One More Term Senator Dorgan, Please?

by Ralph Nader

Late last year, during the Senate debate on health insurance, Dorgan proposed and eloquently explained an amendment to reduce drug prices -- the highest in the world -- by allowing so-call drug reimportation from countries such as Canada under regulatory safeguards.

He expected Obama's active support since Mr. Obama promised to press for this needed competition in his presidential campaign. He figured wrong. The White House used none of its capital to get the few extra votes needed. For Mr. Obama had already cut a deal privately with the drug company chieftains.

That may have been the last straw for Senator Dorgan. He is not the only progressive Democrat in the Congress who is saying, "What does President Obama really stand for?"

Once More Into the Breach

Ussama Makdisi

December 2009

Makdisi reviews:

Rashid Khalidi, Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East (Boston: Beacon Press, 2009)

Patrick Tyler, A World of Trouble: America in the Middle East (London: Portobello Books, 2009)

I had to laugh at this line:

"Even the most conservative type of history -- US diplomatic history, which has traditionally eschewed serious cultural analysis -- has belatedly embraced facets of Said’s thesis."

Khalidi is on point here:

"Khalidi’s book highlights some essential points necessary for an understanding of the US relationship to the Middle East. The first, and most obvious, is oil. The United States became interested in the region because of its strategic significance, which itself was largely a function of Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves. During the Cold War, therefore, the US formed the basis of its domination of the region. It did not so much compete with the Soviets as it did exert extraordinary negative influence over the area. Here Khalidi reverses a theme of American diplomatic history that has taken for granted: US policymakers’ obsession with containing the spread of Soviet influence, as if US imperial interests in the region were themselves defensive or a reflection of the natural order of things."

What an insult to Machiavelli:

"According to Khalidi, the United States, is a Machiavellian, yet often a shortsighted, great power."

President Obama's Muse?

Tuesday 22 December 2009

by: Melvin A. Goodman, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

(Image: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: Barack Obama)

"Since last week's Nobel Prize ceremony, Reinhold Niebuhr, the most influential American theologian of the 20th century, has been given insufficient attention from the mainstream media.

...

"Niebuhr warned against the "dangerous dreams of managing history." There is probably no better example of the global powers trying to manage history than Afghanistan, home of the "Great Game," where Alexander the Great, Queen Victoria, Leonid Brezhnev and, now, Barack Obama have tried to manage the ethnic and tribal communities of this region."

Are you serious?

Egypt: Rooftops Empower the Poor

Sunday 03 January 2010

by: Cam McGrath | Inter Press Service

"The solar water heater he built on the roof of his apartment in Darb El-Ahmar provided hot water for his family until the dilapidated building collapsed three months ago."

US Aid Tied to Purchase of Arms

by Anne Davies

Just before Christmas, the US President, Barack Obama, signed into law one of his country's biggest aid pledges of the year. It was bound not for Africa or any of the many struggling countries on the World Bank's list.

It was a deal for $US2.77 billion ($3 billion) to go to Israel in 2010 and a total of $US30 billion over the next decade.

Israel is bound by the agreement to use 75 per cent of the aid to buy military hardware made in the US: in the crisis-racked US economy, those military factories are critical to many towns.

The Ph.D. Problem

On the professionalization of faculty life, doctoral training, and the academy’s self-renewal

"Put in less personal terms, there is a huge social inefficiency in taking people of high intelligence and devoting resources to training them in programs that half will never complete and for jobs that most will not get. Unfortunately, there is an institutional efficiency, which is that graduate students constitute a cheap labor force. There are not even search costs involved in appointing a graduate student to teach. The system works well from the institutional point of view not when it is producing Ph.D.s, but when it is producing ABDs. It is mainly ABDs who run sections for lecture courses and often offer courses of their own. The longer students remain in graduate school, the more people are available to staff undergraduate classes. Of course, overproduction of Ph.D.s also creates a buyer’s advantage in the market for academic labor. These circumstances explain the graduate-student union movement that has been going on in higher education since the mid 1990s. "

Eliminate the Senate

All Check, No Balance

Eliminate the Senate

By WINSLOW T. WHEELER

"The filibuster is merely one of a thousand ways a small number of senators, even just one, can clog the system. Unlike the House of Representatives, the Senate was never intended to operate by majority rule; it was designed to operate by “unanimous consent.” That means, as we observed during the endless non-debate of the health care bill, that one senator can demand that the entire text of any bill or amendment must be read aloud – word by audible word – if one member simply utters the words “I object” at the appropriate moment. It also means that nominations, even bills, can be held up for days, weeks, even months before a majority leader tries to start what passes for debate in the Senate these days. And, it means any and all committee hearings must be shut down any time the Senate is in session – and a senator objects. The Senate rules are an almost endless opportunity for mischief, or worse, for any member or faction wanting to play the role – just like the racist Southern Democrats did in the 1960s when they stood, insistently and almost endlessly, in the way of civil rights bills."