Progressive breakfast club headlines 12/8/08 12456

 

Progressive breakfast club headlines 12/8/08   OBAMA TO IRAN: DO YOU WANT TO DO THIS "THE HARD WAY OR THE EASY WAY?"  In a Meet the Press interview described as the President-elect having delivered "mixed signals" to Iran, he holds out the possibility of diplomatic talks (the easy way) or tighter sanctions (the hard way) that might be used by the U.S. in regard to Iran's alleged threat to develop nuclear weapons.  http://news.antiwar.com/2008/12/07/obama-attempts-to-clarify-iran-position/   WHEN SHOCK THERAPY BECOMES SHOCK RESISTANCE.  Naomi Klein, who "wrote the book" on world-wide imposition of regressive social measures by neo-liberalism in response to "national crises" notes with some excitement the possibility that people in Canada (her own country) have become immunized from shock effects by observing its failures elsewhere.  The electoral failure of the Harper (Liberal) goverment is a sign of a new "resistive" political force in Canada that promises the growing influence of a coalition of more progressive political forces.  http://www.alternet.org/democracy/110809/?page=1   MURDER IN JUAREZ; WHAT'S GOING ON? According to a prevailing "media narrative," the escalation of murders in Juarez and other border Mexican towns is the product of a "turf war" between rival drug distribution gangs.  Bill Conroy for the Narco News uncovers a very different interpretation: that the violence may well be part of the very Mexican government "crackdown" against the drug trade, abetted by a U.S. "Plan Mexico" project similar to the "Plan Colombia" to combat drug operations in that country.  In this interpretation, it is the emerging "military cartel" associated with a corrupt Mexican government that is putting critics in jail (if they are lucky, killed if they are not).  Conroy notes the rumor that U.S. "Iraqi veterans" are involved in this cartel, an idea somewhat supported by the prevalence of domestic U.S. gang members on military installations, and the access of many of them to weapons in the government's military arsenal.  http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/bill-conroy/2008/12/juarez-murders-shine-light-emerging-%E2%80%98military-cartel%E2%80%99   "JOHN ('NUKE BAILOUT')  BRYSON MUST NOT BE NEW SECRETARY OF ENERGY"  Harvey Wasserman joins the parade of un-solicited advisers to Barack Obama on the make-up of his cabinet, hoping to shoot down one trial balloon which would make the former head of the California Public Utilities Commission the energy secretary.  Wasserman notes how, before he "greenwashed" his views by promoting wind energy, Bryson played a key role both in the de-regulation of electric rates that lead to Enron's boom and bust, and in a bailout of the ailing nuclear power industry.  http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/12/07-2   REMEMBERING MANNY DIAZ IN MIAMI AS HIS FUTURE ON THE NATIONAL POLITICAL STAGE IS PONDERED.  Mention of the Miami Mayor as possible Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Obama administration moves Alan Farago to an article "remembering" Diaz in a light not favorable to that future.  He is remembered (and resented by labor forces) primarily as the architect of a disastrously failed police response to protests associated with FTAA meetings in Miami. But more to Farago's interest, he is remembered as well as the co-architect (with former Govenor Jeb Bush) of promotion of south Florida as a caution-free zone for free-wheeling "redevelopment" of downtown Miami, among other areas, which sparked both the national housing boom and the current disaster of the collapse of a securitized mortgage industry.  http://www.counterpunch.org/farago12052008.html   These headlines and following additional stories posted on website today.  To read them, click http://www.sunstateactivist.org/ scroll below headlines and click on any article you want to read.   ooo  Thinking globally, acting locally in happening in Latin America. ooo  This little (dioxin-laced) Irish pig went to market. ooo  College endowment funds shrink along with the stock market. ooo  FL officials go on European tour, taxpayers pick up bill, $430k. ooo  And more.   Check out my article on Thomas Friedman's "hypocrisy" about the collective guilt of Pakistanis for Mumbai on: http://sunstateactivist.org/ssablog/?p=109     Quote of the day:   "The issue of public financing for political parties in elections is key to protecting and deepening democracy in Canada, and for keeping it out of corporate control. It is not for nothing that the Tories are attacking that. They see attacking public financing of political parties as a way to entrench their power."   Naomi Klein, in an article noting that Canada is not as subject as U.S. to shock doctrine economic action, because its political process is less in control of the country's corporations.  http://www.alternet.org/democracy/110809/?page=2