Some see Larry Summers the “loser”; others see Larry the “brilliant”

Destroyer of masses feeds richer: lauding, lambasting Clinton Harvard Obama sweetheart

I

 guess the president’s judgment is why his figures are falling. Americans who are paying attention are finally seeing a leader who is just talk, a good reader of teleprompters; but substantively, seriously and dangerously inept

Editing, brief comment by Carolyn Bennett

(Reagan) Clinton to Obama via pyramid schemes, Ivy Leagues

 

Clinton, Summers, Rubin

American economist Lawrence Henry (Larry) Summers was the William Jefferson Clinton administration’s U. S. Secretary of the Treasury (1999 to 2001)

Summers was a leading voice within the Clinton Administration arguing against American leadership in greenhouse gas reductions and against U.S. participation in the Kyoto Protocol (ref. internal documents made public in 2009) 

Geithner
Summers

Damaging deregulation: Summers advises Congress

Obama
Summers
Bernanke

On May 7, 1998, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) issued a Concept Release soliciting input from regulators, academics, and practitioners to determine ‘how best to maintain adequate regulatory safeguards without impairing the ability of the OTC (Over-the-counter) derivatives market to grow and the ability of U.S. entities to remain competitive in the global financial marketplace.’

On July 30, 1998, then-Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Summers testified before the U.S. Congress that ‘the parties to these kinds of contract are largely sophisticated financial institutions that would appear to be eminently capable of protecting themselves from fraud and counterparty insolvencies.’

Rubin
Greenspan
Summers

Summers, like Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan (Reagan to 2006, tenure described as  “a leading cause of the subprime mortgage crisis”) and Robert Rubin (U. S. Secretary of the Treasury in first and second Clinton administrations, veteran of Goldman Sachs, director/senior counselor of Citigroup) who also opposed the concept release, offered no proof that the contracts would not be misused by financial institutions. Instead, Summers stated that ‘to date there has been no clear evidence of a need for additional regulation of the institutional OTC derivatives market, and we would submit that proponents of such regulation must bear the burden of demonstrating that need.’

Obama
Summers

In 1999, Summers endorsed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act which removed the separation between investment and commercial banks, saying ‘With this bill, the American financial system takes a major step forward towards the 21st Century.’

F

rom 2001 to 2006, Lawrence Summers was President of Harvard University and resigned this position “in the wake of a no-confidence vote by the Harvard faculty.”

Deregulation, Disestablishment, Destruction

While president of Harvard and in that position a member of the Harvard Corporation (which bears ‘the school’s ultimate fiduciary responsibility’) Summers approved the decision to enter into the swap contracts and the University entered into a series (totaling $3.52 billion) of interest rate swaps, financial derivatives that can be used for either hedging or speculation. The decision to enter into the swap positions attributed to Summers has been termed a ‘massive interest-rate gamble’ that ended badly.

Harvard's
Summers

By late 2008, those positions had lost approximately $1 billion in value, a setback which forced Harvard to borrow significant sums in distressed market conditions to meet margin calls on the swaps.

 In the end, Harvard paid $497.6 million in termination fees to investment banks and has agreed to pay another $425 million over 30–40 years.

In the Charles H. Ferguson-directed 2010 documentary film “Inside Job” about the late-2000s financial crisis ─ ‘the systemic corruption of the United States by the financial services industry and the consequences of that systemic corruption’ ─ Lawrence Summers is presented as one of the key figures behind the late-2000s financial crisis. Ferguson points out the economist’s role in what he characterizes as the deregulation of many domains of the financial sector. The film explores how changes in the policy environment and banking practices helped create the financial crisis.

2010 on

In 2010 Summers, a professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, was the Barack Obama administration’s Director of the White House United States National Economic Council.

In June 2011, Summers joined the board of directors of Square, a company developing an electronic payment service and became a special adviser at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. In 2012, Summers joined the board of person-to-person lending company Lending Club.

A

s the Obama government in the summer of 2013 ponders a loser who, at the expense of the masses, has been rewarded for being a loser, Al Lewis writes at the Wall Street Journal:

 

The FED

Mr. Summers is a master at ‘failing up.’

Screw up at one job, get a better one.

He’s now considered a front-runner to replace Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke in January.

“Mr. Bernanke’s response to the financial crisis has been to digitally print trillions of dollars and give most of it to the biggest banks that caused the crisis,” Lewis writes. “This seems to have averted another Great Depression, but at what cost?

“Eventually, the Fed must ease this money out of the system. And any time Mr. Bernanke even suggests he might do this, the stock market nose dives, spoiling the whole high-wire act. Mr. Bernanke is smart enough to step away before the Fed must unwind this unprecedented position,” Lewis says.

“This task will be like defusing a roadside bomb—and the man to do it is Larry Summers?” 

 

A

lso weighing in this week on a “loser” that just won’t go away, columnist Robert Scheer writes, “The idea that Barack Obama would still consider appointing Lawrence Summers to head the Federal Reserve ─ rather than order an investigation into this former White House official’s Wall Street payments, reported Friday by The Wall Street Journal ─ mocks the president’s claimed concern for the disappearing middle class.

 

“Summers is in large measure responsible for that dismal outcome; and twice now, after top level economic postings in both the Clinton and Obama administrations, he has returned to gorge himself at the Wall Street trough.”

Scheer recalls the Summers history then sums up the “trillions … passed on to the banks to relieve them of the burden of the toxic derivatives they created ─ derivatives that then-Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers testified to Congress were no threat to the ‘thriving market’ that ‘has assumed a major role in our own economy and become a magnet for derivative business from around the world.’ No threat there because, ‘given the nature of the underlying assets involved ... there would seem to be little scope for market manipulation. ... ‘

“This is an idiotic statement,” Scheer charges, “by someone [U.S. President Barack] Obama considers brilliant or, as the president put it when Summers left the White House in September 2010 to get back into the big money game:

‘I will always be grateful that at a time of great peril for our country, a man of Larry’s brilliance, experience and judgment was willing to answer the call and lead our economic team.’

“What leadership?” Scheer asks and answers, citing a most recent McClatchy-Marist poll and an Associated Press survey showing:

54 percent of Americans think the U.S. remains in a recession

60 percent of Americans see the country ‘going in the wrong direction.’

‘Four out of five U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty, or reliance on welfare for at least part of their lives ─ a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream.’ (AP)

 

Reasons cited for the deteriorating economic security: ‘an increasingly globalized U.S. economy, the widening gap between rich and poor, the loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs’ (AP)

“That,” Scheer concludes, “is what Obama conceded in his speech last week [and] which underscores how outrageous it is that he would consider bringing back ‘brilliant’ Larry ─ who caused so much of that misery.”

W

ho will tell the president that it is time to end the corruption, the incest, the destruction?

 

Who will show this president how? Who will instill in him the courage to do what needs to be done for the public good?  Or is this just too much to ask of America’s “losers,” America's consumers, and America’s “brilliant”?

Sources and notes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Greenspan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Rubin 

“Larry Summers ‘Failing Up’ to the Fed ─ Mess Up at One Job, Get a Better One (Al Lewis, columnist for Dow Jones Newswires in Denver, blogs at tellittoal.com), July 27, 2013, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324564704578627891340892004.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

“Gag Me with Lawrence Summers” (by Robert Scheer), July 29, 2013, http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/gag_me_with_lawrence_summers_20130729/

Robert Scheer

Author of The Great American Stickup: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street (published 2010).

Scheer has written seven other books including the collection Thinking Tuna Fish, Talking Death: Essays on the Pornography of Power; With Enough Shovels: Reagan, Bush and Nuclear War; and America After Nixon: The Age of Multinationals; The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq; Playing President: My Close Encounters with Nixon, Carter, Bush I, Reagan and Clinton – and How They Did Not Prepare Me for George W. Bush; The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America.

An American journalist, Scheer has taught at Antioch College, City College of New York, UC Irvine, UCLA and UC Berkeley; and is a clinical professor at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication; he appears weekly on the nationally syndicated political analysis radio program “Left, Right & Center” produced at and syndicated by public radio station KCRW in Santa Monica; he writes a column for Truthdig, which is nationally syndicated by Creators Syndicate. Scheer was born and raised in the Bronx, New York City to a Russian Jewish mother and Protestant father, both garment workers. After his formative schooling years in the Bronx, Scheer took a degree in economics at City College of New York, studied at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University then took graduate studies in economics at the Center for Chinese Studies at UC Berkeley. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Scheer

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

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Tool at court conflicts interests, manages message

Beyond Manning: 

Rights under siege by dying breed

Editing, end comment by 

Carolyn Bennett

Denial of access

According to the Washington Post, the judge in the Bradley Manning case “wrote her (master’s) thesis on what was to prove a remarkably prescient topic: the media’s right of access to military cases. In a published version” of the thesis, Denise Lind “indicated that she supported opening up military justice to scrutiny, arguing that existing restrictions on access to proceedings ‘violate the media First Amendment right of access.’”

Lind-Manning court

Fourteen years later

Journalist Alexa O’Brien reported today in a Democracy Now discussion that in the military court-martial of Pvt. Bradley Manning, Judge Colonel Denise Lind has contended that “there was no First Amendment legal precedent for public access to the court documents.” 

In lieu of First Amendment rights of free press, O’Brien said, Judge Lind “would read these really long, mile-a-minute recitations of the motions into the court record,” depriving direct access; “so that we in the media operations center had to actually scribble these things down in our notebooks.”

This breach and its consequences are enormous and far-reaching, O’Brien said,

We are talking about setting legal precedent for the future of national security reporting and also whistleblowers;

More than that: this judge’s contention contains a threat to people who are simply using the Internet, communicating in legally protected speech (First Amendment rights)

…because the government in this case is essentially asserting that (since) the enemy uses the Internet and you publish intelligence or you aid the enemy with whatever is classified as intelligence, which in this case only has to be true and useful to the enemy (the government’s definition), if it doesn’t have anything to do with classified information — you could be brought up on the charge of aiding the enemy.

O’Brien emphasizes that the press should have had access to public records in the Manning case; and it “tells you (the court's ruling: restricting access, re-interpreting the Bill of Rights) leans more toward a long record of Colonel Denise Lind’s deference (obsequiousness) to the government, the prosecution, and doing whatever she can to help them manage this trial and the public perception about it.”

Conflict or appearance of conflict of interest 

Corruption, Kickback?

Associate dean for academic affairs at the George Washington University Law School Lisa Schenck told the Washington Post she met Judge Denise Lind in 1999 when the two women “shared an office in the criminal law division at JAG’s (Judge Advocate General’s Corps) Rosslyn (Virginia)  headquarters.” At the same time Judge Lind is presiding over the Manning trial, she is teaching part time at GW. Schenck also revealed that Lind, according to the Post article, “has already been informed that she will take up a new position as a judge on the U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals, when the Manning trial ends”; however, Schenck assures the Post that Lind, reportedly a registered Democrat, “will not be swayed by the politics of the case.” 

It smells, Michael Ratner said today on Democracy Now.

The offer of the higher-court position Ratner said he “found pretty extraordinary.… (though) not necessarily illegal; but … it’s interesting to me that she’s going upstairs during the very trial that’s going on, given that promotion.

 

“It reminded me,” he said, “when… the judge in Daniel Ellsberg’s case, the federal judge during Ellsberg’s trial on espionage was offered to be the head of the FBI, secretly, by the Nixon administration. And, of course, there was a huge stink.” Now Judge (Col.) Denise Lind on the Manning case is being offered a higher position but there is no outrage from media.. 

“Think about the higher position:  she’s sitting up there on the higher court when the Bradley Manning conviction is going to be (assuming there’s a conviction because he’s already pleaded to 10 counts) reviewed. 

She won’t sit on it, but her fellow judges are going to be sitting there, and are they going to want to reverse one of their fellow judges? (he asks rhetorically)

So, basically, it stinks.  

Indeed

W

hen an inordinately powerful, incestuous cabal destroys the bedrock ─ constitutional law, human rights conventions ─ the great challenge to be faced by later, able generations, if their minds have not been further compromised by the gadgetry they consume, will be to reconstruct, to reestablish the “good” before moving forward.  

I expect the powerful and selfish are keenly aware of this. By the time their waste has run its course; when the corrupt have laid waste to all they can, taken from the land, its people, its principles ─ they will necessarily die off.

Sources and notes

“Bradley Manning Awaits Verdict after Trial Ends with Prosecution ‘Smears’ and Harsh Gov’t Secrecy,” July 29, 2013, http://www.democracynow.org/2013/7/29/bradley_manning_awaits_verdict_after_trial

“In Bradley Manning case, Judge Lind prefers to keep low profile but ruling may have big Impact” (Billy Kenber, Washington Post published: July 24), http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/more-than-bradley-mannings-fate-lies-with-judge-denise-lind-in-case-about-leaking-info/2013/07/24/fb546d14-f496-11e2-aa2e-4088616498b4_story.html

“A letter to my family and friends about the NDAA and me” by Alexa O'Brien on October 3, 2012 12:00 AM, http://www.alexaobrien.com/secondsight/ndaa_hedges_et/ndaa_letter_to_my_friends_and_family.html

Journalist Alexa O’Brien

Since January 2011, Alexa O’Brien has covered the WikiLeaks release of U.S. State Department Cables, JTF memoranda known as the ‘GTMO files’, and revolutions across Egypt, Bahrain, Iran, and Yemen, as well as the prosecution of Bradley Manning and the U.S. investigation into WikiLeaks. She has interviewed a preeminent U.S. foreign policy expert on the Cambodia cables, and published hours of interviews with former GTMO guards, detainees, defense lawyers, and human rights activists, as well as WikiLeaks media partners Andy Worthington, a GTMO historian and author; and Atanas Tchobanov, the Balkanleaks’ spokesman and co-editor of Bivol.bg.

As a result of her work covering the Global War on Terror; the 2011 revolutions across the Middle East and North Africa; and her extramural activities helping to organize the original occupation of Wall Street in New York and five other American cities on September 17, 2011, the U.S. Government and private security contractors attempted to falsely link her and a campaign finance reform group, which she helped found, to Al Qaeda and ‘cyber-terrorists’.

She subsequently became party to a lawsuit brought against the Obama administration for Section 1021(b)(2) of the National Defense Authorization Act FY2012 with author Chris Hedges and five other plaintiffs. Section 1021(b)(2) allows for the indefinite detention without trial or charges of anyone, who by mere suspicion alone are deemed by the Executive (branch of U.S. government) to be terrorist sympathizers.

Her testimony and submissions were central to U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest’s ruling granting a permanent injunction on Section 1021(b)(2). In June, the 2nd Circuit (was) expected to rule on the Department of Justice’s midnight appeal of Forrest’s September 2012 injunction.

For a year and a half, Alexa O’Brien has produced the only available pre-trial transcripts of Bradley Manning’s secret prosecution. She has provided (a) some of the only analysis available on his case, (b) a forensically reconstructed appellate exhibit list, (c) witness profiles, and (d) a searchable database of the available court record.

Because of her familiarity with the proceedings and investigative work, she has been able to ‘un-redact’ a selection of court documents.

The Freedom of the Press Foundation awarded her a generous grant for her work covering the Bradley Manning trial. Her work was shortlisted for the 2013 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism.

With a background in political philosophy, Alexa O’Brien began her professional life as a stringer in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, for a company that produced segments for the Asian Economic Channel. She went on to light motion picture film and television in the United States and internationally: in countries such as Haiti. Her work for the United Nations Population Fund ‘Worldwide Information Campaign’ was shown at The Hague International Forum; and she has lit numerous television shows and segments for CNN, the BBC, Arts & Entertainment, and the History Channel; as well as stills for photographer Steven Klein in American Vogue. http://www.alexaobrien.com/secondsight/about.html

JTF: Joint Task Force

A joint task force is a multi-service ad-hoc military formation. The task force concept originated with the United States Navy around the beginning of the Second World War in the Pacific.

‘Combined’ is the British-American military term for multi-national formations.

CTF - Commander Task Force, sometimes Combined Task Force

CCTF - Commander Combined Task Force

CJTF - Combined Joint Task Force

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Task_Force

“Transcript |U.S. v Pfc. Manning, Table of Contents” by Alexa O'Brien on April 10, 2013 11:59 PM, http://www.alexaobrien.com/secondsight/wikileaks/bradley_manning/transcripts/us_v_pfc_bradley_manning_transcripts.html

Human rights attorney Michael Ratner

Michael Ratner is “known for human rights activism” and he and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) are currently attorneys in the United States for publishers Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. Ratner was co-counsel in representing the Guantanamo Bay detainees before the United States Supreme Court, where, in June 2004, the court decided his clients have the right to test the legality of their detentions in court.

An attorney and President Emeritus of the non-profit human rights litigation organization (CCR) based in New York City, Ratner is also president of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) based in Berlin. He is a past president of the National Lawyers Guild and author of many books and articles including a textbook on international human rights; The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld: A Prosecution by Book; Against War with Iraq; Guantanamo: What the World Should Know. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Ratner

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

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Ancient nomads denied work, robbed of ancestral lands

Bedouin woman
1898-1914
Wikipedia image

Cries from Sinai: Bedouin subjected to needless crisis

Re-reporting, editing, end comment by Carolyn Bennett

Middle East: Asia/Africa bleeding

Contemporary
Bedouin man
 lighting camp fireJordan

Contemporary Bedouin shepherd
Syria

The Bedouin (also spelled Beduin; Arabic Badawi; plural Badw) are Arabic-speaking nomadic peoples of the Middle Eastern deserts: Arabia, Iraq, Syria, Jordan.

Bedouin warriors were the nucleus of the Muslim armies that invaded the Middle East and North Africa in the 7th century and later on. Most of the Bedouin tribes migrated from the Arabian Peninsula (to what is now Jordan) between the 14th and 18th centuries. Today Bedouins make up 33 to 40 percent of Jordan’s population.

Historically, the Bedouin engaged in nomadic herding, agriculture and sometimes fishing. They also earned income by transporting goods and people across the desert. Scarcity of water and of permanent pastoral land required them to move constantly.

Bedouin population today: 4,000,000 (Wikipedia figures)

Regions with significant populations

Saudi Arabia 1,119,000 (2000)	Iraq 1,437,000
Jordan 832,000	Libya 919,000
Syria 1,389,000	Sudan
Egypt - mainly in Sinai 894,000 (2007)	Eritrea 46,000
Kuwait 260,000	UAE 765,000
Israel 111,000 (2012)	Western Sahara 13,100
Mauritania 54,000	Bahrain
Qatar 39,000	Oman 28,000
Yemen	Palestine 30,000

 Child inspects a destroyed
security building
Rafah

Palestinian city, southern Gaza Strip

site of Rafah Border Crossing

only crossing between 

Gaza Strip and Egypt

  Denied

Natural gas pipeline
running through
the Sinai

In the 1950s, Saudi Arabia and Syria nationalized Bedouin range lands; Jordan severely limited goat grazing; and conflicts over land use have increased since then.

In most countries in the Middle East the Bedouin have no land rights, only users’ privilege; this is especially true for Egypt. Since the mid-1980s, the Bedouins who held desirable coastal property have lost control of much of their land as it was sold by the Egyptian government to hotel operators. The Egyptian government did not see the land as belonging to Bedouin tribes, but rather as a state property.

In the summer of 1999, the latest dispossession of land took place when the army bulldozed Bedouin-run tourist campgrounds north of Nuweiba as part of the final phase of hotel development in the sector, overseen by the Tourist Development Agency (TDA). The director of the Tourist Development Agency dismissed Bedouin rights to most of the land, saying that they had not lived on the coast prior to 1982. Their traditional semi-nomadic culture has left Bedouins vulnerable to such claims.

Militarized

Egyptian border guards

The 2011–2012 Egyptian revolution brought more freedom to the Sinai Bedouin; but because of “weapons smuggling into Gaza” after a number of terror attacks on the Egypt-Israel border, a new Egyptian government in the summer-fall of 2012 initiated a military operation in Sinai.

Egypt-to-Gaza commerce through underground-tunnels that had brought income to Bedouins and Palestinians on either side of the border was abolished by the Egyptian military. This army (long-standing recipient of U.S. aid) demolished more than 120 of tunnels, threatened local Bedouin and forced them to cooperate with state troops and officials.

Sinai Peninsula (Egypt) Bedouin

Bedouin reside largely in the Sinai Peninsula and in the Egyptian suburbs of Cairo. The past few decades were difficult for traditional Bedouin culture because of changing surroundings and construction of new resort towns on the Red Sea coast (e.g., Sharm el-Sheikh). Bedouin in Egypt face a number of challenges: erosion of traditional values, unemployment and various land issues.

Because employers routinely offer low wages to Bedouins living in the Sinai Peninsula, they did not benefit much from the area’s initial construction boom. Also Sudanese and Egyptians were imported to the Peninsula to take jobs as construction workers and laborers. When the tourist industry started to bloom, local Bedouins increasingly moved into new service positions ─ such as cab drivers, tour guides, campgrounds or cafe managers ─ but competition was steep and many Sinai Bedouins remained unemployed.

Scarce employment opportunities led Tarabin Bedouins and other Bedouin tribes living along the border between Egypt and Israel to involve themselves in cross-border drugs and weapons smuggling and human trafficking.

Still robbed and denied 

Demonized and militarized

Al Jazeera reporting

Rafahpopulation of 71,003
Goods, people
move via
underground tunnels 

Bedouins today are prohibited (officially) from owning land, serving in the army or police (civil service jobs), or profiting from local tourism. Many locals cannot claim ownership of the ancestral lands their families and tribes have been using for centuries.

“Since the Egyptian uprising in 2011,” Al Jazeera reported in late December last year, “the Sinai Peninsula, a vast land of mountains and deserts, has become increasingly volatile. The new government (overthrown in 2013) inherited a legacy of lawlessness caused by 30 years of neglect, marginalization and hostility between the Bedouins native to the region and the state.”

Increasing attacks on “army checkpoints and police stations” have prompted “calls for more development in the region, which many see as a possible solution to the unrest.”

Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines edition “The battle for the Sinai” reported on underlying causes and the continuing crisis for “half a million people” wedged between Israel and the Gaza Strip. “For decades,” the report said,

The people have been governed by a strong security paradigm and the Camp David accords with Israel – underwritten by billions of dollars in U.S. military aid. 

The documentary concludes with a quote from Hossam Baghat of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights:

 

‘Only the people of Sinai can defeat terrorism. The central government is not going to defeat terrorism; it is stoking terrorism through its practices.’

 

Cannot simultaneously
prevent and prepare
for
war

This quote could have been referring to the people of the United States and the U.S. government's foreign relations character, policies and practices.

Sources and notes

Bedouin profile Britannica and Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedouin

“In Pictures: Egypt's troubled Sinai Peninsula ─ The Sinai has become more volatile since Egypt’s revolution - the result, many say, of years of government neglect” (Mosaab Elshamy, last modified December 27, 2012, http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/2012/12/2012122484750886262.html

“The battle for the Sinai: Fault Lines examines the changing U.S.-Egyptian relationship through the lens of the Sinai Peninsula), December 19, 2012. Fault Lines can be seen on Al Jazeera English each week at the following times GMT: Tuesday: 2230; Wednesday: 0930; Thursday: 0330; Friday: 1630; Saturday: 2230; Sunday: 0930; Monday: 0330; Tuesday: 1630, http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/faultlines/2012/12/2012121874352233407.html

Al Jazeera images

Egypt’s troubled Sinai Peninsula (in pictures)

A natural gas pipeline running through the Sinai has been targeted more than a dozen times since the 2011 uprising. Bedouins who oppose the peace treaty and export of gas to Israel have attacked the pipeline, which starts in the building pictured above and extends hundreds of kilometers through the desert.

A child inspects a destroyed security building in Rafah, which was targeted by armed groups during the uprising. The Mubarak government's iron-fist policy in Sinai alienated Bedouins and resulted in violent attacks on state buildings during the uprising.

In the border town of Rafah, goods and people smuggling to Gaza has thrived for years using the subterranean tunnels burrowed beneath the border. Just a few hundred meters away from the besieged (Gaza) strip, Rafah lives depend almost exclusively on the tunnels’ economic activity, a more or less open secret.

A now-deserted police checkpoint in north Sinai is one of many that has been attacked by armed Bedouins with heavy weaponry.

Rafah

A Palestinian city in the southern Gaza Strip, Rafah is the site of the Rafah Border Crossing, the only crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt.

Located 30 kilometers (19 miles) south of Gaza, Rafah’s population of 71,003 is overwhelmingly comprised of Palestinian refugees. Rafah camp and Tall as-Sultan camp form separate localities. Rafah is the district capital of the Rafah Governorate. Yasser Arafat International Airport, Gaza’s only airport, is located just south of the city; the airport operated from 1998 to 2001 when it was bombed and bulldozed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) after the killing of Israeli soldiers by members of Hamas.

Rafah (Arabic: رفح‎; also known as Rafiah), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafah

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

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Denying academic freedom humankind's enemies seek control of others’ thoughts to achieve selfish ends ─ David Hoffman

INGRAINING IGNORANCE: Associated Press-obtained emails via FOIA show former Indiana governor turned university president Mitch Daniels “requested that historian and anti-war activist Howard Zinn’s writings be banned from classrooms and asked for a ‘cleanup’ of college courses.” Daniels also “talked about cutting funding for a program run by a local university professor who was one of his sharpest critics.” INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — though the former governor had “pledged to promote academic freedom” when he assumed the university presidency in January, the emails show that as governor Daniels had “attempted to eliminate what he considered liberal ‘propaganda’ at Indiana’s public universities.”

Re-reporting, editing by Carolyn Bennett

In a biographical sketch of Daniels is the citation of the July 2013 Associated Press-obtained emails in which Daniels asks for assurances that the textbook The People’s History of the United States by historian Howard Zinn “‘is not in use anywhere in Indiana.’”

Ban ideas “we” don’t like

“Daniels wrote in 2010, ‘This crap should not be accepted for any credit by the state.’ His e-mails were addressed to his education adviser Scott Jenkins and a top fundraiser and state school board member David Shane. “Part of Shane’s input was that a statewide review ‘would force to daylight a lot of excrement.’

“Daniels and his aides came to agreement and the governor wrote to them: ‘Go for it. Disqualify propaganda ....’”

Defund “our” critics

“In a separate and unrelated round of emails composed in 2009, Indiana Education officials shared concerns with Daniels about the lobbying resources and activities of the Indiana Urban Schools Association. Daniels asked that the administration ‘examine cutting them out, at least of the [funding] surge we are planning for the next couple yrs.’

More accurately DEVOLUTION of intellectual freedom

“The executive director of IUSA is Charles Little (Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis professor of education) who had criticized (Daniels). It wasn’t immediately clear if the audit went through. Daniels said he had never heard of Charles Little.”

Politician turned “Educator” (?)

Manipulator, mind control agent

Mitchell Elias (Mitch) Daniels, Jr. (b. April 7, 1949, in Monongahela, Pennsylvania) is a U.S. politician who became president of Purdue University after holding the Indiana office of governor for two terms (2005-2013). During the George W. Bush administration, he was Director of the Office of Management and Budget (January 20, 2001 – June 6, 2003) He academic credentials were taken at Princeton University; Indiana University- Indianapolis, and Georgetown University (Washington, D.C.)

 

U

niversity of Illinois Professor Cary Nelson told the Associated press, “‘It is astonishing and shocking that such a person is now the head of a major research university, making decisions about the curriculum, that one painfully suspects embodies the same ignorance and racism these comments embody.’” Nelson is also president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), which investigates cases of censorship from university officials. Continuing his reaction, Nelson said:

Academies, through the unique system of tenure, once enshrined freedom of opinion and inquiry (but) now frequently are home to the narrowest sort of closed-mindedness and the worst repression of dissident ideas.

I

n his July 22 article “Boycott Purdue,” PRAVDA.Ru editor David Hoffman makes the case even stronger and more poignantly when contextualizes ignorance and its consequences.

Worse than “stupidity,” which when viewed positively not pejoratively can provide an essential uniqueness and diversity in the world, Hoffman says, “Ignorance is damaging in all its forms. Ignorance is the development of faulty perceptions or opinions that evolve through the use of incomplete and/or inaccurate information or knowledge that, in turn, emanates from the inability, failure, or refusal to examine all sides of an issue. 

One type of ignorance is self-inflicted and internal ─

…making a person incapable of empathizing with any interests or opinions other than one’s own

…making one loath to read, watch, or listen to anything that deviates from one’s own preconceptions. 

…spawning racism, prejudice, intolerance, and injustice

Another type of ignorance, he says, “is imposed externally by corrupt, unethical, self-serving individuals who believe their ambitions, lusts, and greed can only be satisfied by keeping others ignorant.

 This is normally accomplished through a combination of censorship and control over a state or nation’s educational system.

Enemy of freedom, humankind

Mitch “Daniels-the man who worshiped at the altar of privatization while serving as governor; the man who helped make the corporate voice the only politically effective voice in Indiana; the man who lowered the incomes of thousands of Indiana workers; the man who sought to quash academic freedom; the man who denounced college courses as ‘propaganda,’ yet had no compunction about using propaganda himself; the man who attempted to abuse the authority of his office to silence critics-continues to feed at the taxpayer trough as president of Purdue University,” Hoffman writes.

 

“

The greatest gift a human being possesses is the ability to think but thinking is not enough,” Hoffman says. “Human beings must also have access to the information (denied by enemies, the ilk of Mitch Daniels) that permits them to make fully informed decisions.  And this means having access to all learned points of view.

“Therefore enemies of academic freedom are the greatest enemies of humankind, because they seek to control others’ thoughts to achieve their own selfish ends.”

   

Whispered promise, potential

A legacy Americans cannot afford to continue squandering is whispered in words attributed to America’s fourth president (1809-1817) James Madison:

The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.

Knowledge will forever govern ignorance and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

Sources and notes

“AP Exclusive: Daniels looked to censor opponents” (Tom LoBianco), July 16, 2013, http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ap-exclusive-daniels-looked-censor-opponents

“Boycott Purdue” (David Hoffman), July 22, 2013, http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/22-07-2013/125207-boycott_purdue-0/

David R. Hoffman, Legal Editor of Pravda.Ru

Copyright © 1999-2013, «PRAVDA.Ru». When reproducing our materials in whole or in part, hyperlink to PRAVDA.Ru should be made. The opinions and views of the authors do not always coincide with the point of view of PRAVDA.Ru's editors.

Daniels bio, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitch_Daniels

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