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.

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

by Nomad

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. 

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

by Nomad

The Truth about LyingMost 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.

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

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."

Mitt Romney and the Eye of the Needle

Check out this excerpt from one of the (hundred) debates during the Republican primaries. 

That was an interesting reaction, wasn't it? Romney stammers his answer and has to think fast before he commits his soul to the fiery furnace. As Anderson Cooper gives him a second chance to clarify, Romney hesitates and finally- to smattering of applause- takes the plunge. 

(In an earlier post, we pointed out how Romney has violated repeatedly his own Mormon code forbidding lying in every form. He was quite willing in that case to break the tenets of that faith to the cost of his salvation.)