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Ref.: Civic Events
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Ref.: Public Service Notices
01.13 Hawaii, the Unique State
01.24 Can Apple “Rescue” US Education? (Graphics)
01.23 What You (Really) Need to Know
01.22 How to Forecast Weather Infographic w/Simple Explanations
Ref. : Letters to the editor
02.10 LET’S REMAKE THE WAY WE MAKE THINGS
02.09 Cancer rates triple among New York police officers who responded to 9/11
02.08 The seed emergency: The threat to food and democracy
02.07 Bill Gates backs climate scientists lobbying for large-scale geoengineering
02.04 Your Day at the Beach Could Soon Lead to a Night at the Hospital
02.03 Obama Won't Touch Climate With a 10-Foot Pole
02.03 Komen reverses decision to cut Planned Parenthood funding
02.03 Reforming EU Deep-Sea Fisheries Management
02.02 By defunding Planned Parenthood, the Susan G Komen Foundation betrays women
02.02 Ohio Tries to Escape Fate as a Dumping Ground for Fracking Fluid
01.31 Eleanor Smeal dissects Obama vs. Catholic Church controversy over birth control coverage - video
01.30 Scientists Call on Obama Administration to Use Science as Guide for Arctic
01.28 Universal health care proposal stalls in California Senate
01.27 Apple, Electronics and Environmental Ills
01.25 Solar Cheaper Than Diesel Making India’s Mittal Believer: Energy
01.24 Sounding an Alarm on Birds and Mercury
01.24 Why Don’t We Have Abundant Solar Power? Blame Financing, and Industry, not Science
01.22 The Money Traps in U.S. Health Care
01.22 Looking Inside the Twinkie
Ref. Dollars for Doctors - How Industry Money Reaches Physicians
Ref. 2010 Comparative Price Report Medical and Hospital Fees by Country - Graphics
Ref. Health at a Glance 2011 - OECD Indicators
Ref. : Why is Healthcare Absurdly Expensive in USA (Part 2) [Graphics] (Part 1 is here)
Video Health Care Systems in Less Corrupt Countries
02.07 Did Obama make the economy worse? Not according to most statistics
02.02 ABC's Iran Propaganda
02.02 The Ongoing “Foxification” of the Wall Street Journal
01.30 While temperatures rise, denialists reach lower
01.29 Fox News psychiatrist: Newt Gingrich's affairs 'mean he might make a strong president'
01.22 ‘Shocking victory’: With SOPA shelved, Markos Moulitsas on a way forward for Internet policy - video
Daily The Daily Howler
02.05 Why the AGs Must Not Settle: Robo-signing Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg
02.04 THE CAGING OF AMERICA
02.03 Senate Votes To Ban Its Members From Insider Trading... Kind Of
01.31 Senate clears way for vote on insider-trading ban
01.25 Why all the robo-signing? Shedding light on the shadow banking system
01.25 In Iraq, Haditha case is reminder of justice denied
01.22 Still Not Clear on SOPA & PIPA? Infographic w/Simple Explanations
02.10 The Cancer in Occupy
02.10 How Opus Dei Influenced Rick Santorum
02.10 People Are Not Leaving the Labor Force
02.09 Obama, Explained
02.09 OPED: The White Underclass
02.09 EDITORIAL: A Terrible Transportation Bill
02.09 THE OBAMA MEMOS
02.06 Are Conservatives More Fearful Than Liberals?
02.04 Soaking the Poor, State by State
02.04 Reddit Co-Founder Alexis Ohanian's Rosy Outlook On The Future of Politics
02.03 SUPERBOWL XLVI: Are You Ready for Some Football???
02.03 Buffett rules: Sheldon Whitehouse introduces the Paying a Fair Share Act - video
02.02 Secrecy Shrouds ‘Super PAC’ Funds in Latest Filings
02.01 Rich Patrons Are Major Source of Romney’s Cash
01.31 How Newt Gingrich Crippled Congress
01.30 Corporate Rule Is Not Inevitable
01.30 Clashes in Oakland: 400 Arrests, Tear Gas, Flash-Bang Grenades
01.30 A European look at the US primaries - video
01.29 Obama’s Faux Populism Sounds Like Bill Clinton
01.25 Inside Romney’s Tax Returns: A Reading Guide
01.24 ILLUSIONS: Being Led Down the Primrose Path...???
01.24 Science Bulletins: Whales Give Dolphins a Lift - video
01.24 THE OBAMA MEMOS
01.22 Three Takeaways From South Carolina
02.10 This is no bailout for Main Street America
02.10 Why the Foreclosure Deal May Not Be So Hot After All
02.10 Matt Taibbi assesses the $26 billion settlement designed to aid victims of foreclosure fraud - video
02.10 Foreclosure Deal to Spur U.S. Home Seizures
02.08 Banks Paying Homeowners to Avoid Foreclosures
02.07 App Stores Create 500,000 U.S. Jobs
02.07 The Payroll Tax Fight
02.07 Obama super PAC decision: President blesses fundraising for Priorities USA Action
02.06 How Privatizing Government Shovels Cash to Parasitic Corporations and Undermines Democracy
02.05 We’re More Unequal Than You Think – Graphic: Unequal rise in income
02.03 PRIVATE INEQUITY
02.02 The New American Divide
02.02 American Airlines proposes to end all four pension plans
02.01 Economics 101
01.30 New Strategy, Old Pentagon Budget
01.30 Where Did All the Workers Go? 60 Years of Economic Change in 1 Graph
01.29 The Apple Boycott: People Are Spouting Nonsense about Chinese Manufacturing
01.29 Made in the World
01.28 Sugar daddy Adelson could save $500 million in taxes if his boy Gingrich wins - video
01.28 How Swedes and Norwegians broke the power of the ‘1 percent’
01.27 Unemployment in Spain Rises to 22.9%
01.27 Chinese Company Continues Plan To Replace Workforce With 500,000 Robots
01.27 Details Emerge of New Financial Fraud Unit
01.27 Not all jobs are equal
01.27 The Shift from Manufacturing to Service Economy - Graphic
01.25 Billionaires Occupy Davos as 0.01% Bemoan Inequality
01.24 Germany has the economic strengths America once boasted
01.23 State Capitalism: The visible hand
01.22 How Big Money Bought Our Democracy, Corrupted Both Parties, and Set Us Up for Another Financial Crisis - video
01.22 How U.S. lost out on Apple's iPhone work
02.03 What the Occupy movement must learn from Sundance
02.02 US plans to halt Afghan combat role early surprise Kabul
01.31 TABLE TALK
01.30 With its deadly drones, the US is fighting a coward's war
01.30 UN panel aims for 'a future worth choosing'
01.26 Iran is ready to return to nuclear talks
01.24 Reagan’s Hand in Guatemala’s Genocide
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COMMENTARY:
Global Warming, Global Hostilities: Futility of a Super-Power
Middle East Balance Sheet: What's been accomplished?
It certainly made sense to go after Bin Laden after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on U.S. targets (though it would have been better to have used our prior intelligence to prevent those attacks), but the U.S. let Bin Laden escape and instead bombed the impoverished nation of Afghanistan, pushed out the Taliban, and put in its own ineffectual leader, Hamid Karzai. This has led to a resurgence of strength among the tribal warlords and a return to opium production so now Afghanistan is the major world source of heroin; and the Taliban is regaining power. The U.S. has caused damage in Afghanistan, stirred things up, but the end result has been anything but positive. An enduring legacy is the grim provocation of Guantánamo.
The central cause of hostility toward the U.S. in the Middle East, though at this stage it's clearly only one among many, is and remains our total financial, military, and diplomatic support of our client state, Israel. How are things going there? The situation has grown worse and worse. The Palestinians in the occupied territories are living in a vast prison of walled-in cantons. They are being starved, squeezed out, killed. The Palestinians had a democratic election following the death of Arafat and chose a militant Islamic party, Hamas. The U.S. and Israel did not like that kind of democracy and economic boycotting and violent attacks have followed. Now, Israel has renewed war with, or rather on, Lebanon, spurred by actions once again not by the ineffectual Lebanese government but by Palestinian militants. The U.S. is doing nothing to calm down this situation. Following capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbullah and firing of rockets on Haifa, Israel struck Lebanon and killed more than sixty civilians. The U.S. will do what it can to block international condemnation of this action. The U.S. has just vetoed a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip, even though the resolution called for release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit and an end to rocket attacks on Israel. The U.S., in other words, has chosen to do nothing--to let the fires rage out of control.
Maybe there's a connection between our current official indifference as a nation to both peacemaking and restoring eco-balance. In both cases, whether by action or inaction, the Bush administration is a force for destabilization rather than planetary harmony.
In Iran, again a collective effort has proven to be preferable to the U.S.'s threat of unilateral action earlier this year. It's obvious that Iran's nuclear program is no immediate threat to the U.S. and that North Korea is more of a threat. North Korea isn't really capable of damaging U.S. targets either; nor is even North Korea foolish enough to court destruction by trying to do so. Why, by the way, doesn't the U.S. talk to the North Koreans? That would be the best way to tone them down and normalize relations. Likewise with Iran. But again, behind the U.S.'s provocative approach to the Iran nuclear program loomed the neo-con plan, which we now know well: Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran. They want to attack Iran, because they like the idea. To show who's boss.
But who's boss? Is being the biggest bully in the schoolyard the best way to run a globalized world?
As for Israel and the U.S., if the tail is wagging the dog it's less noticeable, since U.S. and Israeli interests in subduing the countries surrounding America's little client state are in such harmony. In Ambassador John Bolton, whose stated aim is to further weaken the already downgraded United Nations, Israel has a good friend. The U.S. has cast eight of the last nine vetoes at the Security Council, and seven of them pertained to sanctioning Israel. Hostilities between Palestinian militants and Israel and Israel's attacks on Lebanon go on while -- with relatively imperceptible violence -- Israel goes on pursuing what Noam Chomsky has recently called its "steady takeover of the West Bank, which, in effect, if it continues, is just the murder of a nation." That's the main event. And the U.S. does nothing to stop it. If journalist Robert Fisk is right on this, as he often seems to be, the key is Syria. And Syria is out of reach. As usual the most important events aren't the ones most prominently reported. And what the U.S. is doing in the region is at best ineffectual and at worst highly dangerous.
It's hard to see anything positive resulting from U.S. Middle East policy. It becomes increasingly difficult to see logic in it, either. It would be nice if one could really argue that the U.S. is in the Middle East for oil, and that its presence there has furthered US control of the oil supply. That at least would make some simple kind of sense. Forceful in wielding his native guile and charm but lacking in logic or information, George W. Bush has actually declared that "we must end our dependence" on the dark fluid, but the administration's choices for alternative fuels, ethanol and hydrogen, seem as empty as that statement. Hydrogen is widely believed to be inefficient and too high in cost. Ethanol has many problems and Butanol is considered preferable. The push for ethanol may be that it is combined with gasoline, and hence its use is easier on the oil and automotive industries. Both of these, as opposed to electric power, continue the use of the internal combustion engine. The talk of alternatives seems mostly a distraction from the fact that when it comes to energy the administration's main push is for more of the same. However, the U.S. auto industry seems to be dying, even though oil and gas use continue at high levels.
What a waste our life as a species remains so long as governments can't organize for peace and rational action, such as the primary one of doing what we can to preserve the planet.
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This story was published on July 17, 2006.
