Reporting with a blindfold

There is no doubt that the global economy has rocked the news world and obviously that will have an effect on the ability of journalists to write stories but this is just ridiculous.

First of all, can someone explain what the difference is between a car bomb in Iraq that is blamed on "insurgents" and one that is "an attack that had all the hallmarks of Al Qaeda’s regional arm." Is their some kind of standards organization that monitors all this?

I dread to think of how Worth came up with this all the way from Beirut. Even within Yemen reporting is almost impossible because of the US-backed regime and the "constraints" it places on journalists there. Of course this is not necessary given the "hallmark" aspects of NYT reporting:

Use names that Americans recognize in the first and last paragraphs.
Avoid explaining the context of a conflict and bashing US aligned factions.

Thankfully it was a short article.

Oh denial...

They have been using the same bloody picture of this monkey for 15 years now. The reason may be that, when I met him at least, his face looked like he had been covered in Vaseline.. he was so shiny (not good for pictures im sure). Moreover, what he seems to forget is that his people are no longer the rough and tumble desert nomads of the past but a bunch of overweight slovenliness desert rats that no longer have the ability to go through a metal detector due to their circumference.

Israeli notion of Justice

Its hardly any wonder that the state of Israel has little notion of what justice is. For one, they don't have a constitution, meaning that there is no covenant between the people of Israel/Palestine and it's government. Whats more important however is that, since there is no constitution, the basis of any legal decision is founded upon"the interpretation of the jurisdictional system." In other words, the whimsical dictates of whichever judge happens to be interpreting whichever law is in front of him/her on that particular day. Not that other nations function much differently; in the US, Russia or Eygpt the judge is more or less the supreme decider of what any law really means and expends punishment accordingly. Nonetheless, the lack of a constitution provides no avenue for recourse or grievance since there are no inherent rights granted to persons living under "Israeli Law". The reason being that, in essence, the people of the land (Jew and Arab) never agreed to formalize their relationship with their government and hence there is no legal pretext under which the "state" can legitimately hold people to "the law."

Israel however is not alone when it comes to being without a constitution. The most notable of which is the UK (dubiously the country that previously controlled what is now known as Israel and Palestine). The absence of this pretext also removes the possibility of holding the state of Israel to it's own standard- a written constitution. Thus allowing the Israelis (and the English in times past) to interpret the laws that they themselves drew up and impose that interpretation on the people they conquered and expelled. An historical occurrence that goes unquestioned inside of the worlds power circles, and more or less passed over with regards to mainstream academic discourse and narrative.

What is more disturbing however is the extent to which the "international community" will go to preserve the immunity of the Jewish state despite their own notions of the rule of law. Case in point. Spain's own Foreign Minister has the chutzpa to promise another country to amend his own laws to suit the purposes of another country!! It pains me to think that all the anti-Semites of this world are pointing fingers at all of us saying "I told you so!"; and It pains me even more that, in this case, I will not to have any argument to make against them.

Selective reasoning at its worst

Look at this idiot pontificate

Despite the fact that the conflict in Sri Lanka was not created by dumping a bunch of people from eastern Europe on the island and then claiming ancestral rights to it, he then goes on to compare the majority Sinhalese to the Jews living in Israel. Someone give this man a calculator (or has this type of mathematics become too painful for Israelis to do). It is just not the case that the Jewish population of Palestine outnumbers that of the Palestinians; not today and not in 1948. If you count all the displaced Palestinians who DO have a right to be counted (2/3 of Jordan included) then the Jews become a minority.

In essence these arguments are frivilous. Today and throughout history numbers only matter to the simple minded and those who were there "first". In some cases it is more obvious than others; the case of the Native Americans for instance. In others it is not so; case in point.

Either way, Freund comes off like a ranting idiot who had an idea while masturbating and trying to make sure his 4th grader glasses dont fall off his face.

Whats more, to add insult to injury and as my friend MG points out "When there are so many Israeli lobbyists in Washington which so heavily influence the country's politics, then as a result, anything the Jewish state should be scrutinized much more severely." Hear, hear!

Im sure all that just slipped Michael's and the editor's at Jpost minds when they decided to fire this one off. Soon we will see Freundbquoted the NYT as a "Middle East Expert" I bet my life on it.

A conversation with LDB

Below is a conversation I had with my good friend LDB in response to this

6:19 PM LDB:
I must say

The coverage of this conflict in America

is far better than the Lebanon war coverage

at least nuances seem to be slowly permeating the american mainstream

6:20 PM its still lightyears from balanced coverage, or any type of understanding

but the vocabulary is starting to change

6:21 PM "Mainstream American politicians are famously reluctant to utter the words "suffering" and "Palestinian" in the same sentence. By breaking from that tradition, Clinton appeared to send a signal to Israel that that it would not have a free hand to operate in the Middle East."

7:22 PM me:
garbage... making the Palestinian issue a humanitarian one as opposed to a political one allows the US government to adopt humanitarian initiatives that further prolong the process as opposed to the much needed political solutions that would require Israel to make significant concessions

7:26 PM LDB:
i don't know that the two don't go hand in hand

7:27 PM I think those two are far from mutually exclusive, even if some people would like them to be.

7:29 PM Ive seen much more American coverage that deals with the daily oppression of Palestinians during "peacetimes" than I ever have; understanding that the gazans don't even posses a quasi-state at this point is crucial to devising political solutions for the region

7:30 PM look at the coverage

7:31 PM the Americans only recently were reminded that their own army can do wrong things, now, by extension, their being reminded that foreign countries supported by the same country are fallible as well

7:32 PM Like it or not, Condi and Gates, have since 2006 had a much more sober approach to foreign policy

the bush snr. realists took over in the bush administration

and this represents a different approach to Israel as well

7:34 PM i think their is a general disenchantment with US middle eastern policy, especially among democratic voters, and that's bleeding into media and politics

23 minutes

7:57 PM me: hear hear...just wait till there is another attack in the US then they'll be all worried about it again...

idiots

7:59 PM i never understand Americans... why they just don't get it

Denial without an inkling of recovery

The strangest thing about the state of the global economy today may seem to be the squiggly lines diving to the bottom of line charts across the world, but to any person who holds government accountable for the actions of their markets (especially when they are the ones who supposedly regulate them) it is evident that the main concern of governments is to avoid dealing with the repercussions of their actions (or more accurately lack thereof) through the use of whatever monetary and fiscal power tools they have at their disposal .

For people who have a memory that spans longer than the last economic expansion they will remember the length and breath of the last recession as well as the previous economic crises subsequent to the great depression. What was a fear then has become a striking reality now. Wether we like it or not our global economy has become so interdependent that it resembles a jenga tower where there are no blocks left to remove.

So rather than attempt to restructure the world economy so that the next 'genius' investment banker's instrument doesn't break the back of the world financial camel, the heads of central banks the world over (with only a few exceptions) are pushing for increased integration of financial markets and less impediments related to the cost of credit (lower base interest rates). Moreover, when a $700 billion bail-out is proposed all the politicos begin to scream socialism. Yet when the same central bank pumps in $800 billion that came from thin air or taxpayer's pockets, no one really voices any criticism.


Like a child who is not willing to take his hand out of the cookie jar, the central banks of the world are not willing let go of the unsustainable financial system that they have come up with. The initial calls for increased global regulation have fallen on deaf ears. The world is now flush with opportunity for anyone to acquire credit at extremely low cost and there is no consideration for the inflationary effects of injecting cash left-right-and-center.

So why isn't this all working out? Because the highest priority of govenments the world over is is that money is made by those that have it continues to be made by them. Considerations regarding redistribution of wealth, monopolization, and punishment for organizations that brought down the world economy don't even register on the radar of the worlds central banks or in the halls of government.

Whatever doubt remained that we live in a fully integrated and interdependent global economy has now been completely discredited. But inherent to the nature of the economic beast that we have created is the calamity that occurs in every national economy when everything goes belly-up. We see that now as poor and developing countries suffer even more from the crisis and emerging markets are not longer seen as the invincible economic behemoths that they once were (GCC is the best example).

What we should be learning at this point is that no company is worth saving if they are not efficient or willing to embrace the social responsiblity that goes hand-in-hand with being one of the Jenga blocks that is holding up the global economy. Until this is realized first by the people of this world and subsequently by governments we can only expect that the next financial crisis will have even worse consequences than the one we are currently in. In the end, unknowingly it is the people of the world who will suffer (not the investment houses) because they didnt take action against their governments unwillingness to rein in the corporate criminals of the world.

The nerve of some people

The fact that GWB, AKA "that idiot", can convene a meeting of the 20 most powerful nations on the back of a global financial crisis and blurt out statements regarding the need for MORE liberalization as opposed to protectionism, is a sure sign that the world has not learned a thing from the global financial crisis.