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Was the bailout itself a scam?
Paul Craig Roberts
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Professor Michael Hudson (CounterPunch, March 18) is correct that the orchestrated outrage over the $165 million AIG bonuses is a diversion from the thousand times greater theft from taxpayers of the approximately $200 billion “bailout” of AIG. Nevertheless, it is a diversion that serves an important purpose. It has taught an inattentive American public that the elites run the government in their own private interests.
Americans are angry that AIG executives are paying themselves millions of dollars in bonuses after having cost the taxpayers an exorbitant sum. Senator Charles Grassley put a proper face on the anger when he suggested that the AIG executives “follow the Japanese example” and “resign or go commit suicide.”
Yet, Obama’s White House economist, Larry Summers, on whose watch as Treasury Secretary in the Clinton administration financial deregulation got out of control, invoked the “sanctity of contracts” in defense of the AIG bonuses.
But the Obama administration does not regard other contracts as sacred. Specifically: labor unions had to agree to give-backs in order for the auto companies to obtain federal help; CNN reports that “Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki confirmed Tuesday [March 10] that the Obama administration is considering a controversial plan to make veterans pay for treatment of service-related injuries with private insurance”; the Washington Post reports that the Obama team has set its sights on downsizing Social Security and Medicare.
Land Day 2009 and BDS Global Week of Action Against the Crisis and War
eileen fleming
The Global Week of Action; a call for BDS/Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions begins March 28th through April 4, 2009. March 30, 2009 will commemorate the 33rd annual Land Day nonviolent solidarity demonstrations and actions in Palestine and the diaspora.
On July 9, 2004, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel's Wall- where ever it was built on occupied Palestinian territory- was illegal and must fall. People of conscience all over the world have united to do what governments do to out of control regimes: use money to do the talking.
The ‘Game’ Called War
Steve Amsel
My understanding of a war is two opposing nations fighting each other to the death. I have never seen a war where it was not armies that were involved in such conflicts….. at least not until I moved to Israel.
Israel has created an enemy of a nation which it claims does not even exist. It has, for the past 61 years, occupied the land belonging to that nation. It has denied them every basic human right guaranteed them by the United Nations. It has ignored every condemnation against them by the World Body as well as a handful of other nations.
It has waged war against this nation….. a nation without an army. Who then are the targeted ones? The civilians….. innocent children and mothers. They justify these actions by claiming that every one of the victims is a potential terrorist. They have gotten away with these actions with the support of much of the western world. The Israelis have a network of support that no other nation enjoys. This network seems to have the world convinced that any criticism or condemnation of Israel is nothing but anti Semitism.
ISRAEL’S DAYS AS A JEWISH STATE ARE NUMBERED
Linda S. Heard
The future of Israel as a Jewish state is in jeopardy, according to a leaked CIA study destined for certain eyes only. According to author and lawyer Franklin Lamb, it predicts an inevitable shift away from a two-state solution to the pursuance of one state. Its estimations also include the emigration to the US of 2 million Israelis within the coming 15 years, along with another 1.5 million to Europe and Russia.
This may sound radical but it appears that the outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert agrees. “If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights, then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished,” he said in January.
The State of Israel is at war with the Palestinian people, people against people, collective against collective
Uri Avnery
The most important sentence written in Israel this week was lost in the general tumult of exciting events.
Really exciting: In a final act of villainy, typical of his whole tenure as Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert abandoned the captive soldier, Gilad Shalit.
Ehud Barak decided that the Labor Party must join the ultra-right government, which includes outright fascists.
And this, too: the former President of Israel was officially indicted for rape.
In this cacophony, who would pay any attention to a sentence written by lawyers in a document submitted to the Supreme Court? The judicial debate concerns one of the most revolting laws ever enacted in Israel.
It says that the wife of an Israeli citizen is not allowed to join him in Israel if she is living in the occupied Palestinian territories or in a “hostile” Arab country.
The Arab citizens of Israel belong to Hamulas (clans) which extend beyond the borders of the state. Arabs generally marry within the Hamula. This is an ancient custom, deeply rooted in their culture, probably originating in the desire to keep the family property together. In the Bible, Isaac married his cousin, Rebecca. -The “Green Line”, which was fixed arbitrarily by the events of the 1948 war, divides families. One village found itself in Israel, the next remained outside the new state, the Hamula lives in both. The Nakba also created a large Palestinian Diaspora.
ISRAELI VETS DISCUSS BRUTALITY, EXECUTIONS OF GAZANS ON COMMAND
Charles E. Carlson
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Brian Williams', NBC Nightly News show, reported a groundbreaking account of Israeli soldiers openly discussing their deliberate execution and brutality toward women, children in Gaza, and deliberate home destruction.
Why now? What motivated NBC to break its silence after ignoring hundreds of such accounts over the years? Probably the creditable source and the fact that the Israeli mainstream published this story has influenced our normally Zionist media to come clean, at least this once. How could NBC ignore what Haaretz gives as fact? A cross section of IDF members confirming they were ordered to carry out war crimes, and acts of destruction and extermination.
The Nightly News account stated the IDF soldiers spoke freely of their acts because of the chilling fact they did not think they were doing anything other than what was expected of them by their commanders. They simply are not ashamed of murdering old, or young women and babies.
Water: Commodity or human right?
Mary Shaw
I am writing this on March 22, World Water Day. And I am thinking about how spoiled we Americans are. We use and abuse our natural resources without giving it a second thought.
But our recklessness could soon turn around to bite us -- and the rest of the world.
When people think of water shortages, they tend to think of the Third World. And, indeed, more than 5,000 children die every day as a result of unsafe drinking water, mostly in developing nations.
Larry Silverstein seeking BAILOUT cash
Facts-not-Fairies
NEW YORK, March 21 (Reuters) -The private developer redeveloping the World Trade Center site in New York City has asked the government for financial assistance, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.
Quoting people familiar with the matter, the Journal said The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the government body that owns the site, is considering whether to help finance at least one of the three office towers planned in the project.
Sources said developer Larry Silverstein has sought financial help with at least two of the towers.
A spokesman for Silverstein blamed delays on the Port Authority but did not say whether it was seeking financial help.
Our ambassador to Poland
Khalid Amayreh
Many of our so-called ambassadors around the world are really unqualified for the job. They simply lack the required professionalism and experience to communicate the plight of our people and justice of our national cause to a world community that is heavily bombarded by Zionist lies around the clock.
I say “so-called” because we are not a state, or even a quasi-state, to have luxurious embassies which fruitlessly consume a significant chunk of our scant financial resources.
Added to that is the too-well-known fact that most of these “ambassadors” are chosen rather haphazardly irrespective of their abilities and qualifications. Some of these actually don’t speak English and their knowledge of international politics is minimal or nonexistent.
Hence, instead of being misrepresented by these flamboyant and often ineffective money-grabbing operatives, who spend much of their time throwing parties and visiting local bars, we should post in the capitals of the world professional spokespersons, fluent in foreign languages, who can effectively and eloquently communicate the truth about Israeli barbarianism. -Still there are more serious problems involving clearly improper behavior on the part of some of our diplomats.
Hopeful Change In El Salvador?
Stephen Lendman
Like other Latin American nations, El Salvador has had a long and troubled history, ruled from one decade to the next by successive military dictatorships, then since 1989 by the right wing National Republican Alliance or ARENA Party.
Long-suffering Salvadorans recall the 1980s struggles when the Farabudo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) failed to end what the civil-military Junta leader, Jose Napoleon Duarte, told New York Times reporter Raymond Bonner in 1980:
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