August 2011

We’ve been warned: the system is ready to blow

by News Sources 08.15.2011

From Britain, Larry Elliott writes: For the past two centuries and more, life in Britain has been governed by a simple concept: tomorrow will be better than today. Black August has given us a glimpse of a dystopia, one in which the financial markets buckle and the cities burn. Like Scrooge, we have been shown [...]

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Libyan rebels ‘take Az-Zawiyah’

by News Sources 08.15.2011

The New York Times reports: After a period of political turmoil, fighters opposing Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi advanced on several fronts on Sunday, seizing ground in the strategic city of Zawiyah that placed them on Tripoli’s doorstep and threatening to cut off an important supply line for the colonel’s loyalists. The incursion late Saturday into Zawiyah, [...]

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Who is in control of the Libyan opposition?

by News Sources 08.15.2011

The Washington Post reports: The retired accounting professor who runs the city council of the Libyan rebel capital wants you to know: “There is good news in Benghazi!” Just ignore the smell. “Electricity, benzene, water, gas — all okay. No rockets, no fighting — all okay. Sewage? Big headache. But all in all, we are [...]

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Syrian navy pounds the port city of Latakia

by News Sources 08.15.2011

Anthony Shadid reports: In yet another escalation of its crackdown on dissent, the Syrian government unleashed navy vessels, tanks and a mix of soldiers, security forces and paramilitary fighters against the port city of Latakia on Sunday, killing at least 25 people, including three children, activists and residents said. The attacks in Latakia marked the [...]

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Israel’s J14 ‘social justice’ movement — just about money?

by Paul Woodward 08.15.2011

Since it began, Israel’s J14 ‘social justice’ movement, has made what was ostensibly a tactical choice to be apolitical and sidestep the divisive issue of the occupation. Following a chorus of appeals to take a stand on this pivotal issue, the movement has implicitly done just that. Max Blumenthal reports: On August 14, a month [...]

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Libyan rebels fly flag over key town near Tripoli

by News Sources 08.14.2011

Reuters reports: Libyan rebels raised their flag over a strategic town near Tripoli on Sunday after their most dramatic advance in months cut off Muammar Gaddafi’s capital from its main link to the outside world. The swift rebel advance on the town of Zawiyah, about 50 km (30 miles) west of Tripoli, will deal a [...]

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Roubini: ‘Karl Marx had it right’

by News Sources 08.14.2011

Joseph Lazzaro writes: There’s an old axiom that goes “wise is the person who appreciates candor almost as much as good news” and with that as a guide, place the forthcoming decidedly in the category of candor. Economist Nouriel “Dr. Doom” Roubini, the New York University professor who four years ago accurately predicted the global [...]

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It’s the inequality, stupid!

by News Sources 08.14.2011

Branko Milanovic writes: As income inequality increased in the past quarter century in most parts of the world, it was strangely absent from mainstream economic discussions and publications. One would be hard-pressed, for example, to find many macroeconomic models that incorporated income or wealth inequality. Even in the run-up to and immediate aftermath of the [...]

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Rick Perry’s crony capitalism problem

by News Sources 08.14.2011

The Wall Street Journal reports: Gov. Rick Perry’s presidential pitch goes something like this: During one of the worst recessions in American history, he’s kept his state “open for business.” In the last two years, Texas created over a quarter of a million jobs, meaning that the state’s 8% unemployment rate is substantially lower than [...]

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Record levels of unemployment for Europe’s youth

by News Sources 08.14.2011

Stefan Steinberg writes: According to the latest figures from the German Statistical Office and Eurostat, youth unemployment across Europe has increased by a staggering 25 percent in the course of the past two and a half years. The current levels of youth unemployment are the highest in Europe since the regular collection of statistics began. [...]

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How China sees English riots

by News Sources 08.14.2011

David Cohen writes: It's been a good couple of weeks for China’s conservative press and a bad one for the image of liberal governments, as democracies battle crises ranging from the US budget standoff to Britain’s ongoing riots. Chinese commentators have taken the opportunity to take a few shots at the nations that have long [...]

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Quantitative easing ‘is good for the rich, bad for the poor’

by News Sources 08.14.2011

The Observer reports: Quantitative easing (QE) – the Bank of England’s recession-busting policy of buying up billions of pounds of bonds – may have contributed to social unrest by exacerbating inequality, according to one City economist. As the Bank of England considers unleashing a fresh round of QE, Dhaval Joshi, of BCA Research, argues the [...]

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Turkey doesn’t rule out international intervention in Syria

by News Sources 08.14.2011

Hurriyet Daily News reports: Turkey isn’t ruling out international intervention in Syria if the Bashar al-Assad regime doesn’t stop using violence against its own people, a Turkish official speaking on condition of anonymity told the Hürriyet Daily News on Friday. The source also said that a letter from Turkish President Abdullah Gül to Assad delivered [...]

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Assad orders tanks into rebel towns as Syria’s brutal crackdown intensifies

by News Sources 08.14.2011

The Guardian reports: Syrian tanks and gunmen have swept through two towns to root out anti-government protesters amid heavy firing that has sent many fleeing to safer areas. Three people were reported to have died in the violence, the latest in an escalating campaign of repression by President Bashar al-Assad’s regime against an uprising that [...]

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Christian supremacism and Michele Bachmann’s leap of faith

by News Sources 08.13.2011

The New York Times reports: The race for the Republican presidential nomination entered a new phase on Saturday as Gov. Rick Perry of Texas declared his candidacy in South Carolina and Michele Bachmann won a closely watched poll of voters in Iowa. With Republican enthusiasm swelling over the prospect of defeating President Obama next year, [...]

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Libyan rebels advance into gateway to Tripoli

by News Sources 08.13.2011

The Associated Press reports: Libyan rebels fought their way into the strategic city of Zawiya west of Tripoli on Saturday in their most significant advance in months, battling snipers on rooftops and heavy shelling from Moammar Gadhafi’s forces holding the city. Zawiya, 30 miles (50 kilometers) from the capital, is a key target for rebels [...]

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Tribal rifts threaten to undermine Libya uprising

by News Sources 08.13.2011

The New York Times reports: Saddled with infighting and undermined by the occasionally ruthless and undisciplined behavior of its fighters, the six-month-old rebel uprising against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi is showing signs of sliding from a struggle to overthrow an autocrat into a murkier contest between factions and tribes. The increase in discord and factionalism is [...]

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Abbas calls for a Palestinian Awakening in September

by News Sources 08.13.2011

Marc Gopin and Aziz Abu Sarah write: In his speech to the Central Council of the PLO in Ramallah, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announced his strategy to end the occupation. The President stressed in his speech that he will not retreat from seeking recognition of the Palestinian state from the United Nations. Abbas had been [...]

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J14 tent protests: What about the occupation?

by News Sources 08.13.2011

Joseph Dana writes: Largely shielded from the European and American financial crises, the Israeli economy has been growing at an astonishing rate over the past five years: 4.7 per cent in 2010 alone. But the wealth isn’t evenly distributed: most Israelis living inside the 1967 borders struggle to make ends meet because of the high [...]

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Does J14 herald a new political era in Israel?

by News Sources 08.13.2011

In a discussion, 972 Magazine poses the question: Does social unrest and emerging tent city protest movement signify the dawn of a new political era in Israel? Avrum Burg, author and former Knesset Speaker, responds: “It’s not political,” protesters are shouting but they want politics to change their lives. In a few months they won’t [...]

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Israeli tent protests ignore link between neoliberalism, occupation

by News Sources 08.13.2011

Max Ajl writes: What have thus far been mostly absent [during Israel's J14 protests] are calls to end the occupation, a silence that speaks eloquently to the composition of Israeli society, in which a call to end the occupation or dismantle the racist juridical structure is perceived as an attack on the state religion: militarist [...]

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State Dept funding neocon-Zionist propaganda outfit

by News Sources 08.13.2011

Ali Gharib reports: On Thursday, the U.S. State Department announced a $200,000 grant to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), a Middle East media watchdog closely aligned with U.S. neoconservatives and Israel’s hawkish security establishment and rightist Likud Party. The grant was awarded “to conduct a project that documents anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial and Holocaust [...]

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Capitol Hill’s representatives for Israel

by News Sources 08.12.2011

Josh Ruebner writes: Nearly 20 percent of the constituents of Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL) live under the poverty line, and nearly 15 percent are unemployed. Jackson’s congressional district, covering parts of the south side of Chicago and its southern suburbs, has been hit harder than many others by the crises plaguing the economy. Many [...]

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My Fellow American

by News Sources 08.12.2011

About My Fellow American: My Fellow American is an online film and social media project that calls upon concerned Americans to pledge and spread a message that Muslims are our fellow Americans. It asks people of other backgrounds to pledge, and share a real life story about a Muslim friend, neighbor, or colleague that they [...]

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