Obama Regime Solicitor General's AIG & Pro-Israeli Government Lobby Links?

Did you notice that the former Williams & Connolly D.C. law-lobbying firm associate and Clinton White House Staff member-lawyer that Democratic President Obama appointed to be U.S. Solicitor General, Elena Kagan, both sat on a "non-profit" board with an AIG executive and spoke at an American Friends of the Hebrew University/lobby function honoring a Goldman Sachs executive?

As the Equal Justice Works website notes, U.S. Solicitor General Kagan recently sat on the Equal Justice Works “non-profit” board next to Anastasia “Stasia” Kelly; and “Anastasia `Stasia' Kelly is the executive vice president and general counsel and senior regulatory and compliance officer of American Insurance Group (AIG)” who “leads a worldwide legal and regulatory team and manages the Corporate Secretary function of this international insurance and financial services firm.”

And, as the Jewish Forward newspaper’s website revealed:

"Unlike Jewish women comics who tend to malign their mothers, Elena Kagan, dean of Harvard Law School (whose awesome curriculum vitae includes a stint as associate counsel to the president (1995-1999), paid homage to hers. At the October 19 American Friends of the Hebrew University lawyers lunch at Cipriani 42nd Street, Kagan told the sea of suits that (despite all her accomplishments) her mother “would be proud” that she was the keynote speaker at this George A. Katz “Torch of Learning” luncheon honoring Robert Katz, a philanthropist and partner at The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc".

So don't expect the White Corporate Male Power Structure’s Democratic Obama Administration to go into court against any of the AIG, Goldman Sachs, or AIPAC executives who may have been recently involved in either white collar crimes or the support of the Israeli War Machine’s war crimes in Gaza.

Aronowitz's Alternative Jobs Creation Plan Of 2005

If you're wondering what an alternative anti-corporate left jobs creation program to the Democratic Obama Regime’s "Corporate Stimulus" economic program (for yet another jobless recovery) might look like, here's what CUNY Grad School Professor Stanley Aronowitz proposed in his 2005 book Just Around The Corner: The Paradox of the Jobless Recovery:

"Slightly less than 10 percent of the annual military budget (not counting emergency Iraq funds), $50 billion, would create almost 2.5 million jobs...Jobs could be created to build low-and moderate-rental or limited-equity cooperative housing (where `owners' are obliged to sell their apartments back to the co-op rather than offer them for sale in the private market)...

"...The housing story of the postwar era has been one of federal, state and local abandonment and betrayal of the brave New Deal public-housing program. It was replaced by a program that used public funds to subsidize private developers...

"Where will we get the funds for creating public jobs and for building new housing...? We urgently need to reinstitute a progressive tax system where large corporations and wealthy individuals are required to pay their fair share and no individual or profitable business is exempt from paying taxes. In addition, in the interest of creating these jobs, loopholes for upper-middle-income taxpayers should be closed. And the bloated military budget, much of which neither enhances our security nor is justified if we had a reasonable foreign policy that was not oriented toward empire, could be slashed and reorganized. The savings could help fund a labor-intensive public-service jobs program.

"Would this jobs program require a new government institution such as the New Deal Public Works and Works Project Administration (PWA and WPA)? Probably...It would be important to stipulate that these are public jobs to expand public goods, and slots should not be created to subsidize wages in the private sector. Right now, huge quantities of federal funds are shoveled into private contractors' pockets...

"...When will working people share in the benefits of the technological revolution of our time?

"We need to amend the Wage and Hour Act to provide for overtime pay for work performed after 6 hours in any day, and after 30 hours a week...

"What to do about the unwaged and the underwaged?...America needs a basic-income guarantee...It is time to revive the concept of a basic guaranteed income for all Americans...

"...Corporations that register offshore must be required to pay U.S. taxes. Those who avoid such taxes should lose their right to sell their goods and services in this country. (Of all U.S. corporations, 60 percent failed to pay taxes in 2003. Many of them were registered in another country, usually a Caribbean site; others simply took advantage of gaping loopholes in U.S. tax law.)"

Truthout's Moyers/Schumann Foundation Connection

On its website, the Truthout.org alternative media group makes the following claim:

“…We are almost entirely reader-supported. There is absolutely no controlling financial interest behind this organization. Over 95% of our financing comes from small, individual donations. The remainder comes from a small number of grants…We depend solely upon our readership for survival, and so we answer to them alone.”

Yet according to the Schumann Center for Media & Democracy’s Form 990 filing for 2007, Truthout.org was given a grant of $500,000 by the Schumann Center for Media & Democracy “for general support to strengthen editorial content through 2008.”

The president of the Schumann Center for Media & Democracy that subsidizes the Truthout.org website is Bill Moyers, the former Johnson White House Press Secretary turned-PBS show producer/host. Besides funding the Truthout.org web site, the Schumann Center for Media & Democracy also owned stock in the following corporations in 2008: Goldman Sachs; American International Group; Fannie Mae; J.P. Morgan Chase; Wachovia; Washington Mutual; Wells Fargo; Exxon Mobil; Chevron; ConocoPhilips; Royal Dutch Shell; General Motors; Ford Motor; Time Warner; Time Warner Cable; Time Warner Telecom; Viacom; CBS; Yahoo; Microsoft; Google; General Electric/NBC; Disney/ABC; United Technologies; Boeing; United Health Group; Starbucks; McDonald’s; and Coca-Cola

Moyers’ Schumann Center for Media & Democracy also gave the Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting [FAIR] alternative media group a grant of $500,000 in 2007. In addition, the Institute for Public Affairs/In These Times magazine alternative media publication was given a $200,000 grant by the Schumann Center for Media & Democracy, while the Independent Media Institute/AlterNet alternative media group was given a $500,000 grant by Moyers’ foundation in 2007.

Between May 1, 2007 and April 30, 2008, the “non-profit” Truthout.org’s total revenues of $1,979,,617 exceeded its total expenses of $1,699,495 by over $290,000, according to its Form 990 filing for 2007. The same Truthout.org financial statement also indicated that the president of the “non-profit” Truthout.org alternative media group, Marc Ash, was paid an annual salary of $207,933 in 2008.

Iraq's Post-December 1963 History Revisited: Conclusion

(See parts 1-6 below)

The history of Iraq is still being influenced by 150,000 U.S. occupation troops and 200,000 private contractors. Yet the mainstream "educational television" stations of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) often appear more eager to broadcast programs about the history of rock music since 1960 than programs about the history of Iraq.

But as Rashid Khalidi observed in the introduction to the 2005 edition of his Resurrecting Empire, "the hubris that allowed Pentagon planners to think that they were somehow immune to the lessons of history produced a grossly mismanaged occupation that has become hated by most Iraqis and has engendered fierce resistance." U.S. anti-war activists, however, may find some knowledge of post-December 1963 Iraqi people's history of use in debating with U.S. opponents of an immediate U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq in 2009.

One result of the change in U.S. government policy toward Iraq after August 1990 has been continued suffering for most people in Iraq since 1991. At least 100,000 Iraqis were killed by the Pentagon's 1991 attack on Iraq, for example. Another 1 million Iraqis died as a result of the U.S. government-organized economic embargo between 1990 and 2001, according to a United Nations estimate.

Continued U.S. military attacks on Iraq and U.S. military intervention in Iraq's internal affairs has been a bipartisan policy of the U.S. White Male Corporate Power Structure's political duopoly. The Democratic Clinton Administration, for example, launched 27 cruise missiles against Iraq in 1996 and 400 cruise missiles against Iraq in December 1998. In addition, Clinton also ordered 600 air raids that killed many people in Iraq in December 1998.

More recently, of course, the Republican Bush Administration’s war machine attacked and occupied Iraq in March, 2003, under the false pretext that the Iraqi government was developing "weapons of mass destruction." Tens of thousands of Iraqis and over 4,500 U.S. occupation troops have died as a result of this latest U.S. military intervention in Iraq. Yet in March 2009, the U.S. military occupation force of nearly 150,000 troops and 200,000 private contractors has still not been withdrawn from Iraq by the Democratic Obama Administration..

But isn't it about time that the people in Iraq were finally allowed to determine for themselves the direction that the people's history of their country should go?

Iraq's Post-December 1963 History Revisited: Part 6

(See parts 1-5 below)

The history of Iraq is still being influenced by 150,000 U.S. occupation troops and 200,000 private contractors. Yet the mainstream "educational television" stations of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) often appear more eager to broadcast programs about the history of rock music since 1960 than programs about the history of Iraq.

But as Rashid Khalidi observed in the introduction to the 2005 edition of his Resurrecting Empire, "the hubris that allowed Pentagon planners to think that they were somehow immune to the lessons of history produced a grossly mismanaged occupation that has become hated by most Iraqis and has engendered fierce resistance." U.S. anti-war activists, however, may find some knowledge of post-December 1963 Iraqi people's history of use in debating with U.S. opponents of an immediate U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq in 2009.

After the then-Iraqi Internal and Military Intelligence Chief, Saddam Hussein, took over as president of the Ba'th regime in 1979, the repression against the surviving Iraqi communist activists again intensified even more. In April 1979, Saddam Hussein's Ba'th regime again completely outlawed the Iraq Communist Party. According to The People's History of Iraq book, "it is estimated that between 20,000 and 30,000 people were arrested in the period 1979-81 (thousands of whom were subsequently detained), while hundreds [of Communist militants] `disappeared' or were killed."

Not surprisingly, after Iraq's Ba'th government ordered the Iraqi military to attack Iran in September 1980, the surviving Iraq Communist Party leaders decided to retreat into Iraqi Kurdistan and form an alliance with Kurdish nationalist activists in Iraq. In 1981, the Iraq Communist Party then expressed its support for the overthrow of the Ba'th regime by means of armed struggle in the countryside.

The Ba'th regime's war with Iran lasted eight years and cost the lives of about 500,000 Iraqis and 500,000 Iranians, before an August 1988 cease-fire agreement between the Iraqi and Iranian governments was finally reached. War damage in Iraq resulting from the Ba'th regime's policy of 1980s military adventurism also exceeded $67 billion.

During the 1980-1988 war, domestic political opponents of the Ba'th regime and war against Iran continued to be persecuted. Between 250,000 and 400,000 Iraqis of Kurdish or Shiite background in Southern Iraq were also deported to Iran in the early 1980s by the Ba'th regime. In 1981, meanwhile, an Iraqi nuclear plant near Baghdad was bombed and destroyed by the Israeli government's jets, in violation of international law.

After 1984, the U.S. government replaced the Soviet Union as the major supplier of foreign military aid to Saddam Hussein's Ba'th regime. But when the Ba'th regime moved Iraqi troops into the oil-rich area of Kuwait that Iraqi nationalists have traditionally claimed as part of Iraq's national territory in August 1990, the U.S. government then adopted a more hostile policy towards Saddam Hussein's Iraqi government. (end of part 6)

Iraq's Post-December 1963 History Revisited: Part 5

(See parts 1-4 below)

The history of Iraq is still being influenced by 150,000 U.S. occupation troops and 200,000 private contractors. Yet the mainstream "educational television" stations of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) often appear more eager to broadcast programs about the history of rock music since 1960 than programs about the history of Iraq.

But as Rashid Khalidi observed in the introduction to the 2005 edition of his Resurrecting Empire, "the hubris that allowed Pentagon planners to think that they were somehow immune to the lessons of history produced a grossly mismanaged occupation that has become hated by most Iraqis and has engendered fierce resistance." U.S. anti-war activists, however, may find some knowledge of post-December 1963 Iraqi people's history of use in debating with U.S. opponents of an immediate U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq in 2009.

After the U.S. government and Israeli government-backed Shah of Iran's regime seized the Arab island of Abu Musa in November 1971, the post-1968 Ba'th regime in Iraq decided to sign a 15-year treaty of friendship with the Soviet Union.

So at the request of the Shah of Iran (who was later overthrown in early 1979), the Republican Nixon Administration's CIA then began to provide $16 million in covert military aid between 1972 and 1975 to the leaders of the Kurdish campaign for self-determination within Iraq. By providing covert military aid to the Kurdish leaders, U.S. State Department officials like Henry Kissinger apparently also hoped to de-stabilize a Ba'th regime which it now felt was becoming too friendly with the Soviet Union.

Despite the Ba'th Party leadership's previous history of executing Iraqi communist activists, the post-1968 Ba'th regime's domestic policy of social democratic economic reforms and foreign policy shift towards friendship with the Soviet Union, apparently persuaded the surviving Iraq Communist Party leaders to temporarily become supporters of the Ba'th regime. On May 14, 1972, for example, some Iraqi communist activists, as individuals, agreed to take positions within the Ba'th government; and, the following month, Iraqi communist activists were pleased by the June 1, 1972 nationalization by the Ba'th regime of the Iraq Petroleum Company that had previously been owned by UK and U.S. oil companies. Support for the post-1968 Ba'th regime by the surviving Iraqi communist activists continued to increase after September 1973, when the Iraq Communist Party was legalized by this Ba'th regime and allowed to publish its party newspaper openly.

Between 1972 and 1976, however, Ba'th Party activists gained control of the Iraqi trade unions, peasant unions and other mass organizations which had, historically, tended to be led by activists who were sympathetic to the Iraq Communist Party. An agreement with the Shah of Iran in 1975 also made it easier for the Ba'th regime to suppress the Kurdish campaign for self-determination in Iraq in the late 1970s.

Although the Soviet Union shipped $4.9 billion in weapons to the Ba'th regime between 1975 and 1979, by 1978 the anti-communist Ba'th regime leaders, however, were again repressing the surviving Iraqi communist activists. In March 1978, for example, twelve Iraqi communist activists were executed for "conducting non-Ba’thist political activity within the armed forces," according to the Haymarket Books' A People's History of Iraq book by Ilario Salucci. Mass arrests of Iraqi communist activists by the Ba'th regime were also made during the summer and fall of 1978. (end of part 5)

Iraq's Post-December 1963 History Revisited: Part 4

(See parts 1-3 below)

The history of Iraq is still being influenced by 150,000 U.S. occupation troops and 200,000 private contractors. Yet the mainstream "educational television" stations of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) often appear more eager to broadcast programs about the history of rock music since 1960 than programs about the history of Iraq.

But as Rashid Khalidi observed in the introduction to the 2005 edition of his Resurrecting Empire, "the hubris that allowed Pentagon planners to think that they were somehow immune to the lessons of history produced a grossly mismanaged occupation that has become hated by most Iraqis and has engendered fierce resistance." U.S. anti-war activists, however, may find some knowledge of post-December 1963 Iraqi people's history of use in debating with U.S. opponents of an immediate U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq in 2009.

In April 1969, tension between the U.S.-government-backed Shah of Iran's regime and the Ba'th regime increased when the Shah declared a 1937 Treaty which gave Iraq control of the Shatt-al-Arab border waterway null and void and ordered Iranian troops to march to the Iranian-Iraqi border in large numbers.

During this same year an alliance developed between the anti-communist Ba'th regime and the pro-Soviet German Democratic Republic [GDR] which led the Ba'th regime to temporarily tolerate the Iraq Communist Party until March 1970.

On March 21, 1970, however, the Ba'th regime arrested the surviving Iraq Communist Party leadership and hundreds of surviving Iraq Communist Party members. Two months before--following an unsuccessful January 1970 Shah of Iran-backed right-wing coup attempt in Iraq--the Ba'th regime had hung or shot 29 Iraqi military officers and 12 Iraqi civilians for allegedly being involved in the coup plot.

The post-1968 Ba'th regime apparently combined its policy of domestic political repression with a policy of democratic economic reform The Ba'th regime prohibited the expulsion of Iraqi peasants from their land, further reduced the maximum amount of land a large Iraqi landlord could own and freed Iraqi peasants from previously required tax payments.

The post-1968 Ba'th regime also introduced national health insurance for all Iraqis, mechanized agriculture, created people's markets and reduced middleman exploitation of the Iraqi peasantry. Minimum wages for Iraqi workers and state subsidies for bread were also increased by the Ba'th regime. In addition, price controls that benefited Iraqi consumers and more extensive social security benefits for Iraqis were established by the Ba'th regime. (end of part 4)