March 16, 2014

America’s Working Class Has No Lobby

by DAVID MACARAY

It’s a broad generalization, and reeks of cynicism, but it’s true: Many (most?) good things get done not as the result of being conspicuously seen as the “right” thing to do, but as the result of pressure being applied to get them done. Conversely, in the absence of pressure being applied, the “right” thing often doesn’t get done. In other words, it’s more about “muscle” than “morals.”

Take the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, for example, one of the harshest anti-immigration measures in U.S. history. After a significant number of Chinese workers had emigrated to the U.S., lured here by the California Gold Rush (1848-1854), and later, by jobs on large works programs, such as the Transcontinental Railroad, America decided it didn’t want any more of them. We had enough Chinamen.

While the reasons for passing the Exclusion Act were a mixed bag of xenophobia, racism, and economic worries, what is most revealing is how simple it was to get this remarkable legislation passed. It was easy. Basically, some people got together and decided no more Chinese should enter the country, and then went out and passed a law to make it so. And the reason it was so easy was because there was no meaningful resistance.

The 1882 Exclusion Act was supposed to stay in effect for ten years. But in 1892, it was extended for ten additional years, and in 1902, it was made permanent. Incredibly, that law stayed on the books until 1943, when it was repealed by the Magnuson Act. And what precipitated its repeal in 1943? Following Pearl Harbor, the Chinese had become the good Asians, and the “Japs” had become the bad Asians.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/03/14/americas-working-class-has-no-lobby-2/

March 15, 2014

An unhappy anniversary: Why the end of Bashar al-Assad is as far away as ever and how Syria’s rebels

lost the plot.


Today marks three years since Syrians rose up against their President. In the time since then, unwavering support for the status quo from Russia and Iran, the unwillingness of the West to intervene, and the increasing disarray of the anti-government factions have all combined to ensure that they may never succeed, writes Patrick Cockburn.

As the first wave of the Arab uprisings broke in early 2011, President Bashar al-Assad sounded confident that Syria would be immune to the turmoil. He was not alone: at a meeting of 10 foreign ambassadors in Damascus in February that year the diplomats without exception dismissed suggestions that the revolutionary turmoil in Egypt and Tunisia might spread to Syria.

The conviction that Syria was more stable than other Arab states was rooted in the belief that Mr Assad was relatively popular; Syria’s long opposition to Israel and the US gave it powerful nationalist credentials; abject poverty was less than in Egypt and Yemen. Yet, within a month of the ambassadors’ meeting, protests began to gather pace and the government responded brutally and with extreme violence, treating dissent as a revolutionary attempt to overthrow the state, similar to the Muslim Brotherhood insurgency of 1979-82 which concluded with the slaughter of some 20,000 people in Hama. Many believe that it was the government’s overreaction that turned protests into an insurgency. The government claims that from the beginning it was facing an armed Islamist revolt funded and supplied by the Gulf monarchies allied to Western intelligence services.

With what, in retrospect, seems like embarrassing speed, foreign governments – and many Syrians – swung from saying nothing would happen to treating the departure of President Assad as a foregone conclusion.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/an-unhappy-anniversary-why-the-end-of-bashar-alassad-is-as-far-away-as-ever--and-how-syrias-rebelslost-the-plot-9193594.html

March 14, 2014

CIA vs. Senate: Who Is Obama Protecting?

Elizabeth Goitein: President Obama is protecting senior CIA officials and himself

March 14, 2014

Bio

Elizabeth (Liza) Goitein co-directs the Brennan Center for Justices Liberty and National Security Program, which seeks to advance effective national security policies that respect constitutional values and the rule of law. Before joining the Brennan Center, Liza served as counsel to Senator Russell Feingold, Chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and as a trial attorney in the Federal Programs Branch of the Civil Division of the Department of Justice. Her writing has been featured in major newspapers including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, USA Today, the Boston Globe, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Philadelphia Inquirer, as well as prominent outlets such as Roll Call, the National Law Journal, Salon, POLITICO, Time, and the Huffington Post. She has appeared on national television and radio shows including the The Rachel Maddow Show, The Today Show, All In with Chris Hayes, Up with Steve Kornacki, PBS NewsHour, and National Public Radios Morning Edition and On The Media. Liza graduated from Yale Law School and clerked for the Hon. Michael Daly Hawkins on the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Transcript

Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Baltimore.

In January, according to Dianne Feinstein, the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, that the head of the CIA, John Brennan, came to her and told her some of her staffers may have broken the law by getting access to secret documents that had been revealed to Senate investigators but, according to Brennan, shouldn't have been shown to Senate staffers, and that might be illegal. Why did he make this trip? Why did he tell Dianne Feinstein this? Because it led to Dianne Feinstein coming to the conclusion and finding out that the CIA had actually been spying on Senate computers, and had even removed records from those--and files from those computers.

Now joining us to give us some background and discuss all of this and joining us now from New York is Elizabeth Goitein. She's codirector of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School.

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11598






Elizabeth Goitein:
Neiman Foundation for Journalism at
Harvard University
http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=about.viewcontributors&bioid=358

March 12, 2014

U.N. Releases Drone Report

Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental
freedoms while countering terrorism, Ben Emmerson

Summary
This is the third annual report submitted to the Human Rights Council by the Special
Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms
while countering terrorism, Ben Emmerson.

In chapter II of the report, the Special Rapporteur lists his key activities undertaken
from 10 January to 16 December 2013. In the main report, contained in chapter III, the
Special Rapporteur examines the use of remotely piloted aircraft, or drones, in
extraterritorial lethal counter-terrorism operations, including in the context of asymmetrical
armed conflict, and allegations that the increasing use of remotely piloted aircraft, or
drones, has caused disproportionate civilian casualties, and makes recommendations to
States. This report constitutes the continuation of the Special Rapporteur’s interim report
on the use of drones to the General Assembly (A/68/389).

http://justsecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Special-Rapporteur-Rapporteur-Emmerson-Drones-2014.pdf

March 10, 2014

Europe: Between Democracy and Oligarchy ( New Left Project )

Though Ukraine’s structural problems go far deeper than the current upheavals over aligning more closely with the European Union, the fact that this peculiar international body can spark pitched street battles refutes one lazy but perennial assertion of its critics: that the EU is simply a trade organisation – a glorified NAFTA – which in the broad scheme of things matters little, both to the populations of Europe and in terms of continental governance. Critics point to low voter turn-out all across member-states and high levels of disillusionment among new entrants as evidence that the Union has little real effect on people's lives and little impact on where power lies – either national or transnational – within Europe. But as Ukraine proves, the status of relations with the EU is capable of summoning extraordinary social forces, a rallying point not only for the immediate question of membership but also for much broader questions about the paths of national development prospective member states find themselves on. The task of understanding the EU – and what membership of a future Union might mean for prospective members – is more important than ever. The violence on the streets of Kiev demands a reassessment of critics’ complacency.

Patterns of European integration (beginning, in most histories, with the European Steel and Coal Community of 1951) have by no means been monolithic. Indeed, for a long time the political institutions designed to underwrite and extend the deepening processes of economic integration were largely neofunctionalist in their goals: aiming for a gradual harmonisation of national tensions through an equally gradual extension of the Community's legal remit. This was expansion by stealth, occasionally in an explicitly social or corporatist and welfarist vein. The most famous of the Community's architects, Jean Monnet, was pragmatically federalist and pro-democratic. ‘Is it possible,’ he asked, ‘to have a Common Market without federal social, monetary and macro-economic policies?’[1] Monnet has more or less been proved right by the eurozone crisis, though political pressures (especially in Germany) continue to resist that conclusion. Major political and economic imbalances between member states continue to undermine any movement towards greater integration of this federal variety.

The Europe Union's other predominant ideology, that of intergovernmental realism, conceives of action undertaken by national governments as the primary locus of European integration. Intergovernmental realists stress the importance of national governments, and point to how further integration will proceed from interactions between states, not above them.[2] Thus neofunctionalist liberals of the Monnet variety stress the transnational processes at work in integration, aiming to further it through the fostering of greater power for international institutions operating outside of or beyond the sovereignty of nation states. Intergovernmental realists, however, stress the limits of possible supranational integration owing to the self-interested nature of national governments. Realists are convinced that the highest form of legal order is one which mediates between self-interested nation-states, curbing their democratic excesses through old-fashioned diplomatic manoeuvring. As such the nation is conceived as the pre-eminent political actor on an international terrain of Hobbesian anarchy with no novel conception of sovereignty emerging.[3] Though such an approach may be appealing for those wishing to understand continued national conflicts within the Union, it has only occasionally reflected the piecemeal reality of EU development, which has involved a good deal of class compromise between states, trade unions and financial institutions, among other conflicting parties.

Nevertheless, by the early 1990s European integration appeared to be stagnating under conditions of a fractious world economy and apparently divergent political and economic paths – with German corporatism, French social-welfarism, and British emulation of the American ‘neoliberal’ model all representing conflicts among Europe's ruling elites. It took the sudden collapse of Communism in the USSR, the Balkans and the states of East-Central Europe (all widely unforeseen) to reignite pro-integration passions. Despite the obvious confidence boost the end of the ‘Evil Empire’ gave the western half, no amount of good-will could fund reunification efforts (on the part of Germany) and reconstruction efforts (on the part of the soon-to-be-Union as a whole). Even if European voters largely supported the drive towards integration, the process itself was carried out in the interests of capital accumulation. The newly democratised states on the periphery would become highly profitable, relatively risk-free spaces of capital investment. Though a great deal of public funding went in to reconstructing Eastern Europe, the overwhelming tendency was for capital – in the form of factory relocations, foreign direct investment, and enormous financial lending – to seek major profits. Thus, following 1989, the specifically pro-market forces underlying EU integration and expansion were foregrounded.

remainder: http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/europe_between_democracy_and_oligarchy

March 6, 2014

Ukrainians Breathe Sigh of Relief As Diplomatic Efforts Continue Between West & Russia

Professor Nicolai Petro lays out how the Crimea crisis could be resolved, as tension remains between pro-EU groups and Russian supported factions

March 6, 2014

Bio

Nicolai N. Petro is professor of politics at the University of Rhode Island. During the collapse of the Soviet Union he served as special assistant for policy in the U.S. State Department. He has published widely on Russian and international politics, and is currently in Ukraine on a Fulbright research fellowship. His web site iswww.npetro.net.

The views expressed are his own and do not reflect those of the Fulbright program or the U.S. Department of State.

Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Jessica Desvarieux in Baltimore.

Following the Russian takeover of the Crimean Peninsula in Ukraine, Western and Russian diplomats are meeting in Paris to discuss how to resolve the political crisis in Ukraine. The European Union has also offered a $15 billion aid package to Ukraine on the condition that it reaches a deal with the International Monetary Fund over austerity measures and domestic gas subsidies.

Now joining us to discuss all this is Nicolai Petro. Nicolai is a professor of politics at the University of Rhode Island, and he has been in Ukraine since July as a visiting scholar and has observed the current crisis firsthand.

#t=0

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=767&Itemid=74&jumival=11552

March 4, 2014

Feds Earmark Millions For Disability Housing Assistance

By Shaun Heasley

March 4, 2014

Federal housing officials are putting $120 million on the table to help thousands of people with disabilities access rental assistance.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said Tuesday that state housing agencies can apply now through May 5 for a share of the funding that’s intended to help prevent homelessness and unnecessary institutionalization of those with disabilities.

The money is available under HUD’s Section 811 Project Rental Assistance Demonstration Program, an initiative created through a 2010 law designed to expand community-based housing options for people with disabilities.

To participate, state housing agencies must work with local Medicaid and health and human services agencies to identify and assist individuals with disabilities who require long-term services and supports to live independently in the community.

http://www.disabilityscoop.com/2014/03/04/feds-earmark-housing/19163/

March 2, 2014

Resolving Nuclear Arms Claims Hinges on Iran’s Demand for Documents

WASHINGTON, Mar 1 2014 (IPS) - The Barack Obama administration has demanded that Iran resolve “past and present concerns” about the “possible military dimensions” of its nuclear programme as a condition for signing a comprehensive nuclear agreement with Tehran.


Administration officials have suggested that Iran must satisfy the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) regarding the allegations in the agency’s report that it has had a covert nuclear weapons programme in the past.

But the record of negotiations between Iran and the IAEA shows Tehran has been ready for the past two years to provide detailed responses to all the charges of an Iranian nuclear weapons work, and that the problem has been the refusal of the IAEA to share with Iran the documentary evidence on which those allegations have been based.

The real obstacle to providing those documents, however, has long been a U.S. policy of refusing to share the documents on the assumption that Iran must confess to having had a weaponisation programme.

The head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation, Ali Akbar Salehi, declared Feb. 12, “The authenticity of each allegation should be proven first, then the person who submitted it to the agency should give us the genuine document. When we are assured of the authenticity, then we can talk to the agency.”

http://www.ipsnews.net/2014/03/resolving-nuclear-arms-claims-hinges-irans-demand-documents/

February 21, 2014

Warning: Saudi mayhem ahead

By Pepe Escobar

Move over, Peter O' Toole. It's Charles of Arabia time. Prince Charles switched to Lawrence mode when he went schmoozing and dancing in Riyadh this past Tuesday with the natives. And just like clockwork, the next day BAE Systems - Europe's number one weapons peddler - announced that the UK and the House of Saud had agreed on "new pricing" for an extremely juicy deal; 72 Eurofighter Typhoon jets.

The Eurofighter is a direct competitor of the spectacularly unsalable French Rafale and the very expensive American F-35s and F-16s. The Associated Press duly included in its dispatch - reproduced by virtually every newspaper around the world - the
Washington-enforced meme "Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries are fortifying their military capabilities to counter a perceived threat from regional rivals, particularly Iran." As if Tehran was going to bomb the House of Saud tomorrow.

The Eurofighter, on the other hand, has already been employed against fellow Arabs - as in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's humanitarian bombing of Libya back to failed-state status. It's open to debate whether the House of Saud might be tempted to employ it against the enemy within: aspiring Saudi women drivers.

Brandishing the official excuse that near-nonagenarian King Abdullah was not able to receive him, Charles of Arabia declined to discuss with the House of Saud the absolutely appalling women's rights, migrant workers' rights and for that matter the full human rights situation in the kingdom. Of course not; this is only brought up when demonizing Russia, China and/or Iran.

remainder: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MID-03-210214.html

February 18, 2014

Edwin Sutherland: The 75th Anniversary of His Coining The Term White-Collar Crime

By William K. Black


Introduction

This year is the 75th anniversary of Edwin Sutherland’s presidential address to the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in 1939. In the course of beginning to write a book from a white-collar criminological perspective about our modern financial crises I decided to reread Sutherland’s address (which was published as an article in 1940) to see how it stands up in light of modern white-collar criminological research and theory. It reads exceptionally well today. It is not even archaic in tone. Sutherland begins by listing eleven (there were two van Sweringen brothers involved in their scam) examples of the kind of criminals he was referring to.

“The present-day white-collar criminals, who are more suave and deceptive than the ‘robber barons,’ are represented by Krueger, Stavisky, Whitney, Mitchell, Foshay, Insull, the Van Sweringens, Musica-Coster, Fall, Sinclair, and many other merchant princes and captains of finance and industry, and by a host of lesser followers.”

Musica-Coster is hyphenated because he used an alias, as did his brothers, to aid his ability to continue to defraud even after one set of his frauds was discovered. Each of the eleven people listed ran what we now call a “control fraud” (where the person controlling a seemingly legitimate entity uses it as “weapon” to defraud. Ten of the individuals controlled private entities. Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall was the corrupt public official leading the Tea Pot Dome scandal. I am near Minneapolis this semester (go north for the winter, brilliant idea) and in driving into the city tonight I saw Foshay Tower (the tallest building west of Chicago and east of California when it was built). Wilbur Burton Foshay made Sutherland’s list.

Nine of the eleven fraud schemes involved financial sector frauds. Harry F. Sinclair, who purchased the sweetheart lease to the Tea Pot Dome from Secretary Fall, was engaged in good old fashioned corruption. Sutherland recognized that accounting was what we now call the “weapon of choice” in financial sector frauds.

http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2014/02/edwin-sutherland-75th-anniversary-coining-term-white-collar-crime.html