Jefferson23
Jefferson23's JournalThe perils of 2012 by Joseph Stiglitz
In 2012, global economic rebalancing will accelerate, inevitably leading to political tensions.
Last Modified: 21 Jan 2012 12:07
Kolkata, India - The year 2011 will be remembered as the time when many ever-optimistic US citizens began to give up hope. President John F Kennedy once said that a rising tide lifts all boats. But now, in the receding tide, those in the US are beginning to see not only that those with taller masts have been lifted far higher, but also that many of the smaller boats had been dashed to pieces in their wake.
In that brief moment when the rising tide was indeed rising, millions of people believed that they might have a fair chance of realising the "American Dream". Now those dreams, too, are receding. By 2011, the savings of those who had lost their jobs in 2008 or 2009 had been spent. Unemployment cheques had run out. Headlines announcing new hiring - still not enough to keep pace with the number of those who would normally have entered the labour force - meant little to the 50-year-olds with little hope of ever holding a job again.
Indeed, middle-aged people who thought that they would be unemployed for a few months have now realised that they were, in fact, forcibly retired. Young people who graduated from college with tens of thousands of dollars of education debt cannot find any jobs at all. People who moved in with friends and relatives have become homeless. Houses bought during the property boom are still on the market or have been sold at a loss. More than seven million families in the US have lost their homes.
The dark underbelly of the previous decade's financial boom has been fully exposed in Europe as well. Dithering over Greece and key national governments' devotion to austerity began to exact a heavy toll last year. Contagion spread to Italy. Spain's unemployment, which had been near 20 per cent since the beginning of the recession, crept even higher. The unthinkable - the end of the euro - began to seem like a real possibility.
in full: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/01/201211416122556461.html
Clinton revives charge of 'covert' site
By Gareth Porter
WASHINGTON - United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's charge on Tuesday that Iran had intended to keep its nuclear facility at Fordow secret until it was revealed by Western intelligence revived a claim the Barack Obama administration made in September 2009.
Clinton said Iran "only declared the Qom facility to the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] after it was discovered by the international community following three years of covert construction". She also charged that there was no "plausible reason" for Iran to enrich to a 20% level at the Fordow plant, implying that the only explanation was an intent to make nuclear weapons.
Clinton's charges were part of a coordinated US-British attack on Iran's enrichment at Fordow. British Foreign Minister William
Hague also argued that Fordow was too small to support a civilian power program. Hague also referred to its "location and clandestine nature", saying they "raise serious questions about its ultimate purpose".
The Clinton-Hague suggestions that the Fordow site must be related to an effort to obtain nuclear weapons appear to be aimed at counter-balancing Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta's statement only two days earlier that Iran was not seeking nuclear weapons.
in full: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NA13Ak02.html
The shame of Guantanamo Bay by Anthony Romero
All branches of the US government must act to end one of the most shameful episodes in American history.
January 11, 2012
New York, New York - This week marks the 10-year anniversary of the first prisoner arriving at Guantanamo Bay, making it the longest-standing war prison in US history. Guantanamo has been a catastrophic failure on every front. It has long been past the time for this shameful episode in American history to be brought to a close.
President Obama has failed to shutter Guantanamo, even though on his second day in office he signed an executive order to close the prison and restore "core constitutional values". In fact, the 2012 National Defence Authorization Act that Obama signed on New Year's Eve contains a sweeping provision that makes indefinite military detention, including of people captured far from any battlefield, a permanent part of American law for the first time in this country's history. This is not just unconstitutional - it's just plain wrong.
Guantanamo was fashioned as an "island outside the law" where terrorism suspects could be held without charge and interrogated without restraint. Almost 800 men have passed through its cells. Today, 171 remain.
As documents secured by the ACLU demonstrate, Guantanamo became a perverse laboratory for brutal interrogation methods. Prisoners were subjected to beatings, sleep deprivation, stress positions, extreme temperatures and prolonged isolation. It started with two false premises: Those who were sent there were all terrorists picked up on the battlefield and that, as "unlawful enemy combatants", they had no legal rights. In reality, a tiny percentage was captured by US forces; most were seized by Pakistani and Afghan militias, tribesmen, and officials, and then sold to the US for large bounties.
in full: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/01/201211193555298292.html
Hobbes’s Mortal Gods: Six Questions for Ted H. Miller by Scott Horton
January 9, 2012
The last decade was clearly something of a Hobbesian moment in American history. Now, political philosopher and Hobbes scholar Ted H. Miller has written a book entitled Mortal Gods: Science, Politics, and the Humanist Ambitions of Thomas Hobbes, in which he examines the English philosopher’s work and its relationship to court politics, absolutist rule, and the seventeenth-century fascination with practical mathematics. I put six questions to Miller about his new book:
1. If the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes can be separated from that of John Locke on a single practical point, it is probably the notion of accountability of senior political figures. Locke teaches us that no man can be above the law. But for Hobbes, as you note, the sovereign is personified as a law-giver who operates outside the limitations of law. Many in America today believe we are witnessing a resurgence of notions of immunity and unaccountability that benefit the powerful and the wealthy. Is this the legacy of Thomas Hobbes?
It’s a very troubling resurgence. As a proponent of absolutist sovereignty, Hobbes plays a part, but he isn’t alone. Moreover, he might aid more than one perspective on this question. Like absolutists before and after, he taught that sovereign powers ought not to be held to law by their subjects. For some, including Locke, Hobbes’s sovereign is an untamed beast who roams his domain, a threat to subjects rather than a legitimate authority. For Hobbes himself, an unquestionable sovereign is the very condition of an ordered and lawful state. With no last word on the law, chaos results. A sovereign held accountable within the state could not do what a sovereign must: “overawe” subjects and hold them accountable. This unusual status of his sovereign as the exempt keeper of law made Hobbes a kind of beacon to critics of rule-of-law liberals in the twentieth century. They noted that Hobbes’s sovereign might suspend, or destroy and reconstitute, basic law in crisis moments.
Hobbes, however, might offer his own solution to the problem of wealthy and powerful people who stand immune and unaccountable: if they claim this immunity without sovereign warrant, then sovereign powers should exercise their force to hold them to account. Unfortunately, much of the immunity you’ve referenced gets the nod from those who claim sovereign power. Some have described the vast increases in executive power after 9/11 as a form of neo-absolutism. The creeping immunity granted those who do the state’s bidding can be seen in the same light.
remainder: http://www.harpers.org/archive/2012/01/hbc-90008381
The road map to the Afghan endgame
Some Taliban may set up an office in Doha, but will all Americans actually leave Kabul?
Last Modified: 07 Jan 2012 11:23
New York, New York - Once upon a time they favoured Dubai - their smuggling Mecca. Now the Taliban go-to destination of choice will be Doha.
So the Taliban will open a political office in Qatar to be engaged in negotiations "with the international community", according to Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid.
Afghan president Hamid Karzai wanted the office to be either in Turkey or Saudi Arabia. The Obama administration applied some screws - Karzai had to accept Qatar. So much for the "sovereignty" of the man informally known as the mayor of Kabul.
The Doha operation was strictly a US, German, Qatari and Taliban "representatives" affair. Doha was specifically picked by the Obama administration. The concept of a reward was clear - as in Qatar's solid, unconditional partnership with NATO, which, by the way, is spectacularly losing a war in Afghanistan.
in full: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/01/20121610014530356.html
Obama distances US from Iran attack
January 5, 2012
By Gareth Porter
WASHINGTON - United States President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are engaged in intense maneuvering over Netanyahu's aim of entangling the United States in an Israeli war against Iran.
Netanyahu is exploiting the extraordinary influence his right-wing Likud Party exercises over the Republican Party and the US Congress on matters related to Israel in order to maximize the likelihood that the US would participate in an attack on Iran.
Obama, meanwhile, appears to be hoping that he can avoid being caught up in a regional war started by Israel if he distances the United States from any Israeli attack.
New evidence surfaced in 2011 that Netanyahu had been serious about dealing a military blow to the Iranian nuclear program, which is suspected in some circles of being designed to produce nuclear weapons - something Tehran denies.
remainder in full: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NA05Ak01.html
Obama Signs the NDAA, World Does Not End (Yet) by Scott Horton
On New Year’s Eve, as most Americans were focused on parties and football games, President Barack Obama signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act for 2012. He issued a significant signing statement in the process:
I have signed this bill despite having serious reservations with certain provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation, and prosecution of suspected terrorists… I decided to sign this bill not only because of the critically important services it provides for our forces and their families and the national security programs it authorizes, but also because the Congress revised provisions that otherwise would have jeopardized the safety, security, and liberty of the American people. Moving forward, my Administration will interpret and implement the provisions described below in a manner that best preserves the flexibility on which our safety depends and upholds the values on which this country was founded…
I want to clarify that my Administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens. Indeed, I believe that doing so would break with our most important traditions and values as a Nation. My Administration will interpret section 1021 in a manner that ensures that any detention it authorizes complies with the Constitution, the laws of war, and all other applicable law.
Obama’s decision hardly provoked applause from the NDAA’s critics. The ACLU stated that it was a “blight on his legacy because he will forever be known as the president who signed indefinite detention without charge or trial into law.” Jonathan Turley has called Obama’s decision to sign the NDAA into law America’s “Mayan moment”—the dooming moment “when the nation embraced authoritarian powers with little more than a pause between rounds of drinks.”
in full: http://harpers.org/archive/2012/01/hbc-90008380
Palestinians plan diplomatic steps to put Israel under 'international siege'
Top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat to meet Netanyahu's envoy in Jordan Tuesday for preliminary talks aimed at setting an agenda for peace negotiations.
By Barak Ravid, Avi Issacharoff and Natasha Mozgovaya
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's envoy Isaac Molho will meet with top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat in Amman Tuesday for preliminary talks aimed at setting an agenda for peace negotiations, even as the Palestinians are preparing a diplomatic campaign that aims to put Israel under "a real international siege."
Among those who have been pushing hard for the meeting Tuesday, the first official meeting between Israeli and Palestinian representatives in several months, are Jordan's King Abdullah and Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh and the Quartet's Mideast envoy, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Senior Israeli officials said there was very little chance that the meeting would lead to the renewal of negotiations.
The diplomatic offensive the Palestinians are planning to launch later this month could include pushing the UN Security Council to pass a resolution condemning settlement construction and urging the International Criminal Court to try Israel for war crimes related to its 2008-2009 incursion into the Gaza Strip.
2012 "will be the start of an unprecedented diplomatic campaign on the part of the Palestinian leadership, and it will be a year of pressure on Israel that will put it under a real international siege," said Fatah Central Committee member Nabil Sha'ath, according to an Israeli Foreign Ministry document. "The campaign will be similar to the one waged against apartheid in South Africa."
remainder here: http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/palestinians-plan-diplomatic-steps-to-put-israel-under-international-siege-1.404973
Hamas and the Arab Spring
The Arab Spring is an opportunity to mend fortunes by rebranding Palestinian politics for statehood and good governance.
Last Modified: 29 Dec 2011
Exeter, United Kingdom - On a "win-loss" scale, Hamas features more as amongst the "winners" not "losers" of the Arab Spring. Ismail Haniyeh's current diplomacy "shuttle" around several Arab capitals is designed, amongst other things, as a declaratory policy embracing the Arab Spring.
However, the embrace remains a little ill-defined around the edge, and faces many challenges.
The Arab Spring, like that "sudden" light, creating a desperately needed opening in a tunnelled Palestinian cause, illuminating the path for Haniyeh, amongst other chiefs of the Palestinian polity, including Fatah.
Haniyeh lands in Cairo around the same time in December three years ago when a buoyant Tzipi Livni more or less declared the war on Gaza with total indifference from Mubarak's ousted Foreign Minister Ahmad Abu al-Ghait in December 2008. Maybe not by design, but the timing of Haniyeh's visit is not without political symbolism.
No one can predict when Livni will get back to Cairo. But what is certain: Haniyeh's visit will not be his last to Egypt's capital.
in full: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/12/2011122964659993802.html
Envoys worldwide feel brunt of Israel's worsening image
In annual meeting 100 Israeli diplomats discuss influence of contentious domestic legislation on Israel's diplomatic standing; Foreign Ministry indicates an erosion in 'special relationship' with U.S.
By Barak Ravid
On Tuesday morning, 100 Israeli ambassadors gathered on Mount Scopus, and together with their host, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, looked out onto Silwan and the Temple Mount. Later they continued toward Abu-Dis, there they peered at the border area and the separation fence. Last year, Barkat and the city he manages caused many of these Israeli diplomats to work overtime, preparing explanations to foreign ministries or media outlets in the countries where they serve. It can be assumed that in 2012, their work will only get harder.
The annual ambassadors' meeting is met with ambivalence by many Israeli diplomats. On the one hand, it provides an opportunity to visit the country for a week, and to be briefed on political matters, as well as internal ministry gossip. On the other hand, instead of a Christmas vacation, these sequestered ambassadors spend long days, from morning to night, inside the Foreign Ministry's auditorium.
The atmosphere in the ambassadors' gathering moved from depression to catharsis. On the one hand, they gripe about escalating international isolation, whereas on the other hand they congratulate one another upon the stopping of the Gaza flotilla sequel via diplomatic means, and upon the temporary derailing of the Palestinian statehood move in the United Nations, launched in September.
Ambassadors who arrived from European states and North America talked about how they are becoming increasingly hated and unwanted, while ambassadors from Asia and Africa spoke optimistically about new markets and opportunities for cooperation in areas such as agriculture and medicine. "Exports to China are at $2.5 billion a year; why isn't this figure $10 billion?" asked one ambassador.
remainder: http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/envoys-worldwide-feel-brunt-of-israel-s-worsening-image-1.404380
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