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Trade Protectionism and Worldwide Economic Contraction
“I almost went down on my knees to beg [President] Herbert Hoover to veto the asinine Hawley-Smoot Tariff.”...“That Act intensified nationalism all over the world.” - Thomas Lamont, banker and economic adviser, June 1930
"Now is a time where we have to be very careful about any signals of protectionism." - President Barack Obama, February 19, 2009
“From the purely economic point of view nothing speaks against free trade and everything against protectionism.” - Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973), Austrian economistWhen the economy is booming, foreign borrowings and imports of goods and services from other countries are most welcome. They allow for more spending without inflation and they raise living standards. It is a version of having your cake and eating it too. In an economic downturn, however, the political reflex of populist politicians is to turn protectionist and to become economic isolationists by raising trade barriers. In such an environment, foreign competition becomes a convenient scapegoat for the crisis, even though the causes of such crisis are most often purely domestic in nature.
Can Economic Growth Stop Climate Change?
Rajesh Makwana
Despite the scientific consensus on the urgent need to address the causes of climate change, a stubborn attachment to economic growth by policymakers threatens to disrupt any effective response to the growing environmental crisis. Interim updates in the run up to December’s major Climate Conference in Copenhagen revealed that emissions and temperatures are accelerating more rapidly than expected - leading many to ask why governments and political leaders are doing so little to reduce emissions and mitigate climate change.
But Governor, You Can Create Money! Just Form Your Own Bank
Ellen Brown
“I understand that these cuts are very painful and they affect real lives. This is the harsh reality and the reality that we face. Sacramento is not Washington – we cannot print our own money. We can only spend what we have.” Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger quoted in Time, May 22, 2009
Christmas comes early, Governor. You CAN print your own money. Fiscally solvent North Dakota is doing it . . . and so can California. Now!!!
Israel's little Hitler
Khalid Amayreh
There is always fresh evidence justifying the Israeli-Nazi analogy. In recent days and weeks, a number of Israeli officials and lawmakers proposed "draft laws" that would effectively formalize Israel's de facto racism and seriously restrict the human and civil rights of Israel’s non-Jewish citizens.
One of the proposals being discussed would criminalize the commemoration of Nakba by Palestinians holding the Israeli citizenship. Predictably, the brazenly racist proposal has infuriated Israel’s 1.5-million- strong Palestinian community.
One Israeli Palestinian parliamentarian compared the proposed law with an imagined promulgation by Germany of a law banning all Jewish activities commemorating the holocaust.
American Sham Scam Medical Care
Raymond Ponzini
We have an absolute sham scam of a medical system in the United States. I am presently being hunted by a collection agent for a three-year-old medical bill for $290. Three years ago I took my wife to an emergency room after listening to days of howling about a small but painful rash she had developed at the base of the back of her neck. The fact that I even waited at all is outrageous, but we are too poor to afford a thousand a month for medical insurance, and we are at the mercy of an exploitive American system, which I and many other Americans dread dealing with.
We spent all of two hours at the hospital, ninety eight percent of it waiting to see a doctor. When they finally did see my wife the diagnosis was short and simple. “It’ s shingles. We can’t do anything go home and let it run it’s course.” After that we were directed to a row of desks where clerks working for the hospital made a pitch to us that if we paid our bill immediately it would only be $185 rather than $290. I wanted to do the right thing and the most economical thing so I paid the $185 for the five-minute consultation and went home with a clean conscience thinking I had paid the bill.
Ending Today's Economic Crisis Simply and Easily, in America and Globally
Stephen Lendman
Some of the best ideas are often the simplest. When applied to the global economic crisis, the solution is easier than imagined. What's hard, in fact a Gordian Knot, is the political will to embrace it. But even matters that great can be solved by a bold stoke, and according to legend, Alexander the Great's "Alexandrian solution" was achieved with one stroke of his sword, cutting the Knot in half. Applied to the global economic crisis, it means addressing it with effective policies, not ones wrecking America and other troubled nations worldwide.
Against the Tortured Logic of Obama's Placebo Presidency: A Call for the Audacity of Hopelessness
Phil Rockstroh
...pleasing sound bites and rousing oratory from President Obama...
From time to time, events unfold that are so large in scope, so all-encompassing in their implications that one's initial response is muted by an inability to categorize it all within the realm of experience. Previous reference points prove of little service. One's image of oneself and one's place in the world is under seize, perhaps even in danger of being torn away. One stare's into the abyss, until the abyss removes its dark shades and makes direct eye contact. The mind buzzes; one's thoughts scuttle in circles like stunned insects. On a collective basis, we as a nation are living through such a time. At present, we are witnessing the descending spiral of Icarusian Capitalism; our sacred delusion of the perpetual ascendancy of a god-like market place lies broken in the dust. Malls and Mcmansions stand abandoned, desolate as the edifices of forgotten gods, as the come-ons of the salesmen of deregulated capitalism are churned to spittle amid a cacophony of collapsing market platitudes.
Gaza siege also hits disabled people
Luisa Morgantini
They worked for years for Israeli companies. For years, they paid their taxes and social insurance contributions in Israel in compliance with Israeli labour and fiscal law. But they also had accidents at work suffering serious and invalidating injuries in Israel's factories, building sites or fields.
Until the period following the Oslo agreements, more than 80,000 Palestinian workers left Gaza every morning, arriving at the Eretz border crossing at 4 a.m. in order to be on time for work in Israel; they returned to Gaza after 6 p.m. dead tired but ready to start again the next morning. Progressively during these years, Israel closed its border crossings for people and goods, including Gaza workers, who were in part replaced by new poor Jewish immigrants but above all by Asian and Romanian workers.
Obama's Honeymoon is Over
Len Hart
Barack Obama has had his 100 days! The honeymoon is over! The gloves are off! Mr. Obama, tear down those illegal prisons!
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Two thousand pictures of Americans performing acts of savage torture on prisoners will not be released to the general public if Mr. Obama gets his way. Military commissions will continue to try prisoners outside the scope of American law, and will be free to use brazen hearsay as "hard" evidence against defendants. Mr. Obama continues to cleave to the most abhorrent aspects of Bush-era secrecy policies, and has moved to block a lawsuit filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) on behalf of former CIA agent Valerie Plame, who was outed by Bush administration officials in order to silence her Iraq whistle blower husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson. --William Rivers Pitt, Truthout
Report from Cairo, Tuesday, May 26:
Medea Benjamin
"But all the rest- 66 in total- made it through into Gaza." Photo: Masy Sary
We have some great news to report!!! The day started out with a 3am call from one of our delegations in Al Arish saying that secret police had contacted them at 2pm to intimidate them and say they would not get into Gaza. We, in Cairo, told them to go on to the border and see what happens.
Then at 9am in the morning, when all three groups got in their buses to go to the border, they were stopped at the first checkpoint, surrounded by riot police, and not allowed to even get off the bus. They were told that there were military exercises going on in the area and that they could not move forward to the border. Meanwhile, they saw other cars going in and out. But they were forced to turn around to go back to Al Arish.
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