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Check out in Counter Punch this week: David Harvey "Is This The End of Neo-Liberalism"
Playlist
Fela Kuti - Gentleman
Gil Scott Heron - Vild (deaf, dumb & blind)
Rakka Irriscience - The Revolution...
Organized Konfusion - Stray Bullet
Lionel Hampton - Where were You
Wooden Glass - In The Rain
Mr Lif - Success
Funky Four+One - That's The Joint
Wailing Souls - Back Out With It
Roy Ayers - We Live In Brooklyn
Quasimoto - Tommorrow Never Knows
Opotopo - Belema
Heath Brothers - Smilin Billy Suite
Rod Taylor - Where Is Your Love Mankind
Blackstar - What's Beef?
The Coup - Ghetto Manifesto
Marvin Gaye - Inner City Blues
Roy AYers - Proceed II
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Bailout Firms Plot to Shield Bonuses from Regulation
The Us treasury department has responded to public pressure and vowed to deduct $165 million from the next bail out infusion of over $30 billion to the failed insurer AIG. AIG invited scourn and ridicule when it was revealed that it planned to award over $165 million in bonuses to executives in the financial products division that was responsible for over $40 billion in losses last year. The Obama administration initially created outrage claiming that it could not intervene thus violating the sanctity of contracts despite being 80% owner of AIG. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has stated that he was unaware of the payout until last week, however testifying before congress AIG CEO, Edward Liddy maintains that he informed the US government three months ago. Liddy has defended the compensation while asking executives to return half of their bonuses to the government.
Meanwhile, other bailed-out firms are reportedly secretly discussing how to shield future bonuses from public scrutiny. The Wall Street Journal reports executives at Citigroup and Morgan Stanley are mulling ways to keep their bonuses without violating anticipated new government rules.
Also this week a Us Treasury report found that the Us’s largest banks are continuing to reduce the flow of credit to new homeowners and consumers despite receiving hundreds of billions of dollars in US taxpayer bailouts.
China Expresses Concern over Safety of US Investments
In other economic news, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has publicly expressed concern about the security of China’s trillion-dollar investment in US government debt. Wen said, “We have lent a huge amount of money to the US. Of course we are concerned about the safety of our assets.” China is America’s biggest foreign creditor.
UN Urged to Investigate War Crimes Committed in Gaza
A group of sixteen of the world’s leading war crimes investigators and judges have sent a letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon calling for the United Nations to launch a full inquiry into war crimes committed during Israel’s attack on Gaza. The letter’s signatories include Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson. According to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, 1,434 Palestinians were killed in the Israeli assault, including 960 civilians. Thirteen Israelis died in the war, including three civilians killed by Hamas rockets.
Netanyahu Offers Foreign Ministry Post to Far-Right Politician
In Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu has formed a pact with far-right politician Avigdor Lieberman in an attempt to a forge a right-wing government in which Lieberman would become Israel’s foreign minister. Lieberman has called for laws to require Palestinians living in Israel to swear loyalty to the Jewish state or lose their citizenship. Lieberman has been condemned by many moderate Israeli and Jewish leaders. Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, recently described Lieberman’s run for president as an “outrageous, abominable, hate-filled campaign, brimming with incitement that, if left unchecked, could lead Israel to the gates of hell.”
Tristan Anderson Remains in Critical Condition in Israeli Hospital
Hospital officials in Israel say the American activist Tristan Anderson is now semi-conscious after days under full anesthesia. Anderson was critically injured Friday when Israeli soldiers fired a tear gas canister directly at his head during a weekly nonviolent protest against the separation wall in the West Bank village of N’alin. Anderson underwent brain surgery in an Israeli hospital near Tel Aviv on Saturday. Parts of his right frontal lobe were removed. Anderson is now able to lift fingers on one hand in response to a voice command.
Red Cross Report: US Committed Torture at CIA Black Sites
The International Committee of the Red Cross concluded in a secret report two years ago that the Bush administration’s treatment of prisoners “constituted torture” in violation of the Geneva Conventions. The findings were based on interviews with prisoners once held in the CIA’s secret black sites. The Red Cross said the fourteen prisoners held in the CIA prisons gave remarkably uniform accounts of abuse that included beatings, sleep deprivation.
Hours after excerpts of the Red Cross report were published, former Vice President Dick Cheney appeared on CNN. And claimed that the programs in question were a “great success story” and that the Obama administrations roll back of the programs will “raise the risk to the American people of another attack”.
Obama: US Can Detain Prisoners Indefinitely Without Charge
Dick Cheney’s comments came days after the Obama administration said it will no longer consider prisoners at Guantanamo Bay to be enemy combatants. Despite abandoning the label, the administration claims it still has the right to hold prisoners indefinitely without charge even if the individual is captured far from any battlefield and has not directly participated in hostilities.
FMLN’s Mauricio Funes Wins El Salvador Election
In El Salvador, leftist presidential candidate Mauricio Funes has claimed victory, ending twenty years of conservative rule. Funes’s party, the FMLN, is a former guerrilla group that fought El Salvador’s US-backed military government for close to twenty years. Funes defeated Rodrigo Avila of the ARENA party by three percentage points.
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