Jefferson23
Jefferson23's JournalThe Book of Jobs by Joseph Stiglitz
Forget monetary policy. Re-examining the cause of the Great Depression—the revolution in agriculture that threw millions out of work—the author argues that the U.S. is now facing and must manage a similar shift in the “real” economy, from industry to service, or risk a tragic replay of 80 years ago.
It has now been almost five years since the bursting of the housing bubble, and four years since the onset of the recession. There are 6.6 million fewer jobs in the United States than there were four years ago. Some 23 million Americans who would like to work full-time cannot get a job. Almost half of those who are unemployed have been unemployed long-term. Wages are falling—the real income of a typical American household is now below the level it was in 1997.
We knew the crisis was serious back in 2008. And we thought we knew who the “bad guys” were—the nation’s big banks, which through cynical lending and reckless gambling had brought the U.S. to the brink of ruin. The Bush and Obama administrations justified a bailout on the grounds that only if the banks were handed money without limit—and without conditions—could the economy recover. We did this not because we loved the banks but because (we were told) we couldn’t do without the lending that they made possible. Many, especially in the financial sector, argued that strong, resolute, and generous action to save not just the banks but the bankers, their shareholders, and their creditors would return the economy to where it had been before the crisis. In the meantime, a short-term stimulus, moderate in size, would suffice to tide the economy over until the banks could be restored to health.
The banks got their bailout. Some of the money went to bonuses. Little of it went to lending. And the economy didn’t really recover—output is barely greater than it was before the crisis, and the job situation is bleak. The diagnosis of our condition and the prescription that followed from it were incorrect. First, it was wrong to think that the bankers would mend their ways—that they would start to lend, if only they were treated nicely enough. We were told, in effect: “Don’t put conditions on the banks to require them to restructure the mortgages or to behave more honestly in their foreclosures. Don’t force them to use the money to lend. Such conditions will upset our delicate markets.” In the end, bank managers looked out for themselves and did what they are accustomed to doing.
Even when we fully repair the banking system, we’ll still be in deep trouble—because we were already in deep trouble. That seeming golden age of 2007 was far from a paradise. Yes, America had many things about which it could be proud. Companies in the information-technology field were at the leading edge of a revolution. But incomes for most working Americans still hadn’t returned to their levels prior to the previous recession. The American standard of living was sustained only by rising debt—debt so large that the U.S. savings rate had dropped to near zero. And “zero” doesn’t really tell the story. Because the rich have always been able to save a significant percentage of their income, putting them in the positive column, an average rate of close to zero means that everyone else must be in negative numbers. (Here’s the reality: in the years leading up to the recession, according to research done by my Columbia University colleague Bruce Greenwald, the bottom 80 percent of the American population had been spending around 110 percent of its income.) What made this level of indebtedness possible was the housing bubble, which Alan Greenspan and then Ben Bernanke, chairmen of the Federal Reserve Board, helped to engineer through low interest rates and nonregulation—not even using the regulatory tools they had. As we now know, this enabled banks to lend and households to borrow on the basis of assets whose value was determined in part by mass delusion.
in full: http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2012/01/stiglitz-depression-201201
Palestinians offer to renew Israel peace talks without settlement freeze, official says
PA reportedly submits new Quartet offer to restart negotiations, demand Israel releases 100 Palestinian prisoners; Israel rejects offer fearing renewal of only low-grade talks.
By Barak Ravid
The Palestinian leadership submitted a proposal to renew peace talks with with Israel that drops their long-standing demand that Israel ceases all West Bank settlement construction, a top Israeli official said on Wednesday.
According to officials with knowledge of the proposal, the Palestinian Authority informed the Quartet two weeks ago that it would renege on its demand for a settlement freeze if Israel releases 100 prisoners as a show of good will.
The prisoners in question are reportedly all veteran inmates, incarcerated in Israeli prisons since before the Oslo accords.
The Palestinian proposal was reputedly the result of heavy pressure applied by Quartet members – the United States, the European Union, Russian, and the United Nations – on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to renew talks before January 26.
in full: http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/palestinians-offer-to-renew-israel-peace-talks-without-settlement-freeze-official-says-1.404201
The Pentagon and its Sock Puppets by Scott Horton
December 27, 2011
An internal Department of Defense review has concluded that a Rumsfeld-era program under which retired military officers who appeared on American broadcast media were given special briefings and access was consistent with Pentagon rules. The New York Times reports:
The inquiry found that from 2002 to 2008, Mr. Rumsfeld’s Pentagon organized 147 events for 74 military analysts. These included 22 meetings at the Pentagon, 114 conference calls with generals and senior Pentagon officials and 11 Pentagon-sponsored trips to Iraq and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Twenty of the events, according to a 35-page report of the inquiry’s findings, involved Mr. Rumsfeld or the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or both. One retired officer, the report said, recalled Mr. Rumsfeld telling him: “You guys influence a wide range of people. We’d like to be sure you have the facts.”
The inspector general’s investigation grappled with the question of whether the outreach constituted an earnest effort to inform the public or an improper campaign of news media manipulation. The inquiry confirmed that Mr. Rumsfeld’s staff frequently provided military analysts with talking points before their network appearances. In some cases, the report said, military analysts “requested talking points on specific topics or issues.” One military analyst described the talking points as “bullet points given for a political purpose.” Another military analyst, the report said, told investigators that the outreach program’s intent “was to move everyone’s mouth on TV as a sock puppet.”
The internal review also apparently found no fault with the exclusion of four individuals precisely because they refused to be sock puppets, speaking critically of some Pentagon decisions. One of them, General Wesley Clark, apparently lost his position as an analyst for CNN because of Pentagon and White House displeasure with what he had to say.
in full: http://www.harpers.org/archive/2011/12/hbc-90008374
Playing chess in Eurasia
December 22, 2011
By Pepe Escobar
Bets are off on which is the great story of 2011. Is it the Arab Spring(s)? Is it the Arab counter-revolution, unleashed by the House of Saud? Is it the "birth pangs" of the Greater Middle East remixed as serial regime changes? Is it R2P ("responsibility to protect" legitimizing "humanitarian" bombing? Is it the freeze out of the "reset" between the US and Russia? Is it the death of al-Qaeda? Is it the euro disaster? Is it the US announcing a Pacific century cum New Cold War against China? Is it the build up towards an attack on Iran? (well, this one started with Dubya, Dick and Rummy ages ago ...)
Underneath all these interlinked plots - and the accompanying hysteria of Cold War-style headlines - there's a never-ending thriller floating downstream: Pipelineistan.
That's the chessboard where the half-hidden twin of the Pentagon's "long war" is played out. Virtually all current geopolitical developments are energy-related. So fasten your seat belts, it's time to revisit Dr Zbigniew Brzezinski's "grand chessboard" in Eurasia to find out who's winning the Pipelineistan wars.
Got tickets to the opera?
Let's start with Nabucco (the gas opera). Nabucco is above all a key, strategic Western powerplay; how to deliver Caspian Sea gas to Europe. Energy execs call it "opening the Southern Corridor" (of gas). The problem is this Open Sesame will only deliver if supplied by a tsunami of gas from two key "stans" - Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan.
remainder: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/ML22Ag02.html
A tradition of violence
Op-ed: B'Tselem field researchers say settler violence against Arabs a routine occurrence
B'Tselem field researchers
Published: 12.26.11
Two mosques were torched here recently, in the villages of Yasuf and Brukin. Torching a mosque affects not only the villagers, and not only the situation in the West Bank, but the whole Muslim world. It's an affront to our religion.
The residents here feel that the settlers are trying to turn the dispute into a religious issue. They are very angry and frustrated, especially because the Israeli authorities, who are supposed to protect us, have not found the perpetrators. Moreover, the authorities themselves have issued orders to demolish mosques.
In the land near the Havat Gilad settlement, they damage olive trees, torch fields and steal Palestinian farmers’ crops all the time. B'Tselem volunteers have filmed settlers setting fields on fire on several occasions.
The damage to the farmers is huge. For many of them, the land is the only source of income for their families. When the settlers steal crops or burn or destroy a grove, there is nobody to turn to for compensation, and the families have to make do with the little that's left.
in full: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4166395,00.html
The eagle, the bear and the dragon by Pepe Escobar
Here's a new Cold War fable for an emerging multipolar world.
Last Modified: 23 Dec 2011 05:59
Let's celebrate the end of an eventful 2011 with a fable.
Once upon a time in the young 21st century, the eagle, the bear and the dragon took their (furry) gloves off and engaged in a New Cold War.
When the original Cold War ended - in theory - in late 1991, in a dacha in Belarus, with the bear almost in coma, the eagle assumed the bear's right to an independent foreign policy which was also cancelled.
That was more than clear between 1999 and 2004 - when NATO, against all promises made to former top bear Gorbachev, expanded all the way to Eastern Europe and the Baltic states.
So the bear started wondering; what if in the end they take away all my security space and I'm geopolitically starved?
In the young 21st century, the key tug of war between the eagle and the bear concerns missile defence. Not even the eagle itself knows whether this immensely expensive gimmick will work. And even if it does, it will probably be financed by a reluctant dragon, which holds over US $1.5tn in eagle debt.
in full: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/12/2011121811848534778.html
History has not been kind to Syria's desire for change by Charles Glass
A dog in Lebanon, an old joke goes, was so hungry, mangy and tired of civil war that he escaped to Syria. To the surprise of the other dogs, he returned a few months later. Seeing him better groomed and fatter than before, they asked whether the Syrians had been good to him. "Very good." "Did they feed and wash you?" "Yes." "Then why did you come back?" "I want to bark."
It is impossible not to sympathise with Syrians' desire to be treated like adults. The Syrian regime is not alone, of course, among Middle East dictatorships in regarding their people as subjects rather than citizens. Under the portrait of the great dictator, little dictators grant some supplicants permits, demand bribes from others and abuse the rest. Syrians can identify with what Italians under Mussolini used to say: "The problem is not the big dictator. It is all the little dictators." Little dictators, though, thrive under the big dictator.
But all dictators are at risk from changed international circumstances, a spark (like a self-immolation in Tunisia) or the sudden realisation that the regime is vulnerable. People in Syria have reasons to demand change, as they have in the past.
I hope, for their sake, that things turn out better this time.
During the First World War, Arab nationalists in Damascus wanted to rid themselves of Ottoman rule. Ottoman officials could be corrupt and arbitrary, but they kept the peace, allowed the Syrians representation in the Istanbul parliament and put no restrictions on travel within the empire. The nationalists collaborated with Britain and France. They ended up with British and French colonialism, contrived borders, the expulsion of three quarters of Palestine's population, insurrections and wars.
in full: http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/comment/history-has-not-been-kind-to-syrias-desire-for-change
The Authority Already Exists – What’s Needed Is a Willingness to Act
Soldiers in the Occupied Territories already have the legal authority to arrest Israeli citizens
Reports have appeared in the Israeli media in recent days claiming that the security forces will soon be given new powers to combat settler violence. According to the reports, soldiers will be authorized to detain and arrest Israelis in the Occupied Territories.
The reports are misleading. Israeli soldiers stationed in the West Bank are already authorized to detain Israeli citizens, if it is suspected that they have committed or are about to commit a criminal offense. The fact that soldiers do not usually take real-time action to arrest settlers who attacking Palestinians is not due to a lack of authority, but to a lack of willingness on the part of the system to take action to protect Palestinians and their property.
B'Tselem emphasizes once again that there is no need to provide the law enforcement agencies in the Territories with new powers. What is needed is to exercise the existing powers. The reluctance of the Israeli army to detain violent settlers in the field is one part of the problem. The police must also ensure effective investigations to uncover attacks committed clandestinely by settlers.
In order to clarify this point, we attach two official documents distributed to soldiers by the Military Advocate General’s Corps and the Civil Administration at the end of 2006 following the ruling issued by the High Court of Justice in the “olive harvest petition” filed by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and Rabbis for Human Rights. The documents are not dated, and were received by B'Tselem in 2007. These documents detail the law enforcement obligations incumbent on Israeli soldiers:
remainder in full: http://www.btselem.org/press-release/20121221_soldiers_authority_to_detain_violent_settlers
Court of Appeal Orders Release of Bagram Prisoner by Scott Horton
December 19, 2011
In an important ruling that sheds light on the complications that American torture and abuse of prisoners presented for NATO allies attempting to support U.S. campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, the English Court of Appeal has issued a writ of habeas corpus requiring the return to British custody of a prisoner it concluded was being held illegally by American forces. Yunus Rahmatullah, who was once thought to be connected to the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, was captured by British troops in Iraq, then turned over to American forces and brought to Bagram prison in Afghanistan in the spring of 2004. I discussed the Rahmatullah case previously, when British parliamentary inquiries first made public the underlying facts. The British legal charity Reprieve brought the habeas petition on Rahmatullah’s behalf.
The facts developed in the Rahmatullah case have clarified the circumstances surrounding one of the notorious Justice Department memoranda issued during the Iraq War. In March 2004, Jack Goldsmith, then head of Justice’s opinion-writing arm, the Office of Legal Counsel, was asked to give an opinion authorizing the removal from Iraq to Afghanistan of a prisoner who was to be rendered to American custody by British military authorities in the Iraqi south. Rahmatullah’s imprisonment was at least one case covered by this memo. The Geneva Conventions unambiguously forbid an occupying power like the United States from removing prisoners from an occupied country except in narrowly defined circumstances designed to ensure prisoners’ own safety. Nevertheless, Goldsmith issued an opinion arguing that they could be removed.
Later on, just as Goldsmith was seeking appointment as a tenured professor at Harvard Law School, a memorandum dated March 19, 2004, surfaced in the press. Several senior faculty members were outraged by it, and mounted an effort to block Goldsmith’s appointment, which was being advanced by the law school’s dean, Elena Kagan (now a Supreme Court Justice). Goldsmith defended himself by arguing that the memo was “never finalized,” a claim that was undermined when the Obama Administration published a finalized memo, signed by Goldsmith and dated March 18, 2004, offering a radically truncated understanding of who fell under the category of “protected persons” in the context of the Iraq War. The finalized memo was textually similar to the March 19 draft. Goldsmith also argued that the memo could not have been used to abuse anyone because “it stated that the suspect’s Geneva Convention protections must travel with him outside of Iraq,” a reference to an ambiguous footnote found at the bottom of the last page of the draft memo.
Unquestionably, the memo did attempt to justify the removal of prisoners from Iraq, notwithstanding the Geneva Conventions’ explicit prohibition of the deportation of prisoners from an occupied country. Was the memo solicited to justify Ramatullah’s removal from Iraq, and to back up U.S. assurances to the British that he would be treated consistently with the Geneva Conventions? That seems likely the case.
in full: http://www.harpers.org/archive/2011/12/hbc-90008364
THE OCCUPIED EYE: The war is pronounced dead
12/17/11
(Spoiler alert: this is the alternate remix of a New York Times original.)
BAGHDAD - The Pentagon officially pronounced its US$3 trillion-and-counting, "war on terror"-related invasion, occupation and decimation of the Iraqi nation dead on Thursday even as the country prepared for a low-intensity Sunni-Shi'ite civil war and the Muslim world wondered whatever happened to the George W Bush administration's Greater Middle East.
In an open-air cement bunker at the former Baghdad airport turned military base, Pentagon chief Leon Panetta praised more than one million Americans in uniform or in mercenary gear for "the remarkable progress" in death and destruction accomplished over the past nine years, but acknowledged the severe challenges that faced the virtually devastated country.
"Let me be clear: Iraq will be tested in the days ahead - by al-Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers, by al-Qaeda in the Maghreb, by al-Qaeda in the Arabic Peninsula, by the Taliban, by Iran, by Hezbollah, by the Assad dictatorship in Syria, by China, by Russia, by Occupy Wall Street.
"Challenges remain, but the US will be there to stand by the Iraqi people with the necessary amount of Hellfire missiles as they navigate those challenges to build a prosperous haven for neo-liberalism and US corporations."
in full: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/ML17Ak02.html
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