Alexander Cockburn: The Ruin of His Presidency

" The oft-announced goal of training an Afghan Army and Police Force is faring no better – in fact considerably worse – that the efforts at “Vietnamization” forty years ago. "

Alexander Cockburn: The Ruin of His Presidency

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Obama and Netanyahu Still Tussling Over Priorities

t r u t h o u t | Obama and Netanyahu Still Tussling Over Priorities

"But the administration has undertaken no visible policy steps at all towards securing either the construction halt or, more importantly, the final peace agreement between Israel and Palestine. Instead, Mitchell got into a lengthy, inconclusive, and quite diversionary negotiation with Netanyahu on defining some limits - far short of a total freeze - on Israel's construction in the settlements.

Netanyahu has publicly embarrassed Obama by announcing several rounds of new housing starts in the settlements, and has met no consequences at all for that defiance. Generous U.S. aid in the financial, military, and economic fields continues to flow to Israel unimpeded."

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t r u t h o u t | Joseph Stiglitz:

t r u t h o u t | Joseph Stiglitz: "Our Faith in Markets Blinds Us"

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Alan Nasser: New Deal Liberalism Writes Its Obituary

Who could blame GOP vultures for feasting on the rotting corpse of American Liberalism.

Alan Nasser: New Deal Liberalism Writes Its Obituary

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No Slowdown for Weapons Industry

Obama's Big Silence: The Race Question

by Naomi Klein

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.

Give a Worker a Raise

How to Fight Deflation

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!"

Suddenly Righteous Dudes

Mendocino County, Famously Laid Back, Reconsiders Its Stance on Marijuana

"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.' "

NPR: Ancient Wall Discovered In Jerusalem

"The City of David digs are funded by Elad, a Jewish settler organization that also buys Palestinian homes and brings Jewish families into the neighborhood. Palestinian and Israeli critics have charged that the archaeology is being used as a political tool to cement Jewish control over parts of Jerusalem that Palestinians want for the capital of a future state."

THE ROVING EYE
Fifty questions on 9/11
By Pepe Escobar

Chase Madar: Samantha Power and the Weaponization of Human Rights

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."

Chase Madar: Samantha Power and the Weaponization of Human Rights

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Reviewing President Rahm Emanuel's Health Care Speech

"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."

t r u t h o u t | Ronald Reagan's Torture

t r u t h o u t | Ronald Reagan's Torture

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Still No. 1

Despite Slump, U.S. Role as Top Arms Supplier Grows

"The United States was the leader not only in arms sales worldwide, but also in sales to nations in the developing world, signing $29.6 billion in weapons agreements with these nations, or 70.1 percent of all such deals. ... The top buyers in the developing world in 2008 were the United Arab Emirates, which signed $9.7 billion in arms deals; Saudi Arabia, which signed $8.7 billion in weapons agreements; and Morocco, with $5.4 billion in arms purchases."

US Fury as Israel Defies Settlement Freeze Call

"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."

t r u t h o u t | Obama's September Choice: Charge or Trim?

t r u t h o u t | Obama's September Choice: Charge or Trim?
    "Americans conflate the recovery plan, which is actually putting people to work, with the Wall Street bailout which rewards the very people who drove us off the cliff. They aren't angry at "big government" in the abstract (They love Social Security and Medicare, two of the largest big government social programs). They are angry at a big government that spends their money to save Wall Street and not Main Street. Obama pays and will pay a continuing price for the decision to subsidize the banks and not reorganize them, to bail them out without firing those who led us into the mess."


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US wants 20,000 more troops to fight Taliban

"The commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan will ask for 20,000 more international troops as part of his new strategic plan for the alliance's war against a resurgent Taliban, The Independent has learned."

Ike Warns of the Radical Right

John Pillager on Obama and Empire

A great lecture.