TRNN Weekly Roundup August 15 - August 19
Following deadly terror attacks on Israel,
Israeli Air Force kills 9 in Gaza despite lack of evidence connecting
attackers to the Strip
Two terror attacks shook Israel on Thursday
and Friday. The attackers fired on an Israeli bus, set of a suicide
bombing and roadside bombs, fired on civilian vehicles, and engaged in a
fire battle with the Israeli army. The day after, 20 Grad rockets hit
the Southern Israeli city of Ashdod, damaging a synagogue. By the
weekend, eight Israelis were killed and nearly forty injured.
Immediately after the attack, the Israeli air force bombed many
locations in Gaza. Nine were killed and nearly thirty injured. In an
interview with The Real News' Lia Tarachansky, Lt. Col. Avital Liebovitz
admits the army does not connect the attack to the Popular Resistance
Committee, whom the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blames.
Tarachansky also spoke with Yossi Gurvitz, a contributing editor to +972
Magazine and Mohammed Fares Al Majdalawi, a Journalist and social
worker based in Gaza City.
Bart Chilton: Wall Street lobbyists trying to slow down trading regulations and defundCommission
In this four-part interview with Senior
Editor Paul Jay, Chilton says the economy is a hair-trigger away from
economic calamity. He says many of the practices that triggered the 2008
collapse have not been addressed – namely lack of oversight and
regulation of the markets. The authors of the Dodd-Frank Consumer
Protection Act claimed it would empower commissioners to take on these
problems, but Wall Street lobbying and lack of political will is
impeding the progress.
Gerry Epstein comments on Nouriel Roubini's blog that Marx was right.
Nouriel Roubini recently wrote in the Wall
Street Journal that Marx was right: capitalism eventually destroys
itself. Epstein supports Roubini's thesis and argues that with both the
conservative and liberal elites on the austerity train, the world could
be back into prolonged recession.
Leo Panitch: Marx was a realist; the real romantics think you can have capitalism without great crisis
In an interview with Paul Jay in 2009, Leo Panitch answers the question "Is Marx relevant to today's world?".
Dems gain two state senate seats in recall election, but fail to secure needed majority.
Some question whether a more multifaceted
strategy could have been more effective. Did discouraging mass action in
preference of exclusively electoral campaigns dissipate the energy of
the reform movement in Wiscosin?
Rob Johnson: Financial institutions planning to use crisis to privatize and monopolize
Johnson describes how financiers anticipate
crises and use capital to privatize services on the municipal and state
level; "A few people with a lot of money have the incentive to grind
everything down and buy everything on the cheap". Johnson likens the
current American situation to Russian oligarchs who worked the political
system to privatize natural resources.
