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Ralph Nader: If Barack Obama Is Serious About Palestinian Peace, He Should Apologize To Jimmy Carter

Posted on November 26, 2008 by Mike Bock

Ralph Nader says Barack Obama has a great opportunity to facilitate peace between the Palestinians and Israel. In order to get the process moving, Nader is urging Obama, on behalf of the Democratic Party, to offer a public apology to Jimmy Carter for the shabby treatment Carter received at the Democratic National Convention.

Nader writes in an article at Counterpunch that at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, the Democratic Party denied Jimmy Carter the traditional invitation to speak that is accorded its former presidents. Nader says Carter was denied this courtesy because of Carter’s well published, controversial views on Israel — summarized in his book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid”

Nader says: “First, there was a compromise offer to let Carter speak but only on domestic policy subjects. This would have kept him from mentioning his views on securing peace between the Israelis and Palestinians through a two-state solution essentially back to the 1967 borders. …Even this astonishing restriction on the former president was unacceptable to the dictatorial censors. They wanted nothing from the deliberate, candid Georgian short of complete exclusion.”

Excerpts from the article:

Silencing Carter, who negotiated the Israeli-Egyptian peace agreement, involved behind the scenes tensions between supporters of the hard-line AIPAC lobby and those Democrats who argued both respect and free speech to let Carter join Bill Clinton on the stage and address a nationwide audience.
It is false to attribute this shutdown to the opinions of American Jews, a majority of whom polls show support a two-state solution and disagree on other issues with the AIPAC lobby, as recently documented by The Nation Magazine’s Eric Alterman.
The Convention planners, with the full knowledge and approval of their candidate, Barack Obama, arranged to have a short video on Carter’s work during the post-Katrina crisis followed by a walk across the stage by Carter and his wife Rosalynn to applause.
Carter’s opponents did not hide their efforts to keep him from speaking. They spoke openly to the media. They disliked Carter’s recognition of Palestinian suffering under the Israeli government’s military and colonial occupation, the blockades, the violations of UN Resolutions and international law. He championed the work of the Israeli and Palestinian peace movements who together have worked out a detailed two-state accord that is supported by a majority of their respective peoples.
Jimmy Carter knew fully what the Party did to him. But he played the loyal Democrat as a good sport and avoided a ruckus without even a public grumble. Privately, however, he and Rosalynn were very upset, believing that political pandering prevents the United States from playing a key role in peacemaking between the powerful Israelis and their Palestinian neighbors.
This is an auspicious time for vigorous peacemaking by the new Obama Administration as a steady, honest broker. The serious offer by the Arab League in 2002 for such an agreement, coupled with diplomatic and economic relations with the Arab countries was reiterated dramatically on November 10 with a full page message in the New York Times. Headlined “Peace is Possible: More than 50 Arab and Muslim Countries Agree,” the Center for Middle East Peace reminds Americans of that Arab Peace Initiative, reiterated in 2007, and supported by the fifty-seven member nations of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (www.centerpeace.org). The dramatic declaration, replete with all the flags of these countries, ended with the plea: “Let us not miss this opportunity.”
The Israeli government has not engaged this long-standing offer by the Arab League. Without Barack Obama taking a strong initiative in America’s national interest, it is unlikely that there will be any serious engagement. A sign that he is determined to set the peace process on course is whether he expresses his regrets about the intolerance and suppression of a former president whose views on the Palestinian question he once shared in Chicago before he began the quest for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.
Jimmy Carter—the early peacemaker between Israel and Egypt (for which he won the Nobel Peace Prize)—has remained the most steadfast, prominent American friend that the Israeli and Palestinian peoples have in securing a stable peace in that region. The new President Obama should welcome Mr. Carter’s wise and seasoned counsel.

Posted in M Bock, Opinion | 6 Comments

Intelligence Report “Global Trends 2025” Says Leadership Is Key For World To Meet Dangerous Future

Posted on November 25, 2008 by Mike Bock

The National Intelligence Council (NIC) this month released a report, “Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World.” This report looks at the next 17 years, and sees a potentially very dangerous world, “more fragmented and conflicted,” with huge population increases and dwindling resources.

The 120 page report (download pdf here) concludes by saying, “Leadership Will Be Key: As we indicated at the beginning of the study, human actions are likely to be the crucial determinant of the outcomes. Historically, as we have pointed out, leaders and their ideas— positive and negative — were among the biggest game-changers during the last century.”

The NIC releases such a report every four years between Election Day and Inauguration Day. Some of the Reports assessments are:

The whole international syste — as constructed following WWI — will be revolutionized. Not only will new players — Brazil, Russia, India and China — have a seat at the international high table, they will bring new stakes and rules of the game.
The unprecedented transfer of wealth roughly from West to East now under way will continue for the foreseeable future.
Unprecedented economic growth, coupled with 1.5 billion more people, will put pressure on resources — particularly energy, food, and water — raising the specter of scarcities emerging as demand outstrips supply.
The potential for conflict will increase owing partly to political turbulence in parts of the greater Middle East.

This report is 120 pages, and I’ve just started to read it. Some highlights:

For the most part, China, India, and Russia are not following the Western liberal model for self- development but instead are using a different model, “state capitalism.” State capitalism is a loose term used to describe a system of economic management that gives a prominent role to the state. Other rising powers—South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore—also used state capitalism to develop their economies. However, the impact of Russia, and particularly China, following this path is potentially much greater owing to their size and approach to “democratization.”
Asia, Africa, and Latin America will account for virtually all population growth over the next 20 years; less than 3 percent of the growth will occur in the West. Europe and Japan will continue to far outdistance the emerging powers of China and India in per capita wealth, but they will struggle to maintain robust growth rates because the size of their working-age populations will decrease. The US will be a partial exception to the aging of populations in the developed world because it will experience higher birth rates and more immigration.
The World Bank estimates that demand for food will rise by 50 percent by 2030, as a result of growing world population, rising affluence, and the shift to Western dietary preferences by a larger middle class. Lack of access to stable supplies of water is reaching critical proportions, particularly for agricultural purposes, and the problem will worsen because of rapid urbanization worldwide and the roughly 1.2 billion persons to be added over the next 20 years. Today,
Experts consider 21 countries, with a combined population of about 600 million, to be either cropland or freshwater scarce. Owing to continuing population growth, 36 countries, with about 1.4 billion people, are projected to fall into this category by 2025.
In the absence of employment opportunities and legal means for political expression, conditions will be ripe for disaffection, growing radicalism, and possible recruitment of youths into terrorist groups. Terrorist groups in 2025 will likely be a combination of descendants of long- established groups—that inherit organizational structures, command and control processes, and training procedures necessary to conduct sophisticated attacks—and newly emergent collections of the angry and disenfranchised that become self-radicalized.

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Samuelson Warns Of Impact Of Lost Wealth On Total Economy

Posted on November 25, 2008 by Mike Bock

Robert J. Samuelson of Newsweek notes that since September 2007, Americans’ personal wealth has dropped about $9 trillion and that a common estimate is that every dollar’s change in wealth causes people to change their spending by 5 cents. If this estimate is correct, he says, $450 billion ($9 trillion times .05) will be missing from the economy.

Samuelson warns that this big drop in consumer spending could have devastating effects. He says, “If the swing toward saving is too sharp, consumer spending wouldn’t just weaken; it would collapse…. Vehicle sales have already plunged. In 2005, they totaled almost 17 million; Global Insight’s 2009 projection is 12.2 million. And these problems feed on each other. Lower consumer spending depresses profits and stock prices, which corrodes confidence, further dampens spending, raises unemployment and increases loan defaults. Credit card losses could be the next big blow to financial institutions.”

Samuelson points out how wild stock prices have moved: the stock market has changed by 4% or more 25 out of the last 50 trading days (16 down, nine up). In the last 25 years, on average, such big one day swings in stock prices have only occured once per year. Says Samuelson, “We’ve gone from one a year to one every other day.” He says, “The wild stock swings confirm the palpable fear and uncertainty. … What terrifies Americans is the prospect that the slump will become much worse than average—and that the government has lost control of events.”

He writes, “The hyper-anxiety is not irrational pessimism, though it may prove unfounded. Every major episode of this crisis—from Bear Stearns’s failure to General Motors’ possible bankruptcy—has come as a surprise. Similarly, the crisis’s three main causes have repeatedly been underestimated: the burst housing ‘bubble’; fragile financial institutions; and a reversal of the ‘wealth effect.’ Of these, the last is least recognized.

Samuelson fears that the $9 trillion in missing wealth, will cause a “wealth effect,” that will further depress consumer activity, leading to even more problems in the economy.

He writes, “The case for a sizable economic “stimulus” package is that it would temporarily compensate for the erosion of consumer spending. But if the positive “wealth effect” is now giving way to a lasting negative or neutral “wealth effect”—as people try to replenish savings and offset lost wealth—then even a recovery would be sluggish. A new source of demand is needed to sustain faster growth. An obvious solution is for high-saving Asian countries, led by China, to consume and spend more so that their imports increase. Whether they have the political capacity to reduce their dependence on export-led growth is unclear.”