Check It Out for Thursday, April 16th
Check It Out for Thursday, April 16 has the following:
Dean Baker writes at The Economist about the need to tax the wealthy.
"The vast majority of the income gains in the United States over the last three decades have gone to the richest 5% of the population, largely as a result of policies that were explicitly designed to redistribute income upwards. Therefore it is far more appropriate to tax the richest 5%t of families who have prospered than the broad middle class who have suffered.
"Of course taxes can be designed in a better or worse manner. The best way to increase taxes on the wealthy, in addition to allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire, would be to apply a modest financial transactions tax (FTT).
"Robert Pollin and I calculated that a scaled set of FTT on stock, futures, options and other financial instruments could raise approximately $150 billion a year. This would go far towards bringing the long-term budget deficit down to a manageable level.
"A FTT would be hugely progressive. While many middle income families own stock, their holdings are dwarfed by the holdings of the wealthy. Furthermore, few middle income families are active traders. Their intention is to hold their stock to support their retirement or their kids' education, not to shuffle it around on a daily or hourly basis. Some mutual funds do engage in frequent trading. An FTT would encourage investors to move their money to funds that are less active traders, thereby allowing them to escape most of the impact of the FTT.
"Most of the burden of the FTT will fall on wealthy individuals who are active traders and also on the financial industry itself. Either way, the tax will be overwhelmingly borne by the wealthy. By raising the cost of trading, the tax will discourage the trading that provides the revenue for the financial industry. A well-designed tax should also discourage the creation of exotic assets that may serve little useful purpose, since it could lead to the tax being paid multiple times. For example, the holder of an option on a stock would both pay the tax on the purchase and sale of the option and also on the purchase and sale of the stock itself, if the option was ever exercised.
"In short, there is a very good argument for increasing taxes on the wealthy given the current budget situation. The alternative is taxing those who are not wealthy. And, there is no better way to tax the wealthy than to tax their gambling in financial markets. A financial transactions tax will raise revenue at the same time that it makes the economy more productive. This is a genuine win-win situation."
Nora Barrows-Friedman at IPS News writes about the UN protecting from racism charges.
"As the wreckage from Israel's recent siege on Gaza continues to smoulder, international civil society organisations are assembling this week in Switzerland to address Israel's crimes of military occupation and racism.
"But any discussion on Israel's actions in Palestine will be excluded from the formal framework at the Durban Anti-Racism Review Conference in Geneva Monday. Israel-Palestine has been deliberately eliminated from the official programme, structured by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UN OHCHR). Civil society groups believe that the United States, countries within the European Union and Israel pressured the UN to omit a review of Israel's racial discrimination against Palestinians.
"However, two weeks ago, the UN High Commissioner's office unilaterally cancelled all side-events pertaining to Palestine issues. Ingrid Jarradat- Gassner, director of the BADIL Resource Centre for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights in Bethlehem, one of several Palestine-based organisations attending the Durban Review conference, tells IPS that BADIL and the other NGOs had organised a side-event specifically about how and why they see Israel as a "regime of institutionalised racial discrimination on both sides of the Green Line."
" 'As Palestinian NGOs and other NGOs working on the issue of Israel and its violations against the rights of the Palestinian people, we were expecting that there would be a possibility for us to organise these side-events during the official Durban review conference in Geneva,' Jarradat-Gassner says. 'We were informed by the UN itself that this would be possible.'
"Jarradat-Gassner says that on Apr. 3, less than three weeks before the Durban Review Conference, the UN High Commissioner's office called BADIL's representative in Geneva into a meeting at the UN, and verbally informed her that all side-events pertaining to the specific issue of Palestine and Israel had been banned.
"Additionally, U.S. President Barack Obama's administration appears to have decided not to attend the Durban Review conference. In 2001, the United States representatives walked out of the first Durban conference when Zionism was defined as racism against Palestinians.
"In the United States, progressive African-American organisations have expressed their disappointment and frustration that Obama has avoided the Durban Review conference. Ajamu Baraka, executive director of the U.S. Human Rights Network in Atlanta, Georgia, tells IPS that his organisation 'takes the position that the Obama administration should participate and be willing to discuss all of the issues that will be addressed during the review process...A strong stand on this issue by the first African-American President of the United States would have a revolutionary impact on the global discourse on race."
Pepe Escobar at AsiaTimes writes about the Pentagon drone strikes in Pakistan.
"As it was leaked by government sources to the Pakistani daily The News, the success rate of the Barack Obama administration's "hell from above" Predator drone war over the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) is a mere 6%. Of "60 Predator strikes between January 14, 2006, and April 8, 2009, only 10 hit their targets, killing 14 wanted al-Qaeda leaders" but most of all "killing 687 innocent Pakistani civilians". All of them Pashtuns.
"Any sensible boss would fire those responsible for such a performance. Not Obama with the Pentagon - which is bound to continue with its only game in (Pashtun) town, based on amassing non-existent, on-the-ground intelligence; accumulating unbearable "collateral damage"; provoking a mass Pashtun rebellion against the discredited 650,000-strong Pakistani army; and ensuring the military's definitive public humiliation.
"Last week, Pentagon supremo Robert Gates left no doubt the Pentagon's future lay with "expeditionary warfare" or "COIN operations", counter-insurgency operations (COIN) of which the "hell from above" Predator diplomacy is a superstar.
"The strategy also includes replicating the Central Command chief General David Petraeus-coined "Sons of Iraq" COIN gambit - now renamed Afghan Public Protection Force, which will inevitably clash big time with the Hamid Karzai government in Kabul, just as Sunni Iraqis clash with Prime Minster Nuri al-Maliki in Baghdad.
"Needless to say, this COIN-saturated "future" peopled with Predator and Reaper drones, special forces and high-tech ground and air sensors apply essentially to Muslim countries. British colonialism, in a pre-COIN past, used to call this "colonial warfare", or "little wars" against brown people.
"Obama's lofty team of strategic reviewers seems to have overlooked that it's because of occupying US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) troops that moderate Pashtun tribals support the Taliban or even join the Taliban. Obviously, Obama's strategic reviewers forgot to ask Pashtuns themselves about the new US "strategy".
"It's now clear in Washington that the troika of special envoy Richard Holbrooke, Petraeus and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton managed to sell to Obama a COIN-based Afghan nation-building scheme - which, if it sounds like a contradiction, that's because it is. Always keen on taking over the news cycle, Obama preferred to strut his catchy, alliterative triad ("disrupt, dismantle, defeat") which will in theory eliminate evil al-Qaeda from the war theater in Afghanistan and Pakistan, or AfPak.
"Still, the fact remains: Obama's war in AfPak is a war against Pashtuns."
Dean Baker writes at The Economist about the need to tax the wealthy.
"The vast majority of the income gains in the United States over the last three decades have gone to the richest 5% of the population, largely as a result of policies that were explicitly designed to redistribute income upwards. Therefore it is far more appropriate to tax the richest 5%t of families who have prospered than the broad middle class who have suffered.
"Of course taxes can be designed in a better or worse manner. The best way to increase taxes on the wealthy, in addition to allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire, would be to apply a modest financial transactions tax (FTT).
"Robert Pollin and I calculated that a scaled set of FTT on stock, futures, options and other financial instruments could raise approximately $150 billion a year. This would go far towards bringing the long-term budget deficit down to a manageable level.
"A FTT would be hugely progressive. While many middle income families own stock, their holdings are dwarfed by the holdings of the wealthy. Furthermore, few middle income families are active traders. Their intention is to hold their stock to support their retirement or their kids' education, not to shuffle it around on a daily or hourly basis. Some mutual funds do engage in frequent trading. An FTT would encourage investors to move their money to funds that are less active traders, thereby allowing them to escape most of the impact of the FTT.
"Most of the burden of the FTT will fall on wealthy individuals who are active traders and also on the financial industry itself. Either way, the tax will be overwhelmingly borne by the wealthy. By raising the cost of trading, the tax will discourage the trading that provides the revenue for the financial industry. A well-designed tax should also discourage the creation of exotic assets that may serve little useful purpose, since it could lead to the tax being paid multiple times. For example, the holder of an option on a stock would both pay the tax on the purchase and sale of the option and also on the purchase and sale of the stock itself, if the option was ever exercised.
"In short, there is a very good argument for increasing taxes on the wealthy given the current budget situation. The alternative is taxing those who are not wealthy. And, there is no better way to tax the wealthy than to tax their gambling in financial markets. A financial transactions tax will raise revenue at the same time that it makes the economy more productive. This is a genuine win-win situation."
Nora Barrows-Friedman at IPS News writes about the UN protecting from racism charges.
"As the wreckage from Israel's recent siege on Gaza continues to smoulder, international civil society organisations are assembling this week in Switzerland to address Israel's crimes of military occupation and racism.
"But any discussion on Israel's actions in Palestine will be excluded from the formal framework at the Durban Anti-Racism Review Conference in Geneva Monday. Israel-Palestine has been deliberately eliminated from the official programme, structured by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UN OHCHR). Civil society groups believe that the United States, countries within the European Union and Israel pressured the UN to omit a review of Israel's racial discrimination against Palestinians.
"However, two weeks ago, the UN High Commissioner's office unilaterally cancelled all side-events pertaining to Palestine issues. Ingrid Jarradat- Gassner, director of the BADIL Resource Centre for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights in Bethlehem, one of several Palestine-based organisations attending the Durban Review conference, tells IPS that BADIL and the other NGOs had organised a side-event specifically about how and why they see Israel as a "regime of institutionalised racial discrimination on both sides of the Green Line."
" 'As Palestinian NGOs and other NGOs working on the issue of Israel and its violations against the rights of the Palestinian people, we were expecting that there would be a possibility for us to organise these side-events during the official Durban review conference in Geneva,' Jarradat-Gassner says. 'We were informed by the UN itself that this would be possible.'
"Jarradat-Gassner says that on Apr. 3, less than three weeks before the Durban Review Conference, the UN High Commissioner's office called BADIL's representative in Geneva into a meeting at the UN, and verbally informed her that all side-events pertaining to the specific issue of Palestine and Israel had been banned.
"Additionally, U.S. President Barack Obama's administration appears to have decided not to attend the Durban Review conference. In 2001, the United States representatives walked out of the first Durban conference when Zionism was defined as racism against Palestinians.
"In the United States, progressive African-American organisations have expressed their disappointment and frustration that Obama has avoided the Durban Review conference. Ajamu Baraka, executive director of the U.S. Human Rights Network in Atlanta, Georgia, tells IPS that his organisation 'takes the position that the Obama administration should participate and be willing to discuss all of the issues that will be addressed during the review process...A strong stand on this issue by the first African-American President of the United States would have a revolutionary impact on the global discourse on race."
Pepe Escobar at AsiaTimes writes about the Pentagon drone strikes in Pakistan.
"As it was leaked by government sources to the Pakistani daily The News, the success rate of the Barack Obama administration's "hell from above" Predator drone war over the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) is a mere 6%. Of "60 Predator strikes between January 14, 2006, and April 8, 2009, only 10 hit their targets, killing 14 wanted al-Qaeda leaders" but most of all "killing 687 innocent Pakistani civilians". All of them Pashtuns.
"Any sensible boss would fire those responsible for such a performance. Not Obama with the Pentagon - which is bound to continue with its only game in (Pashtun) town, based on amassing non-existent, on-the-ground intelligence; accumulating unbearable "collateral damage"; provoking a mass Pashtun rebellion against the discredited 650,000-strong Pakistani army; and ensuring the military's definitive public humiliation.
"Last week, Pentagon supremo Robert Gates left no doubt the Pentagon's future lay with "expeditionary warfare" or "COIN operations", counter-insurgency operations (COIN) of which the "hell from above" Predator diplomacy is a superstar.
"The strategy also includes replicating the Central Command chief General David Petraeus-coined "Sons of Iraq" COIN gambit - now renamed Afghan Public Protection Force, which will inevitably clash big time with the Hamid Karzai government in Kabul, just as Sunni Iraqis clash with Prime Minster Nuri al-Maliki in Baghdad.
"Needless to say, this COIN-saturated "future" peopled with Predator and Reaper drones, special forces and high-tech ground and air sensors apply essentially to Muslim countries. British colonialism, in a pre-COIN past, used to call this "colonial warfare", or "little wars" against brown people.
"Obama's lofty team of strategic reviewers seems to have overlooked that it's because of occupying US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) troops that moderate Pashtun tribals support the Taliban or even join the Taliban. Obviously, Obama's strategic reviewers forgot to ask Pashtuns themselves about the new US "strategy".
"It's now clear in Washington that the troika of special envoy Richard Holbrooke, Petraeus and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton managed to sell to Obama a COIN-based Afghan nation-building scheme - which, if it sounds like a contradiction, that's because it is. Always keen on taking over the news cycle, Obama preferred to strut his catchy, alliterative triad ("disrupt, dismantle, defeat") which will in theory eliminate evil al-Qaeda from the war theater in Afghanistan and Pakistan, or AfPak.
"Still, the fact remains: Obama's war in AfPak is a war against Pashtuns."
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