Did You Know: Income Growth

The economist Emmanuel Saez recently crunched the numbers and found that, between 1993 and 2006, roughly half of overall income growth in the United States went to the top 1 percent of all families. During the expansion overseen by George W. Bush, “the top 1 percent captured almost three-quarters of income growth.” This was great for ordinary Americans, Republicans told us at the time. Except that it wasn’t. According to Saez, real income for Americans in the bottom 99 percent increased by just 1.1 percent per year between 1993 and 2006. During the Bush expansion, it fell below 1 percent per year.

[From The Nation]

Congress Must Investigate Ridge Allegations

[From The Nation]

Ridge’s upcoming book, The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege… And How We Can Be Safe Again, accuses the Bush-Cheney White House of pushing the homeland security chief to “raise the national security alert just before the 2004 election.”

Read the full article here.

Iraq’s New Death Squad

[From New American Media]

Editor’s Note: The Iraq Special Operations Forces (ISOF) is probably the largest special forces outfit ever built by the United States, and it is free of many of the controls that most governments employ to rein in such lethal forces. Research support provided by the Investigative Fund of The Nation Institute, the Center for Investigative Reporting and New American Media. NAM Middle East correspondent Shane Bauer spent early 2009 reporting from Iraq This article was first published in The Nation.

Read the article here.

The Gaza War

A list of articles covering this unfortunate end to 2008 and beginning to 2009 in the Gaza strip.

6 months later, has the world forgotten? – A brief look at Gaza and Gazans 6 months removed from the invasion. The author speaks with a number of Gazans about what it did to their lives; examines the Fatah/Hamas split and the increasing “Islamization” of Gaza by Hamas; and concludes that Gaza is missing support from the rest of the world and that the Palestinians there are exhausted and losing motivation to look for improvement.

Israeli Troops Told to ‘Shoot First’ -  Discusses the approach taken to civilians during the War and then details the words battle as the IDF tries to deny claims from its own soldiers regarding its tactics. A Christian Science Monitor article on the same topic focuses a bit more on the soldiers’ claims.

Israel hits UN Relief compound – Just one of the many sights that Israel fired on that should not have been touched (beyond the fact that the invasion itself was seemingly illegal), this after the Israelis had been provided with the GPS coordinates of all UN facilities in Gaza. This “soft” target hit list also includes some hospitals and schools.

Casualties

“Amnesty International concluded that an overall figure of some 1,400[Palestinian] fatalities is accurate and that, in addition to some 300 children, 115 women and 85 men aged over 50, some 200 men aged less than 50 were unarmed civilians who took no part in the hostilities.” 13 Israeli’s are believed to have been killed, which includes 4 soldiers killed by friendly fire.

The World Health Organization lost 16 people and the UN Relief Agency lost 5.

It would be unfair not to mention the rocket attacks by Hamas and Palestinian militants into Israel, which have been significant, as an illegal action. Also significant though is the low number of Israeli deaths (8 people in 2008) as a result of these rocket attacks. The IDF named these attacks as a major factor in the invasion. Rocket attacks intensified during the Offensive, included new cities in Israel not previously targeted, and rocket attacks have continued intermittently since Israel’s withdrawal.

Blackwater – a family company

With new Blackwater-related news recently, it seemed like a good time to start a post about this friendly neighborhood company. More will be added later.

As a bit of an aside, I’m a little curious why there has not been any real discussion regarding the morality of using mercenary armies. They are an undoubtedly problematic and worrisome entity.

The two recent Blackwater tidbits are:

Blackwater Founded Implicated in Murder

U.S. Still Paying Blackwater Millions

Gaza War Order was Shoot First

[From Reuters by Douglas Hamilton]

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Some Israeli soldiers who took part in the January invasion of the Gaza Strip say they were encouraged by commanders to shoot first and worry later about civilians, and went into Gaza with guns blazing.

Testimony from 30 veterans of Operation Cast Lead, published on Wednesday by the activist group “Breaking the Silence,” lends credence to charges by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and U.N. agencies that Israeli forces inflicted civilian death and destruction on an unjustifiable scale.

Fresh Start for a New Year? Let’s Begin in the Kitchen

[via The New York Times by Mark Bittman]

PERHAPS, like me, you have this romantic notion of shopping daily — maybe even a mental vision of yourself making the rounds, wicker basket in hand, of your little Shropshire or Provençal or Tuscan village. The reality, of course, is that few of us provision our kitchens or cook exclusively with ultra-fresh ingredients, especially in winter, when there simply are no ultra-fresh ingredients.

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But if your goal is to cook and cook quickly, to get a satisfying and enjoyable variety of real food on the table as often as possible, a well-stocked pantry and fridge can sustain you. Replenished weekly or even less frequently, with an occasional stop for fresh vegetables, meat, fish and dairy, they are the core supply houses for the home cook.

While you’re stocking up, you might clear out a bit of the detritus that’s cluttering your shelves. Some of these things take up more space than they’re worth, while others are so much better in their real forms that the difference is laughable. Sadly, some remain in common usage even among good cooks. My point here is not to criminalize their use, but to point out how easily and successfully we can substitute for them, in every case with better results.

Here, then, is my little list of items you might spurn, along with some essential pantry and long-keeping refrigerator items you might consider. Note that I’m not including the ultra-obvious, things that are more or less ubiquitous in the contemporary American pantry, like potatoes, eggs and honey.

‘Government Sachs’ Strikes Gold… Again

[via The Nation by Robert Sheer]

Connect the dots: Goldman Sachs made $3.44 billion in profit this past quarter, while the US deficit topped $1 trillion for the first time in the nation’s history and appeared to be headed toward doubling that figure before the budget year is out. Since most of the increase in the federal deficit is due to bailing out the banks and salvaging the greater economy they helped destroy, why is the top investment bank doing so well?

So Far From God, So Close to Wall St.

[via The Nation]

This past winter both the outgoing director of the CIA and a separate Pentagon report declared political instability in Mexico to be on a par with Pakistan and Iran as top-ranking threats to US national security. It was an exaggeration; Mexico is not yet a “failed state.” On the other hand, it is certainly drifting in that direction.

A vicious war among narco-trafficking cartels last year killed at least 6,000 people, including public officials, police and journalists. The country leads the world in kidnappings (Pakistan is second). And with the global crisis, the chronically anemic economy is hemorrhaging jobs, businesses and hope.

Not surprisingly, voters turned against President Felipe Calderón’s right-wing National Action Party (PAN) in the July 5 midterm elections. But the left-wing Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD)–which many believe was robbed of the presidency in the 2006 election–has ripped itself apart with factional infighting. So frustrated Mexicans gave their Congress back to the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), whose decades of corrupt authoritarian rule were supposed to have permanently ended in 2000. At least, thought many voters, the PRI knows how to keep order.

Mexicans are of course responsible for their own country. But geography has always forced them to play out their history in the shadow of their northern neighbor. “Poor Mexico,” goes the saying. “So far from God, so close to the United States.” Today, Mexico is a prime example of the socially destructive effects of the neoliberal economics promoted throughout the world by the US governing class.

The North American Free Trade Agreement–proposed by Ronald Reagan, negotiated by George Bush I and pushed through Congress by Bill Clinton in 1993–is both symbol and substance of neoliberalism. It was sold to the citizens of the United States, Mexico and Canada with the promise that free trade in goods and money would transform Mexico into a booming middle-class economy, dramatically reducing illegal immigration and creating a vast market for US and, to a lesser extent, Canadian exports.

Fifteen years later, Mexico is still unable to create enough jobs to employ its people. Out-migration has doubled, and on both sides of the US-Mexico border labor-market competition has kept wages down. At the top, income and wealth have ballooned. It is no accident that among NAFTA’s prominent godfathers were former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin (Democrat) and former Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan (Republican), whose fingerprints are all over the current global financial disaster.

Our Cell Phones, Their War

[via Adbusters]

An astonishing six million people are estimated to have died as a result of the conflict in the Congo – the largest war-related death toll since the Second World War. What is perhaps more appalling to citizens geographically removed from this conflict, is the fact that our consumption of seemingly indispensable high-tech gadgets – cell phones, mp3 players, laptops and video game systems – may have substantially contributed to this holocaust.

The conflict in the Congo is often described as “tribal,” but sober assessments by the United Nations, research organizations and the American government reveal something far more complex. The multimillion dollar trade of the Congo’s natural resources by foreign armies, rebels and militias has played an integral role in fueling the conflict – both by motivating armed groups to wage war, and by providing them with the cash to do so.

Water Woes in Jakarta

[Why simple privatization doesn't necessarily mean better service, particularly when its public services at stake.]

Article from the Online Magazine “Inside Indonesia“

Access to clean water is difficult. With seasonal flooding, both the Ciliwung river and groundwater from the many hand-pumps become increasingly contaminated. -Henri Ismai

In Cipinang Muara, East Jakarta, there lies a cemetery complex known as ‘Kuburan Cina’. It is not, unfortunately, solely a resting place for the deceased. It is also home to over 80 families living in a slum inside the complex where water is a precious commodity. The people here earn their income from selling goods in a nearby flea market, making just Rp20,000 (US$2.60) a day. Buying clean water from private vendors is clearly not an option for them. Likewise, piped water is too expensive, and the city’s private water operators do not offer their services to what they consider illegitimate houses. In the past, the slum residents obtained water for cooking, drinking and sanitary purposes by collecting rainwater from the roofs of the buildings in their neighbourhood. Two years ago they collaborated to install four shallow wells. Given the quality of water they use however, water borne diseases such as diarrhoea and typhoid are not uncommon.

The story from Kuburan Cina is a stark reminder of the water service predicament in Jakarta and particularly its impact on the city’s urban poor. When a new system of Private Sector Participation, or PSP as it is sometimes known, opened up the city’s water supply sector to private companies in February 1998, it was hoped that Jakarta would finally be relieved of its clean water shortage woes. However, eight years later a UNDP report found that over 75 per cent of Jakartans – most of whom are of the poorer segment of the population – were still without improved access to clean water, relying instead on multiple sources, including rivers, lakes and private vendors.

Parsing Iran’s Election Results

[There are a lot of links in the article, so go to the original if interested in learning more about the specifics. Another article looking at the results comes from the Tehran Bureau, an independent (and yes, liberal) online news site ]

From the Columbia Journalism Review:

Writing in The Washington Post this morning, Glenn Kessler and Jon Cohen tackle the known unknowns of the Iranian election:

There were few independent polls taken before the election and no exit polls afterward, making it extremely difficult to assess the accuracy of the vote counts announced by the government.

A telephone poll co-sponsored by Terror Free Tomorrow and the New America Foundation, conducted May 11-20, showed Ahmadinejad with a 2 to 1 lead over Mousavi, but 52 percent of those surveyed either had no opinion or refused to answer, making many analysts wary of the results, especially because it was taken more than three weeks before the heated contest. When the poll was released, it predicted the vote would be “closer … than the numbers would indicate” and that no candidate would get the 50 percent needed to avoid a runoff.”

2 Apps for Syncing non-iPods to iTunes

iTunes can play with others. Just needs some help.

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/sync-any-mp3-player-with-itunes-easily/

View Docs Online – when your computer can’t

Don’t have Microsoft Word but need to open a word document? Upload (you can also reference url’s for online documents you’re having trouble viewing) it to ViewDocsOnline and you’ll be able to see it.

Regarding the Microsoft Word comment I should be clear that other applications often have the ability to open Word documents (e.g. Open Office, Apple Pages, and many basic Text Editors), but it might not always work perfectly/some of the formatting might be off etc. ViewDocsOnline also works with a variety of other popular document formats.

Hidden Costs of ‘Cause’ Marketing

Interesting article from the Stanford Social Innovation Review about “cause” marketing, such as Product Red iPods and Gap t-shirts. Here’s the summary:

From pink ribbons to Product Red, cause marketing adroitly serves two masters, earning profits for corporations while raising funds for charities. Yet the short-term benefits of cause marketing—also known as consumption philanthropy—belie its long-term costs. These hidden costs include individualizing solutions to collective problems; replacing virtuous action with mindless buying; and hiding how markets create many social problems in the first place. Consumption philanthropy is therefore unsuited to create real social change.

Article is by Angela M. Eikenberry

You can read it below, but go to SSI Review for Notes and Comments.