ECONOMY WILL TURN AROUND — NOT!
THE DYING ESCALATES IN GAZA
BILL RICHARDSON STEPS DOWN TO DEAL WITH PROBE

• Here we go again •

1. A new year.

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2. Another ride?

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3. Stocks rally on the first day.

Well.

That was all some professional prognosticators needed to offer sunny optimism about the prospects of economic recovery.

The cheerleaders of the New York Times — a newspaper, which ran a piece Saturday PRAISING some of President Bush’s “achievements” (sic) in health care because “its ONLY FAIR,” also, found some new reasons to believe: Some Forecasters See a Fast Economic Recovery

“Economics as the dismal science? Not in some quarters.

In the midst of the deepest recession in the experience of most Americans, many professional forecasters are optimistically heading into the new year declaring that the worst may soon be over. For this rosy picture to play out, they are counting on the Obama administration and Congress to come through with a substantial stimulus package, at least $675 billion over two years.”

Slipping back into my book, ‘Plunder,’ I recalled a reference to another Times headline in October 2007, just a month before the recession is officially said to have begun. It read:

Hmm.

Two months later, to the day, the Wall Street Journal was drinking the same Kool Aid: “US Economy Down; Not Out.”

• “The economy is in a soft patch right now,” said Mike Moran of Daiwa Securities. “My personal view is it’s not a recession type-softness.”

• Analysts surveyed by MarketWatch expect new-home sales to fall to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 706,000 in November, down from 728,000 a month before.

• It’s still debatable whether the troubles in the subprime market will spill over into the broader economy and stop growth.

On this past Friday, the Wall Street Journal ran a front page mea culpa posing as a news story, “The Doomsayers Who Got It Right,” a story profiling experts who predicted the economic collapse we are experiencing. If they got right, then the Journal, and most of our financial press, largely got it wrong.

Most of these “journalists” are so embedded in the financial culture that they refuse to recognize their own complicity in the disaster, i.e., by not investigating when it was happening and not warning us about the deception in the real estate market. At a New Year’s Eve party, I was arguing with one New York Times real estate reporter who kept insisting she, and by extension, her newspaper, was on top of it. She was dismissive of my critique. They may be covering it better now with their retrospective ‘The Recckoning’ series but that’s all well after the fact.

Did they plumb the depths of predatory lending and white collar crime before the markets crashed? Did the expose the lack of regulatiions and the profiteers? Did they go after the ponzi schemers like Madoff? I don’t think so.

The NakedCapitalism.com blog skewers a NYT magazine story suggesting that the crisis can be blamed on faulty RISK MODELS.

WHO SAW IT COMING? Henry Blodgett writes on Clusterstock

Now that we’re mired in the worst economic crisis since the Depression, forecasters who didn’t see it coming are consoling themselves by saying, “no one saw it coming.” This is hogwash.

Many people saw it coming:

• Gary Shilling,
• Nouriel Roubini,
• Jeremy Grantham,
• Dean Baker,
• Peter Schiff,
• Robert Manning
• Robert Kuttner
• Robert Shiller, et al.

NOTE: May I be ever so humble as to include my less austere “alarmist” self in the aforementioned austere listing of the good and great?

They just don’t happen to work for major investment banks.

THE RISING WALL OF DEBT

As the Times, which is closer to Wall Street than the Washington Post, looked up, the Post looked down with a lead story pointing to the real structural and systemic problem: DEBT.

U.S. Debt Expected To Soar This Year

With President-elect Barack Obama and congressional Democrats considering a massive spending package aimed at pulling the nation out of recession, the national debt is projected to jump by as much as $2 trillion this year, an unprecedented increase that could test the world’s appetite for financing…

BEWARE OPTION ARMS

Reggie Middleton, who does a “boom-bust” blog writes on Seeking Alpha about the next great shock to the economy.

“After the subprime saga the asset securitization crisis unfolds, another chapter up its sleeves with added melancholy, called the Option ARMs. With billions of Option ARMs due for recast in 2009 and 2010 another crisis is on the making. But this time problems are expected to be more pronounced than the subprime crisis since the economy is already nearing its trough, the consumer confidence has slumped to an all time recent history low and financial markets are in a gridlock. Making the matters worse is the unrelenting fall in the US housing market which is showing no signs of stabilization.”

FACTS ON THE CRISIS; OBAMA TO THE RESCUE?

You want some facts in a form that might even be fun to read, check out this slide show, ‘How To Wreck The Economy‘ everything you ever wanted to know about the biggest economic meltdown since the Great Depression but were afraid to ask’, from The INDYPENDENT, a must read New York newspaper:

Arun Gupta, who worked on the slide show with our favorite economist, Max Fraad Wolf, had written earlier about the stimulus plan that Obama wants to implement on day one. He doesn’t think it can work:

ILLUSTRATION: JENNIFER LEW

“Shortly after his Jan. 20 inauguration, if all goes according to plan, President Barack Obama will submit an economic stimulus plan to Congress. (DS: Obama called for such a plan in a radio address this past Saturday warning of the dangers of double digit unemployment.) The plan will be of such historic proportions that the media will compare it incessantly to the New Deal; it will probably come with an eye-popping price tag of more than $500 billion; free-market ideologues will wail about the end of capitalism but will be almost powerless to stop it; Congress will jockey to lard it with pet projects as the price of approval.

Those who are already blasting Obama for not doing what they think he should or appoint a different crowd need to be reminded that he doesn’t pretend to be Hugo Chavez. He is a radical, all right, but a radical centrist, not leftist. Back in March 2008, John Judis wrote in The New Republic:

“Even if Obama manages to win, he could very well fail as president. Just as the hopes of Jacksonian Democrats were shattered by the irrepressible conflict over slavery, Obama’s dreams—and his movement—could founder in Iraq and the Middle East.” (That was written before the financial crisis became the number #1 issue.)

Oh, I know that sounds bad, and I certainly don’t want to bum you out. Already, my Associate Dissectrix thinks I may be too negative (and she is probably right), but my colleague, Sharon Kayser, makes me look like a shill for the system. She writes in her latest, closely argued, essay:

“As you read this, the American bailout is reaching epic and fatal proportions of more than 8 trillion and the worst is not over yet. Actually, the current trends are already much worse than depression, though because of some banking toxic tricks and frauds, risks are being constantly shifted down the social ladder deteriorating the consumers purchasing power for ever. There’s nothing that can rescue the system as the crisis was built into the system itself.

Although this has not be aired on any major TV broadcast, when the world Leaders got together to discuss our fate last October, they admitted to being incapable of doing anything. That we are all scr*w*d. The Australian ministerial statement by Kevin Rudd sums it up pretty well while acknowledging that the global wealth destruction amounts to $27 trillion - and that is far from over. Among many other terrifying recent events, discount window borrowing (from the Fed. Reserve) in the week ended Oct 15 averaged a record $437.5 billion per day, surpassing the $420.2 billion rate in the prior week… please note that it is not included in the cumulative 8 trillion package!

In a debt-based economy, competition translates into a ‘great crash enhancer’. Take this housing bubble, its engineers, which couldn’t anything to stop the infectious exuberance, figuring that market saturation would eventually have the last word . This didn’t prevent them from firmly believing that prices had some room to run up… and everybody competed to get the very last piece of the pie. What is truly outraging is that we board onto the Titanic because Credit Rating Agencies sold us a fictive ’star system’, which has led us to a triple A junk status.” Watch the video in full from PBS.

Sorry, gang but I am duty bound to go further with this article that says the “infection” has spread: This is from the Global Economy Does Matter blog. FYI, the author, Edward Hugh, known as ‘the bonobo’ is a Catalan economist of British extraction based in Barcelona. The source of the information is courtesy of JP Morgan, not The Monthly Review:

December’s JPMorgan Global PMI Shows Just How Far The Infection Has Spread by Edward Hugh: Barcelona

Well, here’s the chart I think everyone really need to see (below). The JPMorgan Global Manufacturing PMI hit 33.2 in December, a series record. More to the point you can get a comparison between what is happening now and the 2001 “recession lite” with only a swift glance, and, of course, the 2009 long recession is only just getting started.

Now let’s stick it alongside the one Paul Krugman put up last week of the US Great Depression:

Arguably, what we can see here is that the current collapse in industrial activity is starting to get near the US historic one in terms of proportions, but we still aren’t quite there yet. What we could note that JP Morgan in their monthly report suggest that the present rates of output are equivalent to an annual fall of between 12% and 15%. Really to compare with the fall in the US we need to get up into the 20% region, but remember the global index is based on an average for 26 countries, and some of these are much worse than others (Japan, Spain, possibly Russia) and will already be around the 20% annual contraction rate in December. The point is also that the situation is still deteriorating, so hang on a bit, since it is not at all excluded that we will hit a 20% annualized contraction rate for the whole aggregate 26 sometime during the first quarter.”

OK, enough, but you see where I am going, and maybe where we are all going: DOWN. (Although there are only 250 “Trading Days” left until next Christmas!)

The question is no longer, ‘Will Obama Save Us?’ The question really is, ‘can he or any one politician, by throwing more money at the problem, solve this “problem” after so much money has already been flushed away or disappeared? Anyone for footwear hurling?

Watch CSPAN Monday for the hearings on how the SEC blew its Madoff oversight when it may have been possible to stop the mad dog. So far, we still do NOT have all the facts or many facts at all about the biggest scam in the history of the world.

Rich Bookstaber writes about Bernie’s alleged perfidy:

The Madoff Ponzi scheme will (I hope) be the high watermark for financial fraud for many decades to come. It is hard to overstate the harm it has done, with lifesavings and fortunes lost, charities and schools left foundering. 



“It fell off a Truck”


Did his investors really believe Madoff was doing split-strike conversions? Given that there were not enough options in the world for Madoff to do such a strategy? And given that no one in the industry heard of him as a player in that market? 

An alternative view is that the split-strike conversion story is the equivalent of the “it fell off the truck” story for people buying stolen goods; that investors suspected he was involved in illegal front running, and would just as soon not have had that spelled out for them while the money kept flowing in.

HEADLINES

• SOROS PART OF GROUP TO BUY INDYMAC BANK IN GREAT DEAL

WASHINGTON (AP) — A seven-member investor group including billionaire George Soros and Dell Inc. founder Michael Dell have agreed to purchase failed lender IndyMac Bank, one of the largest casualties of the housing bust, for $13.9 billion.

• FDIC WILL LOSE BILLIONS ON DEAL

IndyMac has 33 bank branches in Southern California with about $6.5 billion in deposits, about half the company’s total at the time of its failure. Other IndyMac assets include a $157.7 billion loan servicing business, which collects mortgages and distributes them to investors, and a reverse-mortgage company, known as Financial Freedom.

The failure of IndyMac, which had $32 billion in assets, was the second-largest last year, trailing only the September failure of Washington Mutual Inc. Under terms of the sale, the new investors will shoulder the first 20 percent of the bank’s loan losses, with the FDIC agreeing to take on the majority of any losses thereafter. The FDIC said Friday its bank insurance fund stands to lose $8.5 billion to $9.4 billion on IndyMac.

SEND ME YOUR STORIES ON THIS ECONOMIC DISASTER.

OFFENSIVE CONTINUES

Israel’s push on the ground into Gaza goes on, unobserved by most of the world’s press which has been excluded, shrouded with propaganda claims by “spokesmen” and at government press conferences.

The Israel Defense forces was said to “bisect” the Gaza City in what was initially described as a limited operation to seize the areas used to fire rockets into Israel but as slowly undergone what we know as “mission creep,” Those broader goals of destroying Hamas completely may have been disguised at first but that seems to be the end game, or shall we say their desired end game. Their leaders speak of a “stage by stage” operation but no one talks of the final stage which is beginning to feel, dare I say it, like a ‘final solution.”

Like in all war, the invading forces deny the legitimacy of the people they are invading. This seems to be pervasive in Israeli media where everyone living in Gaza becomes a Hamas “operative,” whatever that is. Those operatives are then labeled as terrorists and written out of the human race. The Troops,” of course, are Israeli soldiers who are always pictured as “responding,” never initiating, even though they are the invaders.

HEADLINES:

• Ynet News: More than 50 Hamas Terrorists Killed in Ground Operation - Hanan Greenberg

The New York Times quotes Israeli officials without challenge.

“The Israeli military said in a statement that the objective of the ground campaign was “to destroy the terrorist infrastructure of Hamas, while taking control of some of the rocket launching sites” that Hamas uses to fire at southern Israel. “Hamas can stop it whenever it wants,” by stopping its rocket fire, said Shlomo Dror, a Defense Ministry spokesman.”

WILL INVASION “WORK?”

AP: Israel has history of failure in ground attacks

“Israel has a long and largely unsuccessful history of sending ground forces into Palestinian and Lebanese cities. Its forces have either gotten bogged down or sustained heavy casualties, without quelling violent groups or halting attacks for good.”

WHAT IS ISRAEL DOING?

A second story—‘the analysis”—tends to question this wondering if the goal isn’t to destroy Hamas. There is no firm conclusion. This story refers to Hamas as “the militants,” another one of those vaguely defined terms that seems to be interchangeable with operatives and terrorists.

The Washington Post also asks well PR briefed and trained Israeli officials about their goals as summarized in the Daily Beast. They “stay on message.”

“What are Israel’s aims in waging a ground war in Gaza? To seize the psychological advantage over Hamas and force the terrorists to halt firing rockets at Israeli citizens, explains the Washington Post. General Eitan Ben Eliyahu, former chief of the Israeli air force, gave three reasons for switching to a ground campaign: “To suppress the sites where they launch the rockets into our home front; to fight them and kill more and more terrorists; and third, to tighten the ring of pressure around the Hamas leadership, which helps you conduct your negotiations in the diplomatic field.”

“By punching into Gaza in several places, you can cut it into parcels, make it impossible for Hamas to govern,” said Tel Aviv University senior fellow Hirsh Goodman. But the strategy is riven with risk. “There will be burning tanks and human sacrifices, and it’s not going to be pretty,” he said. Former Palestinian negotiator Ziad Abu Zayyad agrees that the Israelis are taking an enormous gamble. “Israel may know how to enter Gaza, but I’m not sure they know how to get out,” he said.”

AL JAZEERA: MORE BALANCED

On Al Jazeera, which I watch on my computer on LiveStation.com, there is real debate. An Israeli spokesman again reinforces that Israel is just fighting back narrative. He describes Gaza as a “Statelet,” which came to power not through the internationally observed elections we saw but through a coup by “a pro-Iranian militia.” This, he says. is “unacceptable to Israel.” And????

Clearly it must be destroyed.

As for the United States, there is virtual silence as if any challenge to the Israel Lobby is unpatriotic. A critic of Israel asks about this on CSPAN:

While others have been protesting with marches in New York to the UN and even a vigil at the holocaust museum challenging the invocation of that horror to justify this horror. Organizers claim a major turnout:

The International Action Center

Possibly the largest protest took place in New York City where a huge rally in Times Square stretched from 42nd Street south to 36th Street, along 7th Ave. Buses came from throughout the region. Crowd estimates ranged from 25,000 and 30,000. Just before the demonstration started the announcement of the Israeli invasion came over the news wires. An angry march through midtown Manhattan, shut down 42nd St, stalled mid-town traffic and ended at the Israeli Mission to the U.N. At the closing rally, the crowd stretched from 48th to 42nd Street, along 2nd Ave.

As for the casualties, we don’t have a real number only reports that the population is terrorized by air raids, bombing and that there are not enough facilities to treat them,
There is even a report from Norwegian medics that traces of depleted uranium are showing up in the Gazan casualties.

US SABOTAGES UN CALL FOR CEASE FIRE

Many European countries are calling for a cease fire. Not the United States. We are totally supporting Israel in the name of what Aaron Miller, a long time pro-Israeli adviser to six Presidents called our “special relationship with Israel.” He has since published an article in Newsweek calling for Obama to get tough on Israel.

The US UN diplomat who undercut a UN resolution on the issue—not that Israel adheres to UN resolutions—did add a caveat cautioning Israel to be mindful of not inflicting civilian casualties. This from a representative of an Administration with over a million civilian deaths to its “credit” in Iraq.

• America’s Hidden Role in Hamas’s Rise to Power By Stephen Zunes, AlterNet

No one in the mainstream media or government is willing to acknowledge America’s sordid role interfering in Palestinian politics.

The United States bears much of the blame for the ongoing bloodshed in the Gaza Strip and nearby parts of Israel. Indeed, were it not for misguided Israeli and American policies, Hamas would not be in control of the territory in the first place.

No wonder so many human rights supporters and critics of Israel—including vast numbers of Israelis are enraged and despondent as Jennifer Loewenstein writes on ZSPACE:

“Strip away the clichés and the vacuous newspeak blaring out across the servile media and its pathetic corps of voluntary state servants in the Western world and what you will find is the naked desire for hegemony; for power over the weak and dominion over the world’s wealth. Worse yet you will find that the selfishness, the hatred and indifference, the racism and bigotry, the egotism and hedonism that we try so hard to cover up with our sophisticated jargon, our refined academic theories and models actually help to guide our basest and ugliest desires. The callousness with which we in indulge in them all are endemic to our very culture; thriving here like flies on a corpse.”

And finally, speaking of the media coverage, the IDF is now saying that the world media is being “fair” which is another way of saying that they are being successful in shaping the way the countries they care about understand the conflict.

FOR LIVE COVERAGE

See Al Jazeera on LiveStation.com. They have a correspondent in Gaza

Also, Information Clearing House has some links.

PRO ISRAEL SOURCES

An associate of mine tells me that a friend of his in Israel views my blog as “anti-Israel,” despite my attempt to cite many Israeli sources You will note that the Israeli critics of Israeli policy are absent from most of our coverage. (Actually, yesterday, AlJazeera had on a very articulate Israeli filmmaker and critics of his government.) Anyway, my colleague sent me links to some blogs, he suggests represent “a wider section of the political spectrum.”

• South Jerusalem - a liberal, religious blog

• Treppenwitz - a more right-wing blog

• Calev in the Land of Milk & Honey - a centrist, reflective kind of blog

• Nahum Barnea - a leading Israeli political columnist

• Yair Lapid - very popular social/political columnist

• Reut Blog - blog entries from Reut analysts on Israel’s economy & security

An even more comprehensive list appears on the website of ‘The Israel Project,’ a leading PR outlet for the Israeli government.

CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES

• How Israel is Multiplying Hamas by a Thousand: Molten Lead in Gaza By URI AVNERY

• Bill Bowles: The State of Israel Is An Obscenity

• ISRAEL HAS NO REAL STRATEGY FOR HAMAS

• The Invasion of Gaza: “Operation Cast Lead”, Part of a Broader Israeli Military-Intelligence Agenda By Michel Chossudovsky

• Americans for Middle East published a very good article on Hamas last May that is particularly relevant now. It’s available only on line in *.pdf format.

• BLOG ON MEDIA COVERAGE IN ARAB WORLD

POLITICAL NEWS —

• VA GOV KAINE NAMED NEW DNC CHAIRMAN
• BILL RICHARDSON STEPS DOWN: UNDER INVESTIGATION FOR A CORPORATE TIE
• AL FRANKEN LEADS IN MINNESOTA SENATE RACE
• BURRIS TO TRY TO GET SEATED AS ILLINOIS SENATOR
• OBAMA STILL SILENT ON GAZA

YOUR LETTERS

A VIEW FROM BRITAIN — Shebar Windstone:

I’d like to see the results of a survey that measures & compares class-consciousness & -loyalty of U.S. citizens & Brits!

Public wants taxes that hurt the rich; Credit crunch provokes backlash against bankers

Two-thirds of Britons want the rich to face punitive tax rates not seen since the 1980s, according to a new poll which suggests that the recession has hardened attitudes towards the wealthy.

Bankers are now seen second only to footballers as being overpaid, while seven in 10 think that ordinary workers should sit on remuneration committees setting executives’ pay to ensure that high salaries are deserved.’

SARAH MEYER –The Latest Comprehensive Timeline on Afghanistan:

PORTUGUAL — Dania Rodrigues corresponds pertaining to one of my films:

I’m a Portuguese archeology student, in Universidade de Lisboa. I had the pleasure of seeing your documentary, ‘Weapons of Mass Deception,’ last night, and I really enjoyed it. I think it’s an amazing and pretty accurate and lucid vision about the distortion made by the media. Even though I often think how the media shapes our ideas and ideals, I never had thought that it might have such a deep impact (since I live on a country where, fortunately, there isn’t such an aggressive bombing of information. Back in Europe, we often think: “How can they do that? How can they support war?,” Your documentary answers pretty well to this question.

Americans are also victims, victims of a different war, the media war you focused. I really loved the idea of using media to oppose the system, because until now I had only met examples of subservience (with the exception of The Daily Show, which arrives here I don’t know how). It really interested me, since I did a thesis illustrating the subversive power of archeology (it was quite provocative, here archeology only serves the interests of the powerful).

So, besides complimenting you, I would like to say to you that I’ve recently formed an association, and after seeing your documentary, I had the idea of promoting some activities in our city, in partnership with other groups, by occasion of the 6th anniversary of the Iraqi war. I was wondering [if there are ]some conferences, and film exhibitions, so I would like to know if we have your permission to show your documentary on this context. But since I would like to do things a little more original, I wonder if you could give some ideas, or recommend [to] me some websites where I can search for some information.

Daniel Spak wrote:

I often post your “Weapons of Mass Deception” video on my blog. Everything I see that you’ve done, I like and agree with. THEN…I was on this site and your on it…BRAVO!!! THEN…I checked out your blog and saw Beatles videos and posts about Gaza…BRAVO!!! I linked to you for quite a while, even before I knew these last few things recently. I linked to you, because anyone who could make “Weapons of Mass Deception“…well I just don’t have to check out too much more about someone like that!

Stop by my blog, I’m a nobody, I have a very small following. I’m trying to post what I think is news the networks aren’t telling us. I get some awesome comments under my posts from my “regulars.” I see you banned commenting. That’s too bad. I get into arguments with commenter’s, too. I just argue back and I never ban anyone. Argue back with them!!!

Keep doing what you’re doing. Great stuff you do, Danny!!! I’m going to buy my son one of your books. He’s in his last year at Northeastern University in Boston…put the comments back on and give ‘em hell!!!!! Tell ‘em to go pound sand!!! I’d get charge if you really posted a comment saying “this is Danny Schecter”…no one famous ever did that. I don’t have a blog for money, it’s just something I do for fun… Thanks.

JEWISH VOICES FOR PEACE

Jewish Voice for Peace joins millions around the world, including the 1,000 Israelis who protested in the streets of Tel Aviv this weekend, in condemning ongoing Israeli attacks on Gaza. We call for an immediate end to attacks on all civilians, whether Palestinian or Israeli.

Israel’s slow strangulation of Gaza through blockade has caused widespread suffering to the 1.5 million people of Gaza due to lack of food, electricity, water treatment supplies and medical equipment. It is a violation of humanitarian law and has been widely condemned around the world.

Noeny Sanchez writes

It could well be the end times. Having watched the ill management of the US for the past 8 years, the only conclusion I can come up with is either the country is being run by idiots who are always making the wrong decisions, an ill-informed people due to right wing control of most news outlets, or a collective DEATH WISH!

CNN even admitted that the fed is now just printing worthless paper. With the impossible to pay back debt that the Bush administration has plagued the people with and the greed of the republican party, and the deluded born again Christians who only want to be first in line at the trough to feed on the last of the flesh of America with no concern what so ever for the country OR the people in it the end times seem not that far away now.”

David Ashton, childhood friend of John Lennon in Liverpool: What it is like to be bombed?.

Many thanks indeed for your thoughtful and helpful writing about the Palestinian issues and the tragic conflict we are at present witness to which seems to me to dismiss our own sense of worth as human beings the sense of being powerless to stop the slaughter in Gaza. I went to school with many Jewish children whose parents had escaped the gas ovens of Nazi-occupied Europe. Liverpool welcomed them and made them feel at home in time. I am not sure that we lads knew about it or understood it as we mixed freely and happily with boys and girls of all races, religions and creeds. I think it was true that most of us boys had some Welsh in our language - usually some very bad ‘non-chapel’ words but Welsh words of greeting which were in common use or we could at least say:

the longest word in the Welsh language which means ‘the church of St Mary by the Hollow of white aspen, over the whirlpool, and St Tysilio’s church close to the red cave’.

So, it was with our accepting attitude towards race that we absorbed the cultures of the world without anyone using, or trying to use, culture to frighten us or use it as a social control mechanism. I think it is true to say that Liverpool and Woolton (the much older civic centre) was, is and hopefully always will be a multi-faith, multi- cultural city which stands as a beacon of optimism and hope in a pessimistic world. It was such a place that inspired my childhood mate John Lennon and why the world finds and will hopefully always find hope, love, joy and optimism in all Johns and the Beatles’ songs. Though we cannot speak for John I am certain in view of the childhood memories we both had of being bombed during the 2nd World War, which the children of Gaza experience as I write.

MY OWN FIRST recollections of my mother were on the night of a late bombing raid during the 1939-45 war. My sister, Pauline, and I had gone into our Anderson Bomb Shelter, at the back of our Liverpool home. I was hugging my Golliwog, called Golly, who got me through the worst of the blitz krieg, lying on my bunk bed.

The adults: Mother, (our Dad was on fire watch duty in Liverpool) and our neighbours called Meakin from next door and Miss Newman, stood outside looking up at the sky, watching the searchlights pinpointing the German bombers. The Polish Air force Hurricane Squadron based at Speke Airport defended Liverpool and saved us from the worst of the Nazi onslaught. John and I suffered terribly from the war; we saw dead bodies piled up in the street. My mother put a coat in front of my eyes and for years she denied that it had happened.

John told me that he’d had similar experiences. It really was the basis of John’s search for peace. John, like me, was very much committed to peace because we had that trauma of war. But when the men came home there was no time to listen to our childhood traumas. As kids we were afraid that if our houses got bombed we wouldn’t be able to get out. Every 20th house saved up and bought a fire mans ladder. When I was five John and I drew pictures of us jumping out of our houses onto the ladder some of these pictures turned up just two years ago, after my Mum died.

The tragedy for me as a child who witnessed this horror of being bombed and still have the nightmares more than 60 years, latter I cannot help wondering what the parents of the Liverpool Jewish children we had known as children who also had the nightmare’s of escape from the death camps and our horror of being bombed in Liverpool would say to their children about the genocide being committed by Israel and the west politicians who are not demanding they stop. John wrote, “ All we are saying is give peace a chance .“ I only wish we could get they message across but then I am certain we will and we must.”

ENGLAND: Ken Keable observes:

Here is an interesting interview on YouTube from RUSSIA TODAY with the daughter of Raul Castro, mainly about her perspective on the revolution’s anniversary and specialty which is sexual politics in Cuba. Great archival footage.

Mary E. O’Reilly

I hardly ever agree with either of these guys, but I think, on this, that what they have to say should be considered. Almost nothing is all good or all bad, I’m sure you’d agree:

Charles Krauthammer — Moral Clarity in Gaza

Some geopolitical conflicts are morally complicated. The Israel-Gaza war is not.

Michael Gerson — Defining Victory for Israel

The objectives are an end to rocket and mortar attacks on Israel and an end of large-scale arms smuggling to Hamas.

MEDIA PREDICTIONS FROM RACHEL SKLAR Via John McCartney

That’s it for now. Thanks to you for reading the News Dissector blog. Please forward it to friends and ask them to subscribe. Thanks to Al Jazeera for including me in a documentary that aired yesterday on the financial crisis. I am still working on my own “crash-u-mentary” based on my book, ‘Plunder.’ I will be speaking in West Hartford, CT, Tuesday night. You are welcome and invited.

FYI, I am available to do other speaking gigs on campuses and communities. Will need travel, hospitality, and an honorarium fee[s].

I know this blog is too long, offers too much news, too many perspective but I was stuck at home this past weekend and just got carried away (and only scratched the surface of all the great reports readers sent me.) I write quickly and I am sure you scroll as just as fast. I don’t think I would feel as pressed to offer so much if most of our news outlets were doing their jobs.

Your comments to dissector@mediachannel.org