On the Radar
with
Lorenzo A. Canizares
Return via www.mytown.ca/canizares/on-the-radar/

2 April 2009
How the G-20 Succeeded -- And Why It Matters by PETER GUMBEL AND CATHERINE MAYER
One measure of a summit's success is the number of participants who attempt to lay claim to its outcome. And by that measure, the G-20 summit in London was a rip-roaring sensation, with several countries seeking to share in the glory. "This is the day that the world came together to fight back against the global recession, not with words but with a plan for global recovery and for reform and with a clear timetable for its delivery," declared the summit host, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Speaking of the agreements reached on tighter regulation of financial markets and institutions, French President Nicolas Sarkozy bigged up his own role in agitating for the measures: "That our Anglo-Saxon friends accepted all of this represents immense progress," he said, adding that "while there were moments of tension, we never thought we'd obtain such a big deal."
Read the rest here...

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1 April 2009
Obama tries to rally world to cope with downturn by Jennifer Loven
On the eve of a global economic summit, President Barack Obama promised world leaders he would listen, not lecture, as they seek a common fix to the financial crisis. "We can only meet this challenge together," he said Wednesday as the U.S. and Russia spoke on the summit sidelines about nuclear warhead reduction.
Read the rest here...

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31 March 2009
The Last Best Chance for Detroit: NYT Editorial
President Obama struck an acceptable compromise on Monday between two unappealing options: letting General Motors and Chrysler go bankrupt right away or giving them tens of billions of dollars more while hoping for the best. Instead, he decided to finance their operations for just a matter of weeks while forcing them to come up with a better plan to overhaul their businesses.
   Now that the government is in control of the process, it must stick to its stated objectives and deadlines. If Chrysler can’t reach an acceptable merger deal with Italy’s Fiat in a month, the government must let go, even if this means certain liquidation.
Read the rest here

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29 March 2009
An American Outrage: Bernie, AIG, and Us by Rosemary and Walter Brasch
There have now been more than 4,000 deaths and 30,000 casualties of American military in the war in Iraq. More than 100,000 Iraqis and others, most of them civilian, have also been killed in what is now known to be an unnecessary war. But, we as a nation have not been outraged. We have recently learned that former President Bush and former Vice-President Cheney had authorized the use of torture. But, we as a nation have not been outraged.
Read the rest here

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29 March 2009
Bush Torture Lawyers Targeted in Criminal Probe by Scott Horton
One of America’s NATO allies—which supported the Bush Administration’s war on terror by committing its troops to the struggle–has now opened formal criminal inquiries looking into the Bush team’s legacy of torture. The action parallels a criminal probe into allegations of torture involving the American CIA that was opened this week in the United Kingdom.
Read the rest here

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26 March 2009
Obama shifts strategy in Afghanistan: more troops, modest goals by Nancy A. Youssef and Margaret Talev, McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — Shifting U.S. objectives in Afghanistan away from the Bush administration's promise to build a Western-style democracy, President Barack Obama will announce on Friday that he's deploying thousands of additional American troops and civilians to achieve more modest goals, such as enhancing security and promoting economic development, U.S. officials said.

The announcement comes days before Obama heads to Europe to ask allies for more troops, civilians, and money in the eight-year war against the Taliban and al Qaida. It also comes as the U.S. prepares to deploy as many as 17,500 more troops to Afghanistan to reclaim the U.S. stake in a fight that's languished as the Bush administration focused on Iraq.
Read the rest here...

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25 March 2009
On Wall Street, Talk of Trust and Civil War by Annalena Lobb & Heidi N. Moore
Finance executives expressed anger and betrayal at Washington's latest anti-Wall Street rhetoric during Tuesday's sessions of the Future of Finance Initiative, a conference hosted by The Wall Street Journal.
Read the rest here...

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25 March 2009
President Cool faces the nation by Andrew Leonard
Early on in his press conference, President Obama proved that he could take a bad question and turn it into a good answer. A question from the AP's Jennifer Loven asking why the American people should grant the administration new powers to regulate was flipped into an explanation of why the lack of regulatory authority had contributed to the government's inability to properly manage the AIG debacle.
Read the rest here.

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23 March 2009
Financial Policy Despair by Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Columnist - The New York Times
Over the weekend The Times and other newspapers reported leaked details about the Obama administration’s bank rescue plan, which is to be officially released this week. If the reports are correct, Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, has persuaded President Obama to recycle Bush administration policy — specifically, the “cash for trash” plan proposed, then abandoned, six months ago by then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.
Read the rest here...

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17 March 2009
Leftist Party Wins Salvadoran Vote Written by BLAKE SCHMIDT and ELISABETH MALKIN - The New York Times
SAN SALVADOR — Almost as soon as Mauricio Funes won the presidency as the standard-bearer for the party of El Salvador’s former leftist guerrillas, he set about trying to reassure his opponents.
Read the rest here

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17 March 2009
Global Labor's Forgotten Plan to Fight the Great Depression
by: Jeremy Brecher, Tim Costello and Brendan Smith
http://www.truthout.org/031709LA
In the early 1930s, as global unemployment tripled in two years and the world plunged into the Great Depression, the world's labor movements developed a program for fighting the global crisis through international public works. It's a little-known historical might-have-been that could have helped halt the Great Depression, the rise of Adolph Hitler, and the Second World War. And, as the efforts of world leaders to address today's "Great Recession" threaten to break down in nationalist rivalry and petty political bickering, it bears lessons - and perhaps an alternative vision - for today.

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16 March 2009
Yes, we need to take care of the future, but we can't forget the past. We are in a war. Our class enemies are going to try to distort reality, and continue to find loopholes to get their bonuses. If sports players can lose their livelihood because of dope addiction, Greed Machine members can lose their bonuses as a result of their greed addiction.
Following the A.I.G. Money: NYT Editorial
The bailouts of American International Group are also rescues of its trading partners — banks and other financial firms — that would have lost out if the insurer had been allowed to fail. But even after four bailouts between last September and this March, no one knows with certainty who those partners are or how much of the bailout money, now totaling $160 billion, has gone to make them whole.
www.progressiveexchange.com

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16 March 2009]
There are still pliable fools of the Greed Machine that have the nerve of stating that we are not facing a class war in the nation. These pliable fools sit with their arms folded while the Greed Machine claims that the economic problem of the nation is because of Obama's socialist policies.
The Granny Bashers: Different Facts, Same Policy by Dean Baker
The granny basher crew constitutes one of the largest and most determined lobbies in Washington. The top priority for this lobby is to cut Social Security and Medicare.
   The lobby includes the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, with an endowment of more than $1 billion from the private equity tycoon himself. It also includes The Washington Post, which liberally sprinkles assertions about the need to cut Social Security and Medicare in both its news and editorial pages. Many prominent members of Congress also belong to the club, along with much of the punditry who make their living pronouncing on public policy.
http://www.truthout.org/031609R

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16 March 2009
Thanks to Tamzin Jans and the Cookie Jar list-serv collective for this must read article. Dreyfuss has done a superb job of tying knots leading us to the conclusion that it will be in the interest of all to find a peaceful settlement to the Afghan war.
An Alternative to War in Afghanistan by Robert Dreyfuss
"President Obama and Congress owe it to both Afghans and Americans to explore a strategy of power extrication before they make another major decision to expand the war."
   That's the opinion not of some left-wing activist, but of the chairman of the establishment, the president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, Leslie Gelb. It appears in an op-ed in the New Yortk Times today, entitled: "How to Leave Afghanistan." It's especially notable for two reasons: first, it comes on the eve of the release of President Obama's Afghanistan review, which will be issued this month, and second, because it appears just above a piece called "How to Surge the Taliban" by Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute, et al. Kagan, his daughter Kimberly, and Max Boot of CFR were invited to Afghanistan by David Petraeus, the Centcom commander.
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/dreyfuss/417180

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15 March 2009
The Most Successful American President: George W. Bush, Part 2: The Constitution by Dr. Steven Jonas, 15 March 2009
Continuing this series, this column focuses on what was the centerpiece of the Bush/Cheney (or Presidency: the destruction of our treasured Constitutional Democracy that (for the most part) has served our nation so well for the 218 years of its existence.
http://tpjmagazine.us/jonas219

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14 March 2009
Oh, What a Lovely Class War! by Michael Winship
via truthout
Limbaugh and other Republicans want to continue the betrayal. But, now that the American people have spoken loud and clear, their betrayal rises to a higher level. They continue to live high on the hog while millions of us are hanging by a thread, denying our Democratic process. This is a must read article.

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12 March 2009
Treasury official: US shouldn't micromanage banks
By JIM KUHNHENN Associated Press Writer
"The government should refrain from micromanaging banks that receive taxpayer assistance, a top Treasury official cautioned lawmakers itching to see results from a $700 billion rescue program for the financial sector. Neel Kashkari, interim assistant secretary for financial stability at Treasury, told a congressional oversight panel Wednesday that banks should not be forced to make loans that bankers might deem risky." Read it here!

Lozenzo Canizares says of this article: Old habits die hard. Of course, micromanaging is not the best way to operate, but when people have been affected by greed addiction they have to be monitored through their rehab program. It makes total sense that our taxpayers monies be directed to enhance our greed devastated economy!

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10 March 2009
Reviving the Dream by Bob Herbert, Op-Ed Columnist: The New York Times
"Now, with the economy in free fall and likely to get worse, Americans - despite their suffering - have an opportunity to reshape the society, and then move it in a fairer, smarter and ultimately more productive direction. That is the only way to revive the dream, but it will take a long time and require great courage and sacrifice." Read it here!

Lozenzo Canizares says of this article: "We need to change our economic distribution system or it won't be only impossible to revive the dream, but to maintain ourselves as a viable nation."

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9 March 2009
Seen in the cold light of our long hangover, they remind us that it was the America of the bubble that was aberrant and perverse, creating a new normal that wasn't normal at all." - Frank Rich

So true! but, the mental cancer is not totally eradicated yet. in the name of "Conservatism" Unbridled Greed and racism to continue to show their killer paws. A Must Read.

Some Things Don’t Change in Grover’s Corners by Frank Rich

“WHEREVER you come near the human race, there’s layers and layers of nonsense,” says the Stage Manager in Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town.” Those words were first heard by New York audiences in February 1938, as America continued to reel from hard times. The Times’s front page told of 100,000 auto workers protesting layoffs in Detroit and of a Republican official attacking the New Deal as “fascist.” Though no one was buying cars, F.D.R. had the gall to endorse a mammoth transcontinental highway construction program to put men back to work.

In the 71 years since, Wilder’s drama has become a permanent yet often dormant fixture in our culture, like the breakfront that’s been in the dining room so long you stopped noticing its contents. Requiring no scenery and many players, “Our Town” is the perennial go-to “High School Play.” But according to A. Tappan Wilder, the playwright’s nephew and literary executor, professional productions have doubled since 2005, including two separate hit revivals newly opened in Chicago and New York.

http://www.progressiveexchange.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3962&Itemid=479

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7 March 2009:
Thanks to BBritton from the Cookie Jar list-serv for this superb must read article: Obama and Gordon Brown have declared war on certain sectors of their respective financial worlds that are refusing to mend their ways. These are the sectors that finance Rush Limbaugh at the tune of $38 million per year.

"Outlaw the Shadow Banking System!"
Guess Who Said It?
By Matthias Chang
URL of this article: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12584

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7 March 2009:
Miracles Take Time by Bob Herbert, Op-Ed Columnist - The New York Times
http://www.progressiveexchange.com/
"Maybe the markets are down because demand has dried up, because many of the nation's biggest firms have imploded and because Americans are losing their jobs and their homes by the millions. Maybe a dose of reality is in order, as opposed to the childish desire for yet another stock market bubble." Bob Herbert

Yes, Mr. Herbert, you are absolutely right. Those that are today whining about the losses in the stock market are the same that applauded the Greed Machine excesses that drove us into this mess.

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6 March 2009:
Vice President Joe Biden in Miami: We're Committed to Middle Class
http://www.truthout.org/030609LA
While in Miami the Vice President pledges a commitment to rehabilitate the Middle Class, in Central PA (Harrisburg) we are having a rally by hate-mongers to oppose the stimulus. Limbaugh is manipulating his forces to create chaos and make it difficult for Obama to succeed in his economic plan. Florida's Republican Governor Charlie Crist has taken a different road. His main concern is the people of Florida not petty partisan politics.

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Lorenzo Canizares recommends Selected articles of value for progressives at www.progressiveexchange.com (Progressive Exchange was established 5/12/04, to provide news that matters and a public forum for progressive voices. Collaboration from our readers is essential for the purpose of this website, which is to stimulate thought, create urgency, advocate change and promote peace.)