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Prosecutor Brenda Morris, toward the end of her cross-examination of the senator yesterday, settled in for a long discussion about the chair, which Alaska restaurateur Bob Persons bought for Stevens as a gift seven years ago — but which Stevens never reported on his Senate disclosure forms.

“And the chair is still at your house?” Morris asked.

“Yes,” Stevens conceded.

“How is that not a gift?”

“He bought that chair as a gift, but I refused it as a gift,” Stevens explained. “He put it there and said it was my chair. I told him I would not accept it as a gift.”

“Where is that chair now?”

“In our house,” Stevens repeated. “We have lots of things in our house that don’t belong to us, ma’am.”

Signataire du manifeste du Forum social de Porto Alegre (”Douze propositions pour un autre monde possible”), en 2005, vous êtes considéré comme l’un des inspirateurs du mouvement altermondialiste. Vous avez fondé et dirigé le Centre Fernand-Braudel pour l’étude de l’économie des systèmes historiques et des civilisations de l’université de l’Etat de New York, à Binghamton. Comment replacez-vous la crise économique et financière actuelle dans le “temps long” de l’histoire du capitalisme ? Immanuel Wallerstein : Fernand Braudel (1902-1985) distinguait le temps de la “longue durée”, qui voit se succéder dans l’histoire humaine des systèmes régissant les rapports de l’homme à son environnement matériel, et, à l’intérieur de ces phases, le temps des cycles longs conjoncturels, décrits par des économistes comme Nicolas Kondratieff (1982-1930) ou Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950). Nous sommes aujourd’hui clairement dans une phase B d’un cycle de Kondratieff qui a commencé il y a trente à trente-cinq ans, après une phase A qui a été la plus longue (de 1945 à 1975) des cinq cents ans d’histoire du système capitaliste.

Dans une phase A, le profit est généré par la production matérielle, industrielle ou autre ; dans une phase B, le capitalisme doit, pour continuer à générer du profit, se financiariser et se réfugier dans la spéculation. Depuis plus de trente ans, les entreprises, les Etats et les ménages s’endettent, massivement. Nous sommes aujourd’hui dans la dernière partie d’une phase B de Kondratieff, lorsque le déclin virtuel devient réel, et que les bulles explosent les unes après les autres : les faillites se multiplient, la concentration du capital augmente, le chômage progresse, et l’économie connaît une situation de déflation réelle. Read more

Like all wars, the dark, untold stories of the Iraqi conflict drain from its shattered landscape like the filthy waters of the Tigris. And still the revelations come.

The Independent has learnt that secret executions are being carried out in the prisons run by Nouri al-Maliki’s “democratic” government.

The hangings are carried out regularly – from a wooden gallows in a small, cramped cell – in Saddam Hussein’s old intelligence headquarters at Kazimiyah. There is no public record of these killings in what is now called Baghdad’s “high-security detention facility” but most of the victims – there have been hundreds since America introduced “democracy” to Iraq – are said to be insurgents, given the same summary justice they mete out to their own captives.

The secrets of Iraq’s death chambers lie mostly hidden from foreign eyes but a few brave Western souls have come forward to tell of this prison horror. The accounts provide only a glimpse into the Iraqi story, at times tantalisingly cut short, at others gloomily predictable. Those who tell it are as depressed as they are filled with hopelessness.

“Most of the executions are of supposed insurgents of one kind or another,” a Westerner who has seen the execution chamber at Kazimiyah told me. “But hanging isn’t easy.” As always, the devil is in the detail. Read more

It was not a debate. Just as television in prime time has been largely emptied of drama and innovative comedy, with a few exceptions, in favor of empty-headed “reality shows,” so the political debates have mostly been gutted.

Judging “how the candidates did” is rather like weighing in on the wittiness of the libretto of “Big Brother” or the pace of character development in the latest episode of “Keeping up with the Kardashians.” The genre of the political review assumes that both candidates are credible in their roles. It becomes self-parody when one candidate is a ditzy nonentity cynically foisted on the public in the same way a ‘reality show’ is, based on a targeted demographic and without regard to quality.

It reminded me of the excruciating first episodes every season of “American Idol,” when a single candidate is found who has the voice of an angel and then everyone else auditioned sounds like fingernails on a blackboard.

The news organizations and civic groups that sponsor political debates have allowed the campaigns to push them around so vigorously that nothing like a debate is any longer possible. The Bushies even tried to force the networks to hide the fact that John Kerry was taller than his rival in 2004. It is not about debating but about how your candidate looks on television. Read more

If the presidential debate Friday night told us anything, it was that whichever of these candidates is elected, we can expect more wars, or at least more conflicts that put U.S. forces or citizens in danger for dubious reasons. Neither John McCain nor Barack Obama came close to questioning the "bipartisan" consensus on U.S. foreign policy, that the U.S. should be the prime mover and shaker in the world at large. They differ, and in some ways that are fairly important, on details. But on the central question of whether it is the United States’ job to go out there and fix the world, there was no disagreement.

To be sure, taking candidates at their word during a debate is not necessarily advisable for one who would be so foolish as to try to predict what they will do once in office. Politicians as a breed are not noted for being especially candid on the campaign trail, of course. Furthermore, every president faces unexpected foreign-policy challenges (Truman didn’t expect Korea, Carter didn’t expect Iran, Dubya didn’t expect 9/11, etc.). Still, the Bushlet has left some open sores out there in the rest of the world. So the next president is likely to have to deal with winding down the war in Iraq and figuring out what to do in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which will require reaching some kind of accommodation with Iran. Neither candidate seems to realize this, so they competed to see who could say the most childishly nasty things.

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