YouTube – Israeli TV airs telephone call to father after children killed -English.
POSTSCRIPT: A spokesman for Israel said that the military was conducting a thorough investigation about what happend, but at this point they didn’t know for sure that the missile hadn’t come from Hamas. I don’t assume that all Israeli apologists are lying, so I’m waiting to see what is determined to be true about the cause of death.
Regardless of the apparent public opposition to the bailout, the Senate voted 52 to 42 to release the remaining funds.
via Americans say: TARP not working, stop spending – Jan. 16, 2009.
Before Barack Obama and his team act on their talk about “labor standards,” I’d like to offer them a tour of the vast garbage dump here in Phnom Penh.
This is a Dante-like vision of hell. It’s a mountain of festering refuse, a half-hour hike across, emitting clouds of smoke from subterranean fires.
The miasma of toxic stink leaves you gasping, breezes batter you with filth, and even the rats look forlorn. Then the smoke parts and you come across a child ambling barefoot, searching for old plastic cups that recyclers will buy for five cents a pound. Many families actually live in shacks on this smoking garbage.
Mr. Obama and the Democrats who favor labor standards in trade agreements mean well, for they intend to fight back at oppressive sweatshops abroad. But while it shocks Americans to hear it, the central challenge in the poorest countries is not that sweatshops exploit too many people, but that they don’t exploit enough.
Read the rest: Op-Ed Columnist – Where Sweatshops Are a Dream – NYTimes.com.
In the Financial Times, I argued that, unlike with Hillary Clinton, there were several reasons why one could be optimistic that Barack Obama would follow a pro-trade policy despite “prudential” protectionist talk on the primaries circuit (“Obama’s free-trade credentials top Clinton’s”, March 3 2008). But the US president-elect’s eloquent silence on trade issues – and his failure to balance his protectionist appointments with powerful trade proponents – require that we abandon these illusions and sound an alarm.
via FT.com / Comment / Opinion – Obama and trade: an alarm sounds. Read the rest.
Anitboycott Compliance.–a rather revealing website, at least to this naive American.
The United States once based alliances on national interest. No longer. Unable to convince its NATO partners to bring Georgia into the alliance, Washington plans to sign an agreement with Tbilisi establishing a “strategic partnership.” For what, one wonders?
Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili called the accord “historic” and observed that “the United States has never before said that Georgia is its strategic partner.” Batu Kutelia, set to become Georgia’s ambassador to the United States, opined: “Cooperation with our strategic partner is almost the only assurance of our security.”
Whatever the meaning of “strategic partner,” Tbilisi is not one. Most important, Georgia has no strategic value for America.
The United states fought the entire Cold War with Georgia part of the Soviet Union. No one argued that liberating Tbilisi was necessary for the West’s survival. Indeed, long before the U.S.S.R., Georgia had been absorbed by the Russian Empire.
The fact that Georgia hosts energy pipelines matters little. The Caspian Basin’s energy resources are useful, not critical, and Russia would block the West’s access to oil and natural gas only in the sort of large-scale confrontation that is unlikely to occur – except in the case of Western meddling along Russia’s border. One need only peer at a map to determine to which country, the United States or Russia, Georgia is more important strategically.
The presumption that a new agreement will deter Moscow from undertaking military action in the future is both naive and foolish. Russia already has demonstrated its readiness to go to war regarding border issues.
Here’s a new holiday cocktail for you: Combine one part bailout seasoning with another part perennial journalistic self-pity, pour it out over the Christmas/New Year’s publishing interregnum and presto!—it’s time for patriotic men and women to get behind a government rescue of what was until very recently one of the most profitable sectors in the United States: The newspaper industry.
“We’re more worthy of a bailout than the jokers on Wall Street,” argued Kansas City Star columnist Jason Whitlock on Dec. 20. “You can’t have a democracy without us. If newspapers are dying, so is our system of government.”
Quite. Without Whitlock in the trenches covering the Big 12 North conference, how is the Republic to survive?
Last week the Treasury Department bought a $5 billion stake in GMAC as part of a plan to transform the lender, formerly the financial arm of General Motors, into a bank holding company. The New York Times reported that GMAC wanted to become a bank mainly so it could be considered a “financial institution” and thereby qualify for money from the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).
Yet the Treasury used TARP funds to invest in GMAC. In other words, if the Times has the story right, GMAC received TARP money so it could be eligible for TARP money.
This paradox highlights the lawlessness of the Bush administration, which has ignored statutory restrictions on TARP and treated it as a slush fund for politically favored supplicants. Although he has strongly criticized President Bush for flouting the law and exceeding his constitutional powers, President-elect Obama has applauded the latest manifestation of that tendency.
A number of school administrators have come forth in recent days to confirm that they recommend Jewish children should not enrol at their schools.
According to school administrators, law enforcement officials and social workers, the on-going conflict in Gaza has led to heightened tensions between Jews and Arabs – particularly Palestinians – here in Denmark.
And although few headmasters of schools have faced the situation, most of those at schools with a high percentage of children of Arab descent say they try to prevent Jewish parents from enrolling their children there.
On Monday, headmaster Olav Nielsen of Humlehave School in Odense publicly admitted he would refuse Jewish parents’ wish to place their child at his school.
The comments were made following an incident last week in which two Israeli citizen’s were shot and wounded at a city shopping centre. Police believe the incident was a reaction to the Gaza conflict.
Other headmasters have now come forth to support Nielsen’s position, adding that they are putting the child’s safety first.