Alex Burghoorn van de Volkskrant 9

Terwijl de wereldpers met angst en beven naar de extreme verrechtsing in Israel kijkt, beweert Alex Burghoorn dat 'Hoop krijgt toch kans in Israël', aldus de kop in de Volkskrant. Zijn 'analyse' moet gelezen worden in het kader van de Volkskrant-overtuiging dat Kadima 'een middenpartij' is en 'de waarheid ergens in het midden [moet] liggen.'

Leest u deze nonsens zelf:
'ANALYSE, Alex Burghoorn

gepubliceerd op 11 februari 2009 21:26, bijgewerkt op 12 februari 2009 08:29
JERUZALEM - Kadima’s boodschap van hoop vond voldoende gehoor om de grootste partij te worden. Toch vraagt het angstige land zich af hoe het verder moet met Israël.

Kadima-leider Tzipi Livni reageert tijdens de verkiezingsnacht in Israël. Volgens exitpolls heeft haar partij nipt gewonnen van Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud. (AP)
‘Breng niet uit wanhoop uw stem uit, maar uit hoop’, sprak Tzipi Livni tot de kijkers thuis, toen zij dinsdagochtend in Tel Aviv haar eigen biljet in de stembus deed.
Het was een bekende campagneboodschap van haar partij Kadima, die na de Gaza-oorlog wat op de achtergrond was geraakt. Immers, hoop gaat doorgaans niet zo goed samen met geweld. Maar voor de eindsprint greep de middenpartij weer terug op de van Obama afgekeken aanpak.
En dus werd het: de hoop, dat ben ik, en de wanhoop, dat zijn de anderen – te weten: de angstzaaiers van rechts.
Het werkte. Tzipi Livni heeft van Kadima de grootste partij in de Knesset – het parlement – weten te maken, met 28 zetels. Toch is dat, om in haar termen te blijven, slechts een eilandje van hoop.' Zie: http://www.volkskrant.nl/buitenland/article1147278.ece/Hoop_krijgt_toch_kans_in_Israel

Nu de werkelijkheid. Hoop voor wie? Niet voor de Palestijnen in bezet gebied en zeker niet voor de burgerbevolking in de Gazastrook die onlangs nog de Israelische terreur over zich heen kreeg, ook niet voor de ouders van de bijna 300 Palestijnse kinderen die door de Israelische strijdkrachten werden vermoord. Hoop voor wie? Ook niet voor de Palestijnen die hun land verliezen aan de Joodse kolonisten die de partij van de 'hoop' weigert te ontruimen. Hoop voor wie? Zelfs niet voor de Palestijnse Israeli's die van Kadima-leidster Livni te horen hebben gekregen dat een Palestijnse staat op de Westbank en de Gazastrook 'would be the “answer” to Israel’s Palestinian citizens', en die nu in angst leven dat ze straks etnisch worden gezuiverd door de regering van hun eigen land. Er is alleen hoop voor de Joden in Israel van wie een meerderheid wil dat hun Palestijnse landgenoten voorgoed verdwijnen uit 'de Joodse staat'. En de hoop van deze mensen heeft Alex Burghoorn, die voor de 'pro-zionistische lobbygroep' het CIDI optreedt, zich eigen gemaakt. 20 procent van de Israelische bevolking speelt in zijn berichtgeving geen rol, want de Palestijnse Israeli's vormen in zijn ogen een te verwaarlozen groep. Burghoorn gedraagt zich als een zionistische propagandist, voor wie de democratie een wassen neus is. Welk journalistiek belang denkt hij te dienen? Welke journalistieke beloning levert hem dit soort 'analyses' op?

Iran 243

'Things are getting interesting in Iran. Former President Mohammad Khatami declared his bid to challenge President Ahmadinejad in the upcoming Iranian Presidential elections in June. This will have significant implications for the United States. In a post on Huffington Post today, I analyze this development further: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/trita-parsi/can-khatami-make-a-comeba_b_165087.html

Sincerely,
Trita Parsi, PhD
http://www.tritaparsi.com/
http://www.treacherousalliance.com/

************************************
Can Khatami make a comeback?
By Trita Parsi
Feb 9, 2009
The Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/trita-parsi/can-khatami-make-a-comeba_b_165087.html

Iran's former President, the soft-spoken Mohammad Khatami, ended months of speculations and revealed his bid to challenge the current Iranian President - the not-so-soft-spoken Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - in the upcoming Presidential elections in June.

"I declare that I will stand for the next elections," Khatami told reporters on Sunday, according to Iran's state-run news agency, IRNA.

With Khatami officially in the race, the Iranian presidential campaigns will begin in earnest. Never before has an incumbent Iranian president faced such a serious challenge. But in spite of Ahmadinejad's abysmal handling of the economy, he is far from defeated. The Iranian presidential elections will not be democratic by Western standards, but they won't lack excitement or fierce competitiveness.

Khatami had earlier declared that he would only run if he was given guarantees by Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, that his candidacy wouldn't be rejected by the Guardian Council, the body that vets candidates, and that he would be able to govern if elected.

Khatami's challenge now is to make sure that he can convince the Iranian populace three things. First, that he will show greater strength and willingness to challenge the political boundaries of the Islamic Republic. During his eight years as President, Khatami disappointed large segments of the population by being too timid and too unwilling to push the envelope to deliver on his promise of greater freedoms and reforms.

In comparison, Ahmadinejad has shown far greater chutzpah than Khatami ever did. For instance, while Khatami wanted to open up to the US, he never took any major bold steps and worried too much about the domestic political backlash from conservatives circles in Iran. When both President Clinton and Khatami appeared at the UN Millennium summit in New York in 2000, Khatami declined to appear in the photo-op with all other world leaders out of fear that the cameras would catch a glimpse of the two presidents shaking hands.

Ahmadinejad, on the other hand, has shown far less sensitivity. Within his first years in office, he sent two letters to President George Bush - none of them cleared by Ayatollah Khamenei - a congratulatory note to President Barack Obama, and he appeared on virtually every network in the US giving one-on-one interviews with American journalists.

Perhaps by virtue of his bombastic and insensitive style, Ahmadinejad has shown how the envelope can be pushed and how taboos can be broken in Iran. Khatami should take note.

Second, Khatami must be able to mobilize his base - the more educated classes in Iran - and make sure that they vote. This may prove a difficult task. Khatami's base has grown disillusioned with the political system in Iran and their low turn-out in the 2005 elections is believed to have enabled Ahmadinejad to snatch the presidency.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, if elected, Khatami must show the courage to ruffle some feathers to implement his program. He has been given an undeserved second chance, an unexpected opportunity to run once more, which is largely due to the way Ahmadinejad's poor performances has created nostalgia about Khatami. He won't be given a third chance.

Khatami's decision to run - and his potential victory - will have significant implications for the US. Though major shifts in the foreign policy arena should not be expected - Iran's red lines on the nuclear issue are unlikely to change, for instance - a Khatami victory can help create an atmosphere that is more conducive to finding a mutually acceptable compromise between Iran and the West.

His decision to run will intensify temptations in Washington to hold back any effort to initiate diplomacy with Iran until after the election. These temptations should be resisted. The last thing Khatami needs is to be considered America's candidate in the race. In fact, opponents to Ahmadinejad argue that they will have an easier time pursuing diplomacy with the US if negotiations are initiated already under Ahmadinejad and the conservatives. It will simply be more difficult for the conservatives to oppose and undermine US-Iran talks if those talks began when a conservative held the presidency.

If Khatami is elected and an opening is found between the US and Iran, Washington must make sure it breaks its bad habit of punishing moderates in the Middle East. The Bush administration ignored several attempts by the Khatami government to reach out to the US, and it put Iran in the Axis of Evil in 2002 only weeks after Washington and Tehran had worked closely together in Afghanistan to topple the Taliban and institute a new constitution in Afghanistan. The failure of the reformist to reap any rewards for their more moderate and constructive foreign policy directly contributed to the ascent of Iran's foreign policy hawks.

Khatami is still a long way from becoming Iran's comeback kid. But if he does, both he and Washington must learn from their mistakes in order to make the comeback worthwhile.

Trita Parsi is the author of Treacherous Alliance – The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the US, a silver medal recipient of the Council on Foreign Relations' Arthur Ross Book Award.'

Het Neoliberale Geloof 319

'The American ruling class
By Tom Eley

Global Research, February 8, 2009
World Socialist Web Site - 2009-02-06
On Wednesday, President Barack Obama announced measures that purport to restrict executive compensation to $500,000 at financial institutions receiving billions in government assistance. The figure does not include stock options, which could be redeemed after financial firms pay back loans from the federal government. Nor does it apply to the original recipients of tens of billions in TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) money.

The measures are essentially a public relations exercise. Their aim is to provide political cover for a new and even larger Wall Street bailout, which Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will unveil next week.

Yet the discussion that has emerged in the wake of Obama’s announcement sheds light on the domination of government by a tiny financial elite and the increasingly threadbare pretense of democracy in the US. This financial aristocracy, the episode reveals, is a power to be approached on bended knee.

The media have responded to Obama’s proposal of a $500,000 limit on executive compensation, which would affect only a handful of firms, as though this were a severe and astonishing punishment. Yet the figure represents approximately 12 times the annual salary of the typical worker. To the majority of the population, a salary of a half million dollars is a staggering amount of money.

Obama’s servility before the financial aristocracy was summed up by the reassurances he gave it in announcing his limits on executive pay.
"This is America," Obama said. "We don't disparage wealth. We don't begrudge anybody for achieving success."

Such a vision of America is at odds with both its present circumstances and its history, which has been characterized by deep democratic and egalitarian traditions that date back to before the Jeffersonian democracy of the early Republic. And while liberals are busy attempting to equate Obama to Franklin Roosevelt, the latter, in the midst of the Great Depression, attempted to capitalize on the tremendous contempt for the rich in the population at large by regularly issuing bromides against the "money changers."

Indeed, Obama’s obsequiousness stands in sharp contrast to the anger of the working masses, who find it incomprehensible that the same executives who are responsible for ruining the economy and squandering trillions in taxpayer money are now presented with pay "limits" of a half million dollars. Workers are wondering why there haven’t been criminal indictments and television scenes of handcuffed executives frog-marched from their offices.

But on Wall Street, $500,000 is considered a pittance. The New York Times reports that executives felt cheated by taking home "only" $18 billion in collective bonuses in 2009. "I feel like I got a doorman’s tip, compared to what I got in previous years," an investment banker with Citigroup told the Times.

The Financial Times reported on Wall Street’s opposition to the largely token measures. "Senior bankers were quick to warn the plans would cause a ‘brain drain’ from the profession as top executives seek
more rewarding jobs out of the public eye," it wrote. "Unlike other careers where job satisfaction and other considerations play a part, finance tends to attract people whose main motivation is money."'

Lees verder: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12205

Sander van Hoorn 14

En ja hoor, Sander van Hoorn van het NOS-Journaal noemt Kadima een 'centrumpartij'. Dat kan hij ook doen zolang hij de feiten verzwijgt. En daar wordt Van Hoorn steeds beter in. Volgens hem behoort Kadima tot het gematigde midden. Met andere woorden een partij die weigert de Joodse nederzettingen in bezet gebied te ontmantelen, zoals het internationaal recht en VN-resoluties eisen, is desondanks voor hem een gematigde middenpartij. Kadima, waarvan de leidster Livni heeft verklaard dat een Palestijnse staat op de Westbank en de Gazastrook 'would be the “answer” to Israel’s Palestinian citizens', is volgens Van Hoorn daadwerkelijk een 'centrumpartij'.

Stel nu dat een Palestijnse politieke partij in Israel van mening is dat de Joden daar dienen te verdwijnen, zou Sander van Hoorn zo'n Palestijnse partij 'een centrumpartij' hebben genoemd? Geen sprake van. Dan had hij (terecht) luid en duidelijk laten weten dat we hier met Palestijnse politieke extremisten te maken hadden. Het enige echte verschil is dat Sander van Hoorn de wereld verdeelt in joden en niet-joden. De Joden in Israel mogen dat wat de niet-Joden in de wereld niet mogen. Waarom zou Van Hoorn de wereld in twee groepen verdelen? Waar komen zijn criteria vandaan? Voor een deel praat hij andere journalisten na, maar voor dat andere deel?

Het Neoliberale Geloof 318

'Asia: The coming fury
By Walden Bello
As goods pile up in wharves from Bangkok to Shanghai, and workers are laid off in record numbers, people in East Asia are beginning to realize they aren't only experiencing an economic downturn but living through the end of an era.
For over 40 years, the cutting edge of the region's economy has been export-oriented industrialization (EOI). Taiwan and South Korea first adopted this strategy of growth in the mid-1960s, with Korean dictator Park Chung-Hee coaxing his country's entrepreneurs to export. He did this by, among other measures, cutting off electricity to their factories if they refused to comply.
The success of Korea and Taiwan convinced the World Bank that EOI was the wave of the future. In the mid-1970s, then-Bank president Robert McNamara enshrined it as doctrine, preaching that "special efforts must be made in many countries to turn their manufacturing enterprises away from the relatively small markets associated with import substitution toward the much larger opportunities flowing from export promotion."
EOI became one of the key points of consensus between the World Bank and Southeast Asia's governments. Both realized import substitution industrialization could continue only if domestic purchasing power were increased via significant redistribution of income and wealth, and this was simply out of the question for the region's elites.
Export markets, especially the relatively open US market, appeared to be a painless substitute.
Japanese capital creates an export platform The World Bank endorsed the establishment of export processing zones, where foreign capital could be married to cheap (usually female) labor. It also supported the establishment of tax incentives for exporters and, less successfully, promoted trade liberalization. Not until the mid-1980s, however, did the economies of Southeast Asia take off, and this wasn't so much because of the World Bank but because of aggressive US trade policy.
In 1985, in what became known as the Plaza Accord, the United States forced the drastic revaluation of the Japanese yen relative to the dollar and other major currencies. By making Japanese imports more expensive to American consumers, Washington hoped to reduce its trade deficit with Tokyo. Production in Japan became prohibitive in terms of labor costs, forcing the Japanese to move the more labor-intensive parts of their manufacturing operations to low-wage areas, in particular to China and Southeast Asia. At least US$15 billion worth of Japanese direct investment flowed into Southeast Asia between 1985 and 1990.
The inflow of Japanese capital allowed the Southeast Asian "newly industrializing countries" to escape the credit squeeze of the early 1980s brought on by the Third World debt crisis, surmount the global recession of the mid-1980s, and move onto a path of high-speed growth.
The centrality of the endaka, or currency revaluation, was reflected in the ratio of foreign direct investment inflows to gross capital formation, which leaped spectacularly in the late 1980s and 1990s in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand.'

Lees verder: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Asian_Economy/KB11Dk01.html

Het Neoliberale Geloof 317

'Global bond markets are calling the bluff of the US Federal Reserve.
The yield on 10-year US Treasury bonds -- the world's benchmark cost of capital -- has jumped from 2 percent to 3 percent since Christmas despite efforts to talk the rate down.
This level will asphyxiate the US economy if allowed to persist, as Fed chair Ben Bernanke must know. The US is already in deflation.
Core prices -- stripping out energy -- fell at an annual rate of 2 percent in the fourth quarter. Wages are following. IBM, Chrysler, General Motors, and YRC have all begun to cut pay.
The "real" cost of capital is rising as the slump deepens. This is textbook debt deflation. It was not supposed to happen. The Bernanke doctrine assumes that the Fed can bring down the whole structure of interest costs, first by slashing the Fed funds rate to zero and then by making a "credible threat" to buy Treasuries outright with printed money.
Mr Bernanke has been repeating this threat since early December.
But talk is cheap. As the Fed hesitates, real yields climb ever higher. Plainly the markets do not regard Fed rhetoric as "credible" at all.
Who can blame bond vigilantes for going on strike? Nobody wants to be left holding the bag if and when the global monetary blitz succeeds in stoking inflation. Governments are borrowing frantically to fund their bailouts and cover a collapse in tax revenue. The US Treasury alone needs to raise $2 trillion in 2009.
Where is the money to come from? China, the Pacific tigers, and the commodity powers are no longer amassing foreign reserves ($7.6 trillion). Their exports have collapsed. Instead of buying a trillion dollars of extra bonds each year, they have become net sellers. In aggregate, they dumped $190 billion over the last 15 weeks.
The Fed has stepped into the breach, up to a point. It has bought $350 billion of commercial paper and has begun to buy $600 billion of mortgage bonds. That helps. But still it recoils from buying Treasuries, perhaps fearing that any move to "monetise"
Washington's deficit starts a slippery slope towards an Argentine fate. Or perhaps Bernanke doesn't believe his own assurances that the Fed can extract itself easily from emergency policies when the cycle turns.
As they dither, the world is falling apart. Events in Japan have turned deeply alarming. Exports fell 35 percent in December.
Industrial output fell 9.6 percent. The economy is contracting at an annual rate of 12 percent. "Falling exports are triggering a downward spiral of production, incomes, and spending. It is important to prepare for swift policy steps, including those usually regarded as unusual," said the Bank of Japan's Atsushi Mizuno.
The bank is already targeting equities on the Tokyo bourse. That is not enough for restive politicians. One bloc led by Sen. Koutaro Tamura wants to create $330 billion in scrip currency for an industrial blitz. "We are facing hyperdeflation, so we need a policy to create hyperinflation," he said.'
Lees verder: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/4560901/Bond-market-calls-Feds-bluff-as-world-falls-apart.html

Het Israelisch Fascisme 2

MJ Rosenberg
Director of Policy for the Israel Policy Forum
Posted February 11, 2009 08:17 AM (EST)

Netanyahu: Better for America, Better For IsraelIn the end, it does not matter all that much that Bibi Netanyahu is going to be Israel's next prime minister. I don't see much (if any) real differences between him and Ehud Barak or Tzipi Livni. In fact, in my opinion, it is Barak more than anyone else who is responsible for demise of the Oslo process. (For the facts on that, see Clayton Swisher's "The Truth About Camp David," a brilliant expose by a young ex-Marine who was there).

I also am taken by an analysis by Yossi Beilin, who was Oslo's architect. He says that it is better to have a pure right wing government than a right wing government covered by a centrist fig leaf. He says that, in the past, the worst Israeli governments have been national unity hybrids. The right goes about its business building new settlements and thwarting the peace process while the "left" (i.e., Shimon Peres, in his day) puts a pretty face on it.
Remember how Jimmy Carter handled Menachem Begin? Or how the first George Bush not only used our foreign aid as leverage against Yitzhak Shamir but engineered his replacement by Yitzhak Rabin? Barak, on the other hand, ran rings around us. President Clinton recalls that Barak treated America as if Israel was the superpower and he, Clinton, was a "goddam wooden Indian" whose job was to shut up and listen).
Beilin also believes that the United States will come down a lot harder on a right wing government than on one that appears centrist. It will be easier for President Obama to deal with Netanyahu than with the almost equally hawkish Livni because the latter seems dedicated to ending the conflict. In fact, her views on some of the critical issues are at least as hard line as Netanyahu's. But her seeming moderation is a nice cover.
A Netanyahu government would have no such cover. Any acts of sabotage to the peace process or new misery inflicted on the Palestinians would likely be strongly opposed by the United States. Israel's most slavish "friends" in Congress -- almost all Democrats -- would find it hard, although far from impossible, to choose Netanyahu (who is very close to the GOP) over Obama. The lobby will be dispirited. Contrary to popular opinion, it does not like far right governments because they are a tougher sell.
The likely result will be either a right wing government that goes out of its way not to offend the United States or one that does, and gets put in its place.
So I'm not too sad today, except about the rise of the neo-fascist Lieberman (the "neo" is there because everyone uses it. I'm not sure what's so neo about him). Here's my piece about him from today's Los Angeles Times.
FOR MORE, SEE MY ORGANIZATION'S NEW BLOG'

Zie: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mj-rosenberg/netanyahu-better-for-amer_b_165894.html