Singer Tony Bennett has sold over 50 million album copies but that success doesn't seem to have required much common sense or decency. In a recent interview, the veteran crooner sounded appalingly similar to controversial left-wing minister Jerremiah Wright, stating, among other things that America “caused” 9/11 to happen. In what was supposed to be an interview about his latest music collection, Bennett took a turn far afield when he began lashing out at U.S. foreign policy, creating a grotesque moral equivalence between Al Qaeda terrorists who deliberately inflict mass civilian casualties and America:
Continue reading …Palestinians: we are already recognised as a state by two-thirds of the globe
September 20, 2011 No Comment
UN delegation claims member countries comprising 75% of the world’s population are in favour of its bid for full statehood Interactive: which countries already recognise Palestinian? Almost two-thirds of the UN’s member states – representing more than 75% of the world’s population – already formally recognise the Palestinian state in some form, according to information posted by Mahmoud Abbas’s administration and foreign ministries around the world. The Palestinian president is pressing forward with plans to formally request UN membership this Friday, despite attempts at a diplomatic compromise by many western states and a US pledge to veto the membership bid. Raising Palestine to full statehood would need to pass the UN security council – where it is subject to veto – and then a vote at the general assembly, comprising all 193 UN member states. However, the general assembly can raise Palestine’s status from “permanent observer” to “non-member observer state”, a largely symbolic vote, without security council approval. Analysis by the Guardian corroborates reports that such a vote would be extremely likely to be passed. Statements on government websites, from the Arab League, Palestinian administrations and elsewhere suggest that in some form, often with caveats, 126 UN member states already grant formal diplomatic recognition of a Palestinian state. The majority of these countries, 105, also formally recognise the state of Israel. The countries that recognise Palestine comprise around 5.5bn of the world’s population of 7bn – more than 75% – but based on World Bank GDP figures make up less than 10% of the world’s economy, highlighting the global rift on what remains a highly contentious topic. Countries which do not yet formally recognise Palestine are overwhelmingly concentrated in western Europe and North America. No western European democracy currently recognises Palestine as a state, but some newer EU members have previously recognised statehood. The UN is unlikely to vote on Abbas’s proposals for a period of several months even if the resolution is tabled as planned. Envoys from the Middle Eastern Quartet – the US, UN, EU and Russia – are meeting through the week to work on compromise plans to place before Abbas and the Israeli government. The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, urged Abbas not to put proposals for statehood before the UN, warning such a course of action was “not the best way forward”. • Methodology: The graphic is based on countries that are recognised as full UN members who have independently formally acknowledged Palestine as a nation state. The countries who have given this formal recognition do not necessarily agree on borders or other factors in statehood, and may have recognised Palestine at any point between 1988 and 2011. • Figures for population estimates and GDP are taken from the World Bank datastore, using the most recent year for which data was available (typically 2010). Palestinian territories Middle East Mahmoud Abbas Israel United Nations James Ball guardian.co.uk
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International Monetary Fund’s World Economic Outlook says slow, bumpy recovery could be jeopardised by Europe’s debt crisis or over-hasty attempts to cut America’s budget deficit • IMF cuts growth forecast for UK The International Monetary Fund warned on Tuesday that the United States and the eurozone risk being plunged back into recession unless policymakers tackle the problems facing the world’s two biggest economic forces. In its half-yearly health check, the Washington-based fund said the global economy was “in a dangerous place” and that its forecast of a slow, bumpy recovery would be jeopardised by a deepening of Europe’s sovereign debt crisis or over-hasty attempts to rein in America’s budget deficit. “Global activity has weakened and become more uneven, confidence has fallen sharply recently, and downside risks are growing,” the IMF said as it cut its global growth forecast for both 2011 and 2012. The IMF also cut its growth forecasts for the UK economy and advised George Osborne to ease the pace of deficit reduction in the event of any further downturn in activity. The IMF’s World Economic Outlook cited the Japanese tsunami and the rise in oil prices prompted by the unrest in north Africa and the Middle East as two of a “barrage” of shocks to hit the international economy in 2011. It said it now expected the global economy to expand by 4% in both 2011 and 2012, cuts of 0.3 points and 0.5 points since it last published forecasts three months ago. “The structural problems facing the crisis-hit advanced economies have proven even more intractable than expected, and the process of devising and implementing reforms even more complicated. “The outlook for these economies is thus for a continuing, but weak and bumpy, expansion.” The IMF said it expected the strong performance of the leading emerging nations to be the main driving force behind growth in the world economy of 4% in 2012, 0.5 points lower than it had been anticipating three months ago. China’s growth rate is forecast to ease back slightly, from 9.5% in 2011 to 9% in 2012, while India is predicted to expand by 7.5% in 2012 after 7.8% growth in 2011. Sub-Saharan Africa is expected to continue to post robust growth, up from 5.2% in 2011 to 5.8% in 2012. The rich developed countries, by contrast, are forecast to grow by just under 2%, slightly faster than the 1.6% pencilled in by the IMF for 2011. “However, this assumes that European policymakers contain the crisis in the euro periphery area, that US policymakers strike a judicious balance between support for the economy and medium-term fiscal consolidation, and that volatility in global financial markets does not escalate.” “The risks are clearly to the downside,” the IMF added, pointing to two particular concerns – that policymakers in the eurozone lose control of the sovereign debt crisis, and that the US economy could weaken as a result of political impasse in Washington, a deteriorating housing market or a slide in shares on Wall Street. It said the European Central Bank should consider cutting interest rates and that the Federal Reserve should stand ready to provide more “unconventional support”. It said: “Either of these two eventualities would have severe implications for global growth. The renewed stress could undermine financial markets and institutions in advanced economies, which remain unusually vulnerable. Commodity prices and global trade and capital flows would likely decline abruptly, dragging down growth in developing countries.” The IMF said that in its downside scenario, the eurozone and the US could fall back into recession, with activity some three percentage points lower in 2012 than envisaged. Currently, the fund is expecting the US to grow by 1.8% in 2012 and the eurozone by 1.1%. “In the euro area, the adverse feedback loop between weak sovereign and financial institutions needs to be broken. Fragile financial institutions must be asked to raise more capital, preferably through private solutions. If these are not available, they will have to accept injections of public capital or support from the European Financial Stability Fund, or be restructured or closed.” The IMF urged Republicans and Democrats in Washington to settle their differences: “Deep political differences leave the course of US policy highly uncertain. There is a serious risk that hasty fiscal cutbacks will further weaken the outlook without providing the long-term reforms required to reduce debt to more sustainable levels.” IMF Global economy Economics Larry Elliott guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Democracy Now is covering the Occupy Wall Street protests. Read the rest of the transcript here: Demonstrators are marching on Wall Street today on the third day of a campaign dubbed “Occupy Wall Street,” which began on Saturday when thousands gathered in New York City’s Financial District. Inspired by the massive public protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and Madrid’s Puerta del Sol Square, hundreds have slept outside near Wall Street for the past two nights. We play a video report on the protest by Democracy Now!’s Sam Alcoff and get a live update from the streets from Nathan Schneider, editor of the blog “Waging Nonviolence.” We also speak with David Graeber, an anthropologist who participated in the activities. “If you look at who showed up [in Egypt and Spain], it was mostly young people, and most of them were people who had gone through the educational system, who were deeply in debt, and who found it completely impossible to get jobs,” says Graeber. “The system has completely failed them… If there’s going to be any kind of society worth living in, we’re going to have to create it ourselves.” You can donate funds here , or send them a pizza from here via their website.
Continue reading …Bill O’Reilly: ‘I Have More Power Than Anybody Other Than The President’
September 20, 2011 No Comment
Bill O’Reilly made a rather bold declaration during a recent interview with Newsweek. The Fox News host was promoting his new book (a historical thriller about the Lincoln assassination), and he clearly had the presidency on his mind, because he told interviewer Peter Boyer that he was almost as powerful as the holder of that office. “I have more power than anybody other than the president, in the sense that I can get things changed, quickly,” he said. “I don’t have to go through the legislative process; I don’t have to do any of that. I can just bring it to the people, and say, look, this has gotta be dealt with.” O’Reilly has a history of making grand statements about his reach. Who can forget, for instance, his prediction that his Super Bowl interview with President Obama would be the most watched in “the history of mankind”? Or his attempt to draft himself as the key negotiator in the debt ceiling crisis? There a bunch of good nuggets in the Newsweek profile. For instance, O’Reilly says he “likes” Obama personally, and that he warned Glenn Beck not to turn into “Elmer Gantry” when the two went on tour together. But that “power” statement stands out. (Interestingly, it’s a bit of a step back from a statement O’Reilly made in 2010, where he said definitively that he had “more power doing what I’m doing” than he would as president.) It’s certainly true that, as the nation’s leading cable news host by some length, O’Reilly has a very large reach and influence. And the relative power of a television host versus, say, the Speaker of the House could be arguable, in a sort of sociological sense. Nevertheless, we are throwing the question open to you, the reader. Do you agree with O’Reilly’s statement? RELATED VIDEO:
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Three years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, what was the fourth-largest investment bank in the US, the Federal Reserve, European Central Bank, Bank of England, and Japanese and Swiss central banks moved last week to avert a liquidity crisis in European banks struggling to deal with the failing Greek economy, leaving American investors with portfolios of Greek bonds worried. Do you think a Greek default is inevitable? Let us know your thoughts in the comments. Following the falling E.U. bank stocks and a Moody's downgrade of two of the largest banks in France, the central banks are acting to protect the financial world against a Greek default that everyone sees as inevitable, except perhaps Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy, and George Papandreou. The more obvious uncertainties seem to be defining the terms of a Greek default and managing any possible wider damage. As explained at the Daily Beast : Contagion has now reached the Rhine and is mightily roiling German politics, making it uncertain whether Merkel can even get the second Greek bailout through the Bundestag. That is by now, however, all but irrelevant because in Greece itself, the game is up. Its economy is collapsing, the interest bill on its soaring debt will absorb a quarter of state revenue next year, and the taxmen who should be collecting around €40 billion in unpaid Greek taxes are all but on strike. Reforms have been woefully timid but are still bitterly resented. The vaunted sale of state assets has never left the drawing board, a run is developing on Greek banks, and unless the E.U. and IMF cough up the next €8 billion within a fortnight, Athens will run out of cash to pay next month’s bloated public-sector salary bill. In a desperate throw of the dice, the government has announced a property tax to be paid through domestic electricity bills—which the mighty electricians’ union has said it will refuse to collect. Writing down Greek debt by, say, 60 percent would saddle the European Central Bank with a big bill; create holes in the balance sheets of some big French, German, and Belgian banks; and, to an unknown extent, expose British and American holders of credit default swaps. Not only Greek but Romanian and Bulgarian banks could collapse, while Cyprus’s exposure to Greek debt is 156 percent of its GDP—and Russia holds massive deposits in Cyprus. But as Timothy Geithner has observed, the eurozone is not exactly penniless, and should be able to recapitalize banks that need it. The harder task will be to calm the European bond market, starting by providing Ireland and Portugal, which are in the recovery ward, with sufficient liquidity to ride out the storm. The European Central Bank will also need to buy Spanish and Italian bonds—but on the condition that their pampered politicians take the sort of steps Italy balked at this summer, notably the total abolition of Italy’s pointless and costly layer of provincial government. An equally great risk is the political risk. Instead of buckling down to fix the root of the problem, many European politicians are instead bent on another political redesign. Jose Manuel Barroso, the European Commission president, said the “fight for the economic and political future of Europe” demands “a new federal movement.” However, Greece's current economic situation is a direct result of combining incompatible economies. Of course, it would be extremely difficult to dismantle the euro in today's turbulent economy, but looking into the future and the lack of support generated by many countries' eurozone membership, the problem that needs fixing could be the euro itself. What are your thoughts?
Continue reading …Two US marines were killed when the Super Cobra attack helicopter they were flying in went down in flames during a training exercise at California’s camp Pendleton. Firefighters were battling a 120-acre brush fire triggered by the afternoon crash late yesterday. It was the third major accident in the Southern…
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(Mirror) Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Ends September 20, 2011 – Veterans speak The Death of DADT Coming Out of The Closet. It Gets Better darkchild_76 says: RT @ BarackObama : As of this moment, # DADT is over. Hear four Americans share what the end of this law means to them: http://t.co/gWG3jS74
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Roast of Charlie Sheen Kate Walsh Roast of Charlie Sheen Kate Walsh Kate Walsh Roast of Charlie Sheen DJMIKEYSWIFT says: “Despite all those years abusing ur lungs, ur kidneys, ur liver…the only things you’ve had removed are your kids.” – Kate Walsh #SheenRoast
Continue reading …HTC Rhyme preorders said to begin September 22, Plum-colored exclusive at Target?
September 20, 2011 No Comment
Ahead of HTC’s big announcement , a tipster has leaked this screen-grab from Target Mobile showing the HTC Rhyme (formerly the Bliss ), ready for eager fans to pre-order from September 22nd — apparently the official launch date. Target Mobile looks to have exclusive rights on a plum-colored version of the Verizon handset, previously seen in white and green. The leak also adds some early details on the rumored charm notifier, which lights up to announce incoming calls and messages. It appears to connect to the headphone jack and will apparently work “outside of clothing.” In-ear buds appear to be included and, while it’s still unclear whether these will also be Beats Audio offerings , it certainly would be name-appropriate. Handset details sound pretty concrete, seemingly confirmed by another leak at Unwired View , with a 3.7-inch WVGA Super LCD screen (matching that on the HTC Desire S ), Android Gingerbread and a rear-facing five megapixel camera. According to the leaks — and even the official-looking renders — it will be one of the first phones to arrive with HTC’s refreshed Sense 3.5 UI. The smart money is on an appearance at HTC’s soiree later today, and we’ll be there to find out for sure. HTC Rhyme preorders said to begin September 22, Plum-colored exclusive at Target? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 20 Sep 2011 08:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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