This Crisis Is Way Bigger Than Dead Banks and Wall Street Bailouts; breaking with Israel

An important article on the economy:

This Crisis Is Way Bigger Than Dead Banks and Wall Street Bailouts

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In Dick Cheney was right By Joe Conason:

"Of the roughly $11 trillion in federal debt accumulated to date, more than 90 percent can be attributed to the tenure of three presidents: Ronald Reagan, who used to complain constantly about runaway spending; George Herbert Walker Bush, reputed to be one of those old-fashioned green-eyeshade Republicans; and his spendthrift son George "Dubya" Bush, whose trillion-dollar war and irresponsible tax cuts accounted for nearly half the entire burden. Only Bill Clinton temporarily reversed the trend with surpluses and started to pay down the debt (by raising rates on the wealthiest taxpayers)."

Think about this.

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AIG is chump change -- let's find corporate America's hidden billions By Joe Conason

"It's time to reform offshore banking, and see what untaxed wealth big business is hiding in overseas tax shelters."

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"But what reason other than evasion could there be for Goldman Sachs Group to set up three subsidiaries in Bermuda, five in Mauritius, and 15 in the Cayman Islands? Why did Countrywide Financial need two subsidiaries in Guernsey? Why did Wachovia need 18 subsidiaries in Bermuda, three in the British Virgin Islands, and 16 in the Caymans? Why did Lehman Brothers need 31 subsidiaries in the Caymans? What do Bank of America's 59 subsidiaries in the Caymans actually do? Why does Citigroup need 427 separate subsidiaries in tax havens, including 12 in the Channel Islands, 21 in Jersey, 91 in Luxembourg, 19 in Bermuda and 90 in the Caymans? What exactly is going on at Morgan Stanley's 19 subs in Jersey, 29 subs in Luxembourg, 14 subs in the Marshall Islands, and its amazing 158 subs in the Caymans? And speaking of AIG, why does it have 18 subs in tax-haven countries? (Don't expect to find out from Fox News Channel or the New York Post, because News Corp. has its own constellation of strange subsidiaries, including 33 in the Caymans alone.)"

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Breaking With Israel A new turn in US foreign policy? by Justin Raimondo

" .. The Israelis and their amen corner in this country have been embarked on a longstanding campaign to gin up a US-Iranian confrontation, just as they did in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, but this time the Lobby is being much more overt about taking a leading and very visible role in the agitation."

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"... Up until now, however, our policy has been based entirely on the dubious axiom that Israeli and American interests are identical, a principle that unites the entire Muslim world against us."

Why isn't there any discussion (read: criticism) on Israel going on in the US?

Here's a quote from CounterPunch Diary in an article entitled Obama's Fall Guy By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

McCarthyism and Middle Eastern Studies

"Viciously strident on some campuses, deviously low-key on others, there’s a McCarthyite campaign in full spate across higher education in the U.S. today. In the sights of the witch-hunters are junior and senior faculty targeted as “anti-Israel”, as terror-symps, as leftists. For every headline case, like Norman Finkelstein or Joseph Mashad or Juan Cole there are three or four less publicized smear campaigns, methodical onslaughts to derail a hiring, head off a tenure appointment, disinvite a speaker, fence off the campus from all dangerous thoughts. The consequence: a climate of fear, of methodical censorship, of cowardice."

So, the deal is: disagree with Israel and it's soldiers in our society, and you get the treatment.

Is this true even in the art world? Maybe so. According to this article
discussing Caryl Churchill's new play "Tell her the truth",

"The now-rote hysteria with which non-Israeli criticism of Israel is met--most recently dismayingly effective in quashing Chas Freeman as President Obama's nominee to chair the National Intelligence Council--has a considerable and ignoble record of stifling opinion and preventing unintimidated, meaningful discussion, in the cultural sphere as well as in the political."

and "In the decades since, American discourse around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has only become more vituperative and polarized, as the New York Theatre Workshop learned three years ago when it announced, and then retreated from, plans to present My Name Is Rachel Corrie. "

and further in the article is this mention: "Hence efforts to shut down exhibitions of Palestinian art all over the country, most notoriously, perhaps, in 2006, when Brandeis University officials removed paintings by Palestinian teenagers from a campus library exhibit, "The Arts of Building Peace." "


Bill