What makes capitalism work and more importantly, who is capable of fixing it when it flies off the rails? Writer and pollster Klaus Kocks writes for Germany’s Frankfurter Rundschau that it isn’t people on the left and it certainly isn’t members of the Green Party - its capitalists themselves.

In highlighting the ongoing legal prosecutions at Siemens - the German mega-giant now mired in what some have called the greatest bribery scandal of all time, Klocks writes:

“What German courts were unable to achieve and even the Pope would have failed to accomplish, has now been done by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. … The capitalists themselves insist that the train of greed remain on the tracks - its tracks.”

Kocks then goes on to describe how the Pietists created the first capital markets - which leads him to what created the business powerhouse known as the United States of America: Read the rest of this entry »

For the Russians, U.S. recognition of Kosovo’s independence was tantamount to an international crime, and the burning of the United States Embassy in Belgrade by angry Serbs could hardly have been avoided. The New York Bureau Chief of Russia’s Novosti News Service, Dmitry Gornostayev writes, ‘It was somewhat ridiculous to hear the appeal by Deputy Secretary of State Nicholas Burns to the Serbs to respect international law. What is he talking about? He and his colleagues violated it themselves last Monday by recognizing Kosovo’s independence!’ In regard to the past two U.S. presidents and the larger issues of Yugoslavia and Iraq, he writes with a burning sarcasm, ‘If reduced to the terms of criminal law, these global actions at least qualify as robbery and murder. According to the laws of Arkansas and Texas - the home states of the past two U.S. Presidents - the crimes of launching illegal wars in Yugoslavia and Iraq would be punishable by the death penalty. But at the homes of these U.S. presidents no one behaves that way - they are decent gentlemen: they play the saxophone, ride bicycles, keep mistresses under the desk and at the very worst, they drop their bagels and ice cream on the couch. All with perfect decency. But once they go outside, you had better get out of the way.’

By Dmitry Gornostayev, Novosti’s New York Bureau Chief

Translated By Igor Medvedev

February 22, 2008

Russia - Novosti - Original Article (Russian)

When the burning of the American Embassy in Belgrade appeared on television along with armored personnel carriers (filled with Serb policemen bereft of any desire to disperse fellow Serbs with Molotov cocktails), I thought to myself: How long will it be until the Americans recall international law and the Vienna Conventions? [which safeguard the immunity of diplomats and embassies] … They remembered very quickly.

It was somewhat ridiculous to hear the appeal by Deputy Secretary of State Nicholas Burns to the Serbs to respect international law. What is he talking about? He and his colleagues violated it themselves last Monday by recognizing Kosovo’s independence!
Read the rest of this entry »

This morning in Honduras, people woke up, opened their morning newspaper, and read this comparison between Communist Cuba and Democratic Puerto Rico. According to Luis Pazos writing for the newspaper La Prensa, ‘Beyond dogma, demagoguery, rhetoric, sympathies and antipathies and based on an objective and dispassionate analysis, the difference in living standards and the level of political freedoms achieved by Cubans and Puerto Ricans in the past 58 years, offers us all a great lesson.’

By Luis Pazos

Translated by Miguel Guttierez

February 27, 2008

Honduras - La Prensa - Original Article (Spanish)

Beyond rhetoric and dogmatic positions, if we analyze the economic and political situations in Cuba and Puerto Rico, we can uncover profound lessons for the future of our peoples.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Associated Press reports today that Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan “says presidential candidate Barack Obama represents hope that the United States will change for the better.”

Seems a neutral enough statement. Farrakhan, 74 years old and recovering from prostate cancer, said he wasn’t telling anyone who to vote for, but “praised Obama and took small jabs at his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in a speech Sunday”.

Minister Farrakhan’s keynote address in Chicago culminated a 3 day event geared toward unifying “Nation of Islam” followers…. a group of mostly blacks who, amongst other things, have often preached separatism of black and non-black cultures, and who have a humanitarian arm to help the poor.

But Minister Farrakhan’s endorsement aside, in the US, a political endorsement of one candidate over another, is understood, by some, as an absolute command… for the ‘congregation’ to vote for the endorsee

…. rather than just a prominent person simply saying, “This is what I personally think.”

Endorsements are still seen as tribal exhortations to the masses. And perhaps they are, often enough.

Though some pundits will try to marginalize such endorsement, and others try to make some big fat frakas over Minister Farrakhan’s so called endorsement, and some will say Oh pshaw, he and his group are irrelevant in our time, I think that all likely overlooks ‘the youngest son’ syndrome’ that often enough, historically overrides even the most august endorsements…

The one who shall be king next, after the old regime has worn down, in mythos, is often the youngest.

This is an old old story, the restoration of the withered kingdom, and who shall prevail to become king.

In mythos, it is often not the eldest son or brother, daughter or sister, nor the eldest advisor, that revives and raises up the faltering kingdom.

It is often the youngest, freshest, strongest one.

In our family is told an old tale called, “The Quest and The Question,” wherein the old king looks over his kingdom which has suffered ‘a gray famine.’ The kingdom is just now trying to recover from that long travail.

The old king, knowing new blood for the kingdom is needed in leadership, sends his three sons in search of ‘the most precious and irreplaceable thing.

Whomsoever comes back with this boon, will be deemed the most visionary, and that one will be awarded the entire kingdom.

The eldest son misunderstands the quest, and brings back a glittering gold and gem-encrusted object of great material but perishable value. The old king regretfully shakes his head, no.

The second eldest son brings back an equally beautiful object of great value which is also of limited life. The old king shakes his head: No, that does not fulfill the quest either.

But the young son brings back nothing. Empty-handed, he appears before his father.

The youngest son says: Father, I have found on my journey not a material thing that can approach what you asked to be brought to you. But I have brought something invisible that does fulfill “‘the most precious and irreplaceable thing,’…

that ‘thing’ father, is my soul … which has now traveled so far and seen so much. I now understand exactly what the kingdom has need for: A most precious and irreplaceable Vision. Through the eyes of the soul. That is the irreplaceable and precious thing.

And the old king cries out that this is exactly the answer, the very thing that –with the energy of youth– will bring the kingdom back to green and good again.

And as we say in our old country, immigrant family, which specializes in semi-elaborate endings to tales:

And thus it was all greened and good again in that land, and thus it stays in that land, still… while we all back here in this dear world are still on the quest, still asking the question, still seeking the boon that will re-green our kingdom….

In depth psychology, the different aspects of a psychological legend, such as the old king, and all three sons, are seen as being components of a single psyche. They could as easily be Queen and daughters, or a mixture; the gender may be less important than the processes followed in these ancient tales which are teaching stories about inner life.

The exegesis of such tales sometimes reveals a psychological process that can be copied in reality, from unconsciousness and ego sight only, to a better, wider, deeper consciousness that has farther-seeing…

New sight is needed for a change or transformation that lasts… not forever, for there is no forever regarding ‘change, else it wouldn’t be called change,’ and there is no transformation that doesn’t eventually wear down and need renewal…but one to Read the rest of this entry »

Is there something odd about one war [Iraq] in which the post-war claims more lives than the war itself, and another [Colombia] in which hostages are taken not for a quick exchange of ransom, but to be held for years simply to make a point? This op-ed from Guatemala’s leading newspaper, Siglo Vientiuno, ponders the question of how the new millennium has altered humanity’s most destructive preoccupation.

“Like the temperature, the seasons, the rain and other natural phenomena that in this new century no longer respond to the old cycles we once knew, the dynamics of war (humanity’s most destructive activity) also seem to have changed.”

Victor Galvez Borrel

Translated By Paula van de Werken

January 14, 2008

Guatemala - Siglo Vientiuno - Original Article (Spanish)

Guatemala: Like the temperature, the seasons, the rain and other natural phenomena that in this new century no longer respond to the old cycles we once knew, the dynamics of war (humanity’s most destructive activity) also seem to have changed. Take two hot spots for example.

The first is the war in Iraq. Effectively, while the invasion of that country officially on May 1, 2003 (after the much-publicized victory if international coalition forces led by the United States after 40 days of combat that devastated the Iraqi Army). A few days later a different war began - and it continues today.

In the last four and a half years (until the end of October 2007) that conflict has resulted in 4,145 dead soldiers (92 percent of them North Americans and a total of five Salvadorans), as well as 28,171 wounded. In other words, 24 times more dead than during the initial invasion.

In addition to recording more deaths after victory than during the initial invasion, this war is characterized by the complexity of the battle being waged on several fronts: against the troops of the international coalition, against the government and the rebuilt Iraqi army (trained and subordinated to the invading forces), and between the majority Shiite Muslims (55 percent of the population) and the minority Sunnis (18 percent of the population).

This latter front gives the conflict the feel of a civil war, which had up to now spared the Kurds (21 percent of the population) but which now threatens to draw them in due to the recent bombings of their territory [northern Iraq] by Turkey. This feature creates the third and key paradox of this war: The troops of the international coalition don’t what to do in order to stay, but neither have they found the formula to go. Attacks with “car bombs” and the taking of hostages are two principal weapons of the fight.

The second “hot spot” is the internal armed conflict in Columbia, the oldest in America, which was ignored and isolated since it became impossible to conceal in 1980.

READ THE REST ON WORLDMEETS.US

One of the many conspiracy theories swirling throughout the Arab world is that Washington and Tehran have been cooperating since the Shah was first installed all the way up to today. According to this op-ed article from Iraq’s Sotal Iraq, not only has Tehran aided Washington in Afghanistan and Iraq - but the entire 1979 hostage crisis and the aborted American rescue of the hostages was staged.

“Iran has been a strategic ally of American imperial power from the time of the Shah right up to today.”

Translated By James Jacobson

By Talal Ma’aruf Najam*

November 12, 2007

Iraq - Sotal Iraq - Original Article (Arabic)

The world was surprised … but we weren’t … and it seems that with our previous analysis we have earned the confidence of many. Iran has been a strategic ally of American imperial power from the time of the Shah right up to today. When the Shah’s visage became unloved by his people, the White House - because of its treachery and unlimited ambition - became uneasy and lost patience with him.

To all the world, with the crisis at American Embassy in Tehran and the detention of its staff by Iranian students in the first days of the Islamic Revolution, Iran entered a period of conflict against American imperial power .

The occupation of the American Embassy dragged on for several months and the assumption of most of the world was that U.S. forces were impotent and that the Iranian revolution had begun to teach Washington a lesson in bravery. But what revealed this bravery was the theatrical crash of two American helicopters in the Iranian desert, which was arranged, far from the capital Teheran, where Iranian Revolutionary Guard held the U.S. hostages [Operation Eagle Claw ].

Washington claimed that the two helicopters were on their way liberate the American hostages. Iran hailed the capture of the two helicopters as a victory over American airpower and the estrangement between Teheran and Washington appeared to continue, even blatantly at times.

Then came the most recent scandal that revealed the false nature of the hostility between the two countries, when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared the American intelligence report on Iran’s nuclear program “a great victory for Iran.”

In his speech broadcast by Iranian television, Ahmadinejad added that the American report “announces the victory to all the international forces of the Iranian nation regarding its nuclear program.”

The American intelligence report unveiled on December 3rd concluded that Iran suspended its nuclear arms program in 2003, although they still haven’t stopped carrying out uranium enrichment. The authors of the report said that they have a, “high degree of confidence” in their information.

Teheran didn’t hesitate to exploit the shift in the attitude of American intelligence, demanding compensation for the “fictional accusations” made against it over the years by the Bush Administration, emphasizing that the report provides good reason to take the issue of the Iranian nuclear file out of the hands of American officials and return it to its natural place: the International Atomic Energy Agency.

What concerns us is Iran’s request for negotiations and demand for compensation, which is nonetheless sensible after all the services Iran has rendered to the American Administration. Tehran supported American forces during their Afghanistan invasion and the findings and information used to launch the American invasion of Iraq were provided by the Iranian regime, mostly through its contacts in the south and middle of Iraq.

READ THE REST ON WORDON.US

The Burma File Newsdesk Special has reported that Mr. Brigadier-General Thura Myint Aung has also claimed that, “True monks had remained in their monasteries,” he said in an interview accompanied by pictures of pious members of the regime offering alms and tributes to solemn-faced clergy.

Thus Mr. Brigadier-General Thura Myint Aung became Than Schwe’s second swamp of shame, for Schwe ordered his minister to also say the following on state TV: “No monks at all have died.”

(This… presumably to go along with earlier claims by Than Schwe and his ‘ministers,’ that when he caused the monasteries to be invaded the troops found nothing but monks, pornography and American flags with swastikas painted on them…)

Mr. Brigadier General’s appears to knowingly and purposefully falsify information according to Than Schwe’s last hope to pull the wool over the eyes of the International Community. It’s way too late for that, however.

The evidence of Than Schwe’s murders of holy men is clear. Concise. Here we see the brutality of the injuries on this monk’s body. And, in an image I ran with an article last week, there was another proof, of a different dead monk, face down and dead in the river, stripped naked of his robes and beaten literally black from ears to tail-bone.

I can only say this at this moment: Than Schwe, you are on very thin ice security-wise. That you have unleashed such evil in young Buddhist men who are your coddled soldiers, that you clearly have near you men who are psychopaths who can beat an innocent holy person beyond recognition, and to death, and not think a thing of it … means you and your family will now never, ever be safe. Ever. Psychopaths live to do harm, Than Schwe. They are not particular about to whom.

____________
I’ve put on the next page the second picture of the same murdered elder monk. I have put it there rather than here for it is very hard to look at. I wanted you to have a choice in the matter, for the image is likely to disturb most. Someone must have gently turned this monk’s body over, and you see the gashes through to the spine from bayonet or machete-like sword, and the rifle butt fractures of the skull that killed this soul. It is such a devastating set of injuries, this poor soul never had a chance, and likely died on his knees, the attack appears to be at the left shoulder and from ‘the coward’s direction,’ from the back.

I would just say that if you look, it would be alright to put your palm over the screen for a moment and just think the best blessing you have, across, across, across the oceans and let it fall like sweet rain over Burma.

warning: graphic image of injuries if you turn to the rest of the story.
Read the rest of this entry »

Like the Burmese presently, like other innocent groups risking their lives for true liberty just to be allowed to live in free and decent ways without governmental oppression… in 1956 the Hungarian young, middle-aged and elderly, took to the streets to rail against the Soviets, fighting for freedom for Hungary.

When the marchers were met in the streets by Russian soldiers in iron tanks, the Hungarians fought with rocks, with wine bottles filled with benzene lighter fluid and stuffed with doilies made by the old women. When the people ran out of their munitions, they fought the tanks with their hands.

President Bush issued a proclamation honoring the 1956 Hungarian Revolution… “The story of Hungarian democracy represents the triumph of liberty over tyranny. In the fall of 1956, the Hungarian people demanded change, and tens of thousands of students, workers, and other citizens bravely marched through the streets to call for freedom. Though Soviet tanks brutally crushed the Hungarian uprising, the thirst for freedom lived on, and in 1989 Hungary became the first communist nation in Europe to make the transition to democracy.”

THE TELEVISION WARRIOR

My foster father is Magyarok, a Hungarian born Hungarian. He came to ‘Amereeka’ with a sewing machine under his arm. And now, he is in the living room yelling at the television again. He thinks the people inside the TV can hear him.
Hollering is a form of Hungarian aerobics;
it’s kept Dad strong all these years.
He immigrated to the USA before World War II.
Afterwards, the small ancestral farm still worked by
his mother and brothers and sisters in Hungary,
was confiscated by Germans, then Soviets.
The men dragged onto freight rollers,
the women, their children held like empty rifles,
were marched to Russian labor camps,
the rest forced from Hungary to Germany.
No children survived. Dad found
his people in the camps, brought the tiny band
one by one and oh so filled with bad night dreams,
to ‘Amereeka’.

My much older cousin had fallen in love with a man
she’d met in the refugee camps.
They’d married in secret there and she was now pregnant.
Now, in ‘Amereeka’, the old people watched over her round belly
as though a ghost Bread of Life
was baking there. A child, a child, they all
sighed, and said hope makes people cry harder than hurt.

So, we all lived together in our little house with Dad going toe to toe every night with the evening news. He’d yell at the TV in his broken English, “You e-diots, you fools!” and heave back in his chair like a soldier thrown by a blast. Dad was the intimate enemy of Vyacheslav Molotov who was a protégé of Stalin; the fascist Franco; Nikita Khrushchev, any dictator who said he wasn’t.

In 1956, so distraught was he seeing the first news reels of Russian tanks in the streets of Budapest, and the young and elderly Hungarians trying to fight the iron tanks with rocks and bare hands, that Dad waved his arms like windmills and threw himself down on the living room rug, daring the tanks to come run over him, “Come get me, you cowards, Come! Get! me!!”

In the ‘60s it was missiles in Cuba and these last many years he has had a yell-fest with apartheid and ayatollahs. He warned Ortega, “Hah! Roll yourself in a tamale, let the comunistos eat you. May they all suffer indigestion.” To the lone student in Tiananmen Square, he waggled his finger, “Ya, ya, I told you so. Ve haf seen dis before. So run him over already!
Get it over with! Dere are no living heroes.” Dad’s eyes watered and watered — he said — from sitting too close to the TV screen.

Last year when Dad was 80 years old, he went hoarse from indicting the televised Ceausescu.
“He vants to bulldozing 7,000 farm villages?
You vant to tear people away from their trees??
You craze man! You want to stack them like chickens?? Read the rest of this entry »

(Cross-posted at The Reaction.)

I’ve been doing a lot of international-news-oriented posts recently — not because I’m turning away from the U.S. — I’m still mostly U.S.-focused — but because, well… because there’s been lot going on around the world. The situation in Burma is the big story at the moment, and rightly so, and I and others been covering it extensively, but here are a couple more fairly high-profile stories, both from the former Soviet Union:

1) Russia: It looks like Putin might be pulling a Chavez after all. He’s not trying to change the rules to keep himself in power — no, he hasn’t gone that far, yet — but he may not step aside, or out, when his presidential term is up:

President Vladimir Putin, in a surprise announcement, opened the door Monday to becoming Russia’s prime minister and retaining power when his presidential term ends next year.

The popular Mr. Putin is barred from seeking a third consecutive term in the March presidential election, but has strongly indicated he would seek to keep a hand on Russia’s reins after he steps down.

Mr. Putin’s remarks Monday at a congress of the dominant, Kremlin-controlled United Russia party hint at a clear scenario in which he could remake himself as a powerful prime minister and eclipse a weakened president.

You know what they say about power, especially the absolute variety.

Putin may install a puppet as president — say, current Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov, a Putin loyalist whom Putin recently put in place — and rule from parliament, the Duma.

Garry Kasparov, chess master and now the leader of the pro-democracy, anti-Putin forces in Russia, is right: “In fact, Putin has done nothing more than decide to use United Russia [Putin’s political party] as the main mechanism for retaining power.” He is also right to attack “the anti-democratic and anti-constitutional nature of this whole electoral process”.
Read the rest of this entry »

(Cross-posted from The Reaction.)

Via Brad Plumer: England’s Daily Mail is reporting on the unofficial (if “official” is what the totalitarians are telling us) but likely accurate death toll in Burma, as well as on the nature of the brutality, the mass murder of the regime’s opponents:

Thousands of protesters are dead and the bodies of hundreds of executed monks have been dumped in the jungle, a former intelligence officer for Burma’s ruling junta has revealed.

The most senior official to defect so far, Hla Win, said: “Many more people have been killed in recent days than you’ve heard about. The bodies can be counted in several thousand.”

*****

Reports from exiles along the frontier confirmed that hundreds of monks had simply “disappeared” as 20,000 troops swarmed around Rangoon yesterday to prevent further demonstrations by religious groups and civilians.

Word reaching dissidents hiding out on the border suggested that as well as executions, some 2,000 monks are being held in the notorious Insein Prison or in university rooms which have been turned into cells.

There were reports that many were savagely beaten at a sports ground on the outskirts of Rangoon, where they were heard crying for help.

Read the full article for more, which includes photos.

The media will soon lose interest in this story, moving on to whatever is next, largely because the sensationalism will subside and their consumers will grow tired of more of the same — and because Burma is effectively a “closed” society. Whatever the attention is continues to receive, however, we must not let this story disappear. If there is little else that we can do — we who do not have the levers of government at our disposal, we who are not diplomats, we who cannot impose sanctions, that is, we bloggers, we in the alternative media — we can continue to seek out reports, and to report on those reports, and to comment on those reports, coming out of Burma or about the situation in Burma generally, as well as to comment on what our governments are doing, or not doing.

That’s the least we can do.
Read the rest of this entry »