FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Date : 09-23-2008

On Thursday, September 25 at 10:00 am, the Free Gaza Movement will hold a press conference at the commercial port in Larnaca. Passengers are listed below.

They will be leaving immediately after the press conference. Come and see the SS HOPE, meet with the passengers and hear about this second trip. Doctors and lawyers are going to Gaza at the request of the people of Gaza to assess the medical tragedy there and to talk to the people. We are also delivering six cubic meters of badly-needed medical supplies for the children of Gaza.

Passengers of 2nd Free Gaza Voyage:

– Al Jabar, Ali (Qatar) Al-Jazeera
– Alshubashi, Mohammed (Germany/Palestine) Physician, Neuro-surgeon
– Abourashed, Amin (Holland) Human Rights
– Arraf, Huwaida (Palestine/US) NVDA/Int., Human Rights, Int. Law Spokesperson FGM
– Barghouti, Mustafa (Palestine) President Mubadara Party, MP
– Boulous, Nicolas (Greece) Boat Engineer
– Butterly, Caiomhe (Ireland) Voices in Wilderness, PSC
– Cox, Rod (UK) Pal Solidarity, Chester, UK
– Al Hams, Walid (Palestine/Sweden) Physician, Internal Medicine
– Ernshire, Eliza (Australia/UK) Human Rights Activist
– Fallisi, Joe (Italy) Opera Singer, Composer
– Graham, Derek (Ireland) Sailor, Electrician, First Mate
– Hamami, Ibrahim (Palestine/UK) Physician, Family Medicine
– Klontzas, George (Greece) Boat Captain
– Kysia, Ramzi (US/Lebanon) Writer, Organizer, Spokesperson
– Maguire, Mairead (Ireland) Peace People/Nobel Peace Prize
– Masarwa, Lubna (Palestine ’48/Israel) Jerusalem Alt. Info. Center, Al Quds Univ.
– McDermott, Theresa (Scotland) Human Rights Activist, was on first trip
– Mohammed, Amir (Sudan) Al-Jazeera
– Zahalka, Jamal (Israel) Member of Knesset

Where, oh where, is America’s Vladimir Putin, who will drive out the oligarchs who have stolen the country’s treasure and debased its currency? – Spengler, Asia Times

Stopping a Financial Crisis, the Swedish Way
Deal Book, 23 September 2008

A few American commentators have proposed that the United States government extract equity from banks as a price for their rescue. But it does not seem to be under serious consideration yet in the Bush administration or Congress.

The reason is not quite clear. The government has already swapped its sovereign guarantee for equity in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage finance institutions, and the American International Group, the global insurance giant.

Putting taxpayers on the hook without anything in return could be a mistake, Urban Backstrom, a senior Swedish finance ministry official at the time, told The Times. “The public will not support a plan if you leave the former shareholders with anything,” he said.

Spengler believes Americans are gamblers who will save the bank to keep the credit flowing.

Luigi Zingales (.pdf) explains why debt-for-equity is not on the table:

The major players in the financial sector do not like it. It is much more appealing for the financial industry to be bailed out at taxpayers’ expense than to bear their share of pain. Forcing a debt-for-equity swap or a debt forgiveness would be no greater a violation of private property rights than a massive bailout, but it faces much stronger political opposition. The appeal of the Paulson solution is that it taxes the many and benefits the few. Since the many (we, the taxpayers) are dispersed, we cannot put up a good fight in Capitol Hill; while the financial industry is well represented at all the levels. It is enough to say that for 6 of the last 13 years, the Secretary of Treasury was a Goldman Sachs alumnus. But, as financial experts, this silence is also our responsibility. Just as it is difficult to find a doctor willing to testify against another doctor in a malpractice suit, no matter how egregious the case, finance experts in both political parties are too friendly to the industry they study and work in.

Paulson’s Folly
Steve Maich, Maccleans.ca, 22 September 2008

We’ve had market crashes before. We’ve had bad recessions before. They’re not nice, but we survive them. Part of what has helped us survive is the distinction between private enterprise and public finance. Public finance should be used to address the damage from market crashes. If you had a trillion dollars to spend, you could do an enormous amount to help people hurt by a market crash. With a trillion dollars, you could create a public program to halt home forecloures, for example. You could go on a massive public infrastructure spending program to employ all the tradespeople hurt by the housing collapse (and address a huge and simmering long–term threat to the economy at the same time). That’s just two examples.

They have managed to terrify people, in order to convince them that this is the only way they could prevent a return to the Great Depression. I think they’re saddling our generation, and our kids generation with a greatly diminished future, for the sake of temporarily bolstering the status quo, and bailing out a handful of incredibly irresponsible institutions that ought to be allowed to fail.

[Read the post]

hat tip for all links to Housing Crash News from Patrick.net (exception: Zingales)

Dear compañeras and compañeros:

We arrive at the 10th anniversary of the arrest of the Cuban Five at a crucial moment of our legal process (That is what they call it, although perhaps “illegal process” would be more appropriate.) The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Atlanta, has just ended our appeal.

That is to say, if it were up to them, things would stand as is, and some day my bones would be sent to Cuba, after death frees me from two life sentences.

The court in question has given unmistakable signals of the type of “justice” that the Five can aspire to in this country. When there was a decision 3-to-0 in our favor, with 93 pages of solid arguments in which the three-judge panel characterized our trial as “The Perfect Storm,” the full panel, against all predictions, not only agreed to review the decision, but reversed it without much explanation. The “perfect storm” quickly became simply a drizzle.

Yet, this time, when the decision was 2-1 against the Five, with obvious legal errors, with a judge arguing in 16 pages that the prosecution presented absolutely no proof that sustains the charge of conspiracy to commit murder, and with a judge who—although voting against us—recognized that it is a “very close case,” and with several defense arguments were not even seriously analyzed, the 11th Circuit categorically refused to review it.

As we say in Cuba: “Not even water is as clear.” We have said time and again that this is a political case, and those who do not see it as such, choose not to see it.

[Read more]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(LARNACA, 22 September 2008) – The Free Gaza Movement announced today that an international delegation of doctors, parliamentarians, and human rights workers will sail to Gaza aboard the SS Hope on Wednesday, September 24th. A press conference will be held on Wednesday at Larnaca Port prior to the ship’s departure.

The passengers on board include:
– 5 physicians from 4 countries
– human rights lawyers and monitors
– Jamal Zahalka, a member of the Israeli Knesset
– Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, General Secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative, and member of the Palestinian Legislative Council
– Mairead Maguire, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976 for her work in Belfast

According to Maguire, a world-renowned human rights campaigner, “This mission carries with it the hopes and wishes of many people around the world.”

[Read more]

McCain Loses His Head
George F. Will, Washington Post, 23 September 2008

To read the Journal’s details about the depths of McCain’s shallowness on the subject of Cox’s chairmanship, see “McCain’s Scapegoat” (Sept. 19, Page A22). Then consider McCain’s characteristic accusation that Cox “has betrayed the public’s trust.”

Perhaps an old antagonism is involved in McCain’s fact-free slander. His most conspicuous economic adviser is Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who previously headed the Congressional Budget Office. There he was an impediment to conservatives, including then-Rep. Cox, who, as chairman of the Republican Policy Committee, persistently tried and generally failed to enlist CBO support for “dynamic scoring” that would estimate the economic growth effects of proposed tax cuts.

In any case, McCain’s smear — that Cox “betrayed the public’s trust” — is a harbinger of a McCain presidency. For McCain, politics is always operatic, pitting people who agree with him against those who are “corrupt” or “betray the public’s trust,” two categories that seem to be exhaustive — there are no other people. McCain’s Manichaean worldview drove him to his signature legislative achievement, the McCain-Feingold law’s restrictions on campaigning. Today, his campaign is creatively finding interstices in laws intended to restrict campaign giving and spending. (For details, see The Post of Sept. 17, Page A4; and the New York Times of Sept. 20, Page One.)