USA

NOVANEWS  America Going Bankrupt State by State by Jeff Davis The next stage of the Obama Depression is beginning now–the financial collapse of individual states. USA Today reports: “Residents eager to get their state tax refunds may have a long wait this year: The recession has tied up cash and caused officials in half a dozen states to consider freezing refunds, in one case for as long as five months. States from New York to Hawaii that have been hard-hit by the economic downturn say they have either delayed refunds or are considering doing so because of budget shortfalls. New York, hit with a $9 billion deficit, may delay $500 million in refunds to keep the state from running out of cash, says Gov. David Paterson. Hawaii’s Department of Taxation says some residents may not see state i...

NOVANEWS I recently looked at the archived version of the Chicago Tribune article, "Barack Obama: The First Jewish President?" and decided to Google the title. Below are links to two of the articles that came up. "Some Chicago Jews say Obama is actually the 'first Jewish president' " by Natasha Mozgovaya in Haaretz. "Barack Obama: 'America’s First Jewish President' " by James Petras. Labels: Jews, Obama, US politics

 NOVANEWS The Jewish Forward newspaper is unhappy (sure, it’s pitifully weak, but unlike the Australian Jewish News, Israel can occasionally step out of line): There were the expected handshakes and bear hugs, the slaps on the back and supportive words amiably expressed before the media. Just what ought to happen when Israel welcomes the vice president of the United States, the second in command of its greatest ally and the highest-ranking official of a still-new administration to visit Jerusalem. Then, dafka, the proverbial stab in the back. Hours after Vice President Joe Biden declared that there is “no space” between Israel and the U.S., the Israeli government announces the approval of 1,600 new housing units in contested East Jerusalem, expanding the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood for ultr...

NOVANEWS Surprise, surprise. So the real issue with the UN Goldstone report over Gaza isn’t really the innocents killed, it’s that the recommendations could be used against the West (via the Forward): In Congress, New York Democrat Gary Ackerman, chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, is one of those leading the new argument against the report. Ackerman stressed, in a February 25 Foreign Affairs Committee hearing with Clinton, “It’s not Israel that I raise the concern about.” He said he was worried about the implications of Goldstone’s report for the United States. The number of civilians killed by America’s military in Iraq and Afghanistan is “certainly a number multiplied by some huge multiple compared to the number of civilians that were killed as Israel ...

NOVANEWS Some CNN's work on the Middle East is more propaganda than news. Hell, the former CNN Beirut Bureau chief (I have it from many Lebanese sources now, confirmed), Brend Sadler (whose work have been criticized and mocked here before) has left the network and has been allegedly doing work for mini-Hariri in the realm of propaganda and PR. (There are a few excellent people at CNN but I won't name them bec I don't want them to lose their jobs). Look at this propaganda about the Bahraini autocracy?

NOVANEWS Ireland is considered to be somewhat more pro-Palestinian than other EU countries. For example, last year, Ireland was one of the few EU countries to endorse the Goldstone report at the UN. But behind all the talk of the Irish government taking a stronger line on Israel than other European countries, and of being outraged by Israeli use of Irish passports for its terrorist actions, it's business as usual. One of Israel's main businesses is of course war, and as Naomi Klein wrote in The Shock Doctrine, it makes a tidy profit from exporting weapons of war. Ireland has long been a trading partner with Israeli arms companies - buying drones for use in UN peacekeeping (that failed to function), and buying surveilence systems from Elbit, the notorious security company being blacklisted ...

NOVANEWS There must be something about the air in Massachusetts these days. They’ve just gone and elected a Republican Senator in a State where a donkey could get elected if it wore the Democratic colours (some say it has already!). Now it’s flagship University, Harvard, seems intent on defending a foreign affairs policy wonk, Martin Kramer, who’s long established a reputation as a hard-line Zionist. Harvard is, of course, the almer mata of another serial racist and by all accounts wife batterer, one Professor Alan Dershowitz whose book The Case for Israel plagiarised a book, Joan Peter’s From Time Immemorial, that was itself guilty of plagiarism and large-scale falsehoods.  Kramer however, who was been involved in the McCarthyite Campus Watch (like the Nazis, he doesn’t like dissident aca...

NOVANEWS Joe Biden visits Israel. Israel announces new settlement construction in East Jerusalem. Even the New York Times acknowledges that despite Israel's inclusion of East Jerusalem as "part of its united capital," the "rest of the world rejects" this position, while Israel makes this political position a fact-on-the-ground through ethnic cleansing in Sheikh Jarrah. Danny Ayalon, in full, glorious meshugana mode, defends the settlement construction in East Jerusalem: "There is no doubt that the Palestinians will try to use this to either stop the upcoming indirect peace talks, or to extort more concessions from us, and I have explained to U.S. government officials that there will be no more concessions." East Jerusalem, off the table. Palestinian state, off the table. Understandably, th...

  NOVANEWS  One of my themes on this site is that Israel is experiencing a dark night of the soul due to the racism that pervades that society, but that Americans are still in the dark about this reality because of our media, which refuses to do the story. And so while Haaretz does the story every other day, and Andrew Sullivan says that Israel’s soul is at risk, establishment institutions like the New York Times and the New Yorker (and the Columbia Journalism School, junketing to Yad Vashem) turn a blind eye to this dark reality.  In the Times case, the problem surely reflects the fact that its two Jerusalem reporters are Jews who are deeply invested in Israeli society. One of them, Ethan Bronner, has a son in the Israeli military. The other, Isabel Kershner, is an Israeli who’s married ...