As China’s economic boom is built on exports, where will the country turn when that starts to falter? Plus, Jeffrey Sachs speaks about the World Bank leadership, US economic recovery and China’s global role (10 March 2012).
Legendary musicians Graham Nash and David Crosby talk about their support for the Occupy Wall Street movement on Current TV’s Countdown (8 November 2011).
President Obama honors the special relationship between France and the United States with President Nicolas Sarkozy at a special event in Cannes. November 4, 2011.
Resolving the European financial crisis is the most important task for world leaders, the US President Barack Obama has said at the G20 summit in Cannes. Mr Obama said the EU had taken steps towards a solution, but more of details were needed about how the plan will be “fully and decisively implemented”. As the G20 leaders begin talks, the Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou has summoned his cabinet for an urgent meeting in Athens. He is facing a rebellion from ministers over plans to hold a referendum on the bailout – after France and Germany warned Greece it wouldn’t get more rescue funds until after the vote. Finance minister Evangelos Venizelos said Greece’s euro membership “cannot depend on a referendum” and that the next bailout funds should be released “without any distractions or delay”. Mr Papandreou is also facing calls to resign from within his own party. French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is hosting the meeting in Cannes, said: “We said clearly to the Greek authorities that the EU, like the IMF, cannot envisage paying the sixth tranche until Greece has adopted the package and all uncertainty has been lifted. “We cannot commit the money of taxpayers . . . until the rules that were agreed on October 27 are respected. Without that, neither Europe nor the IMF can pay a single cent.” Stock markets across Europe saw early falls following the announcement, with Germany’s DAX and France’s CAC 40 both down over 2% on opening, and London’s FTSE 100 losing 1.2%. European leaders agreed a deal last Thursday that would see banks accept a 50% writedown of Greece’s debt, higher than the 40% they had originally offered. It would also increase the scope of the 440bn euro (£386bn) bailout fund to around 1trn euro (£876bn). But Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou’s decision to put the deal to the people sent stock and bond markets across the world falling earlier this week. Speaking after emergency talks with Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday, Mr Papandreou said he was confident that his people would accept the EU bailout plan in the vote set for December 4. “I believe the Greek people are wise and capable of making the right decision for the benefit of our country,” he said. “We are part of the eurozone and we are proud to be part of the eurozone.” The Greek government now faces a key confidence vote expected in parliament on Friday, which may see Mr Papandreou struggle for survival. Major Asian economies have also warned Europe to tackle the crisis before it has a serious impact on economies elsewhere in the world. China’s deputy finance minister Zhu Guangyao said: “Like our European friends, we did not expect the Greek [call for a] referendum. It was an independent decision taken by Greece. I hope this period of uncertainty would be contained.” The White House said US President Barack Obama wanted “unanimity of purpose” to emerge from the G20 and White House spokesman Jay Carney said the situation would be a key subject (3 November 2011).
Since then, the possibility of a Greek referendum has been scrapped, and the G20 Summit has come to an end: ‘President Obama makes remarks at the G-20, saying he’s pleased Greece has embraced the Euro bailout’ (4 November 2011).
While Reuters reports that ‘White House officials bristled on Thursday [, 3 November 2011] at the suggestion U.S. power within the G20 had been diminished by budget woes back home, as Europe looked toward an economically self-confident China for help’, [1] the word on the street is quite different. From Cannes, the Guardian’s Patrick Wintour and Larry Elliott write that the “threat of a world recession drew near last night after the G20 summit in Cannes ended in ominous disarray. Leaders were unable to agree upon a boost to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to help distressed countries, while debt-ridden Italy, now seen as the epicentre of the euro crisis, was forced to put its austerity programme under the fund’s control. UK hopes that the Germans would relent and allow the European Central Bank to become the lender of last resort for the euro were also dashed. In a day of unremitting gloom, and yet more market turbulence, the Greek government also stood on the precipice of collapse, risking an uncontrolled default, as the government of George Papandreou faced a late-night confidence vote in parliament. Prime Minister Papandreou was forced to cancel plans for a referendum on the euro”.[2] Still, apparently living in a dangerous state of delusion and wishful thinking, top White House aide Michael Froman declared: “Our ability to contribute, our ability to lead and our ability to influence the outcome of these sorts of issues is not tied necessarily to having the American taxpayer pay for every problem”.[3] The news agency Reuters adds matter-of-factly that ‘European officials hope to coax China into using some of its massive foreign exchange reserves to play a role in a euro zone rescue fund, although Beijing has so far not publicly voiced its intentions’, adding that ‘[d]omestic U.S. politics currently rules out any grand financial gesture for Europe by President Barack Obama’.[4] All the while, Greece is struggling under the twin burden of austerity measures and popular discontent. The international Arab broadcaster Al Jazeera reports that ‘In Greece, there is still deep uncertainty about the shape of the government as the government prepares for a late night vote of confidence. Joblessness is growing, and many Greeks say that they simply can’t afford life as they are used to living it. Al Jazeera‘s Jonah Hull reports from Athens’ (4 November 2011).
In spite of Michael Froman’s most hopeful diversionary words, in the U.S. capitol Tea Party-inspired obstructionists are preparing for another showdown: ‘Should Congress fail to come up with a budget plan favored by both parties by November 17, the country will be faced with another possible governmental shutdown — the third one in under a year. The White House says that the odds that country’s government will collapse are slim and that likely bipartisan politics will be swept aside this time so that a budget can be agreed upon, sparing the country from catastrophe. Should matters between parties cause for concerns over getting the budget passed in time, however, the United States stands to go broke — again — on November 18’, as reported by the ever-ready critic of American foreign policy RT.[5] In fact, as further explained: ‘As per a temporary bill passed in haste last month, the US government is only appropriately funded until November 19. Congress has been unable to pass a long-term, year-long compromise in over 900 days’.[6]
The Tea Party has been dominating American public life for quite some time now. The movement purports to be a popular uprising of ordinary people fed up with traditional party politics, government subsidies and taxation. It all started way back in 2009 when Chicago stock trader Rick Santelli ranted on CNBC.
Explaining the workings behind this seemingly spontaneous movement Daniel Vogel writes in the Chicago Tribune: “As the documentary (Astro)Turf Wars has shown, tea party sympathizers are well-meaning people who are being organized and funded by the very same power elites, such as the Koch Brothers, whom they think they are opposing”.[7]
[1] Alister Bull and Laura MacInnis, “U.S. influence at G20 not diminished, White House says” Reuters (04 November 2011). http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/04/us-usa-g20-influence-newspro-idUSTRE7A32M220111104.
[2] Patrick Wintour and Larry Elliott, “G20 summit fails to allay world recession fears” The Guardian (04 November 2011). http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/04/g20-summit-fails-eurozone-recession.
[3] Alister Bull and Laura MacInnis, “U.S. influence at G20 not diminished, White House says”.
[4] Alister Bull and Laura MacInnis, “U.S. influence at G20 not diminished, White House says”.
[5] “Dysfunctional Congress threatens another government shut-down” RT (04 November 2011). https://rt.com/usa/news/congress-government-shutdown-budget-579/.
[6] “Dysfunctional Congress threatens another government shut-down”.
[7] Daniel Vogel, “Tea party funding” Chicago Tribune (02 November 2011). http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-11-02/news/chi-111102vogel_briefs_1_left-s-tea-party-funding-strong-mandate,
In this broadcast dated 10 April 2010, the ever-optimistic Stefan Molyneux tells it like it is: ‘The economic downturn is not a bounce, but an endless fall. Get ready for the new normal, these are the facts behind where we are heading. A True News exclusive from Freedomain Radio’.
Turns out that justice is an expensive commodity in the land of the free . . . The Young Turks see it this way: ‘Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former International Monetary Fund chief, had all sexual assault charges against him dropped by a federal judge in New York. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian of The Young Turks discuss’ (23 August 2011).
Even though Mister Uygur and Miss Kasparian appear convinced that the 32-year-old Guinean cleaning lady or “chambermaid” Nafissatou Diallo made up the story to . . . In Slate, the US-based English language online current affairs and culture magazine, back in July, Jessica Grose points out correctly that “just because the hotel maid has links to criminal behavior and has lied in the past, that doesn’t necessarily mean she lied about this rape”, referring to Rachael Larimore’s earlier piece.[1] But, back in France, other women have also popped up claiming that DSK indecently groped them.
Grose writes that “Tristane Banon, a young journalist who had previously described DSK as ‘a rutting chimpanzee’ when he had allegedly attempted to rape her in 2003, has filed charges against him in France”.[2]
Would the New York Judge Michael Obus also have dismissed the criminal charges against DSK if the “chambermaid” had looked like Miss Banon, pictured above??? Alas, in New York the “rutting chimpanzee” assaulted but an immigrant from Guinea . . . The Hon. Michael J. Obus might have looked more kindly upon the plight of the alleged victim . . . gentlemen do prefer blondes, after all. In December 2007, Chief Administrative Judge Ann Pfau appointed Obus to his present position, giving the following appraisal of the man: “Judge Obus is an outstanding judge, and I am delighted that he has agreed to accept this critical assignment. During his lengthy career on the bench in Manhattan’s Criminal and State Supreme Courts, he has become known for his great intellect, vision and unstinting dedication to justice. These qualities will serve him well as Administrative Judge of Manhattan Supreme Court. I welcome him to his new post and look forward to working with him in this capacity”.[3]
Also in Slate, William Saletan related the case of DSK’s alleged French rape victim: Tristane ‘Banon says that in February 2003, when she was 23, she interviewed Strauss-Kahn for a book. Afterward, he phoned her and asked her to meet him at a Paris address for a follow-up interview. The address turned out to be an apartment. There, he touched her and became increasingly physical. She resisted. On a TV show four years ago, she said, according to a Telegraph translation, that the encounter “ended very, very violently because I told him clearly . . . We didn’t merely slap each other . . . I gave kicks, and he undid my bra, he tried to undo my jeans.” Agence France Presse translates her account differently: “I told him clearly ‘No, No!’—and we finished up fighting on the floor. There wasn’t just a couple of blows. I kicked him, and he tried to unclip my bra, to open my jeans.” In an interview just published in L’Express, Banon describes: “his fingers in my mouth, his hands in my pants . . . [He] grabbed my hand and arm, I asked him to let me go . . . He pulled me toward him, we came down and we fought on the ground for several minutes . . . He was violent. When I realized he really wanted to rape me, I started to give him a kick with my boots, I was terrified and I told him: “You’re not going to rape me?” And then I managed to free myself, I ran downstairs” . . . Banon says she tried to stop Strauss-Kahn by reminding him that she was close to his daughter’s age. She says he replied: “What does Camille have to do with it?”’.[4] Indeed, what does Camille Strauss-Kahn have to with anything, she isn’t even blonde . . . Was Nafissatou Diallo merely a victim of convenience??? Did she happen to be female in the wrong place at the wrong time???
[1] Rachael Larimore, “Why DSK Could Walk Even if His Victim Is Telling the Truth About Being Raped ” Slate (01 July 2011). http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2011/07/01/dominique_strauss_kahn_rape_case_released_recognizance.html.
[2] Jessica Grose, “DSK Will Face Attempted Rape Allegations in France” Slate (05 July 2011). http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2011/07/05/dsk_attempted_rape_of_tristane_banon_french_journalist_is_filing.html.
[3] “Hon. Michael J. Obus Appointed Administrative Judge of Manhattan Supreme Court, Criminal Term” New York State Unified Court System (07 December 2007). http://www.courts.state.ny.us/press/pr2007_21.shtml.
[4] William Saletan, “Did Dominique Strauss-Kahn Try To Rape Tristane Banon?” Slate (05 July 2011). http://www.slate.com/id/2298425/pagenum/all/.
John Chambers, the ratings head for S&P, explains why the company downgraded the U.S. credit rating from AAA to AA+ (6 Aug. 2011).
So, now that the Tea Party has succeeded in publicly humiliating President Obama, oops, I meant the United States, what will the future bring??? Will Obama be able to regain respectability on the world stage, or has the maybe not so slow drop down now begun in earnest???
Cynthia McKinney tells RT America that the US needs to take care of domestic issues. The financial debt debate has many wondering what is going on with the US financial situation. Many are demanding that the US stop spending on the wars and bring that revenue home to help with domestic issues. Does it make senses to spend billions of dollars on our defense when we are so close to default? Cynthia McKinney, former US Representative and target of O’ Reilly, tells us what’s really going on.
The hotel maid at the centre of rape allegations against former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn has spoken publicly for the first time. In an interview with Newsweek the 32-year-old said she wanted Strauss-Kahn jailed. It is also the first time Nafissatou Diallo has been named – she said she had no choice after her credibility was questioned. Diallo claims Strauss-Kahn sexually assaulted her when she entered his room to clean it.
In Newsweek, the story is told as follows: ‘The 32-year-old Guinean [Nafissatou Diallo], an employee of the Sofitel hotel, had been told by a room-service waiter that room 2806 was now free for cleaning, “Hello? Housekeeping,” the maid called out again. No reply. The door to the bedroom, to her left, was open, and she could see part of the bed. She glanced around the living room for luggage, saw none. “Hello? Housekeeping.” Then a naked man with white hair suddenly appeared, as if out of nowhere. That’s how Nafissatou Diallo describes the start of the explosive incident on Saturday, May 14, that would forever change her life—and that of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund and, until that moment, the man tipped to be the next president of France. Now the woman known universally as the “DSK maid” has broken her public silence for the first time, talking for more than three hours with NEWSWEEK at the office of her attorneys, Thompson Wigdor, on New York City’s Fifth Avenue’.(1)
The piece continues: ‘“Hello? Housekeeping.” Diallo looked around the living room. She was standing facing the bedroom in the small entrance hall when the naked man with white hair appeared. “Oh, my God,” said Diallo. “I’m so sorry.” And she turned to leave. “You don’t have to be sorry,” he said. But he was like “a crazy man to me.” He clutched at her breasts. He slammed the door of the suite. Diallo is about 5 feet 10, considerably taller than Strauss-Kahn, and she has a sturdy build. “You’re beautiful,” Strauss-Kahn told her, wrestling her toward the bedroom. “I said, ‘Sir, stop this. I don’t want to lose my job,’” Diallo told NEWSWEEK. “He said, ‘You’re not going to lose your job.’ An ugly incident with a guest—any guest—could threaten everything Diallo had worked for. “I don’t look at him. I was so afraid. I didn’t expect anyone in the room.” “He pulls me hard to the bed,” she said. He tried to put his penis in her mouth, she said, and as she told the story she tightened her lips and turned her face from side to side to show how she resisted. “I push him. I get up. I wanted to scare him. I said, ‘Look, there is my supervisor right there.’” But the man said there was nobody out there, and nobody was going to hear. Diallo kept pushing him away: “I don’t want to hurt him,” she told us. “I don’t want to lose my job.” He shoved back, moving her down the hallway from the bedroom toward the bathroom. Diallo’s uniform dress buttoned down the front, but Strauss-Kahn didn’t bother with the buttons, she said. He pulled it up around her thighs and tore down her pantyhose, gripping her crotch so hard that it was still red at the hospital, hours later. He pushed her to her knees, her back to the wall. He forced his penis into her mouth, she said, and he gripped her head on both sides. “He held my head so hard here,” she said, putting her hands to her cranium. “He was moving and making a noise. He was going like ‘uhh, uhh, uhh.’ He said, ‘Suck my’—I don’t want to say.” The report from the hospital where Diallo was taken later for examination notes that “she felt something wet and sour come into her mouth and she spit it out on the carpet.” “I got up,” Diallo told NEWSWEEK. “I was spitting. I run. I run out of there. I don’t turn back. I run to the hallway. I was so nervous; I was so scared. I didn’t want to lose my job.” Diallo says she hid around the corner in the hallway near the service lobby and tried to compose herself. “I was standing there spitting. I was so alone. I was so scared.” Then she saw the man come out of 2806 and head for the elevator. “I don’t know how he got dressed so fast, and with baggage,” she said. “He looked at me like this.” She inclined her head and stared straight ahead. “He said nothing.” The entire incident had taken no more than 15 minutes, and maybe much less. According to a source familiar with the phone records, nine minutes after Diallo entered the room, Strauss-Kahn made a call to his daughter. The maid had left her cleaning supplies in room 2820 when she went to check on Strauss-Kahn’s suite. Now she retrieved them and returned to the suite in which, she says, she had just been attacked. Disoriented, she seems to have sought some kind of solace in resuming her routine. “I went to the room I have to clean,” she explained. But she couldn’t think how or where to start. “I was so, so, so—I don’t know what to do.” Prosecutors, losing faith in Diallo’s credibility, would later raise an issue about this sequence of events. They said she told the grand jury that after the attack she hid in the hallway, but subsequently changed her story to say she cleaned room 2820 and then began to clean the DSK suite. She disputes that she changed her story, and hotel room-access records support what she told NEWSWEEK. Many aspects of Diallo’s account of the alleged attack are mirrored in the hospital records, in which doctors observed five hours afterward that there was “redness” in the area of the vagina where she alleges Strauss-Kahn grabbed her. The medical records also note she complained of “pain to left shoulder.” Weeks later, doctors reexamined the shoulder and found a partial ligament tear, she said. If there is one inconsistency for defense lawyers to dwell on in the hospital records, it is a passage that says her attacker got dressed and left the room, and “said nothing to her during the incident.” In her interview with police and her account to NEWSWEEK, Diallo recalled several statements Strauss-Kahn made during the alleged attack. Defense lawyers are expected to challenge the nature of her injuries, her recollection of events, the veracity of elements of her life story, and her conduct with other men if the case proceeds’.(2)
(1) Christopher Dickey and John Solomon, “The Maid’s Tale” Newsweek (25 July 2011). http://www.newsweek.com/2011/07/24/dsk-maid-tells-of-her-alleged-rape-by-strauss-kahn-exclusive.html.
(2) Christopher Dickey and John Solomon, “The Maid’s Tale-2″. http://www.newsweek.com/2011/07/24/dsk-maid-tells-of-her-alleged-rape-by-strauss-kahn-exclusive.html.
G-8 and NATO Summits: From Camp David to Chicago
Barak Obama, the US president, has opened the G-8 meeting at his Camp David retreat, just outside Washington DC. Europe’s financial woes are expected to dominate a summit of the world’s most industrialized nations. Al Jazeera‘s Patty Culhane reports (18 May 2012).
Thirty seven years ago as the world grappled with a major economic crisis, leaders of six of the world’s biggest economies gathered inFrance. Henry Kissinger,US secretary of state at the time said the G6 would give people a sense they are masters of their destiny and be a bulwark against the blind forces beyond their control. In the intervening years the six has become eight with theUS, Britain, France, Italy, Germany and Japan joined by Canada and Russia. And as the eight leaders congregate at Camp David outsideWashington, the agenda is similar to 1975 – economic crisis. As the Eurozone threatens to implode, fevered discussions are expected on how much pain should be inflicted in order to preserve the financial order (19 May 2012).
President Obama and assorted world leaders will be having a busy weekend. Following the Camp David session, they will travel to Chicago to join other NATO members in a summit that is meant to find a face-saving way out of Afghanistan.
NATO employs YouTube to spread its propaganda message in a very effective way, as illustrated by the series of short video clips entitled the Road to Chicago Series: This instalment of the Road to Chicago Series takes us toPittsburgh,Pennsylvania where we join Highschool students as they learn about NATO during a history lesson. We find out what they believe is the top security threat of the future (17 May 2012).
In the final episode of our Road to Chicago series we’ve arrived inChicago where we meet up with university students for a debate about theSummit and the future of theAlliance (19 May 2012).
And finally: as NATO leaders make their way to Chicagofor the upcoming NATO Summit, protests have already begun. Activists are gathered in the city centre to rally and raise awareness of their cause (19 May 2012).
And then, there are people like Rick Rozoff whose active criticism of NATO has been going strong for years, as documented on his blog Stop NATO: “Stop NATO started in 1999, a watershed year according to Rozoff, when NATO launched its first war, a 78-day bombing campaign against Yugoslavia. That’s the point at which NATO moved beyond its posture as a strictly defensive organization protecting its members’ territories to become “an active war-making organization” – and when promises of post-Cold War demilitarization and a “peace dividend” were betrayed, he says. Since then NATO has conducted wars in Asia and Africa – a brutal ten-year slog with heavy civilian casulaties in Afghanistan, NATO’s first ground war, and a six-month bombing campaign in Libya. Despite the unprecedented presence of 150,000 troops from 50 nations (including NATO members and partners) waging war in a single, relatively small country, Afghanistan is widely viewed as a defeat for the alliance”, as related by the Newstips Editor Curtis Black.[1] He continues thus: the “Chicago summit will deal with transitioning to a new phase of involvement in Afghanistan, further integrating the forty NATO partner states that participate in the alliance’s wars, and upgrading the alliance’s military capabilities. NATO is expected to announce that its European interceptor missile system has achieved initial operational capability”.[2]
This Missile Shield really is NATO’s opening move in the current chess game that is the New Cold War, as I argued some time ago.[3] Black elaborates that “[w]hile touted as a defense against attacks from North Korea or Iran, the missile system seems to be aimed at Russia [and China, or the SCO], destabilizing the continent’s nuclear balance and ratcheting up tensions”.[4]
[1] Curtis Black, “Rick Rozoff chronicles NATO’s ‘endless wars’” Newstips (14 May 2012). http://www.newstips.org/2012/05/rick-rozoff-chronicles-natos-endless-wars/.
[2] Curtis Black, “Rick Rozoff chronicles NATO’s ‘endless wars’”.
[3] Cfr. C. Erimtan, “The New Cold War: Missile Shield Competition” IRCNL (15 October 2011). http://tiny.cc/2gkny.
[4] Curtis Black, “Rick Rozoff chronicles NATO’s ‘endless wars’”.
Category:
Afghanistan, Americana, Capitalism, Current Affairs, Current History, Democracy, EU, Europe, Financial Crisis, G8, Military-Industrial Complex, NATO, New Cold War, Obama, Oil and Gas, Pipelineistan, Political Commentary, Propaganda, War on Terror