Countdown To Mediachannel’s Survival, Obama Pledges More Money For Job Creation

January 31st, 2010 - by: danny

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OBAMA SEEKS MORE MONEY FOR JOB CREATION
MORE WEAPONS SALES OVERSEAS
MARKING THE ANNIVERSARY OF MEDIACHANNEL.ORG

I spent Saturday on a dÃƒÂ©jÃƒÂ vu all over again mission speaking at an anti-war conference at MIT in Cambridge where I took part in anti-war protests back in the days of the Vietnam war. I spoke there many times then, railing at the Institutes complicity in the war. When all these years later, I was invited back, I felt like I had to go.

The auditorium was crowded – one student from Connecticut said she had never been at as large an anti-war gathering – and the speakers were alternatively lucid and angry about what most saw as a betrayal by the Obama Administration and a continued march to more wars worldwide under the deceptive banner of the war on terror. The room overflowed with analysis but I sensed a deeper paralysis when it came to what we can do about an imperial agenda with a liberal face.

Some of the discourse seemed academic—one very brilliant scholar, Peter Dale Scott took Noam Chomsky to task for being dismissive towards 911 conspiracy theories but Noam–whose office was a few buildings away, may have been traveling and wasn’t there to respond. It is an issue that deserves a debate, not just a rejoinder. I was glad to see the 911 truthers engaged in the anti-war discourse and broadening their focus beyond analysis of how Building 7 imploded etc….There are many legitimate questions about what happened that day, and the events that led up to it.

Although I am not one to speak, the participants skewed older and seemed well practiced in oppositional activism for decades. Sometimes too much analysis can lead to paralysis. The event was at a university but it wasn’t overflowing with students

The most emotional aspects of the event involved Haiti and the appeal of an Haitian social worker for help in sending mental health professionals to his country to help people confront a traumatic series of dislocating, life changing and ending events.

The day after the conference, the news seemed to be flowing from the policies that were denounced a day earlier.

Before we get into the news of empire building, here’s the latest on the Administration’s response to the economic decline. During the State of The Union Address, the president announced plans for a new $30 billion dollar jobs bills. Many critics saw it as one more inadequate measure given the persistence and deepening of unemployment. It looks like someone in the White House finally realized that what Paul Krugman and others have been saying is on target.

AP: WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Sunday endorsed spending an additional $100 billion to attack painfully high unemployment as it prepared to send Congress a $3.8 trillion budget that would provide billions more to pull the country out of the Great Recession while increasing taxes on the wealthy and imposing a spending freeze on many government programs.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the administration believed “somewhere in the $100 billion range” would be the appropriate amount for a new jobs measure made up of a business tax credit to encourage hiring, increased infrastructure spending and money from the government’s bailout fund to get banks to increase loans to struggling small businesses.

That price tag would be below a $174 billion bill passed by the House in December but higher than an $83 billion proposal that surfaced last week in the Senate.

Preparing For The Next War

NYT: The Obama administration is accelerating the deployment of new defenses against possible Iranian missile attacks in the Persian Gulf, officials said.

Washington Post: The “new defenses” are being sold to allies.

U.S. steps up weapon sales to Mideast allies: The Obama administration is quietly working with Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf allies to speed up arms sales and rapidly upgrade defenses for oil terminals and other key infrastructure in a bid to thwart future military attacks by Iran,

WAPO: China Talking Tough With US – New Chill in Relationship

China’s indignant reaction to the announcement of U.S. plans to sell weapons to Taiwan appears to be in keeping with a new triumphalist attitude from Beijing that is worrying governments and analysts across the globe.

From the Copenhagen climate change conference to Internet freedom to China’s border with India, China observers have noticed a tough tone emanating from its government, its representatives and influential analysts from its state-funded think tanks.

Calling in U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman on Saturday, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei said the United States would be responsible for “serious repercussions” if it did not reverse the decision to sell Taiwan $6.4 billion worth of helicopters, Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missiles, minesweepers and communications gear. The reaction came even though China has known for months about the planned deal, U.S. officials said.

Scott Schneider Offers Different Perspectives on Tony Blair’s Testimony on Iraq War

Chris Floyd properly calls out Blair’s war crimes, which cannot be diminished by the verbal diarrhea regurgitated at the Chilcott circus:

Other views – with less invective but that also go to the heart of the matter are offered here:

• Blair: truth and lies

• Comment: Blair the eternal world policeman

If the world power alignment were fairer, Blair would definitely have been indicted and found guilty of war crimes, like most of the Bush Junta. A Nuremberg type trial by impartial nations might have even ordered some perpetrators to be executed. Alas, as is the case throughout most of history justice is the will of the stronger and will not prevail here. Blair may think twice about traveling to certain countries, but does anyone really expect him to be pursued more aggressively than America pursues Roman Polanski?

Standing justice on its head, perverting it is the way the power elite operate. Some are already so conditioned to this madness that they have completely given up. Can you blame them when Obama is given a Nobel Peace Prize just before he increases troop deployment to Afghanistan and finds a few new helpless countries to threaten?

The Anglo-American alliance for Global Empire by some measures makes Rome look tame. The overall methodology is the same, however: Perpetual War for Perpetual “Peace”.

HAITI FLIGHTS TO CONTINUE

Before the Earthquake

NYT: The White House said Sunday it will resume a U.S. military airlift of Haitians seriously injured in the earthquake — some with devastating burns, head and spinal chord trauma amputations and other wounds — to American hospitals. The humanitarian effort was suspended five days ago following complaints from the state of Florida that its hospitals were overwhelmed.

IN MEMORIAM: RESPECTED FILM EDITOR DIES IN NEW YORK ACCIDENT

NEW YORK — An award-winning film editor who worked on many of Errol Morris’ documentaries, including “The Fog of War,” was struck and killed by a getaway car speeding from a Manhattan drugstore robbery, police and her mother said on Saturday.

Karen Schmeer was crossing Broadway at West 90th Street on the Upper West Side on Friday when she was struck by a car driven by two suspects in the theft of over-the-counter medication from a CVS drugstore a few blocks away, police said.

Her mother, Eleanor DuBois Schmeer, confirmed the film editor’s death. Schmeer was an editor for Morris’ documentaries as well as other works, including “Sergio,” which won a best-editing award last year at the Sundance Film Festival. The movie is about Sergio de Mello, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights killed in a 2003 explosion at U.N. headquarters in Iraq.

“She was just extremely loved by many, many friends,” said Schmeer’s mother, from her home in Portland, Ore., where her daughter was born.

Morris wrote on his Twitter feed that Schmeer’s death was a “senseless tragedy.”

Daily News (NY): Cyber Theft Rocks Crolumbia University

A break-in at Columbia University has put personal information – including Social Security numbers – of 1,400 students and alumni at risk, officials said Sunday.

Three laptops carrying the vital information were swiped from a locked campus office Jan. 18.

University officials e-mailed the 1,400 current and prospective students, graduates and employees to notify them that their info had been boosted. The school will pay for fraud prevention services, spokesman Robert Hornsby said.

“It’s scary to think someone is walking around with important information of mine,” said Caitlin Brown, 19, a freshman.
said.

The News Dissector