the ambush of helen thomas

Video - Russia Times on Helen Thomas sacking.

Counterpunch | Let’s say Thomas is saying that the Zionists should have stayed in Europe (where anti-Semitism has greatly diminished in the last half-century, typically flourishing now mainly as a result of Israeli policy towards Palestinians) rather than pursuing their agenda in Palestine under Turkish rule or the British mandate. Maybe she’s saying that it was wrong for the Zionists to terrorize Palestinians into fleeing their villages in the diaspora of 1948. Maybe she’s saying that it’s wrong for Israel to accept any Jew (as defined by the rabbinical establishment) as a citizen while denying hundreds of thousands of Arabs the right to return to their homeland. If so, many agree with her. I do, certainly.

But there are some who demand that we all accept a certain understanding of Israel. Everyone must, to avoid charges of anti-Semitism, agree on these points:

1. The establishment of the state of Israel was absolutely necessary, to prevent the annihilation of the Jewish people in a future holocaust. (This is of course an unproveable assertion. The global Jewish population today is about what it was in the 1910s---about 16 million---and if it is declining it’s mostly because of birth control and intermarriage. The prospect for future Auschwitzes seems minimal.)

2. The Jewish state must be within the boundaries of the ancient state of Israel, as it existed during the (legendary) reign of King David, as described in the Bible. It is the right of Jews to reconstitute that state, from which they were wrongly driven. It has always been theirs, no matter where they roamed. It is their “birthright” to live in Israel. (Tens of millions of Christian Zionists embrace this notion, noting that God, in the Bible, made the Jews his Chosen People and gave them that land. Enough said!)

3. The establishment of the modern state of Israel was the result of a just and humane struggle. The displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs was their own fault, or a consequence of propaganda from Arab regimes urging them to flee. (Israeli historians like the estimable Ilan Pappe have effectively disproven this.)

4. The occupation of the lands invaded in 1967 is necessary as a security measure against Arab anti-Semitism, irrational anti-Jewish hate. (You can maybe advocate withdrawal from the territories, and even promote a two-state solution, without being called anti-Semitic. But if you note matter-of-factly that the occupation is against international law, is cruelly implemented, and produces enormous suffering, expect charges of anti-Semitism.)

If you don’t agree that Israel is a moral exemplar and light to the world, “the only democracy in the Middle East” just attending reasonably to its security needs against a world that is (for no good reason) hostile to itself, you can be hounded, harrassed, intimidated, discredited, denied tenure, fired. Helen was fired. That’s the real outrage here.

“So we waited. And of course, during the waiting of it, the flotilla happened.” Yes. A 19 year old Turkish-American boy (among nine others) was shot to death at close range in the head and back in international waters by Israeli hijackers wo’ve subsequently claimed that that their victims wanted to “lynch” them. They effectively conveyed the message: “Don’t mess with Israel.” And then 89 year old Helen got ambushed (lynched?) by this innocent-looking kid on the street.

The message? Shut up, you critics of Israel, you terrorists, you anti-Semites!

I hope Helen Thomas keeps talking and writing. She’s understood and exposed the brutal realities of recent history, and is much too young to shut up now.

dudus worried about public perception

Video - Jamaica Primetime News.

Jamaica Observer | REVEREND Al Miller says Christopher 'Dudus' Coke maintains he is misunderstood by those who failed to see the many initiatives implemented by him in West Kingston to make the crime rate in that police division the lowest.

Miller, who last met with Coke — now a fugitive — two days before the security forces took control of his Tivoli Gardens stronghold, said Coke spoke openly about, among other things, the role he played in helping the elderly and providing a start to many youth who would otherwise have turned to a life of crime.

Miller said Coke spoke of the perception that the public had of him which caused them to view him differently from who he really is.

"He voiced his concern that his side of the story was not being told," Miller told the Observer on Monday.

Miller said Coke insisted that were it not for his input, violence would be a constant feature of Downtown Kingston. Instead, he said that he tried to do the positives which no one spoke about.

"He felt he took the initiative and called together the men from other communities and encouraged the peace and unity for those areas as well," Miller said.

According to the pastor, Coke not only maintained that crime was the lowest in that police division but he was able to quote exact statistics.

Coke attributed this to his influence in West Kingston.

"He asked why people thought he is trying to create mayhem and war when he has done everything to ensure peace," Miller told the Observer in an interview Monday night.

Coke, Miller said, also spoke of encouraging other communities to examine the development model being used for Tivoli Gardens where many persons were encouraged to start their own small businesses and to stay away from crime and violence.

"He said he tried to get into the heads of youths the need to develop themselves and work and to cease from their violent ways," said Miller, adding that Coke also spoke of helping the elderly, organising after-school programmes within West Kingston while insisting that young children must attend school and be off the streets by a certain time nightly.

explains what's happening in kingston jamaica...,

Video - Nils Gilman Fora.TV Deviant Globalization. Fist tap Dale.

LongNow Foundation | Gilman described deviant globalization as "the unpleasant underside of transnational integration."

There's nice tourism, and then sex tourism, such as in Thailand and Switzerland. The vast pharmacology industry is matched by a vast traffic in illegal drugs. The underside of waste disposal is the criminal dumping in the developing world of toxic wastes from the developed world. Military activities worldwide are fed by a huge gray market in weapons. Internet communications are undermined by floods of malware doubling every year. Among the commodities shipped around the world are exotic hardwoods, endangered species, blood diamonds, and stolen art worth billions in ransom. Illegitimate health care includes the provision of human organs from poor people---you can get a new kidney with no waiting for $150,000 in places like Brazil, the Philippines, Istanbul, and South Africa. Far overwhelming legal immigration are torrents of illegal immigrants who pay large sums to get across borders. And money laundering accounts for 4-12% of world GDP---$1.5 to 5 trillion dollars a year.

These are not marginal, "informal" activities. These are enormous, complex businesses straight out of the Harvard Business Review. The drug business in Mexico, for example, employs 400,000 people. A thousand-dollar kilo of cocaine grows in value by 1400-percent when it crosses into the US---nice profit margin there.

The whole phenomenon is driven by state regulators acting on ethical taboos. When we outlaw or tax certain goods and services, we reduce supply while demand increases, and that provides an irresistible opportunity for risk-taking entrepreneurs.

Also, historian Gilman points out, international development practices are partially to blame. From 1949 to 1989 the Cold War was played out with the US and USSR trying to create new states like themselves. It mostly failed, and it ended with the end of international Communism. Then came the neoliberal "Washington Consensus" theory of structural adjustment---governments in developing countries must "stabilize, privatize, and liberalize." That sort of worked, but it hollowed out the governments and dismantled their regulatory capacity. People in those countries realized they were on their own, forced to "survival entrepreneurship." In some places like Eastern Europe criminals took over the economy.

There is a certain Robin Hood effect on the large scale. Serious money is moving from the rich global north to the poor global south and enriching some people there.

Politically, the deviant entrepreneurs don't want to take over the state, just undermine it. For their own communities they often provide state-like services of infrastructure, health care, and even education. They are "post-modern, post-revolutionary, and post-progressive." They resort to violence against the state only when the state suddenly attacks them---as is playing out in (Kingston Jamaica) Mexico now.

What to do? If you try to shut down the deviant economy, you just make the profit margins greater and exacerbate the problem. If you shrug and legalize everything, you condone hateful practices like child sex slavery and the total deforestation of tropical hardwoods.

We are left with making judicious choices about which deviant practices to take most seriously, and then dealing with them patiently in a non-sudden way, realizing that the unsavory economy will never be fully eradicated.

u.s. bishops scrutinizing foreign born priests...,

WaPo | For the first time, American Catholic bishops have begun tracking complaints of sexual abuse against foreign-trained priests working in this country, raising questions about the screening process in place in U.S. dioceses.

In the U.S. bishops' most recent annual survey, church officials reported that of the 21 clergy sex abuse complaints made in 2009 by minors, nine involved priests sent by overseas dioceses. The information comes when the U.S. church is importing hundreds of priests and has been under intense scrutiny for its handling of sex abuse cases, including the movement of abusers from one country to another.

Though it's only one year of data and does not include details about any of the cases, the number of accusations involving foreign-trained priests has prompted debate within the church and among advocates for victims.

under shadow of 1957, arkansas sits this one out...,

WaPo | As 14 states move forward with a lawsuit to block President Obama's new health-care law, calling it an unconstitutional infringement on state sovereignty, Arkansas is nowhere to be found.

"They tried it here in Arkansas in '57 and it didn't work," Gov. Mike Beebe (D) told reporters recently. "I think you got to tell people the truth. And if I understand the law, the truth is the federal government can't just be defied by the state governments."

There are memorials here to the events of 1957, when a previous Arkansas governor rejected federal authority and tried to prevent nine black students from attending all-white Little Rock Central High School. It took U.S. soldiers to protect the students, who made history during an epic struggle over racism and federal power.

To Beebe and Attorney General Dustin McDaniel (D), the lawsuits filed last week and a states'-rights measure proposed for the November ballot are unwelcome echoes. In the face of an implicit request from 33 Republican state legislators to enlist in the court fight, McDaniel remains unmoved.

"I would be abusing my office to bring a suit that I believe to be constitutionally frivolous," McDaniel said in a telephone interview. "State budgets are tight enough right now without bringing actions that are entirely driven by political motivation rather than sound legal justification."

The Arkansas experience in the 1950s rubbed the state raw and delivered a resounding defeat to segregationists, who made arguments similar to the ones launched by opponents of the Democratic-led health-care overhaul.

The central issues, according to many "tea party" protesters and Republican lawmakers, are personal freedom and state sovereignty and the role of the federal government in both spheres.

As Virginia legislators debated a law making it illegal for Congress to require the purchase of health insurance, Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II (R) called Obama's proposals an "onslaught on our liberty."

"In seeking to protect the liberties guaranteed by the Constitution," Cuccinelli wrote in this month's American Spectator, "we are vigorously pursuing freedom for our citizens in the face of a government that, no matter how well intentioned, seeks to expand its power at citizens' expense."

In 1956, two years after the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education overturned the concept of separate but equal, every member of the Arkansas congressional delegation signed "The Southern Manifesto." It declared that the court had abused its power and encroached "on rights reserved to the states and the people."

Parents, the manifesto said, "should not be deprived by government of the rights to direct the lives and education of their own children." The changes were happening "without regard to the consent of the governed" -- a mantra of tea party protesters and Republican members of Congress who voted against the Democrats' health-care bills.

Also in 1956, Gov. Orval E. Faubus (D) was quoted as saying that "neither the state of Arkansas nor its people delegated to the federal government . . . the power to regulate or control the operation of the domestic institutions of Arkansas."

whose country is it?

NYTimes | The far-right extremists have gone into conniptions.

The bullying, threats, and acts of violence following the passage of health care reform have been shocking, but they’re only the most recent manifestations of an increasing sense of desperation.

It’s an extension of a now-familiar theme: some version of “take our country back.” The problem is that the country romanticized by the far right hasn’t existed for some time, and its ability to deny that fact grows more dim every day. President Obama and what he represents has jolted extremists into the present and forced them to confront the future. And it scares them.

Even the optics must be irritating. A woman (Nancy Pelosi) pushed the health care bill through the House. The bill’s most visible and vocal proponents included a gay man (Barney Frank) and a Jew (Anthony Weiner). And the black man in the White House signed the bill into law. It’s enough to make a good old boy go crazy.

Hence their anger and frustration, which is playing out in ways large and small. There is the current spattering of threats and violence, but there also is the run on guns and the explosive growth of nefarious antigovernment and anti-immigrant groups. In fact, according to a report entitled “Rage on the Right: The Year in Hate and Extremism” recently released by the Southern Poverty Law Center, “nativist extremist” groups that confront and harass suspected immigrants have increased nearly 80 percent since President Obama took office, and antigovernment “patriot” groups more than tripled over that period.

Politically, this frustration is epitomized by the Tea Party movement. It may have some legitimate concerns (taxation, the role of government, etc.), but its message is lost in the madness. And now the anemic Republican establishment, covetous of the Tea Party’s passion, is moving to adsorb it, not admonish it. Instead of jettisoning the radical language, rabid bigotry and rising violence, the Republicans justify it. (They don’t want to refute it as much as funnel it.)

There may be a short-term benefit in this strategy, but it’s a long-term loser.

A Quinnipiac University poll released on Wednesday took a look at the Tea Party members and found them to be just as anachronistic to the direction of the country’s demographics as the Republican Party. For instance, they were disproportionately white, evangelical Christian and “less educated ... than the average Joe and Jane Six-Pack.” This at a time when the country is becoming more diverse (some demographers believe that 2010 could be the first year that most children born in the country will be nonwhite), less doctrinally dogmatic, and college enrollment is through the roof. The Tea Party, my friends, is not the future.

You may want “your country back,” but you can’t have it. That sound you hear is the relentless, irrepressible march of change. Welcome to America: The Remix.

israel, obama, and the doomsday weapon

CounterPunch | WHAT BEGAN as an insult to the Vice President of the United States is developing into something far bigger. The mouse has given birth to an elephant.

Lately, the ultra-right government in Jerusalem has started to treat President Barack Obama with thinly veiled contempt. The fears that arose in Jerusalem at the beginning of his term have dissipated. Obama looks to them like a paper black panther. He gave up his demand for a real settlement freeze. Every time he was spat on, he remarked that it was raining.

Yet now, ostensibly quite suddenly, the measure is full. Obama, his Vice President and his senior assistants condemn the Netanyahu government with growing severity. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has submitted an ultimatum: Netanyahu must stop all settlement activity, East Jerusalem included; he must agree to negotiate about all core problems of the conflict, including East Jerusalem, and more.

The surprise was complete. Obama, it seems, has crossed the Rubicon, much as the Egyptian army had crossed the Suez Canal in 1973. Netanyahu gave the order to mobilize all the reserves in America and to move forward all the diplomatic tanks. All Jewish organizations in the US were commanded to join the campaign. AIPAC blew the shofar and ordered its soldiers, the Senators and Congressmen, to storm the White House.

It seems that the decisive battle has been joined. The Israeli leaders were certain that Obama would be defeated.

And then an unusual noise was heard: the sound of the doomsday weapon.

* * *

THE MAN who decided to activate it was a foe of a new kind.

David Petraeus is the most popular officer of the United States army. The four-star general, son of a Dutch sea captain who went to America when his country was overrun by the Nazis, stood out from early childhood. In West Point he was a “distinguished cadet”, in Army Command and General Staff College he was No. 1. As a combat commander, he reaped plaudits. He wrote his doctoral thesis (on the lessons of Vietnam) at Princeton and served as an assistant professor for international relations in the US Military Academy.

He made his mark in Iraq, when he commanded the forces in Mosul, the most problematical city in the country. He concluded that in order to vanquish the enemies of the US he must win over the hearts of the civilian population, acquire local allies and spend more money than ammunition. The locals called him King David. His success was considered so outstanding that his methods were adopted as the official doctrine of the American army.

His star rose rapidly. He was appointed commander of the coalition forces in Iraq and soon became the chief of the Central Command of the US army, which covers the whole Middle East , except Israel and Palestine (which “belong” to the American command in Europe).

When such a person raises his voice, the American people listen. As a respected military thinker, he has no rivals.

* * *

THIS WEEK, Petraeus conveyed an unequivocal message: after reviewing the problems in his AOR (Area Of Responsibility) – which includes, among others, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and Yemen – he turned to what he called the “root causes of instability” in the region. The list was topped by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In his report to the Armed Services Committee he stated: “The enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests in the AOR…The conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel. Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples in the AOR and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support. The conflict also gives Iran influence in the Arab world through its clients, Lebanese Hizballah and Hamas.”

Not content with that, Petraeus sent his officers to present his conclusions to the Joint Chiefs of Staff,

In other words: Israeli-Palestinian peace is not a private matter between the two parties, but a supreme national interest of the USA. That means that the US must give up its one-sided support for the Israeli government and impose the two-state solution.

tea partiers at the big tent

WaPo | About 50 leaders of the grass-roots "tea party" movement will meet in Washington on Tuesday with Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele and other top GOP operatives to discuss campaign strategies and conservative principles.

The afternoon meeting on Capitol Hill will mark the first time that a broad coalition of tea party organizers -- who have railed against both the Democratic and the Republican establishments -- will sit down with GOP leaders. Top Republican leaders have been openly courting the organizers, looking to marshal grass-roots energy heading into November's midterm elections.

Karin Hoffman, founder of DC Works For Us, a tea party group in South Florida, said she initiated the meeting by approaching Steele last month and asking him to sit down with a range of tea party organizers. She said her goal is to open a civil dialogue with the GOP leadership, but she dismissed any suggestion that tea party groups might merge with the Republican Party.

"From the get-go, the grass-roots movement emerged from people desiring to be heard and not feeling like their voices are being heard in Washington," Hoffman said in an interview. "This is the beginning of a formal discussion with the political establishment."

RNC spokeswoman Katie Wright said Steele plans to listen to concerns of tea party leaders and hopes to discuss such issues as lower taxes and smaller government. "The chairman believes it is extremely important to listen to this significant grass-roots movement and work to find common ground in order to elect officials that will protect these principles," she said.

the world is a ghetto....,

NYTimes | A decade ago, New York City officials were so reluctant to give out food stamps, they made people register one day and return the next just to get an application. The welfare commissioner said the program caused dependency and the poor were “better off” without it.

Now the city urges the needy to seek aid (in languages from Albanian to Yiddish). Neighborhood groups recruit clients at churches and grocery stores, with materials that all but proclaim a civic duty to apply — to “help New York farmers, grocers, and businesses.” There is even a program on Rikers Island to enroll inmates leaving the jail.

“Applying for food stamps is easier than ever,” city posters say.

The same is true nationwide. After a U-turn in the politics of poverty, food stamps, a program once scorned as “welfare,” enjoys broad new support. Following deep cuts in the 1990s, Congress reversed course to expand eligibility, cut red tape and burnish the program’s image, with a special effort to enroll the working poor. These changes, combined with soaring unemployment, have pushed enrollment to record highs, with one in eight Americans now getting aid.

“I’ve seen a remarkable shift,” said Senator Richard G. Lugar, an Indiana Republican and prominent food stamp supporter. “People now see that it’s necessary to have a strong food stamp program.”

The revival began a decade ago, after tough welfare laws chased millions of people from the cash rolls, many into low-wage jobs as fast-food workers, maids, and nursing aides. Newly sympathetic officials saw food stamps as a way to help them. For states, the program had another appeal: the benefits are federally paid.

But support also turned on chance developments, including natural disasters (which showed the program’s value in emergencies) and the rise of plastic benefit cards (which eased stigma and fraud). The program has commercial allies, in farmers and grocery stores, and it got an unexpected boost from President George W. Bush, whose food stamp administrator, Eric Bost, proved an ardent supporter.

“I assure you, food stamps is not welfare,” Mr. Bost said in a recent interview.

naked banksterism

NYTimes | If the Democratic Party has a stronghold on Wall Street, it is JPMorgan Chase. Its chief executive, Jamie Dimon, is a friend of President Obama’s from Chicago, a frequent White House guest and a big Democratic donor. Its vice chairman, William M. Daley, a former Clinton administration cabinet official and Obama transition adviser, comes from Chicago’s Democratic dynasty.

But this year Chase’s political action committee is sending the Democrats a pointed message. While it has contributed to some individual Democrats and state organizations, it has rebuffed solicitations from the national Democratic House and Senate campaign committees. Instead, it gave $30,000 to their Republican counterparts.

The shift reflects the hard political edge to the industry’s campaign to thwart Mr. Obama’s proposals for tighter financial regulations.

Just two years after Mr. Obama helped his party pull in record Wall Street contributions — $89 million from the securities and investment business, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics — some of his biggest supporters, like Mr. Dimon, have become the industry’s chief lobbyists against his regulatory agenda.

Republicans are rushing to capitalize on what they call Wall Street’s “buyer’s remorse” with the Democrats. And industry executives and lobbyists are warning Democrats that if Mr. Obama keeps attacking Wall Street “fat cats,” they may fight back by withholding their cash.

“If the president doesn’t become a little more balanced and centrist in his approach, then he will likely lose that support,” said Kelly S. King, the chairman and chief executive of BB&T. Mr. King is a board member of the Financial Services Roundtable, which lobbies for the biggest banks, and last month he helped represent the industry at a private dinner at the Treasury Department.

“I understand the public outcry,” he continued. “We have a 17 percent real unemployment rate, people are hurting, and they want to see punishment. But the political rhetoric just incites more animosity and gets people riled up.”

is the imf gonna have to choke a greece?

NYTimes | European leaders are quietly considering whether to come to the aid of their troubled neighbor Greece amid fears that the nation might default on its debts and unleash another round of financial crisis.

Only a month after Dubai was rescued by its neighboring emirate Abu Dhabi, Germany, France and other European powers are discussing whether Greece might need a bailout too.

After a decade of debt-fueled profligacy, Greece is confronting what amounts to a run on the bank. And, despite repeated assurances from Athens, the nation’s strained finances have put already jittery financial markets on edge. On Thursday, the worries stretched all the way to Wall Street, where the stock market sank 1.1 percent.

Some economists worry that Greece’s troubles could have deep and lasting repercussions for Europe. The crisis poses complex challenges for the euro, which Greece adopted in 2001. The currency sank to a six-month low against the dollar and yen on Thursday.

“Greece failing is not an option, and lots of people think that we will have to intervene at some stage,” said one European finance official, who was not permitted to speak publicly on the matter. “It doesn’t have to happen, and we hope it won’t, but it would be better than seeing a default.”

The shape and scale of a bailout package, if any, has yet to be determined, according to officials in several European capitals. Whether the International Monetary Fund might become involved is uncertain. Some European leaders want Europe to fix this problem itself, while others are open to working with the I.M.F.

right-wing flame war (ditching racists and fascists is hard to do)

NYTimes | By virtue of his willingness to do and share research, his personal embrace of a hawkish, populist anger and his extraordinary Web savvy, Johnson quickly turned Little Green Footballs (or L.G.F., as it is commonly known) into one of the most popular personal sites on the Web, and himself — the very model of a Los Angeles bohemian — into an avatar of the American right wing. With a daily audience in the hundreds of thousands, the career sideman had moved to the center of the stage.

Now it is eight years later, and Johnson, who is 56, sits in the ashes of an epic flame war that has destroyed his relationships with nearly every one of his old right-wing allies. People who have pledged their lives to fighting Islamic extremism, when asked about Charles Johnson now, unsheathe a word they do not throw around lightly: “evil.” Glenn Beck has taken the time to denounce him on air and at length. Johnson himself (Mad King Charles is one of his most frequent, and most printable, Web nicknames) has used his technical know-how to block thousands of his former readers not just from commenting on his site but even, in many cases, from viewing its home page. He recently moved into a gated community, partly out of fear, he said, that the venom directed at him in cyberspace might jump its boundaries and lead someone to do him physical harm. He has turned forcefully against Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, nearly every conservative icon you can name. And answering the question of what, or who, got to Charles Johnson has itself become a kind of boom genre on the Internet.

“It’s just so illogical,” Geller told me heatedly not long ago. “I loved him. I respected him. But the way he went after people was like a mental illness. There’s an evil to that, a maliciousness. He’s a traitor, a turncoat, a plant. We may not know for years what actually happened. You think he changed his mind?”

feeding insurgency

BBCNews | "The malnutrition problem in Afghanistan, and especially Parwan province, is very bad. That's because of the years of fighting, the damage to our infrastructure and rising unemployment.

"It's all helped to make things worse," he said.

Deep discontent
The statistics bear him out: officially, unemployment is about 40%, though it is probably far higher than that; of those who do have a job in Parwan, 45% earn less than $1 a day; chronic malnutrition for children under five across Afghanistan is 54%.

And perhaps most surprising of all, on a UN scale of human development indicators, Afghanistan has slipped from 117th in the world, to 181st - second from the bottom - since the Taliban were ousted.

Professor Sayed Massood, an economist from Kabul University, believes that backsliding is responsible for much of the deep discontent with the government, and growing support for the insurgency.
Vegetables for sale at a market
Even farm workers are suffering from malnutrition

He blames the crisis of public confidence on the policy of pouring billions of dollars in development aid into regions where the insurgency is strongest.

"Instead of the benefits [of aid] going to friends, they are going to enemies. We needed to spend money in the places where the people believe in democracy and work for the government.

"But instead only the enemies are getting rich," he said.

"We need to set examples of peaceful provinces that are also prosperous, but that's just not happening."

Prof Massood argues that the international community has adopted an aid policy that has been entirely counter-productive.

"They have politicised aid; they have tried to use their money to bring about political change in the frontline provinces - they have tried to bribe their enemies.

"But they don't understand that it works the other way around. If you improve the economics of the people, the politics will follow. If you don't, you will lose them."

That might explain why the insurgency appears to be spreading to parts of the country that until now have been relatively peaceful.

small chinese firm gives goldman sachs the finger

Reuters | A small Chinese power generator on Tuesday rejected demands from a Goldman Sachs unit to pay for nearly $80 million lost on two oil hedging contracts, part of a long-running dispute over how China deals with derivatives losses.

Goldman Sachs (GS.N) was one of the foreign banks, along with Citigroup (C.N), Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley (MS.N), blamed by the state assets watchdog for providing "extremely complicated" and difficult to understand derivatives products.

Shenzhen Nanshan Power (000037.SZ) (200037.SZ) said in a statement that it received several notices from J. Aron & Company, a trading subsidiary of Goldman Sachs (GS.N), for at least $79.96 million as compensation for terminating oil option contracts.

"We will not accept the demand by J. Aron for all the losses and related interests," said Nanshan, in line with the stance it took last December.

"We will try our best to negotiate with J. Aron and resolve the dispute peacefully...but the possibility of using a lawsuit can not be ruled out when talks fail," it added.

"J. Aron told us in one notice that if we do not pay the money, they will reserve the right to launch a lawsuit and will not send us any further notice."

The State Assets Supervision and Administration Commission said in September that it would back state-owned companies in any legal action against the foreign banks that sold them oil derivatives, which resulted in losses when oil prices dived late last year.

A Beijing-based Goldman Sachs corporate communication official declined to comment.

are american drone attacks counterproductive?

Der Spiegel | SPIEGEL: Since you are already letting the US carry out its drone attacks against militants on Pakistani territory along the border with Afghanistan, why don't you let them help you with soldiers on Pakistani territory?

Part 2: We Need Huge Public Support to Combat Terrorism
Gilani: We haven't stopped them from helping us. In fact, we have a multi-dimensional cooperation with the United States, including defense and intelligence, but also economics, trade, development, health education and even in cultural affairs. But these drone attacks are counterproductive.

SPIEGEL: Really? The leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, was killed by an American drone. Don't you call this a success?

Gilani: The political and the military leadership have been very successful in isolating the militants from the local tribes. But once there is a drone attack in their home region, they get united again. This is a dangerous trend, and it is my concern and the concern of the army. It is also counterproductive in the sense that it is creating a lot of anti-American sentiment all over the country. But in order to fight the militants in Waziristan, we have to carry the public with us. One cannot go into any war without the support of the masses. We need huge public support to combat terrorism. But we do not get that if there is American interference, which we do not ask for.

SPIEGEL: But no matter what the Americans do, there will always be anti-American sentiment.

Gilani: Right now, the whole nation is supporting our military action because they feel that terrorism is a menace.

dubai and abu dhabi

NYTimes | Dubai is seen as the brash, secular upstart of the seven emirates, and Abu Dhabi is known as the religious and conservative big brother. Tensions between the two are common, but when reporters questioned Sheik Mohammed of Dubai about problems last week, he told them to “shut up.”

Nevertheless, the debt crisis of the last few days has fed the speculation that Abu Dhabi would impose conditions for any bailout, including a stake in prominent Dubai enterprises like Emirates Airlines. Officials of the federation have rejected those rumors.

The United Arab Emirates’ central bank said in a statement Sunday that it would stand behind foreign and domestic banks operating in the emirates. It did not mention Dubai World, which is $59 billion in debt.

Analysts said the statement would not be enough to allay fears that the Dubai government could default on part of its sovereign debt.

Still, as fear from Dubai’s debt crisis circled the globe, an unaccustomed quiet settled here at the center of the storm.

Foreign bankers and other professionals here are simmering in anxiety as the world talks about Dubai like a bad seed of the global economy.

“A lot of people are pretty freaked out,” said one American businessman with long experience in the region, who spoke on condition he not be identified for fear of repercussions. “They’re all watching CNN and going: ‘Is Dubai going to default?’ ”

Many in Dubai have a different perspective.

“Dubai is a victim of media distortion,” wrote one reader to a Web forum of one of the emirates’ most popular newspapers. “All the Western countries have ganged up on Dubai. Why? Because it has succeeded.”

Another reader wrote, “This is all because of jealousy from the Western world,” adding that “Dubai has been at the forefront of development in the Arab world.”

Many Dubai citizens seem inclined to dismiss all talk of tension among the emirates, saying that they are not worried about their country’s future.

“Only a few decades ago, this country was nothing, just a desert,” said Thani al-Falaasi, a 31-year-old Emirati businessman who was shopping Sunday with a friend in the Dubai Mall. Referring to Dubai’s leader, Sheik Mohammed, he said: “He built it up. Even if there is a crisis, he can solve it. We have great confidence in him.”

inequality as u.s. policy since 1979

Post Autistic Economics Review | Since the end of the 1970s, the United States has seen a dramatic increase in economic inequality. While the United States has long been among the most unequal of the world’s rich economies, the economic and social upheaval that began in the 1970s was a striking departure from the movement toward greater equality that began in the Great Depression, continued through World War II, and was a central feature of the first 30 years of the postwar period.

Despite the magnitude of the rise in inequality, the political discourse in the United States refers only obliquely to these developments. The public debate generally acknowledges neither the scale of the increase in inequality nor, except in the most superficial way, the causes of this sudden and sustained turn of events.

This short essay seeks to provide an alternative view of the postwar period in the United States, particularly of the last three decades. My argument is that the high and rising inequality in the United States is the direct result of a set of policies designed first and foremost to increase inequality. These policies, in turn, have their roots in a significant shift in political power against workers and in favor of their employers, a shift that began in the 1970s and continues through today.

The first section of the paper briefly documents the size of the rise in U.S. inequality and puts this change into historical context. The second section sketches an explanation for rising inequality, one that differs from the deeply rooted, but poorly articulated vision that lurks just below the surface of polite political discourse in the United States. The final section focuses on an important part of inequality in the United States that does not receive the attention it deserves.