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• PROMISSORY NOTES: From Crises to Commons

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• Government on the Ropes after Election Defeat | The Socialist Party Analysis

  Kevin McLoughlin of the Socialist Party provides an analysis of the party’s performance in the local and European elections on Indymedia.

  “It wasn’t that 50,510 voters fully endorsed socialism but, there is no doubt that everyone who voted for Joe, knew well that they were voting for a socialist. In the exit poll, when asked why they had voted for Joe Higgins, 48% said because of his personality/personal qualities; 29% because of his policies and 18% because he was the Socialist Party candidate. The poll also indicated that, of those made redundant over the last six months who voted, 32.4% voted for Joe Higgins.”

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• Divorzio all’italiana | LRB Blog

  Thomas Jones on the LRB blog talking about Pietro Germi’s 1961 black comedy, Divorzio all’italiana (Divorce, Italian Style), which is relevant to Manuel Stimulation’s post today on the lusty Italian Premier’s publicly financed ‘parties’. In 1961, divorce was still illegal in Italy so Divorzio all’italiana deals with Ferdinando Cefalù, a a Sicilian aristrocrat in his late thirties, and his wild attempts to rid himself of his wife so he can marry his under-aged cousin. His plan is to stage a crime of passion where he would shoot his wife and an old lover who returned to town unexpectedly (he was presumed dead) while everyone else in the town is off watching La dolce vita.

  Jones also provides a link to a great clip of the male onlookers at the filming of the scene in La doche vita where Ekberg cavorts in the Trevi Fountain, which Fellini also filmed at the time. This gawping mirrors the reaction of the men folk in Ferdinando’s village watching the movie in the local cinema.

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• What the Left Should be Learning From Iran

  Al Giordano on how so much comment in the West focuses on Iran as a nation state with competing elites locked in a power struggle for domination of the government, and whether it is a good or a bad thing from a Western point of view. But it ignores how millions of protesters are challenging state power through communication and technology. It’s a lesson that could prove useful outside of Iran.

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• Instead of a stimulus package we have gone in the other direction. It could be the worst own goal in our history

  For some reason this must read opinion piece by Michael Casey, former economist with the Irish Central Bank didn’t appear where his articles usually do, in the main opinion pages of the Irish Times. Instead it was published in the Innovation supplement and probably as a result not much discussed. Curious then that it suggests that the Government could be wrong to rely on a three year plan to stabilize the public finances (most attempts in other countries have failed) and to ignore the benefits of a stimulus package. The objections to a stimulus package, he said, are

  “mainly assertions without much research support. For example, the last fiscal stabilisation in the late 1980s was successful for a variety of reasons - reasons that no longer exist. The international economy was growing well; there was no problem with banks, no credit crunch and no fear factor arising from deep recession and job losses.”

  By bailing out the banks he adds, the government stopped the flow of domestic deposits into its own coffers. When the main Irish banks appeared to be unstable Irish people started to put their money in to An Post. When the guarantee was announced they stopped, thus cutting off a potential source of borrowing for the government.
  Thanks to Sli Eile of PE for the link.

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• Angry Arab on developments in Iran after the election

  As’ad AbuKhalil (who runs Angry Arab) writes from Oslo on the Iranian situation, and how it is being viewed by Western politicians and the media.

  “Typically, I support neither side in the Iranian situation: but I support those Iranians who are struggling against both sides. I have worried before about the impact of Ahmadinajad’s stupid rhetoric on the Iranian public attitudes toward the Palestinian question. I worried that in the long run it will move the public away from solidarity with the Palestinians. Of course, there is so much hypocrisy in the Western coverage and official reactions to the developments. Most glaring for me was the statement by the secretary-general of the UN who insisted on the respect of the will of the Iranian people. Would that US designate utter such words, say, about Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and other dictatorships that are approved by the US? The role of Faqih in Iran undermines any claim of democracy in that country: but I am in no way sympathetic to Moussavi. He is a man who suddenly discovered the virtues of democracy. When he was prime minister back in the 1980s, he presided over a regime far more oppressive than Ahmadinajad’s.”

  He also points out that there is not much attention given to Moussavi comments during the election campaign to ‘return’ to the teachings of Khomeini. He is the ‘hero’ in Western eyes, because he appears more moderate, while Ahmadinajad is the evil villain, subverting democracy and oppressing people with his religious radicalism.

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• Sinn Fein Held its Own….Just

  Sinn Fein’s performance in the June 5th elections should be measured by their ability to just about maintain the levels they enjoyed in their 2004 surge, where it trebled its council representation and secured a Euro seat, says Eoin Ó’Broin.

  “The fairest assessment of our electoral performance in the 26 counties in the view of this writer is that we held our own . . . just.

  We are without doubt in a better position today than we were the week after the 2007 general elections. We now have representation in 31 out of the 32 counties.
  However, we also need to ask ourselves why, at a time when the Government was the object of such searing public anger, our party did not further build on the gains made in 2004.”

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• Shell To Sea protester at Glengad, being thrown off the Van Oord ship Rasenden Bol by Shell Security. He hit his back on a protruding bit of metal on the way down and was injured.

  Also, Pat O’Donnell’s account of the sinking of the Iona Isle.

  “At 2am on Thursday morning, Pat O’Donnell’s boat the ‘Iona Isle’ was boarded by four masked men and sunk out at sea, near where Mr. O’Donnell lays his fishing pots off Erris, North Mayo. Mr. O’Donnell and crewman Martin McDonnell were attacked and held down by some of the men, while others went below deck, where they proceeded to sink the boat. Both local men have been taken to Castlebar General Hospital, where they are recovering.”

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• Amos Elon (1926–2009)

  Tony Judt’s NYRB tribute to the Israeli journalist and biographer Amos Elon:

  For much of his working life Amos Elon was a journalist, employed by the liberal daily Haaretz. During the 1950s and 1960s he worked frequently as a foreign correspondent ranging from Communist Eastern Europe to Washington, D.C. He used to tell a revealing story. In an interview he conducted in the early 1960s in Washington, with a senior Israeli diplomat who was about to leave his post and return home, he questioned his fellow Israeli closely. “What do you think you achieved during your posting here in the US?” Elon asked him. “Oh, that’s easy,” the diplomat replied. “I believe I have succeeded in convincing Americans that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.”

  Back in those years, Amos told me, he found the diplomat’s assertion simply bizarre; he could hardly then have imagined that this cynical political equation would become received opinion among his countrymen and their supporters.

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• Thomas Jones | Married to that Mob

  Thomas Jones talks about political corruption in Italy and Britain and compares relations between Tessa Jowell and her estranged husband David Mills (who is accused of receiving  £344,000 from Berlusconi ‘in return for the well-spun evidence he gave in two corruption trials involving the Italian prime minister in the late 1990s’) and those of Silvio Berlusconi and his soon to be ex-wife, Veronica Lario. Unlike Jowell, who despite their separation, claims to still believe that Mills is innocent, Lario is suing for divorce. It seems that she does not believe that nothing di piccante or di riservato happened between Uncle Silvio and Noemi Letizia.

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