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Obama the Realist | Paul Wolfowitz | Foreign Policy - 0 views

www.foreignpolicy.com/...think_again_realism

obama foreign-policy foreign policy idealist pragmatist realist idealism realism pragmatism nation-building nation-defending war terror wolfowitz

shared by avivajazz jazzaviva on 17 Sep 09 - No Cached
  • avivajazz jazzaviva on 17 Sep 09
     
    Obama the realist. Not the pragmatist. Certainly not the idealist. Realism as a doctrine: The principal purpose of U.S. foreign policy SHOULD be to manage relations between states, rather than to alter the nature of states. U.S. foreign policy shouldn't be in the business of nation-building.
avivajazz jazzaviva

Noam Chomsky on the place of human rights in U.S. foreign policy | The European Courier - 0 views

europeancourier.org/...n-rights-in-u-s-foreign-policy

chomsky foreign policy foreign-policy human rights human-rights humanrights politics hegemony

shared by avivajazz jazzaviva on 28 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • avivajazz jazzaviva on 28 Feb 11
     
    Chomsky: U.S. concerned about human rights only in the enemy countries http://t.co/ODoBSWy
avivajazz jazzaviva

The Idiots Who Rule America | Truthdig - 0 views

www.truthdig.com/...20_the_idiots_who_rule_america

oligarchy democracy america USA american plutocracy

shared by avivajazz jazzaviva on 19 Sep 09 - Cached
  • avivajazz jazzaviva on 19 Sep 09
     
    Our oligarchic class is incompetent at governing, managing the economy, coping with natural disasters, educating our young, handling foreign affairs, providing basic services like health care and safeguarding individual rights. That it is still in power, and will remain in power after this election, is a testament to our inability to separate illusion from reality. We still believe in "the experts." They still believe in themselves.
avivajazz jazzaviva

The Paranoid Style in American Politics, Richard Hofstadter, Harper's Magazine, Novembe... - 0 views

karws.gso.uri.edu/...the_paranoid_style.html

hofstatder radical rightwing ultraconservative conservative paranoia teaparty wingnuts

shared by avivajazz jazzaviva on 16 Sep 09 - Cached
  • avivajazz jazzaviva on 16 Sep 09
     
    ...the modern right wing, as Daniel Bell has put it, feels dispossessed: America has been largely taken away from them and their kind, though they are determined to try to repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion. The old American virtues have already been eaten away by cosmopolitans and intellectuals; the old competitive capitalism has been gradually undermined by socialistic and communistic schemers; the old national security and independence have been destroyed by treasonous plots, having as their most powerful agents not merely outsiders and foreigners as of old but major statesmen who are at the very centers of American power. Their predecessors had discovered conspiracies; the modern radical right finds conspiracy to be betrayal from on high.
avivajazz jazzaviva

Ron Paul Says Bernie Sanders "Sold Out," Sided With Chris Dodd to "Gut" Audit the Fed |... - 0 views

fdlaction.firedoglake.com/...hris-dodd-to-gut-audit-the-fed

audit-the-fed sanders dodd congress legislation bernie changes fed ron-paul

shared by avivajazz jazzaviva on 07 May 10 - Cached
  • avivajazz jazzaviva on 07 May 10
     
    Sanders/Dodd Audit-The-Fed allows audit of TARP + TALF, but not FOMC, discount window operations, or agreement with foreign central banks. "Even the so called "independent" leftists, Kucinich and Sanders, have both capitulatied to the corporate, class markets and their class despotism, proving they are not real opposition leaders, but phony socialists, phony anti war activists." ~Eric Albert Schwing I read all three versions of the Sanders amendment carefully, and I believe Sanders made a good call if the decision was compromise with Dodd or have no amendment at all. The big differences with the compromise are: -Single audit covering December 1,2007 to May 2010 rather than open-ended audit until all bailout funds are recovered. -Specific parameters on the audit focusing on whether proper procedures were followed and what could be done to improve Fed governance. However it is not clear that the audit is limited to these items. -Fed website still must report lots of previously undisclosed details about the bailout measured-who got what and why. ~bmull
avivajazz jazzaviva

Kagan helped shield Saudis from 9/11 lawsuits | Raw Story - 0 views

rawstory.com/...ped-shield-saudis-911-lawsuits

kagan terrorism scotus middle-east 9_11

shared by avivajazz jazzaviva on 11 May 10 - Cached
  • avivajazz jazzaviva on 11 May 10
     
    Kagan: Lawsuits against Saudi princes by 9/11 victims interfere with foreign relations, shouldn't be heard:
avivajazz jazzaviva

Think Progress » Senate Budget Committee Proposes Slashing State And Foreign ... - 0 views

thinkprogress.org/...budget-defense-clinton

usa congress obama budget_cuts Pentagon war Think_Progress

shared by avivajazz jazzaviva on 28 Apr 10 - Cached
  • avivajazz jazzaviva on 28 Apr 10
     
    "In his 2010 State of the Union address, President Obama called for a "non-security" discretionary spending freeze to help bring down the deficit. "
avivajazz jazzaviva

The G-7 Abandons The Dollar | Forbes | 10.05.09. - 0 views

www.forbes.com/...rrencies-foreign-exchange.html

economy banksters fraud dollar financial crisis inflation currency fiat gold world global

shared by avivajazz jazzaviva on 06 Oct 09 - No Cached
  • avivajazz jazzaviva on 06 Oct 09
     
    The G-7 abandons the dollar. The greenback fell further after the G-7 would not come to the rescue.
ken meece

Think Again: God - By Karen Armstrong | Foreign Policy - 1 views

www.foreignpolicy.com/...god_0

ReadItLater

shared by ken meece on 19 Oct 09 - Cached
  • An inadequate understanding of God that reduces “him” to an idol in our own image who gives our likes and dislikes sacred sanction is the worst form of spiritual tyranny. Such arrogance has led to atrocities like the Crusades. The rise of secularism in government was meant to check this tendency, but secularism itself has created new demons now inflicting themselves on the world.
  • In the West, secularism has been a success, essential to the modern economy and political system, but it was achieved gradually over the course of nearly 300 years, allowing new ideas of governance time to filter down to all levels of society. But in other parts of the world, secularization has occurred far too rapidly and has been resented by large sectors of the population,
  • Shiism had for centuries separated religion from politics as a matter of sacred principle, and Khomeini’s insistence that a cleric should become head of state was an extraordinary innovation.
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • In the same spirit, Hassan al-Banna (1906-1949), founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, began his movement by translating the social message of the Koran into a modern idiom, founding clinics, hospitals, trade unions, schools, and factories that gave workers insurance, holidays, and good working conditions. In other words, he aimed to bring the masses to modernity in an Islamic setting. The Brotherhood’s resulting popularity was threatening to Egypt’s secular government, which could not provide these services.
  • John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama have invoked faith as a shared experience that binds the country together -- an approach that recognizes the communal power of spirituality without making any pretense to divine right.
  • it is not God or religion but violence itself -- inherent in human nature -- that breeds violence. As a species, we survived by killing and eating other animals; we also murder our own kind. So pervasive is this violence that it leaks into most scriptures, though these aggressive passages have always been balanced and held in check by other texts that promote a compassionate ethic based on the Golden Rule
  • "religious" wars, no matter how modern the tools, always begin as political ones.
  • In recent Gallup polling conducted in 35 Muslim countries, only 7 percent of those questioned thought that the September 11 attacks were justified. Their reasons were entirely political.
  • Fundamentalism is not conservative. Rather, it is highly innovative -- even heretical -- because it always develops in response to a perceived crisis. In their anxiety, some fundamentalists distort the tradition they are trying to defend.
  • All fundamentalism -- whether Jewish, Christian, or Muslim -- is rooted in a profound fear of annihilation.
  • The Bible and the Koran may have prohibited usury, but over the centuries Jews, Christians, and Muslims all found ways of getting around this restriction and produced thriving economies. It is one of the great ironies of religious history that Christianity, whose founder taught that it was impossible to serve both God and mammon, should have produced the cultural environment that, as Max Weber suggested in his 1905 book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, was integral to modern capitalism.
  • the religious critique of excessive greed is far from irrelevant. Although not opposed to business, the major faith traditions have tried to counterbalance some of the abuses of capitalism. Eastern religions, such as Buddhism, by means of yoga and other disciplines, try to moderate the aggressive acquisitiveness of the human psyche. The three monotheistic faiths have inveighed against the injustice of unevenly distributed wealth
  • Religion is not simply a matter of subscribing to a set of obligatory beliefs; it is hard work, requiring a ceaseless effort to get beyond the selfishness that prevents us from achieving a more humane humanity.
  • in their rebellion against the modern ethos, fundamentalists tend to overemphasize traditional gender roles. Unfortunately, frontal assaults on this patriarchal trend have often proven counterproductive.
  • But their reading of scripture is unprecedentedly literal. Before the modern period, few understood the first chapter of Genesis as an exact account of the origins of life; until the 17th century, theologians insisted that if a biblical text contradicted science, it must be interpreted allegorically.
  • Ironically, it was the empirical emphasis of modern science that encouraged many to regard God and religious language as fact rather than symbol, thus forcing religion into an overly rational, dogmatic, and alien literalism.
  • What has alienated many Muslims from the democratic ideal is not their religion but Western governments’ support of autocratic rulers, such as the Iranian shahs, Saddam Hussein, and Hosni Mubarak, who have denied people basic human and democratic rights.
  • a 2006 Gallup poll revealed that 46 percent of Americans believe that God should be the source of legislation.
  • A fatwa is not universally binding like a papal edict; rather, it simply expresses the opinion of the mufti who issues it. Muslims can choose which fatwas they adopt and thus participate in a flexible free market of religious thought, just as Americans can choose which church they attend.
  • Religion should be studied with the same academic impartiality and accuracy as the economy, politics, and social customs of a region, so that we learn how religion interacts with political tension, what is counterproductive, and how to avoid giving unnecessary offense.
  • In the Middle East, overly aggressive secularization has sometimes backfired, making the religious establishment more conservative, or even radical.
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