"The fantasy of the rich going to the rescue of ordinary Americans is born out of Nader's deep despair over the decline of our democratic mass movements. It will take angels-and this is what the super-rich become in the book-to descend from the heights to save the country from corporate neofeudalism."
"The problem with the president's interpretation of just-war theory is that the conflict in Afghanistan - the issue that most threatens to undercut the legitimacy of his prize - doesn't fit the bill. It is difficult to claim the war is still in self defense, not when the Taliban pose no threat to the United States and al-Qaeda has been reduced to a few fragments that could relocate elsewhere. The force is far from proportional, given that the most powerful country in the world is bombing one of the poorest and weakest. And civilians have surely not been spared violence. Stephen Walt calculates that the United States has killed 12,000-32,000 civilians in Afghanistan since the war's outbreak. That compares to fewer than 1,000 U.S. casualties. In short, the Afghanistan War is an exception and, for national security reasons, the United States makes such exceptions."
"When all the rhetorical and other problems are stripped away, the fact remains that Obama has, in his first year in office, committed to doubling our forces in Afghanistan and embraced our mission there. Indeed, the plan the president announced on Tuesday features a commendably rapid deployment of reinforcements to the theater, with most of the surge forces arriving over the course of this winter, allowing them to be in position before the enemy's traditional fighting season begins."
"Anyone who wonders why the Obama administration seems to be bending over so far backwards to appease conservatives and industry leaders in the health care debate and Wall Street in the financial regulatory reform debate can find their answer there: those groups make Obama pay for their financial/political support with real actions and policy concessions, while Obama’s “base” will continue their feverish support in exchange for mere gestures and marketing hocus-pocus, for news about the new family puppy or an appearance on Jay Leno."
"The intense interest of the international oil industry in Iraq is fuelled by belief that it may have reserves, rivalling Saudi Arabia, which have gone unexploited or undiscovered during 30 years of war, rebellion and sanctions. The super-giant fields of south-east Iraq are the largest concentration of such fields in the world, according to experts."
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
"Hollywood is still with Obama. If he was shot tomorrow, someone – maybe even Oliver Stone -- would rush to make a movie saying Obama was killed by the Pentagon because of his pledge to pull the troops out of Afghanistan two years from now."
By GARETH PORTER
"Put simply, the Taliban and al Qaeda have become symbiotic," said Gates, "each benefitting from the success and mythology of the other."
It is well known among government officials working on Afghanistan and al Qaeda, however, that serious tensions between the two organiZations emerged after the attack on the "Red Mosque" in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad in July 2007. Western intelligence quickly discovered the attack was an al Qaeda operation, and that it marked the beginning of an al Qaeda campaign calling for the overthrow of the Pakistani government and military.
By VIJAY PRASHAD
"The US media has portrayed the escalation of the Occupation in a very simplistic fashion: either the US solves the problem, or the Taliban returns. This is a false choice, one that assumes that only the US can act, the White Knight riding in to save the world. America is not exceptional. Others are ready. But they don't want to act unless they have a commitment that the US is not going to use their blood and treasure to build its empire."
"Obama is no doubt more comfortable with the thought that his opponent might conceivably be Sarah Palin, the woman who is the progressives’ alibi for not having to focus on their pathetic illusions about Obama. He didn’t deceive them on the campaign trail, if they’d been ready to listen closely. He pledged a war in Afghanistan and now he’s cashing that promise. He didn’t fool them. They fooled themselves, a far more culpable offense."
Dahiyeh, South Beirut.
Hezbollah’s new political program calls for “The elimination of political sectarianism as the main pre-condition to establish a true democracy as the Taif Accord stipulated and the formation of a national council for this end.” ... "We want a government that works for its citizens and provides the appropriate services in their education and medical care and housing to secure a decent life and to address the problem of poverty and provide employment opportunities,” the document reads. "We want a government that works to strengthen the role of women in society and enhance their participation in all fields.”
By MARK WEISBROT
"From 1960-1980, when according to Washington folklore the region’s governments couldn’t do anything right, the average Latin American’s income grew by 82 percent. From 1980- 2009, a much longer period filled with Washington-sponsored neoliberal reforms, it grew by about 18 percent. No wonder that most of the electorate in the region has voted over the last decade to reject neoliberal policies. It is little comfort that the U.S.-based authors of failed policies in Latin America have now managed to tank the U.S. economy as well."
"What really matters in our lives-the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the steady deterioration of the dollar, the mounting foreclosures, the climbing unemployment, the melting of the polar ice caps and the awful reality that once the billions in stimulus money run out next year we will be bereft and broke-doesn't fit into the cheerful happy talk that we mainline into our brains. We are enraptured by the revels of a dying civilization. Once reality shatters the airy edifice, we will scream and yell like petulant children to be rescued, saved and restored to comfort and complacency. There will be no shortage of demagogues, including buffoons like Sarah Palin, who will oblige. We will either wake up to face our stark new limitations, to retreat from imperial projects and discover a new simplicity, as well as a new humility, or we will stumble blindly toward catastrophe and neofeudalism."
It's interesting how when Obama defies his democratic base he is showing "political courage," but when advances the interests of the system he is simply being "pragmatic," and "moderate."
"For hawks like Kristol, Kagan and Senor who have been calling for a surge in U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan since August, Obama's announcement on Tuesday night was a high-point in their campaign of op-ed's, column's and conference's to push the Obama White House in the direction of an escalation in Afghanistan."
Pentagon: Gates Authorized to Deploy More Troops
The Pentagon has acknowledged President Obama’s new troop deployment to Afghanistan could be higher than the 30,000 he announced this week. The Washington Post reports Defense Secretary Robert Gates has been authorized to deploy another 3,000 troops at his discretion. A senior Pentagon official said the number of additional US forces deployed under Obama’s escalation plan could ultimately top 35,000. Speaking before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gates said the first troops would begin to arrive in Afghanistan later this month.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates: “The first of these forces will begin to arrive in Afghanistan within two to three weeks. In all, since taking office, President Obama has committed nearly 52,000 additional troops to Afghanistan for a total US force of approximately 100,000.”Israel Revoking Record Number of Jerusalem Residency Permits for Palestinians
In Israel and the Occupied Territories, new figures show the Israeli government revoked more residency permits for Palestinians in Jerusalem last year than in any year on record. The Israeli human rights group HaMoked says more than 4,500 Palestinians were stripped of their residency in 2008. The average number of revoked residency permits had previously been around 200 per year.
Blackwater Founder Confirms Role as CIA “Asset”
The founder of the private military firm Blackwater has confirmed he’s operated as a CIA “asset” in addition to his company’s publicly known work for the US government. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Erik Prince said he’s served a dual role as both a contractor and as an operative for secretive missions. The disclosure follows independent journalist Jeremy Scahill’s report last week that Blackwater is operating in Pakistan on behalf for the CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command. Prince says he was selected for several missions in part to give the CIA “unattributable capability.” Prince also says he plans to step down from Blackwater and become a high school teacher.
Why the left failed to make a drama out of the crisis:
What positive content there is seems to rely heavily on the Negri/Hardt – and more Hardt than Negri – notions of the common, as neither public nor private. That’s useful in analysing the process of increasingly abstract enclosures – of given genetic material, language, etc – into intellectual property regimes, but it also simply and unreflectively replicates the US humanities post-doctoral world – a realm of open source, cultural flows and radical personal equality sustained by invisible old property: the massive endowments of the Ivy League.
By DAVID PRICE
Presidential Adviser: Mr. President your policies are criminal and stupid.
President: Gee Bob, ya think? Maybe we should reexamine the premises underlying our whole approach to the situation.
"DR. STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER: Well, we think that the Congress needs to start from scratch on this bill. The reform process in Washington has been hijacked by the private health insurance industry. If you look at the Baucus framework, which was the basis of the Senate bill—it’s on the Senate Finance Committee website. Just right-click on that document, and it turns out the author of the document was Elizabeth Fowler, who’s a former vice president of Wellpoint, the nation’s largest private insurance company, covering 35 million people. So the private insurance industry has hijacked the process. What’s come out of the House, what’s likely to come out of the Senate, is a completely inadequate bill that takes about $500 billion in taxpayer money and hands it over to the private health insurance industry.
...
It’s $500 billion in new subsidies to the private health insurance, millions of mandatory new customers for private health insurance.... I think down the line we’re actually likely to be worse off in handing over so much taxpayer money to what is essentially a private health insurance industry bailout."
By M. SHAHID ALAM
http://www.counterpunch.org/shahid11062009.html
"At the outset of the classes I teach, I always address the question of bias in the social sciences. In one course – on the history of the global economy – this is the central theme. It critiques Eurocentric biases in several leading Western accounts of the rise of the global economy.
This fall, I began my first lecture on Eurocentrism by asking my students, How Eurocentric is your day? I explained what I wanted to hear from them. Can they get through a typical day without running into ideas, institutions, values, technologies and products that originated outside the West – in China, India, the Islamicate or Africa?"
By ROBERT LAWLESS
http://www.counterpunch.org/lawless11062009.html
"Enter a war zone with the expectation that the heavy armor will coerce the population into electing a favorable head of state; if this fails, then take refuge in your anthropologists, who will find a quick way to ‘nativize’ the war and help you clamber onto the helicopters. The country you have left behind is now more of a humanitarian disaster than when you self-righteously flew in on the wings of humanitarian interventionism."
"Anyway, so the point is, one of the things he learned in that 2000 race against Bobby Rush, who’s a former Black Panther and a real icon in the black community in Chicago, I think he—it was a very tough race. There was a lot of, you know, “Barack Obama, you’re not black enough” accusations thrown at him. And I think he came out of that race thinking that his natural coalition was different than what was in—than a strictly majority African American congressional district. He had a lot of—he had a real tough time winning over the African Americans in that race. I mean, and he got pummeled. I think he lost by thirty-something points. And at that time, he’s doing a lot of fundraising among what they call in Chicago the lakefront liberals, a lot of wealthy whites north of Hyde Park. And I think he started to realize that he had this sort of appeal to people beyond just his South Side base, and at the very least, that if he could put a coalition of sort of black, white, liberal coalition together, that that would be a sort of natural base for him...."
"The Democrats in Illinois were—won the right to redistrict the state, and like all Democrats in Illinois, Obama was deeply involved with the redrawing of his own district. In fact, one day in the spring of 2001, he sat down at a computer with sophisticated mapping software and began the process of redrawing his own district."
"And his district changed in fundamental ways after that. He used to represent just an area in the south of Chicago that went east to west. His district changed; it now pointed north—it was a north-to-south district—and it included a huge chunk of downtown Chicago, including the famous Loop, which is the big business district; the Gold Coast; all—almost all of the Chicago Lakefront. He represented now all the museums, all the finest shopping areas of downtown Chicago, as well as his original Hyde Park base. So it was a very, very different district. It became whiter. It became wealthier. It became more white-collar. It became more Jewish. And it had one of the highest concentrations of Republicans in Chicago. And the folks that lived and worked in that district now would be the important donors for his US Senate campaign that started—that he started to run for in 2002. So it was a big dramatic change, and that redistricting really was a huge turning point in Obama’s political career."
"Honest and earnest criticism from those whose interests are most nearly touched,—criticism of writers by readers, of government by those governed, of leaders by those led, — this is the soul of democracy and the safeguard of modern society. If the best of the American Negroes receive by outer pressure a leader whom they had not recognized before, manifestly there is here a certain palpable gain. Yet there is also irreparable loss,—a loss of that peculiarly valuable education which a group receives when by search and criticism it finds and commissions its own leaders. The way in which this is done is at once the most elementary and the nicest problem of social growth."The section (from the same DN!) on Obama as an "anti-war" candidate is equally instructive. He did not take a moral, or principled stand against the war, his opposition was purely pragmatic. Obama's position was that the war was stupid - not wrong. There is a huge difference between the two.
"And his speech at the antiwar rally is a good example of that. And just like redistricting, I think you can argue that if he hadn’t opposed the war in Iraq, he would not have been a plausible presidential candidate, because that was the key distinction, of course, with Hillary Clinton. But the speech was not a—what you might call a typical antiwar speech. He started off by talking about wars that he supported: the Civil War—he talked in almost glorious terms about the Civil War and World War II. Now, nobody opposes the Civil War and World War II, so they’re not exactly the riskiest things to support. But he was in front of a pretty, you know, partially pacifist crowd, and it is an antiwar rally, and he was very careful to point out that—where he disagreed with folks in that crowd. In other words, he was trying to push off the left a little bit. He was trying not to be defined as strictly an antiwar candidate."
By KIM NICOLINI
"Where the Wild Things Are presents the legacy of the 60s counterculture as a world of burnt-out disillusionment. The Wild Things in this movie talk in a perpetually stoned residue of hippie culture full of “bummers” and “downers.” They aren’t so much wild as they are decaying, sad, lonely, angry, terrified, terrifying, bitter, resentful, resigned, and lost, not unlike the multitudes of ex-hippie adults that haunted the childhoods of those of us who were born in the 1960s. Like the Wild Things in this movie, these aging hippies wore their tired Utopian ideals like some kind of dirty laundry. Their glazed eyes remember a time when things were supposed to be better while resigning themselves to the fact that things will always be the same"
"It isn't a coincidence that, historically, effective grassroots movements have usually come out of losing campaigns, not winning ones--circumstances that better lend themselves to a bottom-up approach. Supporters of Adlai Stevenson's failed presidential bids in the 1950s went on to run democratic reform efforts in New York and California. Barry Goldwater's followers went on to reshape conservatism after 1964. During the 2004 primaries, the Howard Dean campaign trained a generation of online organizers, and spawned Democracy for America--now a 1.1 million-strong organization that spends money on campaigns its members choose."
"After the 2008 global economic crisis a spell of naivety – about the potential of the half-forgotten anti-globalisation movement; the efficacy of anti-war demonstrations; and whose interests are really being served by identity politics – has arguably been broken. This has forced a reappraisal of the whole project of postmodern, leftwing political thought: from the commitment to non-violence, all the way up to the abandonment of materialist economic analyses like Karl Marx's theory of the 'declining rate of profit'."
"Even downtown, one ruined skyscraper sprouts a pair of trees growing from the rubble.The city has a shocking jobless rate of 29%. The average house price in Detroit is only $7,500, with many homes available for only a few hundred dollars."
"The truth of the matter is that the Obama team has managed the tricky shot of giving more bailout money to the banks than the cumulative dispensations of all previous U.S. governments, while at the same time NOT giving any significant debt relief to ruined homeowners, a huge slice of whom is poor, black and Hispanic. Obama is not seeking to reform the financial system, and it would be beyond miraculous if he did, since the contrivers of the present mess – Lawrence Summers, et al – were given a welcoming clap on the back by the new president, as he stepped into the White House and told them to get on with the job. This amazing bailout for the existing corrupt system – as if Lenin had used the October revolution to restore the Romanovs – has been engineered without significant opposition from organized labor or the left-ßliberal end of Obama’s own party."
"In 2003, U.S. diplomatist Peter Galbraith resigned at the end of a distinguished, 24-year government career. Over the years that followed, he worked as a contract-based adviser to leaders in Iraq's Kurdish community, while also arguing passionately in public media that Iraq's Kurds should be given maximum independence from Baghdad - including full control over any new sources of oil.But in June 2004, more quietly, Galbraith also established a small, U.S.-registered company, Porcupine, that held a five percent stake in a newly exploited oilfield in Iraqi Kurdistan, a Norwegian daily revealed last Saturday."
If Obama declined at last to oppose Netanyahu on the settlement freeze, he will be far more wary of opposing General Petraeus, the commander of Centcom. Obama is sufficiently humane and sufficiently undeceived to take no pleasure in sending soldiers to their deaths for a futile cause. He will have to convince himself that, in some way still to be defined, the mission is urgent after all. Afghanistan will become a necessary war even if we do not know what marks the necessity. Robert Dole, an elder of the Republican Party, has said he would like to see Petraeus as the Republican candidate in 2012. Better to keep him in the field (this must be at least one of Obama’s thoughts) than to have him to run against.
The clever young man who recently made it to the White House is a very fine hypnotist, partly because it is so extraordinary to see an African-American at the pinnacle of power in the land of slavery. However, this is the 21st century, and race — together with gender and even class — can be very seductive tools of propaganda. For what matters, above race and gender, is the class one serves.George Bush’s inner circle — from the State Department to the Supreme Court — was perhaps the most multi racial in presidential history. It was PC par excellence. Think Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell. It was also the most reactionary.
To many, Obama’s very presence in the White House reaffirms the moral nation. He is a marketing dream. Like Calvin Klein or Benetton, he is a brand that promises something special — something exciting, almost risqué, as if he might be a radical, as if he might enact change. He makes people feel good.
...Chris Hedges, author of Empire of Illusion puts it well. “President Obama,” he wrote, “does one thing and Brand Obama gets you to believe another. This is the essence of successful advertising. You buy or do what the advertiser wants because of how they can make you feel.” And so you are kept in “a perpetual state of childishness.” He calls this “junk politics.”
The tragedy is that Brand Obama appears to have crippled or absorbed the antiwar movement, the peace movement. Out of 256 Democrats in Congress, thirty are willing to stand against Obama’s and Nancy Pelosi’s war party. On June 16, they voted for $106 billion for more war.
Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill Democrats were echoing their Republican counterparts in denouncing the Goldstone report. Sixteen leading Senate Democrats joined an equal number of Republicans in signing a letter written by the Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton attacking what they insisted was a "biased report." The recently appointed Democratic senator praised the State Department's efforts to quash the report, claiming that "legitimizing the report sends a dangerous message to countries defending themselves against terrorism."
The letter insisted that any legal action regarding Israeli human rights abuses must not be taken up in international fora. Instead, despite the Israeli government's long history of covering up war crimes by its armed forces, the Israeli justice system should handle the matter internally. The signatories praised what they called "the extraordinary measures taken by the Israel Defense Forces to minimize civilian casualties," acknowledged the State Department for publicly raising its significant concerns about the report, and called upon the Obama administration to "denounce the unbalanced nature of this investigation." Among the 32 signatories were such leading Democratic liberals as Carl Levin (D-MI), Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) , Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Russ Feingold (D-WI).
...
"A culture of impunity in the region has existed for too long," Goldstone told the UNHRC when presenting his report. "The lack of accountability for war crimes and possible war crimes against humanity has reached a crisis point." The Obama administration and the Democratic leadership in Congress are part of this problem, not part of its solution.
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
"With deep regret I have concluded that General of the Army Douglas MacArthur is unable to give his wholehearted support to the policies of the U.S. Government and of the U.N. in matters pertaining to his official duties. In view of the specific responsibilities imposed upon me by the Constitution of the U.S. …I have decided that I must make a change in command in the Far East. I have, therefore, relieved General MacArthur of his command.”
"Our every action must help secure, mobilize and support the Afghan people and their government to defeat the insurgency and establish effective governance."How to "establish effective government" in a country that has never known one, McChrystal does not say. Nor does he tell us how he would do it with an Afghan leadership made up of war lords, drug barons and a president - Hamid Karzai - who won re-election by creating hundreds of phony polling stations and stuffing ballot boxes in wholesale fashion.
By IRA GLUNTS
When I was growing up in a tough neighborhood in the Bronx, we all believed that if you were attacked and the attacker intended on using a weapon, he would show it during the initial phase of combat. Applying the same logic, I have to conclude that Obama will never use the weapon of cutting Israeli military aid or of curtailing US diplomatic support. If he intended to do so, he would have shown that weapon before now, instead of suffering the humiliation of dropping his demand for a full freeze on Israeli settlement expansion.
By MIKE WHITNEY
McChrystal described the White House strategy proposal, which Vice President Biden has been advocating in public remarks, as one that would lead to Afghanistan becoming "Chaos-istan." Asked if he would support it, the general replied, "The short answer is no." McChrystal later remarked, "Waiting does not prolong a favorable outcome. This effort will not remain winnable indefinitely, and nor will public support.""According to sources close to the administration," reported the UK Telegraph on Monday, "Gen McChrystal shocked and angered presidential advisers with the bluntness of a speech given in London last week. The next day he was summoned to an awkward 25-minute face-to-face meeting on board Air Force One on the tarmac in Copenhagen, where the president had arrived to tout Chicago's unsuccessful Olympic bid."
By FRED GARDNER
At this point DeAngelo would have the reform movement push for legalization by advocating reclassification of cannabis as an over-the-counter drug. “At dispensaries all across the country,” he concluded with a flourish, “we will stop asking for medical cannabis identification, and simply ask for adult identification. We will flip the switch at the dispensary door, and all adult Americans will have what hundreds of thousands of Californians now have: free, safe, and affordable access to cannabis.”
"The most recent data from the commerce department shows that the financial industry profits now account for more than 31.5% of all corporate profits. This is a higher share than at any point during the housing bubble years. Of course, it is not that hard to make profits when you get to borrow money from the Fed at almost no interest and then lend it back to the government at 3.5% interest."
By HARRY BROWNE
In the late 50s and early 60s, angry white mobs were reacting to life-changing victories won by the civil rights movement. Today's mobs, on the other hand, are reacting to the symbolic victory of an African American winning the presidency. Yet they are rising up at a time when non-elite blacks and Latinos are losing significant ground, with their homes and jobs slipping away from them at a much higher rate than from whites.
...
When the conference arrived in Durban, many delegates were shocked by the angry mood in the streets: tens of thousands of South Africans joined protests outside the conference centre, holding signs that said "Landlessness = racism" and "New apartheid: rich and poor". Many denounced the conference as a sham, and demanded concrete reparations for the crimes of apartheid.
...
The overriding message was that even though the most visible signs of racism had largely disappeared – colonial rule, apartheid, Jim Crow-style segregation – profound racial divides will persist and even widen until the states and corporations that profited from centuries of state-sanctioned racism pay back some of what they owe.
By MIKE WHITNEY
"Deflation has spread to every sector of the economy; retail, travel, luxury items, autos, building supplies, home furnishings, electronics. No business has been spared. The C.P.I. inflation-gauge has slipped into negative territory and is now at -2.1 percent. Prices are headed down and spending is falling fast. Unemployment is soaring, wages are dropping, and the average work-week has been sliced to just 33 hrs.
...Economist Irving Fisher tackled the problem of deflation 76 years ago in his masterpiece "Debt-Deflation Theory of the Great Depression". Fisher showed how over-indebtedness eventually triggers a chain of events beginning with debt liquidation and ending in distress selling, huge capital losses, and violent economic contraction. This is the challenge that Bernanke faces today.
...
Wall Street likes to stimulate demand through credit expansion and bubblenomics because they can skim fat bonuses on the front end and then bail out before stocks crash. But this perennial "boom and bust" cycle is a real loser for ordinary working class Americans, who merely want a little stability and a paycheck that keeps pace with inflation. The best way to avoid "demand shock"--which is at the heart of every recession--is through wage growth and full employment. It's that simple. When workers get better pay, they buy more more stuff and the economy thrives. Everybody wins!"
"Down at the courthouse, the district attorney sighs.... 'Quite frankly, I might benefit from a card. This is a high-stress job. It would probably do me good to go home and smoke some pot in the evening.' "
Sarah Sewell, the recent head of the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard, has written a slavering introduction to the new Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual: human-rights tools can help the U.S. armed forces run better pacification campaigns in conquered territory."
"Human-rights organizations can do a splendid job of exposing and criticizing abuses, but they are constitutionally incapable of taking stands on larger political issues. No major human-rights NGO opposed the invasion of Iraq. With their legitimacy and funding dependent on a carefully cultivated perception of neutrality, human-rights nonprofits will never be any substitute for an explicitly anti-imperialist political force. In the meantime, America’s best and brightest will continue to explore innovative ways for human rights to serve a thoroughly militarized foreign policy."
"Not to be too much of a downer, but I found Obama's speech tonight a big O-bummer. ... Obama felt the need to tell the country that he's devoted to making sure the wildly unpopular private insurance industry at the heart of the health care meltdown remains profitable. He also made sure to forget that Americans love Medicare and hate private insurance when he went out of his way to reiterate his support for "market" economics (shocker - this was the line both parties stood up and gave a thundering round of applause). Awesome."
"The new plan drawn up by Mr Netanyahu... proposes that Israel would agree to a freeze of settlement building for up to nine months, excluding 2,500 housing units that are already under construction, and settlement projects in East Jerusalem."
"There's been a significant consolidation among the big banks, and it's kind of hollowing out the banking system," said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Economy.com. "You'll be left with very large institutions and small ones that fill in the cracks. But it'll be difficult for the mid-tier institutions to thrive."
"The oligopoly has tightened," he added.
The idea of separating Palestinians and Israelis into distinct ethno-national entities has become an article of faith within peace process circles, but rarely are its supporters asked to justify why a "solution" that has eluded them for decades has any merit.
While his alliance with feminists gave Gates' career a powerful boost, it was his Op ed for the Times blaming continued anti-Semitism on African Americans that brought the public intellectual uptown. It was then that Gates was ordained as the pre-eminent African American scholar when, if one polled African-American scholars throughout the nation, Gates would not have ranked among the top twenty five. ... Last week Rachel Maddow called Gates "the nation's leading black intellectual." Who pray tell is the nation's leading white intellectual, Rachel? How come we can only have one? Some would argue that Gates hasn't written a first rate scholarly work since 1989.
In Israel and the Occupied Territories, Israeli settlers have destroyed or damaged several areas of Palestinian land in ongoing attacks in the West Bank. On Tuesday, Israeli settlers damaged Palestinian trees with saws, one day after more than 1,500 olive trees were set ablaze. Palestinian farmer Mohamad Rajab of the Burin village says the attacks have continued for several days.
Mohamad Rajab: “As we arrived, we looked at the land, and there were five or six settlers cutting the olive trees. Some were cutting, others were damaging, using hand-held saws. When they saw us, they fled. The Palestinian coordination force came and found all these trees damaged. If we had waited another hour, we would have found everything destroyed. There are more than 200 olive trees. Yesterday, they burned some thirty other olive trees. A week ago, they burned another twenty olive trees, and a month ago they burned two-and-a-half acres of wheat.”
The settler attacks came in apparent response to Israel’s announcement that it will begin removing unauthorized outposts established without official Israeli government consent. But Israel has defied US calls to freeze settlement activity and ignored Arab offers of peace in return for ending the occupation of Palestinian land. Although the Obama administration says it opposes the settlements, it hasn’t proposed any suspension of the billions of dollars in US aid to Israel.
Although he made the call “Workers of the world, unite!” Marx still insisted that workers in each country “first of all settle things with their own bourgeoisie.” The measures required to transform existing economic, political, and legal institutions would “of course be different in different countries.” But in every case, Marx would insist that the way to bring about radical change is first to get people to think ambitiously again.How likely is that to happen? Even at a moment when the financial crisis is bleeding dry a vast swath of the world’s people, when collective anxiety shakes every age, religious, and racial group, and when, as always, the deprivations and burdens are falling most heavily on ordinary working people, the prognosis is uncertain. If he were alive today, Marx would not look to pinpoint exactly when or how the current crisis would end. Rather, he would perhaps note that such crises are part and parcel of capitalism’s continued dynamic existence. Reformist politicians who think they can do away with the inherent class inequalities and recurrent crises of capitalist society are the real romantics of our day, themselves clinging to a naive utopian vision of what the world might be. If the current crisis has demonstrated one thing, it is that Marx was the greater realist.
Joel Beinin, in Jewish Voice for Peace: An articulate and charismatic President of the United States named Barack Hussein Obama giving a speech at Cairo University co-sponsored by al-Azhar, the most eminent institution of Muslim learning - now that's a new picture. Its enormous symbolic value is President Obama's biggest asset as he implements policy on the entire range of difficult issues he mentioned. The President stated, "Given our interdependence, any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail." This is an excellent basis for resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The President did not provide details on how the conflict should be resolved beyond general support for "two states, where Israelis and Palestinians each live in peace and security." But the meaning of this formulation is now contested due to its empty repetition by presidents and prime ministers whose actions and inactions have undermined it. Instead President Obama emphasized U.S. rejection of "the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements," saying nothing about the future of those settlements already existing and their nearly 500,000 inhabitants. By limiting himself to an apparently pragmatic "first step," President Obama may have made his task harder. If he does not produce concrete results very soon on this limited, albeit it absolutely necessary, measure, then the potential value of his fine words in Cairo will soon diminish. Joel Beinin June 4, 2009 Stanford, CA |
