An unemployment epidemic in the Middle East: what does it mean for America?
NOW travels to Jordan to explore the implications of - and possible solutions to - having millions of young people out of work in the Middle East. Staggering unemployment rates among the region's massive youth population is fueling anger, frustration and resentment.
To combat the problem, Jordan's Queen Rania has made job creation a top priority. “To me the Middle East is about young people. And if we fail to create opportunities for them then you're going to see a lot of frustrated hope,” she tells NOW.
Another initiative comes from an unlikely source: a Brooklyn, New York businessman who has set up programs across the region to give young people the real world skills they desperately need to gain employment. Both have their work cut out for them: nearly 70 million jobs are needed in the Middle East by the year 2020, according to the World Bank.
Can these training programs work to stem the tide or are they just a drop in the bucket?
Part 1 (8:53)
Part 2 (9:47)
Part 3 (4:51) DISCLOSURE: The Producer of the segment is a relative.
NOW on PBS explores how the oil rich nation of Qatar is importing top-notch American education at a cost of billions of dollars in a fascinating segment titled, “Education City”.
Part 1 (9:33)
Part 2 (9:48)
Part 3 (4:53)
DISCLOSURE: The producer of the segment is a relative.
Progressive Democrats of America hosted Islamic scholar Reza Aslan, author of “No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam”“No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam”, in Los Angeles on Sunday night in an event moderated by Bree Walker. Video of the entire conversation can be found below broken down into individual Q&A to make each part easily accessible:
The dirty little secret about the “Bush Doctrine” and how the last eight years have “opened up a Pandora's box” (6:53)American misperceptions about the Muslim community (3:21)Why do they hate us? (5:55)Suicide bombing (3:13)Jihadism (5:14)CLICK HERE TO SEE THE REST OF THE DISCUSSION WITH REZA
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair spoke to a Los Angeles audience on Monday about his new role as Middle East envoy on behalf of the United Nations, European Union, United States and Russia. Blair began by illustrating the differences between Israel and its neighboring countries through an anecdote about a waiter spilling soup on then Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. The waiter, according to Blair, was lucky that he spilled the soup in a democratic country where the incident was brushed off rather than in one of other Middle East states where the punishment would likely have been severe. Hence, Blair believes the spread of democracy in the region is key to bringing “peace to the Middle East”:
Actually this isn't simply about Jews and Arabs or people of different religious faiths, it's also about making sure that some values and ideals - which are about democracy and are about democracy not just in terms of your voting system but in terms of attitude, spirit and what's in your mind. That those values are protected in that region so that hopefully one day they can spread in that region.
Why anyone would want to spread our broken democracy is beyond me.
One hopes that with all the money the wealthiest 0.6% of Americans - who received 75% of $92 Billion in savings from Bush's generous tax policies on capital gains and dividends in 2005 - were able to get themselves a sweet second or third yacht. Of course, this is a double whammy for the other 99.4% of us who not only didn't see much benefit from Bush's tax cuts but now share in the responsibility of making up those lost revenues to the government. Some more fun stats from Citizens for Tax Justice:
*Half of all tax filers (67 million Americans) reported an adjusted gross income of less than $30,000 and received virtually NONE of the benefits from the tax cuts.
*0.6% reported incomes greater than $500,000 and received tax deductions averaging $81,204 and accounted for 73.4% of the total tax savings.
*13,776 tax filers with gross incomes greater than $10 million or 0.1% of all filers, received 28.2% of the total benefits averaging $1,876,280 each!!!!!
*The number of Americans living in extreme poverty has grown 26% since 2000. In all, 37 million Americans, or about 12% of the country, now live with “low food security,” uh, poverty.
*2 out of 5 elderly Americans live on less than $18,000 a year including social security.
*Low income Americans with disabilities experienced 50% cuts in their housing programs.
*Half of all IRS audits are now conducted on Americans making less than $25,000 per year.
For more dismal statistics on the rich poor divide see one of my earlier BRAD BLOG posts.
Thankfully Bush recognizes a problem when he sees it and before leaving on his month long vacation stressed that we need a new round of corporate tax cuts to make sure US corporations stay competitive!
In all fairness, it takes huge balls and a lot of propaganda to convince anyone that what the country needs is more corporate giveaways to the rich. That is a tall order that will require great effort by Bush. And it will be essential for him to recharge his batteries over a long vacation before the big sell. And if it means that he crushes Ronald Reagan's two term vacation record with 17 months to go in office, so be it.
Plus, nobody wants to be in the Capital during the God awful month of August when temperatures regularly hit a humid 100 degrees. Perhaps it was the heat that allowed Congressional Democrats to pass the new FISA law - which seems to get worse and worse by the day - before leaving on vacation. But Washington heat ain't nothing compared to Baghdad heat, huh, Tony Snow:
“You know, it's 130 degrees in Baghdad in August.”
Which helps explain why the Iraqi parliament is taking the month off as well. Surely our troops, a record 162,000 strong in Iraq, will get the month off too, right? I mean, one suspects that with all their gear, outdoor work and combat, the misery index (weather, though both work) would be worse for our troops than say an air-conditioned Oval Office, uh, speed boat.
Actually, while George W. Bush smashes records for vacation days our troops are getting tours of duty extended from a year to 15 months. And it is a bit odd that Bush would take off so much time right before the crucial General Petreaus report on Iraq. Especially since we are amidst:
“the inescapable calling of our generation”
Oh, I almost forgot that the greater troop levels were the result of Bush's January “Surge” plan. You might recall that the new plan came after great deliberation and partying during which time hundreds of our troops lost their lives:
Ultimately Bush decided upon following neocon Fred Kagan's (fresh off a “very cool” chinook helicopter ride over the Potomac) “Surge” plan which called for an additional 50,000 troops, uh, 35,000, no, 30,000, wait, 50,000, no, 30,000, hold on, 31,500, stop, 20,000, then 35,000, oh, let's just say more troops.
But here's the thing, while Bush and the lawmakers are getting much needed R&R, our depleted troops are dying in the heat of the Iraqi desert by the droves. Long time reporters in Iraq write about the grim picture. According to our own ambassador in Iraq, electricity in Baghdad can be counted on for “an hour or two a day” which is down from six hours earlier in the year and 16-24 hours under Saddam. Even the Brits admit the Surge will not succeed.
But none of this or the rising troop deaths can dissuade the Bushies who have already kicked up the propaganda so many notches that Emeril Lagasse must be envious. Sadly, the American people continue to buy into it. And the real big propaganda push will not hit until September.
Sadly, the truth is that there is nothing that Petraeus could say that would change the course of the war. As Eugene Robinson wrote in the Washington Post:
But if you think Bush is going to care what Petraeus's report says in September, get out of the sun immediately and drink lots of water. You're delirious.
Clearly Bush will continue this unjust, horrific war until the end of his presidency. And nothing from escalating American and Iraqi body counts to American geopolitical strategy can change his decision which was made long ago. W. has even stated that his presidency will be judged on the long term outcome of Iraq. And since pulling out or significantly reducing troops is akin to failure, Bush ain't budging. In other words, he's passing the buck to the next president.
This alone is immoral and it is patently absurd that a decision of this magnitude should rest with a man with such an obvious conflict of interest. And since everyone knows this, it is also immoral for the American people to standby and leave the decision to Bush.
And that would be true even if Bush were a moral person. The fact that he is not just makes the situation that much clearer. Lest we forget that he:
*Continues to push legislation to further enrich the super wealthy at the expense of the most needy in society.
*Imposes anti-condom policies throughout Africa which has led to a remarkable rise in HIV/AIDS.
*Signed a secret executive order authorizing the policy of “extraordinary rendition” which allows the CIA to kidnap any terror suspect from anywhere in the world and transfers them to prisons to be tortured and sometimes killed in countries like Uzbekistan and Egypt.
*Invades countries under false pretenses to further enrich the military industrial complex and his corporatist cronies.
Sick. Martin Luther King Jr. had it right when he said that “There comes a time when silence is betrayal.” How can anyone read that short list of transgressions above and not believe that time is now?
*In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
*When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.
*Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
*Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
*The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
We Americans like to think ourselves noble and a country that has done great things for the world. We stopped Hitler for crying out loud. Yes, but that was a couple of generations ago. And by remaining silent, this generation is burying the memory of the “Greatest Generation.” And our lack of action, for whatever reason, is as immoral as George W. Bush's action.
It is imperative that we wake-up to our faults and correct them before it is too late. For example, a glance at the two pictures below describe a world turned upside down by American military spending and penchant for war and killing:
Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for mankind to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
We Americans seem to be the only ones oblivious to our faults. The entire world has been telling us we are ill for some time. The general consensus around the globe is that the US is a greater threat to world peace than even Iran and North Korea! And our best friends, the Brits, believe that only Osama bin Laden is a greater threat to world peace than the United States.
We are a sick country whose leaders continue to exploit our weakness. And our continued silence is immoral. We sit silently while our government exchanged our leader of the free world status with leader of rogue nations lambast. And if the people will not stand up united and force our leaders to listen to our will, we will become the “infamous generation” whose silence enabled George W. Bush and the corporate elite to destroy the Republic.
Glenn Greenwald: “It is inconceivable on every level that the Democrats would capitulate in this way and it is disgraceful beyond what can be adequately described.”
Marjorie Cohn: “This is a Congress that has remained terrorized by the Bush administration since 9/11.”
Marjorie Cohn: “It takes the power out of judges hands and puts it in the power of Alberto Gonzales and the Director of Intelligence.”
Glenn Greenwald: “Two months earlier James Comey testified before the Senate that he and Aschroft and others had discovered that whatever it was that they were doing from 2001 to 2004 was so illegal, so unconscionable, that they had all decided to resign en masse from the government unless that behavior seized immediately.” And Greenwald interviewed Senator Chris Dodd this weekend, “and I asked him whether or not Senators had any idea of how they had been using this secret spying in order to spy on Americans - what these additional programs are, what it was that they were doing that made James Comey and John Ashcroft threaten to resign from the government - he has absolutely no idea nor do the other Senators.”
In other words, Congress passed a law for which it knows nothing about but that we know was so unconscionable that John Ashcroft threatened to resign over it. And if that is not scary enough, the rubber stamp judges of the FISA court have been replaced by Alberto Gonzales.
Marjorie Cohn: “Even though I am a criminal defense attorney, I quite enjoyed writing up a sample indictment of Alberto Gonzales for War Crimes. He's a war criminal because it was memos that he signed and policies that he put into place, that he convinced Bush to put into place, that led to torture of prisoners in US custody.”
“Torture is illegal under our law. It's illegal under three treaties we have ratified -- the Geneva Conventions, the Convention Against Torture and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. And notwithstanding the Bush administration's distaste for treaties and so-called international law, our Constitution has a provision called the Supremacy Clause and it says that treaties shall be the supreme law of the land. That means that treaties are US law. And pursuant to those treaties we have enacted two federal US statutes -- the Torture Statute and the War Crimes Act. Under the War Crimes Act, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions constitute war crimes. So torture is illegal, all the time. And, in fact, the Torture Convention says, no exceptional circumstances, even a state of war can ever be used as a justification for torture.”
And yet we torture at Gitmo, Abu-Ghareb, all around Iraq, Afghanistan and at CIA black-sites.
Glenn Greenwald: “The greatest threat, the truly unresolved issue is whether we will have a military confrontation with Iran prior to the end of the Bush presidency.”
Amy Goodman: “And yet your explanation of the Democrats and how they are dealing with the president at his lowest polling ever -- perhaps in modern polling history, still caving in bill after bill.”
Glenn Greenwald: “What is so baffling about it is, i think people forget that immediately before the midterm election in 2006, Karl Rove's strategy was to force a vote on the military commissions act and warrantless eavesdropping.” And Democrats voted against both and the Republicans tried to make a huge deal about Democrats being weak on terror. “And the Republicans got crushed with that strategy. And Democrats refuse to realize that that strategy no longer works. Americans are largely immune to this fear-mongering.”
Marjorie Cohn: “The war was premeditated, deliberate, violation of the law. The UN Charter, also a treaty, also part of US law says the only two instances where a country can use force against another is in self-defense or when the Security Council agrees. And there was never any evidence that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to us or any other country...and the Bush administration knew that...they intended to invade Iraq since way before 9/11. And now it's really clear why they did that. And that is to install huge permanent military bases, the biggest in the world, and the biggest US embassy in the world in Baghdad. And to privatize Iraq's oil. They are trying to push through this Iraqi oil law that even Congress is touting as a benchmark for Iraqi progress and it would give control of 3/4 of Iraq's oil to foreign oil companies.”
“It is very important not to say that the war was a mistake, the war is being fought incompetently. The war is illegal and it is also immoral. It is killing thousands of US soldiers. It is killing tens of thousands of Iraqis and draining our national treasury. And the majority of American people know this. But Congress has not caught on yet. ”
Now that I have your attention, click your way over to Anything They Say, where Bhc has returned after a short hiatus with a powerful sweeping piece, PIPELINES AND IMPERIAL MISSIONS, on the Bushies and the Middle East that will take your breath away. I cannot remember an article so breathtaking in its scope and I read Harper's!
Bhc covers all the well-known angles and facts, starting with the now familiar 1992 Defense Planning Guide which outlines the case for American empire. Additionally, he pulls in his unparalleled knowledge of all things oil, from pipelines to the Iraqi Oil Law, which are key to understanding the Bushies foreign policy. And before all is said and done, Bhc takes readers on a tour de force of the ever important currency and commodity markets and the actions and reasoning behind moves from recently emerging powers Russia, China and Iran. And this is but a cursory view of the subjects covered in the post. Like I said, it is truly sweeping.
But, don't let the scope and length of the article scare you away. Where Bhc shines, and has always shined, is in tying so many seemingly disparate facts into one wholly readable story. By the end, what now appears to be a tangled web of unrelated stories, propaganda and political maneuvering, is unraveled into a perfect web that is supported by the facts and common sense. All of which makes it odd that this story will be entirely new to many, if not, most.
With the above in mind, those who get their news solely from the mainstream media are advised to proceed cautiously and prepare themselves to be shocked by the truth. Of course, we Americans don't much like the truth. “We'd rather be lied to about war and then get pissed about the lie than admit to why we really went there.”
Sanity interlaced with wisdom on the foreign policy front make this a much watch. And, as Bhc writes, it is quite sad that such insightful analysis is relegated to Comedy Central.
While news of the Bush/Saud relationship relationship unraveling is shocking, it pales in comparison to what might be Wolf Blitzer's first memorable line ever:
"Even when you think things can't get worse, they clearly can"
Israelis have always been terrible at public relations. I've heard people reason that surviving the Middle East requires a harsh personality that does not translate well to winning the public relations war. Some think they lose the battle solely based on unflattering, throaty accents. Well, I have a new theory - stupidity.
Well, if establishing a new center honoring the most hated man in the Arab and Muslim worlds is not the height of stupidity, I don't know what is:
United States President George Bush was informed on Tuesday of an initiative to establish a center under his name in Israel, as a sign of gratitude for his support for the country and its security.
It appears, at a minimum, that Israel's leadership is as much opposed to peace as their Arab neighbors. Worse, Israel is putting a lot of faith in a man opposed by 70% of his own countrymen and somewhere near 90% of the world. If the Israeli populous does not awaken to this stupidity soon it may quickly turn perilous.
Preview to the a new documentary Breakdown which, at a minimum, dispels the notion that we did Iraqis any favors by disposing of Saddam. Make no mistake about it, Iraq is far worse off today than it ever was under the former dictator and all around bad guy.
In Bob Woodward's new book, "State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III" the president is said to live in a state of willful denial about the situation in Iraq and insists there will be no pullout, even "if Laura and Barney are the only ones who support me." While this inflexibility has been apparent for some time, Woodward's validation is proof Bush is unfit to be commander in chief. He is rigid, does not listen to his commander's on the ground, or anyone for that matter, and would not change course in Iraq if Jesus descended from the Heavens and so ordered him. This endangers the lives of our soldiers in Iraq, security around the world and our safety at home.
Subtract the terrorists from the equation and the United States has never been in more peril than it is today. Our civil liberties are quickly going the way of our democracy and may soon reach the point of no return and our president, whose reality has always been fuzzy, has now completely lost touch. Add to this a creeping paranoia and deep seated religious fundamentalism and sense of victimization shared by the president and the religious right, not to mention a failing economy, and we are now sitting on ticking time bomb that could easily go off without so much as another word from Osama or al Qaeda.
And, for the record, none of this was unforeseen. Long before Ron Suskind labeled it a "faith-based" administration there was plenty of evidence that "the traditional policy-making process involving methodical analysis and debate [was] routinely subverted" as Woodward writes today. Thus, when Woodward states that "the administration’s management of the war as being improvisatory and ad hoc, like a pickup basketball game, and argues that it continually tried to give the public a rosy picture" he could be writing about any part or the administration.
Unforeseen, however, was that in addition to a faith-based presidency, we would also have a class of first graders running the country. There is the President who doesn't know the first thing about foreign policy trying to reshape the Middle East to impress daddy. There's the dad who knows the kid is going to fail but keeps quiet to let the kid be his own man proving that he still does not know the price of a carton of milk. There's the son who picks a Secretary of Defense much like high school students pick prom dates -- to piss off his parents who don't trust the person. There's Condi who cries to her boss that Rummy ignores her and won't return her calls but a President too busy exchanging fart jokes with Rove to care.
In between the fart jokes and nap time, they run the (semi) free world. Please be advised that I am raising the terror level to "you have got to be kidding me" red. Everyone is encouraged to pack a bag with a valid passport and map a quick exit strategy strictly as precautionary measure. But understand that the Bush presidency is not yet 3/4 over and it will only continue to get worse. Scary.
Fox's Brit Hume wonders why Muslims are raising a stink about the US invasion of Iraq but were fine with our invasion of Afghanistan.
I wonder in this short mashup whether there is nothing Hume will say or line he will not cross in the name of partisan hackery. The answer, well, it's “hard to say”.
In Bob Woodward's new book, 
