Today's Stories

September 24, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
The Bitter Fruits of Deregulation

September 23, 2008

Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr.
Bail Out on This Bailout

Michael Hudson
Henry Paulson and the New Yazoo Land Scandal

Tariq Ali
Why was the Marriott Targeted?

Patrick Dyer
A Death Row Visit with Troy A. Davis

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah and the Palestinians

Joshua Frank
Oppose Barack Obama? How Dare Thee!

Alan Farago
Pushing the Referees: How the Financial Crisis Occurred

Dave Lindorff
The Bailout Will Kill the Dollar

Tanya M. Kerssen /
Roger Burbach
Bolivia's Popular Upheaval

Harvey Wasserman
Nuclear Power Liabilities Dwarf Bush's Wall Street Bailout

Website of the Day
Hammered by the Irish: the Video

September 22, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Paulson-Bernanke Bank Bailout Plan: Will the Cure be Worse Than the Crisis?

Mike Whitney
Mushroom Clouds Over Wall Street

Christopher Ketcham
Let It Collapse!

Ron Jacobs
The Predators' Bailout

Anne-Marie McManus
Lost in the Rhetoric of Crisis

Robert Weitzel
The Twin Terrors of the Holy Land: a Sexy Fundamentalist and a White-Haired Zionist

Wajahat Ali
An Interview with Howard Dean

John Ross
A New Cold War Comes to Latin America

Steve Breyman
Does the U.S. Really Need Cluster Bombs?

Patrick Bond
On the Bellies of the Filth

Uri Avnery
Fly, Tzipora, Fly

Carl J. Mayer
An Open Letter to Michael Moore (AKA God's Pen Pal): Whatever Happened to Voting Your Conscience?

Website of the Day
Stop the Execution of Troy Anthony Davis

September 20 / 21, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Is This the Stake Through Neoliberalism's Heart?

Michael Hudson
America's Own Kleptocracy

Pam Martens
The Wall Street Model: Unintelligent Design

Lila Rajiva
Putting Lipstick on an AIG

Mike Whitney
Full-Spectrum Breakdown

Richard Rhames
A Bailout to Nowhere

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
The NY Yankees and the U.S. Economy

Bill and Kathleen Christison
The Making of Recent U.S. Middle East Policies: a New Study of Neocon Influence

Susan Block
Palin as Venus in Furs: the Dominatrix Politics of Drilling and Killing

Robert Fantina
Republicans and Subpoenas: Never the Twain Shall Meet

Heidi Walters
Hung Up on Route 36: an 18-Wheeler and a Nuclear Cask

David Yearsley
Germany's Lost Organs: When Bigger Was Better

Raymond J. Lawrence
The Politics of Tribulation: Sarah Palin and the Rapture

David Rosen
One Billion Pills Later: Viagra at 10

David Michael Green
Living in Sarah Palin's America

Anthony Papa
Imprisoned Voters and the Elections

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Freddie, Fannie, Daddy, Nanny

Howard Lisnoff
When We Notice the Homeless

John Goekler
Leaving Every Child Behind

Missy Beattie
Impalement

Dave Zirin
Leave Josh Howard Alone

Charles R. Larson
Holden Caulfield, Rest in Peace

Tim Matson
Too Big for His Birches: Woodlot Economics

Susie Day
Attack of the Angry Fetus

Poets' Basement
Corseri, Gibbons, Jenkins and Ford

Website of the Weekend
Dylan & Baez: Deportees

September 19, 2008

Steven T. Banko
McCain's Passion Play

Mike Whitney
The Point of No Return

Michael Hudson
The Dow Jones' Wonderfully Cheesy Addition

William Kaufman
Shattering the Glass-Steagall Act: the Bi-Partisan Origins of the Financial Crisis

Brenda Norrell
The Fall of Lehman Bros.: Blowback for Black Mesa?

Keeanga-Yamatta Taylor
The New Rhetoric of Racism: Why Won't Obama Call It Out?

Clifton Ross
Bolivia: Cleaning Up the Bull Ring

Dave Lindorff
Hang On to Your Wallets: the Government's About to Rescue Us!

Cynthia McKinney
Seize the Time!

Susan Hurlich
Storm Survivors: a Dispatch from Cuba

Michael Donnelly
Let's Hand It All Over to the Democrats (They Helped Create This Mess)

Website of the Day
The Crisis Explained

September 18, 2008

Benjamin Dangl
The Machine Gun and the Meeting Table

Harvey Wasserman
The Senate's Drill, Drill, Drill Scam

Susan Abulhawa
The Lobby Has Spoken: Biden and Israel

Robert Weissman
After the Fall: the Financial Re-Regulatory Agenda

Anne-Marie McManus
McCain's Cinderella: the Fetishization of Sarah Palin

Corey D. B. Walker
The Poverty of 21st Century Progressivism

William S. Lind
Senator O'Bush: Why Obama is Wrong on Iran and Afghanistan

Ron Jacobs
Washington's False Logic of Torture

Dave Lindorff
American and China: Joined at the Hip

Binoy Kampmark
How Damien Hirst Got Away With It

Website of the Day
An Invisible Army

September 17, 2008

Stephen Conn
Palin and the Politics of Big Oil

Forrest Hylton
Reactionary Rampage in Bolivia

Patrick Cockburn
Petraeus Leaves Iraq

Gregory Elich
Inside North Korea

Ralph Nader
How the U.S. Auto Industry Wrecked Itself

Franklin Lamb
The Palestinians of Shabra-Shatila

Pam Martens
The Gang's All Here: Bush, McCain and the Old Iran/Contra Team

Dave Lindorff
The End of the Blue Chip Economy

Peter Morici
The Damage Deepens

Stanley Heller
The Killing of Count Folke Bernadotte

Douglas Valentine
Rambling David Foster Wallace

Website of the Day
Free Cindy McCain!

September 16, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
US Economy: Rudderless and Reeling from Direct Hits

Tiphaine Dickson
Citizen Palin: Why Sarah Palin Quoted Westbrook Pegler

Stan Goff
America is Now Rome: an Open Letter to Christian Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan

Uri Avnery
Tzipi's Choice

Michael Winship
Lipstick on Polar Bears

Jeff Halper
Warehousing Palestinians

Patrick Irelan
Bolivia Versus the Empire

Oscar Gonzalez
Who's Dumber? Ike's Refugees or Wall Street's?

Binoy Kampmark
Cheney and His Records

Fatemeh Keshavarz
Muslims are at Peace with You

Sen. Russ Feingold
Restoring the Rule of Law

Website of the Day
The Next Great Rock Band?

September 15, 2008

Mike Whitney
The Tumbrils Roll at Dawn

Peter Morici
Toxic Lehman

Patrick Cockburn
Take Another Look at the Surge

Charles R. Larson
The Maverick Has No Clothes

Jonathan Cook
The Expulsion of Palestinians from Jaffa

Nikolas Kozloff
Racist Rhetoric in Bolivia

Roger Burbach
Morales Confronts the Insurrection: Bolivia and the Echoes of Allende

Helen Redmond
Where's the Health Care Bailout?

David Michael Green
The Democrats Do Poland

David Macaray
The Boeing Strike

Ralph Nader
Remembering Peter Camejo

Website of the Day
The Ballad of Sarah Palin

September 13 / 14, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Panic!

Jeffrey St. Clair
Inside Dirk Kempthorne's Closet

Wajahat Ali
Playing with the Constitution

Robert Fantina
Cheney Scales New Heights of Hypocrisy

Marcus Rediker
Notes on a Visit to the Favelas of Medellín, Colombia

Richard Neville
The Baby Killers

Ed Gaffney
Breaking the Siege of Gaza

Carla Blank
Neglecting a Grand Old Lady

P. Sainath
The Almighty and the U.S. Elections

Lee Sustar
Working Harder; Falling Further Behind

Joshua Frank
Liberalism and Its Bounds

M. Junaid Levesque-Alam
The Guantanamoized Age

Dennis Loo
Shock and Awe Comes Home to Roost

Zach Zill
Squeezed Out in New York City

Omar Barghouti
So You Think You Can Dance? Israeli Profiling of African-American Dancers

Bill Quigley
Social Justice Quiz, 2008

Andy Worthington
Bush's Bitter Legacy

Stephen Dunifer
Free Radio: Liberating the Commons

Seth Sandronsky
Bailing Out Big Auto

David Yearsley
Portabella's Bach: Grim, Trite and Incredibly Boring

Patrick B. Barr
Obama's Punchless Campaign

Rannie Amiri
Tasting Ramadan

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Flight Not Taken

Richard Rhames
What, Me Reason?

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
The Large Hadron Collider Powers Up

Poets' Basement
Deer Cloud and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
Wasilla Valley PTA?

September 24, 2008

An Analytical Overview of the Current Situation

Palestinians Under the Occupation

By KHALIL NAKHLEH

Our current Palestinian situation can be characterized candidly, as one observer described it over 20 some years ago, as a “fragmented national mood”; where more than 80% perceive themselves to suffer from depression and worry; where  the percentages of the poor are in constant upward increase and difficult to keep track of; where  our poor are rapidly joining the inconsequential global pool of “surplus humanity”; where corruption is perceived as a sign of success and compared positively with Israeli society; where Palestinian society under occupation is sliding with an alarming increase towards the rule of the “security forces”; and where there is obvious, predetermined, and politically-sanctioned  extension of military jurisdiction over civilians, and total disregard for civil judiciary.  This is producing a clear visible tendency towards the emergence of a “police state”, dependent for its establishment and continuity on external funds.

Palestinian society under occupation is almost entirely dependent for its survival on aid from outside, and not on its own productive resources and energies:  nearly one million live on their PA monthly salaries, the dispensation of which is conditioned by receiving donations from outside on time; no less than 40 -50 thousand live directly on their salaries from externally-funded NGOs, and some many more thousands live on NGO projects, etc.  Thus, the livelihood of most Palestinians who have “steady” income is mortgaged by political decisions external to them, and beyond their control.

In spite of public statements and uttering to the contrary,   nothing effectively is moving forward.  All current official political initiatives have stopped dead in their tracks, or, euphemistically, “stumbled”.  The average citizen is being bombarded daily by contradictory statements that lead, if anything, to an ambiguous state of frustrated confusion.  More specifically:

The negotiations track with Israel: All indications are that it is revolving around its axis, without any signs of a clear outcome.  The resulting public statements, whether Palestinian or Israeli, seem to point in the same direction, i.e, the realization of minimum Palestinian rights has not been agreed upon, nor the Israeli side is ready to do that.

Holding the long overdue 6th National Fateh Congress (the last Congress was held 21 years ago): in spite of the ongoing visible movement in this direction over the last few years, the reality is that it is bogged down by internecine Fateh internal conflicts and approaches, that are connected to the future role and identity of Fateh, and the problematic and competitive relationship between the PA and the PLO.
Holding the much talked about “National Dialogue” between Fateh and Hamas: This is going nowhere not only because of the opposing approaches to the type of “solutions” to the Palestine question each side advocates, but because of internal opposing camps within each group, and their alignment with the externally involved parties, e.g. the US, Israel, the Arab countries, other regional forces, etc.

As a result, certain lines, or alignments, of potential confrontations, that were always present, now are being crystallized and articulated, and are rapidly surfacing.  Some of these oppositionary lines of possible confrontations that are likely to surface more clearly during the coming year, are:

More open confrontation between the PA and the PLO: Since the decision adopted by the PLO Central Committee in its meeting on 12-13 October 1993 to establish a Palestinian National Authority subordinate to the PLO, the seeds of conflict were present.  The current relationship has become inversed.  Effectively, since Oslo the PLO has been increasingly marginalized, and its bodies anachronistic and ineffective.  The PA is driving to annex the PLO to it (as one analyst described it).

More open confrontation between the Hamas government in Gaza and the Fateh-sanctioned government in Ramallah: The focus will hinge more specifically on the authority and legitimacy of the PLC and the presidency, especially over the term of the president and the role of the PLC and the probable call for new elections.

More open confrontation within Fateh, especially between the “young guard” and the “ancien regime” in the context of the obstructed convening of the 6th National Congress. Much clearer, and potentially oppositional, alignments between Palestinian capitalists vying to fill the political void, supported by “their technocrats and intellectuals”, on the one hand, and the traditionally factional political groups (e.g. the Fateh recent attack on Fayyad, etc).

Possible other combinations.

In the meantime, the average Palestinian citizen, who is carrying the brunt of the military and economic occupation, on a daily basis, and the consequences of the PA’s actual collaborative policies with the occupation, has no voice or support.  Through their own means and local initiatives, they try to resist, by daily practice and by non-violent means, the stealing of their lands and water, their incarceration in closed “warehouses” (to use Jeff Halper’s term), in the enclaves created by the Separation Wall (so benignly called “Barrier”), and in the Arab Jerusalem communities and neighborhoods, and their overall effective separation from their families, historical memories, places of work and traditional service centers, etc.  These are the people who mostly have no confidence or trust in the political “leadership”; and whatever confidence they had at one time is quickly eroding.  This is at a time when they see that the PA political and military apparatus in Ramallah launched an aggressive campaign against basic charitable societies who provide basic welfare assistance to needy groups, and closed down at least 45 of them within the last few months, in response to Israeli-US pressure (and the number is increasing).  These are the people who need the urgent support of the humanitarian agencies to survive from one day to the next.

Consequently, there are apparent frightening signs that Palestinian social fabric under occupation is disintegrating, and is not being protected,  if one is to judge by the deteriorating cultural values; the rise of crime; the nearly total disappearance of traditional cultural and social caring for those who don’t have the means, by those who have them; the regressing quality of education and research; the primacy of individual interests over national collective interests; the signs of conspicuous consumptive patterns as a replacement of productive patterns, etc.

Emerging from this current state, one observes a number of, what might be called, civil society initiatives, both individual and collective, emphasizing the need for a longer term, “strategic” thinking to explore approaches to “salvaging” the situation.  One can note the following:

The recent attempt by an amorphous group, labeled the “Palestine Strategy Group”, over the last few months, to “regain the initiative” regarding the future of the ongoing political negotiations process, and future solutions;

The recent attempt by an ad hoc group of seriously concerned Jerusalemites to rethink “strategically” the status and future of Jerusalem Palestinian Arabs, by filling the void of the non-effective and ambivalent official role of the PA;

Attempts over the last five years by Palestinian social and political activists in Israel at rethinking “strategically” the status and future of the Palestinian minority in Israel, as expressed in recently published documents;

Recent appeals by active civil society organizations and individuals, through conferences and civil societies electronic networks, to re-direct and focus popular, grassroots,  energies on the unequal, unjust, and skewed distribution of financial resources, by highlighting the plight of the impoverished population in Palestine.

What is clear is that the traditionally accepted, political, economic and social “taboos” (e.g., the function and continuity of the PA, the servicing of the Israeli occupation, the status of Jerusalem, the total dependency on external political aid for survival, future debt, the rapidly increasing gap between the new political-economic elite and the poor, etc) are being breached and challenged by these “initiatives”.

What possible scenarios could this situation generate? I expect the following:

Efforts by vested political interests to maintain the status quo; This implies possibly: President Abbas may decree the dissolution of the Hamas-controlled PLC before his term in office expires on 9 January 2009 to ensure that they don’t obstruct his extended term in office;

The PLO “Executive Committee” may extend his term for a few additional months (perhaps half a year);

He may call for new presidential and legislative elections, which can only take place in the West Bank (and Jerusalem), and which will ensure Fateh controlled new (mini) PLC in the West Bank;

Hamas may declare the entire process illegitimate and in breach of the Basic Palestinian Law, and it may not recognize the legitimacy of neither the president or the “new” PLC;

It may continue entrenching its hold and authority in the Gaza Strip, by electing its own “Gaza” president, and perhaps a re-shuffled cabinet;

This, in effect, would formalize the division and separation between the West Bank and Gaza;

Following Israel’s suit by declaring Gaza “an enemy territory”, the Ramallah-based President may declare Gaza as a “rebellious region”, or a “rogue government”, which leaves it open for more sanctions and punishment, and possible “re-occupation” by the Israeli military, in conjunction with Abbas-loyal security forces;

Such a scenario will be acceptable to both Israel and the US and, perhaps, the EU. 

The implication, of course, is the total collapse of the unitary PNA (Palestinian National Authority), as foreseen in the Oslo Accords, and its replacement by two mini-authorities: the PRA (Palestinian Ramallah Authority) and the PGA (Palestinian Gaza Authority).  

The President responds to the concerns of the people for safeguarding national unity and heeds the warning of some Arab states, by:

Declaring his resignation following the Eid, and, effectively, opening the road for the imprisoned speaker of the PLC, to assume the role of acting president during most 2009, and to prepare for new presidential and legislative elections to be held in January 2010, in all areas;

In the meantime, a new care-taker government of “professionals” may be formed and approved by the Hamas-controlled PLC;

This approach will be supported by the people, and by some Arab states, and it will be opposed by the US and Israel, and by some well-entrenched and corrupt Oslo Fateh leadership, who are benefiting illegitimately from the continued status-quo.   

Regardless of which scenario materializes, one thing is clear: poverty will increase; more people will have no, or very little, food; steady income could become scarce; the fickle and unreliable Palestinian capitalists will flee (with their capital) in search of other environments to make guaranteed profits, etc.  However, the immediate and short-term need for humanitarian support and relief interventions will certainly surmount.

In such a situation, juxtaposing humanitarian aid vs. “developmental” aid is an artificial equation.  Unless humanitarian organizations commit themselves to altering the prevalent military and political situation, in order to generate the necessary conditions for “sustainable development”, their main task and responsibility, it seems to me, is to ensure the provision of basic humanitarian support and relief (defined broadly) to the increasing numbers of pauperized, marginalized and incarcerated Palestinian communities, be they “formal” refugees and non-refugees alike.

In this process, it is also clear that the responsibility of humanitarian agencies is to ensure that the provision of humanitarian aid is not a corrupt process itself, nor is it corrupting of those benefiting from it.

Khalil Nakhleh is an independent writer and researcher.  He may be reached at abusama@palnet.com.

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