Friday News Roundup - International
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-12-02/friday-news-roundup-international
The world’s central banks take coordinated action to help relieve the euro zone crisis, at least in the short term. France and Germany work on a more far-reaching solution. In England, hundreds of thousands of public employees walk off the job to protest government austerity measures. Iran faces new sanctions from the European Union after an attack on the British embassy in Tehran. In Egypt, Islamists are poised to win in the early round of the first parliamentary elections since Hosni Mubarak was ousted. And Hillary Clinton visits Myanmar, the first visit by a U.S. Secretary of State in a half century. She offers closer ties if it boosts democratic reforms. A panel of journalists join guest host Susan Page for the international hour of our Friday News Roundup
Guests
Yochi Dreazen
senior national security correspondent, National Journal magazine.
Mary Beth Sheridan
night editor for foreign and national news, The Washington Post.
Hisham Melhem
Washington bureau chief, Al-Arabiya News Channel
Comments
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These guests should be mentioning the deficit when they talk about anything to do with the budget. Ask them if they know how much the government borrowed for each citizen!!!!! (1.2 trill divided by 365 million = what? Over$3000. for each child that they have to pay back).
Will Hillary be satisfied when the Burmese army quits raping dissidents, becomes a civilian Oligarchy, and merely harasses women sexually when they apply for jobs? Look at the rotten eggs in your own basket Mrs. Clinton before inspecting Asian hen houses. I see how you send counterterrorist policing to Bahrain and other hot spots. You have acquired those Maddy Albright values I guess. Stacks of women's and children's dead bodies, but war profit makes it all worthwhile.
RE: Comments On Iran.
It's important for us to remember that the reason we have been at war with Iran for the last 30 years is that the Iranians had the temerity in 1979 to overthrow the dictator that we installed there in ~1950 (and supported for the next 30 years with, among other things, CIA assistance in setting up and running a vast secret police apparatus with well equipped torture chambers) to provide extremely profitable access to Iranian oil reserves for western oil companies. And the new Iranian government didn't even bow down and thank us for our efforts -- going so far as to kick the western oil companies out of the country. Certainly this justifies our unrelenting hostility toward Iran with economic warfare, assassinations of Iranian people, support for anti-Iran terrorist groups, etc.
If we just continue the war long enough, we can undoubtedly restore the dictator to his throne. USA!! USA!! USA!!
Obama and Biden have LOST THE PEACE in Iraq.
All we got back was body bags and huge numbers of maimed soldiers!
The Chinese and Russians got ALL THE OIL, without firing a shot.
Obama does NOT WANT us to have any of the oil.
Biden is nothing less than a "gladhander," not a negotiater.
Your guests have it right. Iran and Pakistan will move in as soon as we move out.
All this FOR NOTHING. 1 trillion dollars and all that pain, with ZERO BENEFITS from negotiating the "PEACE"
This may yet be Obama's largest failure. You heard it here first.
did not listen to spend 10 million late eighties...
'too' expensive to stabilize democratic post Soviet Afghanistan...
same experts now talking about cutting spending... and attacking Iran.
Foreign aid supposed to be surplus weapons or US- not food or cash silly
no one remembers history... what was the difference between ignorance and apathy? Nevermind- don't know and don't care.
Speaking of lies and fiscal irresponsibility, wasn’t it conservatives who were in power in Greece during the majority of the run-up of Greek debt? Aren’t they the ones who provide tax havens for corporations and millionaires in countries around the world? Wasn’t it Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs who sold “PIGS” CDO’s replete with toxic garbage? Your guests are mischaracterizing this issue with their own lies. The European “debt” crisis was originally a credit crisis; in fact, it still is. How convenient for the financial industries to have the issue framed in this way, rather than in the way it deserves to be framed: A lending-based banking crisis rooted in fraud, the securitization process, and the failed policies of economic neo-liberalism? I would not want to see the ECB take the same approach to this crisis as the Fed did post Lehman, but in no case should we lose sight of the fact that this global financial crisis was created by deregulation and a risk distribution business model that created a $700 trillion global derivatives market, one that neo-cons and financiers hope to rationalize on the backs of wage-earners, taxpayers, and consumers everywhere. People like Hisham and Yoshi are not only arrogantly demanding that Europeans unqualifiedly accept austerity measures designed to rationalize this huge market, but also to blame themselves for its creation in the bargain.
Is the West to emulate the work ethic exhibited in repressive regimes like Turkey and China, now? This ongoing characterization of people in indebted countries such as Greece and Italy as profligates and/or lazy is really nothing more than boldfaced bigotry, and should be challenged by the host. We see it here in the U.S., also—in attitudes toward the unemployed, proffered by neo-cons. We saw it previously against blacks in the 60’s, by Birchers; against Jews in 30’s Germany, by Nazis. (Actually, Birchers give equal treatment.) Against Greeks, or workers anywhere who receive union wages or generous public pensions, it’s just another insidious form of bigotry—class bigotry—asking people to hate and resent. Odd, coming from a group of people whose primary identification with scripture comes from the coveting commandment, as if it were the only one ever written. The truth is, conservatives of all stripes simply wish to subordinate all labor to the interests of big business, and all countries to the tools of high finance, destroying democracies as required. The eurozone fiscal union proposal promises to do just that. In essence, it is asking European countries to allow the financial industries to usurp democratic governance—economic dictatorship, in effect. It will never happen.