Tag Archives: Barack Obama

Citibank predator will be the next Treasury Secretary

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Barack Obama, the Nobel Laureate, has now officially presented Jack Lew to be his next Treasury Secretary. Lew, currently Obama’s Chief of Staff, would replace Timothy Geithner, a tool of big finance capital. Can we expect Lew to act in the general interest? No, he too promises to be a tool of big finance capital:

President Barack Obama’s choice [of Lew] to lead the White House budget office oversaw a Citigroup unit that profited off the housing collapse and financial crisis by investing in a hedge fund king who correctly predicted the eventual subprime meltdown and now finds himself involved in the center of the U.S. government’s fraud case against Goldman Sachs.

Lew also broke a Graduate Student’s union while working for New York University and before betting against American citizens while at Citigroup.

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Quote of the day

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Mike Ferner asks:

If actions indeed speak louder than words, what must the impressionable and the young learn when each year as a nation we buy more murder and suffering than education or medical care; when we create a culture that celebrates violence and militarism while it considers peacemakers and the nonviolent as simple, starry-eyed dreamers and more often as downright traitors; when we promote and glamorize the military even as the awful truth about what the military actually does is kept behind the curtain; when our country sells more weapons to the world than all other countries combined; when the nation’s leader, after one of our embassies is attacked, preaches, “There is no excuse for the use of violence” and the next day sends drones to bomb whomever is next on his list and anyone standing near them?

Do we really think we can say one thing and do another without clearly teaching that violence is how to handle whatever aggravates or frightens us?

I suspect hypocrisy has a deeper and stronger connection to our sadistic impulses and their violent consequences than it does to jouissance and fucking.

Quote of the day

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The New York Times informs its readers that:

More than 100 physicians urged the Obama administration on Thursday not to approve the construction of liquefied natural gas export terminals until more is known about the health effects of hydraulic fracturing, the drilling process that has opened the way for a big increase in domestic gas production.

A group called Physicians, Scientists and Engineers for Healthy Energy, which conducts research into unconventional natural gas production, organized a petition arguing that exports of natural gas would increase such domestic drilling, known as fracking, exposing more people to chemicals that might damage their health.

The petition, signed by 107 doctors, public health experts, environmental scientists, and academics, cited a growing number of anecdotal reports associating fracking with adverse health risks through human exposure to water, air and soil.

This petition ought to make the Noble Laureate pause — while he laughs uncontrollably.

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Shocking?

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According to a recent report in the Palm Beach Post:

A new Florida law that contributed to long voter lines and caused some to abandon voting altogether was intentionally designed by Florida GOP staff and consultants to inhibit Democratic voters, former GOP officials and current GOP consultants have told The Palm Beach Post.

Republican leaders said in proposing the law that it was meant to save money and fight voter fraud. But a former GOP chairman and former Gov. Charlie Crist, both of whom have been ousted from the party, now say that fraud concerns were advanced only as subterfuge for the law’s main purpose: GOP victory.

Former Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer says he attended various meetings, beginning in 2009, at which party staffers and consultants pushed for reductions in early voting days and hours.

“The Republican Party, the strategists, the consultants, they firmly believe that early voting is bad for Republican Party candidates,” Greer told The Post. “It’s done for one reason and one reason only. … ‘We’ve got to cut down on early voting because early voting is not good for us,’ ” Greer said he was told by those staffers and consultants.

“They never came in to see me and tell me we had a (voter) fraud issue,” Greer said. “It’s all a marketing ploy.”

No, it is not at all shocking.

Oh, I wish I was in the land of cotton,
Old times there are not forgotten,
Look away, look away, look away Dixie Land.

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Recommended: The Limits of Israeli Belligerence

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Dina Jadallah wrote:

One can watch the latest Israeli assault on Gaza and become overwhelmed with the enormity of the destruction, the loss of human life (one-third of whom are children), and the indiscriminate and disproportionate use of asymmetric power by an occupying state against one million and seven hundred thousand people (mostly refugees) living under an embargo for several years.

On the other hand, one can watch the latest assault and marvel at the resistance, the power of human will, the high morale of a steadfast population that is determined to return to their usurped lands. More importantly, one can be reassured because the people in Gaza are ahead of their leaders, while their resistance is inflicting real damage on their enemy.

The latest conflict might be an inflection point in the struggle, especially if its achievements are employed wisely in order to achieve politically strategic goals such as the lifting of the embargo, a halt to colonies / “settlements, and so forth.

Despite the skewed balance of raw muscular power in Israel’s favor, how is it that it cannot even win what was (wrongly) projected to be a brief and spectacular skirmish that would boost the political fortunes of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his Minister of Defense, Ehud Barak?

Zohan, like his good friend, Uncle Sam, possesses a vast and ever-increasing military advantage over those he would dominate. But also like Uncle Sam, Zohan mostly fails to achieve the political goals he seeks. Zohan has already lost his latest battle. The imprisoned Palestinians refuse to yield. They continue to fight back, to resist this compelling force. That is his defeat in a nutshell. Zohan now needs a cease-fire settlement as much as the peopled interred in his Gaza prison-land.

When we consider a situation like this one, we should always keep this thought in mind: “You can do anything with bayonets except sit on them,” a maxim attributed variously to Talleyrand, Thomas Hardy, Napoleon I and Bismarck.

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Jimmy Carter calls out the Israeli imperialists

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Elisabeth Braw of Metro International posed the following question to Jimmy Carter:

President Obama says he supports a Palestinian state, but even so there’s a deadlock. Does it take even more than the support of a US President to get a Palestinian state?

Carter’s answer:

I think the big change is that the Israeli leaders have decided to abandon the two-state solution. Their policy now is to confiscate Palestinian territory, and they’ve announced publicly that it the Palestinians have to recognize not just Israel but Israel as a Jewish state, even though 20% of the Israeli community are non-Jews. Netanyahu has also decided that even the Jordan valley has to be under Israeli control. So, those factors indicate quite clearly that Netanyahu has decided that the two-state solution is not what he wants. He wants what is being called Greater Israel, Eretz Israel. That’s a new development, and I think everyone recognizes this.

Zohan does battle with a terrorist

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