The latest from The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com
- Marshall Fine: Cognitive dissonance: An entire future, lost in 'reality'
- Robert Amsterdam: Are Russia's Arms Deals to Venezuela Destablizing Central America?
- Jeff Biggers: Letter from Europe: Foreign Disbelief of Topless America
- Cenk Uygur: The "Bipartisan Compromise" Scam
| Marshall Fine: Cognitive dissonance: An entire future, lost in 'reality' | Top |
| I was standing in line at the bank the other day, mindlessly tapping my foot to the music on the PA system, when I suddenly realized what I was listening to: Talking Heads' Once in a Lifetime. Never mind the irony of David Byrne singing "Where is my large automobile?" at this particular moment in economic time - let's talk about cognitive dissonance. It was just the fact of this band, this song, this setting. Perhaps I'm showing my age - oh hell, I know I'm showing my age - but I can remember when that song and that band were considered so far outside the mainstream that they weren't even played on the radio, let alone as background music at a suburban Citibank branch. Then, just as the insanity over Michael Jackson was dying down (yes, Thriller was quite an album; no, he was not the greatest artist who ever lived and, by any reasonable standard, would barely crack the top 500), Walter Cronkite died. And it started all over again - except with a more level-headed sense of awe. Then I heard Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, founder of the Daily Kos website, on Bill Maher's show, saying that he was too young to remember when Cronkite did the news - but offering the wholly logical observation that, because of fragmentation of media, no one would ever bestride the media like a colossus the way Cronkite did. Which made me think: I wonder whether Walter Cronkite ever heard of Perez Hilton? Finally, I heard a radio commercial soliciting moms to bring their kids to a cattle-call audition for commercials and TV shows. "Having your child on TV - how amazing would that be?" the female announcer chirped. Which made me think of the pilot I'd just watched for a new reality show, Addicted to Beauty (Aug. 4 on the Oxygen channel), a program which could make you weep for humanity - it's that revolting. And then I thought, well, how amazing must the parents of the idiots on this show think it is that their children are on TV, revealing to the world just how low the bar is now set for what passes as televised entertainment. Addicted to Beauty is about a new venture in La Jolla, Calif.: an actual plastic surgeon has joined forces with the owner of a beauty spa, to offer both spa treatments and medical cosmetic surgery procedures - everything from Botox to breast implants and face lifts. How repulsive is this show? For the rest of this article, click here to reach my website: www.hollywoodandfine.com. More on Michael Jackson | |
| Robert Amsterdam: Are Russia's Arms Deals to Venezuela Destablizing Central America? | Top |
| Yesterday afternoon, Russia's RIA Novosti Spanish wire service reported on the arrival of the Deputy Prime Minister and Rosneft Chairman Igor Sechin to Caracas, Venezuela. The reason for the trip of Russia's energy czar (and leader of the "siloviki" network of former KGB officers), according to the Kremlin news outlet, was to prepare for Hugo Chávez's upcoming visit to Moscow and a high-level inter-governmental commission to be held in St. Petersburg. By the end of the day, Sechin had already inked many deals, conveniently for himself and for Russia, with the Venezuelan government - Bloomberg reports that Russia and Venezuela signed wide ranging cooperation accords on energy, military, and agricultural cooperation, including the formation of a joint venture between PDVSA-Services and Gazprom's Latin America division. What does Sechin personally get out of the trip? He took a trip with his PDVSA counterpart Rafael Ramirez out to the Orinoco Belt to see an oil field which was once owned by U.S. firm ConocoPhillips before expropriation, announcing plans to unveil another joint venture to develop it with with Rosneft in September. Joint ventures and big-sounding cooperation agreements are a familiar sight to observers of Russia-Venezuela relations, and the two countries have even formed a $4 billion development bank. But other than arms purchases, the trade volume hasn't yet caught up. Venezuela still exports some 60% of its oil to the United States, comprising 11% of U.S. supply . The U.S. is by far their largest trade partner, and Russia's volumes don't even yet compete with China's business with Venezuela. The reason for all this fuss, of course, is that the relationship is highly political . For the Russians, there is a clear desire to poke Washington in the eye after Vice President Joseph Biden's visit to the Ukraine and Georgia - Sechin seems dead set on proving Hillary Clinton right that no spheres of influence exist . More than just the immense enjoyment that Chávez must feel in passing an oil field taken directly from an American company into the hands of a Russian company, there is also a strong and growing military dimension to the relationship to the tune of $4.4 billion. A Swedish think tank estimates a 900% growth in arms purchases in the last five-year period, making Venezuela the #1 buyer of Russian arms in the world. Hugo Chávez should be honored to have such a high ranking official from the Kremlin to help him "prepare" for his next visit to Moscow - Sechin is estimated by many Kremlinologists to have much more clout, and many more billions, than President Dmitry Medvedev himself. Sechin is the main figure running Russia's Latin America policy , as he is rumored to be fluent in both Spanish and Portuguese from his KGB days in Africa. Controversy seems to follow the man wherever he goes. Many point to him as being the main conspirator and beneficiary behind the Kremlin's takeover of the Yukos oil company - a multi-billion dollar daylight robbery . The Rosneft chairman has also come under fire for what many believe to be a non-sensical deal with the Chinese, passing them control of the future of Russian oil. The economist Konstantin Sonin has written that " Sechin's contract with China might go down in history like the notorious privatization auctions of the early 1990s ." The timing of his visit - along with the high tensions over Honduras following the coup - raises some concerns over the uptick in military hardware transfers between Moscow and Caracas. The Venezuelan President recently made several comments about doubling his orders of T-90 battle tanks from Russia. The Kremlin recent sent the battleship Peter the Great to carry out war games with Venezuela in the Caribbean. Venezuela is the only country in Latin America with a license to manufacture their own Kalashnikovs, a fact which is very worrying to the Colombian government when so many of these small arms seem to go missing . A Colombian newspaper also ran a report this month about a Venezuelan contact attempting to sell 20 Russian-made surface-to-air missiles on the black market. What the United States may be worried about with this visit is Russia's potential acquiescence to Chávez's apparent plan to disrupt the attempts to broker a deal on behalf of former Costa Rican President Oscar Arias. Under instructions from Chávez, Zelaya has ignored all advice from Arias, and made many high risk stunts, including crossing over the border for a few minutes amid teeming crowds this past weekend (Christopher Sabatini from the Council of the Americas describes Zelaya's actions as " tragic silliness "). Many observers believe that Chávez and Zelaya " need more dead Hondurans " to produce the outcome they are looking for. There can be no doubt of two facts: this level of arms purchases by Chávez defeats the narrative that he is about protecting the interests of the poor and underprivileged of Venezuela, and secondly, there are individuals seeking improper personal enrichment through their powers of office. The grotesque level of corruption in both Russia and Venezuela should stimulate the discussion as to whether the predatory nature of both states constitutes not only an international crime, but as well a breach of fundamental human rights for which there may indeed be remedies under international law. A version of this article was published on www.robertamsterdam.com . More on Venezuela | |
| Jeff Biggers: Letter from Europe: Foreign Disbelief of Topless America | Top |
| Spoleto, Umbria--When President Barack Obama trundled into the bel paese of Italy for the G8 gathering last month, some of my neighbors in the verdant hills of Umbria were surprised to learn about their country's small but lingering dependence on coal-fired plants. Draping banners down five coal-fired towers of carbon emissions that week, Greenpeace reminded the European gathering--and President Obama--of the inconvenient reality of coal. Coal mining in Italy is considered a relic of yesteryear. Only a few miles from this Umbrian hilltown, the last smoldering lignite mine closed a couple of decades ago after a series of fatal accidents, and with it went the haze of sulfuric acid, mercury, lead and fly ash that cloaked much of Europe. But, the greatest surprise--sheer disbelief--for my neighbors in Italy's protected Umbrian range was reserved for our own American style of Big Coal-gone-wild--that federally sanctioned process of mountaintop removal mining that has laid waste to over a million acres of our nation's most diverse and ancient mountains in Appalachia, in order to produce less than 5-7 percent of national coal production. Blowing up your mountains? The Italian asked again. How is that possible under President Obama? It's hard for any foreigner to believe that President Obama has quietly acquiesced to the marketing and machinations of Big Coal, and allows millions of pounds of ammonium nitrate/fuel oil explosives to rip across our nation's first frontier, topple hundreds of mountains, and ruin and displace historic mountain communities--that would have easily been granted regional protection by the United Nations or the European Community. In fact, when I describe the process of mountaintop removal, and its 38-year reign of terror in Appalachia, no one believes me, so I am compelled to pull out my laptop and show them pictures and videos, including the creative work from Chicago's environmental-artist collective called Topless America (http://www.toplessamerica.org/). Here's their latest journey to Appalachia: Here is an incredible list of the scores of films on mountaintop removal documented by film critic and historian Steve Fesenmaier: http://thegazz.com/gblogs/wvfilm/2009/07/21/the-new-coal-mine-wars-films-about-mtr/ And here's a trailer for the forthcoming film documentary, On Coal River, that expertly details the human costs of "minimizing adverse environmental impacts," as the Obama administration likes to say, of mountaintop removal: Last month in the west country of Ireland, I chatted in a pub with a shopkeeper from County Roscommon. We shared stories of our grandfathers, both of whom were coal miners. After telling me about Ireland's plans for off-shore wind turbines and other renewable energy projects outside Galway, the shopkeeper urged me to go and visit the Arigna Coal Mine in Derreenavoggy, County Roscommon. His grandfather had worked in the underground mine there; my grandfather worked in various underground mines in southern Illinois. The Arigna mine is part of the Miners Way Historical Trail, which treks along the gorgeous hills and valleys of Arigna. Closed in 1990, after being mined underground for 400 years, the Arigna mine--the last working coal mine in Ireland--has been turned into a heritage site. The shopkeeper raved about the natural beauty of the area--his own "little Appalachia," he claimed. He told me to take a hike after I visited the museum. As the coal mine brochure hailed, "Arigna is situated in a picturesque valley with breathtaking scenery and unspoiled landscape." Unspoiled landscape. My grandparent's 150-year-old ancestral homestead in the Shawnee National Forest in southern Illinois was stripmined ten years ago this month and has been turned into a leveled graveyard of foreign grasslands. Over 1.5 million acres of hardwood deciduous forests, and over 500 mountains that would have been celebrated as a national park in any other region in the world, have been wiped out in Appalachia from mountaintop removal, the devastated ruins flatted into monuments of destruction. I told the Irish shopkeeper he needed to visit Appalachia to believe it. More on Italy | |
| Cenk Uygur: The "Bipartisan Compromise" Scam | Top |
| So, some of the top corporatist Democrats and Republicans in the Senate sat around a table in the Finance Committee for awhile pretending to sweat out a compromise and then came out with exactly what we thought they would - a health care proposal that benefits the health care companies above all. Shocking. What did we expect? Max Baucus is the ring leader of this merry band of six senators. Seven out of his top ten donors are ... health care companies (he has received close to $4 million from the health care industry ). You don't say? And then he crafts a proposal that screws the average citizen and helps those same companies. I never could have predicted. Look at the two Democratic proposals they decided to jettison : The public option and employer mandates. The public option would clearly make health insurance cheaper for the average American and for the government overall . But it would also give the private insurance companies real competition - so, we can't have that. Employer mandates might bother some of the top corporations in the country, so we can't have that either. Better to let employees get siphoned off into government subsidies. But wait, wouldn't that make our budget problem worse and not better? Aren't all of these senators pretending to care about the budget and deficit? Oh I forgot, as long as the corporations get their way, none of the rest of this really matters. In fact, if it turns out health care reform costs more in the long run, well, that's great because then you can kill real reform easier the next time around by pretending it costs too much. Everyone wins - except you. So, why are the Democratic senators going along with this scam? Because they get paid by the same guys as the Republicans. That's how life usually works - you follow the orders of whoever paid you. In this case, the politicians get elected by raising more money than their competitors, and they get their money from corporate lobbyists. So, whose orders do you think they're going to follow? Given this state of affairs, it's a minor miracle there are as many Democrats for the public option as there are now. But the ones who actually care to get this done are not the ones coming up with fake compromises with Republicans and the health care industry. They are the ones insisting on a public option. If you negotiate that away, you never had any real interest in reform. Saying you're going to do health care reform without a public option is kind of like saying you're going to fight Al Qaeda in Afghanistan by invading Iraq. It misses the point - on purpose. It promises to do more harm than good. And it's what was planned all along. So, will this be our Waterloo if we allow the American people to be tricked into a "bipartisan compromise" that actually compromises real reform? It will be so easy for the politicians to pretend to be brave and sign on to this as if they are doing something magnanimous by compromising and getting some sort of health care package through. And you can bet your bottom dollar the press will go along with the charade . So, that only leaves us to object. And we can't do it meekly . We have to scream it from the rooftops. Otherwise, they will be perfectly happy to ignore us and sign on to this fraudulent proposal as if it's real health care reform. So, are you going to let them do it? Or are you going to insist on real reform and real change this time around? Watch The Young Turks on You Tube Here | |
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