From 1600 PA Ave. MSNBC 2.27.09
Everybody Look What’s Goin Down…
Day: February 28, 2009
Bill Moyers Journal: Racism + Robert Johnson + Alison Des Forges
Bill Moyers Journal
February 27, 2009
John McWhorter
Scholar John McWhorter weighs in on whether the U.S. is “a nation of cowards,” as Attorney General Eric Holder suggests, on racial issues.
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Robert Johnson
Bill Moyers talks with economist Robert Johnson, who decodes this week’s news on the bank bailout, with a hard look at the international ramifications of the plan and a discussion of why nationalization has become a flash point.
via Bill Moyers Journal . Watch & Listen | PBS (videos below)
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In Memorium
[…] Alison Des Forges, one of the fifty people who died two weeks ago in that plane crash near Buffalo. Regrettably, I didn’t know about Alison Des Forges until her death, although I do know and admire the organization with which she worked, Human Rights Watch.
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Robert Johnson
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Ni’lin pays tribute to Jewish victims of the Holocaust
Crossposted with permission from Jewish Peace News
Jewish Peace News
2.28.09
And Now For Something Completely Different
For a change of pace from our usual dose of death and destruction, an inspiring story:
The village of Ni’lin has paid a particularly high price for its struggle against the Wall and annexation of its lands, including two children who were shot and killed by the Israeli Army in the summer of 2008. Nevertheless, the people of the village continue to protest at least once a week against the Wall, joined by Israeli activists, in particular Anarchists Against the Wall, as well as international activists.
The article below tells the remarkable story of how the people of Ni’lin have put together an exhibit to honor International Holocaust Remembrance Day and commemorate the near destruction of European Jewry under the Nazis.
Activists who have been in Ni’lin recently told me that the reason they heard for the village committee putting together the exhibit was this: if Israeli activists care enough to come to their village to learn about the Palestinian struggle and act in solidarity with Palestinians, they feel obligated to learn Jewish history as well.
This is what solidarity looks like.
–Rebecca Vilkomerson
Ni’lin pays tribute to Jewish victims of the Holocaust
by George H. Hale
BETHLEHEM – Every Friday, the West Bank village of Ni’lin is home to some of the most violent clashes between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian, Israeli and international demonstrators.
Each week, activists from the village’s Land Defence Committee stage demonstrations at the Separation Barrier which cuts off as much as half the village’s farmland and water from its inhabitants.
Mosaic News – 2/27/09: World News From The Middle East
Warning
This video may contain images depicting the reality and horror of war/violence and should only be viewed by a mature audience.
Mosaic needs your help! Donate here: http://linktv.org/contribute
Headlines coming soon. Produced for Link TV by Jamal Dajani.
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Obama announces plan to continue US military occupation of Iraq
The Beeper Cacophony by Walter Brasch
by Walter Brasch
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.walterbrasch.com
February 28, 2009
Barack Obama was determined that the only way anyone was going to take away his BlackBerry was if they pried it from his cold dead hands. Or, something to that effect.
The President justifiably relies upon his BlackBerry, but many rely upon electronic communications as a status symbol or as a crutch so they don’t have to make decisions or engage in face-to-face conversations. Such was the case at a party I thought I might have attended.
It might have been an enjoyable party, but I didn’t experience much of it since pagers, cell phones, Palm Treos, and BlackBerries were going off all evening, and all I heard were excuses of why used car salesmen, real estate agents, and grocery store clerks had to break off conversations to answer the calls of nature.
“So, what’s your sign?” a striking brunette asked me, only to excuse herself when one of her cell phones chimed some hip-hop music. Apparently her sign was Ice-T, with AT&T rising.
Focus on Gaza: Policing Gaza
Warning
This video may contain images depicting the reality and horror of war/violence and should only be viewed by a mature audience.
Focus on Gaza offers a rare look at what life is like for ordinary people inside the Gaza Strip. In this episode: It has been two months since Israel’s war on Gaza began with a devastating air strike on a police academy. Lauren Taylor reports from Gaza on the impact of that strike on the affected families and on the job of policing itself. Also, host Imran Garda talks to Usama Hamdan, a senior Hamas official, about attempts at Palestinian reconciliation. And, in the first of our weekly glimpses into family life in Gaza, we catch up with the incredible story of the Samouni children.
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Inside Iraq: US construction fraud, with Patrick Cockburn
The criminal investigation by US authorities into the alleged role of senior military officers in the misuse of $125bn allocated for the reconstruction of Iraq, could turn out to be the biggest fraud case in US history. Inside Iraq discusses this case.
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Obama announces plan to continue US military occupation of Iraq
By Joseph Kishore
http://www.wsws.org
28 February 2009
President Obama formally announced his administration’s plans for the continued US military occupation of Iraq on Friday, in remarks delivered at the Camp Lejeune marine base in North Carolina. Far from bringing the war to an end, the plans will maintain present troop levels for one year and ensure a substantial military presence for at least three years, through the end of 2011.
As leaked to the press earlier this week, Obama’s plan calls for the withdrawal of all “combat troops” by August 31, 2010, 19 months after his inauguration. This means that the US military presence will continue at present levels through the Iraqi elections scheduled in the fall, ensuring that the occupying forces can maintain a watchful eye over the “democratic” process.
Beginning next year, troops are scheduled to be gradually transferred out of Iraq, leaving a “residual force” of up to 50,000 soldiers after August 2010. Although referred to by the administration as “non-combat troops,” this is a verbal sleight-of-hand, as they will continue to be involved in combat activities. Obama said that these soldiers will be involved in “training, equipping, and advising Iraqi Security Forces as long as they remain non-sectarian; conducting targeted counter-terrorism missions; and protecting our ongoing civilian and military efforts within Iraq.”
[…]
via Obama announces plan to continue US military occupation of Iraq
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Warning to the US: beware treating Afghanistan like Iraq by Patrick Cockburn
The war on Wall Street terror By Jerry Mazza
By Jerry Mazza
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
crossposted at Online Journal
www.jerrymazza.com
Feb 28, 2009
It’s funny that during the run-up to the first War on Terror, Wall Street had such an active hand in exploiting the tragedy of 9/11. Thousands upon thousands of puts short-sold United and American Airlines stocks and WTC-based Morgan Stanley stock plunged; similarly calls (bets to rise) on defense and related stocks sent them soaring on that awful day, the War on Terror’s inciting incident.
Today, we can count on Wall Street again to supply us with what Warren Buffett calls Weapons of Mass Financial Destruction to strike terror not just in the hearts of investors, but workers, businessmen, retired people, the unemployed, the middle-and-working classes and the poor, leaving our financial system like another Ground Zero, with masses of open-mouthed crowds and teary-eyed families hovering about it, losing resources and jobs that took a lifetime to grow.
We’ve come so easily to live with terms like derivates, credit default swaps, subprime lending, toxic mortgages, collateralized debt obligations, all of which we’re told by the OTHER KATHERINE HARRIS add up to some “$1.4 Quadrillion, more money than there is in all the world (at least till Ben Bernanke turned on the printing press lately).” They are lethal in the extreme, created by a shadow market, a criminal market, designed to loot our financial system.
These are instruments of debt created for profit, by a handful of big banksters and credit companies, knowing how harmful they could be to banking, mortgage lending, and any credit institutions. Salesmen for the aforementioned made beaucoup cash on commissions, shoving them downstream to investment banks, securities and bond firms, and watching them collateralized into stocks and bonds, sold into corporate, union, institutional and private portfolios, retirement funds, IRAs, 401Ks, name it.
Monetize This! A Better Way To Fund The Stimulus Package by Dr. Ellen Brown
by Dr. Ellen Hodgson Brown
featured writer
Dandelion Salad
Ellen’s post
webofdebt.com
Feb. 28, 2009
“Diseases desperate grown are by desperate appliances relieved, or not at all.” – Shakespeare, “Hamlet”
Moody’s credit rating agency is warning that the U.S. government’s AAA credit rating is at risk, because it has taken on so much debt that there are few creditors left to underwrite it. Foreigners have bought as much as two-thirds of U.S. debt in recent years, but they could be doing much less purchasing of U.S. Treasury securities in the future, not so much out of a desire to chastise America as simply because they won’t have the funds to do it. Oil prices have fallen off a cliff and the U.S. purchase of foreign exports has dried up, slashing the surpluses that those countries previously recycled back into U.S. Treasuries. And domestic buyers of securities, to the extent that they can be found, will no doubt demand substantially higher returns than the rock-bottom interest rates at which Treasuries are available now.1
Who, then, is left to buy the government’s debt and fund President Obama’s $900 billion stimulus package? The taxpayers are obviously tapped out, so the money will have to be borrowed; but borrowed from whom? The pool of available lenders is shrinking fast. Morever, servicing the federal debt through private lenders imposes a crippling interest burden on the U.S. Treasury. The interest tab was $412 billion in fiscal year 2008, or about one-third of the federal government’s total income from personal income taxes ($1,220 billion in 2008). The taxpayers not only cannot afford the $900 billion; they cannot afford to increase their interest payments. But what is the alternative?
Dandelion Salad 