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Egypt/Turkey-Israel: ‘A clean break’
Eric Walberg
It is not Israel backed by the distant US that inherits the Ottoman mantle of hegemony in the Middle East, but some combination of Turkey and Egypt.
While Egypt’s revolution was very much about domestic matters -- bread and butter, corruption, repression -- its most immediate effects have been international. Not for a long time has Egypt loomed so large in the region, to both friend and foe. At least 13 of the 22 Arab League countries are now affected: Algeria, Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen.
But just as powerful has been the resonance in Israel. It has no precedent for an assertive, democratic neighbour. Except for Turkey.
Egyptian Uprising Overthrows its Zionist Master
Bob Finch
Global Strategic Factors
During the cold war period no liberation movement in any third world country was left to its own devices to fulfill the will of the people through the creation of democratic institutions and a more just society. They were continually corrupted by the superpowers seeking to enhance their global strategic interests in pursuit of global political dominion. The Soviets generally tended to support secretive revolutionary movements which invariably aimed at creating one party states that would be sympathetic to their interests whilst the Americans, aiming to take over from former colonial powers, sought to install dictators who would promote their interests. It might have been thought that, with the end of the cold war, the days when overarching global strategic factors were able to corrupt domestic struggles for a better society would be long gone but the January 15, 2011 uprising in Egypt confirmed the existence of a new strategic factor. This threatened to stymie Egyptians’ liberation struggle. Although this struggle was eventually successful, the new strategic factor could still end up deterring or delaying the completion of this struggle i.e. the creation of a new constitution and democratic institutions.
Craven US veto costs Washington its last shred of credibility
Stuart Littlewood
Hang you head in shame, O Peace Prize laureate.
The Nobel award, said Barack Obama at the time, was “an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations” and must be shared with everyone who strives for "justice and dignity". Where was the justice and dignity in the sad story of America’s UN veto?
Having blocked the United Nations Security Council draft resolution on Friday, which would have condemned Israeli squatter colonies as illegal, Obama has now written America completely out of the script on Middle East peace. Many will see it as a blessing that the US has so spectacularly disqualified itself from serious discussion, and that Obama has finally lifted the scales from the eyes of all those who unwisely invested high hopes in him.
Has Justice Caught A Cold?
Roland Lawrence
In a city obsessed with the fate of the Detroit Lions, it casts a disturbing tell where the sensibilities and priorities of the city’s decision makers lie. It has been several months since Wayne County Procrastinator, I mean, Prosecutor Kym Worthy bailed on her responsibility to determine if Detroit Police Officer Joe Weekly committed murder in the shooting death of 7 year old Aiyana Stanley Jones as she slept in her family’s home on Detroit’s eastside. Worthy “referred” the case to the Michigan State Police citing supposed conflict of interest issues (she’s worried about the appearance of a conflict of interest). Interesting, isn’t it? And thus the case languishes in Lansing -- no doubt in file drawer marked "who cares?" In the meantime Officer Weakley escapes justice and justice for Aiyana escapes official daylight.
Exorcism Versus America’s Naïve Movie Industry
By Thor Thader
“Man … can … surmount all his real enemies … but does he not immediately raise up to himself imaginary enemies, the demons of fancy, who haunt him with superstitious terrors and blast every enjoyment of life?” - Philo in David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
Evil is real—irrespective of personal belief about religion. ‘Evil’, a human word to be sure, as all words are, is mundanely defined as that which is harmful. Any creature therefore, man or animal, has a natural vulnerability to various forms of harm—that is subject to evil’s influence. Our perception of evil may be subjective, relative and egocentric—but so is the skin on our hide and so is equally the state of our imagination. We can be physically harmed and we can experience fear and anxiety. Therefore “we” believe in the reality of evil.
The question has never been whether evil existed—rather it has been one of how to explain it in conjunction with an idea of an all-powerful and supposedly beneficent God. So naturally, the concept of a “devil,” as counter point to a belief in a benign God came along, and continues to work for some. And not too surprisingly such a “motivated” spiritual force has been used to explain much over the centuries.
American Manufacturing Slowly Rotting Away: How Industries Die
Ian Fletcher
I wrote in a previous article about why America's manufacturing sector, despite record output, is actually in very deep trouble: record output doesn't prove the sector healthy when we are running a huge trade deficit in manufactured goods, i.e. consuming more goods than we produce and plugging the gap with asset sales and debt.
But this analysis of the problem only touches the quantitative surface of our ongoing industrial decline. Real industries are not abstract aggregates; they are complex ecosystems of suppliers and supply chains, skills and customer relationships, long-term investments and returns. Deindustrialization is thus a more complex process than is usually realized. It is not just layoffs and crumbling buildings; industries sicken and die in complicated ways.
The Obama Administration's Clueless Trade Diplomacy
Ian Fletcher
Obama clearly doesn't get it yet on trade agreements.
Despite the fact that every major American trade agreement since NAFTA has worsened America's trade balance, he actually seems to think he can improve America's export performance by going for more, starting with a free-trade agreement with South Korea.
So it's worth taking a hard look at why America's trade diplomacy is so chronically dysfunctional. I mean, if the trade agreements our government signs are so disadvantageous to the U.S., why does it sign them in the first place?
The obvious answer is, of course, special interest pressures. Realpolitik in the name of the national interest is a joke; what we have is multinational corporations headquartered in the U.S. passing themselves off as American and calling the shots.
Even worse, many of the largest American companies are now so dependent on their overseas operations, and thus so vulnerable to pressures by foreign governments, that they have become outright Trojan horses with respect to American trade policy. As former congressman Duncan Hunter (R-CA), for years one of the outstanding critics of trade giveaways in Congress, has put it.
A Global Call for Sharing and Justice
Adam Parsons (STWR)
Protesters in the Arab world have much in common with those reacting to austerity across Europe, as well as the millions who have mobilised in support of ending poverty in the South. What we may be witnessing is an emerging public voice in favour of a fundamental reordering of global priorities, write Adam Parsons and Rajesh Makwana.
In a dramatic series of events since late 2010, a new and intensified phase of public protest has erupted across both wealthy and poor regions of the world. Right across Europe, harsh programs of financial austerity have led to escalating protests and mass public campaigns; in the Middle East and North Africa, a revolutionary wave of civil unrest is gripping the international media; and less reported are countless smaller anti-government demonstrations taking place across diverse continents. As commentators struggle to keep up with the rapid unfolding of these events, it is worthwhile to reflect on the basic connections between these varied struggles, and to pose a simple question: are we witnessing the birth of a truly international public voice calling for wealth redistribution and wholesale political reform?
The Empire Loses a Publicist: The Epitaph of an Ideologue
By James Petras
The recent death of one of the United States’ most prominent sociologists, Harvard Professor Daniel Bell, and the effusive eulogies that have accompanied his obituaries highlight the importance of ideological utility over scientific rigor. Typical of the mass media’s hagiographic write-ups is the obituary in the Financial Times (2/12-13/1, p. 5), which claimed that “Few men are given the gift of seeing into the future, but Daniel Bell … was one of them … with uncanny accuracy”. Further on, the ‘puff’ piece pronounced that, “Few thinkers in the second half of the 20th century managed to catch the social and cultural shifts of the times with such range and in such detail as he did”. No doubt there are some important reasons why Bell warrants such effusive praise, but it certainly is not because of his understanding of the political, economic, ideological developments which transpired in the United States during his intellectual life.
A mass murderer named Muammar al-Qaddafi
By Khalid Amayreh
In Libya , the Qaddafi regime's mercenaries, thugs and henchmen have been massacring peaceful demonstrators protesting political tyranny, economic deprivation and the shocking absence of human rights and civil liberties.
In the capital Tripoli, helicopter gunship and even air force fighters have been machineguning unarmed protesters, killing and maiming hundreds.
The scenes of the disfigured bodies of victims, hit from above, can't be described in words. Mercenaries recruited from some African countries have been firing on every moving thing, even ambulances.
Morgues are filled to capacity with dead protesters, most of who with gunshots on the back sides of their bodies, suggesting that the regime's forces had been ordered to shoot to kill anybody moving, including fleeing demonstrators.
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