said Gaza’s borders should be opened to aid. We speak with MIT professor, Noam Chomsky. [includes rush transcript]
Link to video and transcript
Friday, January 23, 2009
Obama's orders leave framework of torture, indefinite detention intact
By Tom Eley
On Thursday, President Barack Obama issued executive orders mandating the closure of the Guantánamo Bay prison camp in a year’s time, requiring that Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and military personnel follow the Army Field Manual’s prohibitions on torture, and closing secret CIA prisons overseas.
While the media is portraying these orders as a repudiation of the detention and interrogation policies of the Bush administration, they actually change little. They essentially represent a public relations effort to refurbish the image of the United States abroad after years of torture and extralegal detentions and shield high-ranking American officials from potential criminal prosecution.
In cowardly fashion, Obama staged his signing of the orders in a manner aimed at placating the political right and defenders of Guantánamo and torture and underscoring his intention to continue the Bush administration’s “war on terror.” He was flanked by 16 retired generals and admirals who have pushed for the closure of the prison camp in Cuba on the grounds that it impedes the prosecution of the global “war” and reiterated in his own remarks his determination to continue the basic political framework of the Bush administration’s foreign policy.
Link to con.
By Tom Eley
On Thursday, President Barack Obama issued executive orders mandating the closure of the Guantánamo Bay prison camp in a year’s time, requiring that Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and military personnel follow the Army Field Manual’s prohibitions on torture, and closing secret CIA prisons overseas.
While the media is portraying these orders as a repudiation of the detention and interrogation policies of the Bush administration, they actually change little. They essentially represent a public relations effort to refurbish the image of the United States abroad after years of torture and extralegal detentions and shield high-ranking American officials from potential criminal prosecution.
In cowardly fashion, Obama staged his signing of the orders in a manner aimed at placating the political right and defenders of Guantánamo and torture and underscoring his intention to continue the Bush administration’s “war on terror.” He was flanked by 16 retired generals and admirals who have pushed for the closure of the prison camp in Cuba on the grounds that it impedes the prosecution of the global “war” and reiterated in his own remarks his determination to continue the basic political framework of the Bush administration’s foreign policy.
Link to con.
A Constitution That Spills Ink Instead of Blood
Bolivia Poised for Historic Vote
By BENJAMIN DANGL
Dozens of marches and rallies in support of Bolivia's new constitution, to be voted on this Sunday, have filled the streets of the La Paz in recent days. On Tuesday, at a rally for the constitution and to celebrate Venezuela's donation of 300 tons of asphalt to the city of La Paz, President Evo Morales took the stage, covered in confetti and with a coca leaf wreath around his neck. The crowd cheered and waved signs, one of them saying, "Thanks for the asphalt and the progress."
The new constitution, written in a diverse assembly which first convened in 2006, is expected to pass in the January 25th national referendum. Other governments led by left-leaning leaders in the region have also passed new constitutions in recent years, including Hugo Chavez in Venezuela in 1999, and Rafael Correa in Ecuador in 2008. In varying degrees, Bolivia's new constitution is expected to play an important role in the implementation of progressive policies developed by the Morales administration and his party, the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS).
At the Tuesday rally in La Paz, the sun was strong as drums and roman candles pounded at the air. The screech of packing tape shot out as one bearded participant secured his indigenous wiphala flag to a plastic pole. A group of women blocked off the expanse of one street with a banner that said, "The right wing will not pass – Yes to Evo."
Link to con.
Bolivia Poised for Historic Vote
By BENJAMIN DANGL
Dozens of marches and rallies in support of Bolivia's new constitution, to be voted on this Sunday, have filled the streets of the La Paz in recent days. On Tuesday, at a rally for the constitution and to celebrate Venezuela's donation of 300 tons of asphalt to the city of La Paz, President Evo Morales took the stage, covered in confetti and with a coca leaf wreath around his neck. The crowd cheered and waved signs, one of them saying, "Thanks for the asphalt and the progress."
The new constitution, written in a diverse assembly which first convened in 2006, is expected to pass in the January 25th national referendum. Other governments led by left-leaning leaders in the region have also passed new constitutions in recent years, including Hugo Chavez in Venezuela in 1999, and Rafael Correa in Ecuador in 2008. In varying degrees, Bolivia's new constitution is expected to play an important role in the implementation of progressive policies developed by the Morales administration and his party, the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS).
At the Tuesday rally in La Paz, the sun was strong as drums and roman candles pounded at the air. The screech of packing tape shot out as one bearded participant secured his indigenous wiphala flag to a plastic pole. A group of women blocked off the expanse of one street with a banner that said, "The right wing will not pass – Yes to Evo."
Link to con.
The Second Stage
Another Real Estate Crisis is About to Hit
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
For a picture of the US real estate crisis, imagine New Orleans wrecked by Hurricane Katrina, and before the waters even begin to recede, a second Katrina hits.
The 1,120,000 lost US retail jobs in 2008 are a signal that the second stage of the real estate bust is about to hit the economy. This time it will be commercial real estate--shopping malls, strip malls, warehouses, and office buildings. As businesses close and rents decline, the ability to service the mortgages on the over-built commercial real estate disappears.
The over-building was helped along by the irresponsibly low interest rates, but the main impetus came from the slide of the US saving rate to zero and the rise in household indebtedness. The shrinkage of savings and the increase in debt raised consumer spending to 72% of GDP. The proliferation of malls and the warehouses that service them reflect the rise in consumer spending as a share of GDP.
Link to con.
Another Real Estate Crisis is About to Hit
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
For a picture of the US real estate crisis, imagine New Orleans wrecked by Hurricane Katrina, and before the waters even begin to recede, a second Katrina hits.
The 1,120,000 lost US retail jobs in 2008 are a signal that the second stage of the real estate bust is about to hit the economy. This time it will be commercial real estate--shopping malls, strip malls, warehouses, and office buildings. As businesses close and rents decline, the ability to service the mortgages on the over-built commercial real estate disappears.
The over-building was helped along by the irresponsibly low interest rates, but the main impetus came from the slide of the US saving rate to zero and the rise in household indebtedness. The shrinkage of savings and the increase in debt raised consumer spending to 72% of GDP. The proliferation of malls and the warehouses that service them reflect the rise in consumer spending as a share of GDP.
Link to con.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Bowing to the right on Inauguration Day
The inauguration speech delivered by President Barack Obama Tuesday has been the object of near-delirious praise from the mass media and the editorial pages of the major US dailies. Even those forced to acknowledge that the 18-minute address was flat in its delivery, banal in much of its content and lacking any oratory that will be long remembered insist that it mattered little what Obama actually said. The important thing was his very presence on the steps of the Capitol—and that of the massive crowd on the Washington Mall—symbolizing “change.”
Eschewing genuine analysis and dedicating its coverage instead to self-delusion and deluding others, the media almost universally fails to grasp the immense contradiction between the sentiments that brought nearly two million people to Washington for the event and the politics that underlay what Obama actually said.
Those standing in the cold came to celebrate the exit from the political stage of a hated president, George W. Bush, and what many hoped would be the beginning of fundamental change. The speech itself, however, was crafted in large measure to appease the Republican right and signal continuity with its essential policies.
Link to con.
The inauguration speech delivered by President Barack Obama Tuesday has been the object of near-delirious praise from the mass media and the editorial pages of the major US dailies. Even those forced to acknowledge that the 18-minute address was flat in its delivery, banal in much of its content and lacking any oratory that will be long remembered insist that it mattered little what Obama actually said. The important thing was his very presence on the steps of the Capitol—and that of the massive crowd on the Washington Mall—symbolizing “change.”
Eschewing genuine analysis and dedicating its coverage instead to self-delusion and deluding others, the media almost universally fails to grasp the immense contradiction between the sentiments that brought nearly two million people to Washington for the event and the politics that underlay what Obama actually said.
Those standing in the cold came to celebrate the exit from the political stage of a hated president, George W. Bush, and what many hoped would be the beginning of fundamental change. The speech itself, however, was crafted in large measure to appease the Republican right and signal continuity with its essential policies.
Link to con.
Payday parasites
Adam Turl explains how the payday loan sharks get away with their rip-off.
THE COMPANY store that used to prey on coal miners and their families, locking them forever into debt bondage, is mostly gone. But capitalism, always innovative, keeps coming up with new ways to prey on workers and pick their pockets.
The inglorious roots of the now infamous sub-prime mortgage lending "industry" were in storefront moneylenders, known as retail consumer finance offices. Some employed their own repo men to take back consumer goods purchased on defaulted loans. Sometimes, the loan officer and repo man was one and the same person.
In the 1970s, some retail consumer finance offices began to make high-risk mortgage loans. "Respectable" banks and corporations later followed them into this lucrative market. They're still reeling from the experience.
But the modern version of the storefront moneylender--the payday loan industry--is making more loans than ever.
Link to con.
Adam Turl explains how the payday loan sharks get away with their rip-off.
THE COMPANY store that used to prey on coal miners and their families, locking them forever into debt bondage, is mostly gone. But capitalism, always innovative, keeps coming up with new ways to prey on workers and pick their pockets.
The inglorious roots of the now infamous sub-prime mortgage lending "industry" were in storefront moneylenders, known as retail consumer finance offices. Some employed their own repo men to take back consumer goods purchased on defaulted loans. Sometimes, the loan officer and repo man was one and the same person.
In the 1970s, some retail consumer finance offices began to make high-risk mortgage loans. "Respectable" banks and corporations later followed them into this lucrative market. They're still reeling from the experience.
But the modern version of the storefront moneylender--the payday loan industry--is making more loans than ever.
Link to con.
In Texas, a Line in the Curriculum Revives Evolution Debate
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr., NY Times
The latest round in a long-running battle over how evolution should be taught in Texas schools began in earnest Wednesday as the State Board of Education heard impassioned testimony from scientists and social conservatives on revising the science curriculum. The debate here has far-reaching consequences; Texas is one of the nation’s biggest buyers of textbooks, and publishers are reluctant to produce different versions of the same material.
Many biologists and teachers said they feared that the board would force textbook publishers to include what skeptics see as weaknesses in Darwin’s theory to sow doubt about science and support the Biblical version of creation.
“These weaknesses that they bring forward are decades old, and they have been refuted many, many times over,” Kevin Fisher, a past president of the Science Teachers Association of Texas, said after testifying. “It’s an attempt to bring false weaknesses into the classroom in an attempt to get students to reject evolution.”
Link to con.
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr., NY Times
The latest round in a long-running battle over how evolution should be taught in Texas schools began in earnest Wednesday as the State Board of Education heard impassioned testimony from scientists and social conservatives on revising the science curriculum. The debate here has far-reaching consequences; Texas is one of the nation’s biggest buyers of textbooks, and publishers are reluctant to produce different versions of the same material.
Many biologists and teachers said they feared that the board would force textbook publishers to include what skeptics see as weaknesses in Darwin’s theory to sow doubt about science and support the Biblical version of creation.
“These weaknesses that they bring forward are decades old, and they have been refuted many, many times over,” Kevin Fisher, a past president of the Science Teachers Association of Texas, said after testifying. “It’s an attempt to bring false weaknesses into the classroom in an attempt to get students to reject evolution.”
Link to con.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
(I hope that Obama does really make a change, but I am sure it is not really the change we need. Perhaps that is something that will happen in the long term, but I fear that without a drastic shot term change, will be ever even see that change. An interesting article (below) via a communist newspaper)
OBAMA: NEW CEO FOR U.S. IMPERIALI$M
The expanding “war on terror,” the stock market crash, mass racist unemployment and home foreclosures, police terror, fascist immigration raids and racist budget cuts are all built into the racist profit system. These are the issues that moved millions to respond to Barack Obama’s call for “CHANGE.”
But Obama isn’t offering anything new, except a liberal face in the White House. His cabinet and top advisors are mostly Clinton and Carter re-treads with decades of loyal service to Chase, Citibank and Exxon-Mobil. His National Security Advisor is mass murderer General James Jones who led the saturation bombing of Yugoslavia, killing thousands.
Every president is a defender of capitalism, a system composed of two classes: the bosses who own everything and profit off the backs of the overwhelming majority, and the working class, who only own our labor power and produce all value, including the profits of the bosses. The government is run by this ruling class, which makes Obama the new CEO for U.S. imperialism.
Link to con.
OBAMA: NEW CEO FOR U.S. IMPERIALI$M
The expanding “war on terror,” the stock market crash, mass racist unemployment and home foreclosures, police terror, fascist immigration raids and racist budget cuts are all built into the racist profit system. These are the issues that moved millions to respond to Barack Obama’s call for “CHANGE.”
But Obama isn’t offering anything new, except a liberal face in the White House. His cabinet and top advisors are mostly Clinton and Carter re-treads with decades of loyal service to Chase, Citibank and Exxon-Mobil. His National Security Advisor is mass murderer General James Jones who led the saturation bombing of Yugoslavia, killing thousands.
Every president is a defender of capitalism, a system composed of two classes: the bosses who own everything and profit off the backs of the overwhelming majority, and the working class, who only own our labor power and produce all value, including the profits of the bosses. The government is run by this ruling class, which makes Obama the new CEO for U.S. imperialism.
Link to con.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
What's in store in the Obama era?
U.S. politics is taking a new shape after a long period of conservative dominance.
WITH THE media focused on the pomp and circumstance of Barack Obama's ascent to the White House, it was easy to lose sight of the deeper significance of his election. Not only is the inauguration of the first African American president historic in its own right, but Obama's election signifies the arrival of a new era in American mainstream politics.
Although only two and a half months have passed since Election Night and the jubilant multiracial celebrations in cities across the country, it's worth restating the breadth and depth of the victory. The Obama-Biden ticket defeated the Republican McCain-Palin ticket by more than 7 percentage points (52.9 percent to 45.6 percent) and nearly 10 million votes (69.5 million to 59.9). Obama became the first Democrat since Jimmy Carter, and only the second since Franklin Roosevelt to win an outright majority in a presidential election.
The Democrats won states like Indiana, North Carolina and Virginia that have been solidly Republican for most of the last generation. At the same time, Obama will have the largest Democratic majority in the House of Representatives since 1992 and the largest majority in the Senate since 1977. This win put a final end to an era of conservative dominance that goes back more than a generation.
Link to con.
U.S. politics is taking a new shape after a long period of conservative dominance.
WITH THE media focused on the pomp and circumstance of Barack Obama's ascent to the White House, it was easy to lose sight of the deeper significance of his election. Not only is the inauguration of the first African American president historic in its own right, but Obama's election signifies the arrival of a new era in American mainstream politics.
Although only two and a half months have passed since Election Night and the jubilant multiracial celebrations in cities across the country, it's worth restating the breadth and depth of the victory. The Obama-Biden ticket defeated the Republican McCain-Palin ticket by more than 7 percentage points (52.9 percent to 45.6 percent) and nearly 10 million votes (69.5 million to 59.9). Obama became the first Democrat since Jimmy Carter, and only the second since Franklin Roosevelt to win an outright majority in a presidential election.
The Democrats won states like Indiana, North Carolina and Virginia that have been solidly Republican for most of the last generation. At the same time, Obama will have the largest Democratic majority in the House of Representatives since 1992 and the largest majority in the Senate since 1977. This win put a final end to an era of conservative dominance that goes back more than a generation.
Link to con.
Obama Has the Chance To Be Another FDR -- He Can End the Era of Marijuana Prohibition
By Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
The parallels between the 1933 coming of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the upcoming inauguration of Barack Obama must include the issue of Prohibition: alcohol in 1933, and marijuana today. As FDR did back then, Obama must now help end an utterly failed, socially destructive, reactionary crusade.
Marijuana prohibition is a core cause of many of the nation's economic problems. It costs the United States tens of billions per year to track, arrest, try, defend and imprison marijuana consumers, who pose little, if any, harm to society. The social toll soars even higher when we account for social violence, lost work, ruined careers and damaged families. In 2007, 775,137 people were arrested in the United States for mere possession of this ancient crop, according to the FBI's uniform crime report.
Like the Prohibition on alcohol that plagued the nation from 1920 to 1933, marijuana prohibition (which essentially began in 1937) feeds organized crime and a socially useless prison-industrial complex that includes judges, lawyers, police, guards, prison contractors and more.
Link to con.
By Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
The parallels between the 1933 coming of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the upcoming inauguration of Barack Obama must include the issue of Prohibition: alcohol in 1933, and marijuana today. As FDR did back then, Obama must now help end an utterly failed, socially destructive, reactionary crusade.
Marijuana prohibition is a core cause of many of the nation's economic problems. It costs the United States tens of billions per year to track, arrest, try, defend and imprison marijuana consumers, who pose little, if any, harm to society. The social toll soars even higher when we account for social violence, lost work, ruined careers and damaged families. In 2007, 775,137 people were arrested in the United States for mere possession of this ancient crop, according to the FBI's uniform crime report.
Like the Prohibition on alcohol that plagued the nation from 1920 to 1933, marijuana prohibition (which essentially began in 1937) feeds organized crime and a socially useless prison-industrial complex that includes judges, lawyers, police, guards, prison contractors and more.
Link to con.
Monday, January 19, 2009
The case for nationalizing the banks
Less than four months after Congress passed the Bush administration’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), authorizing the Treasury Department to spend $700 billion in taxpayer money to bail out the banks, the same banks that received the government handouts are reporting massive losses and the incoming Obama administration is preparing to funnel hundreds of billions in additional funds to Wall Street.
In the interim, the financial crisis has deepened and precipitated a global recession that is acknowledged to be the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Millions more workers, told last fall by Bush and Obama that the government bailout, supposedly designed to benefit “Main Street” and not “Wall Street,” would avert a financial meltdown and mass unemployment, have lost their jobs, their homes and their life savings. Meanwhile, the bankers have refused to use their windfalls to lend to businesses and consumers and have instead either hoarded the government cash or used it to buy up smaller firms.
None of the CEOs and speculators whose corrupt and reckless policies brought their own institutions and the global economy to ruin, while they rewarded themselves with seven- and eight-figure compensation packages, and none of the government regulators who colluded in the plundering of the economy have been called to account. The bankers, with the complicity of the government, flatly refuse to reveal what they have done with the money they received from the Treasury.
Link to con.
Less than four months after Congress passed the Bush administration’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), authorizing the Treasury Department to spend $700 billion in taxpayer money to bail out the banks, the same banks that received the government handouts are reporting massive losses and the incoming Obama administration is preparing to funnel hundreds of billions in additional funds to Wall Street.
In the interim, the financial crisis has deepened and precipitated a global recession that is acknowledged to be the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Millions more workers, told last fall by Bush and Obama that the government bailout, supposedly designed to benefit “Main Street” and not “Wall Street,” would avert a financial meltdown and mass unemployment, have lost their jobs, their homes and their life savings. Meanwhile, the bankers have refused to use their windfalls to lend to businesses and consumers and have instead either hoarded the government cash or used it to buy up smaller firms.
None of the CEOs and speculators whose corrupt and reckless policies brought their own institutions and the global economy to ruin, while they rewarded themselves with seven- and eight-figure compensation packages, and none of the government regulators who colluded in the plundering of the economy have been called to account. The bankers, with the complicity of the government, flatly refuse to reveal what they have done with the money they received from the Treasury.
Link to con.
Obama’s team: A right-wing cabinet for a government of big business
By Patrick Martin
In advance of his inauguration, President-elect Barack Obama has assembled a cabinet drawn from the upper echelons of American society and the right-wing of the Democratic Party. Despite his invocations of “change,” his appeals to antiwar sentiment and to young people in the course of nearly two years of campaigning, there is not a single figure in the leading personnel of the Obama administration drawn from the more liberal elements of the Democratic Party, let alone anyone representative of the broad masses of working people and youth.
The right-wing character of Obama’s nominees is described by the media under the approving labels of “centrist,” “moderate,” and—most of all—“pragmatic.” This terminology signifies that the incoming Obama team consists entirely of individuals who pass muster with the corporate-financial elite. There is not a whiff of genuine oppositional sentiment, let alone political radicalism, among the lot of them.
It is a remarkable fact that if Hillary Clinton had won the Democratic nomination and the presidency instead of Obama, there would be virtually no change in the cabinet selections. The Washington Post noted Sunday, in its overview of the transition process, that Obama staffers have a running joke: “If you wanted Obama to win for president, you should have worked on his campaign, but if you wanted to work for him, you should have worked for Hillary.”
Link to con.
By Patrick Martin
In advance of his inauguration, President-elect Barack Obama has assembled a cabinet drawn from the upper echelons of American society and the right-wing of the Democratic Party. Despite his invocations of “change,” his appeals to antiwar sentiment and to young people in the course of nearly two years of campaigning, there is not a single figure in the leading personnel of the Obama administration drawn from the more liberal elements of the Democratic Party, let alone anyone representative of the broad masses of working people and youth.
The right-wing character of Obama’s nominees is described by the media under the approving labels of “centrist,” “moderate,” and—most of all—“pragmatic.” This terminology signifies that the incoming Obama team consists entirely of individuals who pass muster with the corporate-financial elite. There is not a whiff of genuine oppositional sentiment, let alone political radicalism, among the lot of them.
It is a remarkable fact that if Hillary Clinton had won the Democratic nomination and the presidency instead of Obama, there would be virtually no change in the cabinet selections. The Washington Post noted Sunday, in its overview of the transition process, that Obama staffers have a running joke: “If you wanted Obama to win for president, you should have worked on his campaign, but if you wanted to work for him, you should have worked for Hillary.”
Link to con.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
High Plains Grifter
The Life and Crimes of George W. Bush
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
Part One: The Ties That Blind
The mad cowboys are on the loose. Pack only what you can carry. Liberate the animals. Leave the rest behind. The looters are hot on the trail. Only ruin stands in their wake. Not even women and children are safe. Especially not them. Run for the hills and don't look back. Don't ever look back.
So the story goes, anyway.
We find ourselves living out a scene in a bad Western. A movie filmed long after all the old plot lines have been exhausted, the grizzled character actors put out to pasture, the Indians slaughtered and confined to desert prisons, the cattle slotted into stinking feed lots, the scenic montane backdrops pulverized by strip mines. All that remains are the guns, bulked up beyond all comprehension, and the hangman and his gibbet. We've seen it all before. But there's no escape now. Someone's locked the exits. The film rolls on to the bitter end. Cue music: Toby Keith.
Perhaps only the Pasolini of Salo: 120 Days of Sodom could have done this celluloid scenario justice. Or the impish Mel Brooks, who gave us Blazing Saddles (one of the greatest films on the true nature of American politics), if you understand the narrative as comedy, which is probably the most emetic way to embrace it. Both Pasolini and Brooks are masters of scatological cinema. And there's mounds of bullshit to dig through to get at the core of George W. Bush.
Link to con.
The Life and Crimes of George W. Bush
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
Part One: The Ties That Blind
The mad cowboys are on the loose. Pack only what you can carry. Liberate the animals. Leave the rest behind. The looters are hot on the trail. Only ruin stands in their wake. Not even women and children are safe. Especially not them. Run for the hills and don't look back. Don't ever look back.
So the story goes, anyway.
We find ourselves living out a scene in a bad Western. A movie filmed long after all the old plot lines have been exhausted, the grizzled character actors put out to pasture, the Indians slaughtered and confined to desert prisons, the cattle slotted into stinking feed lots, the scenic montane backdrops pulverized by strip mines. All that remains are the guns, bulked up beyond all comprehension, and the hangman and his gibbet. We've seen it all before. But there's no escape now. Someone's locked the exits. The film rolls on to the bitter end. Cue music: Toby Keith.
Perhaps only the Pasolini of Salo: 120 Days of Sodom could have done this celluloid scenario justice. Or the impish Mel Brooks, who gave us Blazing Saddles (one of the greatest films on the true nature of American politics), if you understand the narrative as comedy, which is probably the most emetic way to embrace it. Both Pasolini and Brooks are masters of scatological cinema. And there's mounds of bullshit to dig through to get at the core of George W. Bush.
Link to con.
Holding Bush Accountable
By Elizabeth Holtzman
President Obama, on his first day in office, can make a number of changes that will mark a clean break with the Bush presidency. He can, and should, issue an executive order revoking any prior order that permits detainee mistreatment by any government agency. He should begin the process of closing Guantánamo, and he should submit to Congress a bill to end the use of military commissions, at least as presently constituted. Over the coming months he can pursue other reforms to restore respect for the Constitution, such as revising the Patriot Act, abolishing secret prisons and "extraordinary rendition," and ending practices, like signing statements, that seek to undo laws.
While these steps are all crucial, however, it is not enough merely to cease the abuses of power and apparent criminality that marked the highest levels of George W. Bush's administration. We cannot simply shrug off the constitutional and criminal misbehavior of the administration, treat it as an aberration and hope it won't happen again. The misbehavior was not an aberration--aspects of it, particularly the idea that the president is above the law, were present in Watergate and in the Iran/Contra scandal. To fully restore the rule of law and prevent any repetition of Bush's misconduct, the abuses of his administration must be directly confronted. As Indiana University law professor Dawn Johnsen--recently tapped by Obama to head his Office of Legal Counsel--wrote in Slate last March, "We must avoid any temptation simply to move on. We must instead be honest with ourselves and the world as we condemn our nation's past transgressions and reject Bush's corruption of our American ideals."
Link to con.
By Elizabeth Holtzman
President Obama, on his first day in office, can make a number of changes that will mark a clean break with the Bush presidency. He can, and should, issue an executive order revoking any prior order that permits detainee mistreatment by any government agency. He should begin the process of closing Guantánamo, and he should submit to Congress a bill to end the use of military commissions, at least as presently constituted. Over the coming months he can pursue other reforms to restore respect for the Constitution, such as revising the Patriot Act, abolishing secret prisons and "extraordinary rendition," and ending practices, like signing statements, that seek to undo laws.
While these steps are all crucial, however, it is not enough merely to cease the abuses of power and apparent criminality that marked the highest levels of George W. Bush's administration. We cannot simply shrug off the constitutional and criminal misbehavior of the administration, treat it as an aberration and hope it won't happen again. The misbehavior was not an aberration--aspects of it, particularly the idea that the president is above the law, were present in Watergate and in the Iran/Contra scandal. To fully restore the rule of law and prevent any repetition of Bush's misconduct, the abuses of his administration must be directly confronted. As Indiana University law professor Dawn Johnsen--recently tapped by Obama to head his Office of Legal Counsel--wrote in Slate last March, "We must avoid any temptation simply to move on. We must instead be honest with ourselves and the world as we condemn our nation's past transgressions and reject Bush's corruption of our American ideals."
Link to con.
Italy's New Racism
By Frederika Randall
Emmanuel Bonsu Foster comes from Ghana. He was 13 when he settled in Italy with his parents. One sunny afternoon in late September, Foster, now 22, was sitting on a park bench in Parma waiting for his classes to begin at a nearby technical institute. Seven men--plainclothed police officers, although he didn't know that--suddenly appeared and knocked him to the ground. They beat and kicked him, beat him some more in the police car, strip-searched him at the station, taunted him with "monkey" and "negro," took Abu Ghraib-style photos of the cowering "criminal" and finally, after six hours, released him. His left eye was hemorrhaging, and he was carrying an envelope with his personal effects on which the cops had scrawled "Emmanuel Negro." It seemed Foster wasn't a pusher, after all. He was just black.
Link to con.
By Frederika Randall
Emmanuel Bonsu Foster comes from Ghana. He was 13 when he settled in Italy with his parents. One sunny afternoon in late September, Foster, now 22, was sitting on a park bench in Parma waiting for his classes to begin at a nearby technical institute. Seven men--plainclothed police officers, although he didn't know that--suddenly appeared and knocked him to the ground. They beat and kicked him, beat him some more in the police car, strip-searched him at the station, taunted him with "monkey" and "negro," took Abu Ghraib-style photos of the cowering "criminal" and finally, after six hours, released him. His left eye was hemorrhaging, and he was carrying an envelope with his personal effects on which the cops had scrawled "Emmanuel Negro." It seemed Foster wasn't a pusher, after all. He was just black.
Link to con.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Forgive and Forget?
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Last Sunday President-elect Barack Obama was asked whether he would seek an investigation of possible crimes by the Bush administration. “I don’t believe that anybody is above the law,” he responded, but “we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.”
I’m sorry, but if we don’t have an inquest into what happened during the Bush years — and nearly everyone has taken Mr. Obama’s remarks to mean that we won’t — this means that those who hold power are indeed above the law because they don’t face any consequences if they abuse their power.
Let’s be clear what we’re talking about here. It’s not just torture and illegal wiretapping, whose perpetrators claim, however implausibly, that they were patriots acting to defend the nation’s security. The fact is that the Bush administration’s abuses extended from environmental policy to voting rights. And most of the abuses involved using the power of government to reward political friends and punish political enemies.
Link to con.
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Last Sunday President-elect Barack Obama was asked whether he would seek an investigation of possible crimes by the Bush administration. “I don’t believe that anybody is above the law,” he responded, but “we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.”
I’m sorry, but if we don’t have an inquest into what happened during the Bush years — and nearly everyone has taken Mr. Obama’s remarks to mean that we won’t — this means that those who hold power are indeed above the law because they don’t face any consequences if they abuse their power.
Let’s be clear what we’re talking about here. It’s not just torture and illegal wiretapping, whose perpetrators claim, however implausibly, that they were patriots acting to defend the nation’s security. The fact is that the Bush administration’s abuses extended from environmental policy to voting rights. And most of the abuses involved using the power of government to reward political friends and punish political enemies.
Link to con.
US roquefort tariff angers French
Lizzy Davies in Paris
They were left battered by farmer Jose Bové's attacks on McDonald's and bruised by the birth of the "freedom fry". But yesterday the French and the Americans proved they had the stomach for another gloriously messy food fight.
Less than a week before it leaves office, the Bush administration has sparked anger across the Atlantic by tripling the import duty rate on roquefort cheese to 300%, a move which the US hopes will "shut down trade" in the sheep's milk product by making it prohibitively expensive.
The decision, part of Washington's attempts to force the EU into dropping its ban on hormone-treated beef, was greeted with disbelief by the French government and by farmers in the south-western Aveyron region who depend on the industry for their livelihoods.
Link to con.
Lizzy Davies in Paris
They were left battered by farmer Jose Bové's attacks on McDonald's and bruised by the birth of the "freedom fry". But yesterday the French and the Americans proved they had the stomach for another gloriously messy food fight.
Less than a week before it leaves office, the Bush administration has sparked anger across the Atlantic by tripling the import duty rate on roquefort cheese to 300%, a move which the US hopes will "shut down trade" in the sheep's milk product by making it prohibitively expensive.
The decision, part of Washington's attempts to force the EU into dropping its ban on hormone-treated beef, was greeted with disbelief by the French government and by farmers in the south-western Aveyron region who depend on the industry for their livelihoods.
Link to con.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
UAW accepts government ban on strikes
It has come to light that the federal bailout of General Motors and Chrysler approved last month by the Bush administration with the support of the incoming Obama administration includes a stipulation that effectively bans strikes or work stoppages by autoworkers. The clause, which was revealed in a Security and Exchange Commission filing by GM last week, coincides with government demands that the 139,000 workers at Detroit's auto companies agree by February 17 to accept mass layoffs, plant closures and sweeping wage and benefit concessions.
According to the SEC filing, the Treasury Department could declare GM and Chrysler in default and revoke $17.4 billion in loans, throwing the automakers into bankruptcy, if "any labor union or collective bargaining unit shall engage in a strike or other work stoppage."
The effect of this provision is to revoke the legal right to strike, an achievement won by the American working class in bitter struggles against "criminal conspiracy" laws used against striking workers in the 19th century. It was only with the 1935 passage, in the depths of the Great Depression, of the National Labor Relations Act that federal law recognized the right of workers to strike. This concession to the working class was not some freely given gift of the Roosevelt administration. It followed general strikes that erupted in 1934 in Toledo, Minneapolis and San Francisco. Without the strike weapon, workers are reduced to the status of industrial slaves, legally compelled to accept the most brutal conditions of exploitation without any recourse to collective resistance.
Link to con.
It has come to light that the federal bailout of General Motors and Chrysler approved last month by the Bush administration with the support of the incoming Obama administration includes a stipulation that effectively bans strikes or work stoppages by autoworkers. The clause, which was revealed in a Security and Exchange Commission filing by GM last week, coincides with government demands that the 139,000 workers at Detroit's auto companies agree by February 17 to accept mass layoffs, plant closures and sweeping wage and benefit concessions.
According to the SEC filing, the Treasury Department could declare GM and Chrysler in default and revoke $17.4 billion in loans, throwing the automakers into bankruptcy, if "any labor union or collective bargaining unit shall engage in a strike or other work stoppage."
The effect of this provision is to revoke the legal right to strike, an achievement won by the American working class in bitter struggles against "criminal conspiracy" laws used against striking workers in the 19th century. It was only with the 1935 passage, in the depths of the Great Depression, of the National Labor Relations Act that federal law recognized the right of workers to strike. This concession to the working class was not some freely given gift of the Roosevelt administration. It followed general strikes that erupted in 1934 in Toledo, Minneapolis and San Francisco. Without the strike weapon, workers are reduced to the status of industrial slaves, legally compelled to accept the most brutal conditions of exploitation without any recourse to collective resistance.
Link to con.
Hillary Clinton touts “smart power” in pursuit of US imperialist aims
By Bill van Auken
At her confirmation hearing Tuesday, Senator Hillary Clinton offered few specifics as to the policies that she would pursue as the Obama administration's secretary of state, but suggested that she would pursue the same objectives as those that have driven US military aggression over the past several years, albeit with some largely cosmetic modifications.
She also made clear that her espousal of the importance of diplomacy did not imply a reduction in military violence. "We will lead with diplomacy because it's a smart approach," she said at one point. "But we also know that military force will sometimes be needed."
In her appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Clinton was showered with praise both by fellow Democrats and by Republicans. Not long ago, the former first lady was vilified by the Republican Party. She herself once described her husband's Republican opponents as a "vast right-wing conspiracy." But such animosity has been cast aside. As Obama's designee for secretary of state, she is clearly seen as a reliable defender of the same interests as those pursued by the Bush administration.
Link to con.
By Bill van Auken
At her confirmation hearing Tuesday, Senator Hillary Clinton offered few specifics as to the policies that she would pursue as the Obama administration's secretary of state, but suggested that she would pursue the same objectives as those that have driven US military aggression over the past several years, albeit with some largely cosmetic modifications.
She also made clear that her espousal of the importance of diplomacy did not imply a reduction in military violence. "We will lead with diplomacy because it's a smart approach," she said at one point. "But we also know that military force will sometimes be needed."
In her appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Clinton was showered with praise both by fellow Democrats and by Republicans. Not long ago, the former first lady was vilified by the Republican Party. She herself once described her husband's Republican opponents as a "vast right-wing conspiracy." But such animosity has been cast aside. As Obama's designee for secretary of state, she is clearly seen as a reliable defender of the same interests as those pursued by the Bush administration.
Link to con.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Pure Propaganda From the Papers of Record
by philip giraldi
The Israeli propaganda machine has called up its allies in the media and Congress to make sure that no one will condemn the invasion of Gaza, which has killed and wounded thousands of Palestinians, most of them civilians and many of them children. The pictures of small bodies lined up to be buried are convincing evidence that something is very wrong in Gaza, but leaders in Congress from both parties have nonetheless rallied to the cause of Israeli victimhood, putting all the blame for the conflict on the Palestinians.
Folks outside the United States who do not have the benefit of the Israel lobby to guide their thinking are seeing the carnage in a different way, noting the disproportionate nature of the Israeli attack and also the unlikelihood that Tel Aviv's stated objectives are obtainable without utterly destroying Gaza's infrastructure and turning the strip of land into a military-occupied moonscape. Many are also wondering what Israel's actual goals might be, since the invasion will only empower Hamas politically, not destroy it. Is it to tie the incoming Obama administration irrevocably to Israel's security agenda or to strengthen the Kadima Party in the lead-up to national elections next month? Only time will tell, but, as always, the Palestinians will bear the brunt of the suffering, and the United States will surely pay some price for green-lighting the Israeli offensive.
Link to con.
by philip giraldi
The Israeli propaganda machine has called up its allies in the media and Congress to make sure that no one will condemn the invasion of Gaza, which has killed and wounded thousands of Palestinians, most of them civilians and many of them children. The pictures of small bodies lined up to be buried are convincing evidence that something is very wrong in Gaza, but leaders in Congress from both parties have nonetheless rallied to the cause of Israeli victimhood, putting all the blame for the conflict on the Palestinians.
Folks outside the United States who do not have the benefit of the Israel lobby to guide their thinking are seeing the carnage in a different way, noting the disproportionate nature of the Israeli attack and also the unlikelihood that Tel Aviv's stated objectives are obtainable without utterly destroying Gaza's infrastructure and turning the strip of land into a military-occupied moonscape. Many are also wondering what Israel's actual goals might be, since the invasion will only empower Hamas politically, not destroy it. Is it to tie the incoming Obama administration irrevocably to Israel's security agenda or to strengthen the Kadima Party in the lead-up to national elections next month? Only time will tell, but, as always, the Palestinians will bear the brunt of the suffering, and the United States will surely pay some price for green-lighting the Israeli offensive.
Link to con.
Seeing Through the Lies
The Facts About Hamas and the War on Gaza
By NORMAN FINKELSTEIN
The record is fairly clear. You can find it on the Israeli website, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website. Israel broke the ceasefire by going into the Gaza and killing six or seven Palestinian militants. At that point—and now I’m quoting the official Israeli website—Hamas retaliated or, in retaliation for the Israeli attack, then launched the missiles.
Now, as to the reason why, the record is fairly clear as well. According to Ha’aretz, Defense Minister Barak began plans for this invasion before the ceasefire even began. In fact, according to yesterday’s Ha’aretz, the plans for the invasion began in March. And the main reasons for the invasion, I think, are twofold. Number one; to enhance what Israel calls its deterrence capacity, which in layman’s language basically means Israel’s capacity to terrorize the region into submission. After their defeat in July 2006 in Lebanon, they felt it important to transmit the message that Israel is still a fighting force, still capable of terrorizing those who dare defy its word.
Link to con.
The Facts About Hamas and the War on Gaza
By NORMAN FINKELSTEIN
The record is fairly clear. You can find it on the Israeli website, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website. Israel broke the ceasefire by going into the Gaza and killing six or seven Palestinian militants. At that point—and now I’m quoting the official Israeli website—Hamas retaliated or, in retaliation for the Israeli attack, then launched the missiles.
Now, as to the reason why, the record is fairly clear as well. According to Ha’aretz, Defense Minister Barak began plans for this invasion before the ceasefire even began. In fact, according to yesterday’s Ha’aretz, the plans for the invasion began in March. And the main reasons for the invasion, I think, are twofold. Number one; to enhance what Israel calls its deterrence capacity, which in layman’s language basically means Israel’s capacity to terrorize the region into submission. After their defeat in July 2006 in Lebanon, they felt it important to transmit the message that Israel is still a fighting force, still capable of terrorizing those who dare defy its word.
Link to con.
Virtually the Entire Dem-Controlled Congress Supports Israel's War Crimes in GazaBy Stephen Zunes
In a direct challenge to the credibility of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the International Red Cross and other reputable humanitarian organizations, an overwhelming bipartisan majority in both houses of Congress has gone on record supporting President George W. Bush's position that the Israeli armed forces bear no responsibility for the large and growing numbers of civilian casualties from their assault on the Gaza Strip.
As of this writing, at least 400 civilians have been killed by Israeli forces, primarily using U.S.-supplied weaponry.
Shattering hopes that an expanded Democratic congressional majority and a new Democratic administration might lead to a more moderate foreign policy, the resolutions put forward an extreme reinterpretation of international humanitarian law, apparently designed to exonerate nations with superior firepower from any liability for inflicting large-scale civilian casualties.
The Senate resolution, primarily written and sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., passed the Senate by unanimous consent on a voice vote. Among the 33 co-sponsors were such otherwise liberal Democratic senators as Barbara Boxer, Calif,; Richard Durbin, Ill,; Carl Levin, Mich.; Sherrod Brown, Ohio; Barbara Mikulski, Md.; and 2004 presidential nominee John Kerry, Mass.
Link to con.
In a direct challenge to the credibility of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the International Red Cross and other reputable humanitarian organizations, an overwhelming bipartisan majority in both houses of Congress has gone on record supporting President George W. Bush's position that the Israeli armed forces bear no responsibility for the large and growing numbers of civilian casualties from their assault on the Gaza Strip.
As of this writing, at least 400 civilians have been killed by Israeli forces, primarily using U.S.-supplied weaponry.
Shattering hopes that an expanded Democratic congressional majority and a new Democratic administration might lead to a more moderate foreign policy, the resolutions put forward an extreme reinterpretation of international humanitarian law, apparently designed to exonerate nations with superior firepower from any liability for inflicting large-scale civilian casualties.
The Senate resolution, primarily written and sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., passed the Senate by unanimous consent on a voice vote. Among the 33 co-sponsors were such otherwise liberal Democratic senators as Barbara Boxer, Calif,; Richard Durbin, Ill,; Carl Levin, Mich.; Sherrod Brown, Ohio; Barbara Mikulski, Md.; and 2004 presidential nominee John Kerry, Mass.
Link to con.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Israel Is Committing War Crimes
Hamas's violations are no justification for Israel's actions.
By GEORGE E. BISHARAT
Israel's current assault on the Gaza Strip cannot be justified by self-defense. Rather, it involves serious violations of international law, including war crimes. Senior Israeli political and military leaders may bear personal liability for their offenses, and they could be prosecuted by an international tribunal, or by nations practicing universal jurisdiction over grave international crimes. Hamas fighters have also violated the laws of warfare, but their misdeeds do not justify Israel's acts.
The United Nations charter preserved the customary right of a state to retaliate against an "armed attack" from another state. The right has evolved to cover nonstate actors operating beyond the borders of the state claiming self-defense, and arguably would apply to Hamas. However, an armed attack involves serious violations of the peace. Minor border skirmishes are common, and if all were considered armed attacks, states could easily exploit them -- as surrounding facts are often murky and unverifiable -- to launch wars of aggression. That is exactly what Israel seems to be currently attempting.
Link to con.
Hamas's violations are no justification for Israel's actions.
By GEORGE E. BISHARAT
Israel's current assault on the Gaza Strip cannot be justified by self-defense. Rather, it involves serious violations of international law, including war crimes. Senior Israeli political and military leaders may bear personal liability for their offenses, and they could be prosecuted by an international tribunal, or by nations practicing universal jurisdiction over grave international crimes. Hamas fighters have also violated the laws of warfare, but their misdeeds do not justify Israel's acts.
The United Nations charter preserved the customary right of a state to retaliate against an "armed attack" from another state. The right has evolved to cover nonstate actors operating beyond the borders of the state claiming self-defense, and arguably would apply to Hamas. However, an armed attack involves serious violations of the peace. Minor border skirmishes are common, and if all were considered armed attacks, states could easily exploit them -- as surrounding facts are often murky and unverifiable -- to launch wars of aggression. That is exactly what Israel seems to be currently attempting.
Link to con.
US's Negative Net Worth at $59.3 Trillion
Our Collapsing Economy
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nonfarm payroll employment declined by 3,445,000 from December 2007 through December 2008. The collapse in employment is across the board. Construction lost 520,000 jobs. Manufacturing lost 806,000 jobs. Trade, transportation and utilities lost 1,495,000 jobs (retail trade accounted for 1,120,000 of this loss). Financial activities lost 145,000 jobs. Professional and business services lost 713,000 jobs. Even government lost 188,000 jobs.
Only in health care and social assistance has the economy been able to eke out a few new jobs. Many analysts believe the job losses will be as great or greater during 2009.
Moreover, the reported job losses are likely understated. Noted statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com) reports that biases in measurement have understated the job loss over the last 12 months by 1,150,000 jobs. Williams reports the unemployment rate as it was measured prior to “reforms” designed to minimize the measured rate of unemployment. According to the methodology used in 1980, the US unemployment rate in December 2008 reached 17.5 percent.
Link to con.
Our Collapsing Economy
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nonfarm payroll employment declined by 3,445,000 from December 2007 through December 2008. The collapse in employment is across the board. Construction lost 520,000 jobs. Manufacturing lost 806,000 jobs. Trade, transportation and utilities lost 1,495,000 jobs (retail trade accounted for 1,120,000 of this loss). Financial activities lost 145,000 jobs. Professional and business services lost 713,000 jobs. Even government lost 188,000 jobs.
Only in health care and social assistance has the economy been able to eke out a few new jobs. Many analysts believe the job losses will be as great or greater during 2009.
Moreover, the reported job losses are likely understated. Noted statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com) reports that biases in measurement have understated the job loss over the last 12 months by 1,150,000 jobs. Williams reports the unemployment rate as it was measured prior to “reforms” designed to minimize the measured rate of unemployment. According to the methodology used in 1980, the US unemployment rate in December 2008 reached 17.5 percent.
Link to con.
Gaza Is the Future
Israel's on a rampage – and here's why
by justin raimondo
Why is Israel pounding Gaza? Well, we know the official explanation, which goes something like this: if you Americans were being targeted by crude, albeit potentially lethal, rockets from, say, Mexico, on a daily basis, how would you respond? Israel, we are told, had to take on Hamas. As Barack Obama put it, while campaigning in Sderot, the Israeli response is "part of being a country." They had no choice.
This is bollocks, as everyone but the brain-dead realize. To begin with, Hamas offered a truce and had abided by the previous cease-fire, but the Israelis weren't interested. Instead, Tel Aviv chose to unleash what the whole world sees as an appallingly disproportionate response, raining death on one of the most tightly packed urban environments on earth and launching what looks to be an invasion and reoccupation of the Gaza Strip.
Of course, any military action by the IDF against Hamas' ragtag fighters is inherently disproportionate, given the radical imbalance in the power relationship between the two. Israel, after all, has the most effective, high-tech military machine in the region, bought and paid for by U.S. taxpayers – and with no expense spared on account of that. In any case, however, many are puzzled by what seems to be an inherently doomed project. The attack will merely popularize Hamas, without changing anything, and Israel will wind up back at square one, caught in a Sisyphean nightmare of constantly re-invading the same territory, then retreating once again. But what if they don't retreat?
Link to con.
Israel's on a rampage – and here's why
by justin raimondo
Why is Israel pounding Gaza? Well, we know the official explanation, which goes something like this: if you Americans were being targeted by crude, albeit potentially lethal, rockets from, say, Mexico, on a daily basis, how would you respond? Israel, we are told, had to take on Hamas. As Barack Obama put it, while campaigning in Sderot, the Israeli response is "part of being a country." They had no choice.
This is bollocks, as everyone but the brain-dead realize. To begin with, Hamas offered a truce and had abided by the previous cease-fire, but the Israelis weren't interested. Instead, Tel Aviv chose to unleash what the whole world sees as an appallingly disproportionate response, raining death on one of the most tightly packed urban environments on earth and launching what looks to be an invasion and reoccupation of the Gaza Strip.
Of course, any military action by the IDF against Hamas' ragtag fighters is inherently disproportionate, given the radical imbalance in the power relationship between the two. Israel, after all, has the most effective, high-tech military machine in the region, bought and paid for by U.S. taxpayers – and with no expense spared on account of that. In any case, however, many are puzzled by what seems to be an inherently doomed project. The attack will merely popularize Hamas, without changing anything, and Israel will wind up back at square one, caught in a Sisyphean nightmare of constantly re-invading the same territory, then retreating once again. But what if they don't retreat?
Link to con.
(Ok just the fact that people like this are walking around the streets, scares the sh** out of me. REALLY! They have no justification for what is going on, except to fall back on the WWII days. get over it!)
Pro-Israel Rally Attended by Big-Time NY Dems Descends into Calls for 'Wiping Out' Palestinians
Pro-Israel Rally Attended by Big-Time NY Dems Descends into Calls for 'Wiping Out' Palestinians
Monday, January 12, 2009
Can Labor Revive the American Dream?
By Esther Kaplan
January 7, 2009
The financial markets are in tatters, consumer spending is anemic and the recession continues to deepen, but corporate America is keeping its eyes on the prize: crushing organized labor. The Center for Union Facts, a business front group, has taken out full-page ads in newspapers linking SEIU president Andy Stern to the Rod Blagojevich scandal. The Chamber of Commerce is capitalizing on the debate over the Big Three bailout to claim that "unions drove the auto companies off the cliff," while minority leader Mitch McConnell and other Republican senators insist on steep wage cuts. A December 10 Republican strategy memo revealed their central obsession: "Republicans should stand firm and take their first shot against organized labor," the memo read. "This is a precursor to card check"--a clear reference to the Employee Free Choice Act.
This simple amendment to federal labor law, which would, among other things, allow workers to unionize when a majority sign cards rather than requiring a bruising election, has galvanized the business community in a way even the $700 billion bailout couldn't. "I get the sense that this is more important to them than even taxes or regulation," says the AFL-CIO's director of government affairs, Bill Samuels. "This is about power. And the business community is not going to give up power willingly." Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott said as much to a meeting with analysts in October. "We like driving the car," he told them, "and we're not going to give the steering wheel to anybody but us."
Link
By Esther Kaplan
January 7, 2009
The financial markets are in tatters, consumer spending is anemic and the recession continues to deepen, but corporate America is keeping its eyes on the prize: crushing organized labor. The Center for Union Facts, a business front group, has taken out full-page ads in newspapers linking SEIU president Andy Stern to the Rod Blagojevich scandal. The Chamber of Commerce is capitalizing on the debate over the Big Three bailout to claim that "unions drove the auto companies off the cliff," while minority leader Mitch McConnell and other Republican senators insist on steep wage cuts. A December 10 Republican strategy memo revealed their central obsession: "Republicans should stand firm and take their first shot against organized labor," the memo read. "This is a precursor to card check"--a clear reference to the Employee Free Choice Act.
This simple amendment to federal labor law, which would, among other things, allow workers to unionize when a majority sign cards rather than requiring a bruising election, has galvanized the business community in a way even the $700 billion bailout couldn't. "I get the sense that this is more important to them than even taxes or regulation," says the AFL-CIO's director of government affairs, Bill Samuels. "This is about power. And the business community is not going to give up power willingly." Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott said as much to a meeting with analysts in October. "We like driving the car," he told them, "and we're not going to give the steering wheel to anybody but us."
Link
The Language of Death
By Chris Hedges
The incursion into Gaza is not about destroying Hamas. It is not about stopping rocket fire into Israel. It is not about achieving peace. The Israeli decision to rain death and destruction on Gaza, to use the lethal weapons of the modern battlefield on a largely defenseless civilian population, is the final phase of the decades-long campaign to ethnically cleanse Palestinians. The assault on Gaza is about creating squalid, lawless and impoverished ghettos where life for Palestinians will be barely sustainable. It is about building ringed Palestinian enclaves where Israel will always have the ability to shut off movement, food, medicine and goods to perpetuate misery. The Israeli attack on Gaza is about building a hell on earth.
This attack is the final Israeli push to extinguish a Palestinian state and crush or expel the Palestinian people. The images of dead Palestinian children, lined up as if asleep on the floor of the main hospital in Gaza, are a metaphor for the future. Israel will, from now on, speak to the Palestinians in the language of death. And the language of death is all the Palestinians will be able to speak back. The slaughter—let’s stop pretending this is a war—is empowering an array of radical Islamists inside and outside of Gaza. It is ominously demolishing the shaky foundations of the corrupt secular Arab regimes on Israel’s borders, from Egypt to Jordan to Syria to Lebanon. It is about creating a new Middle East, one ruled by enraged Islamic radicals.
Hamas cannot lose this conflict. Militant movements feed off martyrs, and Israel is delivering the maimed and the dead by the truckload. Hamas fighters, armed with little more than light weapons, a few rockets and small mortars, are battling one of the most sophisticated military machines on the planet. And the determined resistance by these doomed fighters exposes, throughout the Arab world, the gutlessness of dictators like Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, who refuses to open Egypt’s common border with Gaza despite the slaughter. Israel, when it bombed Lebanon two years ago, sought to destroy Hezbollah. By the time it withdrew it had swelled Hezbollah’s power base and handed it heroic status throughout the Arab world. Israel is now doing the same for Hamas.
Link to con.
By Chris Hedges
The incursion into Gaza is not about destroying Hamas. It is not about stopping rocket fire into Israel. It is not about achieving peace. The Israeli decision to rain death and destruction on Gaza, to use the lethal weapons of the modern battlefield on a largely defenseless civilian population, is the final phase of the decades-long campaign to ethnically cleanse Palestinians. The assault on Gaza is about creating squalid, lawless and impoverished ghettos where life for Palestinians will be barely sustainable. It is about building ringed Palestinian enclaves where Israel will always have the ability to shut off movement, food, medicine and goods to perpetuate misery. The Israeli attack on Gaza is about building a hell on earth.
This attack is the final Israeli push to extinguish a Palestinian state and crush or expel the Palestinian people. The images of dead Palestinian children, lined up as if asleep on the floor of the main hospital in Gaza, are a metaphor for the future. Israel will, from now on, speak to the Palestinians in the language of death. And the language of death is all the Palestinians will be able to speak back. The slaughter—let’s stop pretending this is a war—is empowering an array of radical Islamists inside and outside of Gaza. It is ominously demolishing the shaky foundations of the corrupt secular Arab regimes on Israel’s borders, from Egypt to Jordan to Syria to Lebanon. It is about creating a new Middle East, one ruled by enraged Islamic radicals.
Hamas cannot lose this conflict. Militant movements feed off martyrs, and Israel is delivering the maimed and the dead by the truckload. Hamas fighters, armed with little more than light weapons, a few rockets and small mortars, are battling one of the most sophisticated military machines on the planet. And the determined resistance by these doomed fighters exposes, throughout the Arab world, the gutlessness of dictators like Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, who refuses to open Egypt’s common border with Gaza despite the slaughter. Israel, when it bombed Lebanon two years ago, sought to destroy Hezbollah. By the time it withdrew it had swelled Hezbollah’s power base and handed it heroic status throughout the Arab world. Israel is now doing the same for Hamas.
Link to con.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
What You Don’t Know About Gaza
By RASHID KHALIDI, NY TIMES
NEARLY everything you’ve been led to believe about Gaza is wrong. Below are a few essential points that seem to be missing from the conversation, much of which has taken place in the press, about Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip.
THE GAZANS Most of the people living in Gaza are not there by choice. The majority of the 1.5 million people crammed into the roughly 140 square miles of the Gaza Strip belong to families that came from towns and villages outside Gaza like Ashkelon and Beersheba. They were driven to Gaza by the Israeli Army in 1948.
THE OCCUPATION The Gazans have lived under Israeli occupation since the Six-Day War in 1967. Israel is still widely considered to be an occupying power, even though it removed its troops and settlers from the strip in 2005. Israel still controls access to the area, imports and exports, and the movement of people in and out. Israel has control over Gaza’s air space and sea coast, and its forces enter the area at will. As the occupying power, Israel has the responsibility under the Fourth Geneva Convention to see to the welfare of the civilian population of the Gaza Strip.
THE BLOCKADE Israel’s blockade of the strip, with the support of the United States and the European Union, has grown increasingly stringent since Hamas won the Palestinian Legislative Council elections in January 2006. Fuel, electricity, imports, exports and the movement of people in and out of the Strip have been slowly choked off, leading to life-threatening problems of sanitation, health, water supply and transportation.
Link to con.
By RASHID KHALIDI, NY TIMES
NEARLY everything you’ve been led to believe about Gaza is wrong. Below are a few essential points that seem to be missing from the conversation, much of which has taken place in the press, about Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip.
THE GAZANS Most of the people living in Gaza are not there by choice. The majority of the 1.5 million people crammed into the roughly 140 square miles of the Gaza Strip belong to families that came from towns and villages outside Gaza like Ashkelon and Beersheba. They were driven to Gaza by the Israeli Army in 1948.
THE OCCUPATION The Gazans have lived under Israeli occupation since the Six-Day War in 1967. Israel is still widely considered to be an occupying power, even though it removed its troops and settlers from the strip in 2005. Israel still controls access to the area, imports and exports, and the movement of people in and out. Israel has control over Gaza’s air space and sea coast, and its forces enter the area at will. As the occupying power, Israel has the responsibility under the Fourth Geneva Convention to see to the welfare of the civilian population of the Gaza Strip.
THE BLOCKADE Israel’s blockade of the strip, with the support of the United States and the European Union, has grown increasingly stringent since Hamas won the Palestinian Legislative Council elections in January 2006. Fuel, electricity, imports, exports and the movement of people in and out of the Strip have been slowly choked off, leading to life-threatening problems of sanitation, health, water supply and transportation.
Link to con.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Bob Dylan: "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll"
William Zanzinger killed poor Hattie Carroll
With a cane that he twirled around his diamond ring finger
At a Baltimore hotel society gath'rin'.
And the cops were called in and his weapon took from him
As they rode him in custody down to the station
And booked William Zanzinger for first-degree murder.
But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears,
Take the rag away from your face.
Now ain't the time for your tears.
William Zanzinger, who at twenty-four years
Owns a tobacco farm of six hundred acres
With rich wealthy parents who provide and protect him
And high office relations in the politics of Maryland,
Reacted to his deed with a shrug of his shoulders
And swear words and sneering, and his tongue it was snarling,
In a matter of minutes on bail was out walking.
But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears,
Take the rag away from your face.
Now ain't the time for your tears.
Hattie Carroll was a maid of the kitchen.
She was fifty-one years old and gave birth to ten children
Who carried the dishes and took out the garbage
And never sat once at the head of the table
And didn't even talk to the people at the table
Who just cleaned up all the food from the table
And emptied the ashtrays on a whole other level,
Got killed by a blow, lay slain by a cane
That sailed through the air and came down through the room,
Doomed and determined to destroy all the gentle.
And she never done nothing to William Zanzinger.
But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears,
Take the rag away from your face.
Now ain't the time for your tears.
In the courtroom of honor, the judge pounded his gavel
To show that all's equal and that the courts are on the level
And that the strings in the books ain't pulled and persuaded
And that even the nobles get properly handled
Once that the cops have chased after and caught 'em
And that the ladder of law has no top and no bottom,
Stared at the person who killed for no reason
Who just happened to be feelin' that way without warnin'.
And he spoke through his cloak, most deep and distinguished,
And handed out strongly, for penalty and repentance,
William Zanzinger with a six-month sentence.
Oh, but you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears,
Bury the rag deep in your face
For now's the time for your tears.
William Zanzinger killed poor Hattie Carroll
With a cane that he twirled around his diamond ring finger
At a Baltimore hotel society gath'rin'.
And the cops were called in and his weapon took from him
As they rode him in custody down to the station
And booked William Zanzinger for first-degree murder.
But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears,
Take the rag away from your face.
Now ain't the time for your tears.
William Zanzinger, who at twenty-four years
Owns a tobacco farm of six hundred acres
With rich wealthy parents who provide and protect him
And high office relations in the politics of Maryland,
Reacted to his deed with a shrug of his shoulders
And swear words and sneering, and his tongue it was snarling,
In a matter of minutes on bail was out walking.
But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears,
Take the rag away from your face.
Now ain't the time for your tears.
Hattie Carroll was a maid of the kitchen.
She was fifty-one years old and gave birth to ten children
Who carried the dishes and took out the garbage
And never sat once at the head of the table
And didn't even talk to the people at the table
Who just cleaned up all the food from the table
And emptied the ashtrays on a whole other level,
Got killed by a blow, lay slain by a cane
That sailed through the air and came down through the room,
Doomed and determined to destroy all the gentle.
And she never done nothing to William Zanzinger.
But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears,
Take the rag away from your face.
Now ain't the time for your tears.
In the courtroom of honor, the judge pounded his gavel
To show that all's equal and that the courts are on the level
And that the strings in the books ain't pulled and persuaded
And that even the nobles get properly handled
Once that the cops have chased after and caught 'em
And that the ladder of law has no top and no bottom,
Stared at the person who killed for no reason
Who just happened to be feelin' that way without warnin'.
And he spoke through his cloak, most deep and distinguished,
And handed out strongly, for penalty and repentance,
William Zanzinger with a six-month sentence.
Oh, but you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears,
Bury the rag deep in your face
For now's the time for your tears.
Friday, January 09, 2009
Bush Admin. to bar autoworkers from striking against GM
John Byrne
As GM chief coasts, workers forced to accept cuts, strike prohibition
A little-noticed provision buried in the Bush Administration's $13.4 billion loan package to General Motors will prohibit the United Auto Workers from launching a strike as long as the company receives funds from the federal government.
Not only that, but a strike would give the federal government the power to call in their loan -- putting the loan in default and forcing GM into bankruptcy. The government now has the power to force a bankruptcy if “any labor union or collective bargaining unit shall engage in a strike or other work stoppage.”
The terms of GM's loan package were reported last night in the Detroit Free Press. They did not become public until GM filed documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company's headquarters are pictured above right.
Link to con.
John Byrne
As GM chief coasts, workers forced to accept cuts, strike prohibition
A little-noticed provision buried in the Bush Administration's $13.4 billion loan package to General Motors will prohibit the United Auto Workers from launching a strike as long as the company receives funds from the federal government.
Not only that, but a strike would give the federal government the power to call in their loan -- putting the loan in default and forcing GM into bankruptcy. The government now has the power to force a bankruptcy if “any labor union or collective bargaining unit shall engage in a strike or other work stoppage.”
The terms of GM's loan package were reported last night in the Detroit Free Press. They did not become public until GM filed documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company's headquarters are pictured above right.
Link to con.
An Open Letter to Barack Obama
Move Fast to Restore the Rule of Law
By RALPH NADER
Dear President-Elect Obama:
You have been receiving a great deal of advice since November 4, 2008 from people and groups who either want you to advance policies not covered in your campaign or who want you to be more specific about initiatives you emphasized.
There are two suggestions which may not be among your store of recommendations that need to be considered before you take office on January 20, 2009.
First, the public would benefit from a concise recounting of the state of the union and where the Bush Administration has left our country. As is your style, you can render such a bright line of serious problems inside and outside the government in a matter-of-fact manner. Otherwise, a blurring of who was responsible for what can taint your presidency.
Second, you need to make a clean break from the Bush regime?s law of rule to our declared commitment to the rule of law as in the firm adherence to constitutional requirements and statutory and treaty compliance. There is a Bush-Cheney stream of criminal and unconstitutional actions which are on auto-pilot day after day. You have pointed out some of these abominations such as a policy and practice of torture and violations of due process and probable cause. The task before you is to break these daily patterns just as soon as you ascend to the Presidency or be held increasingly responsible for them. This can be significantly accomplished by executive orders, agency or departmental directives, whistle-blower protections, enforcement actions and explicit legislative proposals.
Link to con.
Move Fast to Restore the Rule of Law
By RALPH NADER
Dear President-Elect Obama:
You have been receiving a great deal of advice since November 4, 2008 from people and groups who either want you to advance policies not covered in your campaign or who want you to be more specific about initiatives you emphasized.
There are two suggestions which may not be among your store of recommendations that need to be considered before you take office on January 20, 2009.
First, the public would benefit from a concise recounting of the state of the union and where the Bush Administration has left our country. As is your style, you can render such a bright line of serious problems inside and outside the government in a matter-of-fact manner. Otherwise, a blurring of who was responsible for what can taint your presidency.
Second, you need to make a clean break from the Bush regime?s law of rule to our declared commitment to the rule of law as in the firm adherence to constitutional requirements and statutory and treaty compliance. There is a Bush-Cheney stream of criminal and unconstitutional actions which are on auto-pilot day after day. You have pointed out some of these abominations such as a policy and practice of torture and violations of due process and probable cause. The task before you is to break these daily patterns just as soon as you ascend to the Presidency or be held increasingly responsible for them. This can be significantly accomplished by executive orders, agency or departmental directives, whistle-blower protections, enforcement actions and explicit legislative proposals.
Link to con.
Israel: Boycott, Divest, Sanction
Lookout
By Naomi Klein
It's time. Long past time. The best strategy to end the increasingly bloody occupation is for Israel to become the target of the kind of global movement that put an end to apartheid in South Africa.
In July 2005 a huge coalition of Palestinian groups laid out plans to do just that. They called on "people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era." The campaign Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions--BDS for short--was born.
Every day that Israel pounds Gaza brings more converts to the BDS cause, and talk of cease-fires is doing little to slow the momentum. Support is even emerging among Israeli Jews. In the midst of the assault roughly 500 Israelis, dozens of them well-known artists and scholars, sent a letter to foreign ambassadors stationed in Israel. It calls for "the adoption of immediate restrictive measures and sanctions" and draws a clear parallel with the antiapartheid struggle. "The boycott on South Africa was effective, but Israel is handled with kid gloves.... This international backing must stop."
Yet many still can't go there. The reasons are complex, emotional and understandable. And they simply aren't good enough. Economic sanctions are the most effective tools in the nonviolent arsenal. Surrendering them verges on active complicity. Here are the top four objections to the BDS strategy, followed by counterarguments.
Link to con.
Lookout
By Naomi Klein
It's time. Long past time. The best strategy to end the increasingly bloody occupation is for Israel to become the target of the kind of global movement that put an end to apartheid in South Africa.
In July 2005 a huge coalition of Palestinian groups laid out plans to do just that. They called on "people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era." The campaign Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions--BDS for short--was born.
Every day that Israel pounds Gaza brings more converts to the BDS cause, and talk of cease-fires is doing little to slow the momentum. Support is even emerging among Israeli Jews. In the midst of the assault roughly 500 Israelis, dozens of them well-known artists and scholars, sent a letter to foreign ambassadors stationed in Israel. It calls for "the adoption of immediate restrictive measures and sanctions" and draws a clear parallel with the antiapartheid struggle. "The boycott on South Africa was effective, but Israel is handled with kid gloves.... This international backing must stop."
Yet many still can't go there. The reasons are complex, emotional and understandable. And they simply aren't good enough. Economic sanctions are the most effective tools in the nonviolent arsenal. Surrendering them verges on active complicity. Here are the top four objections to the BDS strategy, followed by counterarguments.
Link to con.
Heat sends Southwest climate back in time
Effect of natural drought cycle and climate change is restoration of the grasslands of centuries ago.
By Moises Velasquez-Manoff
For 15 years, Craig Allen, a scientist with the US Geological Survey, has monitored a 2.7-acre plot here in northern New Mexico. During that time, he’s witnessed smaller tree species succeeding larger ones. He’s seen dry years, bark-beetle infestations, large-scale tree dieback, and finally, a shift toward grassland. To Dr. Allen, these changes tell a tale of combined human impacts – overgrazing, fire suppression, and climate change. And they underscore how human activity can amplify the effects of natural cycles to alter a landscape dramatically.
The American Southwest may be drying, one of the predicted consequences of human-induced global climate change. Less water in an already semiarid region will affect how, and for what, people use water. Allen also suspects that tree dieback here may be part of a worldwide phenomenon. As temperature extremes have inched higher in semiarid regions globally, forests have succumbed to heat stress.
But, at least in the Southwest, the news isn’t all bad. Over the past century, fire suppression and grazing pressure have let trees reach a greater density than in times past. But now drought and higher temperatures have, in a sense, prompted the system to reset itself. Savanna will again dominate the landscape. And, given the likelihood of more intense droughts in the future, this means more resilience. Grassland can recover from disturbances more quickly than comparatively long-lived pinyon-juniper forest.
Link to con.
Effect of natural drought cycle and climate change is restoration of the grasslands of centuries ago.
By Moises Velasquez-Manoff
For 15 years, Craig Allen, a scientist with the US Geological Survey, has monitored a 2.7-acre plot here in northern New Mexico. During that time, he’s witnessed smaller tree species succeeding larger ones. He’s seen dry years, bark-beetle infestations, large-scale tree dieback, and finally, a shift toward grassland. To Dr. Allen, these changes tell a tale of combined human impacts – overgrazing, fire suppression, and climate change. And they underscore how human activity can amplify the effects of natural cycles to alter a landscape dramatically.
The American Southwest may be drying, one of the predicted consequences of human-induced global climate change. Less water in an already semiarid region will affect how, and for what, people use water. Allen also suspects that tree dieback here may be part of a worldwide phenomenon. As temperature extremes have inched higher in semiarid regions globally, forests have succumbed to heat stress.
But, at least in the Southwest, the news isn’t all bad. Over the past century, fire suppression and grazing pressure have let trees reach a greater density than in times past. But now drought and higher temperatures have, in a sense, prompted the system to reset itself. Savanna will again dominate the landscape. And, given the likelihood of more intense droughts in the future, this means more resilience. Grassland can recover from disturbances more quickly than comparatively long-lived pinyon-juniper forest.
Link to con.
Hall of Mirrors
The Difficulty of Being an Informed American
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
The American print and TV media have never been very good. These days they are horrible. If people intend to be informed, they must turn to foreign news broadcasts, to Internet sites, to foreign newspapers available on the Internet, or to alternative newspapers that are springing up in various cities. A person who sits in front of Murdoch’s Fox “News” or CNN or who reads the New York Times is simply being brainwashed with propaganda.
Before conservatives nod their heads in agreement, I’m not referring to “the liberal media.” I mean the propaganda that issues from the US government and the Israel Lobby.
It was neoconservative Bush regime propaganda fed to America through Judith Miller and the New York Times and through Murdoch’s Fox “News” that convinced Americans that they were in danger from a small secular Arab country half way around the globe called Iraq. It was the American media that convinced Americans that getting rid of dangerous “weapons of mass destruction,” weapons that did not exist in Iraq, would be a cakewalk paid for by Iraqi oil revenues.
It is the same propagandistic American print and TV media that have rationalized Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan based on seven years of lies and deception.
Link to con.
The Difficulty of Being an Informed American
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
The American print and TV media have never been very good. These days they are horrible. If people intend to be informed, they must turn to foreign news broadcasts, to Internet sites, to foreign newspapers available on the Internet, or to alternative newspapers that are springing up in various cities. A person who sits in front of Murdoch’s Fox “News” or CNN or who reads the New York Times is simply being brainwashed with propaganda.
Before conservatives nod their heads in agreement, I’m not referring to “the liberal media.” I mean the propaganda that issues from the US government and the Israel Lobby.
It was neoconservative Bush regime propaganda fed to America through Judith Miller and the New York Times and through Murdoch’s Fox “News” that convinced Americans that they were in danger from a small secular Arab country half way around the globe called Iraq. It was the American media that convinced Americans that getting rid of dangerous “weapons of mass destruction,” weapons that did not exist in Iraq, would be a cakewalk paid for by Iraqi oil revenues.
It is the same propagandistic American print and TV media that have rationalized Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan based on seven years of lies and deception.
Link to con.
Thursday, January 08, 2009
Palestinians Will Never Forget
by Susan Abulhawa
How can anyone watching Gaza burn escape the bitter realization that history repeats itself? Many have compared Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to Apartheid South Africa. But not in their cruelest hour did the Apartheid regime wreak such wanton murder and destruction. Let us stop mincing words. What is happening to Palestinians now whispers of Warsaw and Lodz.
Schools, universities, mosques, police stations, homes, water treatment plants, factories, and anything that supports civil society, including the only mental health clinic in Gaza, have been blown to rubble from planes that rain death from clear skies without any resistance, because Palestinians have no opposing air force. Nor do they have an army or navy. No mechanized armor or heavy weaponry. Thanks to Israel, they haven’t even had continuous electricity or fuel for the past two years. Or food and medicine. Israel’s siege and blockade of Gaza has prevented the movement of people and goods in and out of Gaza, including the import of the most basic goods necessary for survival.
A recent study by the Red Cross showed that 46 percent of Gazan children suffer from anemia. Malnutrition affects 75 percent of Gaza’s population, half of whom are under the age of 17. There has been widespread deafness among children due to Israel’s intentional and frequent sonic booms from low overflights. An alarming number have stunted growth and serious mental disorders due lack of food. The only way they have been able to survive thus far has been due to the tunnels that smuggle food and goods from Egypt.
Link to con.
by Susan Abulhawa
How can anyone watching Gaza burn escape the bitter realization that history repeats itself? Many have compared Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to Apartheid South Africa. But not in their cruelest hour did the Apartheid regime wreak such wanton murder and destruction. Let us stop mincing words. What is happening to Palestinians now whispers of Warsaw and Lodz.
Schools, universities, mosques, police stations, homes, water treatment plants, factories, and anything that supports civil society, including the only mental health clinic in Gaza, have been blown to rubble from planes that rain death from clear skies without any resistance, because Palestinians have no opposing air force. Nor do they have an army or navy. No mechanized armor or heavy weaponry. Thanks to Israel, they haven’t even had continuous electricity or fuel for the past two years. Or food and medicine. Israel’s siege and blockade of Gaza has prevented the movement of people and goods in and out of Gaza, including the import of the most basic goods necessary for survival.
A recent study by the Red Cross showed that 46 percent of Gazan children suffer from anemia. Malnutrition affects 75 percent of Gaza’s population, half of whom are under the age of 17. There has been widespread deafness among children due to Israel’s intentional and frequent sonic booms from low overflights. An alarming number have stunted growth and serious mental disorders due lack of food. The only way they have been able to survive thus far has been due to the tunnels that smuggle food and goods from Egypt.
Link to con.
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Neoconservatism dies in Gaza
The recent Israeli offensive has put the final nail in the coffin of the Bush administration's Middle East fantasy.
By Juan Cole
Jan. 08, 2009 |
The Gaza War of 2009 is a final and eloquent testimony to the complete failure of the neoconservative movement in United States foreign policy. For over a decade, the leading figures in this school of thought saw the violent overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the institution of a parliamentary regime in Iraq as the magic solution to all the problems in the Middle East. They envisioned, in the wake of the fall of Baghdad, the moderation of Hezbollah in Lebanon, the overthrow of the Baath Party in Syria and the Khomeinist regime in Iran, the deepening of the alliance with Turkey, the marginalization of Saudi Arabia, a new era of cheap petroleum, and a final resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on terms favorable to Israel. After eight years in which they strode the globe like colossi, they have left behind a devastated moonscape reminiscent of some post-apocalyptic B movie. As their chief enabler prepares to exit the White House, the only nation they have strengthened is Iran; the only alliance they have deepened is that between Iran and two militant Islamist entities to Israel's north and south, Hezbollah and Hamas.
Link
The recent Israeli offensive has put the final nail in the coffin of the Bush administration's Middle East fantasy.
By Juan Cole
Jan. 08, 2009 |
The Gaza War of 2009 is a final and eloquent testimony to the complete failure of the neoconservative movement in United States foreign policy. For over a decade, the leading figures in this school of thought saw the violent overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the institution of a parliamentary regime in Iraq as the magic solution to all the problems in the Middle East. They envisioned, in the wake of the fall of Baghdad, the moderation of Hezbollah in Lebanon, the overthrow of the Baath Party in Syria and the Khomeinist regime in Iran, the deepening of the alliance with Turkey, the marginalization of Saudi Arabia, a new era of cheap petroleum, and a final resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on terms favorable to Israel. After eight years in which they strode the globe like colossi, they have left behind a devastated moonscape reminiscent of some post-apocalyptic B movie. As their chief enabler prepares to exit the White House, the only nation they have strengthened is Iran; the only alliance they have deepened is that between Iran and two militant Islamist entities to Israel's north and south, Hezbollah and Hamas.
Link
Murder in cold blood
Todd Chretien reports on the outpouring of anger after Oakland police killed an unarmed man on the platform of a transit station.
ON NEW Year's Eve, as scores of horrified people looked on, Oakland transit police forced 22-year-old Oscar Grant to the ground, kneeled on his head and then shot him in the back. Grant, an African American father of a 4-year-old daughter and an Oakland grocery story worker, died several hours later. The bullet entered his back, ricocheted off the concrete floor and punctured his lungs.
Police attempted to confiscate cell phone videos taken by Bay Area Rapid Transit passengers and initially claimed that security cameras didn't record the incident. However, in the last two days, they have been forced to admit that the security cameras did capture the assault. Additionally, one especially graphic video taken by a passenger was released by the Bay Area television station KTVU. It shows an unarmed and unresisting Grant, lying face down, shot at point-blank range by an officer as his horrified friends and onlookers watch.
Link to con.
Todd Chretien reports on the outpouring of anger after Oakland police killed an unarmed man on the platform of a transit station.
ON NEW Year's Eve, as scores of horrified people looked on, Oakland transit police forced 22-year-old Oscar Grant to the ground, kneeled on his head and then shot him in the back. Grant, an African American father of a 4-year-old daughter and an Oakland grocery story worker, died several hours later. The bullet entered his back, ricocheted off the concrete floor and punctured his lungs.
Police attempted to confiscate cell phone videos taken by Bay Area Rapid Transit passengers and initially claimed that security cameras didn't record the incident. However, in the last two days, they have been forced to admit that the security cameras did capture the assault. Additionally, one especially graphic video taken by a passenger was released by the Bay Area television station KTVU. It shows an unarmed and unresisting Grant, lying face down, shot at point-blank range by an officer as his horrified friends and onlookers watch.
Link to con.
Israel spreads death and destruction as it advances into Gaza
By Barry Grey
The toll of Palestinians killed and wounded continues to rise rapidly as Israel intensifies its combined air and ground assault on the largely defenseless and starved Gaza Strip.
While Israel conducts a campaign of killing and collective punishment against the civilian population, the United States continues to block all diplomatic initiatives aimed at imposing a cease-fire. Since Israeli troops, tanks and artillery crossed the border into Gaza Saturday night, at least 64 more Palestinian civilians have been killed, bringing the total in the 11-day war to more than 530. The number of wounded is in the thousands.
According to press reports and statements from the Israeli military, Israeli forces have taken control of several towns north of Gaza City, cut the narrow enclave in half and surrounded Gaza City. There are also reports that Israeli forces are moving toward Gaza's southern border with Egypt in an attempt to cut off the last remaining connection, already restricted by the Egyptian regime, between the besieged population of 1.5 million Gazans and the outside world.
Israeli forces, enjoying total control of the air and advanced weaponry, are reportedly facing resistance from Hamas fighters, who are equipped only with primitive mortars and small arms. Israel has confirmed the death of one solider and the wounding of thirty others. Despite the Israeli ground assault and ongoing bombardment of homes, government buildings, mosques, fire stations, universities and ambulances, some 40 rockets were fired from Gaza into southern Israel on Sunday.
Link to con.
By Barry Grey
The toll of Palestinians killed and wounded continues to rise rapidly as Israel intensifies its combined air and ground assault on the largely defenseless and starved Gaza Strip.
While Israel conducts a campaign of killing and collective punishment against the civilian population, the United States continues to block all diplomatic initiatives aimed at imposing a cease-fire. Since Israeli troops, tanks and artillery crossed the border into Gaza Saturday night, at least 64 more Palestinian civilians have been killed, bringing the total in the 11-day war to more than 530. The number of wounded is in the thousands.
According to press reports and statements from the Israeli military, Israeli forces have taken control of several towns north of Gaza City, cut the narrow enclave in half and surrounded Gaza City. There are also reports that Israeli forces are moving toward Gaza's southern border with Egypt in an attempt to cut off the last remaining connection, already restricted by the Egyptian regime, between the besieged population of 1.5 million Gazans and the outside world.
Israeli forces, enjoying total control of the air and advanced weaponry, are reportedly facing resistance from Hamas fighters, who are equipped only with primitive mortars and small arms. Israel has confirmed the death of one solider and the wounding of thirty others. Despite the Israeli ground assault and ongoing bombardment of homes, government buildings, mosques, fire stations, universities and ambulances, some 40 rockets were fired from Gaza into southern Israel on Sunday.
Link to con.
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
US “surge” in Afghanistan threatens wider war
The US and NATO are planning to create new supply lines from the Central Asian republics to occupation forces in Afghanistan, according to recent media accounts. The move comes in preparation for an expected doubling of US military personnel in Afghanistan under the Obama administration, and in response to an increasing number of attacks on its main supply route from Pakistan.
Currently, over 80 percent of all supplies for US and allied troops are unloaded at the Pakistani port of Karachi and then shipped northwards across Pakistan to Peshawar, ultimately arriving in Afghanistan through the Khyber Pass, the narrow mountain artery between the two countries.
As opposition to the US military among tribes in both Afghanistan and Pakistan has grown, attacks on supply convoys have become increasingly common. In a particularly bold attack, in December a large number of militants stormed supply depots in Peshawar, a Pakistani city of three million on the southern side of the Khyber Pass, destroying over 300 Humvees and trucks set for delivery to NATO forces in Afghanistan.
Link to con.
The US and NATO are planning to create new supply lines from the Central Asian republics to occupation forces in Afghanistan, according to recent media accounts. The move comes in preparation for an expected doubling of US military personnel in Afghanistan under the Obama administration, and in response to an increasing number of attacks on its main supply route from Pakistan.
Currently, over 80 percent of all supplies for US and allied troops are unloaded at the Pakistani port of Karachi and then shipped northwards across Pakistan to Peshawar, ultimately arriving in Afghanistan through the Khyber Pass, the narrow mountain artery between the two countries.
As opposition to the US military among tribes in both Afghanistan and Pakistan has grown, attacks on supply convoys have become increasingly common. In a particularly bold attack, in December a large number of militants stormed supply depots in Peshawar, a Pakistani city of three million on the southern side of the Khyber Pass, destroying over 300 Humvees and trucks set for delivery to NATO forces in Afghanistan.
Link to con.
Obama stimulus plan to include major corporate tax cuts
By Jerry White
For weeks, spokesmen for the incoming Barack Obama administration have suggested that they would respond to the economic crisis by launching a massive program of public spending, with some supporters comparing the scope of the planned economic stimulus package to Roosevelt's New Deal measures during the Great Depression.
Details of Obama's proposals began to emerge on Monday, and it is clear that the US president-elect is proposing a relatively small "stimulus" package, which will include further massive tax incentives for corporate America. The provisions for ordinary people will do next to nothing to alleviate the impact of the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression.
This weekend the Obama transition team revealed that 40 percent of the estimated $675-775 billion it plans to spend over the next two years on its economic package would be earmarked for tax cuts, with about half going to big business.
The Wall Street Journal noted that the "Obama tax-cut proposals, if enacted, could pack more punch in two years than either of George W. Bush's tax cuts did in their first two years." Many of Obama's proposals, the newspaper wrote, were, in fact, extensions of measures carried out by the Republican administration over the last eight years.
Link to con.
By Jerry White
For weeks, spokesmen for the incoming Barack Obama administration have suggested that they would respond to the economic crisis by launching a massive program of public spending, with some supporters comparing the scope of the planned economic stimulus package to Roosevelt's New Deal measures during the Great Depression.
Details of Obama's proposals began to emerge on Monday, and it is clear that the US president-elect is proposing a relatively small "stimulus" package, which will include further massive tax incentives for corporate America. The provisions for ordinary people will do next to nothing to alleviate the impact of the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression.
This weekend the Obama transition team revealed that 40 percent of the estimated $675-775 billion it plans to spend over the next two years on its economic package would be earmarked for tax cuts, with about half going to big business.
The Wall Street Journal noted that the "Obama tax-cut proposals, if enacted, could pack more punch in two years than either of George W. Bush's tax cuts did in their first two years." Many of Obama's proposals, the newspaper wrote, were, in fact, extensions of measures carried out by the Republican administration over the last eight years.
Link to con.
Actually, “It’s the System, Stupid”
by Rick Wolff
At the capitalist system’s core lies its central conflict. On one side, corporate boards of directors pursue ever more surplus extracted from productive workers. On the other side, workers seek ever more wages and benefits and better working conditions that reduce the surplus available to employers. Perpetual class conflict results between capitalists and workers over the size of that surplus. The conflict’s form varies from hidden to open and from mild to violent.
Boards of directors continually find ways to reduce wages. Yet they complain when consumers whose wages fall cannot then buy all the commodities that capitalists need to sell to them. Indeed, insufficient consumption often contributes to causing or worsening a recession. The contradiction here is one that many capitalists seem unable to see, let alone trace to the class structure of capitalist production and its resulting conflict.
Workers continually seek to improve their incomes, benefits, and job conditions. Yet they confront employers who respond by outsourcing jobs to cheaper or more subservient workers or by eliminating jobs through automation, even at the cost of jeopardizing commodity sales to workers, leading to or worsening recessions. The contradiction here — workers who achieve gains risk losing their jobs — underlies another of capitalism’s systemic conflicts. As discussed further below, were workers to become their own collective boards of directors, they would not likely reduce wages or outsource jobs. Workers appropriating their own surpluses would accompany automation with serious job retraining and transitional support to displaced workers — rarely done when capitalist boards of directors automate.
Link to con.
by Rick Wolff
At the capitalist system’s core lies its central conflict. On one side, corporate boards of directors pursue ever more surplus extracted from productive workers. On the other side, workers seek ever more wages and benefits and better working conditions that reduce the surplus available to employers. Perpetual class conflict results between capitalists and workers over the size of that surplus. The conflict’s form varies from hidden to open and from mild to violent.
Boards of directors continually find ways to reduce wages. Yet they complain when consumers whose wages fall cannot then buy all the commodities that capitalists need to sell to them. Indeed, insufficient consumption often contributes to causing or worsening a recession. The contradiction here is one that many capitalists seem unable to see, let alone trace to the class structure of capitalist production and its resulting conflict.
Workers continually seek to improve their incomes, benefits, and job conditions. Yet they confront employers who respond by outsourcing jobs to cheaper or more subservient workers or by eliminating jobs through automation, even at the cost of jeopardizing commodity sales to workers, leading to or worsening recessions. The contradiction here — workers who achieve gains risk losing their jobs — underlies another of capitalism’s systemic conflicts. As discussed further below, were workers to become their own collective boards of directors, they would not likely reduce wages or outsource jobs. Workers appropriating their own surpluses would accompany automation with serious job retraining and transitional support to displaced workers — rarely done when capitalist boards of directors automate.
Link to con.
The making of Israel's apartheid
Phil Gasper recounts the history of how Israel was founded on the basis of the expulsion of the Arab population of Palestine.
ZIONISM IS a political movement that originally emerged in the late 19th century as a response to anti-Semitism, particularly in Eastern Europe. Capitalist development had undermined the traditional commercial roles that many Jews had played in the old feudal economy. As the economy moved into periodic crises, ruling groups in many countries deflected mass anger by scapegoating Jews.
Zionists drew the pessimistic conclusion that anti-Semitism couldn't be eliminated--and that to escape persecution, Jews had to emigrate to a region where they could set up an exclusively Jewish state. Theodore Herzl, known as the father of Zionism, wrote of "the emptiness and futility of trying to 'combat' anti-Semitism," and called for a Jewish state to be set up in an undeveloped country outside Europe.
Herzl was explicit that the program could be carried out only with the backing of one of the major imperialist powers. Once such support had been won, the Zionist movement would conduct itself like other colonizing ventures.
Link to con.
Phil Gasper recounts the history of how Israel was founded on the basis of the expulsion of the Arab population of Palestine.
ZIONISM IS a political movement that originally emerged in the late 19th century as a response to anti-Semitism, particularly in Eastern Europe. Capitalist development had undermined the traditional commercial roles that many Jews had played in the old feudal economy. As the economy moved into periodic crises, ruling groups in many countries deflected mass anger by scapegoating Jews.
Zionists drew the pessimistic conclusion that anti-Semitism couldn't be eliminated--and that to escape persecution, Jews had to emigrate to a region where they could set up an exclusively Jewish state. Theodore Herzl, known as the father of Zionism, wrote of "the emptiness and futility of trying to 'combat' anti-Semitism," and called for a Jewish state to be set up in an undeveloped country outside Europe.
Herzl was explicit that the program could be carried out only with the backing of one of the major imperialist powers. Once such support had been won, the Zionist movement would conduct itself like other colonizing ventures.
Link to con.
Monday, January 05, 2009
One of three excellent articles at the link. k
You Are Being Lied to About Pirates
January 5, 2009
Johann Hari
Who imagined that in 2009, the world’s governments would be declaring a new War on Pirates? As you read this, the British Royal Navy - backed by the ships of more than two dozen nations, from the US to China - is sailing into Somalian waters to take on men we still picture as parrot-on-the-shoulder pantomime villains. They will soon be fighting Somalian ships and even chasing the pirates onto land, into one of the most broken countries on earth. But behind the arrr-me-hearties oddness of this tale, there is an untold scandal. The people our governments are labeling as “one of the great menace of our times” have an extraordinary story to tell — and some justice on their side.
Link
You Are Being Lied to About Pirates
January 5, 2009
Johann Hari
Who imagined that in 2009, the world’s governments would be declaring a new War on Pirates? As you read this, the British Royal Navy - backed by the ships of more than two dozen nations, from the US to China - is sailing into Somalian waters to take on men we still picture as parrot-on-the-shoulder pantomime villains. They will soon be fighting Somalian ships and even chasing the pirates onto land, into one of the most broken countries on earth. But behind the arrr-me-hearties oddness of this tale, there is an untold scandal. The people our governments are labeling as “one of the great menace of our times” have an extraordinary story to tell — and some justice on their side.
Link
Sunday, January 04, 2009
Saturday, January 03, 2009
The crash of 2008 and the prospects for 2009
Whenever a historical review is made certain years attract attention because of the decisive events with which they are associated. The years 1914, 1929, 1933, 1939 and in more recent times 1956 and 1989 are some that come to mind. The year 2008 is destined to join this group.
This was the year when the supposedly impossible happened: The world capitalist system underwent a financial breakdown which now threatens to repeat, or even eclipse, that which began in 1929.
The figures speak for themselves. The US government alone is committed to providing more than $8 trillion to prop up the financial system. Interest rates charged by central banks around the world have been cut to record lows, in the case of the US to near zero, in a desperate bid to prevent a financial meltdown.
The year has ended with stock markets around the world showing losses not seen since the worst years of the Great Depression. In the US, the S&P 500 index has fallen by 38.5 percent—with much of the drop in the last few months—to record its worst result since the fall of 47.1 percent in 1931.
Link to con.
Whenever a historical review is made certain years attract attention because of the decisive events with which they are associated. The years 1914, 1929, 1933, 1939 and in more recent times 1956 and 1989 are some that come to mind. The year 2008 is destined to join this group.
This was the year when the supposedly impossible happened: The world capitalist system underwent a financial breakdown which now threatens to repeat, or even eclipse, that which began in 1929.
The figures speak for themselves. The US government alone is committed to providing more than $8 trillion to prop up the financial system. Interest rates charged by central banks around the world have been cut to record lows, in the case of the US to near zero, in a desperate bid to prevent a financial meltdown.
The year has ended with stock markets around the world showing losses not seen since the worst years of the Great Depression. In the US, the S&P 500 index has fallen by 38.5 percent—with much of the drop in the last few months—to record its worst result since the fall of 47.1 percent in 1931.
Link to con.
The Politics of An Israeli Extermination Campaign: Backers, Apologists and Arms Suppliers
by James Petras
Because of the unconditional support of the entire political class in the US, from the White House to Congress, including both Parties, incoming and outgoing elected officials and all the principal print and electronic mass media, the Israeli Government feels no compunction in publicly proclaiming a detailed and graphic account of its policy of mass extermination of the population of Gaza.
Israel’s sustained and comprehensive bombing campaign of every aspect of governance, civic institutions and society is directed toward destroying civilized life in Gaza. Israel’s totalitarian vision is driven by the practice of a permanent purge of Arab Palestine informed by Zionism, an ethno-racist ideology, promulgated by the Jewish state and justified, enforced and pursued by its organized backers in the United States.
The facts of Israeli extermination have become known: In the first six days of round the clock terror bombing of major and minor populations centers, the Jewish State has murdered and seriously maimed over 2,500 people, mostly dismembered and burned in the open ovens of missile fire. Scores of children and women have been slaughtered as well as defenseless civilians and officials.
Link to con.
by James Petras
Because of the unconditional support of the entire political class in the US, from the White House to Congress, including both Parties, incoming and outgoing elected officials and all the principal print and electronic mass media, the Israeli Government feels no compunction in publicly proclaiming a detailed and graphic account of its policy of mass extermination of the population of Gaza.
Israel’s sustained and comprehensive bombing campaign of every aspect of governance, civic institutions and society is directed toward destroying civilized life in Gaza. Israel’s totalitarian vision is driven by the practice of a permanent purge of Arab Palestine informed by Zionism, an ethno-racist ideology, promulgated by the Jewish state and justified, enforced and pursued by its organized backers in the United States.
The facts of Israeli extermination have become known: In the first six days of round the clock terror bombing of major and minor populations centers, the Jewish State has murdered and seriously maimed over 2,500 people, mostly dismembered and burned in the open ovens of missile fire. Scores of children and women have been slaughtered as well as defenseless civilians and officials.
Link to con.
Friday, January 02, 2009
(Very good Essay!)
Why I Am a Socialist
By Chris Hedges
The corporate forces that are looting the Treasury and have plunged us into a depression will not be contained by the two main political parties. The Democratic and Republican parties have become little more than squalid clubs of privilege and wealth, whores to money and corporate interests, hostage to a massive arms industry, and so adept at deception and self-delusion they no longer know truth from lies. We will either find our way out of this mess by embracing an uncompromising democratic socialism—one that will insist on massive government relief and work programs, the nationalization of electricity and gas companies, a universal, not-for-profit government health care program, the outlawing of hedge funds, a radical reduction of our bloated military budget and an end to imperial wars—or we will continue to be fleeced and impoverished by our bankrupt elite and shackled and chained by our surveillance state.
The free market and globalization, promised as the route to worldwide prosperity, have been exposed as a con game. But this does not mean our corporate masters will disappear. Totalitarianism, as George Orwell pointed out, is not so much an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia. “A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial,” Orwell wrote, “that is when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud.” Force and fraud are all they have left. They will use both.
There is a political shift in Europe toward an open confrontation with the corporate state. Germany has seen a surge of support for Die Linke (The Left), a political grouping formed 18 months ago. It is co-led by the veteran socialist “Red” Oskar Lafontaine, who has built his career on attacking big business. Two-thirds of Germans in public opinion polls say they agree with all or some of Die Linke’s platform. The Socialist Party of the Netherlands is on the verge of overtaking the Labor Party as the main opposition party on the left. Greece, beset with street protests and violence by disaffected youths, has seen the rapid rise of the Coalition of the Radical Left. In Spain and Norway socialists are in power. Resurgence is not universal, especially in France and Britain, but the shifts toward socialism are significant.
Corporations have intruded into every facet of life. We eat corporate food. We buy corporate clothes. We drive corporate cars. We buy our vehicular fuel and our heating oil from corporations. We borrow from corporate banks. We invest our retirement savings with corporations. We are entertained, informed and branded by corporations. We work for corporations. The creation of a mercenary army, the privatization of public utilities and our disgusting for-profit health care system are all legacies of the corporate state. These corporations have no loyalty to America or the American worker. They are not tied to nation states. They are vampires.
Link to con.
Why I Am a Socialist
By Chris Hedges
The corporate forces that are looting the Treasury and have plunged us into a depression will not be contained by the two main political parties. The Democratic and Republican parties have become little more than squalid clubs of privilege and wealth, whores to money and corporate interests, hostage to a massive arms industry, and so adept at deception and self-delusion they no longer know truth from lies. We will either find our way out of this mess by embracing an uncompromising democratic socialism—one that will insist on massive government relief and work programs, the nationalization of electricity and gas companies, a universal, not-for-profit government health care program, the outlawing of hedge funds, a radical reduction of our bloated military budget and an end to imperial wars—or we will continue to be fleeced and impoverished by our bankrupt elite and shackled and chained by our surveillance state.
The free market and globalization, promised as the route to worldwide prosperity, have been exposed as a con game. But this does not mean our corporate masters will disappear. Totalitarianism, as George Orwell pointed out, is not so much an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia. “A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial,” Orwell wrote, “that is when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud.” Force and fraud are all they have left. They will use both.
There is a political shift in Europe toward an open confrontation with the corporate state. Germany has seen a surge of support for Die Linke (The Left), a political grouping formed 18 months ago. It is co-led by the veteran socialist “Red” Oskar Lafontaine, who has built his career on attacking big business. Two-thirds of Germans in public opinion polls say they agree with all or some of Die Linke’s platform. The Socialist Party of the Netherlands is on the verge of overtaking the Labor Party as the main opposition party on the left. Greece, beset with street protests and violence by disaffected youths, has seen the rapid rise of the Coalition of the Radical Left. In Spain and Norway socialists are in power. Resurgence is not universal, especially in France and Britain, but the shifts toward socialism are significant.
Corporations have intruded into every facet of life. We eat corporate food. We buy corporate clothes. We drive corporate cars. We buy our vehicular fuel and our heating oil from corporations. We borrow from corporate banks. We invest our retirement savings with corporations. We are entertained, informed and branded by corporations. We work for corporations. The creation of a mercenary army, the privatization of public utilities and our disgusting for-profit health care system are all legacies of the corporate state. These corporations have no loyalty to America or the American worker. They are not tied to nation states. They are vampires.
Link to con.
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