Monday, February 23, 2004

Israel and US fate linked - rhetorical and dangerous Posted here Monday, February 23, 2004 at 11:18:11 PM     Interesting that the column does not carry through on what the blurb says. But the blurb gets at the potential logic of treating the US and Israel as having a common purpose, a common right and a common identity. OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR Life Among the Bombs By MICHAEL B. OREN For Israelis and Americans, both facing the daily threat of terror, reconciling fortitude with sensitivity is the challenge of our time. Note that the writer is "Michael B. Oren, a senior fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, is the author of "Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East."  I not concerned with the opinion, but the use, by the US of Israel, to legitimate its own identity as an anti-terrorist country, and the use of the US by Israel to legitimate its impossible policies of slowly assimilating he palestinaian territories. ********

Posted here Monday, February 23, 2004 at 11:06:20 PM     These hints about the campaign Bush's McCain Strategy Redux Washington Post - 1 hour ago That was George W. Bush's brilliant dodge throughout the 2000 campaign whenever questions came up as to how he behaved during his twenties and early thirties. By poking fun at himself, Bush was winking at the press corps, especially the ... Bush gives taste of campaign to come Deepika Bush Says Democrats Offer Bitterness, Anger Reuters ********

Posted here Monday, February 23, 2004 at 1:50:18 PM     Worthe the read, showing mor the cannibalism of capital. The Dawn of McScience By Richard Horton In Science in the Private Interest, a strongly argued polemic against the commercial conditions in which scientific research currently operates, Sheldon Krimsky shows how universities have become little more than instruments of wealth. Universities have sacrificed their larger social responsibilities to accommodate a new purpose—the privatization of knowledge—by engaging in multimillion-dollar contracts with industries that demand the rights to negotiate licenses from any subsequent discovery. Science has long been ripe for industrial colonization. The traditional norms of disinterested inquiry and free expression of opinion have been given up in order to harvest new and much-needed revenues. ********

Billmon on climatge Posted here Monday, February 23, 2004 at 12:38:10 PM     For much on climate change, see the post and comments at Billmon ********

Cole on Iraq and Israel Posted here Monday, February 23, 2004 at 9:42:47 AM     From Juan Cole Kwiatkowski on the Neoconservative Coup at the Pentagon The LA Weekly interviews Karen Kwiatkowsky, retired US Air Force Lt. Colonel, who watched the Neocon network take over Middle East policy at the Pentagon with her own eyes. She says the war aims of this group were threefold: 1) To position US companies to get Iraq oil and other contracts, which would not have happened had sanctions continued to loosen with Saddam in power; 2) to create a new Iraq that would be friendly to the establishment of military bases in that country, given that the basing situation in Saudi Arabia was unsatisfactory [and that many in the Pentagon believe the oil-rich and unstable Persian Gulf needed permanent US bases to guarantee oil security); 3) they were threatened by Saddam's decision in the year 2000 to price oil in Euros, which threatened the stability of the dollar. I doubt that the Euro issue was that pressing for the Neocons; it sounds more like something Cheney and Rumsfeld would worry about. In fact, all three of the reasons she says were given for the Iraq war would have appealed outside the circle of the Neocons. I am surprised she left out what surely was the Neocons' major concern, which is that Iraq, Iran and Syria stood in the way of Ariel Sharon's continued theft of Arab land in the Occupied territories and potentially elsewhere, by virtue of their willingness to support groups like Hezbollah and the Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. The Neocons wanted to knock down Saddam, Khamenei and al-Asad in hopes that those countries would be so weakened and preoccupied with internal power struggles that Sharon would have an unimpeded opportunity to pursue his dreams of Greater Israel and the final destruction of the Oslo Peace Accords. As it happens, the emergence of the Iraqi Shiites has immensely strengthened Lebanon's Hezbollah. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani issued a strongly worded condemnation of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians in 2002. In fact, the Sunni clerics in Iraq celebrated Hezbollah's success in forcing Sharon to exchange prisoners. The rise of Sunni nationalist and fundamentalist resistance movements in Iraq may well hold threats to Israel down the road, as well. In all likelihood, the hubris of the Neocons in Washington has actually made Israel less secure than it was with a contained Saddam.     ********

Posted here Monday, February 23, 2004 at 9:11:30 AM     trade.. U.S. Trade Deficit Reaches A Record $489.4 Billion Elizabeth Becker New York Times, February 14, 2004, Page B3 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/14/business/worldbusiness/14trade.html?ex==1392181200&;en=f1b059a8d5a2eb&ei=P07&partner==USERLAND These articles report on the Commerce Department's release of trade data for December. The data showed that the country ran it second highest monthly trade deficit ever in December. The year round trade deficit was a record 4.5 percent of GDP. It is worth noting that the December deficit was considerably higher than what the Commerce Department had assumed in it advance estimate of fourth quarter GDP. The December numbers will lower the estimate of GDP for the quarter by approximately a 0.5 percentage point to 1.0 percentage point. It will have approximately the same impact on productivity growth, lowering the rate for the quarter to approximately 2.0 percent.Other data that has come in since the advance GDP report, most importantly inventory data for December, will push the estimate of GDP upward, but the impact of a surprisingly negative trade report on the estimate of GDP for the 4th quarter deserves some attention. It implies that the economy is growing considerably less rapidly than is generally believed. ********

wage pressures Posted here Monday, February 23, 2004 at 9:08:24 AM     The Health of Grocers, Workers Michael Barbaro and Neil Irwin Washington Post, February 17, 2004, Page E1 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46553-2004Feb16.html This article reports on the changes taking place in the grocery industry. It shows how the spread of Wal-Mart into the sector is depressing wages. Chains that have unionized workforces, and which provide decent wages and benefits to their workers, have great difficulty competing with Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart generally pays its workers far less and only provides very limited health care and pension benefits. the inexorable push on wages and profits leadaing to subsistence wages (and then worse because of replacement by machine). ********