Jonathan Cook: Israel’s Military Mephistopheles

It is not entirely surprising that Amos Gilad, an Israeli general who once sued his own government for “irreversible mental damage” caused by his role in the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, has publicly courted controversy again.

On Monday, Ehud Olmert, Israel’s outgoing prime minister, suspended Mr Gilad as his envoy to Egypt, responsible for negotiating a ceasefire with Hamas, after Mr Gilad called the prime minister’s truce conditions “insane”.

The move threatened to unleash a political storm in Israel. Ehud Barak, the defence minister and a longtime ally of Mr Gilad, rushed to denounce Mr Olmert’s decision. He insisted that Mr Gilad, a defence ministry official in charge of diplomatic and security issues, would continue with his other duties.

Mr Gilad’s fingerprints are to be found on most of the hawkish policies approved by the political leadership since the start of the intifada in 2000, including the emasculation of the Palestinian Authority, the “disengagement” from Gaza, and the promotion of civil war between Hamas and Fatah.

In a sign of Mr Gilad’s indispensability, Mr Olmert was forced to make an embarrassing climbdown two days later and reinstate the wayward official after Mr Gilad submitted a written apology.

Israeli commentators have noted that Mr Gilad has sought over the years to erode the distinction between military and political influence. Writing in Haaretz newspaper, Akiva Eldar has accused Mr Gilad of being “a mephisto in and out of uniform” who has turned his department “into one of the most important power centres in the country”.

via CounterPunch.

The war on Wall Street terror

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.

via Online Journal.

Jump!

The crisis we now face begins to form in outline in the early seventies. Two related developments introduced growing instability into financial markets and the wider economy – the growth of debt and the deregulation of finance.

After a long period of expansion between 1945 and 1970, in which real wages grew steadily throughout the developed world, workers’ compensation leveled off. Average earnings per hour in private non-agricultural industries in the United States reached $8.99 in 1972 (calculated in 1982 dollars). By 2007 they had risen to $8.30. Sorry, no, they had fallen to $8.30 (again, calculated in 1982 dollars). More widely, in the rich, industrialised world, the percentage of GDP captured by all workers in the form of wages fell from 75% in the mid-seventies to 66% in the middle years of this decade.

Output per hour continued to rise – workers still produced more goods and delivered more services, helped in part by information technology. But they weren’t being paid more in real terms for the time and effort.

So who benefited from the weakening share of income secured by labour? Profits and rents have increased by a full third over the last generation, so the first group to benefit from the shift was the very, very rich. The result has been a new Gilded Age, reminiscent of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with all the exquisite good taste, state of the art sycophancy, and imperial violence that characterised the earlier era.

via SpinWatch.

Great Depression Quotes 1929 vs 2008: Have We Learned Anything?

Via: Charting Stocks.

A few select quotes during the depression years of 1929 to 1931.

Notice the “Expert” opinions which convey optimism, the bank bailouts, government assurances, the Hoover (Paulson) plan, and the deliberate attempt by the main stream media to manufacture consent for bailing out Wall St. Has anything changed?

“There is no cause to worry. The high tide of prosperity will continue”
-Andrew W. Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury. September 1929

Stock Prices Will Stay at High Level For Years to Come, Says Ohio Economist .
-Dr. Charles Amos Dice, professor of business organization at Ohio State October 13, 1929

“FISHER SEES STOCKS PERMANENTLY HIGH”
-Irving Fisher, Yale economist, October 16h, 1929

“BROKERS IN MEETING PREDICT RECOVERY; Partners in 35 Wire Houses at Conference Agree Selling Has Been Overdone.”
-October 25, 1929

NEW AID IS PLEDGED TO BANK COALITION; G.F. Baker Jr. Joins Parley at Morgan Offices and Many Other Offers Are Made. SUPPORT EASES ANXIETY
-October 26, 1929

Brokers Believe Worst Is Over and Recommend Buying of Real Bargains
–New York Herald Tribune, October 27, 1929

October 29, 1929 – Stock Market Crashes!

The great nationalization scare

So, before the government takes further steps to support the financial system, there will be a “stress test” to see how the biggest banks would do in an even weaker economy? I’ll tell you who’s being “stress tested.” It’s us.

If the banks need more, we’re told, the government might have to act. But don’t worry — it won’t be a government takeover. A takeover would be “surprising,” the head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp told CBS this week.

It won’t be a takeover — oh no — because a takeover would be bad. That’s the drumbeat of the week.

Economist Paul Krugman makes the point that it’s not entirely un-American to nationalize the banks. He’s right. It’s happened in the past. The bigger point is that even as the public — and markets — panic about nationalization via “takeover,” our government has already actually nationalized much of banking. At least the risky part.

Taxpayers have already relieved banks of the risk of banking by recapitalizing the banks that squandered their capital and buying up or guaranteeing those banks’ bad debts.

The “takeover” on the table now is the takeover of the profits part. That’s the potential profit earned on taxpayer funds.

That’s not scary socialism any more than privatizing profits while socializing risks is free market capitalism. It is giving taxpayers a fair deal. Instead of scaring us, government should be reassuring us of just that.

via Online Journal

John Hutton admits Iraq suspects were handed to US

MPs were given inaccurate information regarding the extraordinary rendition of terror suspects, the defence secretary, John Hutton, admitted yesterday as he confirmed for the first time that UK forces in Iraq handed over individuals to the US, which flew them to a prison in Afghanistan.

Hutton apologised but it did not satisfy opposition MPs and human rights groups, who demanded a full inquiry.

He said British forces in Iraq had undertaken operations “to capture individuals who were subsequently detained by the US”. Specifically, he revealed that in February 2004 British soldiers – known to be SAS troops – handed over two terrorist suspects captured outside the UK-controlled zone covering south-eastern Iraq.

Hutton told MPs that the two men, known to be Pakistanis, were still being held in Afghanistan. He said they were members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a banned organisation that he said was linked to al-Qaida. The US had assured him that the men were being held in humane conditions and had access to the Red Cross.

via The Guardian

Earliest human footprints found in Kenya

Footprints found on a sandy plain in eastern Africa have been hailed by scientists as the earliest evidence of modern upright walking.

The footprints, dated to between 1.51 million and 1.53 million years ago, were discovered in sedimentary rock at Ileret, Kenya, researchers report intoday’s edition of the journal Science.

The findings mark one of the most important discoveries in recent years regarding the evolution of human walking.

With a large toe parallel to the other toes, the prints indicate a modern upright stride, the researchers said. They are likely to have been made by the early hominid Homo ergaster or early Homo erectus.

The series of footprints, including one apparently from a child, were left by individuals walking on a muddy river bank. Judging from stride length, they estimated the individuals were about 5-foot-9 in height.

via The Guardian

Greenwash: Fred Pearce on why ‘clean coal’ is the ultimate climate-change oxymoron

Next week, Americans are being invited to take part in what could become the largest act of civil disobedience against global warming in the country’s history. People are protesting at the coal-fired power plant that powers legislators on Capitol Hill in Washington DC.

Cynics may say it’s about time Americans joined the action. The fact is that too many Americans have been bamboozled for too long by a campaign of disinformation about the science of climate change. Many still think the whole question of mankind’s role in global warming is disputed in scientific circles (I expect the comments beneath this blog will soon demonstrate this point).

Hopefully, that science battle is slowly being won. But now the big greenwash is coming from another direction. Now, we have a technology battle. The people who told us for years how climate change was a myth now say it is all true – but something called “clean coal” can fix it.

via The Guardian

No Pasta For Palestinians. By Jamal Dajani

It’s been more than a month since Israel’s devastating war on Gaza left many dead and thousands injured. The war has ended, but life in Gaza has not returned to normal. Thousands of people remain homeless, and many still remain hungry. Their stories have all but disappeared from US media coverage.

One story is the story of Ayman Aboud, a ten year old orphan from Jabalia. Ayman has lost his parents, two uncles, his grandmother and all of his four siblings. He is now legally deaf (having lost more than eighty percent of his hearing) and has not spoken a word since the devastating event of January 6 when Israeli shells fell on his home. Ayman’s story is not unique. There are hundreds of stories just like his. Does anyone care?

via The Huffington Post

Can Gaza Be Rebuilt Through Tunnels?

The blockade continues – no supplies, no rebuilding.

How do you rebuild 5,000 homes, businesses and government buildings when the only way supplies come into the prison called Gaza is through tunnels? Will the steel I-beams for roofs bend 90 degrees to go through the tunnels from Egypt? Will the tons of cement, lumber, roofing materials, nails, dry wall and paint be hauled by hand, load after load, 70 feet underground, through a tunnel 500 to 900 feet long and then be pulled up a 70-foot hole and put into a waiting truck in Gaza?

The gates to Gaza slammed shut again on Thursday, February 5, the day our three-person group departed Gaza, having been allowed in for only 48 hours. The Egyptian government closed the border crossing into Gaza, continuing the sixteen-month international blockade and siege. The crossing had been briefly open to allow medical and humanitarian supplies into Gaza following the devastating 22-day attack by the Israeli military. The attacks killed 1,330 Palestinians and injured over 5,500. The Israeli government said the attacks were to punish Hamas and other groups for firing unguided rockets into Israeli, rockets that over the past two years have killed about 25 Israelis. Most international observers have called the Israeli response to the rocket attacks disproportionate and collective punishment, elements of war crimes.

via t r u t h o u t

Why I’ll Get Arrested To Stop the Burning of Coal

Why I’ll Get Arrested To Stop the Burning of Coal

On March 2, environmentalist Bill McKibben will join demonstrators who plan to march on a coal-fired power plant in Washington D.C. In this article for Yale Environment 360, he explains why he’s ready to go to jail to protest the continued burning of coal.

via  CommonDreams.org

Freeing Up Resources… for More War

Hours after President Obama’s speech to a joint session of Congress, the New York Times printed the news that he plans to gradually withdraw “American combat forces” from Iraq during the next 18 months. The newspaper reported that the advantages of the pullout will include “relieving the strain on the armed forces and freeing up resources for Afghanistan.”

The president’s speech had little to say about the plans for escalation, but the few words will come back to haunt: “With our friends and allies, we will forge a new and comprehensive strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan to defeat Al Qaida and combat extremism, because I will not allow terrorists to plot against the American people from safe havens halfway around the world. We will not allow it.”

Obama didn’t mention the additional number of U.S. troops — 17,000 — that he has just ordered to Afghanistan. But his pledge that he “will not allow terrorists to plot against the American people” and his ringing declaration, “We will not allow it,” came just before this statement: “As we meet here tonight, our men and women in uniform stand watch abroad and more are readying to deploy.”

Get the message? In his first speech to Congress, the new president threw down a 90-month-old gauntlet, reaffirming the notion that committing to war halfway around the world — in Afghanistan and now in Pakistan too — will make Americans safer. With drumrolls like that, the mission could outlive all of us.

And so, a colossal and fateful blunder, made by a very smart leader, arguably our best and brightest, is careening forward with the help of silence that defers all too readily to power. This is how the war in Vietnam escalated, while individuals and groups muted their voices. Many people will pay with their lives.

via CommonDreams.org