What's next?
Khaled Amayreh in Ramallah
Hundreds of Palestinians gather in the West Bank city of Ramallah
to express support for President Mahmoud Abbas
Whatever lies ahead after Abbas's notification of not seeking the Palestinian presidency again, the status quo ante is over for good, writes Khaled Amayreh in Ramallah.
The recent decision by Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas not to seek a second term in office has already thrown into question the continued survival of the Oslo peace process as well as the future of the PA itself.
Most Palestinians have interpreted Abbas's decision as a frank -- though belated -- admission of the failure of the peace process with Israel. In his speech on Thursday, 5 November, Abbas didn't mourn that process much. But he did suggest that it was pointless to walk any further along the current path given Israel's adamant refusal to stop settlement expansion and the Obama administration's refusal to force Israel to give up the spoils of the 1967 war.
PermalinkLebanese students advise President Obama how to get it right
Franklin Lamb Beirut
If those in Lebanon watching the news on 11/12/09 blinked they might have missed an interesting news item. It appeared at approximately 4:20 pm on Narharnet.com, the pro-US/Saudi news website.
The news item read “4:16 pm, American Ambassador Michele Sison (sp) departed Lebanon for her country.” Ten minutes later the item disappeared and, as it turned out, the ten minutes was exactly how long it took for the US Embassy security and press office to inform Beirut media outlets that “the American Ambassadors movements are to be reported at least one hour after they occur not one minute.”
The Inevitable Collapse of the Dollar
by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy
Americans live beyond their means, Asia finances it and China props up the buck so that the US can buy Chinese made stuff at Wal-Mart. Eventually the Asians/Europeans will stop financing the USA, China will pull the plug on the buck and the bubble will burst.
The CIA's World Fact Book lists the US at the very bottom of a list with the world's largest negative Current Account Balance. China, which pegs the Yuan to the dollar, is at the top with the world's largest positive Current Account Balance.
If the GOP had been correct, US exports should have risen! The 'balance of trade deficit' i.e, the NEGATIVE Current Account Balance would have been reduced! If the GOP had been correct, the US could have paid off huge amounts of national debt run up in incompetent and dishonest GOP regimes. The US might have survived decades of conservative budgets which forced the US to borrow from other countries. But --not surprisingly --things have not worked out as the GOP would have you believe.
Origins of 'Islamophobia' in US Imperialism and Neo-Colonialism
by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy
'Islamophobia' in the U.S. is a top down phenomenon encouraged and exploited by the right wing. It is easier to whip up war fever if the populace is irrational, mindless, or unduly fearful of an entire class, religion or even race. A crooked, corrupt or illegitimate state is 'motivated' to encourage irrational fears among its populace. This was true of Rome, the Third Reich and it is true of the US. It is, perhaps, one of several harbingers of the fall of empire.
That 'Islamophobia' is a needless waste is proven by recent events.
The US government and the assassination of Tupac Shakur
Thomas C. Mountain
ASMARA, Eritrea -- I first wrote about the assassination of American Rap Music superstar Tupak Shakur almost a decade ago. At the time I used the title “The Hand of The Man in Tupak’s Assassination” and I use the term “assassination” for good reason.
Tupak was gunned down on the Las Vegas Strip in front of the mega gambling casino Circus Circus after a Mike Tyson boxing match. Hundreds of people witnessed the killing and it had to have been captured on multiple CCTV (close circuit television) systems used to monitor the front of the hotel. The killers had to have arrived and departed from the scene of the crime via the main thoroughfare, The Strip, and were certainly recorded doing so on dozens if not hundreds of other CCTV systems. -Yet to this day, well over a decade later, law enforcement claims they have no idea who committed this crime. No photos extracted from the multiple video cameras that recorded the assassination, not even the license plate number of the killer’s vehicle.
Distrusting Climate Change Globalism
Anthony Gregory
This December, leaders of the industrialized world will gather in Copenhagen to frame an international strategy against "climate change" to take the place of Kyoto.
Many in the mainstream media would have you believe that someone must be crazy to voice skepticism toward the idea that human carbon emissions cause significant and disastrous global warming.
They don't usually call it "global warming" anymore. The lingo for a few years has been "climate change," since it provides a much more rhetorically strong ground from which to deride skeptics. Lambasting those who "deny climate change" is more compelling than to scoff, "how could you deny the earth is warming?" Especially now that we know it has been cooling for a decade.
So it's cooling now, but the real problem, we are told, is climate change -- as caused by human emissions of carbon -- particularly with an alleged long-term trend toward warming. Real and alleged cataclysms of nature -- everything from Katrina to spiders getting bigger -- has been blamed on our greenhouse gases.
Merely to express doubt of this theory has been called "treason against the planet" by Paul Krugman, who probably speaks for a large segment of left-liberals. It is seen as unseemly, unpatriotic and hysterical to wonder if humans are causing the earth to warm in unsustainable and disastrous ways. Another Nobel Prize winner, Al Gore, even said a year ago that businesses (conveniently ones that compete with his own favored industrial interests) should be censored for voicing doubt on climate change:
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