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WHO RULES: THE ISRAEL LOBBY
OR UNCLE SAM?
The answer
at last! Uri Avnery, former Knesset member, assesses the Lobby's
power. "If the Israeli government wanted a law tomorrow
annulling the 10 Commandments, 95 U.S. Senators (at least) would
sign the bill forthwith." But, yes, in the end the dog wags
the tail.Fifty
years ago Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" blew the cobwebs
out of millions of young minds and drove a stake through the
heart of Eisenhower's America. Lenni Brenner remembers Ginsberg
in the East Village.Dr Mengele died in exile, in disguise. Dr Ishii
died rich and recognized, in his own Tokyo home. Christopher
Reed on Japanese WW2 medical tortures and how the U.S. covered
them up.CounterPunch
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Now!
A great American has passed away--John
Kenneth Galbraith. He was 97 years old and still involved with
the issues of our time.
Galbraith's most famous book
is The
Affluent Society (1958). In this book Galbraith argued that
Americans were good at making money, but neglectful of the wider
public interest.
Alas, the same is true today.
The environment always suffers from the greed of developers and
a number of other well organized interest groups that pull political
strings. I have seen enough in my life to know that Galbraith
was right that the "free market" is not always the
answer. All too often, the "free market" is merely
organized interests pulling political strings behind ideological
cover.
Today the greed of CEOs and
short-term shareholders is destroying the American middle class.
Why pay an American to do a job that can be outsourced to a foreigner
for far less cost or performed by a foreigner brought in on a
H-1B or L-l visa. American organizations and their public relations
operatives spread disinformation that there are shortages of
engineers, nurses, schoolteachers, and so on in America, and
that the need has to be met by bringing in foreigners at less
pay.
Offshoring of jobs and manufacturing
are said to benefit Americans with lower prices, thus making
them richer even as they lose their professional and middle class
jobs. "Free market" economists, subservient to ideology
or business research grants, produce "studies" that
reassure the Americans who are being decimated that giving their
jobs to lesser paid foreigners is good for America.
Just shut up and quit being so selfish. Millions of people are
better off buying Wal-Mart's Chinese-produced goods thanks to
your lost of job.
One obvious problem with these
claims is that when Americans lose good jobs to foreigners, the
American economy loses consumer buying power. The corporations
and their paid for economists are maximizing short-run CEO bonuses
and short-run shareholder capital gains at the expense of the
American consumer market and long-term strength of the US economy.
The corporations think they will be able to sell to mass Chinese
and Indian markets, but, of course, access to those consumer
markets will be blocked by those governments once their domestic
firms have the western technologies.
Galbraith could puncture the
inanities that pass for "free market economics" better
than anyone. Don't read me wrongly. There is a tremendous case
for market economics. The fallibility of government is a well
documented story. I am saying that there are a large number of
special interests that disguise themselves with free market claims,
and that these special interests, not true free market economics,
determine US policy.
Today we need Galbraith more
than we did in his own time. American economists have made themselves
irrelevant. They don't address real issues. Lost in abstractions
and ideology, the economy collapses around them while they give
assurances that all is well.
America owes its former economic
greatness to World War I and World War II, which destroyed Europe
and Japan and left the US as the only manufacturer. As part of
its cold war strategy, America gave itself away and has today
a hollowed out economy based on consumer debt.
Under the Bush regime, the
price of gold has sky-rocketed from $240 an ounce to $660 per
ounce. That tells us something about the confidence the world
has in the dollar as reserve currency.
John Kenneth Galbraith said
"the total alteration in underlying circumstances has not
been squarely faced. As a result, we are guided, in part, by
ideas that are relevant to another world."
His words are more true today
than when he wrote them.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury
in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the
Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of
National Review. He is coauthor of The
Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com
Now
Available
from CounterPunch Books!
The Case
Against Israel
By Michael Neumann
CounterPunch
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