Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Hurricane Sandy Brings an October Surprise

by Nomad

I
n a rather surprising show of solidarity, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who has been bashing President Obama for the last year on his lack of leadership- did an about-face after his state was devastated by Hurricane Sandy. 

Christie called the level of cooperation between the local, state and federal governments "excellent" and praised President Obama's involvement. "I was on the phone for the third time yesterday, last night, with the president of the United States. He called me at midnight last night as he was seeing reports," he said before adding that President Obama accelerated the designation of New Jersey as a major disaster area "without the usual red tape."

"The cooperation has been great with FEMA here on the ground and the cooperation from the president of the United States has been outstanding. He deserves great credit," Christie added.
Meanwhile Jay Carney, spokesman for the White House, gave this assessment of the relief efforts:
"When disaster strikes, Americans suffer -- not Democrats, not independents, not Republicans -- Americans suffer. And then we come together and put politics aside to make sure that those Americans get the assistance that they need."
With a week left before the election, Obama  canceled campaign trips planned for Tuesday and Wednesday to stay in Washington and supervise storm recovery. On Wednesday, Obama is scheduled to visit New Jersey, and is expected to return to campaigning on Thursday.

Sunday, October 28, 2012

The US and Greece: Does the Public Have a Right to Know What Politicians are Hiding?

by Nomad

No matter how cynical Americans are about their politicians and the political process, nothing can compare to the Greeks. Most Greeks you ask on the street would tell you that their government has been corrupt for as long as they can remember.
And that way of thinking goes back to the ancient times too. The philosopher Anacharsis once said,
Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful will easily break through them. 
If the Greek public weren’t already by their nature skeptical about the politics, the austerity measures imposed on Greece by the European Union have pushed that cynicism to the breaking point. Mass protests have erupted into violence throughout Greece as European Union leaders in Brussels have attempted to pull the nation back from the edge of bankruptcy.

The Lost LaGarde List
When journalist and HOT DOC magazine editor, Kostas Vaxevanis, published a list of 1,991 people who had 1.95 billion in deposits in the Geneva, Switzerland HSBC bank branch, many were enraged but few were totally surprised.

According to Greek law, there is nothing illegal about having a Swiss bank accounts as long as they are declared and taxes are paid on them. The editor stressed that people on the list should not be considered tax evaders unless it is proved they did not pay taxes on the deposits.

What was interesting was the names on that list which reported included “several politicians, an advisor to Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, well-known businessmen, journalists, doctors, lawyers and engineers, actors and civil servants – some of them working at the Finance Ministry.” The list contained names, not only of Greeks, but foreign nationals who had apparently emptied their accounts from Greek banks and transferred them to HSBC.
The list contains also the names of three former ministers, of whom one died sometime ago. Also the names of owners of enterprises that have gone bankrupt. But also students studying abroad, pensioners and housewives.

Friday, October 26, 2012

The Line It Is Drawn: A Look Back at October 1963

by Nomad

1963 March

Of the many critical moments in American history, the year 1963 stands out as one of the most climactic.

Yet there were so many things going on and so many stories being told just before that awful moment that were lost in the shadow that fell over the nation after the assassination.


The year 1963 was a momentous one for the fight against discrimination and events were moving quickly. By that year, many leaders in the civil rights movement had begun to question the sincerity of President Kennedy’s commitment to racial equality.

A Great Change is at Hand

In terms of social unrest, it had been a very hot summer. In June, the president had been forced to take a bold step, to federalize the Alabama National Guard when George Wallace, the segregationist governor of the state, refused to allow two black students to attend the state university in Tuscaloosa. Peaceful protests throughout the south had been met with police brutality which, in turn, ignited violence and rioting in many cities. 

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

The "Milk Before Meat" Candidate: Why Romney Doesn’t Deserve Your Vote

by Nomad

Mitt Romney Liar Puppet

The Truth about Lying
Most us as children were taught that lying was wrong. There was never any need to inquire too deeply. It just was. Why? Because I said so. End of discussion.

Later, things started getting complicated. Some lies were more acceptable than others- white lies, for example, though, in fact, all of them were still wrong. Technically.

Around the time of high school, that great petri dish for social behavior- most of us simply stopped asking this basic question and accepted lying a part of the human condition. Get over it.
Throughout the long history of philosophy the subject of deception has been a hot topic. Immanuel Kant was pretty categorical. Lying, he said, was always unethical. To be human means having the ability to be rational and to make own choices. It gave a sense of dignity to humanity. A life with any rational choice was no life for a self-respecting human being.
Bear with me.

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Romney on Iran: The Dangerous Non-Policy of the Hollow Man

Iran Romney Nuclear Policy by Nomad

L
ast night’s third and final debate proved once again that the Republican presidential candidate Romney really has nothing new to offer in terms of foreign policy leadership. And when it comes to Iran, Romney demonstrated last night that he is really a hollow man.

His statements on Iran and how he would deal with this sticky problem are really fascinating, though not in a good way. If you listen to the things he said, they might sound impressive but actually upon a closer inspection, they are filled with peculiarities, political posturing and sparkling fluff.

Sanctions
It is also essential for us to understand what our mission is in Iran, and that is to dissuade Iran from having a nuclear weapon through peaceful and diplomatic means. And crippling sanctions are something I called for five years ago, when I was in Israel, speaking at the Herzliya Conference. I laid out seven steps, crippling sanctions were number one. And they do work. You're seeing it right now in the economy. It's absolutely the right thing to do, to have crippling sanctions. I would have put them in place earlier. But it's good that we have them.
So basically then he would do what the president is already doing. No change of policy but he would be happy to take credit for the results. Begun in the last two years of the Bush administration, the sanctions were expanded and strengthened under the Obama administration, according to the Christian Science Monitor "at a speed that has made current US sanctions policy on Iran the harshest in contemporary history. This leaves a potential new Romney administration with few policy alternatives."