Links June 9 09
- Report from Gaza: 'We are a human experiment' - Mondoweiss - must read
- Peled proposes Israeli sanctions on US - JPost - file under 'Today's joke'
- Netanyahu convinced Obama seeks clash with Israel to appease Arabs - Haaretz
- Israeli attack on USS Liberty - ICH - 42 years ago ...
- Global weapons spending hits record levels - Guardian
- Ugly but interesting in Strasbourg (alt link) - Rachman/FT on the EU election
- Treasury yields rise further on rate talks (alt link) - FT
- China influence to grow faster than most expect: Soros - Reuters
- Supreme Court Delays Sale of Chrysler to Fiat - NYT - This might well mean the end for Chrysler
Please add your links, views and news in the comments.
Posted by b on June 9, 2009 at 6:27 UTC | Permalink
Whoops, second link Kathy YOUNG at 60 years of age.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9FZeNOouMM>Who's Sorry Now For the clown I guess.
Posted by: anna missed | Jun 9 2009 7:42 utc | 2
Recently Released Gitmo Detainee Talks to ABC News
Oddly, Boumediene said no one at Gitmo ever asked him about the alleged plot to blow up the embassies in Sarajevo. They wanted to know what he knew about al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, he recounted, which was nothing.Boumediene said it was in his interest to lie to the interrogators, who would reward the detainees if they admitted guilt.
"If I tell my interrogator, I am from Al Qaeda, I saw Osama bin Laden, he was my boss, I help him, they will tell me, 'Oh you are a good man,'" he said. "But if I refuse ? I tell them I'm innocent, never was I terrorist, never never, they tell me. 'You are, you are not cooperating, I have to punch you.'"
Re the delay in the Chrysler sale, the Blue Indiana site provides further insights into the Indiana state treasurer behind this move:
"Most people probably didn't -- and still don't -- have any idea that Richard Mourdock is our state treasurer. But with the guy running around the cable television circuit spewing fire and brimstone, it's become difficult to ignore the geologist-by-trade's evolution from wallflower to partisan flamethrower.
And with an estimated $2 million being spent by Mourdock in his legal battle against the Chrysler deal, Hoosier taxpayers should definitely start paying attention to a public official who appears to be more interested in his own political crusades than the people who he has pledged to protect.
An appeals court in New York approved the sale Friday but gave objectors until this afternoon to try to get the Supreme Court to intervene. Chrysler LLC wants to sell the bulk of its assets to a group led by Italy's Fiat Group SpA as part of its plan to emerge from bankruptcy protection.
The emergency requests went first to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who handles such matters from New York. She can act on her own or refer it to the entire court.
The Indiana State Police Pension Fund, the Indiana Teacher's Retirement Fund and the state's Major Moves Construction Fund claim the deal unfairly favors the interests of Chrysler's unsecured stakeholders ahead of those of secured debtholders such as the funds.
Two things of note here: (1) If Mourdock actually won, tens of thousands of families could see their jobs or pensions thrown into uncertainty, which last time I checked, was not a good thing for a state already reeling from job losses. (2) The story being lost amidst the grandstanding here is that Mourdock himself was and is responsible for making safe investments on behalf of these funds. And if that's the case, our state treasurer is probably deserving of more than a few questions as to why he was still investing in such risky bonds late last year."
Posted by: Maxcrat | Jun 9 2009 10:33 utc | 4
Following commentary in another thread on the O-man’s Cairo speech, sorry to be late, I finally read it.
Lots of leftist kumbaya guff - not very different from that of the ‘right.’
On another level it struck me as position-diplomacy. Which entails adopting a position, taking a stance, and then not wavering. Naturally in RL diplomacy the position must make sense, unless one is being deliberately provocative. And then what? Nothing. One has done one’s job! That’s it. One goes home or plays golf. Very common.
From the analytical end, one might describe it as anti-Huntingdon, the war of civilization is over! and post-Gramscian, ideology trumps all and comes first, or more sneakily, cultural hegemony will prevail. Heh.
Politically empty. Culturally, the message is traditional.
Bush is more forceful, comprehensible, and comes over as more heart-felt, better grounded:
Bush: The attacks of Sept. 11 and the continued efforts of these extremists to engage in violence against civilians has led some in my country to view Islam as inevitably hostile not only to America and Western countries, but also to human rights. (...)
Like the good folks standing with me, the American people were appalled and outraged at last Tuesday's attacks. And so were Muslims all across the world. Both Americans and Muslim friends and citizens, tax-paying citizens, and Muslims in nations were just appalled and could not believe what we saw on our TV screens. (...) These acts of violence against innocents violate the fundamental tenets of the Islamic faith. (...) The English translation is not as eloquent as the original Arabic, but let me quote from the Koran, itself: (...) When we think of Islam we think of a faith that brings comfort to a billion people around the world. Billions of people find comfort and solace (...) The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That's not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace. These terrorists don't represent peace. They represent evil and war. (...)
Bush, like Obama, went on to discuss ladies’ apparel:
Women who cover their heads in this country must feel comfortable going outside their homes. Moms who wear cover must be not intimidated in America. That's not the America I know. That's not the America I value.
Bush ended with: And may God bless us all.
Obama: And may God's peace be upon you.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/military/terroristattack/bush_speech_9-17.html>bush on sept. 17, 01
Posted by: Tangerine | Jun 9 2009 11:56 utc | 5
The world's biggest military spenders by population
GLOBAL military expenditure rose by 4% in 2008 to a record $1.46 trillion, according to a new report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Israel spends most on defence relative to its population, shelling out over $2,300 a person, over $300 more than America. Small and rich countries, and notably Gulf states, feature prominently by this measure. Saudi Arabia ranks ninth in absolute spending, but sixth by population. China has increased spending by 10% to $85 billion to become the world's second largest spender. But it is still dwarfed by America, whose outlay of $607 billion is higher than that of the next 14 biggest spenders combined.
http://www.economist.com/daily/news/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13808801
emphasis added
Posted by: crone | Jun 9 2009 13:42 utc | 6
Whenever I hear Obama refer to AfPak as the "good war," I'm quickly reminded of the fact that there's nothing good, as in just, about this war. From what I can tell, there are only one to two reasons we are in AfPak: 1) to feed the military-industrial complex and/or 2) to secure one leg of the Caspian oil/gas pipeline. But because using military force is a very cost-ineffective way to gain a bigger piece of the pie when it comes to both black and blue gold, and because our military is more of a drain than a gain on our economy, as Mikhail Gorbachev wisely points out in his most recent piece in the Washington Post, we have nothing to gain and everything to lose by throwing lots of blood, limb, and treasure down this rat hole of a war. So the sooner Obama realizes this, the sooner he can prevent turning AfPak into his Vietnam, and, more importantly, the sooner we'll stop digging our graves in the graveyard of empires!
Posted by: Cynthia | Jun 9 2009 15:02 utc | 8
On a completely different note, here's a story that is going unreported:
$135 billion dollars of US securities has been siezed from two Japanese people in Italy. The people were on the way to Switzerland.
http://www.asianews.it/index.php?l=en&art=15456&size=A
If anyone knows Italian, the story has multiple hits on the Italian Google news and Blog sites, but there is nothing else in English that I can find.
Posted by: bokononon | Jun 9 2009 17:10 utc | 11
@11, that's weird. In those denominations they can't be bearer bonds, can they? They must be individually registered somewhere. It ought to be short work to authenticate them.
Posted by: ...---... | Jun 9 2009 17:56 utc | 12
re #11
Apparently the Finance Police suspected something as they found the notes in the false bottom of a suitcase. there were 10 one billion dollar Kennedy bonds and 249 Federal Reserve bonds of 500 million each. They were on a train headed to Switzerland from Italy.
If they are real, the Italians will collect a fine of 40% of the value over 10,000 euro or around 38 billion euro. that should help out with some problems they are having....
No updates since 5 June, link
Posted by: dan of steele | Jun 9 2009 18:06 utc | 13
Yes, the Finance police...
But, what about the cop inside our heads?
The Corporate Media’s War On Craigslist
Mr. Newmark is a dangerous man. Not only is he singlehandedly sucking the revenue out of the newspaper business’s primary cash cow, classified advertising, but he represents the antithesis of the three tenants of the corporatist philosophy: greed, greed and more greed. He must be stopped. Capitalism cannot survive someone like Newmark cornering such a huge market share. “What’s the point of having more?” Just asking that question will get you expelled from the Brook Club.So now it’s war. Just last week at the private executives meeting of the American Press Institute, the theme was "get craigslist". Here’s the roundup from Poynter’s Rick Edmonds in an article titled, “API to Summit: Newspapers Should Mount a Unified Challenge to Craigslist”:
The main event at the private executives’ meeting a week ago in Chicago was discussion of paid online content, and the American Press Institute contributed a white paper strongly endorsing several versions of that strategy. API also offered a second recommendation and a second white paper, arguing that the industry should mobilize “to prevent further revenue erosion” of classifieds.The target of the effort would be Craigslist, whose mostly free listings have contributed to the disastrous dive of what used to be the industry’s most lucrative revenue source. The white paper suggests that with “a powerful unified national brand” on a common platform, newspapers could take back some of that business.
This is just one example of evidence that the PTMB (POWERS THAT MAKE BELIEVE) want us in their ever loving panoply, if we even think of breaking out of there induced 'Total Institution', out comes the Repressive State Apparatus (RSA). I have stated before, it seems as if we are covertly and not so covertly, but, indeed, methodically being herded into a mental plantation, by a system that has gladly inherited the worst of both the Soviet and Nazi Germany type authoritarian means of control and governship.
A "quasi-Soviet/facist/totalitarian system." A "Kafkaesque" bureaucratic i.e. State induced non- static labyrinth. Whose rules change only for the elite and not the governed.
Does anyone else feel creepy by the use of the coloqualism, "lockdown" when used for universities and other mediums? In light of the school shootings etc..? Isn't 'lockdown' used mostly from such things as prison riots? But I digress, recent links I've posted of the military literally taking over our public schools, But, what about, 'the cop in our heads', in other words, the internalized conditioning? Rgiap has mentioned and I concur, the American people who are scared shirtless and shitless & largely they will not complain because on one side they benefit from this ventures & on the other side because they fear the very real repressive state apparatus that has as its guiding jurisprudential light - the patriot acts & a completely corrupt judiciary. You don't even have to put your boot on my neck anymore, I'm just going grovel here in the dirt, grateful for the scraps. Worse, I might even sing your praise and fight your war. Beat me and make me write bad checks. The major effect of the panopticon of the Repressive State Apparatus (RSA) is to induce a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power.
The inmate,(you), must never be able to be to see his/her surveillance but always be aware that the possibility of being seen is constant. This is the history of the disastrous attempt of the bourgeois to control insanity.
By cruel and inhumane means.
These means did not reduce or control insanity, on the contrary it increased it.
Hence,this camera obscura, the eye of the Magus, manifests itself so deeply within us, internalized to the point where and average man or woman on the street when assailed by an average police man defaults to guilt. For example, all an authority figure has to do is shout "you there" and 9 out of 10 of us will confirm.
Thereby, extending our guilt.
Bottom line...
Gog, wants inside your head.
Just an observation.
Tones of Article 58? the Russian SFSR Penal Code?
*Here I have in mind Colin Wilson's work entitled: 'The Outsiders'
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 9 2009 20:01 utc | 14
If American Jews are refusing to recognize non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust at their Holocaust memorial in Brooklyn USA, then Israeli Jews are likely to pattern themselves after their American brethren by refusing to let Israel be a safe haven for disenfranchised Holocaust victims. I realizes that bigots come in all shapes and sizes, but bigots against non-Jews in the Holocaust is a new one on me!
Seriously though, albeit only slightly, I imagine that Holocaust magnates are operating under the assumption that since the US Supreme Court didn't break up Microsoft's monopoly in the software industry, there's no court in the land that'll break up their monopoly in the Holocaust industry!
Posted by: Cynthia | Jun 9 2009 22:07 utc | 15
Max Blumenthal has brilliantly captured the sights and sounds of Zionist skinheads dunking tea bags and downing brew during their dying days in Rome.
Posted by: Cynthia | Jun 9 2009 22:49 utc | 16
I find it extremely hypocritical of the Huff Post to have no qualms about posting oodles and oodles of Britney-underpants-type stories, but at the same time, it's got its panties in a wad over showing one single clip of Zionist skinheads on parade.
Posted by: Cynthia | Jun 9 2009 23:57 utc | 17
12 & 13
I found a little bit more about the billions of dollars in securities on this Google Translate version of an Italian blog.
"This is clear evidence that the market for collateral and the bond has not been definitely stopped, and the economic crisis has helped to fuel some circuits bank, given the lack of liquidity and capital."
Posted by: bokononon | Jun 10 2009 0:17 utc | 19
re #11 - I don't think there can be bearer bonds in those denominations - this report is probably for entertainment purposes only.
Posted by: mistah charley, ph.d. | Jun 10 2009 4:40 utc | 20
Holocaust® is a registered trademark exclusively applying to European Jews.
Indeed...
Get Your Own Holocaust! This One's Ours!
No Gypsies, Tramps, Thieves Allowed at Brooklyn Holocaust Memorial
By Pareene, 11:53 AM on Mon Jun 8 2009, 8,723 viewsEveryone knows (many people don't know) that the Nazis also exterminated homosexuals, gypsies, and Jehovah's Witnesses, so there is no reason to include that information on a Brooklyn Holocaust Memorial. Assemblyman Dov Hikind is fighting to keep the memorial pure!
City officials approved the addition of markers honoring some of those non-Jewish victims of the Nazis. But if this Sheepshead Bay memorial mentions the millions of non-Jews killed in the Holocaust, everyone will forget about the Jews, and then there will probably be some pogroms, or something.
"To include these other groups diminishes their memory," said Hikind, as he stood next to his 89-year-old mother, Frieda.
[...]
"These people are not in the same category as Jewish people with regards to the Holocaust," Hikind said following a press conference at the memorial. "It is so vastly different. You cannot compare political prisoners with Jewish victims."No, you certainly cannot, especially if you're a real dick.
Hat tip to AlicetheKurious for this...
[Alice -- my second favorite comment (my first favorite is this thread's title):
"We don't wish to take other people's memorials, only to create small settlements on them which, then, must be allowed natural growth."]
The "other groups":
Poles and other SlavsPoles were at first the target of extermination by Hitler. See his Armenian quote.
Slavic people were targeted by the Nazis, mostly intellectuals and prominent people, although there were some mass murders and instances of genocide (see the article about Croatian Ustashe as the most notorious example). Slavic victims are numbered at 26 000 000.
During Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union 1941-1944, hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of Russian army POWs were arbitrarily executed in the field by the invading German armies, in particular by the notorious Waffen S.S., or were shipped to extermination camps for execution simply because they were of Slavic extraction. Thousands of Russian peasant villages were annihilated by German troops for more or less the same reason.
Gypsies
...
Hitler's campaign of genocide against the Roma people of Europe was seen by many as a particularly bizarre application of Nazi racial science. German anthropologists were forced to contend with the fact that Gypsies were descendants of the original Aryan invaders of India, who made their way back to Europe. Ironically, this made them no less Aryan than the German people itself, in practice if not in theory. This dilemma was resolved by Professor Hans Gunther, a leading racial scientist, who wrote:
"The Gypsies have indeed retained some elements from their Nordic home, but they are descended from the lowest classes of the population in that region. In the course of their migration, they absorbed the blood of the surrounding peoples, thus becoming an Oriental, West-Asiatic racial mixture with an addition of Indian, mid-Asiatic, and European strains."
As a result, however, and despite discriminatory measures, some groups of Roma, including the Sinti and Lalleri tribes of Germany, were spared deportation and death. Remaining Gypsy groups suffered much like the Jews (and in some instances, were degraded even more than Jews). In Eastern Europe, Gypsies were deported to the Jewish ghettoes, shot by SS Einsatzgruppen in their villages, and deported and gassed in Auschwitz and Treblinka.
Others
Homosexuals were another of the groups targeted during the time of the Holocaust. However, the Nazi party made no attempt to exterminate all homosexuals; according to Nazi law, being homosexual itself was not grounds for arrest. Some prominent members of the Nazi leadership were known to other Nazi leaders to be homosexual, which may account for the fact that the leadership offered mixed signals on how to deal with homosexuals. Some leaders clearly wanted homosexuals exterminated; others wanted them left alone, while others wanted laws against homosexual acts enforced, but otherwise allowed homosexuals to live as other citizens did.
Estimates vary wildly as to the number of homosexuals killed, because of the specific reason of being homosexual. Most estimates give number around 10,000. The larger numbers include those who were Jewish and homosexual, or even Jewish, homosexual and communist. In addition, records as to the reasons for internment remain non-existent in many areas. See Homosexuals in Nazi Germany for more information.
Around 2000 Jehovah's Witnesses perished in concentration camps, where they were held for political and ideological reasons, as they refused involvement in politics, would not say "Heil Hitler" and did not serve in the German army. - See Jehovah's Witnesses and the Holocaust.
On August 18, 1941, Adolf Hitler ordered an end to the systematic euthanasia of mentally ill and handicapped people due to protests within Germany. ...
The Blessing Is Next To The Wound, one only need look...
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 10 2009 5:03 utc | 21
uncle scam I wrote this before your post appeared being these days slow ...and was happy to see it...anyway here is what i wrote yesterday but didn 't finish check etc:
Gazans have been written out of the human family, from the article posted by b, at Mondoweiss.
That is exactly right.
The stigmatization, control, disenfranchisement, rounding up, forced to work, and ultimate killing of Jews in ww2 was part of getting rid of the ‘poisonous’ elements of society, aimed at a general purification; let’s not forget the homosexuals, Gipsies, Communists, varied political opponents, and remember what the never-mentioned mentally handicapped suffered ... in short an elimination of various socially, financially, morally, intellectually bankrupt individuals / groups, as well as Jews, many of whom were well integrated, established professionally, comfortable, even rich...despoiling them was financially rewarding (in a way, for a time.) Envy and jealousy could be invoked for this group, not the others.
Gypsies are still very badly treated, homosexuals - depends very much on the place - Communists as individuals are still frowned upon but socialist/communist states can expect a heap of trouble (Yugoslavia, Cuba, etc.). The handicapped however are far better treated - their affliction is not ethnic, nor of opinion/lifestyle etc. and it is understood that they are not at fault, it is fate, bad luck.
The Jews, more numerous, more powerful, and with the backing of Various Powers, have locked themselves into a new ghetto, - their very own Homeland, Israel. To achieve an ethnic (for lack of a better word, as many different dimensions are involved) state, it is by definition necessary to ‘purify’ it and ‘expand’ it in a way somewhat similar to Germany. (Different epoch, geo-politics, etc.)
The ghetto has to expel foreign, impure elements, by any means possible, and has to expand - that is a characteristic of fascism, it must move forward, convince, exhibit ‘growth’, conquer - it can’t stand still.
So some group (/s) is going to get it in the neck, and must be dehumanized, seen as vermin, non-human.
For obvious reasons, the other groups mentioned never wanted, or could get, their own shaky ‘statelet’.
Posted by: Tangerine | Jun 10 2009 17:14 utc | 22
The comments to this entry are closed.
Political music to infest the recesses of your mind
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJWjmDa79Iw>I will Follow Him Wait for the last 15 seconds.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpChvV2Frvg>Who's Sorry Now For the clown I guess.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qgcy-V6YIuI>End of the World Going down and checkin out with a dead pan expression and a fantastical hairdo.
Posted by: anna missed | Jun 9 2009 7:34 utc | 1