Prof. Michael Hudson, Global Research, 17 February 2009

Mr. Obama’s “recovery” plan based on infrastructure spending will make real estate fortunes for well-situated properties along the new public transport routes, but there is no sign of cities levying a windfall property tax to save their finances. Their mayors would rather keep the cities broke than to tax real estate and finance. The aim is to re-inflate property markets to enable owners to pay the banks, not to help the public sector break even. So state and local pension plans will remain underfunded while more corporate pension plans go broke.

One would think that politicians would be willing to do the math and realize that debts that can’t be paid, won’t be. But the debts are being kept on the books, continuing to extract interest to pay the creditors that have made the bad loans. The resulting debt deflation threatens to keep the economy in depression until a radical shift in policy occurs – a shift to save the “real” economy, not just the financial sector and the wealthiest 10% of American families.

[Read the article]

U.S. Pressed to Add Billions to Bailouts
Deal Book | 24 February 2009

The government faced mounting pressure on Monday to put billions more in some of the nation’s biggest banks, two of the biggest automakers and the biggest insurance company, despite the billions it has already committed to rescuing them, The New York Times’s Edmund L. Andrews, Andrew Ross Sorkin and Mary Williams Walsh reported.

[Read the report]

Mazin Qumsiyeh
24 February 2009

First, a part of a Statement of H.E. Father Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann, President of the UN General Assembly, 57th plenary meeting on agenda item 16, The Question of Palestine
United Nations, New York
24 November 2008
(excerpts):

I spoke this morning about apartheid and how Israeli policies in the Occupied Palestinian Territories appear so similar to the apartheid of an earlier era, a continent away.

I believe it is very important that we in the United Nations use this term. We must not be afraid to call something what it is. It is the United Nations, after all, that passed the International Convention against the Crime of Apartheid, making clear to all the world that such practices of official discrimination must be outlawed wherever they occur.

We heard today from a representative of South African civil society. We know that all around the world, civil society organizations are working to defend Palestinian rights, and are trying to protect the Palestinian population that we, the United Nations, are failing to protect.

Continue reading →

Part One | Part Two

whoisleonardpeltier.info | 23 February 2009

Greetings my relatives!

It is with a real deep sense of loss that I write this. The loss of my brother in the struggle for Indigenous rights who was also my blood cousin and also a defendant in the Oglala shoot-out trials. I am speaking of Robert Robideau, who we called Bob most of the time. Bob was a tireless campaigner for my freedom and Indigenous rights all over the world. I can’t express enough how greatly his leaving this level of existence will be missed.

Continue reading →

Sam Bahour of epalestine writes:

Dear friends,

Sadly, it has taken 60 years and 1,300+ (the killing continues) additional loss of lives in Gaza to get to this point, nevertheless, this is an opening we must support.  It is the same track I mentioned in my last op-ed, End the Occupation First.

The newly released Amnesty report noted in the two articles below may be downloaded from ePalestine, since I could not find it on Amnesty’s website:

Fueling Conflict: Foreign Arms supplies to Israel/Gaza (PDF, 1.1MB)

Every legislator in the world and every newspaper editorial and letters page in the world should be making the call to support an arms embargo on Israel.  Please act now and make this report known in your community. Organize, Organize, Organize: For Results.

Stop the Arms, Save the Children, All the Children,
Sam

Amira Hass: Amnesty International urges freeze on arms sales to Israel

Telegraph.co.uk: Amnesty International urges Barack Obama to suspend military aid to Israel