To hear some big-time business columnists tell it, fighting for freedom is a bad thing.
The usually sensible Steve Pearlstein at the Washington Post notes that, “net neutrality zealots” (also known as “ayatollahs of net neutrality”) worked themselves into a “self-righteous lather” over the Verizon-Google compromise on Net Neutrality, caring more about “principles” than the “real world.”For Joe Nocera over at the New York Times, the Verizon-Google deal was a “well-meaning proposal,” that is being set upon by “fierce, unyielding proponents” of an open Internet, a group that includes Public Knowledge as part of the “net neutrality purists.”
These two columns by respected writers point to an unfortunate tendency among reporters who peer down from Olympian heights onto the world of mortals to bless a compromise as a way to settle a dispute, regardless whether the compromise is productive. There is the surface “pox on both their houses” approach, although it seems as if in practice the tendency further is distinguished by the pejorative descriptions of liberal or progressive parties, and rarely of conservative or business-oriented opinions or groups.
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has issued a report documenting the severe impact of the global economic crisis on employment prospects for the world’s youth. The report, “Global Employment Trends for Youth”, presents detailed statistics on the growing number of 15-to-24-year-olds who find themselves out of work.
The most striking findings are those showing the rapid rise of youth unemployment from the eruption of the financial crisis in 2008 onwards. At the end of 2009, according to the report’s introduction, global youth unemployment stood at 81 million. This was an increase of 7.8 million, or nearly 10 percent, from the end of 2007.
In percentage terms, global youth unemployment rose from 11.9 percent to 13 percent during this period, an increase described as “sharper than ever before”.
In 2009 alone, the number of young people out of work globally rose by a staggering 6.6 million. As the report noted, “To put this in perspective, over the course of the ten-year period prior to the current crisis (1996-1997 to 2006-2007), the number of unemployed youth increased, on average, by 192,000 per year”.
The leak describes Red Cell as a CIA unit created by the Director to develop "out-of-the-box" analysis offering "alternative viewpoints" on key intelligence issues.
This document doesn't disappoint in being out-of-the-box.
The Pentagon is embarking on a major base construction effort in Afghanistan even as Obama administration and military officials are making it clear that the US “surge” will last well past the July 11 deadline for beginning a drawdown of US troops.
The Washington Post reported Monday that the US Congress is preparing to pass legislation providing “$1.3 billion in additional fiscal 2011 funds for multiyear construction of military facilities in Afghanistan”. These funds would cover, in part, $100 million expansions for each of three major US air bases in different parts of the country.
These projects, the Post stated, are indicative of plans “to support increased US military operations well into the future.”
A notice seeking contractor bids placed on a US government web site last week maps out plans for the expansion of one of these US bases in Shindand, an airfield in western Afghanistan that had been used by the Soviet Army during its occupation of Afghanistan more than two decades ago.
The project is to include new runways, hangars, barracks, storage areas, a “weapons arming area” and other facilities. They are being built to accommodate the Special Operations troops used by Washington to carry out “targeted killings,” i.e., assassinations, which have become a key component of the US war. They will also house a unit operating pilotless drone aircraft for purposes of “Intelligence, Surveillance & Reconnaissance” as well as missile attacks.
The request for bids states that the contract will not be issued until January of next year and that the job itself will not be completed until at least a full year after that, i.e., January 2012, six months after the deadline set by President Barack Obama for the beginning of the drawdown of US troops from Afghanistan.
AT NO time since the Second World War has Europe been so firmly in the grip of right-wing leaders. From old hands like Angela Merkel in Germany, Nicolas Sarkozy in France, and Silvio Berlusconi in Italy, to the recently elected David Cameron in the UK, the center Right now governs the biggest European countries. Even the figureheads of the EU—including the presidents of the European Commission, the European Council, and the European Parliament—have an impeccable conservative political pedigree. The only notable left-wing holdout, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero of Spain, will likely be defeated at the polls when he stands for reelection in less than two years.
With such unprecedented power, it would seem that the Right has a rare opportunity to reshape Europe in its own image. Left-wingers might fear that their adversaries will roll back the achievements of the last decades. What major political reforms, they might ask with terror in their voices, is the Right implementing? In what fundamental ways will it change Europe over the next five to ten years?
The hegemony of the Right is cause for serious concern. Even so, scared questions about the transformative political vision of Europe’s current leaders smack of hyperbole. In reality, they are strangely toothless. Their policies barely deviate from those of their left-wing predecessors. The question is: why?
The trilateral summit of the presidents of three Persian-speaking countries of Iran, Tajikistan and Afghanistan wrapped up on August 5 in Tehran and recorded another unforgettable event in the memory of the three brother nations. With innumerable cultural, religious, social, lingual and strategic commonalities, the three countries of Iran, Tajikistan and Afghanistan have demonstrated their potentiality to build one of the strongest diplomatic partnerships in the region and benefit the world nations through a unique, fruitful and constructive cooperation.
The people of Afghanistan and Tajikistan, whose countries were parts of the Greater Persia in ancient times, consider Iran as their cultural homeland and believe that the Iranian nation is the inheritor of their paternal legacy, the Persian civilization.
Veteran British Labourite Tony Benn has launched a call for “a broad movement of active resistance” to the UK Conservative/Liberal-Democrat coalition government’s austerity measures.
He announced his “coalition of resistance” in the Guardian’s “Comment is Free” section on August 4. His call was backed by 73 signatories: just two Labour MPs, John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn, the solitary Green Party MP, Caroline Lucas, a handful of trade union leaders, including Mark Serwotka of the PCS civil service union and Bob Crow of the Rail Maritime and Transport (RMT) union, as well as prominent figures from the media, such as Ken Loach, and academics and campaigners who have the reputation of being “on the left”. A variety of pseudo-left groups then endorsed his call and began campaigning on his behalf.
Benn’s campaign is fraudulent and should be rejected as a diversion by everyone genuinely seeking to oppose the savage cuts to the welfare state and public sector jobs. Benn revealed its bogus nature when he compared the movement he has in mind to that organised by the Greek trade unions.
The Greek unions have called a series of 24-hour stoppages that have not halted the government’s programme of austerity measures, but which were expressly designed to let off steam without threatening the PASOK government’s ability to impose the cuts demanded by the global markets. When the Greek truck drivers went on strike threatening to bring the economy to a standstill, the government responded by conscripting the drivers and bringing in the army to smash the strike. The response of their union, which had been trying to cut a deal with the government all along, was to capitulate. The presence of the army on the streets in a country that was living under a military junta from 1967 to 1974 is a stark warning of how sharp class antagonisms have become. European governments are attempting to dismantle welfare states that were built up in the post-war period. Such a wholesale destruction of social conditions demands a decisive shift in class relations and cannot be carried out within the framework of parliamentary democracy.
The Pentagon is embarking on a major base construction effort in Afghanistan even as Obama administration and military officials are making it clear that the US “surge” will last well past the July 11 deadline for beginning a drawdown of US troops.