Archive for International
Obama at Symposium on Global Agriculture and Food Security
Posted by: | CommentsThis landed in my email inbox. I’ve shortened it some.
Ronald Reagan Building
Washington, D.C.
May 18, 2012, 10:08 A.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you so much [...] We were originally going to convene, along with the G8, in Chicago. But since we’re not doing this in my hometown, I wanted to bring a little bit of Chicago to Washington. (Laughter.) It is wonderful to see all of you. It is great to see quite a few young people here as well. And I want to acknowledge a good friend. We were just talking backstage — he was my inspiration for singing at the Apollo — (laughter) — Bono is here, and it is good to see him. (Applause.)
Now, this weekend at the G8, we’ll be represented by many of the world’s largest economies. We face urgent challenges — creating jobs, addressing the situation in the eurozone, sustaining the global economic recovery. But even as we deal with these issues, I felt it was also important, also critical to focus on the urgent challenge that confronts some 1 billion men, women and children around the world — the injustice of chronic hunger; the need for long-term food security.
So tomorrow at the G8, we’re going to devote a special session to this challenge. We’re launching a major new partnership to reduce hunger and lift tens of millions of people from poverty. And we’ll be joined by leaders from across Africa, including the first three nations to undertake this effort and who join us here today — I want to acknowledge them: Prime Minister Meles of Ethiopia — (applause) — President Mills of Ghana — (applause) — and President Kikwete of Tanzania. (Applause.) Welcome.
Your Traditions Are More Important Than Theirs. Aren’t They?
Posted by: | CommentsSomething I ran across last night…
Invisible Children
Posted by: | CommentsThank you to loyal reader Diogenes for bringing our attention to this powerful video. In his words, “It makes some of the issues we deal with here seem frivolous in comparison.” He’s right. Watch it to the end — you’ll be moved.
You Have Been Schooled
Posted by: | CommentsThe Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive
“Due process” and “judicial process” are not one and the same, particularly when it comes to national security. The Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process.
– U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, explaining to Northwestern University School of Law how national security officials can pop a Hellfire missile in your American ass and call it due process.
That’s legal reasoning worthy of John Yoo and Alberto Gonzales. And you thought you’d seen the last of them on January 20, 2009.
Glenn Greenwald quotes Sen. Barack Obama and Eric Holder condemning this kind of reasoning from the Bush II White House, and characterizes President Obama’s version of due process:
the President and his underlings are your accuser, your judge, your jury and your executioner all wrapped up in one, acting in total secrecy and without your even knowing that he’s accused you and sentenced you to death, and you have no opportunity even to know about, let alone confront and address, his accusations; is that not enough due process for you?
Damoclean Democracy and the Executive
Posted by: | CommentsCross posted from Ascend of Asheville.
As of 2005 there were 737 US military bases in other countries around the world. Every two years the Executive branch of the US government submits about 4000 civilian, and about 65,000 military appointments to Congress for positions within the government. Most of these positions are within the Executive branch. Essentially, the vast majority of the Executive is military in it’s origin, purpose and/or personnel.
This represents, to borrow a phrase from a famous General turned Executive, a vast military/executive complex, with power that arises in many ways from a single admonishment in the Constitution that the President “take care that the laws be faithfully executed”.
The framers of the Constitution wished to avoid a capricious government that was subject to the whims of the population (too much Democracy) or prone to abuse by dictators (too little Democracy). By aiming for “just right” as they understood it, they created a system approaching genius, but they also created a Damoclean situation that has deteriorated over time. Read More→
Leap Day Open Thread: Merkelserver
Posted by: | CommentsYou’re a server. You’re serving beer to the Chancellor of Germany and her people. You spill five beers down Angela Merkel’s back. You think to yourself… ?
This thread comes around every four years. Maximize it.
Michio Kaku Droppin’ Knowledge
Posted by: | CommentsEverything Michio Kaku sees in the newspapers points to our perilous transition from a tribal/nationalist civilization to a planetary civilization. Will we make it?
So, Who Are The Welfare Junkies?
Posted by: | Comments
So much misdirected anger.
Over at Daily Kos, Zwoof has seen a rash of chain emails about “welfare junkies” who are “drug-fueled slackers.” Obligingly, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) has introduced the Welfare Reform Act of 2011 to discipline deadbeats on food stamps.
This is old news. It is Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queens” (1976) revisited. It is the Lee Atwater/Roger Ailes revolving door, “Willie Horton” campaign ads from 1988. It is the right blaming hurricane victims in New Orleans’ poor, Lower Ninth Ward in 2005 for not leaving town in their SUVs and checking into Shreveport or Dallas hotels until Hurricane Katrina blew herself out. It is conservatives blaming the 2008 financial meltdown on the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act. The government, you see, forced private mortgage lenders and Wall Street to fatten themselves on CDOs built from the “liar loans” they invented and sold to shiftless poor people. In the United Kingdom, it is BBC’s 2010 “The Scheme,” a series critics described as “poverty porn,” depicting welfare recipients that London’s tabloid Daily Mail calls “welfare junkies” (Well, what do you know?) and “foul-mouthed, lazy scroungers, cheats, layabouts, drunks, drug addicts” leeching off “the goodwill of taxpayers.”
Walking and Chewing Gum Redux
Posted by: | CommentsEvolve or perish. We’ve spoken about walking and chewing gum before and it’s back again. On the heels of this weekend’s Netroots New York conference that spent a lot of time on Occupy Wall Street, Robert Cruickshank (formerly with the Courage Campaign) offers reflections on the Progressive and Occupy movements and thinks it is time for a course correction:
It was time for a correction anyway. What we have learned is that winning elections isn’t on its own enough to produce change. What’s needed is a clear policy agenda and a strong external movement that can help progressives in power implement that agenda – and stop others in power from implementing a bad one. That requires a movement in which electoral organizing is just one piece. In other words, the progressive movement needs to grow not only in numbers but in the diversity of what it does.
That isn’t what drives most Occupiers, however. Occupy is also a rebuke of organized politics. They’re in the streets because they believe it’s the only way change can be produced. What it has revealed is that distrust of government is now rampant on the left as well as the right … Occupy’s choice of tactics reflected their belief that anyone in government was either incapable of helping or was determined to break the protest. And Occupy has brought a new group of people into political activism. New voices are popping up online, new leaders are emerging, and they are much less interested in the more incremental changes that the progressive movement had unfortunately become accustomed to accepting.
