Two links

Two very interesting posts by P U L S E:

The Way We Were and What We Are Becoming: An interview with Dr. Michael Hudson, President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City and author of Super-Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (1968 and 2003) and of The Myth of Aid (1971).

Hudson examines the causes and consequences of the present financial crisis, its similarities with the destruction of post-Soviet economy, the “Free Market”, etc. (59mn podcast)

Obama and Afghanistan: Are Bush wars becoming Obama’s wars? Marwan Bishara (Aljazeera program Empire) and his guests including Seymour Hersh, examine the path from Iraq to Afghanistan and into Pakistan. At the beginning of the second video, we learn how the El Salvador option was applied in Iraq. (Two 20 mn videos)

Asymmetric protectionism

Aref-Adib‘s take on the banking crisis

An interesting selection of interviews at P U L S E: G20: Mission Impossible? A few quotes from Tony Benn:

• “If you talk about a global answer to a global crisis, you can’t just talk about the movement of capital, now we are told all the time we must not have protectionism, but the most powerful protectionism in the world is immigration policy. Capital can move anywhere in the world to boost its profits. But labor can’t move because of the immigration control. Now I am raising huge questions, I recognize that. But if it is legitimate for a big American company to go to Malaysia where the waging are low and triple their profit, why shouldn’t a Malaysian looking for highway just go to America?“

• Who elected the IMF? To whom are they accountable?

• If we are going to have a global structure, who is going to control it? Is it going to be just controlled by the bankers and big companies or is it going to be more democratic?

Tony Benn’s website and the five questions one should ask the powerful.

The Crisis of Credit Visualized

Hero of the day

“The internet has changed politics – changed it utterly and forever. Twenty-four hours ago, I made a three-minute speech in the European Parliament, aimed at Gordon Brown. I tipped off the BBC and some of the newspaper correspondents but, unsurprisingly, they ignored me: I am, after all, simply a backbench MEP.”
Nevertheless the video clip of Daniel Hannan‘s speech went viral on YouTube that evening, attracting more than 630,000 views in 24 hours. It became the ‘most viewed today’ YouTube video worldwide two consecutive days.
In an American TV program, Hannan stated he would have voted for Ron Paul if he could.