Skylight Books
1818 N. Vermont Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90027
(323) 660-1175
www.skylightbooks.com
Robert Scheer, editor-in-chief of the award-winning internet magazine Truthdig.com, co-host of "Left, Right, and Center" on KCRW, and "one of the best reporters of our time" (Joan Didion) will discuss and sign his new book, The Great American Stick-Up.
In The Great American Stickup (Nation Books), Scheer uncovers the hidden story behind the Wall Street financial crash of 2008 and the consequent global recession. Instead of going where other journalists have gone in search of this story—the board rooms and trading floors of the big Wall Street firms—Scheer goes back to Washington, D.C., a veritable crime scene, beginning in the 1980s, where the captains of the finance industry, their lobbyists and allies among leading politicians destroyed an American regulatory system that had been functioning effectively since the era of the New Deal.
I've attached an author photo, in case that's helpful. Thank you so much for helping us spread the word about this event!
Mary
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Mary Williams
Events Manager
Skylight Books
1818 N. Vermont Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90027
(323) 660-1175
mary@skylightbooks.com
From: "Romi Elnagar" <bluesapphire48@yahoo.com>
http://www.counterpunch.org/cook11172010.html
Palestinians Will be the Losers ... Again
Obama's Bribe
By Jonathan Cook
CounterPunch: November 17, 2010
Nazareth
Watching the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians drag on year
after year without conclusion, it is easy to overlook the enormous changes
that have taken place on the ground since the Oslo Accords were signed 17
years ago.
Each has undermined the Palestinians' primary goal of achieving viable
statehood, whether it is the near-trebling of Jewish settlers on Palestinian
land to the current numbers of half a million, Israel's increasing
stranglehold on East Jerusalem, the wall that has effectively annexed large
slices of the West Bank to Israel, or the splitting of the Palestinian
national movement into rival camps following Israel's withdrawal from Gaza
in 2005.
Another setback of similar magnitude may be unfolding as Barack Obama
dangles a lavish package of incentives in the face of Benjamin Netanyahu in
an attempt to lure the Israeli prime minister into renewing a three-month,
partial freeze on Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank.
The generosity of the US president's package, which includes 20 combat
aircraft worth $3 billion and backing for Israel's continued military
presence in the Jordan Valley after the declaration of a Palestinian state,
has prompted even Thomas Friedman of The New York Times to compare it to a
"bribe".
Israeli officials said yesterday they were still waiting to see a text of
the deal worked out between Netanyahu and the US secretary of state, Hillary
Clinton, in seven hours of negotiations.
In addition to the concession in the Jordan Valley and the offer of combat
jets that would effectively double the annual aid from the US, the deal is
said to include a promise by Washington to veto for the next year any UN
resolutions Israel opposes and to refrain, after borders have been agreed,
from demanding any future limits on settlement growth.
The signs are that Netanyahu will be able to secure the backing of his
right-wing cabinet for a brief settlement freeze that this time, the US has
indicated, will not include East Jerusalem.
So far, in attempting to resolve the conflict, Obama has nearly exhausted
his political capital. There were intimations this week that the White House
could not afford further humiliation and was going for broke.
The timetable for negotiations now calls for reaching an agreement on
borders within three months -- the duration of the settlement construction
freeze -- followed by a final resolution of the conflict within a year or
so.
Washington's hopeful logic is that a renewal of the freeze will be
unnecessary in three months because an agreement on borders will already
have established whether a settlement is to be considered included in Israel's
territory and therefore permitted to expand or inside Palestine and
therefore slated for destruction.
In a similarly optimistic vein, the US apparently expects the problem of
refugees simply to dissolve through the creation of a special international
fund to compensate them. The right of return appears to be off the table.
If these obstacles can be surmounted this way - a very big "if" - only one
significant point of contention, the future of East Jerusalem, remains to be
resolved.
This is where things get more awkward. The US is not proposing that the
three-month freeze apply to East Jerusalem, after settlement-building there
caused friction between Israel and the US during the last moratorium.
This concession and the outlines of a previous US peace proposal under
president Bill Clinton hint at Washington's most likely strategy. East
Jerusalem will be divided, with the large settlement blocs, home to at least
200,000 Jews, handed over to Israel while the Old City and its holy places
fall under a complicated shared sovereignty.
In the face of this intense US-Israeli diplomacy, Palestinians are dismayed.
They have described the agreement between the US and Netanyahu as "deeply
disappointing" and are demanding from the White House similarly generous
inducements to ease their path back to negotiations. The Arab League, which
has taken a prominent role in overseeing the Palestinian negotiations, has
also objected to the deal.
The Palestinians fear they will be left with a patchwork of disconnected
areas - what Israel has previously termed "bubbles" - as their capital.
If the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, can be made to
swallow all this, which seems highly improbable, he will then have to
contend with Hamas, the rival Palestinian faction, which can be expected to
do everything in its power to disrupt such an agreement.
And then there is Netanyahu. Few Israeli analysts think he has suddenly
become more amenable to the US plans.
Neve Gordon, a politics professor at Ben Gurion University in the Negev and
author of an important study of the occupation, believes the Israeli prime
minister is simply playing the part demanded by Obama.
"He is taking the US 'merchandise' on offer, but will hold firm on key
issues that guarantee the talks' failure. That way he gets the credit for
keeping the negotiations on track and lets the Palestinians take the blame
for walking out."
This sounds suspiciously like a re-run of the last proper peace talks, at
Camp David in 2000. Then, Israeli intransigence stalled the negotiations,
but Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, was blamed by the US and Israel
for their collapse.
The Camp David failure led to the outbreak of Palestinian violence, the
second intifada, and the demise of the Israeli peace camp. Mr Netanyahu may
be prepared to risk a repeat of both such outcomes from these talks if it
means he can avoid making any real concessions on Palestinian statehood.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His
latest books are "Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the
Plan to Remake the Middle East" (Pluto Press) and "Disappearing Palestine:
Israel's Experiments in Human Despair" (Zed Books). His website is
www.jkcook.net.
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