Global News and Analysis

Source: Alternet

It’s now crystal clear that our economy is not producing enough jobs for all who want and need them. It’s also clear that our economy is doing an excellent job at putting more and more wealth in the hands of the few. It’s time to change this equation with one simple proposal that would put millions of Americans back to work in a matter of months: free tuition at all public colleges and universities.

The spinmeisters can’t hide the fact that unemployment is still at horrendous levels and causing enormous suffering for millions of Americans. Job growth is so paltry that at this rate it will take over a decade to return to full employment. Worse still, there are 5.8 million Americans who have been unemployed for 27 weeks or longer, the highest number since the Great Depression. Meanwhile, Wall Street, which caused the economic collapse, is returning to record profits and bonuses. We can no longer afford to wait for the trickle-down economics to put our people back to work. And we can easily afford a free higher education program provided we have the nerve to make Wall Street pay for it. read more

Source: The Nation

A few years ago, when I was still teaching at Yale, I was approached by a student who was interested in going to graduate school. She had her eye on Columbia; did I know someone there she could talk with? I did, an old professor of mine. But when I wrote to arrange the introduction, he refused to even meet with her. “I won’t talk to students about graduate school anymore,” he explained. “Going to grad school’s a suicide mission.”

The policy may be extreme, but the feeling is universal. Most professors I know are willing to talk with students about pursuing a PhD, but their advice comes down to three words: don’t do it. (William Pannapacker, writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education as Thomas Benton, has been making this argument for years. See “The Big Lie About the ‘Life of the Mind,’” among other essays.) My own advice was never that categorical. Go if you feel that your happiness depends on it—it can be a great experience in many ways—but be aware of what you’re in for. You’re going to be in school for at least seven years, probably more like nine, and there’s a very good chance that you won’t get a job at the end of it. read more

Source: The Independent

Christopher Hill, a former US secretary of state for east Asia who was ambassador to Iraq – and usually a very obedient and un-eloquent American diplomat – wrote the other day that “the notion that a dictator can claim the sovereign right to abuse his people has become unacceptable”.

Unless, of course – and Mr Hill did not mention this – you happen to live in Bahrain. On this tiny island, a Sunni monarchy, the al-Khalifas, rule a majority Shia population and have responded to democratic protests with death sentences, mass arrests, the imprisonment of doctors for letting patients die after protests and an “invitation” to Saudi forces to enter the country. They have also destroyed dozens of Shia mosques with all the thoroughness of a 9/11 pilot. But then, let’s remember that most of the 9/11 killers were indeed Saudis. read more

Source: The Progressive

I don’t like using the word rape as a metaphor, but the charge against the head of the International Monetary Fund is almost a perfect metaphor for the IMF’s role in the world.

IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn is accused of attempted rape against an African maid in a luxury hotel in New York City.

And while the truth of this allegation remains for the legal system to sort out, screwing helpless people over in the Third World (and Eastern Europe: see Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine”) is what the IMF is all about. read more

Source: Guernica Magazine

We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic.

It’s increasingly clear that the operation was a planned assassination, multiply violating elementary norms of international law. There appears to have been no attempt to apprehend the unarmed victim, as presumably could have been done by 80 commandos facing virtually no opposition—except, they claim, from his wife, who lunged towards them. In societies that profess some respect for law, suspects are apprehended and brought to fair trial. I stress “suspects.” In April 2002, the head of the FBI, Robert Mueller, informed the press that after the most intensive investigation in history, the FBI could say no more than that it “believed” that the plot was hatched in Afghanistan, though implemented in the UAE and Germany. What they only believed in April 2002, they obviously didn’t know 8 months earlier, when Washington dismissed tentative offers by the Taliban (how serious, we do not know, because they were instantly dismissed) to extradite bin Laden if they were presented with evidence—which, as we soon learned, Washington didn’t have. Thus Obama was simply lying when he said, in his White House statement, that “we quickly learned that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by al Qaeda.” read more

Source: Alternet

Communities in California and Mexico are angered by a cap-and-trade plan that could shift the burden from polluters to poor communities.

California leads the United States in energy efficiency, and is often hailed as a global beacon of environmental protection; at the same time, it is the 12th largest emitter of carbon dioxide worldwide, making the state a significant driver of climate change. Any efforts to reduce these emissions would clearly benefit not only California, but the world. So when the implementation of California’s Global Warming Solutions Act, AB32, came to a grinding halt due to San Francisco Superior Court’s March 18 ruling that it violated the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), it came as a shock to industry and environmentalists alike. read more