alt.newz.flux-all |
- Editorial Roundup: Excerpts From Recent Editorials - The Associated Press
- Obama's New Energy Policy: Consider the Bigger Picture and Some Old Friends - Huffington Post (blog)
- Dubious Decisions on Drilling: Why Obama Should Reconsider Offshore Drilling ... - Across the Aisle (blog)
- In Bid to Boost Drilling, GOP Counterattacks With Focus on Gas Prices - New York Times
- Kerry: Bill Rollout To Come 'Very, Very Soon' - National Journal (blog)
- Gulf oil spill: An energy crossroads for Obama - Los Angeles Times (blog)
- PRESS RELEASE: Time for the World Bank to clean its energy investments – or ... - Bank Information Center
- Poised for a British-US Realignment - Council on Foreign Relations
- Former U.S. Department of Energy Official Joins McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP in ... - PR Newswire (press release)
- Bring Greece Here
- Pending home sales rise 5.3 percent in March - San Jose Mercury News
- Iran calls for renewed energy strategy - UPI.com
- How the GOP's Consumer Plan Screws You
- Funny Ahmadinejad Commen!
- When Immigrants Are Actually Indentured Servants
- Russian Policy on Iran: Balancing is Best
- The Return of the Raj
- Profile - Fatima Bhutto: Fatima's Feuding, Feudal Family
- More Key Primaries Ahead
- We Cannot Tolerate a Nuclear Canada!
- Ohio, Indiana, and North Carolina Primary Results
- Kent State Killings Triggered by FBI Agent Provocateur
- New York Times minimizes Gulf oil spill
- BP Oil Spill Highlights Poor Safety Record, the Worst of Any Oil Company in America
- Shell reports record oil spillages in Nigeria
- Former U.S. Department of Energy Official Joins McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP in ... - PR Newswire (press release)
- Americans prefer ‘progressive,' 'state's rights' to ‘capitalism,' poll finds
- "Hey Dad, Why Does This Country Protect Billionaires, and Not Teachers?"
- Americans Are Ratting Out Their Neighbors to the IRS at a Record Pace to Reap Cash Whistleblower Rewards
- Obama Faces Backlash Over Drilling, Leak Response - NPR
- Sparking bilateral trade - Xinhua
- Chickens for Checkups, round 4: Rove playbook fail
- KY-Sen: Sarah Palin stars in new Rand Paul ad
- ATTORNEYS STILL AT LARGE
- US: All Options on the Table Against Syria
- LIVE: President Obama on Wall Street Reform
- ONE DOWN, OVER THREE MILLION MORE TO GO…..
- Alzheimer's drugs cause brain damage and actually worsen memory loss
- The Making of American Foreign Policy It's all about domestic politics
| Editorial Roundup: Excerpts From Recent Editorials - The Associated Press Posted: 05 May 2010 05:31 AM PDT
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| Obama's New Energy Policy: Consider the Bigger Picture and Some Old Friends - Huffington Post (blog) Posted: 05 May 2010 05:04 AM PDT
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| Posted: 05 May 2010 04:51 AM PDT
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| In Bid to Boost Drilling, GOP Counterattacks With Focus on Gas Prices - New York Times Posted: 05 May 2010 04:32 AM PDT
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| Kerry: Bill Rollout To Come 'Very, Very Soon' - National Journal (blog) Posted: 05 May 2010 04:22 AM PDT
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| Gulf oil spill: An energy crossroads for Obama - Los Angeles Times (blog) Posted: 05 May 2010 02:44 AM PDT
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| Posted: 05 May 2010 02:31 AM PDT
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| Poised for a British-US Realignment - Council on Foreign Relations Posted: 05 May 2010 02:06 AM PDT
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| Posted: 05 May 2010 02:00 AM PDT
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| Posted: 05 May 2010 01:22 AM PDT ShareThis Bring Greece Here - new CLG Facebook group - Join us! Sick of bailouts, corporaterrorist trolls, Wall Street casinos, banking maggots and politicians who are hand-maidens of same? We need *vigorous,* active protests *here* in the US! Why aren't US citizens 'taking it to the streets,' are they are in Athens? We, too, will not continue to be cowed by these corporaterrorist dirt-bags and their political puppets!
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| Pending home sales rise 5.3 percent in March - San Jose Mercury News Posted: 05 May 2010 01:06 AM PDT
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| Iran calls for renewed energy strategy - UPI.com Posted: 05 May 2010 12:56 AM PDT
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| How the GOP's Consumer Plan Screws You Posted: 04 May 2010 10:10 PM PDT Senate Republicans have put forward their own proposal for a new consumer protection agency, a plan that significantly kneecaps the consumer division Democrats are pushing for and does little to actually help consumers. Republicans' plan would establish a consumer protection division within the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, but the division wouldn't be independent or autonomous, a condition seen as a dealbreaker for consumer advocates. (The Democrats would put an independent agency in the Federal Reserve.) In the GOP's plan, the division's ability to write new rules would be seriously constrained by the FDIC, who would have to agree to those new rules before they became law. The GOP's consumer proposal would also allow federal consumer laws to continue to override, or preempt, state laws. (The Democratic plan, on the other hand, would let states' attorneys general and other regulators, who are nimbler and respond to on-the-ground events faster, to craft laws at the state level.)     
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| Posted: 04 May 2010 10:02 PM PDT Writes Daniel: "I love the way Ahmadinejad turns US foreign policy back on itself! But the smirking Stephanopolous is impossible to watch."
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| When Immigrants Are Actually Indentured Servants Posted: 04 May 2010 10:00 PM PDT In 2007, after seven years' research and writing, Random House published my book, Nobodies, an examination of modern American slave labor. Each year, as documented by the State Department and there CIA, there are some 17,500 new cases of trafficking on American soil. Many involve domestic workers, sex workers, and farmworkers, illegally present, hard to account for, and easily abused. Just as troublesome, I discovered, are guestworkers, legally brought into the country by state sanction, then abused with numbing regularity. My article "Bound for America," just published in MoJo's latest issue, digs into this significant slice of the immigration debate. The story involves over a thousand workers from Thailand who, in 2005 and 2006, paid between $11,000 and $23,000 for the privilege of coming to America as farmworkers. They worked in fourteen different states for a Los Angeles-based company named Global Horizons. Having signed contracts based on three years of employment, workers took tremendous risks, borrowing money against homes and ancestral land, where they live with their extended families. Now, after being sent home early, prior to paying off their enormous recruiting debts, many of these workers —and their families—are losing that land. Their lives are ruined, thanks to their transaction with our guest worker program. I traveled to Northern Thailand and farms in Maui and Utah to report on the story from beginning to end. I met with dozens of families coping with bankruptcy. I visited farms in the middle of nowhere, where despite the presence of 12 million undocumented workers (some say 20 million), it seemed necessary to fly in workers from far away Thailand. The complaint, according to the labor contractor who brought the workers, as well as numerous growers sick of hiring Mexicans, is that "Mexicans run away." That's right, some farmer down the road offers fifty cents an hour more, and they just take off, like the ingrates they are. The answer, apparently, is to seek a population more captive, more encumbered by debt and cultural dislocation. As the immigration debate rears its painful, ugly head once more, it is my hope that the facts become known, and that America's H2-A and H2-B guestworker programs aren't seized upon as a panacea for politically difficult compromises. Although nothing has been decided, current proposals under consideration plan to ENLARGE our guestworker population by hundreds of thousands. To those who would rely on this complex, obscure, and deceitful solution to our ills, it should be known that the case of which I write appears to be blossoming into the largest case of human trafficking ever seen on American soil. Is this the solution to our problems?
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| Russian Policy on Iran: Balancing is Best Posted: 04 May 2010 09:54 PM PDT James Nixey, May 2010 http://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/publications/twt/archive/view/-/id/2024/ The World Today, Volume 66, Number 5 The world wants Iran to give up any aspiration to become a nuclear weapons state and the United Nations has backed sanctions several times. Russia has its doubts. It benefits from trade and nuclear deals with Iran and the Bushehr nuclear plant is finally about to open. If Iran changed, Moscow's influence might wane, if it became more radical it could be a threat. For Moscow, the current balancing act is best. Basking in the lukewarm glow of the newly re-signed START treaty, further reducing strategic nuclear stockpiles; it is worth remembering that resetting relations with Russia still means different things to different players. For western Europe, it means: 'let's build trust on the basis of economic cooperation'. For Russia, it says: 'accept our primacy in the neighbourhood of the other former Soviet states and treat us as equals, with veto rights, on all major international issues'. And for America, which originated the policy in an attempt to woo Russia while it pursued higher priorities, reset means: 'back us over common interests such as Iran, one such greater priority, and we will be quieter over almost all your grandstanding and other misdemeanours'. A deal over Iran must be a tempting incentive for Russia, which is also under pressure from the United States finally to offer something back. But is it enough, and is it even possible? Interests such as Iran may not be as common as Washington believes. In these pages three years ago, Yury Fedorov wrote: 'The Kremlin is interested in neither a nuclear-armed Iran, nor in ending its nuclear programme' (Trump and Trap, February 2007). Iran has since come measurably closer to building that weapon, but little has changed in Russian policy. It is still playing both ends against the middle and putting its national interests first. A nuclear Iran would likely be more active in Russian spheres of 'privileged interests', such as the Caspian. However, Iran after a US or Israeli attack would be a source of instability in Russia's already volatile southern border regions. Equally, Iran's nuclear efforts divert American and European resources from Russia's self-proclaimed sphere of influence. Russia does not especially care about or for Iran. And certainly not the current radical leadership. More than once it has spurned Iran's offer of a 'strategic relationship'. It sees Iran as the west often sees Russia: potentially dangerous and unreliable; not least since Iran got close to, but ultimately rejected, a 2006 Kremlin offer to securely enrich or 'reprocess' Tehran's uranium in Russian territory, or, more recently, learnt of a previously undisclosed enrichment facility at Qom. Despite the extensive ties at working level, there is little trust and much irritation. Russia is frequently, and by turns, angry and disillusioned with Iran. But it still does not share America's view. For one thing, Russia's policy is America centric, rather than Iran-centric. Its post imperial hangover rules out forms of cooperation that would or could strengthen US dominance. Neither Russia nor Iran wish to see western influence grow in the Caspian basin or global energy markets. But Iran is a potential spoiler in Central Asia, the South Caucasus and possibly Russia itself. The Moscow subway bombings are a reminder of Iran's ability, real or imaginary, to export radical ideology to the North Caucasus. Though conscious of a large Russian-speaking population and trade agreements in Israel, a more persuasive voice in the Kremlin may now be: 'best not anger President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by siding too much with the "Great Satan"'. Moscow has no reason to welcome a nuclear Iran. But that does not mean it will sacrifice these core interests to obstruct it. Iran itself has had a consistent policy of not aiding Islam-influenced separatism in Russia: partly out of good-neighbourliness, partly from fear of Russia retaliating by interfering with its minorities. Helping to promote disorder to the north by funding dissidents, as it does Hamas or Iraq's Sadrists, would be a bad strategic move. Moreover, Russian Muslims are largely Sunni so they are not that susceptible to Iran's Shi'a revolution. BACK AT BUSHEHRThe one thousand-megawatt Russian-built nuclear reactor at Bushehr in south-western Iran clearly illustrates the hierarchy of Moscow's interests. Its long delay, for financial, technological and political reasons, has surely increased leverage in Moscow's relations with Tehran. But to what end? Russia has announced it will start up the reactor in July, ostensibly to generate of electricity for civilian use. The threat of Iran going nuclear comes just as much from rogue Russian scientists and under-the-radar organisations as from officially authorised contracts. Simply put, it is harder to control Russians' movements than ever before. Russia's primary defence of its advanced technological involvement in Iran is ingenious if not water-tight. It claims that the Bushehr complex, which is International Atomic Energy Agency-overseen, actually ensures that weaponisation of fissile material does not take place and that Iran complies with its international non-proliferation obligations. Still, even the US has given up fussing about Bushehr. Since 2003, it has largely conceded that Iran should have a civil nuclear programme: in 2005, with US acquiescence, the E3 - Germany, Britain and France - offered light-water moderated reactors to Iran. SANCTION-BUSTINGBut with the US unconvinced about Iran's nuclear intentions, and pushing for a fourth round of UN Security Council sanctions - and occasionally threatening military action - Moscow is desperately hoping that, in its current talks, Beijing will use its veto, or at least push for a watering down, thus hiding or diluting Moscow's own objection. Moscow has successfully lessened the impact for Iran of the last three UN resolutions; but being the lone spoiler on the most serious international issues is not to Russia's geopolitical advantage. The more radical Iran gets, the more out of touch Russia looks and the more it is forced to choose sides. Smart sanctions, aimed at the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the blacklisting of specified people and companies, are still being considered in Moscow. PROFIT MOTIVEEconomic incentives for the post-Soviet Russian state with Iran, though less than with, say, Turkey, should not be underestimated. The $1 billion plant at Bushehr is potentially just the beginning. Iran wants more, and the income for Russia could be ten times that figure. Overall trade is currently at $3 billion a year and rising. The incentive for financial profit from Iran is especially prevalent in Russia's strategically important nuclear and defence sectors - which are under increasing pressure - where it has sizeable and influential internal lobbies being asked to spearhead the current drive toward modernisation. Numerous Russian enterprises are neck-deep in lucrative contracts in the Islamic Republic. Russia's arms relationships elsewhere in the world are in jeopardy; notably from China which is increasingly dubious about Russian technology. So the proposed sale of the S-300 missile defence system to Iran is important. But the transaction is in stasis, reflecting a degree of Russian political concern. Already delivered, however, are the less sophisticated Tor-M1missile defence systems, also designed to protect Bushehr among other sites from air attack; somewhat optimistically, one would think, if it ever came to it. Russia's current economic mainstay - energy - is sizable with regards Iran too. Not only is Gazprom assisting in exploring Iran's oil and gas fields - the world's second largest after Russia's own - Iran's shortage of gas for export means that Russia does not even have to compete with Iran in selling gas to the west. Meanwhile, Kremlin Inc. buys up regional energy infrastructure such as the Iran-Armenia gas pipeline. DELICATEIt is a truism that Russia profits from 'controlled tension'. An anarchic or radical Iran would leave Moscow vulnerable to extremist insertion in its own sovereign territory. A stable and western-friendly Iran would open it up to the west and further marginalise Russia. Moscow loses both ways. It even loses from western or Israeli military intervention in Iran which would destabilise the surrounding area. Russia believes that it can benefit most from its current balancing act: nervously enjoying the attention from both sides. But the balance depends too much on the continuation of Iran's internal political status quo for Moscow's comfort. Russia's support of Ahmadinejad during the post-election protests last year did not go unnoticed by Iranian protestors who were heard shouting 'death to Russia!' In the longer term, Moscow could pay the price if the internal situation in Iran changes and it finds it has backed the wrong horse. True, a Russian-brokered deal with Iran would usefully boost Moscow's credentials as a peace-broker cum power-player, as well as being more financially lucrative than any American solution. More likely, however, Russia has few, if any, effective instruments to put pressure on Iran. Moscow knows this by now and so is more likely to try to conceal this lack of leverage. Ultimately, the Russian national interest is still too different from that of the west: Iran's nuclear ambition is simply not as important to Moscow. Russia's position on Iran could change at any moment, but for now, abandoning its current interests and isolating Iran for a Washington project, which will enforce western and especially US power projection in the region, does not look likely. But in spite of Russia's financial advantage, so skilfully derived from the current situation, the longer it continues to pursue different interests in Iran, the further its all-important international reputation is diminished. Russia's delicate handling of Iran is surely about to unravel. James Nixey, Manager and Research Fellow, Russia and Eurasia Programme, Chatham House 
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| Posted: 04 May 2010 09:51 PM PDT http://www.the-american- C. Raja Mohan It is not clear what French President Nicolas Sarkozy had in mind when he invited a contingent of 400 Indian troops to march down the Champs-Élysées for the Bastille Day parade in 2009. But Paris might be on to something that Washington has missed, in spite of its more intensive military engagement with India in recent years. Although Paris does not have the power to engineer international structural changes in New Delhi's favor, it has often been ahead of Washington in strategizing about India. In its effort to build a partnership with India, ongoing since the mid-1990s, France has helped India renegotiate its position in the global nuclear order: It provided diplomatic cover when India defied the world with nuclear tests in May 1998, promoted the idea of changing the global non-proliferation rules to facilitate civilian nuclear cooperation with India, and worked with the Bush Administration to get the international community to endorse India's nuclear exceptionalism. Of course, Sarkozy's motives might have been merely tactical: a move to butter up Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who was among the honored guests at the parade, or to raise its share of India's rapidly expanding market for advanced arms. But Paris is capable of more than tactics: It may sense the prospects of a fundamental change in India's defense orientation and its potential to contribute significantly to international security politics in the 21st century. It may see that a rising India, which runs one of the world's major economies and fields a large armed force, will eventually bear some of the military burdens of maintaining the global order. If so, it would not be the first time that India has done so. Western analysts, some British excepted, seem not to appreciate two historical facts: that the Indian armed forces contributed significantly to Allied efforts in the 20th century's two world wars; and that India's British Raj was the main peacekeeper in the Indian Ocean littoral and beyond. And it is not just the West that is ignorant of the security legacy of the British Raj; India's own post-colonial political class deliberately induced a collective national amnesia about the country's rich pre-independence military traditions. Its foreign policy establishment still pretends that India's engagement with the world began on August 15, 1947. The image of Indian troops marching in Paris should remind the world that India's military past could be a useful guide to its strategic future. If the United States and India can together rediscover and revive the Indian military's expeditionary tradition, they will have a solid basis for strategic cooperation not only between themselves but also with the rest of the world's democracies. The Bush Administration showed an instinctive sense of this possibility when it committed itself to assisting India's rise and boosting its defense capabilities. President Barack Obama does seem to have a fund of goodwill toward India, which was reflected in his decision to receive Prime Minister Singh in November 2009 as the first state guest at the White House. But it is not clear if the Obama Administration has a larger strategic conception of the prospects for military and security cooperation with India. In general, the Democratic administrations of recent times have tended to define engagement with India in terms of global issues and multilateralism rather than converging bilateral interests. Rather than frame the relationship with India using such ambitious but unrealizable multilateral goals, or drag Delhi further than it wishes to go into the Af-Pak mess, the Obama Administration needs to elevate the bilateral military engagement with India to a strategic level. While the U.S. debate on military burden-sharing has traditionally taken place in the context of Washington's alliances with Western Europe and Japan, a rising India may well be a more credible and sustainable partner than these two in coping with new international security challenges. If both sides can shake off the remaining historical baggage that has kept them at arm's length for most of the past sixty years, we may see something remotely like the return of the Raj. A good deal of that old baggage has already been discarded. More Americans than ever now see beyond India's third-worldish rhetoric and appreciate its quiet affection for power and realpolitik. Ever more Indians appreciate the genuine opportunities for strategic, economic and political partnership with the United States and the West in general. This appreciation accelerated dramatically during the tenure of the Bush Administration, having just come off a stretch of poor relations during the Clinton years. Although Indian opposition to the "liberal wars" of the 1990s was couched in terms of sovereignty and non-intervention, the real problem for India was the potential threat of American meddling on the Kashmir question. India faced an intense insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir supported from across the border beginning in the late 1980s, a serious effort by Pakistan to "internationalize" the dispute, and the Clinton Administration's constant hectoring on India's nuclear efforts and human rights. Unsurprisingly, India resolved to resist these new "Wilsonians" in the security debates following the Cold War. Eventually, Washington figured this out. The Clinton Administration in its final year, and the Bush Administration throughout its tenure, sought to make amends and develop a new level of political understanding between the two nations. Clinton stepped back from linking improved ties to progress on Kashmir and non-proliferation. The Bush Administration fell almost completely silent on Kashmir and put an end to nearly four decades of Indo-U.S. quarreling over nuclear issues. It also exerted itself to prevent an Indo-Pak war in the winter of 2001–02. Taken together, all of this opened the way for constructing a new security partnership. Having initially raised fears that it might undo the good work of the Bush Administration, the Obama Administration has since signaled that it will avoid destabilizing activism on the Kashmir question, will not let the deepening U.S. engagement with Pakistan undermine possibilities with India, and will elevate the relationship with Delhi to what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called "India-U.S. 3.0."1But although Secretary Clinton has spoken of cooperation on global security as one of the pillars of the U.S.-India relationship envisaged under the Obama Administration, she has been hesitant thus far to construct a case for a defense partnership. The Raj Legacy That defense partnership is no longer a bridge too far, and I believe that it may come to resemble the strategic profile of the British Raj. A genuine partnership between Washington and New Delhi can reconstitute in the 21st century the "India Center" that organized peace and stability in much of the Eastern Hemisphere during the 19th and early 20th centuries.2 And it will be a more effective partnership than that of Empire and Colony, for the United States has no desire to inflict such limits on Indian potential. The Raj legacy contains four key elements, each of them subject to creative renewal in the 21st century. The first of these elements is the expeditionary tradition that accompanied the creation of modern armed forces by the Raj. The armed forces under colonial rule initially focused on domestic constabulary functions and the defense of ever-shifting frontiers, but beginning in the late 18th century the Raj also put them to expeditionary use.3 Through the 19th century, Indian troops saw action in theaters ranging from Egypt to Japan, from Southern Africa to the Mediterranean. Despite growing nationalist opposition, British use of Indian armed forces surged in the first decades of the 20th century. During the Great War, nearly 1.2 million Indians were recruited for service in the army. When it ended, about 950,000 Indian troops were serving overseas. According to the official count, between 62,000 and 65,000 Indian soldiers were killed in that war. In World War II, the Indian army saw action on fronts ranging from Italy and North Africa to East Africa, the Middle East and the Far East. In Southeast Asia alone, 700,000 Indian troops joined the effort to oust Japanese armies from Burma, Malaya and Indo-China. By the time the war ended, the Indian army numbered a massive 2.5 million men, the largest all-volunteer force the world had ever seen. Yet, as I noted earlier, modern India's political leadership has been reluctant to recognize the contributions of its men to the making of the modern world. The Indian national movement was deeply divided in its attitudes toward the Indian army under British rule. These divisions became sharper as the movement confronted the meaning of World War II and the political choices it offered. While the Indian National Congress, speaking as the principal vehicle of the national movement, condemned the "imperialist war", individual leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru backed the Allied war effort against the fascists. Further accentuating India's ambivalence, an "Indian National Army", led by Subhash Chandra Bose, used Japanese assistance in an effort to forcibly liberate India from the British. It was no surprise, then, that the divided national movement could not leverage the Indian army's extraordinary contribution to the Allied victory in the negotiations with the British on the terms of independence, the distribution of the spoils of the war and the construction of the postwar international order. As the Indian leadership confronted many security challenges immediately after independence, it is perhaps understandable that it momentarily forgot this complex history. A second legacy of the Raj is the "military surplus" in the Subcontinent, which has endured despite all the political changes of the past six decades: partition, permanent Indo-Pak conflict, the occupation of Tibet by China and the resultant Sino-Indian military tensions on the Indo-Tibetan border. Despite these challenges, the now-separate armies of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh have made an important mark on international security politics. That the South Asian armies, including those of Nepal, contribute nearly 40 percent of the world's peacekeepers underlines the region's role as a military reservoir. But this extraordinary role is widely overlooked in international debates on peacekeeping, particularly in India's case.4 A third legacy of the Raj is a security system for the smaller states of the Subcontinent. Britain constructed a glacis around India that involved the creation and maintenance of a set of protectorates and buffer states from Persia to Siam through Afghanistan, Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan and Burma. If Partition ruptured the strategic unity of the Subcontinent and enormously weakened the so-called "India Center" in Asian security affairs, then the Cold War between the United States and Soviet Russia, and the re-emergence of a centralized China, likewise chipped away at the presumed primacy of New Delhi in the region. In seeking to preserve that status, independent India revived the British Raj's protectorate arrangements with Nepal, Bhutan and Sikkim in 1949–50. Sikkim was eventually integrated into India, and New Delhi saw itself as responsible for both the external and internal security of the Himalayan Kingdoms. From direct military intervention to coercive diplomacy, India used a variety of measures to prevent the internal and external destabilization of its smaller neighbors. India's military interventions in East Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and its coercive diplomacy to promote federalism in Sri Lanka and democracy in Nepal, are best seen in this context. The fourth legacy bears similarity to Great Britain's efforts to prevent, first, France and, later, Czarist Russia, from encroaching on the Subcontinent in the much celebrated Great Game. Namely, India claimed an exclusive sphere of influence in South Asia. An Indian version of the Monroe Doctrine for the Subcontinent, aimed at preventing other major powers from intervening in the region, became an integral element of India's policy.5 It also argued that its own conflicts with neighbors should be managed in a bilateral rather than a multilateral context and viewed with great suspicion the interests of major powers in its neighborhood. To the extent it could, too, New Delhi prevented its neighbors from granting military bases and facilities to great powers. The influence of India's Raj inheritance was somewhat tempered, however, by its relative economic decline in the decades after independence. Delhi simply could not sustain the Raj legacy within the Indian Ocean littoral. In Southeast Asia and the Gulf, it largely abandoned its traditional security role. Even within the Subcontinent, the attempt to sustain the glacis was not entirely successful: Note, for example, China's occupation of Tibet, its growing influence in South Asia and Burma, Russia's intervention in Afghanistan, and Pakistan's alliances with Washington and Beijing. As India's economic growth gathered momentum in the 1990s and its relations with the great powers began to improve, Delhi initiated policies aimed at re-asserting a privileged role in all the subregions abutting the Subcontinent (the Gulf, Central Asia, Southeast Asia) and, more broadly, the Indian Ocean littoral. Reconfiguring the Raj Well before the notion of India's rise was even debated or accepted, former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger argued that India had the potential to emerge as one of six major powers of the post-Cold War international system.6 He recognized that independent India had internalized the strategic logic that had driven the Raj's policies in the Indian Ocean, arguing that India's goals are analogous to those of Britain east of the Suez in the 19th century—a policy essentially shaped by the Viceroy's office in New Delhi. It will seek to be the strongest country in the subcontinent, and will attempt to prevent the emergence of a major power in the Indian Ocean or South East Asia. Whatever the day-to-day irritations between New Delhi and Washington, Kissinger became convinced a decade ago that India's "geopolitical interests will impel it over the next decade to share some of the security burdens now borne by the United States in the in the region between Aden and Malacca."7 While most American analysts considered such an outcome a remote prospect at the time, Kissinger's two basic propositions—that India will behave like the British Raj and that there will be room for burden-sharing between Delhi and Washington in the Indian Ocean arena—have been borne out to some extent. When India changed its economic orientation in the early 1990s and embarked on a high-growth path, it arrested its postwar marginalization in Asia and the Indian Ocean. Given its size, an India that could produce an annual economic growth rate of 7–8 percent was bound to acquire the basis for a vigorous regional diplomacy. Such rapid economic growth easily provided for annual defense expenditures of 2–3 percent of GDP, which are large enough in aggregate terms to modernize India's military capabilities. After an extended period of economic growth, India's regional security strategy took on not only new momentum but a new name as well: "neo-Curzonian", a reference to the expansive policies of the Raj under Lord George Curzon, the Viceroy in Calcutta at the turn of the 20th century. As Parag Khanna and I have argued: A neo-Curzonian foreign policy is premised on the logic of Indian centrality, permitting multidirectional engagement—or "multi-alignment"—with all major powers and seeking access and leverage from East Africa to Pacific Asia. Such a forward foreign policy emphasizes the revival of commercial cooperation; building institutional, physical and political links with neighboring regions to circumvent buffer states; developing energy supplies and assets; and pursuing multistate defense agreements and contracts.8 Most assessments of Indian foreign and security policy have confirmed the growing Indian capacity and will to project power (hard and soft) throughout what Delhi calls its "extended neighborhood", a concept that now includes all subregions in the Indian Ocean and Western Pacific littoral.9 As India's military capabilities grew and the Bush Administration reached out to Delhi, a new basis for bilateral security cooperation took shape. This would not have been possible without the Bush Administration's "de-hyphenation" of India-Pakistan relations, which produced a new level of mutual trust between Washington and Delhi.10 Both sides began to take steps in the defense and security realm that, although small, went against the grain of the bilateral relationship of the past. For its part, India offered the U.S. military access to facilities immediately after 9/11. The U.S. government, which needed the Pakistani army's cooperation to oust the Taliban from Afghanistan, declined the Indian offer. Looking for other ways to lend political support to U.S. operations in Afghanistan, India escorted U.S. naval ships participating in Operation Enduring Freedom through the Malacca Straits in 2002. In 2003, the Indian government vigorously debated the U.S. request to send troops to Iraq. While Delhi eventually backed off, fearing a domestic political backlash, the fact that it considered such a deployment at all was significant. When the tsunami disaster hit the eastern Indian Ocean in December 2004, India quickly decided to join forces with the navies of the United States, Japan and Australia to provide relief and rehabilitation. In June 2005, India signed a ten-year defense framework agreement with the United States that involved broad-ranging bilateral cooperation as well as participation in multinational military operations. Although the left-liberal Indian opposition attacked Delhi's departure from the previous policy of participating only in UN-sponsored operations, the government held to its agreement with the United States. The agreement was also significant for another reason: It was the first time India identified a broad range of cooperative military missions that it could undertake with a major power. Throughout the Cold War, India had deliberately limited its military engagement with Russia to weapons acquisition and had refrained from any service-to-service exchanges, joint exercises or joint missions. That India was now willing to do all these things with the United States signaled Delhi's transition from non-alignment and military isolationism to cooperative security engagement with other powers. The U.S. government, in turn, promised to raise India's power potential. After decades of partnering with India's regional rivals, Pakistan and China, the Bush Administration intensified U.S. military engagement and opened its weapons store to India. At a time when the United States was unwilling to sell arms to China and prevented its European partners from doing so as well, one did not need to go to great lengths to explain the proposition of assisting India's military rise. The Bush Administration made a strategic assessment that the emergence of a militarily powerful India was in American interests, especially in hedging against the potential negative consequences of China's rise. The second term of the Bush Administration brought rapid expansion in the frequency and quality of joint military exercises with India. The U.S. government also agreed to sell the first ever military platforms to India: the USS Trenton amphibious transport ship (now called the INS Jalashwa), C-130 military transport aircraft and the P-8 maritime reconnaissance aircraft. Boeing and Lockheed Martin are both bidding for the Indian plan to purchase 126 advanced fighter aircraft, a contract said to be worth $10 billion, which would make it one of the largest arms deals in history. | ||
| Profile - Fatima Bhutto: Fatima's Feuding, Feudal Family Posted: 04 May 2010 09:47 PM PDT
Farzana Shaikh, May 2010 The World Today, Volume 66, Number 5 http://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/publications/twt/archive/view/-/id/2026/ They can be found from Pakistan to the Philippines and in many countries between. Their names are closely associated with the political fortunes of their nations and often with violent conflict: among them Aquino, Gandhi and, of course, Bhutto. The newest name in that particular political dynasty has been offering her thoughts on the phenomenon to Farzana Shaikh. Fatima Bhutto is on record as saying she does not believe in 'birthright politics.' Yet many doubt she will resist the lure of a political career that can be expected to rest squarely on her membership of Pakistan's most celebrated, if tarnished, political dynasty - the Bhuttos. As the proud bearer of the family name, Fatima has found it hard to build on her reputation as an implacable foe of the very system that guarantees her the kind of public attention of which others of lesser birth can only dream. The publication of her new book, Songs of Blood and Sword: A Daughter's Memoir, in which she tells the story of Pakistan through the prism of her feuding and feudal family, provided just the opportunity for me to put to her this central conundrum. I asked Fatima how she felt about using and jealously guarding the Bhutto name while denouncing those like her aunt, Benazir Bhutto, who had sought to do likewise - but whom she accuses of creating a 'saprophytic culture' based on 'bloodlines, genetics [and] a who's who of dynastic politics.' Could she, I wondered, have it both ways? ORDINARY'I had an ordinary childhood,' she told me, 'in which the issue of dynastic rights hardly figured.' Born in Kabul in 1982 and educated in exile in Damascus until she finally settled with her family in Pakistan in 1993 allowed her, she believes, 'the freedom to escape the pressures of growing up in Pakistan, where family name determines who you are.' In Damascus, by contrast, 'few knew or even cared about my background; most of my school friends couldn't even pronounce my [family] name.' Nor she insists, was there any expectation on the part of her father, Murtaza Bhutto, who was gunned down in Karachi in 1996, that Fatima would 'carry on the family name.' But this version of her childhood as 'ordinary' is unlikely to wash with those persuaded that the Bhuttos were no ordinary family. Owners of unimaginable wealth - it is said that the size of Bhutto land-holdings in Sind even defeated census officials of the Raj - influential counsellors to Indian princes, and the privileged recipients of knighthoods for services rendered to the British empire in India - the Bhuttos took their entitlement to power for granted. The glittering careers of Fatima's grandfather, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, and his arguably more famous daughter, Benazir, were judged merely to endorse this culture of entitlement. The Bhutto's meteoric rise did not go unnoticed outside Pakistan. There were friends in high places, especially in the Arab world. Former Palestine Liberation Organisation Chairman Yasser Arafat, Libya's Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and then-Syrian Presiden tHafez al-Assad were all close to the family and generously hosted Fatima's father during his sixteen year exile. Their patronage ensured that the fortunes and fate of the Bhuttos was common knowledge. 'The whole Arab world,' Fatima's step-mother Lebanese by descent - told her, 'was nauseated' by the decision of Pakistan's military ruler, General Zia ul Haq, to hang Fatima's grandfather, Zulfiqar, in 1979. That Fatima was expected by her father to tell the story of how this extraordinary family fell from grace and was corrupted by greed is also in no doubt. In the book she freely admits that she agreed to honour a promise to her father to 'tell his story' one day. But timing was of the essence or else, as she told an audience at the launch of her book in Karachi, the story could be 'hijacked' by those she calls 'murderers and thieves' acting at the behest of Pakistan's President, Asif Ali Zardari - Benazir's widower - whom she accuses of orchestrating her father's assassination. Fatima insists, however, that these blood feuds, especially those that famously divided Murtaza from his elder sister, Benazir, had nothing to do with dynastic rights. When I asked her whether she might have felt differently about dynasties if Murtaza, the eldest son, had been allowed to assume his father's mantle, she appeared to bristle. 'I am not arguing,' she told me, 'that my father had an inherent right over his sister to claim the Bhutto legacy - no one has the right to claim a legacy, which is a dirty word, anyway.' Their differences, she insists, were 'political.' The idea that Murtaza was driven by personal rivalry - he followed his sister To Harvard and Oxford - or that he might have been motivated by personal resentment against his sister, who is widely believed to have been her father's favourite, is sharply dismissed by Fatima as 'a myth fabricated by Benazir.' Her grandfather, she wanted me to understand, 'was a progressive man, who treated all his children equally,' adding 'in fact, his favourite was Sanam [Benazir's younger sister, the third of the four Bhutto children].' At the same time, she was at pains to demonstrate that, if anything, Zulfiqar intended his political mission to be continued by his sons: she told me: 'he had set aside two constituencies for his sons rather than his daughter in which to be elected.' JUSTICE DENIEDWhen I asked how she felt as a self-proclaimed feminist about the dynastic 'politics of patriarchy' and whether she suffered from any tension involved in reconciling her outrage over her father's loss of his 'birthright' with her personal commitment to a world free of a culture of entitlement on grounds of descent and gender, she remained calm. 'There is no tension,' she assured me. 'My outrage has nothing to do with denied birthrights; it is to do with the denial of justice, with the fact of my father's extra-judicial murder.' For her part Fatima has tried hard to carve a non-dynastic niche for herself. Breaking with family tradition, she headed to study not at Harvard or Oxford, but Columbia University and the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. She has also broken ranks by opting, so far, for a literary rather than a political career, and denied she has any political ambitions. As if to underscore the point, she told me that she would have no hesitation in surrendering her family name if she were to marry. Will she stick to this course? It is too early to say. Farzana Shaikh, Associate Fellow, Asia Programme, Chatham House, Author, Making Sense of Pakistan, C Hurst & C0, 2009 
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| Posted: 04 May 2010 09:44 PM PDT While the Senate fields are set in Ohio and Indiana, more big primaries loom in the next week. Incumbent Sen. Bob Bennett (R-Utah) could very well lose his seat on Saturday when he faces that state's GOP nominating convention. If Bennett doesn't do well enough there, he won't even get to contest a primary. His crime: working on a bipartisan health care reform proposal with Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden. If the polls of the convention delegates are accurate, Bennett is doomed. He could soon become Utah's first incumbent senator to lose his party's nomination in 70 years. The message is clear: Democrats are the enemy, and any work with them—however inchoate—is a grave sin for a true Republican. There are primary elections for three House seats in Nebraska and three in West Virginia next Tuesday. Of the incumbents, only Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-W.Va.), a 14-termer, faces a real challenge. Both Mollohan and his challenger, former state Sen. Mike Oliverio, have released polls showing themselves with high single-digit leads. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this race is the dynamic: Oliverio is running against Mollohan from the right, and has even said he would support someone other than Nancy Pelosi for Speaker of the House. That's a weird thing to say. The vote to elect a speaker at the beginning of each session of congress is basically what separates Democrats from Republicans—it's one vote when you really have to vote with your party. You can bet Nancy Pelosi will be the Dems' "candidate" for speaker. And you can bet that she'll expect Oliverio to vote for her. Followers of Massey Energy, the coal company associated with the mining disaster last month, will be focusing on the Republican primary in another West Virginia district. In the north of the state, Elliot "Spike" Maynard, a former state supreme court justice, is running for the right to face incumbent Dem Nick Rahall. Maynard is famous for being photographed vacationing with Don Blankenship, the notorious Massey CEO, on the French Riviera while Massey was appealing a $50 million case to his court.
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| We Cannot Tolerate a Nuclear Canada! Posted: 04 May 2010 09:16 PM PDT Writes Tom Mysiewicz:
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| Ohio, Indiana, and North Carolina Primary Results Posted: 04 May 2010 08:41 PM PDT Tuesday's primary elections in Ohio, Indiana, and North Carolina produced few surprises. (I previewed the races yesterday.) In the Buckeye state's Democratic Senate primary, Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher, the favored candidate of the DC Democratic establishment (and Gov. Ted Strickland) beat Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner by 10 points. Fisher will face Bush budget director Rob Portman and his $7.6 million war chest in November. The most interesting thing to watch here is whether Brunner will back Fisher in the general election. Brunner had previously said she would not support Fisher if he won, and she may make it harder for him to lock down liberals if she keeps her word. In Indiana, GOP establishment candidates held on—barely—across the state. Former Sen. Dan Coats, heavily criticized for his time as a Washington lobbyist, took home just 39 percent of the vote in the Republican primary for the Senate seat being vacated by retiring Dem Evan Bayh. That was enough to win the race, but the poor performance earned Coats mockery from the Democrats. The Democratic National Committee sent out an email blast quoting news reports about Coats' win: "Not 'overly impressive,' Republicans Not 'ready to embrace Dan Coats as a returning hero,' Result 'Humbling.' The Dems' crowing is unsurprising: they were happy to see Coats win, because they think that running against Coats (and his lobbying) gives their candidate, moderate Rep. Brad Ellsworth, the best chance of winning the seat. On the House side, GOP incumbents and former officeholders struggled to fend off primary challenges from enraged conservative activists. Fourteen-term Rep. Dan Burton, who faced the toughest challenge, earned just 30 percent of the vote in his primary. But in a seven-way contest, that was enough—Burton edged onetime state Rep. Luke Messer by two points and will be favored to win a fifteenth term in the fall. Rep. Mark Souder, like Burton, faced several conservative challengers who split the vote against him. He won his primary with a plurality—48 percent—but was 14 points ahead of his nearest challenger, Bob Thomas. Elsewhere in the Hoosier state, former Rep. Mike Sodrel failed in his bid to face Dem Rep. Baron Hill for an almost unprecedented fifth time. (Sodrel was 1-3 in four previous tries.) Sodrel finished a dissappointing third in the primary, which was won by attorney Todd Young. In North Carolina, there were six candidates in the Democratic Senate primary to face incumbent Republican Sen. Richard Burr. Elaine Marshall, the secretary of state (and the candidate favored by progressives) beat state Sen. Cal Cunningham, 36 percent to 27 percent. But Marshall wasn't able to hit the 40 percent cutoff required to avoid a June run-off. Cunningham and Marshall will campaign for another month before facing the primary electorate again on June 22, when the Dems will finally have a candidate.
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| Kent State Killings Triggered by FBI Agent Provocateur Posted: 04 May 2010 08:19 PM PDT Thanks to a friend (who works for the government), who notes that we now know that "an FBI agent provocateur fired the first shots at National Guard soldiers, who then killed four students, according to newly declassified FBI records. Remember, belief in conspiracy theories is always a mark of insanity." Those killings, 40 years ago, and the killing of 57,000 US soldiers and at least three million Cambodians, Laotions, and Vietnamese (whose names are not on a wall in DC), were the fruit of a monstrous war of aggression. That war, started by Ike, escalated (and then deescalated) by JFK, and massively escalated by LBJ and Nixon, is one of the many blots on the US government's escutcheon. How many people has the militaristic US killed in its hundreds of wars and hundreds of years? Yesterday I did a podcast with Jim Douglass, author of JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters. He shows that Kennedy was killed because he turned towards peace after the Bay of Pigs, and so turned away from the CIA, the Joint Chiefs, and the merchants of death. Jim, a retired religion professor at the University of Hawaii, founded the Catholic Worker House in Birmingham, Alabama, with his wife Shelley.
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| New York Times minimizes Gulf oil spill Posted: 04 May 2010 08:06 PM PDT http://wsws.org/articles/2010/may2010/spil-m05.shtml The April 20 blowout on a BP oil rig 50 miles off Louisiana's coast, which claimed the lives of 11 workers, continues to gush millions of gallons of heavy crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico with no clear end in sight. The disaster has already led to major economic and environmental devastation, with the Gulf Coast's multi-billion-dollar fishing industry suspended in high season.
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| BP Oil Spill Highlights Poor Safety Record, the Worst of Any Oil Company in America Posted: 04 May 2010 08:05 PM PDT http://www.democracynow.org/2010/5/5/group_bp_has_one_of_the "BP is a London-based oil company with one of the worst safety records of any oil company operating in America," says Tyson Slocum of Public Citizen. "In just the last few years, BP has paid $485 million in fines and settlements to the US government for environmental crimes, willful neglect of worker safety rules, and penalties for manipulating energy markets." We speak with Slocum and with an attorney representing several workers who survived the blast that sank BP's Deepwater Horizon rig. He's also representing the wife of one of the 11 workers now presumed dead who is filing a lawsuit accusing BP of negligence.
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| Shell reports record oil spillages in Nigeria Posted: 04 May 2010 08:02 PM PDT http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/05/shell-oil-spill-niger-delta Oil giant blames thieves and militants for the spilling of nearly 14,000 tonnes of crude oil into the Niger Delta last year. The amount of oil spilled by Shell's Nigerian subsidiary was more than double the amount poured into the delta in 2008, and quadruple what was spilled in 2007 – highlighting the worsening situation the oil company faces in Nigeria.
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| Posted: 04 May 2010 08:00 PM PDT
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| Americans prefer ‘progressive,' 'state's rights' to ‘capitalism,' poll finds Posted: 04 May 2010 07:58 PM PDT http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0505/americans-positive-response-progressive-capitalism/ Americans have a more positive response to the word "progressive" than they do "capitalism," according to a new Pew research poll. The poll, conducted Apr. 21-26 attempted to gauge Americans' honest responses to various concepts. Strikingly -- perhaps due to the recent financial crisis, repeated bank bailouts and ire at Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs -- more Americans have positive views of liberals than they do of capitalists.
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| "Hey Dad, Why Does This Country Protect Billionaires, and Not Teachers?" Posted: 04 May 2010 07:56 PM PDT Something is really screwed up when we award billions to Wall Street elites for doing things we don't comprehend, even as we lay off teachers by the thousands. Last week, thousands of New Jersey public school students walked out of class to protest draconian school budget cuts. "Save my teacher," their signs read. In a state that is home to a bevy of high finance billionaires, with the highest per capita income in the nation, teachers are being sacked left and right. In our town half the student body protested outside the high school.
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| Posted: 04 May 2010 07:51 PM PDT http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2010/05/americans-are-.html Americans seeking reward money are turning in neighbors, clients and employers they suspect of cheating on taxes to the IRS at a rate of nearly eight per day, the director of the agency's whistleblower program said.
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| Obama Faces Backlash Over Drilling, Leak Response - NPR Posted: 04 May 2010 06:19 PM PDT
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| Sparking bilateral trade - Xinhua Posted: 04 May 2010 12:57 PM PDT
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| Chickens for Checkups, round 4: Rove playbook fail Posted: 21 Apr 2010 11:10 PM PDT NRSC spokesman Brian Walsh borrows a page from Karl Rove's playbook and tries to blame Democrats for making "Chickens for Checkups" an issue in the 2010 Nevada Senate race:
Uh, first, wasn't it Sue Lowden who injected farm animals into the Senate race by not once, not twice, but three times proposing her 'Chickens for Checkups' barter scheme? Hard to blame Reid for pointing out the sheer idiocy of one of his opponent's ideas. And second, given that it was the Republican candidate who put "farm animals" front and center, isn't the NRSC essentially calling Sue Lowden "frankly a bit pathetic"?
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| KY-Sen: Sarah Palin stars in new Rand Paul ad Posted: 21 Apr 2010 10:40 PM PDT Rand Paul has unveiled a new ad featuring Sarah Palin's endorsement of his campaign for the GOP nomination in Kentucky's U.S. Senate race. Here's a pair of screenshots from the ad.  There's a chance you might recognize the screenshot of Palin speaking: it's from her February 7, 2010 appearance on Fox News Sunday. Ordinarily, the inclusion of a clip from cable channel in a campaign ad would be unremarkable, but just last month, Fox demanded the DNC pull an ad from YouTube that included Fox footage. The DNC asserted that it was exercising its fair use rights to no avail; Fox stood by its demand, and YouTube pulled the clip. Meanwhile, there are several clips from Fox on the RNC channel (example 1, 2, and 3). There's nothing wrong with that, but if Fox is going to allow the RNC and Rand Paul to use its video in their political campaigns, shouldn't they also let the DNC do the same?
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| Posted: 21 Apr 2010 10:35 PM PDT DR GRUMPY - Marie is a slumber party veteran. Between friends, school, and girl scouts, there are frequent sleep-overs at somebody's house. I drop her off, give them my cell phone number, and tell her I'll see her in the morning. So tonight, she had a slumber party. I dropped her off, handed somebody my cell phone number, kissed her goodnight, and turned around to leave... To find the kid's mother blocking my way to the door, handing me a clipboard and a pen. It was, I swear, more paperwork then a new patient at my office has to fill out. She wanted me to: - Sign a legal waiver saying we wouldn't sue her over any injuries Marie might sustain in the course of a "normal slumber party" (whatever the hell that is). - Fill out a form listing what ER I wanted her taken to in the event of an emergency. - Fill out a paper listing medicine and food allergies (I can understand that part, actually), and any special dietary requirements. - List her pediatrician's name and number. - List her height & weight (to my surprise, she didn't ask for a blood type). - Write out a list of all valuables she had on her (I wrote "pink PJ's with horses on them"). And then she chewed me out for not having a photocopy of our insurance card with me. See you in the morning, Marie. You know my cell, in case you need to be rescued from crazy mom. _______________________________________________________ 
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| US: All Options on the Table Against Syria Posted: 21 Apr 2010 10:11 PM PDT Though they have admitted once again that they still haven't actually got any proof that any such thing happened, the US State Department insisted today that "all options are on the table" with respect to retaliating against Syria over its alleged delivery of Scud missiles to Hezbollah. Assistant Secretary Jeffrey Feltman says the State Department has "really, really serious concern" about the report, and said if Syria actually turns out to have done such a thing it would be a "provocative action."
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| LIVE: President Obama on Wall Street Reform Posted: 21 Apr 2010 09:51 PM PDT Just over two years ago, as a Senator and presidential candidate, Barack Obama delivered a speech on the need for Wall Street reform at Cooper Union in New York City. Today, on the cusp of signing a reform package into law, President Obama returns to Cooper Union to make his final argument for getting something done. Here's a live video feed of President Obama's speech: Update: The full speech is included below the fold. In it, Obama stresses five key principles: taxpayer protection from future financial institution failures "new transparency" in the financial system; more consumer protections; the "Volker Rule," which sets limits on the size of banks and the risks that banks can take; and a larger role for investors and pension holders. --mcjoan Update 2: Hitting on the "permanent bailout" lie: "But what is not legitimate is to suggest that we’re enabling or encouraging future taxpayer bailouts, as some have claimed. That may make for a good sound bite, but it’s not factually accurate." Update 3: Strong support for the Volker Rule and ending too big to fail--that's a critical element, (which Simon Johnson explains really well) and hopefully means there'll be White House support for the Brown/Kaufman/Whitehouse amendment.
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| ONE DOWN, OVER THREE MILLION MORE TO GO….. Posted: 21 Apr 2010 09:48 PM PDT | ||
| Alzheimer's drugs cause brain damage and actually worsen memory loss Posted: 21 Apr 2010 09:48 PM PDT Big Pharma drugs that are being used on humans right now and promoted as potential treatments for Alzheimer's disease (AD) could cause the very brain damage and memory loss they are supposed to treat.
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| The Making of American Foreign Policy It's all about domestic politics Posted: 21 Apr 2010 09:46 PM PDT A huge ongoing propaganda campaign is constantly churning out pro-Israel materials directed at a wide variety of special interest groups: the lobby's most well-known success story is the Christian fundamentalist faction, which believes in the key role played by Israel as a harbinger of the second coming of Christ. The lobby has parlayed this into a powerful domestic constituency fanatically devoted to Israel's cause – and not just the cause of the current Israeli government, but of the most extremist and expansionist elements in the Israeli polity.
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