Het Neoliberale Geloof 450

Wall St. and the Media Are Trying to Make Us Forget Who Started the Financial Crash

It’s fast approaching the time Wall Street has been waiting for: the time when the media and the public forget what got us into this economic mess. As massive doses of taxpayer Viagra lift the stock market ticker, we hold out hope that our 401k and pension plans will re-erect themselves along with our jobs. We feel stimulated by the stimulus package… and the morning after we forget. The crisis, whatever it was, is over, isn’t it? Surely, it’s time to move on.

Wall Street is praying that we forget how they broke open the Treasury vault to the tune of trillions in loan guarantees, subsidies and interest free money in addition to the more highly publicized TARP funds — the largest transfer of wealth since African-American slaves built the South. It would be nice if we forgot about proposed wage caps on bankers. It would be nice if we stopped talking about ridiculous reforms and regulations that might prevent banker and hedge funds operators from walking off with hundreds of millions in private booty. Better to turn our attention to the auto industry. And maybe, if it all breaks just right, most of us might start to believe that the real problem all along was Detroit, rather than the wildest Wall Street casino ever created. It would be much better for the wealthy if we returned to one of our favorite pastimes: blaming autoworkers’ health care and pension benefits, or blasting big government for interfering in the economy.

Are we really going to forget? That depends on the severity of the crisis and it depends on our ability to understand it. Some see green shoots all around. (I would like to sell them the Brooklyn Bridge) I’m no soothsayer so I can’t tell you how long this crisis will last, or how much carnage it will cause, or even if the green shoots will be killed by all the financial toxic waste still polluting our economy. But I can help us remember its key characteristics: This crisis was the result of a total failure of financial markets. It wasn’t caused by consumers taking on too much debt, or a housing bubble, or uncompetitive industries. It was caused by financial markets run wild. It wasn’t caused by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac or big government. It was caused because our leaders believed free-markets could run on their own. Greenspan, Rubin, Bernanke and scores of others both on Wall Street and in government (or in the revolving doors between them) proclaimed that the free-market always knows best. It was ok if the elite gained riches once reserved for royalty. It was ok because their prowess and ingenuity drove our economy to new heights. They were the financial innovators of the world. It was far better for America to produce new financial instruments than to make solar energy or efficient cars.

They were dead wrong. Left to its own devices, the financial system crashed. We gave them every kind of deregulation they wanted and they drove the economy off a cliff.

Yet, it’s easier to blame average consumers who ran up too much debt on their credit cards or subprime borrowers who got in over their heads. In times of crisis, our complicit media likes to spread blame around. Columnist David Brooks suggests that the big unanswered question of the crash of 2008 is “how so many people could be so stupid, incompetent and self-destructive all at once.” ( www.nytimes.com/2009/01/16/opinion/16brooks.html.) But everyone is not to blame. Not this time. Financial free markets failed. Free-market ideology failed. Firms that are too big to fail, failed (while profiting all the way until they raided the Treasury.). Let’s hope our memories don’t fail as well.

Lees verder: http://www.mediachannel.org/wordpress/2009/05/20/wall-st-and-the-media-are-trying-to-make-us-forget-who-started-the-financial-crash/

The Empire 452

States: It's taxes, taxes and more taxes
Desperate to balance budgets, states are hiking income and sales taxes on
people and businesses.

Last Updated: May 20, 2009: 12:22 PM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Facing mounting budget deficits and seeing few
areas left to cut spending, states increasingly are turning to the only
option they have left: raising taxes.

Though public officials are loath to do this, particularly during a
recession, many governors are increasing personal income taxes, raising
corporate income taxes, hiking cigarette and gas taxes, or broadening sales
taxes.

Already, 16 states have taken this unpopular step this fiscal year, and
another 17 have proposed tax hikes for the coming year, according to the
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a policy group. In many cases, they
are making small increases in specific taxes, rather than imposing a broad
rate hike.

"The question isn't whether to raise taxes, it's which taxes to raise,"
said Linda Bilmes, professor of public finance at Harvard's Kennedy School
of Government.

Wealthier residents in Hawaii are now paying higher personal income taxes.
The state increased the tax rate to 11% for single filers earning more than
$200,000 and couples making more than $400,000, while also raising levies
on hotel accommodations and real estate purchases.

Smokers in Rhode Island, meanwhile, now pay the highest state tobacco taxes
in the nation, forking over an additional $1 for a total of $3.46 in state
levies per pack.

Lees verder: http://money.cnn.com/2009/05/20/news/economy/state_tax_increases/index.htm

De Israelische Terreur 865

Can Obama meet Netanyahu's challenge?

By Mustafa Barghouthi

 

20 May 2009

Mustafa Barghouthi argues that if President Barack Obama fails to stand up to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu now, he will be consigning Jerusalem, the West Bank and the two-state solution to an Israeli expansionism “that will overwhelm the ability of cartographers to concoct a viable Palestinian state”.

 

I cannot recall a more important meeting between an American president and an Israeli prime minister than today's [18 May] meeting between President Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Will the Obama administration have the courage to challenge Netanyahu, or will all the talk of change dissolve in the face of a concerted one-two punch from Netanyahu and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)?

I am increasingly convinced that if Obama fails to speak out now, it will doom the two-state solution forever. Further fiddling in Washington – after eight years of it – will consign Jerusalem, the West Bank and the two-state solution to an Israeli expansionism that will overwhelm the ability of cartographers to concoct a viable Palestinian state.

It's now or almost certainly never. If Obama lacks the political will to stand up to Netanyahu now, he will lack the capacity later. And by the time Obama leaves office, it will be too late to salvage anything more than an archipelago of Palestinian Bantustans. We Palestinians seek freedom, not apartheid, and not the sort of Potemkin villages on the West Bank that Netanyahu is trying to package to the West as visionary economic boomtowns for desperate Palestinians. Yes, we want economic improvement, but the best way to achieve that is through control over our own lives, borders and resources.

Israel's new foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, claimed in an April interview that "America accepts all our decisions". I was in Washington in February and did not find that to be the case. The Obama administration, I was pleased to hear, planned to be in neither the Israelis' nor the Palestinians' pocket. That is all we Palestinians have ever asked.

Yet, just as in the 1990s, Netanyahu believes that he is the world's driving force and that a Democratic president should be following his lead. In his memoir, former lead American negotiator Dennis Ross quoted an exasperated President Clinton as complaining that Netanyahu comported himself as though he thought Israel, and not the United States, was the superpower. That doesn't appear to have changed. How else to explain the recent assertion by Israeli officials that, before Israel will address core Palestinian-Israeli negotiating issues, the United States must deal – apparently to Israel's satisfaction – with Iran's nuclear programme?

The false Iran-Palestine linkage troubles me because its Israeli boosters think that Iran is an immediate concern, and Palestinian freedom can once again be kicked down the road. Danny Ayalon, Israel's deputy foreign minister and a representative of Lieberman's extremist Yisrael Beiteinu party, said in April that "the Iranian clock should be measured in months", but the Palestinian timetable "is open-ended".

What Ayalon, Lieberman and Netanyahu fail to grasp is the world's increasing recognition that they are attempting to dictate the timetable for another people's freedom. This is unacceptable in the 21st century.

Lees verder: http://www.redress.cc/palestine/mbarghouthi20090520

De Israelische Terreur 864

Netanyahu adviser moves out of the shadows

US forced to rehabilitate former spy Uzi Arad

By Jonathan Cook in Nazareth

20 May 2009

Jonathan Cook considers the rise of a former official of Israel’s spy agency Mossad, Uzi Arad, formerly barred from entering the US by the Bush administration after implication in a spying scandal but recently rehabilitated by Obama. Arad is an implacable opponent of Palestinian statehood and believes that Israel should strike  “anything and everything of value” in Iran, including its “holiest sites”.

As might be expected of a former senior official with Israel’s spy agency Mossad, Uzi Arad – the most trusted political adviser to Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister – has got used to being in the shadows as he exerts influence.

 

But that is fast changing. Mr Arad was prominent in preparing Mr Netanyahu’s tough positions as he headed for Washington this week to meet Barack Obama, the US president, who is seeking to advance a Middle East peace plan.

 

Mr Arad, recently appointed the head of Israel’s revamped National Security Council, will oversee an organization that Mr Netanyahu regards as the linchpin of the new government’s security and foreign policy.

 

One military analyst, Amir Oren, has noted that, given Mr Netanyahu’s unstable coalition, Mr Arad “is likely to emerge as a strong adviser to a weak government”.

 

Mr Arad has been outspoken both in rejecting Palestinian statehood and in promoting the military option against Iran, positions believed to be shared by the Israeli prime minister and that will be at the root of a possible confrontation in the coming months with the Obama administration.

 

Mr Arad is also one of only a handful of senior figures on Mr Netanyahu’s Iran Task Force, charged with devising a strategy for dealing with Tehran and its supposed ambitions to attain nuclear weapons.

 

That will make some in Israel uneasy. The hawkish views that have made Mr Arad indispensable to Mr Netanyahu have also earned him several high-profile opponents.

 

Arik Carmon, founder of the Israel Democracy Institute, has described Mr Arad’s proposal to arrange “territorial exchanges” to strip some of Israel’s Palestinian minority of their citizenship as “racist”.

 

Alon Liel, a former director-general of Israel’s Foreign Ministry, has called Mr Arad’s efforts to derail recent talks with Syria by demanding the continuing occupation of the Golan “ridiculous and nasty”.

 

In 2007, before his rise to public prominence, Mr Arad also fuelled worried speculation about Israel’s plans for a military strike on Tehran, after he described it as “easier than you think”. A wide range of non-military Iranian targets were legitimate, he added.

 

But despite Mr Arad’s espousal of opinions that in many respects accord with those of Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu Party and Mr Netanyahu’s foreign minister, few doubt the prime minister’s fierce loyalty to him.

Lees verder: http://www.redress.cc/palestine/jcook20090520

Theodor Holman 8

Paul2 heeft een nieuwe reactie op uw bericht "Theodor Holman 7" achtergelaten: 

Hoe serieus kun je zo'n man nemen
'Moord op Theo van Gogh

Holmans geloofwaardigheid liep in 2004 na de moord op collega Theo van Gogh een geduchte deuk op. In het televisieprogramma Barend & Van Dorp beweerde Holman dat hij bij het opgebaarde lijk van Van Gogh had gevoeld dat het been was geamputeerd. Dit zou volgens hem door de politie zijn gedaan omdat er nog kogels van de moordaanslag in zouden zitten die onderzocht moesten worden. Enige dagen later bleek zijn verhaal niet waar te zijn en slechts bedoeld om de gemoederen in de Nederlandse gemeenschap nog wat meer te verhitten. Onder de dreiging van een juridische aanklacht wegens het 'aanzetten tot haat' (in de richting van de Nederlandse moslimgemeenschap, waaruit de dader van de aanslag voortkwam) trok Holman zijn opmerkingen in.'
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_Holman 

De Commerciele Massamedia 213

De Volkskrant bericht: 

Vliegtuigcrash Indonesië eist tientallen levens

Zeker 79 mensen zijn woensdag om het leven gekomen door het neerstorten van een militair transportvliegtuig in Oost-Java. Dat heeft een woordvoerder van de Indonesische luchtmacht voor de radio gezegd. Vraag: waarom is dit nieuws? En waarom is het volgende geen nieuws? 18,000 children die every day of hunger, U.N. says. Elke dag weer tenminste 18.000 kinderen. En hoe komt dat? Waarom is dit geen nieuws voor de westerse commerciele massamedia?

Theodor Holman 7

Dit schreef anzi naar aanleiding van een stukje van mij over het fascistje "Theodor Holman" Er is hier ook sprake van ironie en overdrijving, maar ik geloof niet dat jij deze humor helemaal begrijpt.Jammer, want net als bij Reve, zit daarin zijn kracht. Ik moest ook altijd lachen om de humorvolle azijnzeikerij van van Reve en nu om het grappige pissen op moslims van Holman. De urinestraal, die doet 't,he! Geweldig, je moet er toch maar opkomen, geniaal!  

anzi  

Mijn reactie:

'dit schreef ik 16 juni vorig jaar: 

Zonder uitgebreid op Holman's ongein in te gaan, is het opmerkelijk hoe hij een steeds grotere epigoon van Gerard Reve is geworden. Wat hij schrijft lijkt ironisch bedoelt, alleen valt hij in dezelfde kuil als zijn leermeester. Laten we daarom ook het origineel als voorbeeld nemen. In Het ironische van de ironie, over het geval G.K. van het Reve schreef Harry Mulisch aan het eind van de jaren zeventig over het racisme en antisemitisme van de “grote volksschrijver”: “De ironie leidt to parodie, de parodie leidt tot identificatie – dat is de onwrikbare wet, waaraan Van het Reve nog het meest onderhorig is… Zo wordt het spel ernst. De corpsstudent speelt net zo lang de man met de grote bek, tot hij het is. Dat is het ironische van de ironie: dat zij het plotseling niet meer is. Hij is als het ware door de dubbele bodem van de ironie gezakt. Wie ironisch spreekt, zegt het tegendeel van wat hij meent, maar zodanig, dat de ander dat doorziet. Van het Reve zegt wat hij meent, maar zodanig, dat de ander dat niet doorziet en denkt nog steeds met ironie te doen te hebben… Als hij… schrijft: ‘Ik vind, dat de arbeiders in bepaalde aparte wijken zouden moeten wonen, die ze alleen op weg van of naar hun werk zouden mogen verlaten, & verder alleen met speciale verlofpasjes’- dan is dat eenvoudig zijn mening, geen grap, geen fantasie.”