Defaultgeddon: More good articles

The articles I post here pretty much show for certain that there wont be a default but still, for ease of lumping the topics together I've kept the same title

Yesterday I posted a short FAQ that was one of the best explanations of the debt ceiling farce so far. In a discussion on Buzz I was caused to ask if there are any longer form articles that give a description of a similar quality. Thanks to a mix of hanging out in a Something Awful thread and checking various sites I regularly do a day later I have an embarrassment of riches on the subject.

This fairly short article by Dean Baker explains how the debt ceiling arguments are just being used as a cover by both Republicans and Democrats, especially Obama, to force austerity measures on America and gut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security at the behest of their corporate overlords.

Given the stealth Bi-partisan support for this Americans really are screwed.

Michael Hudson has written a longer piece that focuses on the great amount of effort Obama has put in to destroying as much of FDR's legacy as he possibly can.

Speaking of FDR, Richard D Wolff has written an article examining the nature of the Keynesian softening of Capitalism that was required to save Capitalism. Essentially the Welfare State and the New Deal were part of a system to keep Capitalism going and protect the rich from popular anger when the system is experiencing one of its' major crisis. However in order to maintain this buffer and protect the rich governments incurred greater deficits because the rich and powerful didn't want to pay the tax necessary to maintain it. Now public debt has gotten so large the elite want deficit reduced. Thus the buffer that keeps people relatively safe and relatively quiet is being removed. Interesting times loon.

Defaultgeddon: A different kind of scare.

There's plenty to be afraid of with Defaultgeddon and the inevitable "compromise" but I had a different kind of scare this morning, The Australian, a Murdoch owned paper, has one of the best breakdowns of the issues surrounding this crisis I've read.

Take a look at it here

I mean a broken clock and all that but still, it has shaken my view of the world a little. Also when did Leonard Nemoy grow a goatee...?

The IMF gets to play to the home crowd.

Over the years the IMF has gotten to fuck over a lot of countries and bring misery and death to countless poors but this is the big one, the IMF is going to do the biggest gig of all, the home crowd. We all knew it was coming but finally they're starting to hype it up for the fans.

And as they receive a ticker tape along the newly privatised streets the IMF's open topped limo will be blaring out a very special anthem:


Make your peace with your Gods non-millionaire Americans.

Defaultgeddon: a couple of points.

Firstly I would like to thank Amber for bringing something important to my attention. I had assumed renaming welfare programs as "entitlements" had been a slow creeping shifting of the narrative. Amber however pointed out the shift has occurred very rapidly only starting earlier this year with Paul Ryan's slash and burn budget. And I quote:

first instance of "Roadmap for America" plan being introduced: May 21, 2008 with a revision in January 2010.
check this google trends data:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=entitlement&date=all&geo=usa&ctab=0&sort=0&sa=N
Talk about controlling the narrative...

It is pretty terrifying how much and how rapidly the right wing control the narrative.

Secondly I found this LA Times article that sums up how much damage the Gang of Six proposals and other compromises Obama is willing to back will do to America. He really has sold us down the river.

As an aside there is an article by Jeffrey Sachs doing the rounds at the minute explaining why America is in such a bad state and it is fairly trenchant but thanks to someone in the comments (comments are weird like that, a lot of dross and then some very worthwhile stuff) pointed out Sachs is one of the creators of shock doctrine and was personally responsible for turning Russia into the Oligarch run hellhole it is today.

There are a lot of false friends out there.

Defaultgeddon, the bright side?

With a US default looking increasingly likely in the face of the Tea Party rejecting Operation kill all poors. What are the benefits of this, not for non-millionaires like you but for the politicians who'll be fine whatever happens?

We'll leave endemic corruption aside because apart from "they're being paid to shit on us" what more is there to say?

The reason the Tea Party want a default is fairly simple, they think big government is bad thus they causing it to shut down will be great. They assume the treasury will be forced to maintain debt payments thus everything else will take catastrophic cuts and free market magic will fix everything. Of course if anything goes wrong (and hoo boy will it) all the right wing press and politicians will scream how willing to make a deal they were but Obama just wouldn't be reasonable.

Obama wants a default because while the President will take the blame for a bad economy it looks like the economy is going to be bad whatever. At least this way he'll be able to point to GOP intransigence and the fact he made huge offers of compromise (which he also supports because he really doesn't care about the poor) which might just work. Polling consistently shows the US public hate congress more than the president so having a tangible way to put the blame for the economy on congress would be no bad thing for him.

Democratic congresspeople to my mind have the most to lose, their constituents are going to blame them directly for the loss of vital services and reductions in social security and medicare /medicaid. If there were anything like justice in the world the tea party members of the house who are making default seem ever more likely would be the ones to be punished for that but that is rather a weak reason for Democratic congresspeople to want a default.

Now the big problem with these positive scenarios is that while maybe politically one faction or another may gain somewhat from a default the nation as a whole loses so badly the political loses will be far greater.

For the Tea Party their arguments for small government will be undermined by a recession that may well become a depression. A weak and faltering economy simply will not be able to handle the sudden withdrawal of the direct contribution public funds make to the economy and the indirect contribution public institutions and the spending power of public sector workers bring. I have no idea if the super rich assholes behind the Tea Party will benefit economically or otherwise but in terms of politics the GOP will not be vindicated.

For Obama the ability to blame congress for the economy would be nice but the collapse of US prestige and power after the dollar stops being the reserve currency ( I don't honestly know what will replace it, maybe the Yuan?) will give his opponent in 2012 ample chance to attack him on nationalistic grounds. As will the increased price of borrowing for the US, foreign wars will become even more expensive. Plus presiding over a major economic turmoil doesn't tend to make voters like you much even if they do blame congress.

I don't tend to think Democratic congresspeople have any reason at all to want default so there's little contrast with for them.

I think the Tea Partiers may actually want a default whereas Obama sees some benefits in it for him so as to prevent him caving in completely. Still though, what a silly mess we're in that a wholly artificial accounting process, the debt ceiling, is coming so close to causing a global economic crisis.

Murdochgate = Watergate?

The Guardian's John Harris has written an article looking at how Murdochgate has unmasked the UK's political elite and how it will affect civil society in the future. I highly recommend you read this.

As the title implies I want to look at his allusion to Watergate at the end impacts things. First of all I want to direct you to a piece Noam Chomsky wrote in 1973, when admittedly the Watergate scandal had been running a bit longer (but then again info moves much faster now) but it is still very much a contemporary assessment. While Chomsky doesn't specifically predict the moral majority and Reagan, which Harris highlights as a key outcome of Watergate, he does accurately predict an increase and entrenchment of executive power over other branches of the US government.

There are also strong elements of Chomsky's main criticism, that Nixon was punished not for wrongdoing but for breaking the rules. For upsetting the cosy elite. In a similar sense Murdoch is receiving so much criticism because he used his influence to sway the political parties to do his will. This is not right, the press exists to influence the masses, to manufacture consent on issues the elite have already agreed upon. Even then it was only the revelations such as those about Milly Dowler that gave politicians enough cover to act in their own interests and take down Murdoch. Indeed Murdoch's strong connections to the elite before the past two weeks and even now is not a particularly large issue, other media groups seem to tacitly accept that influence and connection to the rich and powerful is a good thing, they were more jealous that they didn't hold as much power as Murdoch than worried about such close links between power and the fourth estate.

Finally to quote a paragraph of Chomsky's:

"Still more cynical is the current enthusiasm [from the media] over the health of the American political system, as shown by the curbing of Nixon and his subordinates, or by the civilized compromise that permitted Nixon and Kissinger to kill Cambodians and destroy their land only until August 15, truly a model of how a democracy should function, with no disorder or ugly disruption."

We are seeing a similar compartmentalisation of Murdoch's wrongdoing here, it is a British problem, it is a problem only with his papers, the TV arms of News Corporation in the UK and US is seperate and shouldn't be blamed. Close ties to a media oligarch by politicians in both main parties are seen as a sign of shame but not an indictment of the British political system as a whole.

The myth is still being maintained that this is a scandal that can be dealt with by the political class even though it is the creation of the political class. Removing Murdoch's influence removes an especially egregious symptom but it certainly does not cure the disease.

Sunday's Murdochgate developments.

A marriage born of true love. I also hear Rupert is a big fan of Anime

Saturday was a little sleepy but Sunday brought yet more big news stories. This fits with a favoured strategy of getting as much bad news out of the way as quickly as possible but as we will see there is so much bad news out there the Murdochs may well be sacrificed to save News Corp.

However the biggest story today has been the arrest of Rebekah Brooks. Conveniently this occurred just two days after she quite as the CEO of News International but as her PR firm were at pains to make clear, she had no idea she was to be arrested today when she went in for questioning. Given just a week ago she was in charge of the internal investigation News Corp was holding on the phone hacking scandal this doesn't look good for them or any of her politician friends. Do be wary of the Robert Peston quotes in that article though, he is a News Corporation man that just happens to be working for the BBC.

Brooks' arrest is fortuitous in that it will likely prevent her from giving evidence to a the select committee on Tuesday but it is even more fortuitous for Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson who appears to be as corrupt as all hell. The close connection between senior Metropolitan Police officers at the heart of the phone scandal and News Corporation was mentioned by me yesterday but this morning brought revelations of numerous official and private meetings between the police and a senior News Corporation employee. This was followed just hours later by a further revelation that Commissioner Stephenson took a £12 000 spa holiday for free.

In such a situation an embattled Police Commissioner might just push for a headline grabbing arrest that need not result in a solid conviction, just give him some breathing room. Heck if he is really in News Corporation's pocket a "botched" arrest now could save her from punishment in the future.

Still if Brooks does end up facing the Select Committee on Tuesday things might not be so bad as has been made out. The Independent exclusively revealed that the Chairman of the committee has very close links with News Corporation too! While he may be trustworthy on this matter one can't help but ask questions about things such as this (quoted from this article I'll get on to in a moment)

Committee members preparing to grill the trio are to be given legal advice on the morning of the hearing on how far they can push the News Corp boss and his son for answers. The committee's chairman, the Tory MP John Whittingdale, has asked for details of their lines of questioning to avoid duplication.

While certainly duplicated lines of questioning would be a bad thing, one has to hopes his links to News Corp don't mean that Murdoch father and son (and maybe Mrs Brooks too) aren't forewarned.

Still everything does not seem to be going the Murdoch's way of late. It would seem, at least at this point, News Corporation isn't really at that much risk, its' most profitable arms and ventures are yet to be touched by the scandal, but Murdoch control of the company does seem to be looking weaker. There is no place for sentimentality in business so the fact he built the empire from scratch will count for little. Still there is no guarantee without him at the helm sailing will be as smooth and even with Rupert gone it is likely in the short term at least politicians in the US and definitely the UK wont want to appear to close to the Corp. Furthermore every indication is Rupert wont fall easy if they try to usurp him and that could cause a great deal of damage before he is gone.

Indeed Ed Miliband, leader of the Labour party is now in a do or die struggle against News Corporation and is smart enough to realise it. Breaking up News International is not a new policy, Neil Kinnock tried it in 1992 , which lead to The Sun fighting an all out war against him. With the Sun claiming "It was The Sun wot won it!" for the uninspiring John Major in the general election that year. This time around popular opinion is definitely on Miliband's side. His victory in this is far from assured but if he loses his political career is over and Rupert Murdoch hardly needs an enemy that motivated with the public backing at this point in time.

If you are interested in how much Miliband has benefited from his strong opposition to Murdoch this interview is worth a read. While they're definitely slanted to favour Miliband there are some interesting examples of just how much influence News Corporation papers had in the UK (and likely still do elsewhere).

I hope I haven't missed anything. This looks like it is going to be another interesting week for News Corporation and the Murdochs.

Obama, the Tea Party President.

Reading a couple of articles today I am becoming increasingly pessimistic about that a compromise on raising the debt ceiling can be reached (I am, of course, wholly pessimistic about what the content of any possible compromise would be).

This first article by a hedge fund manager who seems to at least pay lip service to being liberal gives this entry its title, examining how Obama increasingly seems to agree with the Tea Party on savage cuts. Now this would seem to suggest a compromise is more likely, not less, but as I have argued with Tony, who is clearly vindicated by this piece, it isn't Obama so much as Democratic legislators that are an obstacle to total GOP victory on this issue.

Obama's seeming desire to gut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security is so unappealing to the voters that the selfish pragmatism of many Democrats will prevent them from agreeing to a capitulation. Defending these three broadly popular programs is a big vote winner, attacking them is a vote loser as Paul Ryan learnt a couple of months ago.

Further at this piece by Will Hutton asserts, basic human interaction requires some give and take. For reasons of pride and for the ability to tell angry constituents they at least put up a fight Democratic legislators may not be willing to throw cherished welfare programs under the bus. Even if Obama explains in a soaring and wondrous speech why the poor should go die in a fire and why people under the age of 55 expecting to retire at some point are unreasonable.

But while it will be the political reality of legislative politics that prevents absolute capitulation by the Democrats it is Obama who is preventing any other outcome. If he had fought for anything near a middle ground rather than agreeing to make major concessions on social programs on day one then there would be some impetus for compromise, something for Democratic legislators to hang their hats on and, much more importantly, an opportunity for more moderate House republicans to push for compromise too. Sure the Tea Partiers are happy to drive straight off the cliff but older GOP hands will probably not want to see the end of the American empire, even if only social programs and civilian jobs are lost following a default with more expensive credit the American war machine is that much harder to maintain.

There are other signs a default is becoming a more likely scenario. A look at the business press, Fox News and others shows you the increasing suggestion that a default wouldn't be so bad. Some people have taken away from this the belief that big business and the super rich want a default. This is highly unlikely, I mean they'd be better off than the rest of us sure but the potential upheaval is unlikely to be appealing to them.

What instead this "default aint so bad" rhetoric is for is a form of spinning a very bad scenario into being Obama's problem. You plant the seed that a default really need not be that bad if you're smart, you're competent and then when the inevitable major problems occur you scream as loud as you can it is Obama and the left's fault for not being competent. Thus you attempt to shift the blame from the debt ceiling debate, where GOP intransigence might get blamed to it being wholly an issue of presidential control. Default as a controllable thing gone bad lays the blame solely at Obama's door.

Still given I don't think anyone beyond the Tea Party really wants default the fact the business press have shifted from trying to prevent a very bad thing to damage control on that very bad thing is not a good sign. Of course maybe the rich will profit from a default in a way I don't understand or perhaps the business press are just idiots, both are entirely plausible.

I still think there is a very good chance we'll get some kind of settlement on the debt ceiling before August 2nd but I will reiterate that the mainstream view that there is nothing to worry about is incorrect. We'll have to see I suppose.

US coverage of Murdochgate so far.

Someone in a comment thread on the Guardian website suggested the scandal be called Murdochgate and I think it fits rather well.

Rumour has it the NYT has a scoop on the phone hacking of 9/11 victims and their families that will break tomorrow. In which case it seems likely the story is about to become at least somewhat more prominent in the US. So pointing out this comparison Media Matters made of CNN, Fox and MSNBC's coverage of the issue seems rather timely.

Oh and courtesy of Jonny here is a sample of Fox News' coverage of the scandal:

Shame on Obama.

Why on earth did Pex have to be so goddamnn right?

Less Americans have access to basic necessities than when Obama was elected.

Goddamn scum.

America's Pooey pants moment.

One of my favourite teachers introduced me to the concept of a pooey pants moment. She described how her son in an A-level exam had described Lenin's position after the October revolution as such. He got an A in that exam and not unreasonably. While the term is crude it does rather accurately reflect the nature of having a military of around 500 dedicated amateurs (the red guards) against standing remnants of the Tsarist military numbering about 20,000 men who have much more material and expertise. On top of that even the majority of the left intelligentsia / political class that had emerged following the February revolution opposed the Bolshevik seizure of power. The Bolsheviks eventually won out, mostly because of how badass a dude Trotsky was, although there were of course other factors. Nonetheless early on in the civil war if I were in Lenin's position my pants would likely have been rather pooey.

But why should America's pants collectively be pooey? The absurd argument over the raising of the debt ceiling of course!. As you are likely aware this is not a thing most other countries have, it should be linked to the budget with the amount of debt the nation takes out linked to the budget that was passed. But America is exceptional

But others have commented on this and far better explanations exist elsewhere. This shouldn't be a pooey pants moment but it is because of the nature of Republican Party at this moment in time. 538 lays out the nature of this very well.

Most commentators and economists and so on aren't very worried about a US default, technical or otherwise because logically it is very much in the GOP's interest to raise the debt ceiling, sure they'll push for cuts that'll hurt the poor, that's what they do, but at the end of the day they'll compromise and the ceiling will be raised. The problem is the Tea party is so far to the right and so ideologically driven it doesn't appear to be looking to its' own (or big business's) self interest anymore. Indeed Nate Silver demonstrates that the ideological gap between the House GOP and GOP voters is bigger than the gap between GOP and Democratic voters.

So why are they so far out in to right field? Do they have some strategy to bring down Obama that the mainstream media hasn't picked up on? It could possibly be, but as Silver points out it is very difficult to predict who could win out of this. Given how Gingrich's shutdown in 1995-6 didn't play out well for the GOP, either their strategists have some amazing insights everyone is lacking this time around or they're not behaving in a sound manner.

So have the lunatics taken over the asylum? Is it time to poo our pants and eat the barrel of a gun? Well maybe but the GOP's behaviour isn't quite as mad as it may seem or at least it isn't aimless madness. The article about the ideological gap between the House GOP and GOP voters is mildly misleading because the gap between likely GOP voters and the House is much smaller. As this third article explains the GOP are not in a position to compromise. Jonny linked it me last week and my only response was welp.

Essentially the GOP is seemingly on the ropes it has haemorrhaged the middle ground to the Democrats (whatever the hell the middle ground in the US even is these days) and the only thing that allowed them to win so comprehensively in the 2010 midterms was a motivated minority of extreme right wingers and the apathy of the larger more moderate groups of voters. They are just trapped in a morton's fork (Catch 22) situation, they can't alienate the Tea Party because if they do they seemingly face extinction but appeasing the Tea Party drives them further from the mainstream and leads them to take absurdly hard lines on issues they have no public support on.

Will the debt ceiling be raised in some form before August 2nd? Probably. The calm assurance it will happen is definitely misplaced however.

News Corp corruption news!

(almost a palindrome)

A couple of stories worth pointing out:

The former executive editor of the News of the World was arrested today. Oh and he happened to be a consultant hired by the Metropolitan police to advise the Commissioner and Assistant Commissioner John Yates, the officer in charge of investigating phone hacking. Oh and he just happened to be advising them on "stuff" over the period back in 2009 when the Met decided there was no need to investigate phone hacking further.

All perfectly innocent I'm sure.

Secondly Rupert Murdoch gave the American Chamber of Commerce $1 million to lobby to weaken the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the very act he may now be charged under over events in the UK. Theres also a picture of Elliot Spitzer because it is all but inevitable he is going to try to link his own downfall with other invasions of privacy of the rich and powerful probably as a springboard back into politics. After his shameful defence of the IDF's illegal boarding of a ship in international waters and the murder of nine passengers I can't say I view that as a good thing.

Oh just noticed this on the live stream from the Guardian (where else?) and it is probably worth pasting:

PA has published a list of the menbers of the Commons culture media and sport committee who will grill Rupert and James Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks at next Tuesday's hearing:

• Chairman John Whittingdale is a senior backbench Conservative. He quit his job in the City to work as an adviser to Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s.

• Tom Watson, Labour, took News International's Sun newspaper to court and won after it ran stories claiming he had been involved in a campaign to smear the Tories.

• Louise Mensch, Conservative, a "chick-lit" novelist, claims she has been "threatened" before by a national newspaper journalist.

• Philip Davies, Conservative, is a rebellious backbencher who is outspoken on crime and immigration.

• Therese Coffey, Conservative, was finance director for Mars Drinks UK before being elected last year.

• Damian Collins, Conservative, worked at Saatchi advertising before setting up his own marketing firm.

• Paul Farrelly, Labour, admitted last year he "wrestled" a man to the floor in a Commons bar "entirely in self-defence".

• Alan Keen, Labour Co-operative, is chairman of the All Party parliamentary football group and once worked as a tactical scout for Middlesbrough football club.

• Adrian Sanders, Liberal Democrat, is a keen campaigner on animal welfare issues.

• Jim Sheridan, Labour, a former trade union convener and chairman of the All Party parliamentary Scottish football group.

A couple of quick stories.

Firstly we need to note that it is a bad week for everyone who breach people's privacy for a living and not just News Corporation employees. MI5, MI6 and GCHQ (the British version of the NSA) are all facing funding cuts and shock horror the Intelligence and Security Committee, a parliamentary committee, wants some oversight over the operational activities of all three services. The article is perhaps most noteworthy however for helping me realise the gulf between myself and the establishment

GCHQ director Iain Lobban also says he is having trouble retaining sufficient numbers of suitably-qualified internet specialists.

"I need some real internet whizzes in order to do cyber," he told the committee.

"They will be working for Microsoft or Google or Amazon or whoever. And I can't compete with their salaries. I can offer them a fantastic mission, but I can't compete with their salaries.

"But I probably have to do better than I am doing at the moment, or else my internet whizzes are not going to stay… and we do have a steady drip, I am afraid .

"Month‑on‑month, we are losing whizzes who'll basically say 'I'm sorry, I am going to take three times the salary and the car and whatever else'."

I didn't think anyone talked like that anymore. Perhaps we can apply to the IMF for a bridge loan so as to damn the tide of Whizz loss?

and Secondly a news bulletin this morning relating to violence at a memorial service for Ahmad Wali Karzai, Afghan president Hamid Karzai's half brother was the straw that broke the camel's back. The article states:

Ahmad Wali Karzai, a controversial but key figure in Nato's battle against the Taliban, was killed by his bodyguard.

Now while it is fair to say that "controversial" has a fairly wide scope in a country as unstable as Afghanistan but it does imply his views prompted disagreement rather than his actions. His actions really should provoke more than controversy given he was a Drug Lord and CIA Asset. But the latter probably explains why anywhere above the fold or the first few paragraphs his nature will and can only be referred to as "controversial".

The Singularity movement as Eugenics 2.0

With the total failure of the May 21st rapture to come to pass I decided to have a look at the atheist/nerd version of the rapture, that is the Singularity and while I am in no position to judge how plausible it is I did notice something odd. A lot of the people who are ardent believers are noticeably right wing. Vernor Vinge, the guy who coined the term Technological Singularity is an Anarcho-capitalist. Another prominent speaker in the movement, Robin Hanson is a professor of economics at George Mason University (a Koch Brothers controlled institution) and his views on the economics of the Singularity is very much along Libertarian lines. Then theres the corporate sponsorship of the Singularity University which according to wikipedia: "Corporate founding partners and sponsors include NASA, Google, Nokia, Autodesk, IDEO, LinkedIn, ePlanet Ventures, and the X-Prize Foundation."

This seemed odd to me hey, nerds tend to libertarians and heck corporations sponsor everything these days. However while drifting around Wikipedia trying to get a better insight into the whole movement I was lucky enough to stumble upon a brief mention of David Correia as strident critic of the movement and a footnoted link to this Counterpunch article which expands greatly upon what had caused me to be suspicious and highlights links to US military funding via DARPA. At the very least this article makes a strong argument for much greater suspicion about the movement and its' actual, rather than stated, goals.

http://www.counterpunch.org/correia09152010.html

Some excellent opinion pieces.

Al Jazeera has put up a number of excellent opinion pieces today.

Dominic Strauss Kahn
I had some suspicion that DSK being charged with Rape might be politically motivated, though I had assumed it was more likely to be Sarkozy's doing than anyone else's. Now I do not suggest the victim is lying, just that the timing is suspicious, Elliot Spitzer was found to be a user of prostitutes at a very fortuitous time for the GOP but he had actually committed that crime for instance. These two pieces examine this possibility from different angles:

Danny Schechter looks at The Financial world as a hypsexualised environment and examines how intelligence agencies and banks who were not fond of some of the things DSK was saying might have exploited already known about "foibles" to shut down a potential threat.

Pepe Escobar expands on just why DSK could have needed neutralising pointing out that he was trying to make the IMF slightly less of a machine designed to carve up the world for the benefit of a plutocratic elite. As Escobar highlights the endorsement of Joseph Stiglitz could well have lead the financial elite to get rid of him.

This does not of course mean DSK did not commit rape, it just means a lot of very powerful people had reason to have him disgraced. On a more positive note it strongly suggests Noam Chomsky is a really decent guy, hes been a thorn in the right's side for decades and they haven't gotten anything to stick to him.

Obama's Speech
I haven't read or watch the whole speech so I can't really offer much comment but reading around the apparent Israeli chagrin at the 1967 borders proposal (something the UN has always endorsed) one realises that Obama has given Israel all they could really want in that speech. Still no harm in acting angry and hoping for more.

Richard Falk looks specifically at how the speech favours Israel and examines within this context what Palestinians can do.

Joseph Massad looks at how the speech impacts US Imperial policy in the middle east depressingly but not surprisingly he finds it to be a lot of hypocrisy and a continued pursuit of the status quo. The point about Obama giving a speech for the West and specifically for America is an interesting one. Sure the US has always been insular but given Obama's popularity and prominence as a non-white Western leader and the clear political awakening going on in the Middle East to be so tone deaf to the views and opinions of Arabs is unwise. I mean sure he probably assumes he can use violence and financial coercion to force the Arabs back under dictatorships but it never hurts to at least pretend not to be a monster.

Miscellaneous

I probably wont link this unless I do it here so here we go. Jonny sent me this and it's an article in an Indian newspaper about how China has pledged to protect Pakistan from future US incursions. Now you'd think that would be big news, but no, the western media obviously don't want to get too stuck into the regional political situation. America and friends are saving Afghanistan from Muslims or something and no other nation really exists in that scenario.

Tarak Barkawi examines how accusations of "radicalisation" are being used to attack freedom of speech at universities. He also broaches the subject of neo-liberalisation of University management.

Finally there is a review of a book by Francis Fukuyama, he who is mocked over the misinterpretation of his statements regarding the "end of history". It is a critique of the anti-state sentiment of right wingers in both the US and the UK. Such a prominent conservative making such a strong case against neo-liberal ideology is I think noteworthy and worth keeping an eye on. Then again, maybe he'll be arrested for an embarrassing crime within the next couple of weeks.

Israel's reasonable response.

This is no about Obama's speech that he delivered yesterday, I may do a post collecting different people's analysis but I'm not sure, so often Obama has said a lot of pretty things and then done pretty much none of it. With a year and a half to go in his first term actions are more of an issue than slogans.

No instead we're looking at an OP-ED piece in the NYT that Jonny linked me to last night. This one. He framed it saying something along the lines of he was astounded at how audacious it was. As per my usual world weary act and a general numbness to Israel's free wheeling evil I dismissed this assertion and pointed out it was in the NYT afterall.

On reflection though I was wrong and Jonny was right, this is shocking and it is audacious. In writing, deliberately released just the day before Obama's big speech we have a senior member of Israel's ruling party openly advocating ethnic cleansing. To wit:

[following annexation of all remaining Palestinian territory] These Palestinians would not have the option to become Israeli citizens, therefore averting the threat to the Jewish and democratic status of Israel by a growing Palestinian population.

Now the Nazi comparisons are easy and unarguably apt but I'd instead like to compare this assertion to a hypothetical one made by a Serb, a member of Milosevic's party in the mid to late 90s. First with the Bosnians and then with Albanians in Kosovo you had a situation where Muslim ethnic groups were trying to break away from a violent and repressive regime. When they did violence and, in the case of the Bosnians, genocide occurred. But lets backtrack to when Bosnian and Kosovan independence was more talk than action, can one really imagine a Serb politician being given a platform in a major American and International Newspaper to threaten violent mass expulsion from what was then Yugoslavia?

One of course cannot. Yet Israel, useful tool of the Energy and Arms industries is allowed to have its' politicians issue outrageous threats against a repressed minority that is trying to assert its' statehood in a peaceful and democratic manner in line with international law and the UN charter. While the NYT editors temper circulation boosting Wikileaks revelations with descriptions of why Julian Assange is a poopy head they seem totally willing to print statements of intent regard massive breaches of international law that would bring misery to millions. Though to be fair to the NYT it is not like any of her rivals either domestic or foreign have thought it worthy of mention. Nor is there any political reaction, HAMAS is a dismissed as a negotiating partner because it refuses to recognise Israel as a nation state, yet Israel is being hailed as an ardent pursuer of peace in the aftermath of Obama's speech, and this unmentioned piece.

There is, I think, some hope to be drawn from this though. I am fairly sure if Israel actively pursued this policy they could annex all Palestinian land and drive them out. At the same time I think the US could win in Afghanistan if they used a few nukes. The fact is though that some victories are simply too costly to be pursued, in a world where Israel's image is consistently becoming murkier and European popular support for Palestine is growing rapidly and even in the US questions are starting to be asked Israel will suffer a great deal if they do this. Similar economic sanctions to those suffered by South Africa would likely be imposed by the EU.

Plus Israel is not a monolithic bloc, there is a sizeable minority of Israelis who would not stand for such an action, likely leading to considerable internal unrest.

Thus if the Israeli establishment is feeling forced to shift from a position of ever claiming to be the innocent victim to issuing threats such as this perhaps the plan to push for the recognition of Palestine as a sovereign state has some potential for the Palestinian cause.

Counter-revolution to the Arab Spring

Obama is delivering a speech about the Arab Spring today and it will most likely be just as full of lies as his 2009 speech in Cairo (worth bearing in mind how when he no doubt mentions in today's speech how awesome democracy how willing to give a speech in a client dictatorship he was two years ago.)

Thus I highly recommend Joseph Massad's editorial about how the Euro-American / Saudi counter-revolution to the Arab Spring is going and what it entails. Read it here and bear in mind how little this resembles the mainstream coverage of the region.

Patch Adams was a real person.

I just watched the Latest Onion A.V. Club Inventory on Youtube and they pointed out Patch Adams was a real person. Surprisingly he seems to be a really great guy and a devoted political activist for Healthcare reform in the US.

Glenn Greenwald Q&A at Brown

I admit I am somewhat schizophrenic about Glenn Greenwald praising him one minute and questioning him the next but he seems an odd mix of genuine concern about civil liberties and still thinking the CATO institute is pretty good (he tweeted about a drug conference there the other day).

Nonetheless this lecture and Q&A is very good. In the lecture part he does cover some old ground so if you're pressed for time skipping to the Q&A bit at around the 50 minute mark may be worthwhile.

How the US and the west is transitioning to Fascism.

William I. Robinson has written an editorial for Al Jazeera that details how the US is on the verge of fascism he is not using the term fascism lightly either. It pulls together a lot of threads explaining why things are as they currently are but one especially good point it makes is an explanation of why Obama is doing what he's doing.