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Memo to Congress: Show Us the M-O-N-E-Y! (Part 1)
Geraldine Perry
Cuba Gooding Jr. became an overnight sensation when his character, pro football player Rod Tidwell, pithily directed his high-minded but needy agent Jerry Macguire, played by Tom Cruise, to "Show me the money!" Tidwell's terse directive is as practical as it is memorable and luckily for Tidwell, Macguire delivers.
Whether out of extraordinary resolve or sheer desperation, a "show me the money" policy is exactly the course Fed Chair Ben Bernancke is pursuing at full throttle. Faced with the unenviable task of reflating a deflating and uncooperative economy, the Fed opted last fall to take the "easy money" quotient a notch higher by formally initiating a second round of quantitative easing, while tacitly acknowledging the possibility of QE3, QE4, and so on into the undefined future. With Fed Fund rates effectively at or very near zero and a trillion dollars already in reserves, the Fed is in other words doing all it can to get the "credit-as-money" spigot flowing.
Somebody please hand Abbas the revolver on the silver tray
Stuart Littlewood
In all our joy and excitement for Egypt let us not lose sight of the grey and sinister blob that is Mahmoud Abbas.
He must be asking himself – fearfully - why he has so far escaped the purge while his bosom-buddies Hosni and Zine are sent packing in disgrace.
Some say Abbas isn’t a bad guy, he just lost his way. Actually there's a long crime-sheet against him, too tiresome to catalogue in detail here.
A founding member of Arafat’s Fatah faction, he won the presidency of the Palestinian National Authority in 2005 in a dodgy and deeply lopsided contest – let’s not dignify it with the word ‘election’ – in which Israel seriously interfered to obstruct other candidates. He has overstayed his term by two years and is widely regarded as having no legitimacy and no popular mandate, yet he’s still propped up by the US and Israel and their hangers-on.
In 2007 he dissolved the Hamas-led unity government and appointed Salam Fayyad prime minister, a move that was almost certainly illegal under Palestinian Basic Law and designed to ensure the disunity and weakness that Israel so badly wanted to see.
He has been further undone by the Wikileaks revelations that the Israeli government "consulted with Egypt and Fatah prior to Operation Cast Lead, asking if they were willing to assume control of Gaza once Israel defeated Hamas".
Reagan Revisionism: Planned Centennial Commemoration Hoopla
by Stephen Lendman
A weeklong infomercial followed his death on June 5, 2004, mythology airbrushing truth, including Marilyn Berger in the New York Times, saying:
"To a nation hungry for a hero, a nation battered by Vietnam, damaged by Watergate and humiliated by the taking of hostages in Iran, Ronald Reagan held out the promise of a return to greatness, the promise that American would 'stand tall' again."
Quoting admirers and critics, she called him a "great communicator," a "made-for-television president (who) never lost his boyish charm or his ability to look Americans in the eye and make many feel good about themselves. (He) was a combination of ideologue and pragmatist who could compromise and still appear to be a man of unbending principle."
One of America's best or worst? For supporters, the former. Critics disagree. Judge him by his record, not the hoopla. Typical praise came from made-for-media historians like Michael Beschloss practically elevating him to sainthood, equating him to FDR, saying it's "not too much to suggest that Americans would give similar thanks that they twice elected Ronald Reagan, a President who saw the chance to end the Cold War in his own time" - an event, of course, he had nothing to do with besides being president on the cusp of when it happened.
This Ain't Ike's Grand Old Party
by Mary Pitt
As one who was born into the Republican Party almost a century ago, I do not even recognize the party as it exists today. My family hated Franklin Roosevelt as rabidly as the Tea Party hates Obama today. Despite the fact that the nation was deep in the depression before he took office, my parents and their neighbors detested every measure that President Roosevelt took to correct the situation, My father was deeply humiliated when he had to accept the first box of government-distributed food so that his children could eat.
You see, the Republican Party had real principles then. It was not considered a shame to be poor so long as you worked hard and were an honorable person. If you needed something that you could not buy, you offered to work for it. If you could not work, the neighbors would come in and do your work so that you would lose neither your work nor the eventual benefit of what you had worked so hard to accomplish.
EGYPT UPRISING / TWO MINUTE WARNING FOR OLD WORLD ORDER
Allen L Roland
Egypt’s current uprising is a two minute warning for the old world order which controlled the populace by force and US military aid but are now being crushed by growing public dissent and a long simmering desire for true change, individual liberty and political freedom ~ the times are a changing:
Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.
Bob Dylan / Times They Are A Changing / 1964 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYQZSDOWwww
Revolution is in the air and particularly in the Middle East. The flood waters of discontent as well as the desire for true change is rising throughout the world and that includes the United States. President Obama still does not get that millions of Americans voted for true change in 2008 and saw him as a self proclaimed agent of that change. Instead, Obama has offered token change and has become a champion of the status quo as well as the economic and moral abuses of power that were the trademark of the Bush/Cheney administration and the rapidly decaying old World order.
Abusing Palestinian Children
by Stephen Lendman
Israel is an equal opportunity abuser, treating women, old men, invalids, and children like young adults because they're Palestinians, not Jews, so they're fair game, vilified as national security threats or terrorists for wanting freedom, equality, justice and peace.
Numerous previous articles discussed it, several specifically on children, accessed through the following links:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/03/brutalizing-palestinian-children.html
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/04/imprisoning-palestinian-children.html
Where Will It All End?
By J. Speer-Williams
Our security and freedoms are disappearing while they tell us they must take away our freedoms in order to keep us secure.
Our environment is dying while they tell us they must destroy our environment for us to have food, energy, and industrial products.
Our infrastructure is crumbling while they use our money to destroy foreign infrastructures.
Our money is becoming worthless while they give our money to foreign bankers before it becomes worthless.
Our police are abusing us while they claim our police are serving and protecting us.
Our foods, medicines, and vaccines are killing us while they hide those facts from us.
Global Intifada
Gilad Atzmon
Haaretz reported today that “Israel urges the world to curb criticism of Egypt's Mubarak.”
Apparently Jerusalem seeks to convince its allies that it is in the ‘West's interest’ to maintain the stability of the Egyptian regime. In other words, Israel urges the ‘Goyim’ to ‘keep being subservient to Jerusalem’. Jerusalem was foolish enough to admit that Mubarak was there to serve Israeli and ‘Western’ interests.
Over the weekend Israel called on the United States and a number of European countries to restrain their condemnation of President Hosni Mubarak to “preserve stability in the region.”
Rights groups speak out on Egyptian protests
Mary Shaw
Things remain volatile in Egypt, where protesters have been filling the streets for several days calling for President Hosni Mubarak to resign. The military is even involved at this point. It's become violent. Some protesters have been killed. And, so far, Mubarak has shown no intention of leaving.
Human rights groups have been weighing in on the protests, defending the people's right to demonstrate, and condemning what appears to be unnecessary violence against the protesters.
Joe Stork, Deputy Middle East Director for Human Rights Watch (HRW), observed that "[p]olice and plainclothes agents seem to be shooting people without justification, using live bullets or firing teargas canisters straight at protesters." Stork called for those using excessive force be held to account, along with those giving the orders to shoot, "no matter how senior."
Egypt's Revolution: Obama Backing Regime Change?
by Stephen Lendman
In July 2003, a USAF Institute for National Security Studies report titled, "Egypt as a Failing State: Implications for US National Security" suggested "Mubarak's traditionally autocratic and oppressive short-term fixes" weren't working. As a result, "the possibility of unrest is real; with the correct confluence of domestic, regional, and international events, Egypt can quickly be added to the list of failed states....This paper (thus) contends that (the appearance of) democracy is a security imperative for the post-9/11 world."
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