From shimogamo at attglobal.net Tue Jul 1 04:51:32 2008 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Bill Totten) Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2008 19:51:32 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Faustian Economics Message-ID: <486A0C34.3050000@attglobal.net> Hell hath no limits by Wendell Berry Harper's Magazine Essay (May 2008) The general reaction to the apparent end of the era of cheap fossil fuel, as to other readily foreseeable curtailments, has been to delay any sort of reckoning. The strategies of delay, so far, have been a sort of willed oblivion, or visions of large profits to the manufacturers of such "biofuels" as ethanol from corn or switchgrass, or the familiar unscientific faith that "science will find an answer". The dominant response, in short, is a dogged belief that what we call the American Way of Life will prove somehow indestructible. We will keep on consuming, spending, wasting, and driving, as before, at any cost to anything and everybody but ourselves. This belief was always indefensible - the real names of global warming are Waste and Greed - and by now it is manifestly foolish. But foolishness on this scale looks disturbingly like a sort of national insanity. We seem to have come to a collective delusion of grandeur, insisting that all of us are "free" to be as conspicuously greedy and wasteful as the most corrupt of kings and queens. (Perhaps by devoting more and more of our already abused cropland to fuel production we will at last cure ourselves of obesity and become fashionably skeletal, hungry but - thank God! - still driving.) The problem with us is not only prodigal extravagance but also an assumed limitlessness. We have obscured the issue by refusing to see that limitlessness is a godly trait. We have insistently, and with relief, defined ourselves as animals or as "higher animals". But to define ourselves as animals, given our specifically human powers and desires, is to define ourselves as limitless animals - which of course is a contradiction in terms. Any definition is a limit, which is why the God of Exodus refuses to define Himself: "I am that I am". Even so, that we have founded our present society upon delusional assumptions of limitlessness is easy enough to demonstrate. A. recent "summit" in Louisville, Kentucky, was entitled "Unbridled Energy: The Industrialization of Kentucky's Energy Resources". Its subjects were "clean-coal generation, biofuels, and other cutting-edge applications", the conversion of coal to "liquid fuels", and the likelihood that all this will be "environmentally friendly". These hopes, which "can create jobs and boost the nation's security", are to be supported by government "loan guarantees ... investment tax credits and other tax breaks". Such talk we recognize as completely conventional. It is, in fact, a tissue of cliches that is now the common tongue of promoters, politicians, and journalists. This language does not allow for any computation or speculation as to the net good of anything proposed. The entire contraption of "Unbridled Energy" is supported only by a rote optimism: "The United States has 250 billion tons of recoverable coal reserves - enough to last 100 years even at double the current rate of consumption". We humans have inhabited the earth for many thousands of years, and now we can look forward to surviving for another hundred by doubling our consumption of coal? This is national security? The world-ending fire of industrial fundamentalism may already be burning in our furnaces and engines, but if it will burn for a hundred more years, that will be fine. Surely it would be better to intend straightforwardly to contain the fire and eventually put it out! But once greed has been made an honorable motive, then you have an economy without limits. It has no place for temperance or thrift or the ecological law of return. It will do anything. It is monstrous by definition. In keeping with our unrestrained consumptiveness, the commonly accepted basis of our economy is the supposed possibility of limitless growth, limitless wants, limitless wealth, limitless natural resources, limitless energy, and limitless debt. The idea of a limitless economy implies and requires a doctrine of general human limitlessness: all are entitled to pursue without limit whatever they conceive as desirable - a license that classifies the most exalted Christian capitalist with the lowliest pornographer. This fantasy of limitlessness perhaps arose from the coincidence of the Industrial Revolution with the suddenly exploitable resources of the New World - though how the supposed limitlessness of resources can be reconciled with their exhaustion is not clear. Or perhaps it comes from the contrary apprehension of the world's "smallness", made possible by modern astronomy and high-speed transportation. Fear of the smallness of our world and its life may lead to a kind of claustrophobia and thence, with apparent reasonableness, to a desire for the "freedom" of limitlessness. But this desire, paradoxically, reduces everything. The life of this world is small to those who think it is, and the desire to enlarge it makes it smaller, and can reduce it finally to nothing. However it came about, this credo of limitlessness clearly implies a principled wish not only for limitless possessions but also for limitless knowledge, limitless science, limitless technology, and limitless progress. And , necessarily, it must lead to limitless violence, waste, war, and destruction. That it should finally produce a crowning cult of political limitlessness is only a matter of mad logic. The normalization of the doctrine of limitlessness has produced a sort of moral minimalism: the desire to be efficient at any cost, to be unencumbered by complexity. The minimization of neighborliness, respect, reverence, responsibility, accountability, and self-subordination - this is the culture of which our present leaders and heroes are the spoiled children. Our national faith so far has been: "There's always more". Our true religion is a sort of autistic industrialism. People of intelligence and ability seem now to be genuinely embarrassed by any solution to any problem that does not involve high technology, a great expenditure of energy, or a big machine. Thus an X marked on a paper ballot no longer fulfills our idea of voting. One problem with this state of affairs is that the work now most needing to be done - that of neighborliness and caretaking - cannot be done by remote control with the greatest power on the largest scale. A second problem is that the economic fantasy of limitlessness in a limited world calls fearfully into question the value of our monetary wealth, which does not reliably stand for the real wealth of land, resources, and workmanship but instead wastes and depletes it. That human limitlessness is a fantasy means, obviously, that its life expectancy is limited. There is now a growing perception, and not just among a few experts, that we are entering a time of inescapable limits. We are not likely to be granted another world to plunder in compensation for our pillage of this one. Nor are we likely to believe much longer in our ability to outsmart, by means of science and technology, our economic stupidity. The hope that we can cure the ills of industrialism by the homeopathy of more technology seems at last to he losing status. We are, in short, coming under pressure to understand ourselves as limited creatures in a limited world. This constraint, however, is not the condemnation it may seem. On the contrary, it returns us to our real condition and to our human heritage, from which our self-definition as limitless animals has for too long cut us off. Every cultural and religious tradition that I know about, while fully acknowledging our animal nature, defines us specifically as humans - that is, as animals (if the word still applies) capable of living not only within natural limits but also within cultural limits, self-imposed. As earthly creatures, we live, because we must, within natural limits, which we may describe by such names as "earth" or "ecosystem" or "watershed" or "place". But as humans, we may elect to respond to this necessary placement by the self-restraints implied in neighborliness, stewardship, thrift, temperance, generosity, care, kindness, friendship, loyalty, and love. In our limitless selfishness, we have tried to define "freedom", for example, as an escape from all restraint. But, as my friend Bert Hornback has explained in his book The Wisdom in Words (2004), "free" is etymologically related to "friend". These words come from the same Indo-European root, which carries the sense of "dear" or "beloved". We set our friends free by our love for them, with the implied restraints of faithfulness or loyalty. And this suggests that our "identity" is located not in the impulse of selfhood but in deliberately maintained connections. Thinking of our predicament has sent me back again to Christopher Marlowe's Tragical History of Doctor Faustus. This is a play of the Renaissance; Faustus, a man of learning, longs to possess "all Nature's treasury", to "Ransack the ocean ... / And search all corners of the newfound world ..." To assuage his thirst for knowledge and power, he deeds his soul to Lucifer, receiving in compensation for twenty-four years the services of the sub-devil Mephistophilis, nominally Faustus's slave but in fact his master. Having the subject of limitlessness in mind, I was astonished on this reading to come upon Mephistophilis's description of hell. When Faustus asks, "How comes it then that thou art out of hell?" Mephistophilis replies, "Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it". And a few pages later he explains: Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed In one self place, but where we [the damned] are is hell, And where hell is must we ever be. For those who reject heaven, hell is everywhere, and thus is limitless. For them, even the thought of heaven is hell. It is only appropriate, then, that Mephistophilis rejects any conventional limit: "Tut, Faustus, marriage is but a ceremonial toy. If thou lovest me, think no more of it." Continuing this theme, for Faustus's pleasure the devils present a sort of pageant of the seven deadly sins, three of which - Pride, Wrath, and Gluttony - describe themselves as orphans, disdaining the restraints of parental or filial love. Seventy or so years later, and with the issue of the human definition more than ever in doubt, John Milton in Book VII of Paradise Lost returns again to a consideration of our urge to know. To Adam's request to be told the story of creation, the "affable Archangel" Raphael agrees "to answer thy desire / Of knowledge within bounds [my emphasis] ...", explaining that Knowledge is as food, and needs no less Her temperance over appetite, to know In measure what the mind may well contain; Oppresses else with surfeit, and soon turns Wisdom to folly, as nourishment to wind. Raphael is saying, with angelic circumlocution, that knowledge without wisdom, limitless knowledge, is not worth a fart; he is not a humorless archangel. But he also is saying that knowledge without measure, knowledge that the human mind cannot appropriately use, is mortally dangerous. I am well aware of what I risk in bringing this language of religion into what is normally a scientific discussion. I do so because I doubt that we can define our present problems adequately, let alone solve them, without some recourse to our cultural heritage. We are, after all, trying now to deal with the failure of scientists, technicians, and politicians to "think up" a version of human continuance that is economically probable and ecologically responsible, or perhaps even imaginable. If we go back into our tradition, we are going to find a concern with religion, which at a minimum shatters the selfish context of the individual life, and thus forces a consideration of what human beings are and ought to be. This concern persists at least as late as our Declaration of Independence, which holds as "self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights ..." Thus among our political roots we have still our old preoccupation with our definition as humans, which in the Declaration is wisely assigned to our Creator; our rights and the rights of all humans are not granted by any human government but are innate, belonging to us by birth. This insistence comes not from the fear of death or even extinction but from the ancient fear that in order to survive we might become inhuman or monstrous. And so our cultural tradition is in large part the record of our continuing effort to understand ourselves as beings specifically human: to say that, as humans, we must do certain things and we must not do certain things. We must have limits or we will cease to exist as humans; perhaps we will cease to exist, period. At times, for example, some of us humans have thought that human beings, properly so called, did not make war against civilian populations, or hold prisoners without a fair trial, or use torture for any reason. Some of us would-be humans have thought too that we should not be free at anybody else's expense. And yet in the phrase "free market", the word "free" has come to mean unlimited economic power for some, with the necessary consequence of economic powerlessness for others. Several years ago, after I had spoken at a meeting, two earnest and obviously troubled young veterinarians approached me with a question: How could they practice veterinary medicine without serious economic damage to the farmers who were their clients? Underlying their question was the fact that for a long time veterinary help for a sheep or a pig has been likely to cost more than the animal is worth. I had to answer that, in my opinion, so long as their practice relied heavily on selling patented drugs, they had no choice, since the market for medicinal drugs was entirely controlled by the drug companies, whereas most farmers had no control at all over the market for agricultural products. My questioners were asking in effect if a predatory economy can have a beneficent result. The answer too often is No. And that is because there is an absolute discontinuity between the economy of the seller of medicines and the economy of the buyer, as there is in the health industry as a whole. The drug industry is interested in the survival of patients, we have to suppose, because surviving patients will continue to consume drugs. Now let us consider a contrary example. Recently, at another meeting, I talked for some time with an elderly, and some would say an old-fashioned, farmer from Nebraska. Unable to farm any longer himself, he had rented his land to a younger farmer on the basis of what he called "crop share" instead of a price paid or owed in advance. Thus, as the old farmer said of his renter, "If he has a good year, I have a good year. If he has a bad year, I have a bad one". This is what I would call community economics. It is a sharing of fate. It assures an economic continuity and a common interest between the two partners to the trade. This is as far as possible from the economy in which the young veterinarians were caught, in which the powerful are limitlessly "free" to trade, to the disadvantage, and ultimately the ruin, of the powerless. It is this economy of community destruction that, wittingly or unwittingly, most scientists and technicians have served for the past two hundred years. These scientists and technicians have justified themselves by the proposition that they are the vanguard of progress, enlarging human knowledge and power, and thus they have romanticized both themselves and the predatory enterprises that they have served. As a consequence, our great need now is for sciences and technologies of limits, of domesticity, of what Wes Jackson of the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, has called "homecoming". These would be specifically human sciences and technologies, working, as the best humans always have worked, within self-imposed limits. The limits would be the accepted contexts of places, communities, and neighborhoods, both natural and human. I know that the idea of such limitations will horrify some people, maybe most people, for we have long encouraged ourselves to feel at home on "the cutting edges" of knowledge and power or on some "frontier" of human experience. But I know too that we are talking now in the presence of much evidence that improvement by outward expansion may no longer be a good idea, if it ever was. It was not a good idea for the farmers who "leveraged" secure acreage to buy more during the 1970s. It has proved tragically to be a bad idea in a number of recent wars. If it is a good idea in the form of corporate gigantism, then we must ask, For whom? Faustus, who wants all knowledge and all the world for himself, is a man supremely lonely and finally doomed. I don't think Marlowe was kidding. I don't think Satan is kidding when he says in Paradise Lost, "Myself am Hell". If the idea of appropriate limitation seems unacceptable to us, that may be because, like Marlowe's Faustus and Milton's Satan, we confuse limits with confinement. But that, as I think Marlowe and Milton and others were trying to tell us, is a great and potentially a fatal mistake. Satan's fault, as Milton understood it and perhaps with some sympathy, was precisely that he could not tolerate his proper limitation; he could not subordinate himself to anything whatever. Faustus's error was his unwillingness to remain "Faustus, and a man". In our age of the world it is not rare to find writers, critics, and teachers of literature, as well as scientists and technicians, who regard Satan's and Faustus's defiance as salutary and heroic. On the contrary, our human and earthly limits, properly understood, are not confinements but rather inducements to formal elaboration and elegance, to fullness of relationship and meaning. Perhaps our most serious cultural loss in recent centuries is the knowledge that some things, though limited, are inexhaustible. For example, an ecosystem, even that of a working forest or farm, so long as it remains ecologically intact, is inexhaustible. A small place, as I know from my own experience, can provide opportunities of work and learning, and a fund of beauty, solace, and pleasure - in addition to its difficulties - that cannot be exhausted in a lifetime or in generations. To recover from our disease of limitlessness, we will have to give up the idea that we have a right to be godlike animals, that we are potentially omniscient and omnipotent, ready to discover "the secret of the universe". We will have to start over, with a different and much older premise: the naturalness and, for creatures of limited intelligence, the necessity, of limits. We must learn again to ask how we can make the most of what we are, what we have, what we have been given. If we always have a theoretically better substitute available from somebody or someplace else, we will never make the most of anything. It is hard to make the most of one life. If we each had two lives, we would not make much of either. Or as one of my best teachers said of people in general: "They'll never be worth a damn as long as they've got two choices". To deal with the problems, which after all are inescapable, of living with limited intelligence in a limited world, I suggest that we may have to remove some of the emphasis we have lately placed on science and technology and have a new look at the arts. For an art does not propose to enlarge itself by limitless extension but rather to enrich itself within bounds that are accepted prior to the work. It is the artists, not the scientists, who have dealt unremittingly with the problem of limits. A painting, however large, must finally be bounded by a frame or a wall. A composer or playwright must reckon, at a minimum, with the capacity of an audience to sit still and pay attention. A story, once begun, must end somewhere within the limits of the writer's and the reader's memory. And of course the arts characteristically impose limits that are artificial: the five acts of a play, or the fourteen lines of a sonnet. Within these limits artists achieve elaborations of pattern, of sustaining relationships of parts with one another and with the whole, that may be astonishingly complex. And probably most of us can name a painting, a piece of music, a poem or play or story that still grows in meaning and remains fresh after many years of familiarity. We know by now that a natural ecosystem survives by the same sort of formal intricacy, ever-changing, inexhaustible, and no doubt finally unknowable. We know further that if we want to make our economic landscapes sustainably and abundantly productive, we must do so by maintaining in them a living formal complexity something like that of natural ecosystems. We can do this only by raising to the highest level our mastery of the arts of agriculture, animal husbandry, forestry, and, ultimately, the art of living. It is true that insofar as scientific experiments must be conducted within carefully observed limits, scientists also are artists. But in science one experiment, whether it succeeds or fails, is logically followed by another in a theoretically infinite progression. According to the underlying myth of modern science, this progression is always replacing the smaller knowledge of the past with the larger knowledge of the present, which will be replaced by the yet larger knowledge of the future. In the arts, by contrast, no limitless sequence of works is ever implied or looked for. No work of art is necessarily followed by a second work that is necessarily better. Given the methodologies of science, the law of gravity and the genome were bound to be discovered by somebody; the identity of the discoverer is incidental to the fact. But it appears that in the arts there are no second chances. We must assume that we had one chance each for The Divine Comedy and King Lear. If Dante and Shakespeare had died before they wrote those poems, nobody ever would have written them. The same is true of our arts of land use, our economic arts, which are our arts of living. With these it is once-for-all. We will have no chance to redo our experiments with bad agriculture leading to soil loss. The Appalachian mountains and forests we have destroyed for coal are gone forever. It is now and forevermore too late to use thriftily the first half of the world's supply of petroleum. In the art of living we can only start again with what remains. And so, in confronting the phenomenon of "peak oil", we are really confronting the end of our customary delusion of "more". Whichever way we turn, from now on, we are going to find a limit beyond which there will be no more. To hit these limits at top speed is not a rational choice. To start slowing down, with the idea of avoiding catastrophe, is a rational choice, and a viable one if we can recover the necessary political sanity. Of course it makes sense to consider alternative energy sources, provided they make sense. But also we will have to re-examine the economic structures of our lives, and conform them to the tolerances and limits of our earthly places. Where there is no more, our one choice is to make the most and the best of what we have. _____ Wendell Berry's most recent novel is Andy Catlett (2006), published by Counterpoint. His story "The Requirement" appeared in the March 2007 issue of Harper's Magazine. http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From james.irldaly at ntlworld.com Tue Jul 1 05:10:47 2008 From: james.irldaly at ntlworld.com (james daly) Date: Tue, 1 Jul 2008 12:10:47 +0100 Subject: [A-List] sanctions Message-ID: <62A1DBED44B549F4B654252BCB73603A@home9sg93n9r5y> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ruthless Critic of All that Exists" > To: > Sent: Monday, June 30, 2008 10:36 PM Subject: Re: [Marxism] Stating obvious,SADC says Zimbabwe vote not will of people *********** When "Ruthless Critic of All That Exists" (above) asked on Marxmail if we shouldn't accept UN sanctions against Zimbabwe: Shouldn't this depend on *what* the proposed actions are? If the actions consist of such things as diplomatic de-recognition, freezing foreign bank accounts, etc, that will hurt the Mugabe-associated elite but not the common people. Why shouldn't that be supported? Sanctions of the Iraq kind would hurt common people and should not be supported. it all depends on the concrete actions that are proposed. **************** Sartesian (above) rightly replied: No. When the UN takes these steps regarding the actions of the the US, the UK, France, against their own and the world's peoples, talk to me again. When the UN defies Israel's refusal to allow investigatiors into Jenin and other Palestinian areas where Israel has conducted reprisals against the inhabitants, come and talk to me again. When the UN funds prosecution of Reagan Administration members for war crimes in Nicaragua, Bush Administration member for war crimes in Iraq, give me a call. Probably going to be a long time. Think NEVER is about right. From james.irldaly at ntlworld.com Tue Jul 1 05:56:23 2008 From: james.irldaly at ntlworld.com (james daly) Date: Tue, 1 Jul 2008 12:56:23 +0100 Subject: [A-List] Targeted Countries Message-ID: <16EEA7734B8C4C92ADC5D951B1B76B8B@home9sg93n9r5y> Surely all this ought ought to be taken for granted by Marxists? -- J. D. Stephen Gowans provides the latest commentary on the misdirection by the Western media in its coverage of the Zimbabwean elections. Defending the Indefensible: Sham Democracy Promoter Defends Imperialist Ties ************** "What Zunes leaves out or does not understand is that non-violent pro-democracy movements are often powerless without imperialist governments first threatening or deploying military interventions, imposing sanctions and blockades and broadcasting anti-government propaganda, thereby turning the population of targeted countries against their governments. In other words, *the bad guys Zunes can rail against to establish his leftist credentials*(my emphasis - J. D.) do the dirty work while his people's forces come in at the end to effect the coup de grace. The result is never democracy, in the original sense of the word, but improved trade and investment conditions for Western economic elites - the same elites Sharp and Zunes are taking foundation lucre from". *************** ( Zunes say ) governments can't be brought down unless they lose popular support. Zunes' last point is true, but the pressure Western governments exert on foreign policy targets through threats of war, bombing campaigns, sanctions, and propaganda, go a long way toward alienating target governments of popular support, and thereby preparing the ground for Sharp- and Zunes-trained overthrow movements to go to work. Serbia, whose once social- and publicly-owned enterprises have been sold off to Western investors, is a model of what overthrow movements Zunes celebrates and assists produce. ************* Stephen Zunes, an advisor to the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict, an organization founded by former Michael Milken right-hand man Peter Ackerman, continues to defend "non-violent pro-democracy" activists involved in promoting overthrow movements abroad. In a June 27, 2008 article in Foreign Policy in Focus, Zunes springs to the defense of Gene Sharp, the founder of the Albert Einstein Institution, who has been exposed in Eva Golinger's "Bush vs. Chavez: Washington's War on Venezuela" as "a self-titled expert of what he calls 'non-violent defense', though better termed regime change" who has provided "aid to Venezuela's opposition in finding new and inventive ways to overthrow Chavez." Sharp has been variously connected to Western-backed overthrow movements in Myanmar, Tibet, Belarus, Serbia and Zimbabwe - countries the US ruling class is acting to bring under its heel. Zunes' defense of Sharp, which amounts mostly to declaring Golinger's and others' exposure of the AEI founder to be "fabricated allegations," rests on his demolishing a straw man. Sharp is not, he argues, part of a Bush administration conspiracy to overthrow foreign governments. This is probably true. But I'm not aware of anyone who has ever directly linked Sharp to either the Bush administration or a conspiracy. Someone may have done so somewhere, but for the most part, Sharp have been criticized for accepting funding from and acting (whether intentionally or not) on behalf of US ruling class forces. These, of course, are much broader than the Bush administration. Peter Ackerman, the head of the ICNC, which Zunes belongs to in an advisory capacity, is not, as far as I'm aware, connected to the Bush administration, but has taken on a leadership role on behalf of the US ruling class. He has celebrated the overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic by forces Gene Sharp had a key role in training, and Western governments had a key role in bankrolling and establishing the conditions for the success of. Ackerman's ruling class credentials are impeccable - a Wall Street investment banker, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and head of Freedom House, which is interlocked with the CIA and a "virtual propaganda arm of the (US) government and international right wing," according to Noam Chomsky's and Edward Herman's Manufacturing Consent. This is the company Sharp, Zunes and their left-wing regime change promoters keep. Ackerman's wife, Joanne Leedom-Ackerman, is a former director of the AEI. She is also currently a director of the US foreign policy establishment-dominated Human Rights Watch, which promotes the view that the US should use its "moral authority" to promote human rights around the world, and the US Congress-funded International Center for journalists. After two pages of telling us there is no truth to the charges against Sharp (which, inasmuch as they involve Bush administration-connections, is probably true) Zunes reinforces the case Sharp's critics have been making, when he reveals that the AEI: . Is funded by corporate foundations. . Is open to accepting funding from organizations that have received funding from government sources (i.e., accepts government funding through pass through organizations.) . Has received grants from the US Congress's National Endowment for Democracy (an organization that does overtly what the CIA used to do covertly.) . Has advised members of the Venezuelan opposition. Not disclosed in Zunes' article, but revealing nonetheless, is that the NED paid for the AEI to provide advice to Zimbabwe's Western-backed neo-liberal opposition party, the MDC. I'm never sure whether Zunes is unsophisticated, sophistical, or both. He declares Sharp to be innocent of all charges, and then adduces evidence that backs up the allegations of Sharp's critics. In doing so, he sets out a defense that amounts to the following: 1. It's all right for left activists to take money from corporate foundations. 2. It's all right to take money from governments, just so long as they're not Republican ones and was done years ago. 3. It's all right to take money from Republican governments today, just so long as it comes through pass through organizations. (The CIA, it should be noted, has a long history of using pass throughs to fund organizations like the ICNC, Freedom House and the AEI.) 4. Even if foreign overthrow movements have been bankrolled by the US, Britain and other Western governments, the effect of the funding on the success of these movements is immaterial; governments can't be brought down unless they lose popular support. Zunes' last point is true, but the pressure Western governments exert on foreign policy targets through threats of war, bombing campaigns, sanctions, and propaganda, go a long way toward alienating target governments of popular support, and thereby preparing the ground for Sharp- and Zunes-trained overthrow movements to go to work. Serbia, whose once social- and publicly-owned enterprises have been sold off to Western investors, is a model of what overthrow movements Zunes celebrates and assists produce. As ever, Zunes would like us to believe that the corporations and wealthy individuals who furnish the foundations that support organizations like Sharp's are either keenly interested in promoting democracy, or aren't, and have ulterior motives in funding nonviolent pro-democracy groups, but that the latter are not influenced by their funding sources. That may be true, but useful idiots don't need to be bribed. This is succinctly illustrated in a David Horowitz quotation, cited by Michael Barker in a forthcoming Swans article. "In the control of scholarship by wealth, it is neither necessary nor desirable that professors hold a certain orientation because they receive a grant. The important thing is that they receive a grant because they hold the orientation." Frances Stonor Saunders in her "Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters, points out that the NCL, the non-communist left, has long been the favored funding recipients of foundations and the CIA. The idea, from their point of view, is to channel leftist sentiment and thinking in pro-imperialist directions by amplifying the voice of the pro-imperialist NCL, thereby drowning out and marginalizing the voice of the communist left. While the NCL is often opposed to Western military intervention, and on this basis professes to be anti-imperialist, it promotes and legitimizes imperialist interventions in other ways. It encourages overthrow movements, celebrating them as pro-democracy people's forces, offers them assistance, training and legitimacy, and mimics the rhetorical assaults by imperialist governments on target governments, thereby promoting the view that Western governments must act, even if not militarily. A commitment to peace and low-level democracy is not equivalent to anti-imperialism, and as Sharp demonstrates, is a leftist version of a pro-imperialist program. What Zunes leaves out or does not understand is than non-violent pro-democracy movements are often powerless without imperialist governments first threatening or deploying military interventions, imposing sanctions and blockades and broadcasting anti-government propaganda, thereby turning the population of targeted countries against their governments. In other words, the bad guys Zunes can rail against to establish his leftist credentials do the dirty work while his people's forces come in at the end to effect the coup de grace. The result is never democracy, in the original sense of the word, but improved trade and investment conditions for Western economic elites - the same elites Sharp and Zunes are taking foundation lucre from. Zunes would also like to bamboozle us into believing that the assistance and funding overthrow movements receive from Western imperialist governments makes little difference in the grand scheme of things (which means, by implication, that the foundations which dole out funding are managed by morons who are squandering money on ineffectual programs.) As always, Zunes does his part in promoting US foreign policy goals, aping US government descriptions of regime change targets, vilifying them as "autocratic regimes," which presumably deserve to brought down by handsomely funded overthrow movements trained by Zunes, Sharp and the left "non-violent democracy promotion" apparatus. It comes as no surprise that while Zunes refers to the target governments of Belarus and Zimbabwe as regimes (as the US State Department does), he refers to the current US executive as the Bush "administration." Zunes has put together a public statement in defense of Sharp, which has been signed by NCL luminaries Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn. Zunes hopes their endorsement will lay to rest legitimate questions about the role played by Sharp and other nonviolent pro-democracy activists, including Zunes himself, in promoting US imperialism under the guise of advancing democracy. But endorsements by Chomsky or Zinn don't change the facts; they only raise questions about the endorsers and Zunes' stooping to reliance of appeal to authority. Apparently, he has judged his argument too weak to stand on its own. Calling in NCL luminaries is the political equivalent of calling out the sheep herders to bring the flock back into line. But is the authority of Chomsky and Zinn deserved? Joan Roelofs reveals in her "Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism" that The Progressive, the magazine for which Zinn writes a regular column, had advisory board members on the Council of Foreign Relations and receives grants from the Ford Foundation. Zunes will reply that I'm engaging in guilt by association, but the point is that the ruling class funds the NCL and the NCL gladly accepts ruling class lucre. Zunes can dismiss the connection as irrelevant and of no consequence, but this is sheer sophistry. Sharp and Zunes may be genuinely interested in the pursuit of democracy, but it's a low-intensity democracy subordinate to US imperial interests they're promoting. Foreign governments on the US ruling class regime change hit list - and anti-imperialists in the West -- have a legitimate reason to be wary of Sharp, Zunes and other leftist members of the US regime change apparatus. They are ruling class operatives who align with ruling class figures to facilitate the pursuit of overseas profits through the elimination of nationalist and socialist governments which stand in the way. Their promotion of democracy, revealed in the neo-liberal, privatized tyrannies which are the invariable outcomes of their work, is as much a sham as the democracy promotion of the imperialist governments they're tied to through pass through funding and interlocks with ruling class foundations and activists. Look for Michael Barker's forthcoming article on Zunes' defense of Sharp in Swans. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 8821 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20080701/6bf3a540/attachment.jpeg From critical.montages at gmail.com Tue Jul 1 12:48:49 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Tue, 1 Jul 2008 14:48:49 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Dean Baker: "We're Probably a Bit More than Halfway to the Bottom of the Bubble" Message-ID: The Meltdown Lowdown (No. 11) Airline CEOs have some odd ideas about customer service, Exxon gets a break from the Supreme Court, and many middle aged families have very little savings. Dean Baker | June 27, 2008 | web only . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . And the Bubble Keeps on Bursting The new Case-Shiller housing data showed that prices kept plummeting in April. Real house prices in the 20-city index were falling at close to a 26 percent annual rate over the months from January to April. Since their peak in the summer of 2006, real house prices have dropped by more than 23 percent. This means that we're probably a bit more than halfway to the bottom of the bubble. Prices in the most rapidly deflating markets are dropping much faster. In the last three months, real house prices in Phoenix, San Francisco and Miami have all fallen at close to a 40 percent annual rate. The implications of this rate of price decline are incredible. Imagine you had paid off 20 percent of a mid-priced home in the San Francisco area as of January. This would have given you approximately $136,000 in equity on a $680,000 home. Three months later, that home is $597,000 and your equity stake is down to $53,000. In three more months at this rate, you will be underwater. Such are the joys of home ownership in a collapsing bubble. Of course, it is not gloomy for everyone. Imagine that you are a wise renter who was thinking of buying a mid-priced home in the SF area. You are now $83,000 richer as a result of your decision to wait. That's not bad -- you get almost $28,000 a month for not buying. From nscchicago at igc.org Tue Jul 1 10:53:55 2008 From: nscchicago at igc.org (NSC WORKERS COOP) Date: Tue, 1 Jul 2008 11:53:55 -0500 Subject: [A-List] Fw: [NoIraqWar] Herald(Scotland)No Cigar as Banks Cut Off Cuba - LAW? WHAT LAW? Message-ID: <002601c8db9b$149d8320$0a0110ac@NSCCHICAGO> Tom Baker here forwarding news on how gangster nation Indian Killer USA bullies ----- Original Message ----- From: beth massey From: Nancy Mikelsons From: Walter Lippmann Subject: [NoIraqWar] Herald(Scotland)No Cigar as Banks Cut Off Cuba Subject: SUNDAY HERALD (Scotland): No cigar as banks cut off Cuba (Washington's blockade of Cuba isn't just aimed at preventing people from the U.S. from visiting or doing business on the island. It's also aimed at strangling the country by further efforts to strangle Cuban business and the economic relations of countries all over the world with the island. There also are national sovereignty issues involved, as Washington pushes other countries to comply with its blockade, and, even though they have laws against such cooperation, many countries permit their companies to cooperate with Washington policies on this.) ============================================================== SUNDAY HERALD (Scotland) No cigar as banks cut off Cuba Joanna Blythman on US interference Comment | Read Comments (9) http://www.sundayherald.com/oped/opinion/display.var.2369430.0.no_cigar_as_banks_cut_off_cuba.php IT SEEMS that our banks are doing the United States's dirty work these days. Lloyds TSB and Barclays have been telling British customers who have financial dealings with Cuba to take their business elsewhere. Why? Because they're scared. Not of the British government - which nominally encourages trade with Cuba and has a policy of positive engagement with the island - but of the US. Blinded by rabid anti-socialist, anti-Castro sentiment, for 48 years the US has conducted a vendetta against this peaceful Caribbean island by imposing a crippling economic blockade, one that has wilfully impoverished the Cuban people and been roundly condemned for 16 years running by the UN General Assembly. In 2007, 184 countries, including the UK, voted against it - only four didn't. The whole world, apart from the US, its thuggish sidekick, Israel, and a couple of obscure statelets, believes this punitive blockade should be lifted. Cuba appears on America's blacklist of state sponsors of terrorism, along with pariah states such as Sudan and North Korea. US legislation has long criminalised any company doing business with Cuba, and it is enforced with McCarthyite zeal - American business people have been fined and imprisoned. Even a director's fact-finding visit to the island could land a US company in trouble. advertisement Unable to carry its anti-Cuba argument abroad, the US uses its economic muscle to get what it wants outwith its own borders. Thus any transnational company or its subsidiary with a presence in the US - even if not based there - can face swingeing penalties. Swiss banking giant, UBS, for instance, has had to pay the Federal Reserve a fine of $100 million for dealing with Havana. Putting the frighteners on the international banking sector works. Not only are Lloyds TSB and Barclays running scared, so too, according to the Cuba Solidarity Campaign, are HSBC and the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). I asked the latter to clarify whether or not it was operating an embargo and got the following opaque response: "The group complies with all applicable sanctions regimes in the jurisdictions in which it operates. While we are aware of the various arguments surrounding the Cuban embargo, this is a matter which should rightfully be addressed by government through the appropriate diplomatic channels." (I asked Bank of Scotland too. I haven't heard a word back.) Never expect bankers to man the barricades on any issue unless it affects their bottom line. Yet RBS does have a point. Why isn't the UK government protecting the right of British companies to do business with Cuba? Which state has sovereignty over banking here, the UK or the US? Westminster has two weapons at its disposal: an EU blocking statute and the Protection of Trading Interests Act, both enacted in 1996 explicitly to prevent any discrimination against British companies that legitimately trade with Cuba. But neither Tony Blair nor Gordon Brown has used them. The Mexican government fined a Sheraton Hotel in Mexico City for expelling Cuban guests, and the Austrian government has launched administrative procedures against an Austrian bank that cancelled the accounts of Cuban citizens (ironically, mainly Castro-loathing exiles) after being taken over by US investors. Austria's foreign minister, Ursula Plassnik, took the view that the bank had violated EU rules against implementing US Cuban sanctions on European soil. "We are not the 51st state of the United States" she said. Perhaps the UK is. Despite his initial aloofness, Gordon Brown has turned into George Bush's replacement poodle for Blair. So currently, if you want to import Cuban cigars, sugar or rum to the UK, your bank account is too hot to handle. Only the good old ethically-minded Co-Operative Bank still seems to welcome such business. This is bad news for Cuba's economy, and ours. Potentially Cuba is a big market for the UK, yet our exports to the island went down by 40% between 2001 and 2006. I wonder why ? How long before the US's malign blockade hampers the ability of UK citizens to visit Cuba? British tourists already find that their credit cards - which have yielded funds in out-of-the-way countries all around the globe - mysteriously don't work there. That's because many credit card companies are subsidiaries of US banks. For the time being, Virgin flies tourists in and out of the island - Richard Branson's bank account must be hard to turn down. But unless Gordon Brown defends British companies against a foreign government that is trying to obstruct their legal business, then British tour companies currently active in Cuba may run into banking difficulties. If, like me, you think that the world should be free to trade with Cuba and disapprove of America's unhealthy grip on our financial institutions, you could ask your bank to confirm that it is happy to offer banking services to Cuban organisations, companies trading with Cuba, and of course, Cuban individuals. The Cuba Solidarity Campaign has a model letter you can use or adapt for the purpose at: www.cuba-solidarity.org.uk/news.asp?ItemID=1356 In the absence of a satisfactory response, consider taking your account elsewhere. If certain banks won't do business with Cuba, then why should we do business with them? ========================================= WALTER LIPPMANN Los Angeles, California Editor-in-Chief, CubaNews http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/ "Cuba - Un Para???so bajo el bloqueo" ========================================= __._,_.___ _______________________________ Send a contribution by going to our website: http://www.NoIraqWar-chicago.org and using the "DONATE" button. _______________________________ Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required) Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe __,_._,___ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 10822 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20080701/b3e2aaaa/attachment.txt -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 20288 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20080701/b3e2aaaa/attachment-0001.jpeg From noreply at coha.org Tue Jul 1 14:19:14 2008 From: noreply at coha.org (noreply at coha.org) Date: Tue, 1 Jul 2008 16:19:14 -0400 Subject: [A-List] The Politics of Illogicality: North Korea is Removed from Washington's Terrorist List but Cuban Embargo Remains Message-ID: <20080701201913.E41763E419E@mx-out2.daemonmail.net> A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 11002 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20080701/6f63763b/attachment.txt From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Tue Jul 1 16:48:36 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2008 18:48:36 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Obama enabling White Supremacists Message-ID: <486A7C04.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> Leigh: You and I differ... I don't believe running for president of the US under any currently known circumstances is "uppity"... you don't get there from here by being uppity, you get 'vetted' and removed from the possibility of EVER being even the government's dogcatcher.. ^^^ CB: What you or I consider uppity is not the issue. It is what white supremacists consider uppity. ( See thread title). They definitely consider running for President uppity ^^^ If you still believe (like all those 40s/50s CPUSA folks did) that 'burrowing from within' is a viable strategy for change, we differ there too. ^^^^ CB: Obama is not a communist, so.... More to the point is the issue of supporting reforms or not. ^^^^ He's what I've always called a 'corporate hack', and 'hack' crosses race/gender/income lines as if they don't exist... You COULD replace that word with opportunist or somesuch and have part of the meaning of 'hack'. ^^^^ CB: You can call him a corporate hack , but that don't make it so, since he went from President of Harvard law review to community organizer. Bill Goodman , venerable National Lawyers Guild veteran , just said to me how he was impressed by O doing that when he could have made a "trillion". ^^^^ OK, so he won't have a trillion in his bank account, but he'll NEVER have to carry cash in his wallet again anyway. Harvard? You state that like it means something other than 'bourgeois'. ^^^^ CB: How's that ? I state it as if "Harvard" meant it was a ticket to get rich real quick... but he didn't. Indicates something about his motivations , his thinking, his personal goals and aspirations. If he wanted to be a corporate hack, and he had a prime ticket for that, why did he go do community organizing ? ^^^^^^ I don't know Bill Goodman or his background, but I wonder what John Mage, former NLG director and direct action activist (retired director, but not retired activist I believe) would think of Obama. ^^^^ CB: His brother, Shane, has said a few positive things about Obama on LBO-Talk. John Mage was a counsel for the Soviet Union (!) here. O I imagine he is not an ultra-leftist. He used to write to LBO-talk too. ^^^^^ I found this today, and it is a summation of my visualization of the problem with American political figures regardless of race, color, creed or national origin. ^^^^^ CB; But you are white, right ? So, what makes you think we Black people grant you that right to look at things in a color-blind way ? Ever heard of the White Man's Burden ? i'm sure Obama would cut you a break on this though. He's more tolerant than some of the rest of us. Look, just because a black person can rise to the top of the white man's shit heap doesn't negate the fact that it's still perhaps permanently a shit heap and your fingernails still need cleaning from scrambling to the slimy top. ^^^^ CB: It's an indication of a significant maturation of masses of white people. ^^^^ I dunno about the "White Man's Burden" stuff... . Is that like 'blood quantum' or something? ^^^^ CB: Title of a poem by Kipling, in which he expresses liberal paternalism, lamenting all the white man has to do to save color peoples from themselves. "So, what makes you think we..." Is that the editorial we? ^^^^ CB: Straightup first person plural. ^^^^ From shimogamo at attglobal.net Tue Jul 1 19:28:29 2008 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Bill Totten) Date: Wed, 02 Jul 2008 10:28:29 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Not Your Grandma's Depression Message-ID: <486AD9BD.8030708@attglobal.net> Clusterfuck Nation by Jim Kunstler Comment on current events by the author of The Long Emergency (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2005) www.kunstler.com (June 30 2008) This isn't so funny anymore. Intimations of a July banking collapse rumbled though the Internet this weekend while mainstream news orgs like The New York Times and CNN pulled their puds over swift boats and Amy Winehouse's performance technique. Something is happening, and you don't know what it is, do you Mr. Jones ...? to quote the master. What's happening is that American society is sliding into a greater depression than the one Grandma lived through. On the technical side, there has been unending controversy as to whether we're gripped by inflation or deflation. It's certainly deceptive. Food and gasoline prices are rising faster than the rivers of Iowa. But the prices of assets, like houses, stocks, jet-skis, GMC Yukons and pre-owned Hummel figurines are cratering as America turns into Yard Sale Nation. We're a very different country than we were in 1932. In that earlier crisis of capital, few people had any money but our society still possessed fantastic resources. We had plenty of everything that our land could provide: a treasure trove of mineral ores and the equipment to refine it all, a wealth of oil and gas still in the ground, and all the rigs needed to get at it, manpower galore (and of a highly disciplined, regimented kind), with fine-tuned factories waiting for orders. We had a railroad system that was the envy of the world and millions of family farms (even despite the dust bowl) owned by people who retained age-old skills not yet degraded by agribusiness. We had fully-functional cities with operating waterfronts and ten thousand small towns with local economies, local newspapers, and local culture. We had a crisis of capital in the 1930s for reasons that are still debated today. My own guess is a combination of a bad debt workout that sucked "money" into a black hole (since money is loaned into existence, but vanishes if the loans are not systematically paid back) plus a gross saturation of markets, meaning that every American who had wanted to buy a car or an electric toaster had done so and there was no one left to sell to. (The first round of globalism - 1870 to 1914 - had shut down after the fiasco of World War One.) Our debt problems today are of a magnitude so extreme that astronomers would be hard pressed to calculate them. By any rational measure our society is comprehensively bankrupt. From the federal treasury down to the suburban cul-de-sacs so much loaned money is either not being paid back, or is at risk of never being paid back, that the suckage of presumed wealth has passed through an event horizon out of the known universe into some other realm of space-time, never to be seen again in this realm. This would seem to be the very essence of monetary deflation - money defaulted out-of-existence. This condition is partly disguised by both the loss of credibility of US currency and real-world scarcities of oil and food, but the upshot will be something at least twice as bad as the Great Depression of the 1930s: people with no money in a land with no resources (with manpower that has no discipline), hardly any family farms left, cities that are basket-cases of bottomless need, comatose small towns stripped of their assets and social capital, an aviation industry on the verge of death, and a railroad system that is the laughingstock of the world. Not to mention the mind-boggling liabilities of suburbia and the motoring infrastructure that services it. The banks have been doing their death dance for an entire year now, pretending that their problems are those of mere "liquidity" (that is, cash-on-hand) rather than insolvency (no cash either on hand or in the vault and nothing else to sell to raise cash except worthless "creative" securities that nobody would ever buy). But the destruction of money (resulting from loans not paid back) is now so intense that the game of pretend has reached its terminal point. The question for the moment is exactly who and what will be crushed as these institutions roll over and die. Complicating matters is a global oil predicament that is really not hard to understand, but which the organs of news and opinion have obdurately failed to explicate for an anxious public. Call it Peak Oil. There are only a few elements of it you need to know. (1) that demand has now permanently outstripped supply; (2) that new discoveries are too meager to offset consumption; (3) That under under the circumstances, the systems we rely on for daily life are crumbling. I've called this situation The Long Emergency. Our chances of mitigating this, and of continuing our current way of life is about zero. I've tried to promote the idea that rather than waste remaining resources in the futile attempt to sustain the unsustainable (that is, come up with "solutions" to keep suburbia running), that we should begin immediately making other arrangements for daily life - mainly by downscaling and re-scaling everything from farming to commerce to the way we inhabit the landscape - but my suggestions have proven unpopular even among the "environmental" elites, who are too busy being entranced by new and groovy ways to keep all the cars running. So where we are at now is the equivalent of standing in the slop by the ocean shore under a gathering hundred-foot-high wave that is about to come crashing down on our heads. Since I sure don't know everything, I can't say how this will all play out in the months ahead, especially with the presidential election coming at the exact moment that voters will be turning on their furnaces for the cold and dark winter beyond. I would venture to say that so far our society as a whole has done a piss-poor job of comprehending the situation. But there is still the possibility, with four months of politicking left, that the nature of our predicament can be articulated in a way that few can fail to understand, the way Mr Lincoln articulated the terms of the Civil War on the eve of its fateful outbreak. _____ My new novel of the post-oil future, World Made By Hand, is available at all booksellers. http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/2008/06/not-your-grandmas-depression.html http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From tal1 at cogeco.ca Tue Jul 1 20:31:12 2008 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Tue, 1 Jul 2008 22:31:12 -0400 Subject: [A-List] India People's War News: Maoists destroy two mobile phone towers Message-ID: <85CEE80A0A92477A9698DEEC39A5C6F0@TonyPC> ...This bye-the-bye is somewhat related to Hezbollah's recent victory in protecting its fiber-optic communications system in Lebanon. Fibre-optics (i.e. land-line) systems are relatively invunerable to hacking and jamming whilst cell-phone microwave communications systems are not. Tony > Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2008 > Subject: India People's War News: Maoists destroy two mobile phone towers > > > India, June 27 - India's Maoist insurgents destroyed two mobile towers > and have shut down six others in the country's east, blaming the network > for revealing their movements to the police, officials said. > > Rebels, fearing mobiles are being used by informers, have banned the use > of mobile phones in villages under their control in India after hundreds > of suspected insurgents were arrested this year. > > Police said armed rebels set two towers of Bharti Airtel Ltd on fire on > Thursday in Bihar state, snapping communication lines in the region. > > "The Maoists are angry since the police were able to locate their > movements through the mobile network, leading to many arrests," said > Ajay Kumar Sinha, a senior police officer from Gaya district, where the > incident took place. > > The rebels called local media to claim responsibility. > > A spokeswoman for Bharti Airtel said they were looking into the issue. > > The rebels say they are fighting for the rights of the poor and > landless. They regularly kill policemen and attack government > establishments in eastern and central India. > > They usually operate in a large swathe of India stretching from the east > to some southern states, mostly in the countryside. > > > - ----- End forwarded message ----- > > > > > - -- > ** FULL-SPECTRUM DOMINANCE! **************************************** > * BOYCOTT BOURGEOIS * Get your news & analysis * > * MASS-MEDIA: * from the Best on the Web * > **** Critical endorsement only **** Most sites need donations **** > * http://prwatch.org PR Watch * > * http://www.imemc.org/audio IMEMC Palestine Audio Reports * > * http://www.spinwatch.org.uk SpinWatch * > * http://www.statewatch.org Statewatch * > * http://www.deepdishtv.org/shocking Shocking and Awful * > * http://www.deepdishtv.org Deep Dish TV * > * http://blackcommentator.com The Black Commentator * > ****** The problem with liberals: They always blink first ******** > GPG fingerprint = 2E7F 2D69 4B0B C8D5 07E3 09C3 5E8D C4B4 461B B771 > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (GNU/Linux) > > iD8DBQFIZk7eXo3EtEYbt3ERAsgaAJ9QbaFJGUmZjxbaWX61UTCSA1bUWgCeOhnx > ceDCh9PpRk7OF0zr8ksZGNw= > =s9Qo > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- > From nscchicago at igc.org Tue Jul 1 23:04:19 2008 From: nscchicago at igc.org (NSC WORKERS COOP) Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2008 00:04:19 -0500 Subject: [A-List] WNU #952: Is CANF Smuggling Cuban Migrants? Message-ID: <022c01c8dc01$1e0ff760$0a0110ac@NSCCHICAGO> From: "Weekly News Update" Subject: WNU #952: Is CANF Smuggling Cuban Migrants? WEEKLY NEWS UPDATE ON THE AMERICAS ISSUE #952, JUNE 29, 2008 NICARAGUA SOLIDARITY NETWORK OF GREATER NEW YORK 339 LAFAYETTE ST., NEW YORK, NY 10012 (212) 674-9499, weeklynewsupdate at gmail.com This Update is also available at: http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/2008/06/wnu-952-is-canf-smuggling-cuban.html 1. Cuba: Is CANF Smuggling Migrants? 2. Mexico: Congress OKs "Plan Mexico" 3. Links to alternative sources on: Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti *1. CUBA: IS CANF SMUGGLING MIGRANTS? On June 23 the Mexican daily La Jornada reported that according to "judicial sources" the Mexican Attorney General's Office (PGR) has information that the Miami-based Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) has maintained ties for at least three years with the "Golf Cartel" drug trafficking operation and "Los Zetas"--a gang of hired assassins working for the cartels--to help in the smuggling of Cuban and Central American immigrants through Mexican territory to the US. CANF, an influential organization of rightwing Cuban Americans in Florida, has friendly relations with US politicians from both the Democratic and Republican parties. Reporter Alfredo Mendez wrote that the allegations came from an ongoing investigation of two Cuban Americans, Nairobi Claro and Noriel Veloz, who were arrested in the eastern state of Quintana Roo on June 8 for allegedly transporting 33 Cubans to Mexico illegally. The 33 Cubans were later "snatched" from Mexican authorities by armed men, along with four Central Americans; at least 18 of the immigrants were later found in Texas [see Update #951]. Claro and Veloz reportedly told investigators in Cancun, Quintana Roo, that they were CANF members and that they used payments from the immigrants to bribe Mexican officials, get forged immigration documents and contract Zetas for the immigrant smuggling operation. According to the sources, Claro and Veloz turned down an offer for release on bail, saying they would be executed if they went out on the streets. [LJ 6/23/08] CANF president Francisco "Pepe" Hernandez strongly denied the allegations on June 24 and told The Miami Herald that the story was probably "disinformation" planted by the Cuban government to discredit his organization. He said Claro and Veloz had never had any connection with CANF. The two men are both listed in public records as living in Miami's Little Havana area. [Trading Markets 6/25/08 from the Miami Herald] The PGR also denied the story in a letter to La Jornada published on June 26. Reporter Mendez responded that his sources had access to the proceedings in the Fourth District Court in Cancun, adding that Cuban ambassador Manuel Aguilera had confirmed to him in an interview in Mexico City on June 24 that the Cuban government possessed intelligence indicating that CANF is "who's behind all this" and had shared it with the Mexican government. [LJ 6/26/08] The smuggling of Cubans through Mexico has grown dramatically since 2002, when just 195 Cuban immigrants were detained in Quintana Roo; by 2005 the number had jumped to 2,504, although it has fallen since then. The smugglers frequently dress the Cubans as tourists, in Bermuda shorts, and transport them in yachts. The US has a "wet foot, dry foot" policy for Cubans; if they are apprehended at sea, they are returned to Cuba, but if they manage to enter the US, they are allowed to stay. [Univision 6/24/08 from AFP] *2. MEXICO: CONGRESS OKS "PLAN MEXICO" On June 26 the US Senate passed a supplemental appropriations bill which included funding for President George W. Bush's Merida Initiative, a project ostensibly aiding the fight against drug trafficking in Mexico and Central America. The House of Representatives passed the same bill on June 19, and President Bush is expected to sign it, completing the legislative process. The legislation provides $65 million for Central American countries and $400 million for Mexico in the first year of the project; Mexico's share includes $215.5 million for Mexico's anti-trafficking programs, $116.5 million for "military cooperation" between Mexico and the US, and $20 million for building institutions and supporting human rights organizations. The Senate and the House passed different versions of the Merida Initiative in May, but Mexican officials objected to conditions the Senate imposed requiring the monitoring of human rights violations by Mexican security forces. The two houses then worked out a compromise that reduces these conditions to a consultative process between Mexico and the US. Under pressure from US human rights and labor activists--who called the initiative "Plan Mexico" in reference to a similar package that has funded military operations in Colombia--Congress expressed concern about specific allegations of human rights abuses in San Salvador Atenco, Mexico state, and in Oaxaca in 2006. The legislation also notes the Mexican government's failure to resolve the shooting death of independent US journalist Brad Will in Oaxaca in October 2006 [see Updates #849, 872]. The Merida Initiative is a small part of the overall appropriations bill, which provides $162 billion for the occupation of Iraq, enough to pay for the war until Bush's term ends in January 2009. [La Jornada 6/27/08] Clarification: In Update #950 we reported on an authorization that the House of Representatives passed on June 10 for the Merida Initiative. We said the authorization would go to the Senate for approval. In fact, Congressional authorizations are not necessary for the allocation of funds, and Congress decided to bypass the authorization and simply fund the initiative through the supplemental appropriations bill. [Center for International Policy "Plan Colombia and Beyond" blog, 6/13/08] More breaking stories from alternative sources: Amazon Tribes Fight to Keep the Xingu Alive http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5322 Bolivia: Uncertain Political Future in Wake of Autonomy Votes http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1347/68/ Colombia: Indigenous Self Defense in Times of War http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1351/1/ U.S. Military Looks to Colombia to Replace Base in Ecuador http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1349/1/ Colombia's Sen. Piedad C?rdoba interrogated by US immigration http://ww4report.com/node/5714 Colombia: Uribe seeks to consolidate "dictatorship" http://ww4report.com/node/5713 Iran, Venezuela to launch joint development bank http://ww4report.com/node/5680 Venezuelan charges "mud-slinging" over Hezbollah accusations http://ww4report.com/node/5679 Nicaragua: cyber-savvy youth protest Ortega http://ww4report.com/node/5707 Goldcorp: Occupation and Resistance in Guatemala (and Beyond) http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1345/68/ US Senate approves "Plan Mexico"; narcos keep up pressure http://ww4report.com/node/5709 Mexico compensates indigenous men for forced sterilizations http://ww4report.com/node/5708 NAFTA and the Elephant in the Room http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5329 Bush Administration Accused of Withholding "Lifesaving" Aid to Haiti http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1348/1/ Obama and the School of the Americas http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1352/68/ For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources: http://nacla.newsvine.com/ For immigration updates and events: http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com END Your support is appreciated. A print edition of the Update is also available via first class mail (a contribution of at least $30 is suggested to cover printing and postage within the US). Back issues and source materials are available on request. Update subscribers also receive, as a supplement, our own weekly Immigration News Briefs. Order The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers, from Monthly Review Press, by Update editors Jane Guskin and David Wilson: http://thepoliticsofimmigration.com -- ISSN#: 1084-922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate at gmail.com. 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To subscribe or unsubscribe, send us an email at weeklynewsupdate at gmail.com with the words "subscribe" or "unsubscribe" in the subject header. ================================= Weekly News Update on the Americas 339 Lafayette Street New York, NY 10012 212-674-9499, weeklynewsupdate at gmail ================================= From nscchicago at igc.org Tue Jul 1 22:55:23 2008 From: nscchicago at igc.org (NSC WORKERS COOP) Date: Tue, 1 Jul 2008 23:55:23 -0500 Subject: [A-List] Fw: [21stcenturysocialism] PHILIPPINES: Revolutionary Justice for the Filipino Working Class Victims of Big Capitalists! Message-ID: <020001c8dbff$edc2f720$0a0110ac@NSCCHICAGO> Tom Baker here and no one ever hears anything about the Philippines. People there are as invisible as Haiti. Dummy Down winning again ----- Original Message ----- From: "grok" From: jose_npa at yahoo.es Subject: Revolutionary Justice for the Filipino Working Class Victims of Big Capitalists! > Revolutionary Justice for the Filipino Working Class Victims of Big > Capitalists! > June 26, 2008 > > The Revolutionary Council of Trade Unions (RCTU) in Southern > Mindanao, an underground group of revolutionary unions and > an allied organization of the National Democratic Front of > the Philippines (NDFP) expresses its strongest indignation > of the systematic attack perpetrated by foreign and local > comprador-capitalists against the Filipino working class. > > In collaboration with the corrupt and fascist Arroyo regime, > these capitalists severely exploit, deprive and suppress > workers who struggle against retrenchments, lockouts and > other forms of attacks against labor. Among the most rabid > anti-worker corporations and culprits of massive > displacement and despotism in the region are the > STANFILCO-DOLE Phils, LAPANDAY, FRANKLIN BAKER and the Davao > City Water District (DCWD). We hold the owners and top > management of these companies accountable for these vicious > economic and political attacks and vow to continue fighting > them in all fronts. The spiraling economic crisis which is > brought about by the moribund character of capitalism has > placed workers at the losing end. Aggravated by the > inutility of the Arroyo regime to decisively address the > rice and oil crisis, workers today not only contend with > very low wages but also face the threat of losing their > jobs. In the past ten months, more than a thousand workers > in the region were displaced due to lockouts and > retrenchments. In the guise of cost-cutting measures and > redundancy, the Arroyo regime and big capital connived to > deprive workers of their livelihood. > > Franklin Baker, a company which produces desiccated coconut > and has a market in several continents, retrenched 242 > regular workers last January. It has effectively wiped-out > the regular force in its coconut paring department. However, > it has employed the services of four external factories > which supply it with pared coconut. The workers in these > external factories are hired as contractuals and are > deprived of regular employment. Franklin Baker has also a > history of violence against the workers. It has figured in > the violent dispersal of its striking workers in Sta. Cruz, > Davao del Sur which claimed the lives of two workers. For > the longest time, STANFILCO? Dole Philippines has exploited > the Filipino workforce. > > On September 2007, this fruit export giant assaulted the > very people that made it an international force in the > agricultural business. It has closed down the Davao > Integrated Transport Facilities, Incorporated (DITFI), its > subsidiary which transports overland its packed bananas and > pineapple. Displaced were 250 workers, even if the > subsidiary and its services were essential to Stanfilco ? > Dole Philippines' operations. Stanfilco ? Dole Philippines > employed the mercenary 10th Infantry Division of the Armed > Forces of the Philippines and the notorious gang of Chito > Herbolingo of the anti-communist National Alliance for > Democracy to attack the workers' protest. > > The subsidiary is now replaced by a manpower agency whose > workforce is paid way below what the workers of DITFI used > to received. Stanfilco ? Dole Philippines has a record of > wiping out their regular workforce and replacing them with > contractual employees. LAPANDAY, another giant in the banana > industry, recently terminated more than 200 workers. > > This Lorenzo-owned company based in Mandug, Davao City ended > the employment of workers whose sweat and blood created > their vast wealth. The Lorenzos are accountable for the > destruction of workers' livelihood and deaths of trade > unionists. In the mid-80s, they financed anti-communist > cults led by Jun Alcover who murdered union leaders Peter > Alderete, Boy Lisondra, Danny Martinez, Miguel Ba?ados and > Danilo Ba?ados. The RCTU rejoiced when Red fighters of the > 1st Pulang Bagani Company of the New People's Army (NPA) > disarmed the security force of Rafael Lorenzo last month. > > The Davao City Water District (DCWD) has terminated on > account of trumped up charges, the union president, two > other officers and suspended 38 officers and members of the > Nagkahiusang Mamumuo sa Davao City Water District > (NAMADACWAD) on March 2008. The union, due to its steadfast > campaign against the privatization of the DCWD earned the > ire of the District's Board of Directors. This condemnable > act is the brainchild of its Board Chairman Atty. Eliseo > Braganza. Other cases of retrenchments and termination > include the Master Ports Services, Incorporated which took > away the job of more than 100 workers last month and Roto > Fresh Max Banana plantation which retrenched 19 workers. > There is a sharpening contradiction between labor and > capital. > > It is quite clear that big capital show no heart to workers > and their families even if the economic crisis has reached > unprecedented heights. Big capital greedily accumulates > superprofit at the expense of the working class and with > extreme callousness and cruelty. Gloria Arroyo, the > Philippine Congress, the Department of Labor and Employment > and its attached agencies represent foreign and local big > business interests. These state instrumentalities serve at > the behest of big capitalists in suppressing, attacking and > annihilating militant unionism and nothing genuinely > beneficial to the working class can be expected from them. > > Only through the massive and sustained mobilization of its > organized strength can the Filipino working class achieve > gains in the struggle for wages, job security, rights and > welfare together with the Filipino people's struggle for > national and social emancipation. And as a concrete and > complementary move to the trade union movement, and seeing > no relief from the judicial system of the anti-labor > Philippine state, the RCTU will file a case before the > revolutionary People's Court of the People's Democratic > Government in the countryside for acts tantamount to > economic sabotage against workers' livelihood, human rights > violations and other grievous crimes committed by the owners > and top management personalities of the aforementioned > companies. We enjoin all worker-victims, their families and > the trade unions to support this endeavor with the end of > attaining genuine and revolutionary justice. We call on all > workers in the region to strengthen ranks, fight and foil > the raging capitalist and regime onslaught. > > > - ----- End forwarded message ----- > From nscchicago at igc.org Tue Jul 1 23:19:22 2008 From: nscchicago at igc.org (NSC WORKERS COOP) Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2008 00:19:22 -0500 Subject: [A-List] RAIDS RAIDS RAIDS at Houston, Washington, Kansas, Nebraska, Chicago - ALL IN A DAY'S WORK Message-ID: <023a01c8dc03$46db9f30$0a0110ac@NSCCHICAGO> From: "Weekly News Update" Subject: INB 6/29/08: Raids at Houston Rag Company, Washington Aerospace Plant This issue of INB is posted at: http://immigrationnewsbriefs.blogspot.com/2008/06/inb-62908-raids-at-houston-rag-company.html Immigration News Briefs Vol. 11, No. 14 - June 29, 2008 1. Houston Clothing Company Raided 2. Washington Aerospace Plant Raided 3. Tennessee Restaurants Raided 4. "Fugitive" Raids in Midwest *1. HOUSTON CLOTHING COMPANY RAIDED Early on June 25, some 200 agents from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raided Action Rags USA, an international supplier of used clothing and rags in Houston, Texas. The ICE agents executed a federal search warrant at the plant and arrested 166 workers for administrative immigration violations. According to ICE, 135 of the arrested workers are from Mexico, 12 are from Honduras, 10 from Guatemala, eight from El Salvador, and the nationality of one is unknown. Late on June 25, ICE officials confirmed that 130 of the 166 workers detained were female. ICE released 66 workers, including 10 who are pregnant, for humanitarian reasons such as medical and child care issues. The number of detainees released for humanitarian reasons was later revised to 73. ICE officials said four workers were taken to area hospitals after suffering from anxiety attacks and heat-related illness (the Action Rags plant is not air-conditioned); another woman was transported by helicopter to a local hospital after she fell 20 feet off a stack of wooden pallets in which she was hiding. "Right now, we're still trying to secure the interior because we found several individuals trying to locate hiding spaces inside," said Greg Palmore, spokesperson for ICE in Houston, on June 25. ICE let 16 Action Rags workers go free after realizing that "[o]ne was a U.S. citizen and another 15 were here in status and are legally authorized to work," explained Bob Rutt, ICE special agent in charge in Houston. Rutt later revised those numbers, telling the New York Times that two US citizens and 13 to 19 legal residents were among those initially questioned during the raid. (These individuals were not counted among the 166 arrested workers.) ICE began investigating Action Rags USA a year ago after learning about hiring practices from a former employee. Rutt said no member of the company's management has been arrested, but he confirmed that "the [ICE] office of investigation is looking at allegations of the hiring of illegal aliens, which is a crime." Arresting unauthorized workers was "a collateral part" of the investigation, said Rutt. "Our focus, ICE's overall focus, is targeting the employer." During the 2007 fiscal year, ICE made 863 criminal arrests and 4,077 administrative arrests nationally as a result of worksite enforcement, according to the agency's statistics. [Houston Chronicle 6/25/08, 6/26/08; ICE News Release 6/25/08; New York Times 6/26/08; KHOU-TV (Houston) 6/26/08] Action Rags lost its corporate status in July 2007 due to a tax forfeiture, according to Texas Secretary of State records. The records listed Mubarik Kahlon as the company's registered agent and director. Secretary of State spokesperson Scott Haywood confirmed that Action Rags is no longer a registered LLC in Texas. [HC 6/26/08] On June 26, dozens of people protested the previous day's raid with a demonstration outside the Mickey Leland Federal Building in downtown Houston. "Our question to the federal government is very simple," said Mike Espinosa with Houston Justice for Janitors. "How does putting a working woman in jail keep this country safer?" Protesters also said ICE should be held responsible for the injuries the workers suffered during the raid. [KPRC Local 2 (Houston) 6/26/08; KHOU-TV 6/26/08] *2. WASHINGTON AEROSPACE PLANT RAIDED On June 26, ICE agents executed a federal civil search warrant at an aircraft manufacturing plant in Arlington, Washington, arresting 32 of the company's workers?16 women and 16 men--on administrative immigration violations. Two of the workers are from El Salvador; the others are from Mexico. The raid took place at Aerospace Manufacturing Technologies, Inc. (AMT), a leading supplier of frame and interior parts for commercial and military aircraft. AMT provides many of the parts used in airplanes such as the Boeing 737 and Boeing 777. About 360 workers were at the job site when ICE agents showed up. The probe into AMT began months earlier after ICE received a tip that the business was using undocumented workers, said ICE spokesperson Lorie Dankers. ICE then audited AMT's employment records, which revealed discrepancies leading agents to believe that a small percentage of the company's employees used counterfeit documents to secure their jobs. According to ICE, there is no evidence AMT was aware that the workers had used false credentials. The investigation is ongoing and the company is cooperating, said Dankers. "We'll go where the evidence leads us," she said. Four female workers were released on humanitarian grounds because they are primary caregivers to children. The other 28 workers were taken to the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington. [ICE News Release 6/26/08; Lynnwood Enterprise 6/27/08; 710 KIRO Radio 6/26/08] A day earlier, on June 25, the Northwest Detention Center ended a six-day quarantine and lockdown that affected more than 900 of the 1,000 detainees held at the facility. The quarantine was imposed after one detainee fell ill with chickenpox; a second detainee showed signs of the infection on June 20. Doctors determined that all but 80 of the approximately 760 male detainees were immune from the disease after blood tests showed evidence of either the vaccine or a previous exposure. The 240 female detainees didn't require testing because they're segregated from the male population. Court cases for detainees who are immune to chickenpox resumed on June 24, and deportations were to start again as early as June 25, said ICE spokesperson Lorie Dankers. Visits from friends, family members and attorneys were to resume on June 26. Detainees who aren't immune to chickenpox will be quarantined through July 7. During that time, they can't be deported or receive visitors. Detainees who arrived after June 24 were being placed into the same residence pods as immune detainees. [News Tribune (Tacoma) 6/25/08] *3. TENNESSEE RESTAURANTS RAIDED On June 17, ICE agents raided three Chinese restaurants in central Tennessee owned by restaurant entrepreneur Stanley Wang, arresting a total of about 50 workers from Mexico, the People's Republic of China, El Salvador, Guatemala, Malaysia and Indonesia. The raids took place at the New Famous Chinese Restaurant in Nashville, Chef Wang's in Murfreesboro and the Famous Chinese Restaurant in Smyrna. [The Tennessean 6/19/08; Murfreesboro Post 6/19/08] According to employees at Chef Wang's, agents entered the restaurant around 11am. "It was pretty weird. They took all the Hispanics from the back and were, like, frisking them, and they put them all in cuffs, set them down in the dining room and were talking to them in Spanish," said Brigitte Barbeau. At least 12 people were taken away, the employees said. "It was pretty dramatic. These are people that we work with every day. You know, we're like family here," said Stacy Cox. [WSMV.com 6/18/08] Federal agents, along with the Murfreesboro Police Department, also conducted an investigation at a Murfreesboro home in relation to the raids. Milissa Reierson, a spokesperson for the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development, said her department participated in the enforcement effort. The Metro Nashville Police Department and the Tennessee Highway Patrol also assisted. [The Tennessean 6/19/08; Murfreesboro Post 6/19/08] It was not clear whether the Tennessee raids were connected to grand jury indictments handed down Apr. 15 in US District Court for the Northern District of Georgia [see INB 4/27/08]. The indictments charged 15 people from Georgia employment agencies with conspiring to supply undocumented workers to Chinese restaurants in a number of eastern states, including Tennessee. [Murfreesboro Post 6/19/08] *4. "FUGITIVE" RAIDS IN MIDWEST Over a five-day period ending June 24, ICE Fugitive Operations Teams carried out a series of coordinated sweeps through southeast Wisconsin, the Chicago metropolitan area, southwestern Kansas and central Nebraska, arresting a total of 158 people, of whom fewer than 90 were "fugitives" who have failed to comply with deportation orders. In Wisconsin, ICE arrested 38 people in Milwaukee, Kenosha and Racine counties, describing 16 of them as "fugitives" and 22 as "immigration violators encountered by ICE officers during their targeted arrests." Those arrested are from Albania, China, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Ukraine and Yugoslavia. [ICE News Release 6/25/08] In its Chicago press release, ICE gave the total number arrested in the Wisconsin sweeps as 32. In Chicago, Highland Park, Waukegan, Highwood, and elsewhere in the Chicago metropolitan area, ICE arrested 43 immigrants from Albania, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Jordan, Mexico, Poland and Yugoslavia. ICE described 25 of those arrested as fugitives and 18 as immigration violators; 20 reportedly had prior criminal convictions. [ICE News Release 6/25/08] In southwestern Kansas, ICE arrested 33 people in Garden City and 15 in Dodge City. Those arrested included five women and came from El Salvador, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and Vietnam. ICE reported that 33 of the 48 people arrested had criminal convictions, but did not say how many were considered "fugitives." (Calculations based on conflicting figures in ICE's Garden City and Chicago press releases suggest that somewhere between 14 and 20 of the 48 people arrested in Kansas were considered "fugitives" while 28 to 34 of the total were immigration violators.) ICE spokesperson Carl Rusnok said most of the immigrants were arrested at their homes, but a few were arrested at work. He did not know whether any of the arrests occurred at the area's beef-packing plants. [ICE News Release 6/25/08; Dodge Globe 6/27/08] [Garden City and Dodge City both have major meatpacking plants which employ large numbers of immigrants. During nationwide mobilizations for immigrant rights on Apr. 10, 2006, some 3,000-4,000 people marched in Garden City, a town with an estimated population of 28,000, while 2,000 marched in Dodge City, population 26,000. See INB 6/16/06.] The raids were supervised out of the ICE office in Chicago, which oversees operations in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri and Kentucky. [ICE News Release 6/25/08] In central Nebraska, ICE arrested 44 immigrants from Nicaragua, Guatemala, Mexico and El Salvador. Most were arrested in Lexington (25 arrests) and Grand Island (12 arrests); two people were arrested in Broken Bow and one person was arrested in each of the following towns: Cozad, Gibbon, Hastings, Kearney and North Platte. Of the total, 28 were considered "fugitives" and 16 were described as immigration violators; 10 had criminal convictions. The Nebraska raids were coordinated out of the ICE Office of Detention and Removal Operations in Bloomington, Minnesota, which oversees operations in Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota and North Dakota. [ICE News Release 6/25/08] ----------------------------------------------------- END Contributions toward Immigration News Briefs are gladly accepted: they should be made payable and sent to Nicaragua Solidarity Network, 339 Lafayette St, New York, NY 10012. (Tax-deductible contributions of $50 or more may be made payable to the A.J. Muste Memorial Institute and earmarked for "NSN".) ************************************************************************** ORDER "The Politics of Immigration: Questions and Answers," a new book by the editors of Immigration News Briefs and Weekly News Update on the Americas, out now on Monthly Review Press: for details see publisher website: http://monthlyreview.org/politicsofimmigration.htm book website: http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org authors' blog: http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com or email the authors at thepoliticsofimmigration at gmail.com Immigration News Briefs is a weekly supplement to Weekly News Update on the Americas, published by Nicaragua Solidarity Network, 339 Lafayette St, New York, NY 10012; tel 212-674-9499; weeklynewsupdate at gmail.com. INB is also distributed free via email; contact immigrationnewsbriefs at gmail.com to subscribe or unsubscribe. You may reprint or distribute items from INB, but please credit us and tell people how to subscribe. Immigration News Briefs is posted at http://immigrationnewsbriefs.blogspot.com. Starting with 2008, INB issues on the blog include clickable links to all available cited sources. Please use the blog to access sources and back issues and to search by key word. -- To subscribe or unsubscribe, send us an email at weeklynewsupdate at gmail.com with the words "subscribe" or "unsubscribe" in the subject header. ================================= Weekly News Update on the Americas 339 Lafayette Street New York, NY 10012 212-674-9499, weeklynewsupdate at gmail ================================= From kaliyuga at wildblue.net Wed Jul 2 07:26:14 2008 From: kaliyuga at wildblue.net (MARGARET WYLES) Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2008 05:26:14 -0800 Subject: [A-List] RAIDS RAIDS RAIDS at Houston, Washington, Kansas, Nebraska, Chicago - ALL IN A DAY'S WORK In-Reply-To: <023a01c8dc03$46db9f30$0a0110ac@NSCCHICAGO> References: <023a01c8dc03$46db9f30$0a0110ac@NSCCHICAGO> Message-ID: <82b839ea0807020626l217d3196jadc1b71fb1e65446@mail.gmail.com> I'll add one more raid...in my home town of Arcata, California. http://www.eurekareporter.com/article/080610-sun-valley-floral-farms-loses-half-its-work-force Apparently, some of these 283 people had worked there for 15 years. In this small community, 283 is a VERY large number. As this all appears to be a coordinated effort on the part of the INS, one has to wonder, to what end? My suspicion is that the powers that be recognize that we are in for a significant downturn and that these generally poorer paying jobs will be the only alternative for U.S. citizens. From james.irldaly at ntlworld.com Wed Jul 2 04:45:36 2008 From: james.irldaly at ntlworld.com (james daly) Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2008 11:45:36 +0100 Subject: [A-List] (no subject) Message-ID: <9E719FA544444D2B91DAF625BCF63C99@home9sg93n9r5y> http://www.raceandhistory.com/historicalviews/2008/1006.html The Movement for Democratic Change: The Continuity of its Theoretical and Practical Weaknesses By Sehlare Makgetlaneng* June 10, 2008 "The fight against Zimbabwe is a fight against us all. Today it is Zimbabwe, tomorrow it will be South Africa, it will be Mozambique, it will be Angola, it will be any other African country. Any government that is perceived to be strong, and to be resistant to imperialists, would be made a target and be undermined. So let us not allow any point of weakness in the solidarity of the SADC, because that weakness will also be transferred to the rest of Africa." -Thabo Mbekii(1) The Movement for Democratic Change is characterised by unique and frightening theoretical and practical weaknesses. It is as if it is not an opposition political party in the former settler colonial society in the region which was the victim of settler colonial rule. It has no position on imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, racism, globalisation and north-south relations. Despite acute problems confronted by the masses of the Zimbabwean people on a daily basis, its strategy and tactics have been failing to meet their demands and needs. The consequence has been that they do not recognise them as expressions of their own experience. Its remaining alternative to defeat the Zimbabwean African National Union - Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) to be in power in Zimbabwe is the ballot box. The purpose of this work is to demonstrate that the MDC's profound theoretical and practical weaknesses have continued increasing. In its achievement in the March 2008 presidential and parliamentary elections, the MDC have exposed the continuity of its theoretical and practical weaknesses. It is as if it does not have serious organic intellectuals capable of articulating appropriate strategy and tactics, nationally, regionally, continentally and internationally. Who are its leading intellectuals and strategists? The MDC maintain the thesis of the primacy of external factors over internal factors. While it maintains that ZANU-PF is responsible for socio-political and economic problems in the country, or that their sources are internal, it maintain that their solution is external. It maintains that leaders of some other African countries, particularly President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, are crucial for solving these problems and the survival of the Mugabe administration as well as ZANU-PF as the ruling party. The incorrect thesis of the primacy of external factors over internal factors either in the resolution or maintenance of Zimbabwean problems is maintained even by some of those who declare to be against it. They maintain it when they argue that external actors are critical to the continued survival of the Mugabe administration. Ian Phimister and Brian Raftopoulos defend this thesis when they maintain that "the support of President Thabo Mbeki has all along been crucial for survival of Mugabe's regime." Leaders of the whole Southern and Central Africa have also enabled the regime to survive. As the "ZANU-PF government" effectively suspended the rule of law" in its attempts to "bludgeon its opponents into silence, it has enjoyed the support provided by the so-called 'quiet diplomacy' and 'constructive engagement' of other Southern and Central African governments."(2) A critical and objective analysis of the state of the MDC will support the fact that internal factors, not external factors, have been crucial for survival of the Mugabe administration. Highlighting its practical and theoretical weaknesses, Dumisani Muleya maintains that it is: getting into a state of paralysis. After defeating Mugabe and his ruling Zanu (PF) [in the 29 March 2008 elections], the MDC seems to have run out of ideas. The trouble is that the opposition has no serious leverage to change the situation. Its attempt at mass action a few weeks ago was a damp squib. The truth is that even if the MDC is popular with the masses, it is structurally brittle and lacks strong leadership. It has no capacity to deal with Mugabe's hardened regime. It has been consistently outflanked in the streets by Mugabe's brutal security forces and outmanoeuvred at the negotiating table. The power relations still favour Mugabe, due to his control of the instruments of repression. There is a need for the MDC to be more dynamic to avoid becoming paralysed. The party also needs to rely more on formal structures to make critical decisions on the way forward, rather than ghostly characters or money grubbers with narrow vested interests. The party risks being hijacked by money mongers, especially now that it is on the verge of gaining power.(3) After the Zimbabwean Electoral Commission delayed to announce the results of the March 2008 presidential and parliamentary elections, maintaining that the MDC won the presidential elections and that it had obtained the required percentage for it to be in charge of the political administration of the society, Morgan Richard Tsvangirai moved from one administrative capital to another administrative capital of Southern Africa meeting political leaders of the region asking them for support for his political party. These are some of the leaders his organisation has been not only avoiding, but regarding as central to the survival of the Mugabe administration. The issue of mobilising the masses of the people to support what the MDC said was its overwhelming victory in the presidential and parliamentary elections was avoided. Barney Mthombothi in 2004 maintained that, instead of mobilising its supporters, the MDC "has been wasting time on fervent pleas to the international community." Tsvangirai and his colleagues should recognise the reality in practice that the masses of the people of Zimbabwe are "the fount of their credibility, legitimacy, power and authority" and that when "the masses are properly mobilised no autocrat, no matter how powerful or repressive, can rule them against their will for any length of time." He concluded that the MDC's "tactic so far has been to appeal for international assistance in the form of sanctions and boycotts without a concomitant intensive mobilisation of the masses within the country" and that this tactic is incorrect in that it fails to come to grips with the reality that the "home front is the theatre, the crucible, of the struggle" or that the "engine of the opposition is in Zimbabwe, not outside" the country.(4) Briefly, "the key catalyst for change" in Zimbabwe "remains Zimbabweans."(5) This position is the advice to the MDC - the advice it has refused to recognise in theory and practice in its insistence that the solution to Zimbabwe's problems is primarily external, not internal. The MDC under the leadership of Tsvangirai is still embarking upon this programme of action. After the Zimbabwean Electoral Commission delayed to announce the result of the March 2008 presidential and parliamentary elections, maintaining that the MDC won the presidential elections and that it has obtained the percentage for it to be in charge of the political administration of the society, Tsvangirai moved from one administrative capital to another administrative capital of Southern Africa meeting political leaders of the region asking them for support for his political party. These are some of the leaders his organisation has been not only avoiding, but regarding as central to the survival of the Mugabe administration. Tendai Biti, secretary general of the MDC, in his speech at the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation symposium in Cape Town on 8 May 2008, pointing out that there must be "a commitment to democratisation, social and economic reconstruction and national healing" in Zimbabwe, concluded that the Southern African Development Community, the African Union and South Africa "have a duty to play their part" to serve as "the midwife to deliver the baby" and that "Zimbabweans did what they could" in bringing into existence "the people's victory of 2008" elections whose recognition is essential.(6) In a typical MDC appeal to "international community" and threat of mass action if it does not do what it is being asked to do, Biti concluded in his speech: "Leadership must emerge from the international community to fill the vacuum of mediocrity, inaction and paralysis. Without this the population of Zimbabwe might have no option but to fight back."(7) What Biti refuses to acknowledge is that if the MDC is committed in practice to "democratisation, social and economic reconstruction and national healing" in the country, it must wage a war against itself being the organisation accused even by some of its members of providing the leadership of "mediocrity, inaction and paralysis" in the resolution of the Zimbabwean national question. The responsibility to bring this popular national development into existence in Zimbabwe lies on the shoulders of the people of the country. For the political party to spend time, energy and resources criticising leaders of other countries for not committing themselves to resolving national problems it declares to be the primary reason behind its establishment is to maintain that it is not capable not only to achieve this national objective, but also of serving as a genuine national leader, leading the people into achieving and defending their strategic and tactical interests. This position is supportive of the position that the MDC is a front of imperialist forces as the Mugabe administration maintains. What is the MDC's minimum programme of action? Does it mean that the MDC is of the view that it is possible to realise its objectives without mobilising the masses of the people and without their active participation in the struggle? Official documents and speeches of leaders of any organisation articulating popular democratic grievances and aspirations in theory and practice reflect, among others, that it has conducted a careful and concrete study of the concrete socio-political and economic conditions in the country as well as its problems, their form and content, causes and consequences. Secondly, they reflect that it has executed the task of studying members of the society to ascertain their grievances and aspirations. This theoretical task enables it to find out which grievances and aspirations are common to the majority of the members of the society in order to base its minimum programme of action on them. This theoretical task serves the practical task of solving common grievances and achieving common aspirations. This is not the case with the MDC whose theoretical method consists of pre-conceived views of the national situation, ZANU-PF, Mugabe's administration and their alleged African allies whose support we are told is essential for their survival and also, by implication, whose withdrawal of their support is essential for the solution of the country's problems. The MDC is not facing the critical structural and fundamental challenges progressive and revolutionary organisation are confronting. These challenges are that: In as much as the slave cannot ask the slave-master to provide the strategy and tactics for a successful uprising of the slaves, so must we, who are hungry and treated as minors in a world of adults, also take upon ourselves the task of defining the new world order of prosperity and development for all and equality among nations of the world. For the weak to challenge the strong has never been easy. Neither will it be easy to challenge powerful vested interests on the current and entrenched orthodoxies about the modern world economy.(8) The MDC's means of mobilisation of resources for the resolution of Zimbabwe's problems is characterised by its continued efforts to attract and preserve political, ideological and economic investment of advanced capitalist countries to itself and its cause. It regards and accepts their political, ideological and economic goodwill as of crucial importance in achieving its objective to be in power so as to achieve governance, democracy and development objectives it has set for the country. This is the same issue of subordinating Zimbabwe's development to the resources of the political, economic and financial forces of developed countries. The key issue is not that these forces have proved to be not reliable when it comes to the development of Africa and that of the majority of its people, but that they are structural enemies of Africa and the masses of its people. By acting in alliance with these forces in the adoption, formulation and implementation of strategy and tactics for a successful achievement of its objectives, the MDC is providing them with powerful weapons to create Zimbabwe under its leadership in their own image. When the MDC promised to march on the State House and bring "millions onto the streets" in what it regarded as the "final push" on Mugabe and the ZANU-PF to defeat them, it displayed its practical and theoretical weaknesses. Jono Waters maintained that because of its lack of appropriate strategy and tactics, it failed to capture the imagination of Zimbabweans in the process. However, it was a promise that the MDC failed to come close to achieving. Almost no one turned out, partly because of the heavy state security presence, but largely because of the MDC's own lack of organisation, unimaginative ideas and ability to play straight into government hands. The MDC as a party is disorganised and has been slow to capitalise on building structures in the "high density suburbs" or townships, where most of its support is. I regularly asked my staff if they were going to take part in MDC mass action. No, because firstly they don't know what to do as there is no organisation and secondly, they reckoned someone else would do the marching.(9) Waters provides some of the key reasons why the MDC maintains the position that the solution to Zimbabwe's problems is external, not internal and that external factors, not internal factors, have been crucial for survival of the Mugabe administration. There now exists what Zanu (PF) rightly calls anti-government non-governmental organisations (NGOs) who pour thousands of dollars into opposition coffers. I would go as far as to say that these NGOs have been a major contributor to the downfall of democracy in Zimbabwe. For two reasons: the government has capitalised on it by making the link with "meddling in Zimbabwe's affairs"; more importantly, people do not see an opposition leadership that struggles and thinks and feels with them. They see a bunch of greedy, US [United States] dollar salaried, Pajero drivers. The foreign press also gives the MDC more credit than it deserves. Whether or not these "correspondents" were sitting in Johannesburg or London (where it appears most now are), or even Harare, they would draw the same pro-MDC conclusions. When the most recent "action" [final push march] failed, the MDC was then able to hide behind an easy excuse for their inability to organise - with the foreign press being their apologists - Mugabe's brutal and despotic regime. Yes, it is brutal and despotic. But the point that keeps getting missed is that most of Zimbabwe's cowed and subjugated population appear to feel the MDC is not worth being beaten up or, let alone dying for. Repressive regimes ultimately implode, but what sustains this one to some extent is a general lack of belief the MDC will be any better running the country.(10) Given its unique and frightening lack of appropriate strategy and tactics, does it mean that there is no alternative for it to defeat ZANU and assume power? Its remaining alternative is the ballot box through which to achieve this objective. Waters correctly maintained that the MDC's "greatest mistake was" that "it did not capitalise on people's anger quickly enough" when, after the presidential election in March 2002, "the people were angry in what appeared to be a manipulated outcome."(11) It intensified this "greatest mistake" after the Zimbabwean Electoral Commission delayed to announce the results of the March 2008 presidential and parliamentary elections and when after more and more people agreed with it that it won not only parliamentary elections, but also the presidential elections for its leader to be the president of the country. Instead of capitalising on "people's anger" and mobilising them into decisive mass action for what it regarded as its overwhelming victory in these elections to be recognised (as Biti maintained that this recognition is essential), it displayed in theory and practice its leadership of "mediocrity, inaction and paralysis." In a damaging e-mail note (by William Bango as Tsvangirai's spokesperson, to the party's leader based in Belgium representing it to the European Union, Grace Kwinje), the practical and theoretical weakness of Tsvangirai and the MDC are pointed out as articulated by some of its members. It was leaked to the state-owned Sunday Mail on 8 June 2008. In Bango's words: They complain that the MDC is a spineless party with a leadership that is scared to nothing (sic). They say all kinds of unkind words for Morgan Tsvangirai ... he is a poor strategist ... he is a condom that we will quickly take off once we are satisfied with what we are doing... he is a coward, why is he not marching with everyone, why is he not in front, why is he still going to court if it is the finish push.(12) Bango was attempting to brush aside criticisms of Tsvangirai by some party members. These criticisms of Tsvangirai constitute invaluable advice to him, his advisors and his colleagues in the leadership of the organisation. Tsvangirai has continued refusing to recognise this advice in theory and practice by not willingly seeing to it that the organisation critically assess its theoretical positions as it confronts the practical question as to what is to be done to achieve its strategic and tactical objectives. The critical assessment of positions is a task specified by political practice, as any serious organisation constituting the realisation of the unity of theory and practice under the dominance of practice confronts the current situation for its concrete understanding, confrontation and resolution. After the Zimbabwean Electoral Commission delayed to announce the results of the March 2008 presidential and parliamentary elections and when after more and more people agreed it won parliamentary and presidential elections for him to be the president of the country, Tsvangirai went into a self-imposed exile concentrating on mobilising diplomatic pressure against Mugabe. Instead of capitalising on the immediate post-March 2008 electoral crisis and mobilising Zimbabweans into decisive mass action for what the MDC regarded as its overwhelming victory in these elections to be recognised and affirmed, he displayed in theory and practice his leadership of "mediocrity, inaction and paralysis" by refusing to return to the country to lead the presidential run-off election campaign. He cited an alleged plot by the military to assassinate him as the reason behind his decision of postponing his return to the country. Zimbabwean analysts maintained that regardless of the security danger he may have faced, his absence from the country to lead from the front raised negative questions about his leadership qualities and his willingness to put his safety or security on the line at the crucial time when the MDC constantly maintained that many of its members and supporters were being killed and continue being killed. John Makumbe, political scientist at the University of Zimbabwe maintained that if Tsvangirai "doesn't come back" home "he will be demonstrating that he is fearful of Mugabe, therefore he is less of a leaders than Mugabe and that will have very serious implications on his qualities as a leader."(13) Bill Saidi, deputy editor of the independent newspaper The Standard, maintained that, through his self-imposed exile, Tsvangirai has created impression that he is more concerned about his security than that of the members and supporters of the organisation under his leadership. This is "not heroism at all. If you are in a struggle ... and if you are not in front to back your people, then you weaken the struggle."(14) According to Jonathan Moyo, former Minister of Information and Publicity, Tsvangirai is damaging his reputation as a leader prepared to be with the members and supporters of the party. Maintaining that at issue is "not about losing or winning the runoff, but his credibility as a national leader who is able to be with the people" and that he should "stop behaving like an opposition leader and behave like a leader of a government-in-waiting." He concludes: "All national leaders are under daily security threat but they don't allow those threats to shape their agenda. You can't wish to be president of Zimbabwe by remote control. Each day he spends out of the country is very costly to him."(15) Nelson Chamisa, the MDC spokesperson, attempted to gloss over Tsvangirai's prolonged self-imposed exile by maintaining that questions should be raised about Mugabe and his administration rather than about Tsvangirai and the MDC. For him: "The issue is about violence and the killing of people and the pressure should be put on the Zanu (PF) regime to end the violence. The regime is on the rampage."(16) Eldred Masunungure, political scientist at the University of Zimbabwe, like Makumbe, Saidi and Moyo, disagrees with Chamisa's position. His position is that Tsavngirai's decision to stay outside the country at such a crucial time in the history of the struggle of the organisation to defeat the ZANU-PF "is ill-advised and very damaging." The point is that: "Once you decide to get into politics you should be prepared to take risks. You should be prepared to take risks. You should not be like a general who abandons his troops at a crucial moment."(17) Central to this criticism is that, by going into self-imposed exile and prolonging it, he betrayed the trust of the MDC members and supporters and the national confidence in himself. He enabled Mugabe and ZANU-PF to recapture the ground they lost and set the agenda impelling him and the MDC to react to it. If leaders of political parties declaring to be for popular social change indicate that they are not willing to risk their lives and possessions for the achievement of their strategic and tactical objectives, why should their members and supporters do what they are not prepared to do? Responding to this criticism levelled against him even by some of his allies and supporters, he ended his self-imposed exile on 24 May 2008 by leaving South Africa for Zimbabwe. The position defended by Phimister and Raftopoulos that the support of Mbeki has been crucial for survival of the Mugabe administration is also defended by Morgan Tsvangirai. Tsvangirai continues blaming South African foreign policy towards Zimbabwe for its problems. He continues demanding that President Thabo Mbeki should contribute towards their resolution. The MDC under his leadership has failed to provide external actors with platforms to contribute towards support to the resolution of Zimbabwe's problems. It has failed to provide them with platforms to render support to itself. Addressing the Foreign Correspondents' Association of Southern Africa on 13 February 2008 in Johannesburg, he pointed out that Mbeki should have "a little courage" by criticising Mugabe in public since he does not have to fear that Mugabe would send him to jail. Mbeki "can break his policy of quiet support for the dictatorship in Zimbabwe" and "add his voice to those demanding free and fair elections in Zimbabwe." Mbeki does not need to fear to face risks members and supporters of the opposition are taking on a daily basis. He "can do it without taking the risks that we taking. He won't be arrested, teargassed, beaten, charged with treason, he won't see his supporters killed." He continued: "Only a little courage is required - the courage to speak the unpleasant truth, the courage to see what is before him." Mbeki "owes it to our common African humanity; he owes it to his own people - who are seeing refugees streaming into their cities, taking their jobs, crowding their cities, dying on their streets" in South Africa. Tsvangirai warned that if Mbeki does not solve Zimbabwe's problems, South Africa might soon be "overwhelmed by the tragedy of Zimbabwe." In his words: "President Mbeki, if you won't do it for us, if you won't do it for Africa, do it for your own country. Do it for your legacy. You have invited the world to see what freedom and democracy has done for South Africa [and] for the World Cup. Do not allow your South Africa to be overwhelmed by the tragedy of Zimbabwe."(18) Why if Mbeki does not solve Zimbabwe's problems, South Africa might soon be "overwhelmed by the tragedy of Zimbabwe?" One of the reasons why is because, according to him, the 29 March elections were not going to be free and fair. This line of reasoning is not new. It is what the MDC faction under his leadership has been saying, that South Africa should contribute towards resolution of Zimbabwe by acting against Mugabe. Its supporters have been regarding Mugabe as authoritarian, corrupt and a dictator who has been stealing elections since the MDC posed a serious challenge to his rule in the 2000 elections. He is seen as a threat to the socio-political and economic development and progress not only of Zimbabwe and Southern Africa, but also of the whole African continent, Africa's initiatives such as the New Partnership for Africa's Development and Africa's relations with the Western European countries. Leaders of developed countries have exerted pressure upon the leaders of Southern African countries to join them in condemning Mugabe, demanding that South Africa should play a leading role in acting against Mugabe because of what they regard as his administration's violations of human rights. It is interesting to note that leaders of developed countries and their allies throughout the world do not criticise atrocious violations of human rights in some other countries. At issue is hypocrisy or double standards on their part. Khathu Mamaila maintains that hypocrisy or double standards of the West has helped Mugabe to maintain his grip on power. He cites some "crimes" constantly mentioned in the criticism of the Mugabe administration. These are examples of this hypocrisy or these double standards. Firstly, is the issue of the suppression of the media by the Mugabe administration. Mamaila maintains that on this issue, the Mugabe administration "is not the worst." He cites "the case of two Ethiopian journalists arrested for "outrage against the constitution." They "face execution or life sentence if convicted. There is no public outrage about this" from the West and the fundamentalist critics of the Mugabe administration. There are other "worse humanitarian crises on the continent" and throughout the world. He cites the case of the genocide in Darfur and "unending fighting" in the Democratic Republic of Congo.(19) Mamaila maintains that at issue in the hypocrisy or double standards of the West and its allies is "the need to understand the lack of legitimacy of the anti-Mugabe efforts." On the so-called invasion of the Zimbabwean land by African Zimbabweans, his position is that those who attacked Mugabe for "giving" Africans land "lacked legitimacy because they have failed to condemn the obscenity of fewer than 4000 white farmers owning more than 70% of the arable land."(20) These forces lack legitimacy primarily because they are leaders and theoreticians of the forces of the sagacious dispensation of legitimised rapacity and sanctioned organised theft on an international scale. This system structurally protects thieves who transform themselves into legitimate owners who invoke the rule of law and order upon establishing themselves in possession of what they have stolen including the land. Leaders of developed countries and their allies focus exclusively on human rights issues in the country. Despite governance, democracy and development challenges it is facing, Zimbabwe since achievement of its political independence in 1980 held elections every five years. Its record of holding elections is more progressive than that of a considerable number of African countries. Opposition political parties participated in these elections. This development has not been the case with some allies of the United States and the United Kingdom of Great Britain in Africa. Some of them are unelected presidents of their countries. Gordon Brown himself is an unelected prime minister of his country. Seretse Ian Khama of Botswana, the son of the country's first president, and Jose Eduardo dos Santos of Angola are unelected presidents of their countries. Some of their allies in the continent refuse to subject themselves to procedural motions of transparent, credible, free and fair elections. Leaders of developed countries and their allies do not criticise them. When they criticise some of them, their criticism is moderate if not insignificant. The United States and the United Kingdom of Great Britain demanded the immediate resignation of Mugabe and his handover of state political power to Tsvangirai after their satisfaction that their ally overwhelmingly defeated him in the March 2008 presidential elections. This position was articulated, among others, by the United States Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Jendayi Frazer. The MDC maintained and defended this position. Its allies regarded this development as their historical opportunity to effect regime change in the country they have chosen for this process. African countries refused to join developed countries in their demand that Mugabe should leave office. They are fully aware of their regime change agenda in the country and their hypocrisy and double standards. The United States initially supported the re-election of President Mwai Kibaki of Kenya despite international opposition to the obvious rigging that characterised the 27 December 2007 presidential elections and the national and international popular position that the process was won by Raila Odinga, the leader of the Orange Democratic Movement. The Bush administration sent its glowing congratulations to Kibaki and the Kenyan Electoral Commission urging "all candidates to accept the Commission's results." Kibaki, the leader of the Party of National Unity, a staunch ally of the United States and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and a leader of the "frontline state in the global war on terrorism" had to be supported. The issue of their interests is primary in relation to their declared commitment to good governance and human rights including transparent, credible, free and fair elections. Their practice of hypocrisy or double standards applies to other countries throughout the world. Business Day in its 15 May 2008 editorial entitled, 'Scapegoats' maintains that "there is a convincing argument that Mbeki's "quiet diplomacy" is directly responsible for much of the influx of Zimbabweans."(xxi) Tony Leon, foreign affairs spokesperson of the Democratic Alliance, quoted approvingly The Economist statement of April 2008 that "South Africa's president has prolonged Zimbabwe's agony."(21) This position basically means that South Africa is responsible for socio-political and economic problems which have led not only Zimbabweans, but also people of other countries to leave their countries for South Africa and other countries. Mbeki and South Africa are used as scapegoats for governance, democracy and development failures of some countries. According to this position, the African National Congress (ANC), not the MDC, not to mention the Zimbabwean African National Union - Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) which is regarded as the problem, is central not only to sustaining Zimbabwe's national problems, but also to their solution. It is obvious that this position is incorrect and that it degrades the people of Zimbabwe. Those who maintain and defend it are fully aware of this reality. They do not believe their propaganda. The fact that this position is incorrect is not the issue. The issue is what it intends to achieve. It is the tactical means to achieve the strategic objective. Central to its demands is that the ANC government should allow itself to be used as the organisational means to effect regime change for the MDC to be in power in Zimbabwe for the advancement of the strategic interests of imperialism and its allies. One of these demands is that the ANC should "play a role in getting rid of Mugabe" for it to set "a precedent" for itself and to see itself having "taken a step along the road from revolutionary liberation movement to political party"(23) or for South Africa not to implement the theoretical understanding that "so long as imperialism is in existence, an independent African state must be a liberation movement in power, or it will not be independent."(24) It is a tragedy of Zimbabwean politics of opposition that as the leading opposition political party striving to be in power, the MDC continues regarding individuals maintaining these positions as its supporters - individuals who have proved through their works including writings that they are against the interests of Africa and its masses of people. It has failed to mobilise the masses of the Zimbabwean people into decisive mass action to achieve its objective to be in power. Its only remaining alternative to defeat ZANU-PF is through the ballot box. If it assumes power, will it be able to meet the demands of its powerful external supporters without meeting the national popular demands, particularly of the working class in the cities and urban areas which constitutes its crucial support base? Will it not be regarded as lacking the political will in the language of structural adjustment programme in managing national affairs in its exercise of political power? Why has the MDC failed to provide alternative vision and agenda of the future Zimbabwe to that offered by leaders of imperialist countries and the international organisations such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank controlled by these countries? The strategic tasks confronting the masses of Zimbabweans are primarily political, not economic. Who should be their national president and why? How should their national problems be resolved? What should be the nature of the future Zimbabwe's relations with its regional and continental African countries and the rest of the world, particularly imperialist countries? How best and effectively to improve the material conditions of the millions of Zimbabweans? These are some of the questions which should be answered to the satisfaction of the majority of Zimbabweans. Zimbabwe's national problems should be viewed beyond the conflict between the MDC and the ZANU-PF and their leaders. The centrality of their resolution is the issue of confronting them in the resolute struggle against internal and external enemies and to transform the society's governance, democracy and development dynamics in the interest of the masses of its people. Briefly, at issue is the struggle to effect the fundamental socio-political, economic and ideological transformation of the state and the society, not only a rearrangement at the top of the society. It is on this strategic issue central to the resolution of the Zimbabwean national problems that the MDC is lacking. This explains why a considerable number of individuals maintain that the solution to Zimbabwe's problems lies within ZANU-PF, not within the MDC. The struggle to resolve these problems including power relations between imperialist countries and the country are fought within ZANU-PF, not within the MDC. Zimbabwe's contribution to the struggle against imperialism regionally in Southern Africa, continentally in Africa and beyond the continent will serve the country under the leadership of ZANU-PF, not of the MDC. NOTES: Dr. Sehlare Makgetlaneng is a social science researcher with Governance and Democracy research unit of the Africa Institute of South Africa in Pretoria, South Africa. 1.. Thabo Mbeki's statement at the Extra-Ordinary Southern African Development Community Summit of Heads of State and Government in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, 29 March 2007. 2.. Ian Phimister and Brian Raftopolous, "Mugabe, Mbeki and the Politics of Anti-Imperialism," Review of African Political Economy, Vol. 31, No. 101, September 2004, p. 385. 3.. Dumisani Muleya, "Zimbabwe suffers in total paralysis," Business Day (Johannesburg), 12 May 2008, p. 11. 4.. Barney Mthombothi, "Why Mugabe still wields power?" The Star (Johannesburg), 3 November 2004, p. 14. 5.. Khathu Mamaila, "Double Trouble: Hypocrisy helps Mugabe to maintain his grip on power," City Press (Johannesburg), 22 July 2007, p. 22. 6.. Tendai Biti, "Zimbabwe: where to now?" Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg), May 16 to 22, 2008, p. 33. 7.. Ibid. 8.. Department of Foreign Affairs of South Africa, Speech of the Deputy President of the Republic of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, at the Opening of the Ministerial Meeting of the X11 Summit of Heads of State and Government of the Non-Aligned Movement, Durban, South Africa, 31 August 1998, X11 Summit Conference of Heads of State and Government of the Non-Aligned Movement, Durban 1998: Basic Documents, 29 August to 3 September 1998, Durban, South Africa, Pretoria: Department of Foreign Affairs, 1998, p. 230. 9.. Jono Waters, "Failed 'big push' on Mugabe exposes hubris of MDC," Business Day (Johannesburg), 30 June 2003, p. 11. 10.. Ibid. 11.. Ibid. 12.. William Bango, quoted in Waters, "Failed 'big push' on Mugabe exposes hubris of MDC," p. 11 13.. John Makumbe, quoted in Susan Njanji, "'You can't be president by remote control': Tsvangirai's stayaway is 'damaging his credibility,'" Business Day (Johannesburg), 20 May 2008, p. 7. 14.. Bill Saidi, quoted in Njanji, "'You can't be president by remote control': Tsvangirai's stayaway is 'damaging his credibility,'" p. 7. 15.. Jonathan Moyo, quoted in Njanji, "'You can't be president by remote control': Tsvangirai's stayaway is 'damaging his credibility,'" p. 7. 16.. Nelson Chamisa, quoted in Njanji, "'You can't be president by remote control': Tsvangirai's stayaway is 'damaging his credibility,'" p. 7. 17.. Eldred Masunungure, quoted in Njanji, "'You can't be president by remote control': Tsvangirai's stayaway is 'damaging his credibility,'" p. 7. 18.. Address by Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of Zimbabwe's Movement for Democratic Change, to the Foreign Correspondents' Association of Southern Africa, February 13, 2008 (www.fcasa.co.za/PDFs/morgan%20Tsvangirai/speech), page 3 of 7. 19.. Khathu Mamaila, "Double Trouble: Hypocrisy helps Mugabe to maintain his grip on power," City Press (Johannesburg), 22 July 2007, p. 22. 20.. Ibid. 21.. Business Day, "Scapegoats," Business Day (Johannesburg), 15 May 2008, p. 12. 22.. The Economist, quoted in Tony Leon, "South Africa and Zimbabwe," Business Day (Johannesburg), 29 April 2008, p. 9. 23.. John Kane-Berman, "Good time to reconsider ANC-Zanu (PF) kinship," Business Day (Johannesburg), 15 May 2008, p. 13. 24.. Amilcar Cabral, Unity and Struggle: Speeches and Writings of Amilcar Cabral, New York and London: Monthly Review Press, 1979, p. 116. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 1011 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20080702/d7dc4f9f/attachment.gif -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 993 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20080702/d7dc4f9f/attachment-0001.gif From shimogamo at attglobal.net Wed Jul 2 08:02:58 2008 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Bill Totten) Date: Wed, 02 Jul 2008 23:02:58 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Power vs Poverty Message-ID: <486B8A92.6060603@attglobal.net> Privatisation, free trade and market forces ... the rich world insists poor states play by our rules. But they don't work. Time to let countries determine their own destinies? by Duncan Green New Statesman (June 19 2008) The global food price crisis is exposing frightening levels of vulnerability in poor nations around the world. Yet these are countries into which the rich world, for half a century or more, has diverted hundreds of billions of dollars of humanitarian aid in pursuit of the high ideal of ending poverty. It is a good moment to take stock and ask what went wrong. Compare two of the most vulnerable economies, Haiti and Botswana. In Haiti, spiralling food prices have in recent months prompted widespread rioting, claiming the lives of six people and forcing the resignation of the prime minister. This unrest has set back the search for political stability in an archetypal "fragile state". No such riots have occurred in the Southern African nation of Botswana. In a country that imports ninety per cent of its food, soaring prices have undoubtedly hurt the poor, but the state has the money and capacity to help them cope. Why does Haiti sink while Botswana swims? A landlocked state with a small population and an arid landscape, Botswana has a high dependence on diamonds - the very "curse of wealth" that has destabilised many other African countries. At independence in 1966, it had just two secondary schools and twelve kilometers of paved road, and relied on the UK for half of government revenues. Botswana ought to be a basket case. But Botswana has become Africa's most enduring success story. Its GDP per capita has risen a hundredfold since independence. Over the past three decades it has been the world's fastest-growing economy. It negotiated hard-fought deals for its diamonds with De Beers and used the royalties well. It has throughout remained one of sub-Saharan Africa's few non-racial democracies, despite being bordered (and occasionally invaded) by racist regimes in South Africa and Rhodesia. The secret of Botswana's success lies in politics. The country's elite come from a single dominant ethnic group (the Batswana) whose governance systems, emphasising broad consultation and consensus-building, emerged largely unscathed from colonialism. Botswana's leading human rights activist calls it "gentle authoritarianism". The government broke every rule in the so-called Washington consensus, setting up state-owned companies, nationalising mineral rights and steering the economy via six-year national development plans. "We are a free-market economy that does everything by planning", one local academic told me, laughing. In the second half of the 20th century, dozens of developing countries emulated Botswana's success and achieved similar growth rates. "Getting the politics right" was key for them all. These countries have built effective states that guarantee the rule of law, ensure a healthy and educated population, control their national territories and create a positive environment for investment, growth and trade. For many, the growth spurt began with the redistribution of land and other assets. This story bears little relation to the cruder theories of development advanced by rich-country governments or, for that matter, some NGOs. Yet, getting the politics right really can "make poverty history". Aid alone cannot. In many countries the state remains a work in progress and the rosy picture is not without flaws. Power battles and shifting alliances mean reverses are frequent. Raw power and gangsterism prevail in states that are more master than servant to their citizens. In his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four? (1949), written at the onset of the Cold War, George Orwell portrayed a totalitarian state built around the cult of Big Brother: "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - for ever". In the 20th century, some 170 million people were killed by their own governments, four times the number killed in wars between nations. But the worse deprivation and suffering now are not Orwellian in nature. They exist where states are weak: half of all children who die before the age of five live in states defined as "fragile". Fixing this is not easy, but it can be done. Some states once branded as "failing" provide evidence. Malaysia went within a few decades from a post-independence meltdown of ethnic rioting to an industrial powerhouse. The economist Ha-Joon Chang points to his own country, South Korea, from where, in the 1960s, government officials were sent by the World Bank to Pakistan and the Philippines to "learn about good governance". The pupil swiftly outstripped the master. If you define development merely as rising GDP per capita, then the story almost ends there - effective states create the basis for rapid growth. But development, particularly tackling poverty, is about far more than that. When the World Bank, in an unprecedented exercise, asked 64,000 poor people around the world about their lives, what emerged was a complex and human account of poverty, encompassing issues that are often ignored in the academic literature: the importance of being able to give one's children a good start in life, the mental anguish that poverty brings. The overall conclusion was that, "again and again, powerlessness seems to be at the core of the bad life". Tackling such powerlessness is not just about election campaigns and government. Building "power within" - for example, women's assertiveness to insist on their right not to be beaten in the home - and "power with" - in the form of collective organisation - is essential to achieving the wider empowerment that transforms politics and societies. In 1900, New Zealand was the only country with a government elected by all its adult citizens. By the end of the century, despite severe reversals, including fascism and communism, and succeeding waves of military coups against elected governments, there were ostensibly 120 electoral democracies in place. Democracies are often flawed and, as we have seen in several African countries, progress is reversible, but the overall trend remains positive. Successful transformations Effective states in east Asia and elsewhere have typically taken off under autocracies. In Latin America, active social movements and political organisations have rarely been accompanied by effective states. Does this mean active citizenship and efficient governments are mutually exclusive? Happily, the evidence suggests that the "Asian values" argument for benign dictatorship, once espoused by leaders in Singapore and Malaysia, is wrong. A recent survey by the Harvard economist Dani Rodrik found that democracies produce more predictable long-run growth rates, greater short-term stability and more equality, and are better able to handle economic shocks. Many of the countries that have had active citizens and been run efficiently have already ceased to be poor and disappeared off the development radar. Some of the most successful transformations in the past century, such as those of Sweden and Finland, have been triggered by social pacts within a democracy, showing what the combination of activism and good government can achieve. Yet, though this combination is at the heart of development, it is seldom acknowledged in debates about the "development industry", typified by international institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF. Here, economic policy is king, and politics is often seen as an irritating process through which unworthy individuals use their power to unravel the plans of wise economists. "Getting the prices right" requires the state to get out of economic management, freeing the stage for the true heroes of development: the entrepreneurs. It hasn't worked. The retreat of the state in Latin America, once a faithful devotee of Washington consensus prescriptions, failed to lead to lasting progress. Meanwhile, countries such as China and Vietnam, which maintained a central role for the state, prospered. The importance of politics in development will only grow. The world is entering a new age of scarcity, in which food, water and carbon are rationed, either explicitly, through regulation, or implicitly, by price. In this environment, conflicts over access to basic resources are bound to intensify. Politics and power will decide who gets what. All this poses challenges to the $100 billion global development industry. Official donors such as the UK's Department for International Development are trying to reassess their thinking to understand better the role of politics in development. But they face a dilemma: any outside body, especially a government institution, interferes with domestic politics in developing countries at its peril. To get round this, there is always a temptation to turn political issues into technical ones - for example, by focusing on "governance" or "institution-building". But, by failing to confront issues of power, such approaches often give rise to the same frustrations as those that focus on economic policy: why won't these countries do what's good for them? >From grass roots to government International organisations such as Oxfam have long been criticised by some developing-country partner organisations for preferring policy to politics. But they face real limits. Charity law, mission and bitter experience should dissuade them from becoming mere support groups for any political party in a given developing country. Instead, they have to promote empowerment without becoming politicised. It is a fine line to tread, but it is eminently feasible. In Bolivia, for example, twenty years of support for the Chiquitano Indians helped them move from semi-slavery to becoming a political force, with the founding of indigenous people's organisations, such as that led by Jos? Bailaba, and the election of Chiquitano mayors and senators. Following the election of South America's first indigenous president, Evo Morales, a land reform bill gave the Chiquitanos rights to a million hectares of traditional lands. Even though the alchemy of development takes place primarily in the crucible of effective states with active citizens, global institutions such as aid donors, the UN and transnational corporations play a significant role. Nation states will not wither away, even if their actions are constrained by an ever-growing web of global and regional trade agreements, bilateral investment treaties and the proliferating "soft law" of international conventions and codes of conduct on everything from financial services to human rights. Rich-country governments and their citizens need to ensure that this system of global government supports national development efforts based on the state and its people working together. They must also deter powerful countries and corporations from doing harm, whether through paying bribes or imposing policies that hurt the poor. The fight against poverty, inequality and environmental collapse will define the 21st century, as the fight against slavery or for universal suffrage defined earlier eras. It is hard to imagine a more worthwhile cause. _____ Duncan Green is the author of From Poverty to Power published by Oxfam on 23 June. http://www.newstatesman.com/global-issues/2008/06/botswana-development-states http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From noreply at coha.org Wed Jul 2 09:35:07 2008 From: noreply at coha.org (noreply at coha.org) Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2008 11:35:07 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Selective Idealism/Selective Indignation: Double-Standards and Inconsistencies Persist in U.S. Foreign Policy Message-ID: <20080702153508.43E053E41D4@mx-out2.daemonmail.net> A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 9212 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20080702/dadbdc9c/attachment.txt From the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com Wed Jul 2 10:10:40 2008 From: the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com (Leighm) Date: Wed, 02 Jul 2008 09:10:40 -0700 Subject: [A-List] RAIDS RAIDS RAIDS at Houston, Washington, Kansas, Nebraska, Chicago - ALL IN A DAY'S WORK In-Reply-To: <82b839ea0807020626l217d3196jadc1b71fb1e65446@mail.gmail.com> References: <023a01c8dc03$46db9f30$0a0110ac@NSCCHICAGO> <82b839ea0807020626l217d3196jadc1b71fb1e65446@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <486BA880.20808@gmail.com> MARGARET WYLES wrote: > I'll add one more raid...in my home town of Arcata, California. > > http://www.eurekareporter.com/article/080610-sun-valley-floral-farms-loses-half-its-work-force > > Apparently, some of these 283 people had worked there for 15 years. > In this small community, 283 is a VERY large number. > > As this all appears to be a coordinated effort on the part of the INS, > one has to wonder, to what end? My suspicion is that the powers that > be recognize that we are in for a significant downturn and that these > generally poorer paying jobs will be the only alternative for U.S. > citizens. > > > I wonder whether out-of-work baristas (tm, Starbucks) can take their place? "The Grande era at Starbucks is over. 600 stores will be shut by the end of the year? and approximately 10,000 people will have to find something else to do in an already basketcase US economy." or perhap we can retrain those Starbucks workers to do something like this: "If it works as foreign policy? The budget for the Wild Horse Adoption Program has been cut, so the Bureau of Land Management will cull the herd? by shooting the horses." [July 02 2008] Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: No Fireworks? Just Take Your Gun - Let?s Talk About ?4th Of Julys? Of Yesteryear And Why We Celebrate The Day At All My site: http://leighm.net/wp/2008/07/02/tth_080702/ or Archive.org: http://www.archive.org/details/tth_080702 From nmgoro at gmail.com Wed Jul 2 11:25:34 2008 From: nmgoro at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?Q?N=C3=A9stor_Gorojovsky?=) Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2008 14:25:34 -0300 Subject: [A-List] Selective Idealism/Selective Indignation: Double-Standards and Inconsistencies Persist in U.S. Foreign Policy In-Reply-To: <20080702153508.43E053E41D4@mx-out2.daemonmail.net> References: <20080702153508.43E053E41D4@mx-out2.daemonmail.net> Message-ID: <2fa158550807021025l3499c9fbvfe4a832abb7a34b7@mail.gmail.com> 2008/7/2, noreply at coha.org : > > > Protecting Peru and Brazil's Uncontacted Amazon Tribes > > What is it about the recent photographs of the "uncontacted" indigenous > tribe of the Peruvian-Brazilian Amazon region that has caused such a stir > around the world? The provocative photos of painted natives in loincloths, > including several holding bows ready to loose their arrows at the aircraft > filming them from overhead, are eliciting worldwide concern over how the > authorities will treat these people. The image of brandished bows and arrows > seems pretty clear: these natives want to be left alone. The government > recently released the photographs taken by FUNAI, Brazil's National > Foundation for Indians, in order to provide substance to the debate over > isolated and uncontacted groups who exist in the Amazon. > > Survival International, an organization that monitors the status of > indigenous tribes worldwide, estimates that there are at least 100 isolated > tribes remaining in the world, with half of them in Peru and Brazil. These > native peoples and their ways of life are in constant peril due to new > roads, dams, logging, mineral mining and especially disease brought from > outside, and there are growing concerns that these threats endanger the many > indigenous tribes' ways of life. Contact with outsiders brings only > violence, exploitation and death. The recent photos have intensified a > long-standing disagreement about whether Peru and Brazil are doing enough to > protect isolated indigenous tribes and the prospective ethnological fate of > the entire Amazon region. All the above is, willy nilly, permeated by imperialist double-talk. Whenever you read "protect the rights of the indigenous tribes", in L. America, please read "protect their right to undermine the national revolution in L. Am." Those "indigenous tribes" are citizens of Latin American states. It is up to Latin Americans to manage our own problems with our own citizens. Humanitary imperialists have NOTHING to do here. "Tribal" issues, in Latin America, are promoted, fostered, pampered and defended by every and any imperialist NGO and even imperialist concerns. Such as Repsol, in Southern Argentina, with the Mapuche leadership (who are by no means representative of the majority of the Argentineans of Mapuche stock, such as, for example -Juan Per?n). Once upon a time, no Leftist would ever side with any such concern. Times are a-changing... When good willed progressives share the view of humanitary imperialists, we are facing a serious problem. -- N?stor Gorojovsky El texto principal de este correo puede no ser de mi autor?a From shimogamo at attglobal.net Wed Jul 2 18:46:57 2008 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Bill Totten) Date: Thu, 03 Jul 2008 09:46:57 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Don't Drink the (Bottled) Water Message-ID: <486C2181.8050700@attglobal.net> by Stephen McKean http://culturechange.org (June 23 2008) At long last, it looks like our two-decade affair with the disposable water bottle may finally be coming to an end. With increasing media attention being paid to the environmental impact of all those plastic bottles, as well as increased scrutiny of the perceived superiority of bottled water, it is now becoming the hip, eco-friendly thing to tote your own reusable bottle filled with good old-fashioned tap water. Jenny Powers, a spokesperson for the Natural Resources Defense Council, says that the disposable plastic bottle has become a sort of poster a child of environmental degradation. "Roughly seventy percent of water bottles - probably more - wind up in landfills or incinerators", Jenny says, noting that recycling rates for plastic bottles are far lower than for other beverage containers (due to the on-the-go nature of the product, and also because of deposit-return laws that were enacted before the advent of the plastic bottle). That appallingly high figure takes on an even more frightening aspect when you consider that we Americans consume fifty billion plastic bottles per year. "That's 170 bottles per year for every man, woman and child in America", Jenny says. Factor in the energy needed to make all those bottles, as well as the energy required to ship them from point A to point B, and you hold in your hand a not-so-refreshing bottle of environmental disaster. But it isn't eco-concerns alone that are driving this trend away from the plastic bottle. As it turns out, your tap water is perfectly clean. In study after study, bottled water has been proven to be no cleaner than tap water, and has the added disadvantage that it isn't nearly as well regulated as your tap water. Also, if you estimate that a bottle of water costs about a dollar, your tap water is thousands of dollars cheaper. And then of course there is bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical compound found in the disposable bottles that could be disruptive to the body's hormone levels. Though not as alarming as some media reports, an April 2008 study by the National Institutes of Health concluded that "the possibility that bisphenol A may alter human development cannot be dismissed". So what's the health-conscious, eco-friendly boy or girl to do? The answer: go to your local outfitter or other retailer and check out the ever-growing selection of reusable beverage containers. From stainless steel to BPA-free plastic, there are hundreds of choices for whatever situation requires rehydration. For backpackers and outdoor athletes who have been filtering water and reusing water bottles all along, it's never been easier. The Vario filter by Katadyn, for instance, pumps two liters of water per minute and has a replaceable carbon core. Chris Glaser, a manager at Benchmark Outfitters in Cincinnati says that sales for the new containers - stainless steel and BPA free - have been brisk. "A lot of our water bottle sales have been influenced by all the reports of BPH on the news", he says. "We can't keep the products in stock". Jenny of the NRDC is glad people are beginning to take a new look at the plastic bottle. "I don't think people really considered the environmental impact of bottled water", she says. "It just wasn't on their radar - and now it is, which is great". _____ This article comes to Culture Change readers courtesy Get Out Zine: getoutzine.com The good ship Junk - made of 15,000 plastic trash water bottles - is on her way from Long Beach to Hawaii, to highlight the important findings of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation: junkraft.blogspot.com Further Reading: Culture Change reports on plastics, plus links to other groups such as Algalita, producers of the award-winning documumentary "Our Synthetic Sea": culturechange.org. Ceramic filter (to avoid more plastics): gaiam.com Additional reports at culturechange.org : "Encountering plastics in the Caribbean" by Jan Lundberg, Culture Change Letter #182: "Plastic disaster breaks through to mainstream: scandal over bisphenol-A" by Jan Lundberg Culture Change Letter #180, March 22, 2008: "US Presidential candidates' staffs briefed on peak oil and the plastic plague" by Jan Lundberg, Culture Change Letter #178 "Overpopulation, vegans eating plastic, and the housing bubble" by Jan Lundberg, Culture Change Letter #117: http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=181&Itemid=1#cont http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From tal1 at cogeco.ca Wed Jul 2 20:54:22 2008 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2008 22:54:22 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Russian Parliament Warns Lithuania Against Hosting US Missiles Message-ID: <619B55623068487FBE1A9DFA6FC44514@TonyPC> ----- Original Message ----- From: Rick Rozoff To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Sent: Wednesday, July 02, 2008 12:26 PM Subject: [stopnato] Russian Parliament Warns Lithuania Against Hosting US Missiles http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/07/02/europe/EU-Russia-US-Missile-Defense.php Associated Press July 2, 2008 Russian parliament warns Lithuania against hosting US missile defense MOSCOW - Russian lawmakers warned Lithuania against agreeing to place U.S. missile defense sites in the Baltic country, saying Wednesday that such a move could trigger a Russian military buildup in the region. Russia could deploy more troops to its Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad if Lithuania offers its soil for the deployment of U.S. missile interceptors, said a statement approved unanimously by the Kremlin-controlled lower house, the State Duma. Lithuania's Prime Minister Gediminas Kirkilas was in Washington on Wednesday for talks with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said he did not know if the two were discussing the possibility of placing missile-defense components in the former Soviet country on Russia's northern border. But on Tuesday the Pentagon said Lithuania would be a "good alternative" to Poland if negotiations with Warsaw collapse. Poland has demanded increased U.S. military aid in exchange for approving the deal. Russia is fiercely against the U.S. plans to deploy components of a missile defense shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, saying the move would undermine its nuclear deterrent. The Duma statement said that placing U.S. interceptors in Lithuania would "lead to a change of the Russian Federation's approach to military security in the Baltics, which is currently based on the principle of minimal sufficient military presence." The lawmakers said using Lithuania in the missile-defense plan "will lead to an adequate modernization and strengthening of a grouping of Russian forces deployed to the Kaliningrad region." Kaliningrad, Russia's westernmost region, is located on the Baltic Sea between Poland and Lithuania. The Duma statement also criticized a Lithuanian law passed last month banning the public display of Soviet and Nazi symbols. It said the law insulted the memory of the Soviet soldiers who fought the Nazis in the World War II and amounted to an attempt to "rewrite history." The Soviet Union annexed independent Lithuania in 1940. Nazi Germany quickly seized the Baltics after invading the Soviet Union in 1941, and the Soviet army drove Nazi troops back in 1944. =========================== Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato To subscribe, send an e-mail to: stopnato-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages http://lists.topica.com/lists/ANTINATO/read ============================== __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Database | Polls | Calendar MARKETPLACE Attention, Yahoo! Groups users! Sign up now for a one-month free trial from Blockbuster. Limited time offer. Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required) Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch format to Traditional Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe Visit Your Group John McEnroe on Yahoo! Groups Join him for the 10 Day Challenge. Cat Zone on Yahoo! Groups Join a Group all about cats. Special K Group on Yahoo! Groups Join the challenge and lose weight.. __,_._,___ From tal1 at cogeco.ca Wed Jul 2 21:33:30 2008 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2008 23:33:30 -0400 Subject: [A-List] US Primes Citizens For War; Concessions Made Russia Weak Message-ID: ----- Original Message ----- From: Rick Rozoff To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Sent: Wednesday, July 02, 2008 8:54 PM Subject: [stopnato] US Primes Citizens For War; Concessions Made Russia Weak http://www.kp.ru/daily/24124.4/345335/ Komsomolskaya Pravda July 2, 2008 Indiana Jones may lead to another Cold War? KP continues to examine Russia's cutting down on nuclear arms Viktor Baranets -In the series' fourth film, Indiana Jones fights Russian soldiers and ends up in the epicenter of a nuclear explosion. A census was held after the film was released in the U.S. and 78 percent of respondents said they aren't against increasing the military budget. Seems like an odd coincidence.... - The last Soviet General Secretary [Gorbachev] surrendered everything that was created by an entire generation to the U.S. And we're still paying the price today. In the last issue of our weekly, KP compared the nuclear resources of Russia and the U.S. This isn't the first year the U.S. has called upon the Cold War's ghost. Such a stance seems to benefit their foreign policy. When the U.S. government claims a lingering threat overseas, their people pay less attention to fly-by-night bombings in Belgrade or Iraq. This year, even the lovable archeologist Indiana Jones was called to the propaganda front. In the series' fourth film, Indiana Jones fights Russian soldiers and ends up in the epicenter of a nuclear explosion. A census was held after the film was released in the U.S. and 78 percent of respondents said they aren't against increasing the military budget. Seems like an odd coincidence.... Many analysts assert that U.S. ambitions could lead to a new nuclear standoff. The line of demarcation between the silently warring sides would no longer rest along the Berlin Wall, but rather lay claim to the U.S. anti-missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. What are Russia's trump cards? KP spoke with Colonel Mikhail Polezhaev to find out. KP: Colonel Polezhaev, the U.S. says they know the locations where our shaft missiles will discharge. Are they bluffing? Polezhaev: No. They do know the locations of discharge for our silos. But we actually share this information. We also know the locations of discharge of their Minutemen missiles. These aren't secrets. KP: And are they watching our missiles from space? Polezhaev: They can see our missiles from space in good weather. But they need the exact coordinates of a location nearby to target any object from space. Where can you get this information in the steppes or the taiga? So the U.S. may know where our missiles are located, but they'll definitely have problems if they try to hit our silos on the nose. KP: Can the U.S. locate our mobile Topol missiles? They're on the surface, so they shouldn't be hard to disable in a sudden attack? Polezhaev: The Topol missile is 22 meters long, 3.5 meters wide and four meters tall. U.S. spy satellites travel over the regions where our Topols are based 2-3 times per day. The observation time is 15 minutes. In recent years, the Topol missile increased its masking ability - not only against optical and radiolocational reconnaissance, but against thermal reconnaissance, as well. So they would need to hunt for the Topol along the patrolling route. KP: How precise are today's nuclear missiles compared to the Cold War? Polezhaev: The U.S. and Soviet first-generation missiles weren't precise - 1-3 kilometers. As a result, the nuclear weapons were intended for large-scale strikes across entire cities. Today's U.S. missiles are more precise than ours, that is, judging from available documentation. They have an accuracy of 100-200 meters. We can now use nuclear missiles to destroy highly protected targets like silos. So presently, nuclear weapons are the main arms used to combat nuclear weapons. In the U.S., they've even designed a warhead block that is able to penetrate the surface. These missiles don't explode when hitting the surface, but rather at a depth. Similar designs were developed in Russia for the Voevod missiles. But their development ended after 1991. KP: Why? Polazhaev: Because the primary developer was the Southern Construction Bureau in Dnepropetrovsk [Ukraine]. After the fall of the Soviet Union, these activities were curtailed. Cooperation between manufacturers and enterprises simply fell apart. Of the four missiles in production at the end of 1991, only one was manufactured by a Russian company - the Topol. And ever since, the missile is growing more and more expensive. The price (without warhead) in 2000 was around $3 million. In 2005, the price soared to $5 million. Today, the Topol costs twice as much. Missile manufacturing is also short-circulation, meaning the price has to cover all the manufacturer's expenses. Gorbachev did the U.S. a big favor KP: Why did we destroy our Soviet missiles for nearly 15 years on U.S. money? Did we need to throw them away because of their age? Polezhaev: To an extent - yes. But the answer isn't that straightforward. There was clearly a surplus of missiles in the Soviet Union. But huge resources are needed to maintain arms of different ages and models and to keep them ready for war. Enormous finances are also required for ensuring cooperation among manufacturers. KP: But we could have negotiated pretty well and for a fairly long time with such a strong nuclear hand?! Polezhaev: But unfortunately that didn't happen. The last Soviet General Secretary surrendered everything that was created by an entire generation to the U.S. And we're still paying the price today. KP: But the U.S. seemed to have similar problems with their aging Minutemen-2? Polezhaev: Yes, they saw cooperation dissolve while their expenses for maintaing the arms grew. Gorbachev did them a big favor when he signed the treaty "On the Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms" (START-1). They saved a lot of money destroying missiles that they would have had to get rid of anyway. KP: What was Moscow's biggest strategic miscalculation in the arms reduction treaty? Polezhaev: You can't call it anything else but a desire to oblige the U.S. The first move was the treaty on mid- and close-range missiles. We destroyed far more missiles than the U.S. But what seems like a near betrayal is when we agreed to destroy the Oka strategical and tactical complex although it only fired missiles under 500 kilometers. And when they woke up from their stupidity, they started producing better, but analogous arms. These are colossal additional expenses! This is the money of the people, including retirees. When START-2 was signed, Yeltsin agreed to destroy our missile trains in exchange for a lone promise from the U.S. to take their strategical bombers off duty. But these are unequal compromises. Railway missile complexes take part in first strikes. The aviation doesn't. The U.S. destroyed junk instead of warheads KP: How did Russia end up in this situation? Polezhaev: At the time, the country's leadership didn't have a new nuclear doctrine. There was such an euphoria, talks about the coming of a "new era in mutual relations with NATO" and even a "brotherhood with the U.S." As a result, Russia decreased its strategic attack arms simultaneously according to two treaties (START-1 and START-2). We had to explode 150 nuclear silos and destroy all our PS-20 and PS-22. There were huge losses and expenses. It's not surprising that the U.S. was ready to finance the destruction of our heavy missiles. Their gains from these two treaties were more than double ours. KP: And the U.S. didn't even ratify START-2. Why? Polezhaev: There are no secrets for the U.S. in terms of our missiles. The Voevod was developed and manufactured in Dnepropetrovsk. The Sotka was made in Reutov, although the control system was made in Kharkov. The Topol was developed in Moscow, and the targeting system in Kiev. The U.S. knew when the missiles' capabilities would end and that we'd have to spend our money liquidating them anyway without their financial assistance. KP: You give the impression that the U.S. played us for fools. Polezhaev: They didn't even try to fulfil their obligations honestly. For example, we exchange our telemetry data with the U.S. during trial missile runs. They have Trident missiles on their submarines. But we registered the quantity of warheads as exceeding the number quoted in the treaty. KP: Maybe this is the only such incident? Polezhaev: Absolutely not! This is only one of many such facts. We carried out a disarmament inspection at a military base in Colorado. A small group of Russian inspectors was supposed to check hundreds of first and second stage Pershing-2 missiles. Their destruction was planned for a later point in time. When our inspectors got to the polygon, they demanded the containers be opened. Inside there were no missiles - and just a bunch of junk. =========================== Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato To subscribe, send an e-mail to: stopnato-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages http://lists.topica.com/lists/ANTINATO/read ============================== __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Database | Polls | Calendar MARKETPLACE Attention, Yahoo! Groups users! Sign up now for a one-month free trial from Blockbuster. Limited time offer. Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required) Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch format to Traditional Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe Recent Activity 1New Members Visit Your Group Yahoo! Groups Cat Zone Connect w/ others who love cats. Yahoo! Groups Familyographer Zone Learn how to capture family moments. Special K Group on Yahoo! Groups Join the challenge and lose weight.. __,_._,___ From tal1 at cogeco.ca Wed Jul 2 21:45:05 2008 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2008 23:45:05 -0400 Subject: [A-List] SCO: Iran Looks East As West Is Increasingly Isolated Message-ID: <50436131ECDA455FB0D9253C4ACD586F@TonyPC> ----- Original Message ----- From: Rick Rozoff To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Sent: Wednesday, July 02, 2008 6:52 PM Subject: [stopnato] SCO: Iran Looks East As West Is Increasingly Isolated http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=62312§ionid=3510303 Press TV (Iran) July 2, 2008 Iran looks East as Europe looks the other way By Luke Manzarpour Tehran - Iran's efforts to revamp its economy after the devastation of the Iran-Iraq war and years of post-revolution adjustments have for more than a decade focused predominantly on Europe, an already thorny relationship consistently hindered by United States pressures. Now, in the age of the 'War on Terror', the US has gained an invaluable tool in its attempts to isolate Iran, linking the persistent spectacle of the downing of the Twin Towers with not only the Iranian political establishment but the entire country, a fallacious connection that Europeans are proving ready, if not eager, to lap up. Thus US officials can now associate Iran's entire banking system with a vague terrorist threat and Europe looks set to balk. That the US treats Iran's 'support of terrorism' as "self-evident" renders superfluous the arduous task of presenting evidence connecting any Iranian bank with any actual explosion. Leading the assault on Iran's financial sector is the US Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), whose 'Guidance to Financial Institutions on the Continuing Money Laundering Threat Involving Illicit Iranian Activity', March 20th, tars every Iranian banking institution, state-owned and private, as a potential supporter of terrorist activity. .... France under Sarkozy has been a vocal mouthpiece for US policies, with French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner declaring last September that his country should prepare for war with Iran, and apparently intends to cut off all transactions with Iranian banks once existing payments go through. President Nicholas Sarkozy has also reportedly pressured Total and Gaz de France not to seek any new deals with Iran. Elsewhere, British-Dutch oil group Shell and Spain's Repsol look set to pull out of a $10 billion project in South Pars, British banks Standard Chartered and HSBC have significantly scaled down their presence in Iran and earlier this month Barclays Bank decided to close the accounts of Iranian banks Saderat and Melli and those of all their staff. Last week saw Gordon Brown purport to impose sanctions (imaginary at the present) 'that will freeze the overseas assets of the biggest bank in Iran, the bank Melli,' to the delight of visiting diplomats. Britain's canine servitude is well established... Iran now find its old Silk Road partners the more welcoming and autonomous traders. China has overtaken Germany as Iran's second largest trading partner (the first being the UAE), with the fall in German business mirrored by a significant rise in Chinese annual trade in the region of $20 billion. Further incalculable amounts of trade are conducted through the Dubai free-trade zone. Shortly after Siemens' premature withdrawal, Tehran Urban & Suburban Railway Company signed a substantially larger contract with China Northern Locomotive & Rolling Stock Industry Group. China, followed by Japan, is now the largest market for Iranian oil, while Singapore has become Iran's biggest gasoline customer. Meanwhile, Russian energy sector giants are busy securing lucrative deals in Iran, with LUKoil exploiting Iran's Azadegan oilfields and Gazprom involved in Iran's gas reserves. Although the former initially bowed to the US extraterritorial 'ban' on third country investments in Iran of over $20 million, it has subsequently resumed all activities. India has also defied the long arm of US law by going ahead with a pipeline deal with Iran (to which Pakistan is also party) despite enormous pressure to withdraw. The Indian government did, however, vote against Iran at the IAEA (triggering a withering attack from various factions of India's polity); a contradiction which highlights the decisive place India finds itself with a choice between Asian unity or US 'partnership'. Even trade with South Korea, a recipient of strong US political support, is proceeding unabated in an upward trend, reaching $8 billion in 2007. This while the US-Korea Free Trade Agreement, said to be US's second largest trade agreement ever, is in the process of finalisation. As such, it is essential for the US to find ways to undermine Asian trading with Iran if it is to justify European abstinence. One often-reported 'success' has been the supposed reluctance of European banks to open letters of credit for Iranian clients. .... Indeed the US is severely limited in the extent to which it can coerce Asian compliance. Unlike the USA, which has an astronomical foreign trade deficit, China, enjoys the largest Forex reserve in the world. The Chinese and other Asian countries have long taken cooperative measures to counter US hegemonic controls. A major tool is the Asian Energy Security Grid. This is being pursued by China and Russia as an alternative to US-led Western control of the world's energy resources. Iran is an integral partner to the group, which sees natural enemies Russia and China pushed together to counter US threats to their sovereignty. More significant is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), to which Iran is an observer and the US has been refused access. Iran has now applied for a formal membership, and is likely to be welcomed as such soon. According to its website the SCO seeks 'cooperation in political affairs, economy and trade, scientific-technical, cultural, and educational spheres as well as in energy, transportation, tourism, and environment protection fields.' Recent developments include moves towards common energy products in alternative fuels, a free-trade zone and joint military exercises, indicating a drive in the direction of serious collective political and security clout. Vladimir Putin used the SCO 2007 summit to announce Russia's resumption of regular long-range bomber patrols, a move which caused quite a stir in the West and accusations of Russian aggression. On the US domestic side, with big business salivating at growing access to the enormous Chinese market, corporate interest groups have sufficient incentive to oppose policies that will undermine US-China relations. If the US fails to coerce Asian countries into compliance on Iran, its ability to determine European trade will be severely weakened. With all this business flowing Asia's way it may not be too long before Europe decides that it has had enough of being the biggest loser in US foreign policy on Iran, which is the Middle East's largest - and still largely untapped - market, especially in the coming lean times. The US cannot enforce sanctions on all European traders and sufficient defiance of the cross-Atlantic decree alone will ensure autonomy from it. .... Once again, Iran has become the unintended beneficiary of US aggression, after being indisputably the greatest beneficiary of the US invasion of Iraq. In addition to spurring the country to build a solid domestic industrial and defence infrastructure, and achieving self-sufficiency in key sectors of agriculture, America's ill-conceived attempts to economically isolate Iran have snapped the country out of the Eurocentricism that had distracted it. The newly-awakened Iran now seeks instead to cement alliances with the world's next superpowers. To avoid relying exclusively on Asia, the Islamic Republic should also look to rebuild its relations with Europe. Iran need not fear any crippling effect of US-prompted European withdrawal, at least as long as its Asian partners refuse to bow to the wistful hegemon-in-decline. =========================== Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato To subscribe, send an e-mail to: stopnato-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages http://lists.topica.com/lists/ANTINATO/read ============================== __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Database | Polls | Calendar MARKETPLACE Blockbuster is giving away a FREE trial of - Blockbuster Total Access. Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required) Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch format to Traditional Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe Visit Your Group Best of Y! 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All-Bran 10 Day Challenge Join the club and feel the benefits.. __,_._,___ From annewilliamson at msn.com Wed Jul 2 16:10:31 2008 From: annewilliamson at msn.com (Anne Williamson) Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2008 18:10:31 -0400 Subject: [A-List] RAIDS RAIDS RAIDS at Houston, Washington, Kansas, Nebraska, Chicago - ALL IN A DAY'S WORK In-Reply-To: <82b839ea0807020626l217d3196jadc1b71fb1e65446@mail.gmail.com> References: <023a01c8dc03$46db9f30$0a0110ac@NSCCHICAGO> <82b839ea0807020626l217d3196jadc1b71fb1e65446@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: The point of the raids is to highlight John McCain's turnaround on illegals; remember, he sponsored an Amnesty Bill that went down badly with Republicans - now he can bray about his support for the Federales' actions....and thus force Obama to take a very public position on the issue....just politics, too bad for the deportees. -A. > Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2008 05:26:14 -0800 > From: kaliyuga at wildblue.net > To: a-list at lists.econ.utah.edu > Subject: Re: [A-List] RAIDS RAIDS RAIDS at Houston, Washington, Kansas, Nebraska, Chicago - ALL IN A DAY'S WORK > > I'll add one more raid...in my home town of Arcata, California. > > http://www.eurekareporter.com/article/080610-sun-valley-floral-farms-loses-half-its-work-force > > Apparently, some of these 283 people had worked there for 15 years. > In this small community, 283 is a VERY large number. > > As this all appears to be a coordinated effort on the part of the INS, > one has to wonder, to what end? My suspicion is that the powers that > be recognize that we are in for a significant downturn and that these > generally poorer paying jobs will be the only alternative for U.S. > citizens. > -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 1504 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20080702/62b13195/attachment.txt From noreply at coha.org Wed Jul 2 18:05:14 2008 From: noreply at coha.org (noreply at coha.org) Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2008 20:05:14 -0400 Subject: [A-List] BREAKING NEWS: COLOMBIA Message-ID: <20080703000514.A319D3E46F7@mx-out.daemonmail.net> A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 8088 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20080702/79a32a9c/attachment.txt From nscchicago at igc.org Wed Jul 2 22:22:14 2008 From: nscchicago at igc.org (NSC WORKERS COOP) Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2008 23:22:14 -0500 Subject: [A-List] Fw: MNN Canada abuses Indigenous women & elders Message-ID: <005001c8dcc4$66dcb460$0a0110ac@NSCCHICAGO> From: orakwa Subject: MNN Canada abuses Indigenous women & elders WHY IS CANADA ABUSING INDIGENOUS WOMEN AND ELDERS? SURVEILLANCE, CONTROL AND THE INVISIBLE BOUNDARIES OF "INDIAN COUNTRY" For MNN by Ieriwa'on:ni ieriwaonni at live.com MNN. July 1, 2008. Dear Friends and Supporters: Those of us who are close to Kahentinetha and Katenies, the friends and family who spend time with them on a daily basis, would like to thank all of you for your support and kind words. We would like to share some of the reflections you've sent us. Harriet Nahanni recently died in custody in British Columbia. 500 women have disappeared without any investigation. Kahentinetha survived the trauma induced heart attack inflicted on her by the Canadian Border Services Agency at Cornwall Ontario. Katenies and her family continue to be harassed as they have been since she filed a formal court motion in 2003 asking Canada to prove its jurisdiction over her and her Nation. Her daughter Teiohontateh has filed a human rights complaint over abuse at the same border. What is MNN's role in "Indian Country"? There are thousands of voices out there struggling to be heard. By attacking women and elders they are trying to tell us they'll attack anyone. Will this keep us quiet? No way. Today is July 1st ,"Canada Day". There's lots of drinking, flag waving and fireworks. The colonial regime whose officers committed the June 14th, 2008 assault on these two grandmothers is celebrating the foundations of their squatter state with land and resources stolen from Indigenous peoples. Why are they in such a drunken state? The violent attacks and the violations of international law demonstrate that Canada is still at war with Indigenous people. They're trying to forget that every square inch they stand on is Indigenous. Section 2 of Canada's Constitution Act, 1982 declared that everyone has the fundamental freedom of "thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication". But does Canada respect its own constitution? No. Canada does not support freedom of opinion. It has a propaganda mill to control the media. It doesn't even allow scientists to speak to the public without running their findings past spin doctors. It suppresses historical facts and current evidence of its "serial killer" tendencies. It's trying to make us invisible. This is one of the reasons why the media have ignored the attack on MNN personnel. An honest state would present the facts for public discussion. The public has no idea what is going on. Why do operatives hired by the Canadian government want to shut down MNN? MNN is not a rant blog. MNN describes attacks on Indigenous Peoples. It puts into words what people are thinking and checks it out to see what's true. It conducts critical investigations into Canadian and international corporate misconduct. It is based on solid research and thorough discussion. This panics those who parasite on "Indians" and on honest members of the Canadian public. Recently lawyer Patrick Nadjiwan of North Bay Ontario accused MNN of libel and slander. MNN proved that its information came from the websites of his clients, the guys who were ready to sue MNN. They were slandering themselves. Their scam at Sharbot Lake couldn't stand up to the light of day. Suddenly he was silent. MNN has also come under attack by colonial state operatives. What really gets to them is the way MNN follows the principles of the Kaienerekowa, the Haudenosaunee Great Law of Peace. They don't like the way MNN recognizes that we all have minds. We all have the capacity to see and hear, to think and feel. Every person's ability to sense and understand is important. The young and the old. The steel-worker, the scholar, the tobacco-trader, the grandmother. The Onkwehonwe and the immigrant. Each of us has a unique insight to contribute, no matter how big or small. We all have responsibilities. That means we can't just drift along following orders without thinking or questioning. In the past couple of years, MNN has exposed the colonial beast. The Canadian government hired young men to guard an illegal border in the middle of the Akwesasne community which was never meant for Indigenous people. They have been routinely threatening and harassing Indigenous people who have to pass there. Someone gave them orders to assault the two grandmothers. This violates the natural order. Women and elders are essential to life itself. There was no valid reason for this attempted assassination. The boundary is an artificial abomination. It was placed there by foreign invaders without any right to do so. Even so, these two grandmothers presented themselves peacefully. They waited quietly in their car for a full hour while these "black shirts" prepared their attack. Why the violence? Why the state sadism? The appetites of the colonizers are insatiable. They do not maintain sustainable economies. They depend on the exploitation of non-renewable resources. They are conditioned to want more and more and more. Raised on mental "junk food", they "force feed" their children fascism and call it "democracy". Bloated but malnourished, their senses are shut down. They cannot access the natural principles of self-determination that can be found in the "Kaianereh'ko:wa". Their brains are starved. They have become gluttonous hungry ghosts with no control over their appetites. The Supreme Court of Canada recently ruled that CSIS cannot destroy evidence. A no brainer! This should mean the Canadian Border Service Agency cannot destroy the video tapes and other evidence of their attacks on the two grandmothers. So why does the CBSA claim nothing happened that day? Does the Supreme Court ruling on CSIS mean the CBSA is suddenly going to start thinking and acting legally? It doesn't look like it. How do we deal with such monsters? How do we deal with a state that uses violence to try to shut down public discussion and the law? These perverts are trying to create a climate of fear. They're acting like the caricature of a fascist third world state. It's not working. Many people are watching and waiting. They aren't fooled. Canada has become a sick joke. Some people are curious about what will happen at 9:00 am in the Cornwall Ontario court house on July 14th when Katenies appears again. Will Canada obey the default judgment? The justice of the peace who released her on June 16th was already suspicious about the irregular treatment she received. The Supreme Court of Canada is suspicious of CSIS. Someone warned MNN: "Of course you know CSIS or RCMP have been monitoring you since MNN started." They started way before when the Women Title Holders raised the constitutional jurisdiction question in 4 fraudulent New York State land claims in 2004 [USSC 06-165]. They all folded because they refused to respect the Indigenous law that the land can never be surrendered. Katenies raised this in Cornwall and won by default in March 2004. [Posted on MNN December 18, 2006 under "Jay Treaty"]. They can't keep ignoring the fact that they have no authority over us, even if they have all the guns. MNN has always advocated peace. MNN has always supported Indigenous people who resist genocide. MNN often warns about the colonial states' use of armed force to attack unarmed demonstrators and suppress Indigenous opinion. Is Katenies a threat to the rule of law? No way. Her motion and judgment are making them shake in their socks. Yep! All of the weapons of war belong to the Canadian state. The army and the police are trying to scare people into doing whatever they say, whether or not it's legal. But it's not working. As another reader pointed out: "The time has come. The mistreatment of our people is going to stop because we are all watching and telling the world about it". People know that these two grandmothers did not bring this on themselves. They are not responsible for the illegal and life-threatening attack they suffered. A century ago Louis Riel was hung for treason because he defended Metis rights. Today the death penalty has been banned in Canada and in international law. Canada, it is not OK for Canadian government officers to try to implement death sentences by other means such as excessive use of force and extraordinary threats and abuse? It is not OK for border guards to put people under so much physical stress that they have heart attacks? It is not OK for the state to give their agents a license to kill Indigenous people. Ieriwa'on:ni N.B. My e-mail address was written incorrectly at the end of the last article. It should be ieriwaonni at live.com. Your responses are appreciated. This border issue legal challenge will cost money. MNN has none. Canada has unlimited funds from exploiting indigenous resources. Canada is apparently hiring top law firms to fight the Mohawks. We need counsel that will not be intimidated by this display of power. Your financial help is needed. If you could send donations, it would be greatly appreciated: "MNN Mohawk Nation News", Box 991, Kahnawake [Quebec, Canada] J0L 1B0. Thank you very much. Phil Fontaine of AFN is a partner in CBSA's Sustainable Development Strategy 2007-9 See Apprendix 4 for list of external stakeholders; Chris Kealey, Canada Customs Excise, Immigration Taxation Board, CBSA Media Relations 613-991-5197; Alain Joliceour, President CBSA 613-952-3200, 613-957-0612; General inquiries CBSA-ASFC at canada.gc.ca; National Aboriginal Initiative, Canadian Human Rights Commission 204-983-2189, 1-866772-4880 info.com at chrc-ccdp.ca; Canada Customs Port of Entry, Cornwall Island Ontario; Gaetan Cousineau, Quebec Human Rights, presidence at cdpdj.gc.ca; Akwesasne Mohawk police 613-575-2250 ex 2400; Mohawk Security Louis Mitchell 613-932-5183, 613-575-2340; Lance Markel, District Dir. CBSA 613-930-3234, 613-991-1214; Nurse Rachet at Cornwall Community Hospital 613-938-4240; www.,chrc-ccdp.ca; Brent Lefebvre Investigator for CBSA; Susan St. Clair, Canadian Human Rights Commission, 344 Slater, Ottawa 613-995-1151, 1-888-214-1090, 613-943-5188; National spokesperson CBSA 613-957-6500; Quebec Media Relations CBSA 514-350-6130; Handling arrest Scott Patterson; Chief MCA Nona Benedict 613-575-2250 nbenedict at akwesasne.ca; Minister Stockwell Day, House of Commons, Ottawa K1A 0A6 613-995-1702 day.s at parl.gc.ca 250-770-4480, days1 at parl.gc.ca; Dave MacKenzie, Parliamentary Secretary, Public Safety, 613-995-4432;Mackenzie.d at parl.gc.ca; Melissa Leclair Communications Pub. Safety 613-991-2863; OFFICERS: 17012; 16320; 16511; 16121; 16275; Report: Mohawk grandmothers attacked by Canadian Border Services Agency guards nooneisillegal-montreal.blogspot.com/2008/06/cbsa-attack.html "Family furious with Customs" Posted by Trevor Pritchard, Cornwall Standard Freeholder - Saturday, June 21, 2008 Family furious with Customs See MNN Category: " Border/Jay Treaty " New MNN Books Available Now! The books below, email us: Mohawk Warriors Three - The Trial of Lasagna, Noriega, 20/20$20.00 usd The On-Going Confusion between The Great Law and The Handsome Lake Code$ 20.00 usd The Agonizing Death of "Colonialism" and "Federal Indian Law" in Kaianere'ko:wa/Great Law Territory $20.00 usd Who's Sorry Now? The good, the bad and the unapologetic Mohawks of Kanehsatake $20.00 usd Rebuilding the Iroquois Confederacy Karoniaktajeh $10 usd Warriors Hand Book Karoniaktajeh $10 usd Mail checks and money orders to... MNN P.O. Box 991 Kahnawake, QC J0L 1B0 Purchase t-shirts, mugs and more at our CafePress Store http://www.cafepress.com/mohawknews Subscribe to MNN for breaking news updates http://www.mohawknationnews.com/news/subscription.php Sign Women Title Holders petition! http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/Iroquois Link to MNN Get the code and banners to link to Mohawk Nation News. http://www.mohawknationnews.com/pg.php?page=promote.html Your Support - Make a contribution to our newsgroup. Secure your online transaction with PayPal??. http://www.mohawknationnews.com/pg.php?page=donate.html Nia:wen, Kahentinetha Horn Kahentinetha2 at yahoo.com Speaking & Contemporary Native Issues Workshops Katenies katenies20 at yahoo.com Manager Stay tuned! www.mohawknationnews.com Please forward this email to a friend! -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 35764 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20080702/a1737b5e/attachment.txt -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 20288 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20080702/a1737b5e/attachment-0001.jpeg From glparramatta at greenleft.org.au Thu Jul 3 02:55:13 2008 From: glparramatta at greenleft.org.au (glparramatta) Date: Thu, 03 Jul 2008 18:55:13 +1000 Subject: [A-List] Michael Lebowitz: The spectre of socialism for the 21st century | Links Message-ID: <486C93F1.10102@greenleft.org.au> A spectre is haunting capitalism. It is the spectre of socialism for the 21st century. Increasingly, the characteristics of this spectre are becoming clear, and we are able to see enough to understand what it is not. The only thing that is not clear at this point is whether the spectre is real ? i.e., whether it is actually an earthly presence. Consider what this spectre is not. It is not the belief that by struggling within capitalism for reforms that it is possible to change the nature of capitalism -- i.e., that a better capitalism, a third way, can suspend the logic of capital (except momentarily). Nor is it a focus upon electing friendly governments to preside over exploitation, oppression and exclusion -- i.e., to support barbarism with a human face. Indeed, this spectre does not accept the premise that you can challenge the logic of capital without understanding it. Very simply, the spectre of socialism for the 21st century is not yesterday?s liberal package -- social democracy. Full article at http://links.org.au/node/503 Subscribe free to /Links - International Journal of Socialist Renewal/ - at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373 From shimogamo at attglobal.net Thu Jul 3 05:22:26 2008 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Bill Totten) Date: Thu, 03 Jul 2008 20:22:26 +0900 Subject: [A-List] The Water Craze Message-ID: <486CB672.1090304@attglobal.net> Lown RCTs (Random Clinical Thoughts) Dr Bernard Lown, Founder and Chair, ProCor www.procor.org (June 17 2008) _____ Note: The true nexus of cardiovascular prevention lies at the intersection of clinical medicine, basic science, social structure, global economics, and public policy. No one I know can better navigate that space than Dr Bernard Lown, ProCor s Founder and Chairman, who consistently and powerfully has argued for a moral stance as the key which unleashes action. The following essay is the first of a series by Dr Lown titled "Lown RCTs: Random Clinical Thoughts". It is Dr Lown s hope that these pieces will call attention to some of the deep challenges encountered in medicine and will be relevant to health in developing countries. We invite your responses and further discussion of this thought-provoking article, which focuses on the essential and elemental: water". _____ I was taken aback when an elderly patient confessed dejectedly that she didn t drink the eight glasses of water her physician had prescribed. I was astounded to learn that water loading for all comers pervades medical practice. But how robust is the scientific evidence and how did this come about? Innovations in clinical practice are usually based on accumulations of scientific breakthroughs. These are first published in medical journals and then trumpeted 24/7 in the media. Yet I could not recall a single scientific study on the benefits of increased water consumption. A systematic search of the medical literature turned up a blank. Recently I came across comments of Dr Heinz Valtin, which stimulated me to address this issue. Dr Valtin is an emeritus professor of physiology at Dartmouth Medical School, an authority on kidney function and water balance, on which subjects he has authored several textbooks. After an exhaustive ten-month search of the literature, Dr Valtin likewise could not identify a single published paper relating to daily water requirements {1}. Apparently, in the 1940s the Food and Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine offered recommendations on food and water needs. As a rough rule of thumb, it suggested drinking one milliliter of water for every calorie eaten. This equals roughly two quarts or eight eight-ounce glasses daily. An important proviso followed: "Much of this (water) can be gathered from the food that we eat". So in fact, if one eats a healthy diet, no additional water may be required. The minimum daily requirement of liquid has been defined. Those residing in moderate climates lose about 500 milliliters or sixteen ounces of water daily. This is referred to as the obligatory fluid loss, and includes water mandatorily excreted by kidneys, insensible water loss from skin through evaporation, a well as water shed in tears, eliminated in menstrual fluid, semen, and feces. Such losses are readily replaced by the high content of water in solid food and by the fact that most people consume beverages such as coffee, tea, fruit juices, wine, and alcohol. Is there any benefit though from additional fluid intake? A prevailing notion is that drinking more water may help with constipation. But the water one drinks is excreted by the kidneys, not by the intestines. Another popular myth is that more water helps with weight loss. No scientific evidence supports the greater efficacy of dieting when water intake is increased. Nor does water dousing help combat kidney stones, urinary tract infection, or bladder cancer. Could eight glasses of water daily inflict harm? As a physician, I have been concerned with disruption of sleep by nocturia. Excess water accentuates the physiological tendency to excrete more fluid when one is recumbent during the night. Elderly males are especially predisposed to nocturia. They invariably suffer from benign prostatic hypertrophy (BPH), which sensitizes the bladder neck to spasm even when the bladder stores modest amounts of urine. Being roused multiple times during the night diminishes the restorative qualities afforded by sleep and may play a role in the ubiquity of depression among the aged. Another, but far less frequent, adverse consequence of excess water intake is hyponatremia or water intoxication. It is rarely encountered among elderly who are taking powerful diuretics, such as lasix. A diuretic is commonly prescribed for largely innocuous, gravity-dependent ankle swelling. When coupled with an eight-glasses-of-water regimen, substantial dilution of body sodium may lead to adverse neuropsychological effects. So far I have evaded discussing how binging on water came about. In fact, I do not know. However, the innocent statement from the Food and Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine, some sixty years ago, is an unlikely source. Nor do I think the medical profession was a significant actor in launching the practice. It took far more powerful voices. Aggressive beverage marketers like Coca-Cola and PepsiCo are more likely suspects. In the short span of a few years their water brands, Aquafina and Dasani, became blockbuster successes. The current market for bottled water is huge and growing. Revenues from global soft drinks and bottled water sales this year are anticipated to exceed US$146 billion. The US is the largest consumer in the world {2}. This has led the Wall Street Journal to gush that bottled water is the next best thing to oil and gold. A variety of factors are driving demand. Topmost in my view is the medicalization of every aspect of life and the erroneous view that we are prone to dehydration unless constantly replenished. Additional factors are the perception that bottled water is safer and tastier than municipal water. In most industrialized countries, however, and especially in the United States, tap water is far more stringently regulated and more frequently monitored than bottled water. For example, New York City has tested its water supply 430,000 times in a single year {3}. Municipalities provide high-quality potable water. The sobering fact is that 25% of bottled water, including popular brands such as Aquafina and Dasani, are merely filtered tap water processed close to their distribution point. If bottled water is without health or safety advantage, wherein is its popularity? When tap and bottled water are compared in blind tests, the source is unidentifiable. The choice is therefore not driven by taste. Perhaps the appeal relates to enhancing self-image. Carrying a small bottle was pioneered by super-models to suggest elegance, high fashion, and affluence. Marketing is particularly focused on women, who drink more bottled water than men. Possibly, as with other articles of consumption, the appeal is not related to the intrinsic utility of the product but in the message it conveys. Being able to afford a product, far costlier than tap water, proclaims wealth and success. Indeed bottle water is very costly. Dasani and Aquafina sell for about five US cents an ounce, while municipal water sells for less than one US cent a gallon. Even gasoline, at current exorbitant prices, is forty percent. Indeed bottled water puts Big Oil to shame. I am persuaded that for those living in developed countries, drinking bottled water should shame the user. Today a billion people lack reliable access to safe drinking water. Dirty water spews disease. According to the World Health Organization, unclean water accounts for eighty percent of global disease and kills about five million people annually. It is worth pondering that merely a quarter of the spending on bottled water could provide safe sanitation and clean water for the wretched of the earth. Even for those who cannot muster a sense of charity for the afflicted, self-interest should cause them to hesitate when resorting to bottled water. Producing and transporting plastic bottles consumes prodigious quantities of oil and other fossil fuels. Non-biodegradable plastic adds to litter and solid waste, which crowds landfills. It has been estimated that to produce the bottles that Americans consumed in 2006 required in excess of seventeen million barrels of oil and increased global warming by adding 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide. That is why I embrace the view of Tom Standage, author of the history of water and other drinks: "Tap water is not so abundant in the developing world. And that is ultimately why I find the illogical enthusiasm for illogical water not simply peculiar, but distasteful." The practicing physician ultimately needs to deal with the mundane question of an individual patient, "How much water should I drink a day?" Unfortunately this important question cannot be readily answered. To respond concretely one must have a wealth of information. For example, how does water requirement vary with age, with gender, with level of activity, with composition of diet, with daily calorie intake, with body mass index, with psychological stress, with type of occupation, in pre- and post-menopausal women, with presence and type of chronic ailments, on and on. A doctor does not treat humankind but a specific unique person. To do so responsibly, one needs prodigious amounts of sound evidence-based information. The physician, dealing with problems of the here and now, cannot wait for the definitive data. Uncertainty is the province of the professional. Herein a complex synthesis is required of a sound education in the basics, guided by a wealth of well assimilated experience, restrained by knowledge that all actions have unintended consequences, and chaperoned by solid common sense. So what is my response to the simple water question? First, a sense of thirst, though weakened by age, is a good litmus for fluid intake. Eight ounces of liquid with a meal should suffice for those not running a marathon or living in the tropics. If the urine is scanty and concentrated, an extra eight ounces is advisable. While diffident about the broad question of how much, I would not hesitate being judgmental when it relates to bottled water and carting it as though an indispensable amulet of healthy living. Bottled water is not a medical but a moral issue. As Voltaire cautioned, "Those who make us believe absurdities can make us commit atrocities". Resorting to bottled water as a routine practice is indeed an atrocity against the environment and against common sense. References: 1. In the drink: Do we really need eight glasses of water a day? Interview Professor Heinz Valtin. Nutrition Action Health Letter (June 2008) 2. http://www1.ibisworld.com/pressrelease/pressrelease.aspx?prid=124 3. Standage T. Bad to the last drop. Op Ed. New York Times (August 01 2005) 4. Standage T. A History of the World in Six Glasses (2006) Copyright (c) 2002 ProCOR.org. Privacy Policy http://www.procor.org/discussion/displaymsg.asp?ref=3690&cate=ProCOR+Dialogue http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From james.irldaly at ntlworld.com Thu Jul 3 08:18:24 2008 From: james.irldaly at ntlworld.com (james daly) Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2008 15:18:24 +0100 Subject: [A-List] Violence in Zimbabwe, and the MDC and social imperialists Message-ID: <15D044CF26574E10A3676FD9B17FD860@home9sg93n9r5y> Wednesday, June 25, 2008 It was MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai who said to Mugabe, "If you don't want to go peacefully, we will remove you violently." [1] -- -- [ Louis Proyect "discredits" this on the grounds that it was said 10 years ago and Tsvangirai apologised the next day. If Obama said it to George W. Bush a belated apology would hardly suffice, and the incident would be remembered for more than 10 years. -- J. D.] -- -- -- It was MDC faction leader Arthur Mutambara who said he was "going to remove Robert Mugabe, I promise you, with every tool at my disposal" and that "We're not going to rule out or in anything - the sky's the limit." [2] It was secretary general of Tsvangirai's MDC faction, Tendai Biti, who warned of Kenya-style post electoral violence if Mugabe won. [3] It was opposition principal Pius Ncube, then Archbishop of Bulawayo, who said he was "ready to lead the people, guns blazing," to oust the Mugabe government. [4] It was the Zimbabwe Resistance Movement that promised to take up arms against the Zanu-PF government if "the poodles who run the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission," failed to declare Tsvangirai the victor of the presidential run-off election. [5] In light of this, is it any surprise that Zanu-PF supporters are "outraged that the Security Council that never saw the need to convene and discuss Kenya when more than 2,000 people were hacked to death over two months, at times in front of Western cameras, saw it fit to meet and discuss Zimbabwe on the back of" claims by the opposition that it was being repressed by a campaign of violence? [6] The Social Imperialist Project With Western media coverage on Zimbabwe monopolized by the views of the neo-liberal MDC, the US and British governments, and "independent" election monitors and human rights groups funded by the US Congress and State Department, the British government's Westminster Foundation for Democracy, George Soros' Open Society Institute, and the CIA- and Council on Foreign Relations-linked Freedom House, one might think it would be possible to find a measure of relief from the blanket uniformity of ruling class dominated opinion on a socialist web site. Just a tiny break. Instead, the Socialist Project [7] served up an article on Zimbabwe, "Death Spiral in Zimbabwe: Mediation, Violence and the GNU", by Grace Kwinjeh, a founding member of Zimbabwe's neo-liberal MDC party and member of its executive committee. [8] The article, not surprisingly, re-iterates a view that is friendly to the party the author is a principal member of. Kwinjeh has a habit of disguising her background, one that's hardly irrelevant to the subject she's writing on, by presenting herself as simply an independent journalist living in South Africa - kind of like John McCain submitting analyses on Obama's politics while calling himself an independent journalist living in Arizona. Kwinjeh, a regular on the US propaganda arm Voice of America' Studio 7, traveled to Washington not too long ago on George Soros's tab to testify to the regime changers in Washington. She is neither independent, particularly interested in national self-determination, nor an opponent of neo-liberalism. [9] One might expect the Socialist Project to offer a view from the other side, especially given its professed support for "the national self-determination of the many peoples of the world" and ostensibly implacable opposition to neo-liberalism. Unlike Kwinjeh, I am sympathetic to Zimbabwe's project of national self-determination, I am implacably opposed to neo-liberalism, and while many of my articles have been published in Zimbabwe's state-owned newspaper, The Herald, (none of which I submitted or was paid for) I have no membership in any political party in Zimbabwe, disguised or otherwise, much less a relationship as a founding member. ISO's Latest Silliness Here's what wrong with the MDC, according to the Zimbabwe section of the International Socialist Organization: "The increasing domination of the party leadership by capitalist and Western elites and the marginalization of workers and radicals.will lead to its likely pursuing a neoliberal capitalist agenda if it assumes power to the detriment of the working people." [10] Funny that it has taken this long for the ISO to figure this out. Here's then MDC spokesman Eddie Cross, formerly vice-chairman of the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries, in advance of 2000 elections - eight years ago! "We are going to fast track privatization. All 50 government parastatals will be privatized within a two-year time-frame, but we are going to go beyond that. We are going to privatize many of the functions of government. We are going to privatize the central statistical office. We are going to privatize virtually the entire school delivery system. And you know, we have looked at the numbers and we think we can get government employment down from about 300,000 at the present time to about 75,000 in five years." [11] Moreover, the principal role in the formation of the party played by the Zimbabwe Democracy Trust, whose patrons are former British foreign secretaries Douglas Hurd, Geoffrey Howe, Malcolm Rifkind and whose chair is Lord Renwick of Clifton, should have provided more than an inkling of what was ahead. So now that the ISO has belatedly figured out that the MDC is dominated by "capitalist and Western elites" and will likely pursue "a neoliberal capitalist agenda," what does it recommend radicals and working people in Zimbabwe do? Unconditionally support Tsvangirai. Yes, that's right. "The ISO.has now modified its position to call for unconditional but fraternally critical support to Tsvangirai." [12] A Canadian connection: Roger Annis and John Riddel are part of a Canadian organization called Socialist Voice, whose web site links to The International Journal of Socialist Renewal, the journal in which ISO-Zimbabwe's latest silliness appeared. A few years ago Annis and Riddel made essentially the same analysis, but in connection with Canada's New Democratic Party. After taking the NDP to task for acting "as a faithful defender of the capitalist order," whose parliamentary program hews "close to the Liberal model" and whose leader "opposes or at best abstains from . mass struggles" -- closing with "they are committed defenders of capitalist rule" - the two recommended that "socialists.give critical support to the NDP." [13] Do these guys go to the same confidence trickster school? Morgan Tsvangirai and the New Humanitarianism During the run-up to the predatory NATO war on Yugoslavia, groups of people who came to be known pejoratively as "cruise missile leftists" and the "new humanitarians" sought to provide a new legal basis for Western imperialism by arguing that ideas of state sovereignty were no longer valid, and that the West should be free to intervene in the internal affairs of other countries on humanitarian grounds. The elevation of the Rwandan civil war to the status of a genocide helped, for calls for interventions in numerous places could be justified by the need "to prevent another Rwanda." In an article published in the British newspaper The Guardian on June 25, Morgan Tsvangirai trotted out the same argument. "Our proposal," he wrote, "is one that aims to remove the often debilitating barriers of state-sovereignty" to open the door for "the words of indignation from global leaders to be backed by the moral rectitude of military force." So the military pursuit of imperialist goals has now become the moral rectitude of the West's military force. Tsvangirai Speaks the Truth In the same article, Tsvangirai opines: "The battle in Zimbabwe today is a battle between democracy and dictatorship, justice and injustice, right and wrong." He's right. The battle in Zimbabwe today is between the democracy of popular land ownership and self-rule and the dictatorship of rule by outsiders working through proxies; between the justice of Zimbabweans reclaiming the land that was stolen from them and the injustice of sanctions; between the right of struggle for national independence and the wrong of neocolonial oppression. 1. BBC, September 30, 2000. 2. Times Online, March 5, 2006. 3. Herald (Zimbabwe), March 27, 2008. 4. Sunday Times (UK), July 1, 2007. 5. The Zimbabwe Times, May 31, 2008. 6. Herald (Zimbabwe) June 25, 2008. 7. http://socialistproject.ca/ 8. http://socialistproject.ca/bullet/bullet116.html 9. You can learn more about Kwinjeh here http://gowans.wordpress.com/2008/03/23/who-is-grace-kwinjeh-and-why-did-patrick-bond-co-author-an-article-with-her/ and here http://gowans.wordpress.com/2008/03/24/the-company-patrick-bond-keeps/ 10. http://links.org.au/node/489 11. John Wright, "Victims of the West," Morning Star (UK), December 18, 2007. 12. http://links.org.au/node/489 13. http://gowans.blogspot.com/2005/12/marxists-my-ass-these-people-are.html From james.irldaly at ntlworld.com Thu Jul 3 08:20:27 2008 From: james.irldaly at ntlworld.com (james daly) Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2008 15:20:27 +0100 Subject: [A-List] Violence in Zimbabwe, and the MDC and its Social Imperialist Supporters Message-ID: <5073883D33FE4AAC9D329CFB5C98DC2D@home9sg93n9r5y> Violence in Zimbabwe, and the MDC and its Social Imperialist Supporters By Stephen Gowans Wednesday, June 25, 2008 It was MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai who said to Mugabe, "If you don't want to go peacefully, we will remove you violently." [1] -- -- [ Louis Proyect "discredits" this on the grounds that it was said 10 years ago and Tsvangirai apologised the next day. If Obama said it to George W. Bush a belated apology would hardly suffice, and the incident would be remembered for more than 10 years. -- J. D.] -- -- -- It was MDC faction leader Arthur Mutambara who said he was "going to remove Robert Mugabe, I promise you, with every tool at my disposal" and that "We're not going to rule out or in anything - the sky's the limit." [2] It was secretary general of Tsvangirai's MDC faction, Tendai Biti, who warned of Kenya-style post electoral violence if Mugabe won. [3] It was opposition principal Pius Ncube, then Archbishop of Bulawayo, who said he was "ready to lead the people, guns blazing," to oust the Mugabe government. [4] It was the Zimbabwe Resistance Movement that promised to take up arms against the Zanu-PF government if "the poodles who run the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission," failed to declare Tsvangirai the victor of the presidential run-off election. [5] In light of this, is it any surprise that Zanu-PF supporters are "outraged that the Security Council that never saw the need to convene and discuss Kenya when more than 2,000 people were hacked to death over two months, at times in front of Western cameras, saw it fit to meet and discuss Zimbabwe on the back of" claims by the opposition that it was being repressed by a campaign of violence? [6] The Social Imperialist Project With Western media coverage on Zimbabwe monopolized by the views of the neo-liberal MDC, the US and British governments, and "independent" election monitors and human rights groups funded by the US Congress and State Department, the British government's Westminster Foundation for Democracy, George Soros' Open Society Institute, and the CIA- and Council on Foreign Relations-linked Freedom House, one might think it would be possible to find a measure of relief from the blanket uniformity of ruling class dominated opinion on a socialist web site. Just a tiny break. Instead, the Socialist Project [7] served up an article on Zimbabwe, "Death Spiral in Zimbabwe: Mediation, Violence and the GNU", by Grace Kwinjeh, a founding member of Zimbabwe's neo-liberal MDC party and member of its executive committee. [8] The article, not surprisingly, re-iterates a view that is friendly to the party the author is a principal member of. Kwinjeh has a habit of disguising her background, one that's hardly irrelevant to the subject she's writing on, by presenting herself as simply an independent journalist living in South Africa - kind of like John McCain submitting analyses on Obama's politics while calling himself an independent journalist living in Arizona. Kwinjeh, a regular on the US propaganda arm Voice of America' Studio 7, traveled to Washington not too long ago on George Soros's tab to testify to the regime changers in Washington. She is neither independent, particularly interested in national self-determination, nor an opponent of neo-liberalism. [9] One might expect the Socialist Project to offer a view from the other side, especially given its professed support for "the national self-determination of the many peoples of the world" and ostensibly implacable opposition to neo-liberalism. Unlike Kwinjeh, I am sympathetic to Zimbabwe's project of national self-determination, I am implacably opposed to neo-liberalism, and while many of my articles have been published in Zimbabwe's state-owned newspaper, The Herald, (none of which I submitted or was paid for) I have no membership in any political party in Zimbabwe, disguised or otherwise, much less a relationship as a founding member. ISO's Latest Silliness Here's what wrong with the MDC, according to the Zimbabwe section of the International Socialist Organization: "The increasing domination of the party leadership by capitalist and Western elites and the marginalization of workers and radicals.will lead to its likely pursuing a neoliberal capitalist agenda if it assumes power to the detriment of the working people." [10] Funny that it has taken this long for the ISO to figure this out. Here's then MDC spokesman Eddie Cross, formerly vice-chairman of the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries, in advance of 2000 elections - eight years ago! "We are going to fast track privatization. All 50 government parastatals will be privatized within a two-year time-frame, but we are going to go beyond that. We are going to privatize many of the functions of government. We are going to privatize the central statistical office. We are going to privatize virtually the entire school delivery system. And you know, we have looked at the numbers and we think we can get government employment down from about 300,000 at the present time to about 75,000 in five years." [11] Moreover, the principal role in the formation of the party played by the Zimbabwe Democracy Trust, whose patrons are former British foreign secretaries Douglas Hurd, Geoffrey Howe, Malcolm Rifkind and whose chair is Lord Renwick of Clifton, should have provided more than an inkling of what was ahead. So now that the ISO has belatedly figured out that the MDC is dominated by "capitalist and Western elites" and will likely pursue "a neoliberal capitalist agenda," what does it recommend radicals and working people in Zimbabwe do? Unconditionally support Tsvangirai. Yes, that's right. "The ISO.has now modified its position to call for unconditional but fraternally critical support to Tsvangirai." [12] A Canadian connection: Roger Annis and John Riddel are part of a Canadian organization called Socialist Voice, whose web site links to The International Journal of Socialist Renewal, the journal in which ISO-Zimbabwe's latest silliness appeared. A few years ago Annis and Riddel made essentially the same analysis, but in connection with Canada's New Democratic Party. After taking the NDP to task for acting "as a faithful defender of the capitalist order," whose parliamentary program hews "close to the Liberal model" and whose leader "opposes or at best abstains from . mass struggles" -- closing with "they are committed defenders of capitalist rule" - the two recommended that "socialists.give critical support to the NDP." [13] Do these guys go to the same confidence trickster school? Morgan Tsvangirai and the New Humanitarianism During the run-up to the predatory NATO war on Yugoslavia, groups of people who came to be known pejoratively as "cruise missile leftists" and the "new humanitarians" sought to provide a new legal basis for Western imperialism by arguing that ideas of state sovereignty were no longer valid, and that the West should be free to intervene in the internal affairs of other countries on humanitarian grounds. The elevation of the Rwandan civil war to the status of a genocide helped, for calls for interventions in numerous places could be justified by the need "to prevent another Rwanda." In an article published in the British newspaper The Guardian on June 25, Morgan Tsvangirai trotted out the same argument. "Our proposal," he wrote, "is one that aims to remove the often debilitating barriers of state-sovereignty" to open the door for "the words of indignation from global leaders to be backed by the moral rectitude of military force." So the military pursuit of imperialist goals has now become the moral rectitude of the West's military force. Tsvangirai Speaks the Truth In the same article, Tsvangirai opines: "The battle in Zimbabwe today is a battle between democracy and dictatorship, justice and injustice, right and wrong." He's right. The battle in Zimbabwe today is between the democracy of popular land ownership and self-rule and the dictatorship of rule by outsiders working through proxies; between the justice of Zimbabweans reclaiming the land that was stolen from them and the injustice of sanctions; between the right of struggle for national independence and the wrong of neocolonial oppression. 1. BBC, September 30, 2000. 2. Times Online, March 5, 2006. 3. Herald (Zimbabwe), March 27, 2008. 4. Sunday Times (UK), July 1, 2007. 5. The Zimbabwe Times, May 31, 2008. 6. Herald (Zimbabwe) June 25, 2008. 7. http://socialistproject.ca/ 8. http://socialistproject.ca/bullet/bullet116.html 9. You can learn more about Kwinjeh here http://gowans.wordpress.com/2008/03/23/who-is-grace-kwinjeh-and-why-did-patrick-bond-co-author-an-article-with-her/ and here http://gowans.wordpress.com/2008/03/24/the-company-patrick-bond-keeps/ 10. http://links.org.au/node/489 11. John Wright, "Victims of the West," Morning Star (UK), December 18, 2007. 12. http://links.org.au/node/489 13. http://gowans.blogspot.com/2005/12/marxists-my-ass-these-people-are.html From the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com Thu Jul 3 10:31:04 2008 From: the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com (Leighm) Date: Thu, 03 Jul 2008 09:31:04 -0700 Subject: [A-List] =?windows-1252?q?Barack-_=91I_may_have_a_pigmentation_di?= =?windows-1252?q?sorder=2C_but_I=92m_just_like_you=2C_Mr=2E_Businessman?= =?windows-1252?q?=92?= Message-ID: <486CFEC8.9090304@gmail.com> Barack- ?I may have a pigmentation disorder, but I?m just like you, Mr. Businessman? By Tony Logan NOT MY TRIBE - 6/27/2008 2:57PM MDT Barack Obama?s recent campaigning has highlighted how he?s ready to go to war against Iran alongside Israel, and how he supports using the death penalty even more than it already is used by the government in the US. Barack Obama, to the Right of the Supreme Court! Change the business community can back safely! Why he even berates Black fathers for being bad role models for the kids! They?re Black! Let?s see? More guns, bombs, and equipment for more war! Looks good for business. More prisons, death chambers, and nastiness to the lower classes! Looks good for the industrial-police-prison-National Security business crowd. More sanctimonious moralizing. Looks good for the church businesses, too. ?I may have a pigmentation disorder, but I?m just like you, Mr. American Dumb Ass Businessman!? Vote Barack Obama! Safely, now. http://www.notmytribe.com/2008/barack-i-may-have-a-pigmentation-disorder-but-im-just-like-you-mr-businessman-83599.html From tal1 at cogeco.ca Thu Jul 3 11:24:07 2008 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2008 13:24:07 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Serbia: Hague Tribunal Is An Accomplice To War Crimes Message-ID: ----- Original Message ----- From: Rick Rozoff To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, July 03, 2008 12:12 PM Subject: [stopnato] Serbia: Hague Tribunal Is An Accomplice To War Crimes http://www.focus-fen.net/?id=n144987 MakFax (Macedonia) July 3, 2008 Serbia's PM: ICTY acquittal decision is a new crime against innocent victims Belgrade - Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica assessed that by today's decision of acquittal, the ICTY became an accomplice in the war crimes committed by Naser Oric, the Serbian Tanjug agency reports. By this verdict a new crime against innocent victims who suffered at the hands of Naser Oric has been committed, Kostunica told Tanjug. After the acquittal verdicts to war criminals Ramush Haradinaj and Naser Oric, the ICTY lost any legitimacy and it can no longer be considered a court that justly establishes guilt, the Serbian prime minister assessed. The Hague Tribunal no longer has the legitimacy of a court and it is obvious that the Tribunal exists primarily to condemn as guilty only one side, the Serbs, for the crimes of the civil war by which former Yugoslavia was disintegrated. =========================== Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato To subscribe, send an e-mail to: stopnato-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages http://lists.topica.com/lists/ANTINATO/read ============================== __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Database | Polls | Calendar MARKETPLACE Special offer for Yahoo! Groups from Blockbuster! Get a free 1-month trial with no late fees or due dates. Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required) Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch format to Traditional Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe Recent Activity 1New Members Visit Your Group Dog Zone on Yahoo! Groups Join a Group all about dogs. Best of Y! Groups Check it out and nominate your group to be featured. Wellness Spot Embrace Change Break the Yo-Yo weight loss cycle.. __,_._,___ From critical.montages at gmail.com Thu Jul 3 14:07:25 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2008 16:07:25 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Iran Fights Scourge of Addiction in Plain View, Stressing Treatment Message-ID: June 27, 2008 Iran Fights Scourge of Addiction in Plain View, Stressing Treatment By NAZILA FATHI TEHRAN ? Ali blew out a candle on a small round cake. More than 200 people cheered, celebrating the first anniversary of his becoming drug-free. "I was in an awful condition," said Ali, describing 12 years of addiction to opium and alcohol. "I reached a state that I smashed our furniture and threw our television out of the window." Ali, 31, who has a wife and child and identified himself by only his first name to avoid possible embarrassment to his family, is among more than 800 addicts struggling to overcome their habits at a free treatment center in central Tehran. More than a million Iranians are addicted to some form of opium, heroin or other opium derivative, according to the government, and some estimates run as high as 10 million. In a country where the discussion of some social and cultural issues, like homosexuality, can be all but taboo, drug addiction has been widely acknowledged as a serious problem. It is talked about openly in schools and on television. Posters have encouraged people to think of addiction as a disease and to seek treatment. Iran's theocratic government has encouraged and financed a vast expansion in the number of drug treatment centers to help users confront their addictions and to combat the spread of H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, through shared needles. The center in central Tehran, which is called Congress 60 and is run by a private nonprofit agency, is one of 600 centers that provide drug treatment across the country with help from government money. An additional 1,250 centers offer methadone, free needles and other services for addicts who are not ready to quit, including food and treatment for H.I.V. and other sexually transmitted infections. Iran's government, trying to curb addiction's huge social costs, has been more supportive of drug treatment than any other government in the Islamic world, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. It was not always this way. After the 1979 revolution, the government tried a more traditional approach: arresting drug users and putting them in jail. But two decades later, it recognized that this approach had failed. A sharp increase in the crime rate and the number of people infected with H.I.V., both directly linked to a surge in narcotics use, persuaded the government to shift strategies. "We have realized that an addict is a social reality," said Muhammad-Reza Jahani, the vice president for the Committee Combating Drugs, which coordinates the government's efforts to fight drug addiction and trafficking. "We don't want to fight addicts; we want to fight addiction. We need to manage addiction." No one knows for certain just how widespread addiction is. The official estimate is 1.1 million people, according to Esmail Ahmadi Moghadam, the leader of the security forces. Mr. Moghadam has banned the use of any other statistics on addiction, according to the state-run news agency IRNA. But some experts put the number much higher. At a conference on addiction in 2005, Ahmad Kavand, an official in the Interior Ministry, put the number of addicts at 10 million, or about one in every seven people in Iran, the semiofficial Fars News Agency reported. Southern Tehran has neighborhoods where homeless addicts can readily be found sleeping in parks or openly injecting drugs. The smell of opium in residential neighborhoods, even in affluent areas, is common. Opium has deep cultural roots in Iran. It has long been considered an effective painkiller, and its use is socially acceptable. Many addicts start by smoking opium occasionally, and move on to heroin and other opium-based narcotics after becoming dependent. In many cities, a bride brings the equipment for smoking opium as part of her dowry. Before the 1979 revolution, the government gave opium to addicts to enable them to avoid drug dealers. "Opium in our culture is like Champagne in France," said Dr. Ali Alavi, with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. "Many use it for entertainment." Drug abuse is even more common outside Tehran and other large cities, particularly in the provinces along the drug-trafficking routes that run from Iran's long eastern border with Afghanistan, where opium poppies are grown, to the northwest, where it is transported to Turkey and Europe. More than 93 percent of the opium produced for the world's illicit narcotics markets comes from Afghanistan, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, and Iran is the main trafficking route for nearly 60 percent of the opium grown in Afghanistan. With opium production skyrocketing in Afghanistan, some Iranian officials accuse the American military of ignoring poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, even though it is a major source of revenue for the Taliban and Al Qaeda. "We think the Americans want to keep this source of infection near us," said Mr. Jahani, the Iranian antidrug official. "Because of the animosity between Iran and the U.S., this is the best way to keep our resources and forces occupied." The government grew so concerned about drug trafficking that it spent $6 billion in 2006 to build a wall 13 feet high, with barbed wire, and a trench 13 feet deep and 16 feet wide along a third of Iran's border with Afghanistan. Iran seizes more illicit opiates than any other country, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime said, and it burns tons of confiscated drugs in a ceremony every year. Still, plenty gets through, and drug abuse remains widespread. The drugs have been getting stronger, too. Four years ago, dealers introduced a further refinement of heroin known here as crack. Unrelated to crack cocaine, the drug is mostly smoked, is vastly more powerful than raw opium and has caught on rapidly. Four years ago, 54 percent of addicts in Iran used opium, according to a survey by the Committee Combating Drugs. Only 30 percent of addicts now use opium, the survey found, with many having switched to crack. Some people who become addicted to crack are unaware that it is made from heroin. Samira, 21, who said she had been smoking crack for four years, dragged herself to the House of Sun, a drug treatment center for women in Tehran, trying for the seventh time, she said, to find a way to quit. She said she started smoking opium when she was 15 to relieve the pain of a broken leg. "My sister is married to a drug dealer, and he told me that crack was not addictive," she said, struggling to keep her eyes open. "I have to smoke at least every two hours now." In dealing with opiate addiction, the government has also had to begin addressing AIDS, which had long been considered a Western problem. The front line has been prisons, where heroin addiction and needle-sharing are rampant. After a 25 percent surge in H.I.V. cases, the government began distributing free needles in prisons in 2000. The government insists that there are only about 17,000 people with H.I.V. in Iran, but it has also ordered drug treatment centers not to disclose how many of their clients have AIDS. At one Tehran center, Ali Yaghoubi, 47, with hollow cheeks and eyes, said he became infected with H.I.V. while serving a 25-year prison sentence for robbery and selling drugs. "We had to share something called a pump for injecting heroin," he said. "It was a thick needle hooked up to a pump." The number of addicts taking methadone has increased to 100,000 from 5,000 in two years, Kamran Bagheri Lankarani, the minister of health, said in May, according to Iran-e-Pak, a magazine about addiction. Almost all of the alternative treatment centers are subsidized by the government, but still have a relatively free hand in choosing their methods. "There are so many options that no addict can claim that there is nowhere to go for help," said Dr. Mohammad-Reza Haddadi, a physician and researcher at the National Center for Addiction Studies. "It is much cheaper and healthier for them to go to these centers for methadone than to drug dealers." From nscchicago at igc.org Thu Jul 3 11:40:30 2008 From: nscchicago at igc.org (NSC WORKERS COOP) Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2008 12:40:30 -0500 Subject: [A-List] Nicaragua Network Hotline--July 1, 2008 Message-ID: <008501c8dd33$ebae04e0$0a0110ac@NSCCHICAGO> Nicaragua Network Hotline--July 1, 2008 From: Nicaragua Network [mailto:nicanet at afgj.org] Subject: Nicaragua Network Hotline--July 1, 2008 You are receiving this email from Nicaragua Network because you are subscribed to the Hotline list. To ensure that you continue to receive emails from us, add nicanet at afgj.org to your address book today. Nicaragua Network Hotline www.nicanet.org July 1, 2008 1. IMF clarifies position on Venezuelan aid 2. Government ramping up farm support 3. Reforestation campaign begins in Managua 4. Opposition marches on June 27 5. "Streets for the People" moves forward amidst criticism Topic 1: IMF clarifies position on Venezuelan aid The IMF's permanent Nicaragua representative, Humberto Arbulu, said on June 25, "Taking into account the adverse international situation particularly the increase in the price of petroleum and other basic products, I would say that within those restrictions, the macroeconomic situation [of Nicaragua] is good." He added that "international reserves are buoyant; the fiscal deficit is under control; [and] the financial system continues healthy growth...." When asked about aid from Venezuela, Arbulu said, "The authorities are about ready with a system for reporting the Venezuelan aid. They don't have all the figures yet. We just have the total amount of US$520 million." He added, "What we know today, and that could vary if the authorities give us different information, the US$520 million is mainly direct investment, in donations from PDVSA [the Venezuelan oil company] and then there is a small amount on 90 day credit from PDVSA." Arbulu said that the electricity generators alone could account for US$200 million of the aid and that it will not produce public indebtedness. The IMF representative also expressed satisfaction that the National Assembly had passed a Transparency Law on June 24, but he said that the IMF might suggest amendments after the law is published "to increase even more the transparency" of government finances. Arbulu said that the IMF "has no problem" with increases to salaries of health workers, teachers, police and military because "the increases were contemplated earlier and there are resources available that permit the government to keep the deficit at 1.8% [of GDP] which is what the IMF supports." Topic 2: Government ramping up farm support Ariel Bucardo, Minister of Agriculture and Livestock, met last week with 300 farmers and ranchers in Matiguas to discuss production, financing, and planting advances. "The important thing about this meeting was the agreement we arrived at with farmers and ranchers to create councils of production,... to insure food [supply],... to increase production and thereby eradicate poverty," Bucardo said. The Rural Credit Fund (FCR) approved a US$525,000 grant to the Union of Cooperatives of Multiple Services of the North (UCOSEMUN) for planting and marketing of 1,180 acres of corn and 1,250 of beans. "Seven hundred small and medium producers will benefit in the municipalities of Condega, Esteli, Pueblo Nuevo and La Trinidad," said Freddy Alem?n, financial administrative manager of UCOSEMUN. The beneficiaries said they were happy with the arrangement because they have money for the first planting and at the time of the harvest will be able to sell it. Last year, UCOSEMUN sold 100 tons of beans to the Nicaraguan Company of Basic Foods (ENABAS) to supply the population with beans at a below market price. Elsewhere, 200 women in the department of Granada each received a "production bond" last weekend. The bonds were presented to the women by government representatives and will be used to buy poultry and seeds for fruit trees, among other things. The majority of the women who will benefit from these bonds are single mothers who said they felt grateful to President Daniel Ortega for the new policies implemented that allowed them to receive the bonds. This is part of the Ortega government's Zero Hunger program. Topic 3: Reforestation campaign begins in Managua The National Reforestation Campaign, promoted by the National Forestry Institute (INAFOR), the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources (MARENA) and students from the Miguel de Cervantes Institute [High School], officially began this Saturday with the planting of what El Nuevo Diario said were 4,000 and La Prensa said were 8,700 trees in the community of Pochocuape, south of Managua. The southern river basin zone has been identified as one of the most vulnerable due to the vast amounts of water and sediments that pour into it during the rainy season. The protection of this area is vital because it provides more than 60% of Managua's potable water. Other water sources have been contaminated by industries and septic tanks while urbanization in the middle and lower parts of the basin has occurred without proper planning or environmentally safe construction. It is because of this vulnerability that the Reforestation Campaign has concentrated on replanting the area. "They said that if we wanted to come plant trees, we could. We were not required to do it but we know that it is necessary to protect our environment," said Sherlin Ruiz, a fourth year student at the Miguel de Cervantes Institute. The director of INAFOR, William Schwartz, said that the goal is to reforest 60 thousand hectares per year before 2012 (aiming to plant nine million trees throughout Nicaragua) with the help of environmental authorities in order to remedy the past years of destruction. Topic 4: Opposition marches on June 27 On June 27, thousands of Nicaraguans marched in Managua "to repudiate the Ortega dictatorship, the spoils distributing Ortega-Aleman pact, the constant rise in the price of basic foods, growing inflation and the lack of serious projects, either populist or political, to combat poverty and unemployment," according to a statement by organizers. Twelve civil society groups formed the "Citizen Union for Democracy" to organize the march. The organizations included the Civil Coordinator, the Movement for Nicaragua, the Nicaraguan Youth Network, Youth for Democracy in Nicaragua, INCIDE, the Permanent Commission on Human Rights, the Group for Citizen Reflection and Action, the Autonomous Women's Movement, the United for Leon Movement, "Let's Do Democracy," the Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation, FUNDEMOS, and the Teachers Federation of Nicaragua. The Sandinista Renovation Movement, the "Let's Go with Eduardo" Movement and the Conservative Party also joined the march. It was the second march in a week organized to protest the cancellation of the legal status of two Nicaraguan political parties, the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS) and the Conservative Party (PC), on June 11. The US government-funded International Republican Institute provided $80,000 for the march through the Movement for Nicaragua which it created during the 2006 presidential election. Marchers demanded that Ortega resign denouncing him as "incompetent" and as a "terrorist" because he granted political asylum to three women wounded during a Colombian military attack on a camp in Ecuador where the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) was negotiating prisoner releases. Signs said "Enough!" "He must go!" "No to the pact!" "Ortega and Somoza are the same thing!" and "This is the beginning of the end!" The march, which took place without incident, was calculated by organizers to have been attended by more than 15,000 people while police put the figure at 6,000. Cancellation of the legal status of the MRS and the PC has also come in for criticism from some Sandinista sources. Felipe Stuart Cournoyer states that even though the Council of Electoral Experts of Latin America has said that the decision of the Supreme Electoral Council conforms to Nicaraguan law, it is a "grave anti-democratic action, a political act made possible by an anti-democratic law, based on a long tradition of state control over political parties." Stuart, a Sandinista political analyst, said that "in my humble opinion [the decision] constitutes a serious political error and miscalculation by the FSLN and the PLC," naming both of the parties represented on the Supreme Electoral Council which has the constitutional authority over election issues. Topic 5: "Streets for the People" moves forward amidst criticism The Streets for the People program is scheduled to pave 1,000 blocks of city streets-equivalent to 100 kilometers or 60 miles, funded from the petroleum agreements signed by the presidents of Venezuela and Nicaragua. The program is now under control of the mayors of the nation's cities and opposition leaders said last week that the 83 Sandinista mayors are receiving the most funds, with 19 towns with Liberal mayors also receiving funds for street paving. In the 2004 municipal elections the FSLN- Convergence candidates and the PLC candidates won all but 8 local governments in the entire country. According to plans the street paving should be completed by the time of the November municipal elections. The daily newspaper La Prensa reports that the public works contracts are given out on a no-bid basis. Gonzalo Navarro, the Sandinista mayor of Matagalpa where 23 blocks will be paved, said, "In our case, the mayor's office signed a contract directly because we are in the rainy season and we wanted to speed things up." The funds for the projects are disbursed by the Alba-Caruna (Cooperative of Savings and Credit- Rural Funds) which manages the funds from the oil arrangement with Venezuela within the framework of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA). In Managua, 400 blocks of streets will be paved and US$8 million of the US$20 million budget for the program will be spent. The projects are presently 25% finished. Streets that already have basic infrastructure such as sewer lines will be paved with asphalt while those which do not will be paved with paving stones which are more easily removed. This hotline is prepared from the Nicaragua News Service and other sources. To receive a more extensive weekly summary of the news from Nicaragua by e-mail or postal service, send a check for $60.00 to Nicaragua Network, 1247 E St., SE, Washington, DC 20003. We can be reached by phone at 202-544-9355. Our web site is: www.nicanet.org. 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Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 31633 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20080703/45aaf5f7/attachment.txt From shimogamo at attglobal.net Thu Jul 3 19:00:15 2008 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Bill Totten) Date: Fri, 04 Jul 2008 10:00:15 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Rogue Nation Message-ID: <486D761F.4060802@attglobal.net> by Charley Reese lewrockwell.com (June 30 2008) One gets the impression that there are some people in Washington who believe that Israel or the US can bomb Iran's nuclear reactors, fly home, and it will be mission complete. It makes you wonder if perhaps there is a virus going around that is gradually making people stupid. If we or Israel attack Iran, we will have a new war on our hands. The Iranians are not going to shrug off an attack and say, "You naughty boys, you". Consider how much trouble Iraq has given us. Some 4,000 dead and 29,000 wounded, a half a trillion dollars in cost and still climbing, and five years later, we cannot say that the country is pacified. Iraq is a small country compared with Iran. Iran has about seventy million people. Its western mountains border the Persian Gulf. In other words, its missiles and guns look down on the US ships below it. And it has lots of missiles, from short-range to intermediate-range (around 2,200 kilometers). More to the point, it has been equipped by Russia with the fastest anti-ship missile on the planet. The SS-N-22 Sunburn can travel at Mach 3 at high altitude and at Mach 2.2 at low altitude. That is faster than anything in our arsenal. Iran's conventional forces include an army of 540,000 men and 300,000 reserves, including 120,000 Iranian Guards especially trained in unconventional warfare. It has more than 1,600 main battle tanks and 21,000 other armored combat vehicles. It has 3,200 artillery pieces, three submarines, 59 surface warships and ten amphibious ships. It's been receiving help in arming itself from China, North Korea and Russia. Unlike Iraq, Iran's forces have not been worn down with bombing, wars and sanctions. It also has a new anti-aircraft defense system from Russia that I've heard is pretty snazzy. So, if you think we or Israel can attack Iran and not expect retaliation, I'd have to say with regret that you are a moron. If you think we could easily handle Iran in an all-out war, I'd have to promote you to idiot. Attacking Iran would be folly, but we seem to be living in the Age of Folly. Morons and idiots took us into an unjustified war against Iraq before we had finished the job in Afghanistan. Now we have troops tied down in both countries. China has a tremendous investment and interest in Iran and would likely see an attack as a threat to its national interests. China could strike a large blow against the US just by dumping the financial paper we have foolishly allowed the Chinese to pile up, thanks to the trade deficit. For some years now, I've worried that we seem to be more and more like Colonial England ? arrogant, racist, overestimating our own capacity and underestimating that of our enemies. As the fate of the British Empire demonstrates, that is a fatal flaw. The British never dreamed that the "little yellow people" could come ashore by land and take Singapore from the rear or that they would sink the pride of the British fleet, but they did both. I suppose no one in Washington can imagine the Iranians sinking one of our carriers in the Persian Gulf. How'd you like to be the president who has to tell the American people that we've lost a carrier for the first time since World War II? Exactly how the Iranians will respond to an attack, I don't know, but they will respond. In keeping with our present policy, our attack on Iran would be illegal, since under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has the right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. Who would have thought that we would become the rogue nation committing acts of aggression around the globe? http://www.lewrockwell.com/reese/reese471.html http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From shimogamo at attglobal.net Fri Jul 4 03:56:46 2008 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Bill Totten) Date: Fri, 04 Jul 2008 18:56:46 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Why the US is a helluva country Message-ID: <486DF3DE.40500@attglobal.net> by Lorna Salzman http://culturechange.org (July 01 2008) Some people are giving a lot of thought to how to build a movement around global warming. This is a tough challenge but given American know-how, can-do, ingenuity, cojones, knee-jerk patriotic hubris, suspicion of foreigners, a staggeringly high fifty percent literacy rate, reliance on conspiracy theories, faith in one god or another, and unflagging belief in progress in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, I am sure it can be done. This is a helluva country. Here's why. 1. A commitment to representative democracy conditioned only on the necessity of belonging to one of two parties, Republican or Democrat. Republicans have the upper hand given that their 24th pair of chromosomes codes for Greed. Democrats' 24th chromosome codes for Deceit. It's Win-Win for either of them. 2. An abiding love for gambling, monster theme parks, shopping in giant malls, riding in huge vans, and family values that use churches and TV sets to bring everyone together. These shared values give a remarkable cohesion to American society even in the face of ecological collapse. No one wants to be a nattering nabob of negativity as the world crumbles around us. Stiff upper lips are enough for the British but not for Americans, who need overstuffed credit cards to reassure themselves that they are the salvation of the world and if you don't like it you can go back where you came from. 3. A fervent belief in the right to cheap gas. After decades of paying under a dollar per gallon for gasoline - 35 cents in the 1960s - Americans are now getting really pissed off at the chutzpah of royal monarchs, royal leftist pains-in-the-ass and Royal Dutch Shell executives who think they have as much a right to make money as Americans do. What gives foreigners these privileges? Don't they know we can send in the troops anytime we want for any reason? 4. An indissoluble adhesion to religion in one form or another. It is undeniable that the existence of dissent, protest and freedom of expression causes discomfort to many Americans, sending them into the arms and shelter of various religious cults and institutions, who will, on their behalf, fight against these basic freedoms and rights so as to make them feel better. Generally speaking, they are cheaper than psychoanalysts depending on how much of your meagre salary you turn over to these delightful snake oil salesmen. (Nothing wrong with snake oil; lots of it, under different names, is sold in "Health food" stores to the conspiracy theorists on the left and right who think all doctors and medicine are poisoning them). 5. There is nothing like conspiracy theories, except maybe some stand-up comedians, to keep people amused and connected. We can thank the internet for making this political networking possible, since it ties up people who might be making serious mischief elsewhere. 6. An unprecedented web of multiculturalism, ranging from extreme Political Correctness which bans words like "beggars" and "midget", to Rambo Limbaughs, to posturing paleoliberals like Eric Alterman and The Nation, to New Age gurus like Deepak Chopra, to street-theater rabblerousers like Al Sharpton, not to mention the mammalian diversity in the halls of Congress, where the promise of equal opportunity is fulfilled in the election of liars, louts and lechers every two years. This country can be rightly proud of its tolerance for dissent, where blacks think all whites are racists and whites think all blacks are Arabs. 7. Only in America could the conundrum of disdain for government and politicians be so perfectly illustrated by the election-year digestion of the whole cloth of candidates' promises. 8. An adherence to the time-tested practice of misogyny, whether in the corporate glass ceiling, skewed pay scales, domestic violence, or the female slavery in Mormon religious brothels that condemns generations of girls and women to illiteracy, inequality and isolation. Let no one accuse Americans of forsaking the prejudices and practices of their pioneer ancestors. 9. A obeisant compliant media industry that, unlike its brethren in congress, is willing and eager to feed the demands, biases and fears of its readers and listeners. It cannot be accused of elitism or pandering to the select few; on the contrary, it faithfully brings, every hour of the day and night, the promise of prosperity and material success to tens of millions of people even as the country's political and economic leaders strive to deprive them of these things. Truly, it is a balm for troubled Americans who are tired of being bombarded with the bad news about global warming, epidemics, food shortages and the prospect of parking their RV in their backyard indefinitely. Given these conditions, who should be leading our country? The only people qualified to lead our country fall into at least one of these categories: atheists/secularists; women; libertarians; homeless. Atheists and secularists are independent rational thinkers and resistant to cult thinking and behavior. Women are obviously the more compassionate, stable and social justice-oriented gender. Libertarians, though they have some peculiar ideas about guns, taxes and the environment, are highly tolerant of dissent and defenders of civil liberties. And the homeless need to replace the corporate lobbyists and executives and be allowed to pursue their own self interest: getting a roof over their heads and a hot meal. (Note: I have left out gays and lesbians because basically they are really no different from the rest of society). Here is my proposed list for the top positions in Washington: President: Dennis Kucinich. A little guy with a big brain and heart. Vice president: Weird Al Yankovich. Because we need another VP named Al. Secretary of State: Christopher Hitchens. A gutsy smartass atheist with no ax to grind, who is hated by the left and the religious community ... testimony to his value. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare: Ayaan Hirsi Ali. A reward for her moral witness and courage in facing down islamist extremism and PC. Secretary of Commerce: Reverend Billy of the Church of Stop Shopping. Secretary for the Environment: James Gustave Speth. For being a non-leftist fingering capitalism as the root of the world's problems. (If he declines, I nominate Dave Foreman). Secretary of Labor: Ralph Nader. _____ Lorna Salzman started her forty-year career as environmental activist saving wetlands on eastern Long Island and got her big boost and inspiration when Dave Brower hired her as regional representative of Friends of the Earth in New York. After serving over ten years with FOE, mostly fighting nuclear power and fending off the Army Corps of Engineers, she had brief stints at National Audubon Society's American Birds magazine, at Food & Water fighting food irradiation, and in the 1990s served three years as natural resource specialist at the New York City Department of Environmental Protection. In between she founded the New York Green Party, ran as a green for congress in 2002, and sought the party's presidential nomination in 2004. Her collected writings are at lornasalzman.com . Her previous article in Culture Change was "Neo-liberals in green clothing: Nordhaus, Shellenberger and Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors" at culturechange.org . http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=182&Itemid=1#cont http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From shimogamo at attglobal.net Fri Jul 4 03:56:56 2008 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Bill Totten) Date: Fri, 04 Jul 2008 18:56:56 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Why the US is a helluva country Message-ID: <486DF3E8.9040501@attglobal.net> by Lorna Salzman http://culturechange.org (July 01 2008) Some people are giving a lot of thought to how to build a movement around global warming. This is a tough challenge but given American know-how, can-do, ingenuity, cojones, knee-jerk patriotic hubris, suspicion of foreigners, a staggeringly high fifty percent literacy rate, reliance on conspiracy theories, faith in one god or another, and unflagging belief in progress in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, I am sure it can be done. This is a helluva country. Here's why. 1. A commitment to representative democracy conditioned only on the necessity of belonging to one of two parties, Republican or Democrat. Republicans have the upper hand given that their 24th pair of chromosomes codes for Greed. Democrats' 24th chromosome codes for Deceit. It's Win-Win for either of them. 2. An abiding love for gambling, monster theme parks, shopping in giant malls, riding in huge vans, and family values that use churches and TV sets to bring everyone together. These shared values give a remarkable cohesion to American society even in the face of ecological collapse. No one wants to be a nattering nabob of negativity as the world crumbles around us. Stiff upper lips are enough for the British but not for Americans, who need overstuffed credit cards to reassure themselves that they are the salvation of the world and if you don't like it you can go back where you came from. 3. A fervent belief in the right to cheap gas. After decades of paying under a dollar per gallon for gasoline - 35 cents in the 1960s - Americans are now getting really pissed off at the chutzpah of royal monarchs, royal leftist pains-in-the-ass and Royal Dutch Shell executives who think they have as much a right to make money as Americans do. What gives foreigners these privileges? Don't they know we can send in the troops anytime we want for any reason? 4. An indissoluble adhesion to religion in one form or another. It is undeniable that the existence of dissent, protest and freedom of expression causes discomfort to many Americans, sending them into the arms and shelter of various religious cults and institutions, who will, on their behalf, fight against these basic freedoms and rights so as to make them feel better. Generally speaking, they are cheaper than psychoanalysts depending on how much of your meagre salary you turn over to these delightful snake oil salesmen. (Nothing wrong with snake oil; lots of it, under different names, is sold in "Health food" stores to the conspiracy theorists on the left and right who think all doctors and medicine are poisoning them). 5. There is nothing like conspiracy theories, except maybe some stand-up comedians, to keep people amused and connected. We can thank the internet for making this political networking possible, since it ties up people who might be making serious mischief elsewhere. 6. An unprecedented web of multiculturalism, ranging from extreme Political Correctness which bans words like "beggars" and "midget", to Rambo Limbaughs, to posturing paleoliberals like Eric Alterman and The Nation, to New Age gurus like Deepak Chopra, to street-theater rabblerousers like Al Sharpton, not to mention the mammalian diversity in the halls of Congress, where the promise of equal opportunity is fulfilled in the election of liars, louts and lechers every two years. This country can be rightly proud of its tolerance for dissent, where blacks think all whites are racists and whites think all blacks are Arabs. 7. Only in America could the conundrum of disdain for government and politicians be so perfectly illustrated by the election-year digestion of the whole cloth of candidates' promises. 8. An adherence to the time-tested practice of misogyny, whether in the corporate glass ceiling, skewed pay scales, domestic violence, or the female slavery in Mormon religious brothels that condemns generations of girls and women to illiteracy, inequality and isolation. Let no one accuse Americans of forsaking the prejudices and practices of their pioneer ancestors. 9. A obeisant compliant media industry that, unlike its brethren in congress, is willing and eager to feed the demands, biases and fears of its readers and listeners. It cannot be accused of elitism or pandering to the select few; on the contrary, it faithfully brings, every hour of the day and night, the promise of prosperity and material success to tens of millions of people even as the country's political and economic leaders strive to deprive them of these things. Truly, it is a balm for troubled Americans who are tired of being bombarded with the bad news about global warming, epidemics, food shortages and the prospect of parking their RV in their backyard indefinitely. Given these conditions, who should be leading our country? The only people qualified to lead our country fall into at least one of these categories: atheists/secularists; women; libertarians; homeless. Atheists and secularists are independent rational thinkers and resistant to cult thinking and behavior. Women are obviously the more compassionate, stable and social justice-oriented gender. Libertarians, though they have some peculiar ideas about guns, taxes and the environment, are highly tolerant of dissent and defenders of civil liberties. And the homeless need to replace the corporate lobbyists and executives and be allowed to pursue their own self interest: getting a roof over their heads and a hot meal. (Note: I have left out gays and lesbians because basically they are really no different from the rest of society). Here is my proposed list for the top positions in Washington: President: Dennis Kucinich. A little guy with a big brain and heart. Vice president: Weird Al Yankovich. Because we need another VP named Al. Secretary of State: Christopher Hitchens. A gutsy smartass atheist with no ax to grind, who is hated by the left and the religious community ... testimony to his value. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare: Ayaan Hirsi Ali. A reward for her moral witness and courage in facing down islamist extremism and PC. Secretary of Commerce: Reverend Billy of the Church of Stop Shopping. Secretary for the Environment: James Gustave Speth. For being a non-leftist fingering capitalism as the root of the world's problems. (If he declines, I nominate Dave Foreman). Secretary of Labor: Ralph Nader. _____ Lorna Salzman started her forty-year career as environmental activist saving wetlands on eastern Long Island and got her big boost and inspiration when Dave Brower hired her as regional representative of Friends of the Earth in New York. After serving over ten years with FOE, mostly fighting nuclear power and fending off the Army Corps of Engineers, she had brief stints at National Audubon Society's American Birds magazine, at Food & Water fighting food irradiation, and in the 1990s served three years as natural resource specialist at the New York City Department of Environmental Protection. In between she founded the New York Green Party, ran as a green for congress in 2002, and sought the party's presidential nomination in 2004. Her collected writings are at lornasalzman.com . Her previous article in Culture Change was "Neo-liberals in green clothing: Nordhaus, Shellenberger and Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors" at culturechange.org . http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=182&Itemid=1#cont http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From bar at idirect.com Fri Jul 4 04:05:14 2008 From: bar at idirect.com (bar at idirect.com) Date: Fri, 4 Jul 2008 06:05:14 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [A-List] spiked article: Zimbabwe and the new Cowardly Colonialism by Brendan ONeill] Message-ID: <39214.193.220.86.132.1215165914.squirrel@webmail.look.ca> I thought you might be interested in the following article from spiked: Zimbabwe and the new Cowardly Colonialism by Brendan O?Neill Western intervention against Robert Mugabe?s ?evil regime? put Zimbabwe into an economic straitjacket and disempowered its people. http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/4942/ From bar at idirect.com Fri Jul 4 03:01:13 2008 From: bar at idirect.com (bar at idirect.com) Date: Fri, 4 Jul 2008 05:01:13 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [A-List] Serbia: Hague Tribunal Is An Accomplice To War Crimes In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <32995.193.220.86.132.1215162073.squirrel@webmail.look.ca> Ditto for the Rwanda tribunal.Just yesterday an RPF (Tutsi) Captain (witness Alpha 1)testifed here that the RPF massacred everyone whenever they took control of a former govt area. That Kagame referred to Hutus as subhuman. THat all prisoners of war were massacred. That the RPF put on govt army uniforms, went on to roadblocks and killed people and then blamed it on the govt forces to discredit them. That they shot down the Hutu president's plane. That after they took power Kagame continued to massacre Hutus in Rwanda and the Congo. That he left after protesting these killings. The reaction of the judges and prosecution.Bored yawns. So while they continue toframe the Hutus for crimes committed by the RPF they continue to protect the RPF becuase that protects the US which was behind it all. Chris > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: Rick Rozoff > To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com > Sent: Thursday, July 03, 2008 12:12 PM > Subject: [stopnato] Serbia: Hague Tribunal Is An Accomplice To War Crimes > > > http://www.focus-fen.net/?id=n144987 > > MakFax (Macedonia) > July 3, 2008 > > Serbia's PM: ICTY acquittal decision is a new crime > against innocent victims > > > Belgrade - Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica > assessed that by today's decision of acquittal, the > ICTY became an accomplice in the war crimes committed > by Naser Oric, the Serbian Tanjug agency reports. > > By this verdict a new crime against innocent victims > who suffered at the hands of Naser Oric has been > committed, Kostunica told Tanjug. > > After the acquittal verdicts to war criminals Ramush > Haradinaj and Naser Oric, the ICTY lost any legitimacy > and it can no longer be considered a court that justly > establishes guilt, the Serbian prime minister > assessed. > > The Hague Tribunal no longer has the legitimacy of a > court and it is obvious that the Tribunal exists > primarily to condemn as guilty only one side, the > Serbs, for the crimes of the civil war by which former > Yugoslavia was disintegrated. > > > =========================== > Stop NATO > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato > > To subscribe, send an e-mail to: > stopnato-subscribe at yahoogroups.com > > Archives: > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages > > http://lists.topica.com/lists/ANTINATO/read > ============================== > > > __._,_.___ > Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic > Messages | Database | Polls | Calendar > MARKETPLACE > > > Special offer for Yahoo! 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Groups > Check it out > and nominate your > group to be featured. > Wellness Spot > Embrace Change > Break the Yo-Yo > weight loss cycle.. > __,_._,___ > > > > From james.irldaly at ntlworld.com Fri Jul 4 04:42:28 2008 From: james.irldaly at ntlworld.com (james daly) Date: Fri, 4 Jul 2008 11:42:28 +0100 Subject: [A-List] Western intervention put Zimbabwe into an economic straitjacket Message-ID: Thursday 3 April 2008 Zimbabwe and the new Cowardly Colonialism Western intervention against Robert Mugabe's 'evil regime' put Zimbabwe into an economic straitjacket and disempowered its people. Brendan O'Neill 'We've beaten Mugabe', said a frontpage headline in the London Evening Standard yesterday. Only there were no quote marks around the words 'We've beaten Mugabe', which made it difficult to tell if the paper was reporting the thoughts of Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) upon its electoral victory over Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF Party, or its own back-slapping relish at the thought that its journalism may have played a part in toppling Mugabe. Indeed, 'We've beaten Mugabe' could be the slogan of political and media operators in Britain and elsewhere in the West, who like to fantasise that Mugabe is 'Africa's Hitler', that his Zimbabwe was 'more evil than, for example, China and Saudi Arabia', and that it is up to the West to 'put pressure on Zimbabwe to change' (1). The media reports about Zimbabwe's elections present them as a clash between the 'evil' Mugabe and the 'heroic' Tsvangirai, an electoral battle for Zimbabwe's soul. Mugabe is depicted as having brought Zimbabwe to its knees, causing widespread poverty and enforcing terror and repression, and Tsvangirai is discussed as the harbinger of a dignified 'revolution' against Mugabeism (2). This is a fantasy. It ignores the key role played by Western governments and financial institutions in using sanctions, tough diplomacy and the proxy interventionists of the South Africa government and the African Union to isolate and harry Zimbabwe over the past decade. Such self-serving external meddling has contributed to Zimbabwe's economic crisis - and it has dangerously distorted the political dynamics inside Zimbabwe and elsewhere in the south of Africa. Over the past 10 years, American and European governments cynically transformed Mugabe's Zimbabwe into the West's whipping boy in Africa, the state they love to hate, a country against which they can enforce tough sanctions to demonstrate their seriousness about standing up to 'evil'. The West has imposed economic sanctions on Zimbabwe, warned off foreign investors, denied Zimbabwean officials the right to travel freely around the world, demonised Mugabe as an 'evil dictator', discussed the idea of military action against Zimbabwe, and used moral and financial blackmail to cajole South Africa's president Thabo Mbeki to 'deal with' Mugabe (3). Objectively, this singling out of Mugabe's regime as the 'worst government on Earth, the most brutal, destructive, lawless government' made little sense (4). No doubt Mugabe is a nasty piece of work, but then so are some of the government heads that the West is more than happy to work with. Indeed, one could argue that, over the past decade, there was more choice and openness in Mugabe's Zimbabwe than there was in Rwanda and Uganda, both close political allies of America and Britain. No, Zimbabwe was labelled the demon of Africa, not in response to events on the ground in Zimbabwe itself, but in response to the needs and desires of governments in the West looking for a purposeful mission in international affairs. Western meddling pushed Zimbabwe to the precipice. Yet listening to the discussion of the elections, you could be forgiven for thinking that the country had suffered from a sudden, inexplicable case of Spontaneous National Combustion. The economic crisis is depicted as a peculiar phenomenon on a continent where there has mostly been economic growth in recent years. Where most of Africa's economies have been growing at a rate of between five and six per cent recently, Zimbabwe is the only African country that had a negative GDP in 2007/2008. It is reported that the Zimbabwean economy has shrunk by more than a third since 1999, a 'decline worse than in major African civil wars', says one newspaper (5). Apparently there's an unemployment rate of around 80 per cent, and inflation is running at 100,586 per cent (6). Yet the only explanation given for this economic nosedive is Mugabe's seizure of colonial-era, white-owned commercial farms eight years ago. As the UK Guardian says: 'The economic crisis is largely blamed on the seizure of white-owned farms that began in 2000, disrupting the agriculture-based economy.' (7) It is true that foreign exchange earnings from these former white-owned farms have plummeted, causing major economic problems; but there is more to Zimbabwe than tobacco and the other cash crops once produced by the white farmers. A key driver of Zimbabwe's economic crisis has been the West's attempts to bring down Mugabe by turning the financial levers. Relentlessly, the American and British governments, and the European Union, economically punished Mugabe's Zimbabwe for what they considered to be its political disobedience. In November 1998, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) implemented undeclared sanctions against Zimbabwe, by warning off potential investors, freezing loans and refusing to negotiate with Zimbabwean officials on the issue of debt. In September 1999, the IMF suspended its support for economic adjustment and reform in Zimbabwe. In October 1999, the International Development Association, a multilateral development bank, suspended all structural adjustment loans and credits to Zimbabwe; in May 2000 it suspended all other forms of new lending (8). In December 2001, the US passed the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act, which decreed that Mugabe could restore relations with international financial institutions only if he agreed to conditions on Zimbabwe's rule of law, the presence of its troops in the Congo, and the conduct of its internal elections. The American law also instructed all US members of international financial institutions to oppose and vote against any extension of loans, credits or guarantees to Zimbabwe. In 2002, then British foreign secretary Jack Straw declared that Britain would 'oppose any access by Zimbabwe to international financial institutions'. Also in 2002, British officials threatened to withdraw financial assistance to other countries in southern Africa unless they, too, imposed sanctions against Zimbabwe. This led Benjamin Mkapa, then president of Tanzania, to complain that African members of the British Commonwealth were enduring 'a bombardment for an alliance against Mugabe' (9). The European Union imposed 'smart' sanctions against Zimbabwe, refusing to allocate visas for travel in EU countries to Mugabe and his officials and freezing all of their economic assets in Europe (10). In the early and mid-2000s, both the World Bank and the IMF tried to dissuade states and institutions from extending financial credit to Zimbabwe. A Zimbabwean official claimed that: 'Our contacts in various countries have indicated that these institutions are using all sorts of tactics to cow all those who are keen to assist Zimbabwe.' (11) The economic punishment of 'evil Mugabe' by powerful Western forces had a massive impact on Zimbabwe. According to one critical observer, Gregory Elich, author of Strange Liberators: Militarism, Mayhem and the Pursuit of Profit, 'Western financial restrictions made it nearly impossible for Zimbabwe to engage in normal international trade'. And 'for a nation that had to import 100 per cent of its oil, 40 per cent of its electricity and most of its spare parts, Zimbabwe was highly vulnerable to being cut off from access to foreign exchange'. Elich argues that the impact of Western restrictions on trading and crediting with Zimbabwe was 'immediate and dire': 'The supply of oil fell sharply, and periodically ran out entirely. It became increasingly difficult to muster the foreign currency to maintain an adequate level of imported electricity, and the nation was frequently beset by blackouts. The shortage of oil and electricity in turn severely hobbled industrial production, as did the inability to import raw materials and spare parts. Business after business closed down and the unemployment rate soared...' (12) Alongside turning the screws on Zimbabwe's economy, the West interfered politically in an attempt to undermine Mugabe's government. America's Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001 authorised President George W Bush to fund 'opposition media' as well as 'democracy and governance programmes' inside Zimbabwe. In April last year, the US State Department confirmed for the first time that the US had sponsored 'events' in Zimbabwe aimed at 'discrediting' Mugabe (13). It is reported that the opposition party MDC also received financial backing and political direction from Britain, Germany, Holland, Denmark and the US. A small number of political observers in the West have questioned the wisdom of Western interference in Zimbabwe's internal affairs. When America passed its Zimbabwe Act, US congresswoman Cynthia McKinney asked during a debate in the House of Representatives why US officials were enforcing politically-motivated sanctions against a mostly democratic country: 'Zimbabwe is Africa's second-longest stable democracy. It is multi-party. It had elections last year [in 2001] where the opposition [the MDC] won over 50 seats in parliament. It has an opposition press which vigorously criticises the government and governing party. It has an independent judiciary which issues decisions contrary to the wishes of the governing party.' (14) Indeed, one of the ostensible reasons why America passed the Act was to protest against the presence of Zimbabwean troops in the Congo. Yet, in 2001, both Uganda and Rwanda also had troops in the Congo; and neither Uganda nor Rwanda allowed opposition political parties or a free press. Yet both were allies of America, and received considerable economic backing from the US. Mugabe was no doubt a rotten ruler; his party certainly used pressure and even force in order to secure victory in general elections in the late 1990s and the 2000s. Yet that is not why he was singled out as a 'tyrant' and an 'African Hitler'. It was political considerations in the West that elevated Mugabe to that position and transformed Zimbabwe into a pariah state. Western governments despised what they considered to be Mugabe's cheek, in particular his temerity in daring to seize white farms, to interfere in the Congo without a green light from the US, and his frequent denunciations of Western colonialism. Indeed, since the defeat of the white rulers of Rhodesia in 1980, Mugabe lived off his reputation as a brave warrior against Western arrogance in Africa. It was colonialism and imperialist intervention that gave him his base of support, which has always been a substantial one, despite, or perhaps because of, international hostility against Zimbabwe. As the African commentator Barrie Collins has argued: 'Since the end of the Cold War, the USA and the UK have got used to a high degree of compliance on the part of African governments - and they are no longer prepared to tolerate those, like Zimbabwe, that insist on doing things their own way.' (15) Bashing Zimbabwe played a dual role for Western officials and commentators. It allowed those of a conservative stripe to defend the historic reputation of colonialism by comparing it favourably with the rule of individuals like Mugabe. Eton-educated British observers loathed Mugabe because they considered him a symbol of African cockiness, who had humiliated Ian Smith (the white minority ruler of a self-declared 'independent' Rhodesia from 1965 to 1979) before the eyes of the world. Attacking Mugabe's rule became a way of rehabilitating the image of old-fashioned, British-tinged colonialism. At the same time, one-time anti-colonialist radicals - including most notably the gay rights activist Peter Tatchell in the UK - focused their political energies on opposing Mugabe, describing him as intolerant and not sufficiently respectful of minority rights. At a time when political radicalism is on the wane in the West, some activists sought to recover their old campaigning spirit by taking potshots at the easy target of a beleaguered African state. Indeed, radicals often led the charge for tougher economic and political punishment of Zimbabwe - and frequently, they got what they asked for. From the late 1990s to today, Zimbabwe became the West's favoured punchbag in the 'Dark Continent'. Yet Western governments have chosen striking forms of intervention. Instead of militarily and directly intervening in Zimbabwean affairs - despite loud demands from the colonialist/radical alliance that they should do so - governments in the West pursued a more hands-off form of meddling in Mugabe's regime. They used sanctions and economic blackmail; they funded opposition parties and 'events'; and most revealingly they put pressure on South Africa, Tanzania and other nearby states to use their muscle to try to push Mugabe from power. This was effectively 'blacked-up imperialism', an attempt by Western powers nervous about being seen smashing their way into Africa to use local proxies to do their dirty work for them. To their credit, many African officials refused to play the game. The African Union turned down Western suggestions to send forces to Zimbabwe in 2005, arguing that 'it is not proper for the AU commission to start running the internal affairs of members' states'. Though South Africa's Mbeki has become involved in Zimbabwean politics, he has also, to the irritation of Western observers, insisted that the future of Zimbabwe 'has never been a South African responsibility' (16). Zimbabwe captures both the West's sense of caution in international affairs and also its inexorable drive to interfere wherever and however it can. As the former British foreign secretary Margaret Beckett argued, Britain cannot be seen explicitly interfering in Zimbabwe because we are 'the old colonial power' - yet at the same time Britain apparently has a 'responsibility' to spread democracy around the world (17). The end result of this schizophrenic approach to African affairs and international affairs more broadly - a political defensiveness combined with a desire to do something seemingly purposeful and proper - is an unpredictable, ravenous, behind-the-scenes form of meddling in other countries' affairs, a kind of 'cowardly colonialism'. And it can have dire consequences for people in the third world. On the basis of little more than the fact that they needed a focus for their international pretensions, Western governments have put Zimbabwe into an economic straitjacket and warped its internal political process. If the sanctions, blackmail and withdrawal of trade have helped to push Zimbabwe's economy into freefall, then the relentless backdoor political interventions have disempowered the people of Zimbabwe. The dynamic of Western intervention caused Mugabe to become more entrenched and paranoid about outsiders - and it encouraged the MDC to look to Western officials and radicals for their favour and flattery rather than to build a meaningful grassroots movement inside Zimbabwe. Indeed, for all the talk of a 'revolution' in Zimbabwe, both during minor street protests last year and during the elections this week, many people actually seem quite resigned about Zimbabwe's fate. As one report recently said: '[T]he opposition hasn't been able to mobilise tens of thousands of people.' (18) Lots of the current news coverage continually shows Zimbabweans queuing up for hours to buy a newspaper for a few thousand dollars so that they can read about the elections. This footage is supposed to show how bad inflation has become in Zimbabwe, but it also reveals something else: that the West's attempted strangulation of Mugabe's regime reduced the people of Zimbabwe to observers rather than masters of their fate, who look to the front pages of newspapers to find out what might happen next in their country. Brendan O'Neill is editor of spiked. Visit his website here. Previously on spiked Brendan O'Neill said that Darfur has become pornography for chattering classes. Philip Cunliffe looked at what it means for Darfur to have been colonised by 'peacekeepers'. He argued that Bernard-Henri L?vy's report from Darfur shows that liberal lust for Western intervention survived Iraq, and that African Union troops are being enlisted in Darfur to give a respectable face to Western intervention. Or read more at spiked issue Africa. (1) End of days for 'Africa's Hitler', National Post, 1 April 2008 (2) Heroic return for Zimbabwe's opposition leader, Independent.ie, 28 March 2008 (3) Mugabe hoping to side-step Mbeki and Annan , ioL, 24 July 2005 (4) Abroad at Home; A Regime Of Thugs, New York Times, 5 May 2001 (5) Britain prepares ?1bn-a-year package to aid Zimbabwe, Guardian, 3 April 2008 (6) Britain prepares ?1bn-a-year package to aid Zimbabwe, Guardian, 3 April 2008 (7) Britain prepares ?1bn-a-year package to aid Zimbabwe, Guardian, 3 April 2008 (8) The Battle over Zimbabwe's Future, Global Research, 13 April 2007 (9) The Battle over Zimbabwe's Future, Global Research, 13 April 2007 (10) 'This time, Bob, it's personal', by Barrie Collins, 22 February 2002 (11) The Battle over Zimbabwe's Future, Global Research, 13 April 2007 (12) The Battle over Zimbabwe's Future, Global Research, 13 April 2007 (13) US reveals its efforts to topple Mugabe regime, Guardian, 6 April 2007 (14) Sanctions, which sanctions?, New African, May 2007 (15) 'This time, Bob, it's personal', by Barrie Collins, 22 February 2002 (16) Trashing Mugabe, by Josie Appleton, 25 July 2005 (17) See Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett Condemns Mugabe Goverment (18) Zimbabwe: talking up a revolution, by David Chandler, 22 April 2007 reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/4942/ Thursday 3 April 2008 Zimbabwe and the new Cowardly Colonialism Western intervention against Robert Mugabe's 'evil regime' put Zimbabwe into an economic straitjacket and disempowered its people. Brendan O'Neill 'We've beaten Mugabe', said a frontpage headline in the London Evening Standard yesterday. Only there were no quote marks around the words 'We've beaten Mugabe', which made it difficult to tell if the paper was reporting the thoughts of Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) upon its electoral victory over Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF Party, or its own back-slapping relish at the thought that its journalism may have played a part in toppling Mugabe. Indeed, 'We've beaten Mugabe' could be the slogan of political and media operators in Britain and elsewhere in the West, who like to fantasise that Mugabe is 'Africa's Hitler', that his Zimbabwe was 'more evil than, for example, China and Saudi Arabia', and that it is up to the West to 'put pressure on Zimbabwe to change' (1). The media reports about Zimbabwe's elections present them as a clash between the 'evil' Mugabe and the 'heroic' Tsvangirai, an electoral battle for Zimbabwe's soul. Mugabe is depicted as having brought Zimbabwe to its knees, causing widespread poverty and enforcing terror and repression, and Tsvangirai is discussed as the harbinger of a dignified 'revolution' against Mugabeism (2). This is a fantasy. It ignores the key role played by Western governments and financial institutions in using sanctions, tough diplomacy and the proxy interventionists of the South Africa government and the African Union to isolate and harry Zimbabwe over the past decade. Such self-serving external meddling has contributed to Zimbabwe's economic crisis - and it has dangerously distorted the political dynamics inside Zimbabwe and elsewhere in the south of Africa. Over the past 10 years, American and European governments cynically transformed Mugabe's Zimbabwe into the West's whipping boy in Africa, the state they love to hate, a country against which they can enforce tough sanctions to demonstrate their seriousness about standing up to 'evil'. The West has imposed economic sanctions on Zimbabwe, warned off foreign investors, denied Zimbabwean officials the right to travel freely around the world, demonised Mugabe as an 'evil dictator', discussed the idea of military action against Zimbabwe, and used moral and financial blackmail to cajole South Africa's president Thabo Mbeki to 'deal with' Mugabe (3). Objectively, this singling out of Mugabe's regime as the 'worst government on Earth, the most brutal, destructive, lawless government' made little sense (4). No doubt Mugabe is a nasty piece of work, but then so are some of the government heads that the West is more than happy to work with. Indeed, one could argue that, over the past decade, there was more choice and openness in Mugabe's Zimbabwe than there was in Rwanda and Uganda, both close political allies of America and Britain. No, Zimbabwe was labelled the demon of Africa, not in response to events on the ground in Zimbabwe itself, but in response to the needs and desires of governments in the West looking for a purposeful mission in international affairs. Western meddling pushed Zimbabwe to the precipice. Yet listening to the discussion of the elections, you could be forgiven for thinking that the country had suffered from a sudden, inexplicable case of Spontaneous National Combustion. The economic crisis is depicted as a peculiar phenomenon on a continent where there has mostly been economic growth in recent years. Where most of Africa's economies have been growing at a rate of between five and six per cent recently, Zimbabwe is the only African country that had a negative GDP in 2007/2008. It is reported that the Zimbabwean economy has shrunk by more than a third since 1999, a 'decline worse than in major African civil wars', says one newspaper (5). Apparently there's an unemployment rate of around 80 per cent, and inflation is running at 100,586 per cent (6). Yet the only explanation given for this economic nosedive is Mugabe's seizure of colonial-era, white-owned commercial farms eight years ago. As the UK Guardian says: 'The economic crisis is largely blamed on the seizure of white-owned farms that began in 2000, disrupting the agriculture-based economy.' (7) It is true that foreign exchange earnings from these former white-owned farms have plummeted, causing major economic problems; but there is more to Zimbabwe than tobacco and the other cash crops once produced by the white farmers. A key driver of Zimbabwe's economic crisis has been the West's attempts to bring down Mugabe by turning the financial levers. Relentlessly, the American and British governments, and the European Union, economically punished Mugabe's Zimbabwe for what they considered to be its political disobedience. In November 1998, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) implemented undeclared sanctions against Zimbabwe, by warning off potential investors, freezing loans and refusing to negotiate with Zimbabwean officials on the issue of debt. In September 1999, the IMF suspended its support for economic adjustment and reform in Zimbabwe. In October 1999, the International Development Association, a multilateral development bank, suspended all structural adjustment loans and credits to Zimbabwe; in May 2000 it suspended all other forms of new lending (8). In December 2001, the US passed the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act, which decreed that Mugabe could restore relations with international financial institutions only if he agreed to conditions on Zimbabwe's rule of law, the presence of its troops in the Congo, and the conduct of its internal elections. The American law also instructed all US members of international financial institutions to oppose and vote against any extension of loans, credits or guarantees to Zimbabwe. In 2002, then British foreign secretary Jack Straw declared that Britain would 'oppose any access by Zimbabwe to international financial institutions'. Also in 2002, British officials threatened to withdraw financial assistance to other countries in southern Africa unless they, too, imposed sanctions against Zimbabwe. This led Benjamin Mkapa, then president of Tanzania, to complain that African members of the British Commonwealth were enduring 'a bombardment for an alliance against Mugabe' (9). The European Union imposed 'smart' sanctions against Zimbabwe, refusing to allocate visas for travel in EU countries to Mugabe and his officials and freezing all of their economic assets in Europe (10). In the early and mid-2000s, both the World Bank and the IMF tried to dissuade states and institutions from extending financial credit to Zimbabwe. A Zimbabwean official claimed that: 'Our contacts in various countries have indicated that these institutions are using all sorts of tactics to cow all those who are keen to assist Zimbabwe.' (11) The economic punishment of 'evil Mugabe' by powerful Western forces had a massive impact on Zimbabwe. According to one critical observer, Gregory Elich, author of Strange Liberators: Militarism, Mayhem and the Pursuit of Profit, 'Western financial restrictions made it nearly impossible for Zimbabwe to engage in normal international trade'. And 'for a nation that had to import 100 per cent of its oil, 40 per cent of its electricity and most of its spare parts, Zimbabwe was highly vulnerable to being cut off from access to foreign exchange'. Elich argues that the impact of Western restrictions on trading and crediting with Zimbabwe was 'immediate and dire': 'The supply of oil fell sharply, and periodically ran out entirely. It became increasingly difficult to muster the foreign currency to maintain an adequate level of imported electricity, and the nation was frequently beset by blackouts. The shortage of oil and electricity in turn severely hobbled industrial production, as did the inability to import raw materials and spare parts. Business after business closed down and the unemployment rate soared...' (12) Alongside turning the screws on Zimbabwe's economy, the West interfered politically in an attempt to undermine Mugabe's government. America's Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001 authorised President George W Bush to fund 'opposition media' as well as 'democracy and governance programmes' inside Zimbabwe. In April last year, the US State Department confirmed for the first time that the US had sponsored 'events' in Zimbabwe aimed at 'discrediting' Mugabe (13). It is reported that the opposition party MDC also received financial backing and political direction from Britain, Germany, Holland, Denmark and the US. A small number of political observers in the West have questioned the wisdom of Western interference in Zimbabwe's internal affairs. When America passed its Zimbabwe Act, US congresswoman Cynthia McKinney asked during a debate in the House of Representatives why US officials were enforcing politically-motivated sanctions against a mostly democratic country: 'Zimbabwe is Africa's second-longest stable democracy. It is multi-party. It had elections last year [in 2001] where the opposition [the MDC] won over 50 seats in parliament. It has an opposition press which vigorously criticises the government and governing party. It has an independent judiciary which issues decisions contrary to the wishes of the governing party.' (14) Indeed, one of the ostensible reasons why America passed the Act was to protest against the presence of Zimbabwean troops in the Congo. Yet, in 2001, both Uganda and Rwanda also had troops in the Congo; and neither Uganda nor Rwanda allowed opposition political parties or a free press. Yet both were allies of America, and received considerable economic backing from the US. Mugabe was no doubt a rotten ruler; his party certainly used pressure and even force in order to secure victory in general elections in the late 1990s and the 2000s. Yet that is not why he was singled out as a 'tyrant' and an 'African Hitler'. It was political considerations in the West that elevated Mugabe to that position and transformed Zimbabwe into a pariah state. Western governments despised what they considered to be Mugabe's cheek, in particular his temerity in daring to seize white farms, to interfere in the Congo without a green light from the US, and his frequent denunciations of Western colonialism. Indeed, since the defeat of the white rulers of Rhodesia in 1980, Mugabe lived off his reputation as a brave warrior against Western arrogance in Africa. It was colonialism and imperialist intervention that gave him his base of support, which has always been a substantial one, despite, or perhaps because of, international hostility against Zimbabwe. As the African commentator Barrie Collins has argued: 'Since the end of the Cold War, the USA and the UK have got used to a high degree of compliance on the part of African governments - and they are no longer prepared to tolerate those, like Zimbabwe, that insist on doing things their own way.' (15) Bashing Zimbabwe played a dual role for Western officials and commentators. It allowed those of a conservative stripe to defend the historic reputation of colonialism by comparing it favourably with the rule of individuals like Mugabe. Eton-educated British observers loathed Mugabe because they considered him a symbol of African cockiness, who had humiliated Ian Smith (the white minority ruler of a self-declared 'independent' Rhodesia from 1965 to 1979) before the eyes of the world. Attacking Mugabe's rule became a way of rehabilitating the image of old-fashioned, British-tinged colonialism. At the same time, one-time anti-colonialist radicals - including most notably the gay rights activist Peter Tatchell in the UK - focused their political energies on opposing Mugabe, describing him as intolerant and not sufficiently respectful of minority rights. At a time when political radicalism is on the wane in the West, some activists sought to recover their old campaigning spirit by taking potshots at the easy target of a beleaguered African state. Indeed, radicals often led the charge for tougher economic and political punishment of Zimbabwe - and frequently, they got what they asked for. From the late 1990s to today, Zimbabwe became the West's favoured punchbag in the 'Dark Continent'. Yet Western governments have chosen striking forms of intervention. Instead of militarily and directly intervening in Zimbabwean affairs - despite loud demands from the colonialist/radical alliance that they should do so - governments in the West pursued a more hands-off form of meddling in Mugabe's regime. They used sanctions and economic blackmail; they funded opposition parties and 'events'; and most revealingly they put pressure on South Africa, Tanzania and other nearby states to use their muscle to try to push Mugabe from power. This was effectively 'blacked-up imperialism', an attempt by Western powers nervous about being seen smashing their way into Africa to use local proxies to do their dirty work for them. To their credit, many African officials refused to play the game. The African Union turned down Western suggestions to send forces to Zimbabwe in 2005, arguing that 'it is not proper for the AU commission to start running the internal affairs of members' states'. Though South Africa's Mbeki has become involved in Zimbabwean politics, he has also, to the irritation of Western observers, insisted that the future of Zimbabwe 'has never been a South African responsibility' (16). Zimbabwe captures both the West's sense of caution in international affairs and also its inexorable drive to interfere wherever and however it can. As the former British foreign secretary Margaret Beckett argued, Britain cannot be seen explicitly interfering in Zimbabwe because we are 'the old colonial power' - yet at the same time Britain apparently has a 'responsibility' to spread democracy around the world (17). The end result of this schizophrenic approach to African affairs and international affairs more broadly - a political defensiveness combined with a desire to do something seemingly purposeful and proper - is an unpredictable, ravenous, behind-the-scenes form of meddling in other countries' affairs, a kind of 'cowardly colonialism'. And it can have dire consequences for people in the third world. On the basis of little more than the fact that they needed a focus for their international pretensions, Western governments have put Zimbabwe into an economic straitjacket and warped its internal political process. If the sanctions, blackmail and withdrawal of trade have helped to push Zimbabwe's economy into freefall, then the relentless backdoor political interventions have disempowered the people of Zimbabwe. The dynamic of Western intervention caused Mugabe to become more entrenched and paranoid about outsiders - and it encouraged the MDC to look to Western officials and radicals for their favour and flattery rather than to build a meaningful grassroots movement inside Zimbabwe. Indeed, for all the talk of a 'revolution' in Zimbabwe, both during minor street protests last year and during the elections this week, many people actually seem quite resigned about Zimbabwe's fate. As one report recently said: '[T]he opposition hasn't been able to mobilise tens of thousands of people.' (18) Lots of the current news coverage continually shows Zimbabweans queuing up for hours to buy a newspaper for a few thousand dollars so that they can read about the elections. This footage is supposed to show how bad inflation has become in Zimbabwe, but it also reveals something else: that the West's attempted strangulation of Mugabe's regime reduced the people of Zimbabwe to observers rather than masters of their fate, who look to the front pages of newspapers to find out what might happen next in their country. Brendan O'Neill is editor of spiked. Visit his website here. Previously on spiked Brendan O'Neill said that Darfur has become pornography for chattering classes. Philip Cunliffe looked at what it means for Darfur to have been colonised by 'peacekeepers'. He argued that Bernard-Henri L?vy's report from Darfur shows that liberal lust for Western intervention survived Iraq, and that African Union troops are being enlisted in Darfur to give a respectable face to Western intervention. Or read more at spiked issue Africa. (1) End of days for 'Africa's Hitler', National Post, 1 April 2008 (2) Heroic return for Zimbabwe's opposition leader, Independent.ie, 28 March 2008 (3) Mugabe hoping to side-step Mbeki and Annan , ioL, 24 July 2005 (4) Abroad at Home; A Regime Of Thugs, New York Times, 5 May 2001 (5) Britain prepares ?1bn-a-year package to aid Zimbabwe, Guardian, 3 April 2008 (6) Britain prepares ?1bn-a-year package to aid Zimbabwe, Guardian, 3 April 2008 (7) Britain prepares ?1bn-a-year package to aid Zimbabwe, Guardian, 3 April 2008 (8) The Battle over Zimbabwe's Future, Global Research, 13 April 2007 (9) The Battle over Zimbabwe's Future, Global Research, 13 April 2007 (10) 'This time, Bob, it's personal', by Barrie Collins, 22 February 2002 (11) The Battle over Zimbabwe's Future, Global Research, 13 April 2007 (12) The Battle over Zimbabwe's Future, Global Research, 13 April 2007 (13) US reveals its efforts to topple Mugabe regime, Guardian, 6 April 2007 (14) Sanctions, which sanctions?, New African, May 2007 (15) 'This time, Bob, it's personal', by Barrie Collins, 22 February 2002 (16) Trashing Mugabe, by Josie Appleton, 25 July 2005 (17) See Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett Condemns Mugabe Goverment (18) Zimbabwe: talking up a revolution, by David Chandler, 22 April 2007 reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/4942/ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 1011 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20080704/b05234cf/attachment-0002.gif -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 993 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20080704/b05234cf/attachment-0003.gif From james.irldaly at ntlworld.com Fri Jul 4 07:27:08 2008 From: james.irldaly at ntlworld.com (james daly) Date: Fri, 4 Jul 2008 14:27:08 +0100 Subject: [A-List] [Marxism] Now that I know... References: <2fa158550807030741o52c30d85w52450814175ea3fb@mail.gmail.com><359F05B677E14A95B453E1A5DDA9B2D4@home9sg93n9r5y><486D0821.6050003@panix.com><97E962211D2E4EE1BF69E02F6333B34B@home9sg93n9r5y> <20080704111916.E0ECB12467@mailbackend.panix.com> Message-ID: <1B8EC266A6994D75A7DA391ADB51DA96@home9sg93n9r5y> I have unsubscribed from Marxmail, but failed to post my farewell e-mail in time. In case anyone was interested, here it is. ************* The angel with the fiery sword has spoken. Operation Murabatsvina, garbage clearance, proceeds. My little tent in Marxmail is swept away. You win -- again -- Patrick. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Louis Proyect" To: "James Daly" Sent: Friday, July 04, 2008 12:19 PM Subject: Re: [Marxism] Now that I know... From nmgoro at gmail.com Fri Jul 4 09:33:03 2008 From: nmgoro at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?Q?N=C3=A9stor_Gorojovsky?=) Date: Fri, 4 Jul 2008 12:33:03 -0300 Subject: [A-List] (Spanish, short intro in English) Speech by Galeano, first Illustrious Citizen of Mercosur Message-ID: <2fa158550807040833p14f6a6b3o609dca3cf23c96b1@mail.gmail.com> [It is by no means a minor issue that Mercosur has chosen Eduardo Galeano to name him its first "Illustrious citizen". These are gestures with a strong load of meaning. And Mercosur choses as an emblematic intellectual no other than Galeano! I must say that not everything by Galeano moves me so much. In fact, I believe that "Las inversiones extranjeras en Am?rica Latina", by the Bolivian Carlos Montenegro, is miles above Galeano's very good "Open veins..." And Montenegro's book was written 15 or 20 years before the "Open veins..." But my personal preferences are unimportant. What is really important is the speech by Galeano, who traces back the struggle for unity to the years of the Wars of Emancipation, and grounds it on Jos? Artigas, the man that Galeano, most brilliantly, defined as the "general de los sencillos", that is the "general of the folk". Those who can read Spanish will enjoy. Sorry, can't translate. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: hugopresman at yahoo.com.ar Date: 04-jul-2008 11:04 Subject: [R-P] EDUARDO GALEANO, PRIMER CIUDADANO ILUSTRE DEL MERCOSUR, Y UN DISCURSO INOLVIDABLE To: nmgoro at gmail.com Cc: Lucha de masas para recuperar la Argentina [Ay?denos a financiar la lista, escriba a recpopmod at gmail.com.] CITANDO LA FUENTE,EL MATERIAL DE ESTA LISTA ES DE LIBRE REPRODUCCI?N EDUARDO GALEANO, PRIMER CIUDADANO ILUSTRE DEL MERCOSUR, Y UN DISCURSO INOLVIDABLE "Los mapas del alma no tienen fronteras" Por Eduardo Galeano Nuestra regi?n es el reino de las paradojas. Brasil, pongamos por caso: parad?jicamente, el Aleijadinho, el hombre m?s feo del Brasil, cre? las m?s altas hermosuras del arte de la ?poca colonial; parad?jicamente, Garrincha, arruinado desde la infancia por la miseria y la poliomelitis, nacido para la desdicha, fue el jugador que m?s alegr?a ofreci? en toda la historia del f?tbol y, parad?jicamente, ya ha cumplido cien a?os de edad Oscar Niemeyer, que es el m?s nuevo de los arquitectos y el m?s joven de los brasile?os. - - - O pongamos por caso, Bolivia: en 1978, cinco mujeres voltearon una dictadura militar. Parad?jicamente, toda Bolivia se burl? de ellas cuando iniciaron su huelga de hambre. Parad?jicamente, toda Bolivia termin? ayunando con ellas, hasta que la dictadura cay?. Yo hab?a conocido a una de esas cinco porfiadas, Domitila Barrios, en el pueblo minero de Llallagua. En una asamblea de obreros de las minas, todos hombres, ella se hab?a alzado y hab?a hecho callar a todos. -Quiero decirles estito -hab?a dicho-. Nuestro enemigo principal no es el imperialismo, ni la burgues?a ni la burocracia. Nuestro enemigo principal es el miedo, y lo llevamos adentro. Y a?os despu?s, reencontr? a Domitila en Estocolmo. La hab?an echado de Bolivia, y ella hab?a marchado al exilio, con sus siete hijos. Domitila estaba muy agradecida de la solidaridad de los suecos, y les admiraba la libertad, pero ellos le daban pena, tan solitos que estaban, bebiendo solos, comiendo solos, hablando solos. Y les daba consejos: -No sean bobos -les dec?a-. J?ntense. Nosotros, all? en Bolivia, nos juntamos. Aunque sea para pelearnos, nos juntamos. - - - Y cu?nta raz?n ten?a. Porque, digo yo: ?existen los dientes, si no se juntan en la boca? ?Existen los dedos, si no se juntan en la mano? Juntarnos: y no s?lo para defender el precio de nuestros productos, sino tambi?n, y sobre todo, para defender el valor de nuestros derechos. Bien juntos est?n, aunque de vez en cuando simulen ri?as y disputas, los pocos pa?ses ricos que ejercen la arrogancia sobre todos los dem?s. Su riqueza come pobreza y su arrogancia come miedo. Hace bien poquito, pongamos por caso, Europa aprob? la ley que convierte a los inmigrantes en criminales. Paradoja de paradojas: Europa, que durante siglos ha invadido el mundo, cierra la puerta en las narices de los invadidos, cuando le retribuyen la visita. Y esa ley se ha promulgado con una asombrosa impunidad, que resultar?a inexplicable si no estuvi?ramos acostumbrados a ser comidos y a vivir con miedo. Miedo de vivir, miedo de decir, miedo de ser. Esta regi?n nuestra forma parte de una Am?rica latina organizada para el divorcio de sus partes, para el odio mutuo y la mutua ignorancia. Pero s?lo siendo juntos seremos capaces de descubrir lo que podemos ser, contra una tradici?n que nos ha amaestrado para el miedo y la resignaci?n y la soledad y que cada d?a nos ense?a a desquerernos, a escupir al espejo, a copiar en lugar de crear. - - - Todo a lo largo de la primera mitad del siglo diecinueve, un venezolano llamado Sim?n Rodr?guez anduvo por los caminos de nuestra Am?rica, a lomo de mula, desafiando a los nuevos due?os del poder: -Ustedes -clamaba don Sim?n-, ustedes que tanto imitan a los europeos, ?por qu? no les imitan lo m?s importante, que es la originalidad? Parad?jicamente, era escuchado por nadie este hombre que tanto merec?a ser escuchado. Parad?jicamente, lo llamaban loco, porque comet?a la cordura de creer que debemos pensar con nuestra propia cabeza, porque comet?a la cordura de proponer una educaci?n para todos y una Am?rica de todos, y dec?a que al que no sabe, cualquiera lo enga?a y al que no tiene, cualquiera lo compra, y porque comet?a la cordura de dudar de la independencia de nuestros pa?ses reci?n nacidos: -No somos due?os de nosotros mismos -dec?a-. Somos independientes, pero no somos libres. - - - Quince a?os despu?s de la muerte del loco Rodr?guez, Paraguay fue exterminado. El ?nico pa?s hispanoamericano de veras libre fue parad?jicamente asesinado en nombre de la libertad. Paraguay no estaba preso en la jaula de la deuda externa, porque no deb?a un centavo a nadie, y no practicaba la mentirosa libertad de comercio, que nos impon?a y nos impone una econom?a de importaci?n y una cultura de impostaci?n. Parad?jicamente, al cabo de cinco a?os de guerra feroz, entre tanta muerte sobrevivi? el origen. Seg?n la m?s antigua de sus tradiciones, los paraguayos hab?an nacido de la lengua que los nombr?, y entre las ruinas humeantes sobrevivi? esa lengua sagrada, la lengua primera, la lengua guaran?. Y en guaran? hablan todav?a los paraguayos a la hora de la verdad, que es la hora del amor y del humor. En guaran?, ?e?? significa palabra y tambi?n significa alma. Quien miente la palabra traiciona el alma. Si te doy mi palabra, me doy. - - - Un siglo despu?s de la guerra del Paraguay, un presidente de Chile dio su palabra, y se dio. Los aviones escup?an bombas sobre el palacio de gobierno, tambi?n ametrallado por las tropas de tierra. El hab?a dicho: -Yo de aqu? no salgo vivo. En la historia latinoamericana, es una frase frecuente. La han pronunciado unos cuantos presidentes que despu?s han salido vivos, para seguir pronunci?ndola. Pero esa bala no minti?. La bala de Salvador Allende no minti?. Parad?jicamente, una de las principales avenidas de Santiago de Chile se llama, todav?a, Once de Setiembre. Y no se llama as? por las v?ctimas de las Torres Gemelas de Nueva York. No. Se llama as? en homenaje a los verdugos de la democracia en Chile. Con todo respeto por ese pa?s que amo, me atrevo a preguntar, por puro sentido com?n: ?No ser?a hora de cambiarle el nombre? ?No ser?a hora de llamarla Avenida Salvador Allende, en homenaje a la dignidad de la democracia y a la dignidad de la palabra? - - - Y saltando la cordillera, me pregunto: ?por qu? ser? que el Che Guevara, el argentino m?s famoso de todos los tiempos, el m?s universal de los latinoamericanos, tiene la costumbre de seguir naciendo? Parad?jicamente, cuanto m?s lo manipulan, cuanto m?s lo traicionan, m?s nace. El es el m?s nacedor de todos. Y me pregunto: ?No ser? porque ?l dec?a lo que pensaba, y hac?a lo que dec?a? ?No ser? que por eso sigue siendo tan extraordinario, en este mundo donde las palabras y los hechos muy rara vez se encuentran, y cuando se encuentran no se saludan, porque no se reconocen? - - - Los mapas del alma no tienen fronteras, y yo soy patriota de varias patrias. Pero quiero culminar este viajecito por las tierras de la regi?n, evocando a un hombre nacido, como yo, por aqu? cerquita. Parad?jicamente, ?l muri? hace un siglo y medio, pero sigue siendo mi compatriota m?s peligroso. Tan peligroso es que la dictadura militar del Uruguay no pudo encontrar ni una sola frase suya que no fuera subversiva y tuvo que decorar con fechas y nombres de batallas el mausoleo que erigi? para ofender su memoria. A ?l, que se neg? a aceptar que nuestra patria grande se rompiera en pedazos; a ?l, que se neg? a aceptar que la independencia de Am?rica fuera una emboscada contra sus hijos m?s pobres, a ?l, que fue el verdadero primer ciudadano ilustre de la regi?n, dedico esta distinci?n, que recibo en su nombre. Y termino con palabras que le escrib? hace alg?n tiempo: 1820, Paso del Boquer?n. Sin volver la cabeza, usted se hunde en el exilio. Lo veo, lo estoy viendo: se desliza el Paran? con perezas de lagarto y all? se aleja flameando su poncho rotoso, al trote del caballo, y se pierde en la fronda. Usted no dice adi?s a su tierra. Ella no se lo creer?a. O quiz?s usted no sabe, todav?a, que se va para siempre. Se agrisa el paisaje. Usted se va, vencido, y su tierra se queda sin aliento. ?Le devolver?n la respiraci?n los hijos que le nazcan, los amantes que le lleguen? Quienes de esa tierra broten, quienes en ella entren, ?se har?n dignos de tristeza tan honda? Su tierra. Nuestra tierra del sur. Usted le ser? muy necesario, don Jos?. Cada vez que los codiciosos la lastimen y la humillen, cada vez que los tontos la crean muda o est?ril, usted le har? falta. Porque usted, don Jos? Artigas, general de los sencillos, es la mejor palabra que ella ha dicho. __________________________________________________ Correo Yahoo! Espacio para todos tus mensajes, antivirus y antispam ?gratis! ?Abr? tu cuenta ya! - http://correo.yahoo.com.ar ________________________________________ INFORMACI?N SOBRE LA LISTA Y SUSCRIPCIONES POR V?A INTERNET: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/reconquista-popular. SUSCRIPCI?N POR CORREO ELECTR?NICO: env?e un mensaje escribiendo 'help' en el asunto (no escriba nada en el cuerpo del mensaje) a reconquista-popular-request at lists.econ.utah.edu EL CORREO ELECTR?NICO DE LA PERSONA QUE ADMINISTRA LA LISTA ES: reconquista-popular-admin at lists.econ.utah.edu TODOS LOS MENSAJES DE ESTA LISTA QUEDAN ARCHIVADOS Y PUEDEN CONSULTARSE EN: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/reconquista-popular/ ________________________________________ Lista de correo electr?nico Reconquista-Popular Reconquista-Popular at lists.econ.utah.edu http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/reconquista-popular -- N?stor Gorojovsky El texto principal de este correo puede no ser de mi autor?a From nmgoro at gmail.com Fri Jul 4 11:43:16 2008 From: nmgoro at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?Q?N=C3=A9stor_Gorojovsky?=) Date: Fri, 4 Jul 2008 14:43:16 -0300 Subject: [A-List] [Marxism] Now that I know... In-Reply-To: <1B8EC266A6994D75A7DA391ADB51DA96@home9sg93n9r5y> References: <2fa158550807030741o52c30d85w52450814175ea3fb@mail.gmail.com> <359F05B677E14A95B453E1A5DDA9B2D4@home9sg93n9r5y> <486D0821.6050003@panix.com> <97E962211D2E4EE1BF69E02F6333B34B@home9sg93n9r5y> <20080704111916.E0ECB12467@mailbackend.panix.com> <1B8EC266A6994D75A7DA391ADB51DA96@home9sg93n9r5y> Message-ID: <2fa158550807041043t7e26dbau56fce2f2cc132e70@mail.gmail.com> You mean Patrick Bond McCarthyzed you out of Marxmail? Private, please. 2008/7/4, james daly : > > I have unsubscribed from Marxmail, but failed to post my farewell e-mail in > time. In case anyone was interested, here it is. > > ************* > > The angel with the fiery sword has spoken. Operation Murabatsvina, garbage > clearance, proceeds. My little tent in Marxmail is swept away. You win -- > again -- Patrick. > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Louis Proyect" > To: "James Daly" > > Sent: Friday, July 04, 2008 12:19 PM > Subject: Re: [Marxism] Now that I know... > > > > > -- N?stor Gorojovsky El texto principal de este correo puede no ser de mi autor?a From tal1 at cogeco.ca Fri Jul 4 15:46:47 2008 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Fri, 4 Jul 2008 17:46:47 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Why the US is a helluva country In-Reply-To: <486DF3E8.9040501@attglobal.net> References: <486DF3E8.9040501@attglobal.net> Message-ID: <4AD27941C25044038F92D079CD579CC5@TonyPC> A couple quibbles: "Nothing wrong with snake oil; lots of it, under different names, is sold in "Health food" stores to the conspiracy theorists on the left and right who think all doctors and medicine are poisoning them)." ....well, they sort of are...but, then, being up on the actual state-of-the-art research in this area is something the 'health food' anti-conspiracy conspiratists ain't. "Secretary of State: Christopher Hitchens. A gutsy smartass atheist with > no ax to grind, who is hated by the left and the religious community ... > testimony to his value." ..ah, Mr. 'Hatchet' Hitchens....opportunistic, right-wing asshole weilding a decidedly imperialist axe. Hated by the left on sublimely rational grounds. " Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare: Ayaan Hirsi Ali. A reward > for her moral witness and courage in facing down islamist extremism and > PC." ...the author's 'moral witness' is patently stuck between Stage 2 and 3 on the Kholberg scale (purely conventional morality marked by reflexive xenophobia). Did I say 'quibbles'?...Lorna Salzman: cruise-missile liberal. T. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bill Totten" To: "a-list" ; "ugly New World" ; "World City" Sent: Friday, July 04, 2008 5:56 AM Subject: [A-List] Why the US is a helluva country > > by Lorna Salzman > > http://culturechange.org (July 01 2008) > > > Some people are giving a lot of thought to how to build a movement > around global warming. This is a tough challenge but given American > know-how, can-do, ingenuity, cojones, knee-jerk patriotic hubris, > suspicion of foreigners, a staggeringly high fifty percent literacy > rate, reliance on conspiracy theories, faith in one god or another, and > unflagging belief in progress in the face of overwhelming evidence to > the contrary, I am sure it can be done. This is a helluva country. > Here's why. > > 1. A commitment to representative democracy conditioned only on the > necessity of belonging to one of two parties, Republican or Democrat. > Republicans have the upper hand given that their 24th pair of > chromosomes codes for Greed. Democrats' 24th chromosome codes for > Deceit. It's Win-Win for either of them. > > 2. An abiding love for gambling, monster theme parks, shopping in giant > malls, riding in huge vans, and family values that use churches and TV > sets to bring everyone together. These shared values give a remarkable > cohesion to American society even in the face of ecological collapse. No > one wants to be a nattering nabob of negativity as the world crumbles > around us. Stiff upper lips are enough for the British but not for > Americans, who need overstuffed credit cards to reassure themselves that > they are the salvation of the world and if you don't like it you can go > back where you came from. > > 3. A fervent belief in the right to cheap gas. After decades of paying > under a dollar per gallon for gasoline - 35 cents in the 1960s - > Americans are now getting really pissed off at the chutzpah of royal > monarchs, royal leftist pains-in-the-ass and Royal Dutch Shell > executives who think they have as much a right to make money as > Americans do. What gives foreigners these privileges? Don't they know we > can send in the troops anytime we want for any reason? > > 4. An indissoluble adhesion to religion in one form or another. It is > undeniable that the existence of dissent, protest and freedom of > expression causes discomfort to many Americans, sending them into the > arms and shelter of various religious cults and institutions, who will, > on their behalf, fight against these basic freedoms and rights so as to > make them feel better. Generally speaking, they are cheaper than > psychoanalysts depending on how much of your meagre salary you turn over > to these delightful snake oil salesmen. (Nothing wrong with snake oil; > lots of it, under different names, is sold in "Health food" stores to > the conspiracy theorists on the left and right who think all doctors and > medicine are poisoning them). > > 5. There is nothing like conspiracy theories, except maybe some stand-up > comedians, to keep people amused and connected. We can thank the > internet for making this political networking possible, since it ties up > people who might be making serious mischief elsewhere. > > 6. An unprecedented web of multiculturalism, ranging from extreme > Political Correctness which bans words like "beggars" and "midget", to > Rambo Limbaughs, to posturing paleoliberals like Eric Alterman and The > Nation, to New Age gurus like Deepak Chopra, to street-theater > rabblerousers like Al Sharpton, not to mention the mammalian diversity > in the halls of Congress, where the promise of equal opportunity is > fulfilled in the election of liars, louts and lechers every two years. > This country can be rightly proud of its tolerance for dissent, where > blacks think all whites are racists and whites think all blacks are Arabs. > > 7. Only in America could the conundrum of disdain for government and > politicians be so perfectly illustrated by the election-year digestion > of the whole cloth of candidates' promises. > > 8. An adherence to the time-tested practice of misogyny, whether in the > corporate glass ceiling, skewed pay scales, domestic violence, or the > female slavery in Mormon religious brothels that condemns generations of > girls and women to illiteracy, inequality and isolation. Let no one > accuse Americans of forsaking the prejudices and practices of their > pioneer ancestors. > > 9. A obeisant compliant media industry that, unlike its brethren in > congress, is willing and eager to feed the demands, biases and fears of > its readers and listeners. It cannot be accused of elitism or pandering > to the select few; on the contrary, it faithfully brings, every hour of > the day and night, the promise of prosperity and material success to > tens of millions of people even as the country's political and economic > leaders strive to deprive them of these things. Truly, it is a balm for > troubled Americans who are tired of being bombarded with the bad news > about global warming, epidemics, food shortages and the prospect of > parking their RV in their backyard indefinitely. > > Given these conditions, who should be leading our country? The only > people qualified to lead our country fall into at least one of these > categories: atheists/secularists; women; libertarians; homeless. > Atheists and secularists are independent rational thinkers and resistant > to cult thinking and behavior. Women are obviously the more > compassionate, stable and social justice-oriented gender. Libertarians, > though they have some peculiar ideas about guns, taxes and the > environment, are highly tolerant of dissent and defenders of civil > liberties. And the homeless need to replace the corporate lobbyists and > executives and be allowed to pursue their own self interest: getting a > roof over their heads and a hot meal. (Note: I have left out gays and > lesbians because basically they are really no different from the rest of > society). > > > Here is my proposed list for the top positions in Washington: > > President: Dennis Kucinich. A little guy with a big brain and heart. > > Vice president: Weird Al Yankovich. Because we need another VP named Al. > > Secretary of State: Christopher Hitchens. A gutsy smartass atheist with > no ax to grind, who is hated by the left and the religious community ... > testimony to his value. > > Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare: Ayaan Hirsi Ali. A reward > for her moral witness and courage in facing down islamist extremism and > PC. > > Secretary of Commerce: Reverend Billy of the Church of Stop Shopping. > > Secretary for the Environment: James Gustave Speth. For being a > non-leftist fingering capitalism as the root of the world's problems. > (If he declines, I nominate Dave Foreman). > > Secretary of Labor: Ralph Nader. > > _____ > > Lorna Salzman started her forty-year career as environmental activist > saving wetlands on eastern Long Island and got her big boost and > inspiration when Dave Brower hired her as regional representative of > Friends of the Earth in New York. After serving over ten years with FOE, > mostly fighting nuclear power and fending off the Army Corps of > Engineers, she had brief stints at National Audubon Society's American > Birds magazine, at Food & Water fighting food irradiation, and in the > 1990s served three years as natural resource specialist at the New York > City Department of Environmental Protection. In between she founded the > New York Green Party, ran as a green for congress in 2002, and sought > the party's presidential nomination in 2004. > > Her collected writings are at lornasalzman.com . > > Her previous article in Culture Change was "Neo-liberals in green > clothing: Nordhaus, Shellenberger and Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors" > at culturechange.org . > > http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=182&Itemid=1#cont > > > http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com > http://www.ashisuto.co.jp > > > From nscchicago at igc.org Fri Jul 4 15:47:27 2008 From: nscchicago at igc.org (NSC WORKERS COOP) Date: Fri, 4 Jul 2008 16:47:27 -0500 Subject: [A-List] NICARAGUA UPDATE - ABOUT POLITICS OF THE OLIGARCHY Message-ID: <021f01c8de1f$949ae230$0a0110ac@NSCCHICAGO> Tom Baker here and I've forwarded to you news from Nicaragua as it's come to me. Recently the HOTLINE came by, noting the oligarichal play for power. The following comments and article should give you good base for better understanding. Friends, the history of the USA shows this nation as Indian Killer Slave Owner a lot more sophisticated today. Use this as you will and get it around. ----- Original Message ----- From: Dr. Arnold Matlin Subject: Article about Nica from Toni Solo Dear Friends: Toni Solo has written an important article about Nicaragua. You can find following my comments. Toni has a zspace. Click here or scroll down. http://zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/18057 The article is primarily a criticism of the U.S. State Department and the reporters/newspapers who, knowingly or unknowingly, publish material churned out in Foggy Bottom. The article uses Nicaragua as the example, and Solo clearly is pro-FSLN. He refutes many of the MRS arguing points, and gives the situation in Nicaragua a Sandinista spin. It works for me, but it won't work for everyone. We all know that the way you present the news can be just as important as the news content itself. (Everyone agrees that Daniel Ortega won 38% of the votes in the last election. You could write, "Ortega wins with only 38% of the vote," or "Ortega wins 38% of the vote, well above the 35% required for a first-round election victory, and also well above the 29% won by his closest rival.") I think that Solo makes a good case for the State Department spin being the spin we read in the mainstream papers, or hear on NPR. We also know that for every point Toni Solo refutes, an MRS supporter could, in turn, refute that point. My point is that there are two sides to the FSLN/MRS political situation in Nicaragua, and we in the U.S. tend to receive the pro-MRS news, because that's what suits our government, and that's, naturally, what suits the MRS and their many supporters within the U.S. solidarity movement. (I've never criticized the MRS supporters in the U.S. or Nicaragua-they're my friends and co-workers. I just respectfully disagree with them.) Solo presents the FSLN side of the story. I hope you'll find time to read it and see what you think. In solidarity, Arnie The Foggy Bottom Cuckoo: Editions Worldwide July 01, 2008 By Toni Solo Toni Solo's ZSpace Page Join ZSpace The US State Department's little known but widely read propaganda sheet, the Foggy Bottom Cuckoo, has editions in the liberal press of most Western Bloc countries. In the US, it usually pokes its beak out of the Washington Post or the New York Times. In Spain, it mostly fools readers into thinking it is El Pa?s. In the UK it often gulls unsuspecting readers by mugging itself up as the Guardian or The Observer. The Cuckoo regurgitates pre-digested US State Department tit-bits and spews them all over its surrogate media's unsuspecting readers. Surprisingly, they seldom seem to notice and seem happy to pay for the propaganda bath as a matter of routine. Recent examples abound, with the Cuckoo regularly throwing up yucky gobbets of pap on Iran, Venezuela and, lately, Nicaragua. Marcela Sanchez' recent Foggy Bottom Cuckoo piece on Nicaragua originally appeared in the Washington Post, being re-published in Nicaragua media empresario Carlos Fernando Chamorro's web-based news magazine Confidencial" on June 22nd. The very first line of Sanchez' piece repeated the US State Department claim that freedom and democracy are at risk in Nicaragua. Sanchez cites three examples. First, she notes the cancellation of legal status for the Movimiento Renovador Sandinista and Conservative parties. Secondly, she refers to the postponement of local elections in municipalities of the northern Atlantic Coast region badly affected by Hurricane Felix towards the end of 2007. Finally, she cites the recognition of Eliseo Nu ez (Senior) rather than Eduardo Montealgre as the president of the Alianza Liberal Nicarag?ense. Only people with a special interest in Nicaragua will have a clue about the detail involved in these events and this lack of information is something Sanchez exploits so as to avoid alternative explanations that discredit her argument. In the first case she ignores the failure of the MRS to satisfy simple administrative requirements which the electoral autorities gave them nearly 15 months to satisfy. One might plausibly argue that the MRS leadership did this because they were unwilling to invest resources in complying with electoral law in municipalities where they had no chance of winning. For a party with only 7% national support and whose base is overwhelmingly in the country's capital Managua, the area not worth organizing would cover about 70% of the country's 153 municipalities. Instead, the MRS preferred to provoke a bogus political crisis so as to garner mostly foreign support and bolster the minority right wing and centre right opposition of which they are a part. In the case of the postponement of the municipal elections in three municipalities of the RAAN one can quote the leader of the Partido Liberal Constitucionalista, the largest opposition party in Nicaragua, Arnoldo Alem?n. Alem?n noted that the issue of the postponement was linked to other matters like the upcoming election of new magistrates to the constitutionally independent electoral body, the Supreme Electoral Council. He noted, "The Constitution indicates 56 votes and even if we were unanimous, the PLC, the Let's Go With Eduardo group and the MRS, we don't make 52 and that means that one has to negotiate with the FSLN to make up the 56 votes." All that National Assembly horse trading, so typical of electoral democracies, makes Sanchez' claim that democracy is at risk in Nicaragua look completely stupid. Likewise Sanchez insists that the FSLN fears losing support in the three municipalities where the elections are postponed. But the elections have only been postponed for five months, from November until January. Sanchez thinks people's voting intentions are so volatile that five months will make a difference. For their part, the government and the electoral authorities argue it will take that period of time to allow people in those municipalities to recover completely from the effects of Hurricane Felix so as to be able to hold the municipal elections under more normal conditions, which are unlikely to prevail by November this year. 80% of people in those muncipalities were displaced by the hurricane, almost all the electoral records were destroyed and many people eligible to vote lost their vital ID cards. Sanchez seems oblivious to all of that. The final example cited by Sanchez is perhaps even more absurd. After failing to get even 30% of the vote as a candidate in the 2006 presidential elections Eduardo Montealegre's standing has diminished substantially. A CID Gallup poll published in June found that 40% of people see disgraced former president Arnoldo Aleman as the main opposition leader. Just 10% of people thought Montealegre was. In February this year, responding to a complaint from embittered former allies of Eduardo Montealegre, not from the FSLN coalition government, the independent Supreme Electoral Council resolved that Eduardo Montealegre had not been duly elected leader of the Alianza Liberal Nicarag?ense. Presidency of the ALN passed to veteran right winger Eliseo Nu ez. The whole episode was yet another example of the Nicaraguan right's chronic failure to form a united front following Montealegre's abortive attempt to displace Arnoldo Alem?n as the Nicaraguan right's natural leader. But Sanchez in her article skims over this aspect of the affair and squeezes Montealegre's discomfiture into her "democracy in crisis!" narrative. Having made three disingenuous points, Sanchez then quotes discredited MRS leader Edmundo Jarquin, whom the CID Gallup poll found was regarded as an important opposition leader by just 2% of people in Nicaragua. Jarquin's remarks are as poisonous as they are absurd. Sanchez reports he believes Ortega is "turning into the same kind of dictator that they overthrew in 1979". In fact "Ortega and Somoza - it's the same thing" is a prominent slogan in the marches being organized by the minority right wing parties and the plethora of NGOs that have so little national support they look to funding from US destabilization specialists like the International Republican Institute, the National Endowment for Democracy, and USAID among various others. The viciousness of such moronic demagoguery is a carbon copy of the same hate-filled scurril and rant that characterise NATO country efforts to destabilise Venezuela and Bolivia and to attack Cuba. Jarquin refers constantly to an undemocratic pact between the FSLN and the PLC. Unfortunately for him, those two parties won 65% of the vote in the 2006 presidential elections. The last time anyone looked 65% was a pretty decisive majority in any electoral democracy. Another thing Sanchez fails to note is that Jarquin himself is a political ally of Eduardo Montealegre who is currently preparing to run as candidate for mayor of Managua on the basis of a pact with....Arnoldo Aleman, leader of the PLC. The wilful stupidity and absurdity of people like Marcela Sanchez is matched by Rory Carroll, Foggy Bottom Cuckoo Latin America correspondent of the UK Guardian. Carroll is smarter than Sanchez in that he is better at mixing fact with sly inaccuracies and obtuse personal insults. He starts his June 24th article "Intellectuals condemn authoritarian Ortega" by reporting the inaccurate and ill-informed public letter in support of MRS leader Dora Maria Tellez signed by writers like Eduardo Galeano and Noam Chomsky. In among the legitimate reporting one finds "One of the most serious rows flared over the electoral agency barring two opposition parties from November municipal elections, claiming they missed a deadline for naming party representatives in all electoral districts." But the independent electoral authority did not "claim they missed a deadline". In the case of the MRS, that party was given nearly 15 months to complete the necessary administrative procedures to comply with the relevant electoral law and also with its own party statutes. So not only did the MRS indeed, really and in fact miss a deadline, about which there is no argument, but they did so after repeated encouragement to put the relevant documentation in order by the CSE for well over a year. In the case of the Conservative Party, they too did indeed really miss a deadline failing to meet a fundamental requirement of Nicaragua's electoral law, in place since 1995. Carroll's use of the word "claim" suggests institutional uncertainty. But, unless you are writing for the Foggy Bottom Cuckoo, there was no uncertainty. Later one finds "Venezuela's president, Hugo Ch?vez, has pledged subsidised oil to his socialist ally but Ortega's ratings have slumped to 21%, according to a recent poll, on the back of high inflation and enduring poverty." Well, it all depends on which poll you choose. Carroll has used the same gambit in the past referring to Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and picking the least favourable poll available. This is standard Foggy Bottom Cuckoo procedure. If Carroll had researched a bit more he could have found other polls showing, for example, that the FSLN's candidate for mayor is currently running well ahead of the opposition in voter intentions. In the country generally, the FSLN and its electoral alliance is even likely to make gains in the municipal elections forthcoming in November unless the opposition pull themselves together. While it's true that the majority of people in Nicaragua are despondent about their economic future, polls generally show most people do not consider the opposition a viable alternative to the FSLN. Carroll also refers to the acrimonious decision by musical legend Carlos Mej?a Godoy to insist the FSLN coalition government stop using his songs in its public activities. But he fails to note the equally bitter response from ordinary people all over Nicaragua at Mej?a Godoy's gesture. Carroll styles Mej?a Godoy as an "opponent" of Daniel Ortega's government. He does not point out that Mej?a Godoy ran as MRS vice-presidential candidate in the 2006 presidential elections. Thus Carroll allows uninformed readers think the gesture is that of disinterested artist. Such omission is a typical Foggy Bottom Cuckoo ploy. Elsewhere in the article Carroll notes, "International donors, including Britain, have threatened to cut funding over what they say is an authoritarian and reckless style of government which is compounding economic woes." But he does not quote anyone saying this. The reason he does not is that almost all the development cooperation donors view the FSLN governments programme very favourably. He has used an off the record source whom he could not identify because what they say is in fact not true. Humberto Arbul?, permanent representative of the IMF, finished a recent round of meetings saying on June 24th this year, "the situation of international reserves continues buoyant, the fiscal deficit is under control, the financial system continues healthy growth and the amount of deposits continues to grow above nominal product.....from that point of view, things seem fine, but evidently there are risks coming fundamentally from the international situation." The IMF representative does not use the word "reckless" - or anything like it. Perhaps Rory Carroll knows something the IMF does not. Individual country representatives give a completely different picture to the anonymous sources referred to by Rory Carroll. In May this year, Helena Reultersward, the Swedish representative of the 20 foreign development cooperation donor countries supporting Nicaragua's Health Ministry, confirmed that the Ministry had completed the implementation of its budget to a level of 93% and complied with the terms of its agreement with the donor countries. One could cite example after example of such ratifications of the Nicaraguan government's efficiency and responsible use of funds. But that does not fit in with the Foggy Bottom Cuckoo "democracy in crisis!" screenplay. Carroll's article on Nicaragua follows up an even more intellectually dishonest piece that he wrote not long after the Interpol FARC laptop fiasco. This piece by Carroll and Matthew Bristow, published on June 15th was entitled, perhaps by mischievous sub-editors, "Colombia: Pinned down in their jungle lairs, wounded Farc face long war's end". But in fact, the first five paragraphs describe a Venezuelan army mission to destroy a Colombian paramilitary narcotics encampment on the Venezuelan side of the border with Colombia. Those five paragraphs give discredit two of the Foggy Bottom Cuckoo's favourite myths. Firstly, that Venezuela promotes narcotics trafficking. The opposite is true. It is the Colombian government that has been bankrolled by narcotics dealing paramilitaries for over a decade. Secondly, that Venezuela supports the FARC to destabilise Colombia. The opposite is true. The US government and Colombia encourage paramilitaries to destabilise Venezuela. This was demonstrated by the arrest outside Caracas of over 100 Colombian paramilitaries training for sabotage operations in 2004. But even despite the implicit debunking of those two myths in the article's first five paragraphs, the writers follow up by trying to reinforce yet another one. First they quote the latest of numerous calls by Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez for a negotiated peace and the release of FARC hostages. "Enough of all this war. The time has come to sit down and talk peace." But they go on to comment, "It was an astonishing u-turn made all the more dramatic for being broadcast live on TV and radio and addressed directly to the rebels, who are known to avidly follow Ch?vez's speeches on transistor radios." Various commentators have noted that the Venezuelan government and Hugo Chavez have repeatedly called for a negotiated peace to Colombia's civil war in recent years and for the release of prisoners in the hands of the FARC. President Chavez himself has noted in a recent speech to officers of Venezuela's armed forces that Venezuelan forces have in the past found themselves in combat with FARC units and have suffered fatalities as a result. If there is a u-turn, it has been that the US State Department has finally had to acknowledge its longstanding deceit on the matter. But instead of doing so it sends out the Foggy Bottom Cuckoo to declare falsely that it is Hugo Chavez who has made a u-turn. The only interesting thing about Foggy Bottom Cuckoo writers like Sanchez, Carroll, Bristow, Simon Romero and all the others is how they play on the ignorance of the general public. Their stories hardly ever stand up to scrutiny by anyone familiar with the events in question and their context. These writers depend on the selective use of facts, more or less subtle insinuation into their reports of partisan editorial comment and the elimination of inconvenient alternative views or events. When reliable quotes are thin on the ground, they cite anonymous sources for opinions the individuals concerned would be unable to justify out in the open. The cynical, lazy practice of writers like these made possible the criminal war of aggression against Iraq. As a result over a million people in Iraq have died. Now the Foggy Bottom Cuckoo is preparing the ground for future NATO country aggression in Latin America. That systematic disinformation campaign is an integral part of the low intensity destabilisation war that has targeted Cuba for decades. It facilitated the coup d'?tat against Jean Bertrand Aristide in Haiti, as well as the continuing campaign against the governments of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Evo Morales in Bolivia. Now the US State Department and its NATO allies are increasing the tempo of their intervention in Nicaragua. toni writes for tortillaconsal.com -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 21914 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20080704/8a46dabf/attachment.txt -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 32516 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20080704/8a46dabf/attachment-0001.jpeg From shimogamo at attglobal.net Fri Jul 4 19:51:01 2008 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Bill Totten) Date: Sat, 05 Jul 2008 10:51:01 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Why I'm Not Patriotic Message-ID: <486ED385.8080003@attglobal.net> by Matthew Rothschild In memory of George Carlin The Progressive (July 04 2008) It's July 4th again, a day of near-compulsory flag-waving and nation-worshipping. Count me out. Spare me the puerile parades. Don't play that martial music, white boy. And don't befoul nature's sky with your F-16s. You see, I don't believe in patriotism. It's not that I'm anti-American, but I am anti-patriotic. Love of country isn't natural. It's not something you're born with. It's an inculcated kind of love, something that is foisted upon you in the home, in the school, on TV, at church, during the football game. Yet most people accept it without inspection. Why? For when you stop to think about it, patriotism (especially in its malignant morph, nationalism) has done more to stack the corpses millions high in the last 300 years than any other factor, including the prodigious slayer, religion. The victims of colonialism, from the Congo to the Philippines, fell at nationalism's bayonet point. World War I filled the graves with the most foolish nationalism. And Hitler and Mussolini and Imperial Japan brought nationalism to new nadirs. The flags next to the tombstones are but signed confessions-notes left by the killer after the fact. The millions of victims of Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot have on their death certificates a dual diagnosis: yes communism, but also that other ism, nationalism. The whole world almost got destroyed because of nationalism during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The bloody battles in Serbia and Bosnia and Croatia in the 1990s fed off the injured pride of competing patriotisms and all their nourished grievances. In the last five years in Iraq, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians have died because the United States, the patriarch of patriotism, saw fit to impose itself, without just cause, on another country. But the excuse was patriotism, wrapped in Bush's brand of messianic militarism: that we, the great Americans, have a duty to deliver "God's gift of freedom" to every corner of the world. And the Congress swallowed it, and much of the American public swallowed it, because they've been fed a steady diet of this swill. What is patriotism but "the narcissism of petty differences"? That's Freud's term, describing the disorder that compels one group to feel superior to another. Then there's a little multiplication problem: Can every country be the greatest country in the world? This belief system magically transforms an accident of birth into some kind of blue ribbon. "It's a great country", said the old Quaker essayist Milton Mayer. "They're all great countries". At times, the appeal to patriotism may be necessary, as when harnessing the group to protect against a larger threat (Hitler) or to overthrow an oppressor (as in the anti-colonial struggles in the Third World). But it is always a dangerous toxin to play with, and it ought to be shelved with cross and bones on the label except in these most extreme circumstances. In an article called "Patriot Games" in the current issue of Time magazine (July 7), Peter Beinart, late of The New Republic, inspects his navel for seven pages and then throws the lint all around. "Conservatives are right", he says. "To some degree, patriotism must mean loving your country for the same reason you love your family: simply because it is yours". And then he criticizes, incoherently, the conservative love-it-or-leave-it types. The moral folly of his argument he himself exposes: "If liberals love America purely because it embodies ideals like liberty, justice, and equality, why shouldn't they love Canada - which from a liberal perspective often goes further toward realizing those principles - even more? And what do liberals do", he asks, "when those universal ideals collide with America's self-interest? Giving away the federal budget to Africa would probably increase the net sum of justice and equality on the planet, after all. But it would harm Americans and thus be unpatriotic." This is a straw man if I ever I saw one, but if the United States gave a lot more of its budget to eradicating poverty and disease in Africa and other parts of the developing world, it might actually make us all safer. At bottom, note how readily Beinart disposes of "liberty, justice, and equality". He has stripped patriotism to its vacuous essence: Love your country because it's yours. If we stopped that arm from reflexively saluting and concerned ourselves more with "universal ideals" than with parochial ones, we'd be a lot better off. We wouldn't be in Iraq, we wouldn't have besmirched ourselves at Guantanamo, we wouldn't be acting like some Argentinean junta that wages illegal wars and tortures people and disappears them into secret dungeons. Love of country is a form of idolatry. Listen, if you would, to the wisdom of Milton Mayer, writing back in 1962 a rebuke to JFK for his much-celebrated line: "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country". Mayer would have none of it. "When Mr Kennedy spoke those words at his inaugural, I knew that I was at odds with a society which did not immediately rebel against them", he wrote. "They are the words of totalitarianism pure; no Jefferson could have spoken them, and no Khrushchev could have spoken them better. Could a man say what Mr Kennedy said and also say that the difference between us and them is that they believe that man exists for the State and we believe that the State exists for man? He couldn't, but he did. And in doing so, he read me out of society." When Americans retort that this is still the greatest country in the world, I have to ask why. Are we the greatest country because we have 10,000 nuclear weapons? No, that just makes us enormously powerful, with the capacity to destroy the Earth itself. Are we the greatest country because we have soldiers stationed in more than 120 countries? No, that just makes us an empire, like the empires of old, only more so. Are we the greatest country because we are one-twentieth of the world's population but we consume one-quarter of its resources? No, that just must makes us a greedy and wasteful nation. Are we the greatest country because the top one percent of Americans hoards 34 percent of the nation's wealth, more than everyone in the bottom ninety percent combined? No, that just makes us a vastly unequal nation. Are we the greatest country because corporations are treated as real, live human beings with rights? No, that just enshrines a plutocracy in this country. Are we the greatest country because we take the best care of our people's basic needs? No, actually we don't. We're far down the list on health care and infant mortality and parental leave and sick leave and quality of life. So what exactly are we talking about here? To the extent that we're a great (not the greatest, mind you: that's a fool's game) country, we're less of a great country today. Because those things that truly made us great - the system of checks and balances, the enshrinement of our individual rights and liberties - have all been systematically assaulted by Bush and Cheney. >From the Patriot Act to the Military Commissions Act to the new FISA Act, and all the signing statements in between, we are less great today. >From Abu Ghraib and Bagram Air Force Base and Guantanamo, we are less great today. >From National Security Presidential Directive 51 (giving the Executive responsibility for ensuring constitutional government in an emergency) to National Security Presidential Directive 59 (expanding the collection of our biometric data), we are less great today. >From the Joint Terrorism Task Forces to InfraGard and the Terrorist Liaison Officers, we are less great today. Admit it. We don't have a lot to brag about today. It is time, it is long past time, to get over the American superiority complex. It is time, it is long past time, to put patriotism back on the shelf - out of the reach of children and madmen. _____ Matthew Rothschild is the editor of The Progressive. Copyright (c) 2008 The Progressive http://www.progressive.org/mag/wx070208 http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From pbond at mail.ngo.za Fri Jul 4 23:57:34 2008 From: pbond at mail.ngo.za (Patrick Bond) Date: Sat, 05 Jul 2008 07:57:34 +0200 Subject: [A-List] Violence in Zimbabwe, and the MDC and its Social Imperialist Supporters In-Reply-To: <5073883D33FE4AAC9D329CFB5C98DC2D@home9sg93n9r5y> References: <5073883D33FE4AAC9D329CFB5C98DC2D@home9sg93n9r5y> Message-ID: <486F0D4E.7030808@mail.ngo.za> james daly wrote: > Violence in Zimbabwe, and the MDC and its Social Imperialist Supporters > By Stephen Gowans > Wednesday, June 25, 2008 > It was MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai who said to Mugabe, "If you don't want > to go peacefully, we will remove you violently." [1] > -- -- [ Louis Proyect "discredits" this on the grounds that it was said 10 > years ago and Tsvangirai apologised the next day. If Obama said it to George > W. Bush a belated apology would hardly suffice, and the incident would be > remembered for more than 10 years. -- J. D.] -- -- -- > James, you and Gowans don't give a damn about genuine power relations, do you. Here's what's going on: * imperialism is not really concerned with what happens in Zim because very little is at stake, and there is no initiative to take Zimbabwe over by military force, and there are no real sanctions aside from loans - but even without sanctions Mugabe's huge arrears on long-term debt prevent him from borrowing from formal financial institutions in any case; * subimperialism (the South African government) keeps Mugabe in power, partly (as Mbeki's brother argues) because a trade union catalysed opposition party - even the neoliberal MDC - is the last thing Mbeki's wing of the ANC wants to see emerge next door; * the progressive mass-based organisations in Zim - the People's Convention (see below), the Zim Congress of Trade Unions, the Zim National Students Union, Women of Zimbabwe Arise, the Combined Harare Residents Association, the National Constitutional Assembly, etc - are calling for both democracy and social justice; * Mugabe and his paramilitaries have killed nearly 100 opposition activists since he lost the March 29 election, and tortured thousands, and displaced an estimated 200 000 - amongst whom are a good many excellent grassroots activists; * the MDC has until now offered a few words of militant opposition (like those Gowans is frightened by), but in reality they have rolled over and done absolutely nothing in terms of mass action the past few years, and are notoriously reluctant to consider a "Plan B", even involving economic sanctions (which they do not support); * meanwhile, Mugabe and his cronies live high on the hog, printing money for illicit dealmaking, running a classical patronage regime, importing apparently unlimited luxury goods for personal consumption, and engaging in widespread corruption; * the ideal of transformation from semi-feudal rural social relations to a system of redistributive rural justice supported by an agriculturalist state *didn't happen* aside from displacement of a few thousand white farmers who have increasingly been replaced by a few thousand Mugabe cronies on the best farms, who in turn have allowed production to drop so far that Zim - formerly a food exporter - is in constand need of food aid; * Mugabe has learned the art of talk left walk right better than anyone, so that only the Dalys and Gowans of the world are still confused. *** THE ZIMBABWE PEOPLES? CHARTER Adopted at the Peoples? Convention, Harare, on the 9th of February 2008 We, the People of Zimbabwe, After deliberations amongst ourselves and with the full knowledge of the work done by civic society organizations and social movements; With an understanding that our struggle for emancipation has been drawn-out and is in need of a people-driven solution; Hereby declare for all to know that: - 1. Political Environment In the knowledge that our political environment since colonialism and after our national independence in 1980 has remained characterised by: a) A lack of respect for the rule of law; b) Political violence, most notably that which occurred in the early to late 1980s in the provinces of Midlands and Matabeleland, and that which occurred in the years from 1997 to present day, where lives were lost as a result of government actions undertaken with impunity; c) A lack of fundamental rights and freedoms, including freedom of expression and information, association and assembly, all characterised by the militarization of arms of the state and government. The People shall have a political environment in which: - ? All people in Zimbabwe, including children, are guaranteed without discrimination the rights to freedom of expression and information, association and assembly, and all other fundamental rights and freedoms as provided under international law to which the state has bound itself voluntarily. ? All people in Zimbabwe live in a society characterised by tolerance of divergent views, cultures or religions, honesty, integrity and common concern for the welfare of all. ? All people in Zimbabwe are guaranteed safety and security, and a lawful environment free from human rights violations and impunity. ? All national institutions including the judiciary, law enforcement agencies, state security agencies, electoral, media and human rights commissions, are independent and impartial and serve all the people of Zimbabwe without fear or favour. ? There exists a free and vibrant media, which places emphasis on freedom of expression and information and a government, which guarantees independent public media as well as a vibrant and independent private media. ? All people in Zimbabwe live in a society, which is the embodiment of transparency, with an efficient public service and a belief in a legitimate, people-centred state. And hereby further declare that never again shall we let lives be lost, maimed, tortured or traumatised by the dehumanising experiences of political intolerance, violence and lack of democratic government. 2. Elections Fully believing that all elections in Zimbabwe remain illegitimate and without merit until undertaken under a new democratic and people-driven constitution, The People shall have all elections under a new people-driven constitutional dispensation characterised by: - ? Equal access to the media. ? One independent, impartial, accountable and well-resourced electoral management body. ? A process of delimitation, which is free from political control, which is accurate, fair, transparent and undertaken with full public participation. ? A continually updated and accurate voters? roll, which is open and accessible to all. ? Transparent and neutral location of polling stations, agreed to through a national consultative process devoid of undue ruling or opposition party and government influence, which are accessible to all including those with special needs. ? Voter education with the full participation of civic society that is both expansive and well-timed in order to allow citizens to exercise their democratic right to choose leaders of their choice to the full. ? International, Regional and Local Observers and Monitors being permitted access to everyone involved in the electoral process. ? An Electoral Court, which is independent and impartial, well-staffed and wellresourced to address all issues relating to electoral processes, conduct, conflicts and results in a timely manner. 3. Constitutional Reform Holding in relation to constitutional reform that a new constitution of Zimbabwe must be produced by a people-driven, participatory process and must in it guarantee: - a) That the Republic of Zimbabwe shall be a democracy, with separation of powers, a justiciable Bill of Rights that recognises civil, political, social, economic, cultural and environmental rights; b) Devolution of government authority to provinces and to local government level; c) A multi-party system of democratic government based on universal suffrage and regular free and fair elections and the right to recall public officials; d) The right to citizenship for any person born in Zimbabwe. Birth certificates, national identity documents and passports shall be easily available for all citizens; e) A credible and fair election management body and process; f) An independent, impartial and competent judiciary; g) The protection of labour rights and the right to informal trade; h) The protection and promotion of the rights of people living with disabilities; i) Independent and impartial commissions which deal with gender equality, land, elections, human rights and social justice; j) An impartial state security apparatus; The People shall have a constitutional reform process, which is characterised by the following: - ? Comprehensive consultation with the people of Zimbabwe wherein they are guaranteed freedom of expression and information, association and assembly. ? The collection of the views of the people and their compilation into a draft constitution that shall be undertaken by an All-Stakeholders? Commission composed of representatives of government, parliament, political parties, civil society, labour, business and the church with a gender and minority balance. ? A transparent process of the appointment of the All-Stakeholders? Commission members as well as their terms of reference. ? The holding of a national referendum on any draft constitution. 4. National Economy and Social Welfare Holding in relation to the national economy and social welfare that because the colonial and post colonial periods resulted in massive growth in social inequality and marginalisation of women, youths, peasants, informal traders, workers, the disabled, professionals and the ordinary people in general, we hereby make it known that our national economy belongs to the people of Zimbabwe and must serve as a mechanism through which everyone shall be equally guaranteed the rights to dignity, economic and social justice which shall be guided by the following principles: ? People-centered economic planning and budgets at national and local government levels that guarantee social and economic rights ? The obligation on the state, provincial and local authorities to initiate public programmes to build schools, hospitals, houses, dams and roads and create jobs. ? Equitable access to and distribution of national resources for the benefit of all people of Zimbabwe. ? A transparent process of ownership and equitable, open and fair redistribution of land from the few to the many. ? The right of the people of Zimbabwe to refuse repayment of any odious debt accrued by a dictatorial government. ? Protection of our environment from exploitation and misuse, whether by individuals or companies. ? Social and Economic justice as a fundamental principle that guides a new people driven constitution and in particular the specification of the people?s social-economic rights in the Bill of Rights. And in particular, we hold that the national economy shall ensure: ? Free and quality public health care including free drugs, treatment, care and support for those living with HIV and AIDS. ? A living pension and social security allowances for all retirees, elderly, disabled, orphans, unemployed and ex-combatants and ex-detainees. ? Decent work, employment and the right to earn a living. ? Affordable, quality and decent public funded transport. ? Food security and the availability of basic commodities at affordable prices, where necessary, to ensure universal access. ? Free and quality public education from cr?che to college and university levels. ? Decent and affordable public funded housing. ? Fair labour standards including: o A tax-free minimum wage linked to inflation and the poverty datum line and pay equity for women, youth and casual workers. o Safe working places and adequate state and employer funded compensation for injury or death from accidents at work. o Protection from unfair dismissal. o Measures to ensure gender equity in the workplace, including equal pay for work of equal worth, full and paid maternity and paternity leave. ? Access to trade within and without the national borders and removal of all obstacles on the right of small traders, small scale producers and vendors to trade and earn a living. 5. National Value System Believing that we must commit ourselves to a national value system that recognises the humanity of every single individual in our society which we shall call ubuntu, hunhu, The People shall commit to: - ? Provide solidarity wherever needed to those that are less privileged in our society as individuals or in any other capacity. ? Equally respect people of all ages. ? Challenging intolerance by learning and respecting all languages and cultures. ? An inclusive national process of truth, justice, reconciliation and healing. ? Recognising all people involved in the liberation struggle. And that this be done with an emphasis that ubuntu/hunhu is passed on from one generation to the next at national and community level. 6. Gender Holding in relation to gender that all human beings are created equal, must live and be respected equally with equitable access to all resources that our society offers regardless of their gender, and that gender equality is the responsibility of women and men equally, we recognise the role that our mothers and sisters played in the liberation of our country from colonialism and their subsequent leading role in all struggles for democracy and social justice. The People state that these fundamental principles must be observed and upheld at all levels of the Peoples? Charter, both on paper and in practice, where decisions are made about the following: - ? Our national budget and economy. ? Our legislative and government processes in order to allow representative quota systems. ? Provision by the state of all health care and all sanitary requirements of women. ? An understanding that women bear the brunt of any decline in social welfare security, economic and political systems. 7. Youth Believing that at all given times the youth, both female and male, represent the present and the future of our country and that all those in positions of leadership nationally and locally must remain true to the fact that our country shall be passed on from one generation to the next, The People state that, in order for each generation to bequeath to the next a country that remains the epitome of hope, democracy and sustainable livelihoods, the following principles for the youth must be adhered to and respected: - ? The youth shall be guaranteed the right to education at all levels until they acquire their first tertiary qualification. ? The youth shall be guaranteed an equal voice in decision-making processes that not only affect them but the country as a whole in all spheres of politics, the national economy and social welfare. ? The youth shall be guaranteed access to the right to health. ? The youth shall not be subject to political abuse through training regimes that connote political violence or any semblance of propaganda that will compromise their right to determine their future as both individuals and as a collective. ? The youth have the right to associate and assemble and express themselves freely of their own prerogative. *ADOPTED BY: - Achieve Your Goal Trust Bulawayo Agenda Bulawayo Progressive Residents? Association Christian Alliance Combined Harare Residents? Association Chitungwiza Residents and Ratepayers Association Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition International Socialist Organisation Matabeleland Aids Council MESA Media Alliance of Zimbabwe Media Institute of Southern Africa ? Zimbabwe Chapter 8 Media Monitoring Project of Zimbabwe National Association of Non-Governmental Organisations NASCOH National Constitutional Assembly Progressive Teachers? Union of Zimbabwe Restoration of Human Rights Students? Christian Movement of Zimbabwe Students? Solidarity Trust Transparency International Zimbabwe Women of Zimbabwe Arise, Men of Zimbabwe Arise Women?s Coalition YIDEZ Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops? Conference Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions Zimbabwe Cross-Border Traders Association Zimbabwe Election Support Network Zimbabwe Human Rights Association Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum ZISAP Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights Zimbabwe National Pastors Conference Zimbabwe National Students Union Zimbabwe Social Forum ZYCS Zimbabwe Youth Movement Zimbabwe Labour Centre. From nscchicago at igc.org Fri Jul 4 23:58:40 2008 From: nscchicago at igc.org (NSC WORKERS COOP) Date: Sat, 5 Jul 2008 00:58:40 -0500 Subject: [A-List] [LASolidarity] Fidel Castro on Colombia hostage release References: <744091.10824.qm@web43133.mail.sp1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <007d01c8de64$3475a440$0a0110ac@NSCCHICAGO> Tom Baker here and friends, mi compas, it is time for the Guerrilla Potatoes to take their stand and stuff themselves in all heroism into the tailpipes of the Oligarchary. Potatoes, Rise Up, Take a Stand. Stuff yourselves into the tailpipes of the Oligarchy. The scam going on is so big. Only a self sacrificing potato can stop it. Liberate a potato and stuff her into a power monger tailpipe. Re The FARC. The idea of a socialist state sends the imperialist goon into a dizzy. While we do not know how well a socialist system is operating in the FARC territory, we presume its source of revenues to support such a venture into socialism comes from (a) taxes from the latifundistas, large landowners, and (b) the lucrative cocaine etc, also taxed. Their sources of income do not subscribe to socialism and would work with the goons and probably do. Below, Fidel relates that this taking of hostages might be something of another scam, but so what, there are other aspects, a history, which Fidel relates. ----- Original Message ----- From: stansfield smith Subject: [LASolidarity] Fidel Castro on Colombia hostage release ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index] [Marxism] Fidel on Marulanda, Ingrid Betancourt, and journalistic tasks ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The true story and the challenge of the Cuban journalistsby Fidel Castro[excerpt]Yesterday, an important event took place, which will be an issue thefollowing days. This is the release of Ingrid Betancourt and a groupof people held by the FARC, that is, the Revolutionary Armed Forcesfrom Colombia.On January 10th this year, our ambassador to Venezuela, GermanSanchez, following a request of the Venezuelan and Colombiangovernments, took part in the release of Clara Rojas to theInternational Red Cross. She had been a candidate to vice Presidentof Colombia when Ingrid Betancourt was running for President and waskidnapped on February 23, 2002. Consuelo Gonzalez, a member of theHouse of Representatives, kidnapped on September 10, 2001, wasreleased with her.An era of peace was opening for Colombia. This is a process Cuba hasbeen supporting for over two decades, as it is most convenient forthe unity and peace of the peoples of our America, using new ways inthe special and complex circumstances prevailing after the demise ofthe USSR in the early 1990s --which I wont try to analyze here-- verydifferent from those existing in Cuba, Nicaragua and other countriesin the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s of the 20th century.The bombing of a camp in Ecuadorian soil in the early hours of March1st, --while Colombian guerrillas and young visitors from differentnationalities were sleeping-- using Yankee technology; the occupationof the territory, the coup de grace on the wounded and the kidnappingof corpses as part of the terrorist plan from the United Statesgovernment was repudiated the world over.A Rio Group meeting was then held in the Dominican Republic on March7th. There the events were strongly condemned while the USadministration applauded.Manuel Marulanda, a peasant and communist militant, the main leaderof that guerrilla founded almost half a century ago was still alive.He passed away on the 26th of that same month.Ingrid Betancourt, feeble and sick, as well as other captives with aserious health condition could hardly resist any longer.Out of a basically humanist sentiment, we rejoiced at the news thatIngrid Betancourt, three American citizens and other captives hadbeen released. The civilians should have never been kidnapped neithershould the militaries have been kept prisoners in the conditions ofthe jungle. These were objectively cruel actions. No revolutionarypurpose could justify it. The time will come when the subjectivefactors should be analyzed in depth.We won our revolutionary war in Cuba by immediately releasing everyprisoner absolutely unconditionally. The soldiers and officerscaptured in battle were released to the International Red Cross; weonly kept their weapons. No soldier will ever surrender if he thinkshe will be killed or subjected to cruel treatment.We are watching with concern how the imperialists try to capitalizeon what happened in Colombia in order to hide and justify theirheinous crimes of genocide against other peoples. They want todeflect international attention from their interventionist plans inVenezuela and Bolivia and from the presence of the 4th Fleet insupport of the political line that intends to obliterate theindependence of the countries located south of the United Stateswhile taking possession of their natural resources.These should be illustrative examples for all of our journalists. Inour times, truth is navigating rough seas, where the mass media arein the hands of those threatening human survival with their immenseeconomic, technologic and military resources. That's the challengefaced by the Cuban journalists!Fidel Castro RuzJuly 3, 2008FULL:http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/reflexiones/2008/ing/f030708i.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ a.. b.. c.. d.. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ LAsolidarity mailing list LAsolidarity at lists.mutualaid.org http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/lasolidarity free hosting provided by http://www.mutualaid.org/ To unsubscribe, send a blank email to LAsolidarity-unsubscribe at lists.mutualaid.org -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 9080 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20080705/8c6e06d2/attachment.txt -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 81789 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20080705/8c6e06d2/attachment-0001.jpeg From shimogamo at attglobal.net Sat Jul 5 05:39:25 2008 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Bill Totten) Date: Sat, 05 Jul 2008 20:39:25 +0900 Subject: [A-List] The Anti-Empire Report Message-ID: <486F5D6D.1000807@attglobal.net> Read this or George W Bush will be president the rest of your life by William Blum www.killinghope.org (July 04 2008) Some thoughts on "patriotism" written on July 4 Most important thought: I'm sick and tired of this thing called "patriotism". The Japanese pilots who bombed Pearl Harbor were being patriotic. The German people who supported Hitler and his conquests were being patriotic, fighting for the Fatherland. All the Latin American military dictators who overthrew democratically-elected governments and routinely tortured people were being patriotic - saving their beloved country from "communism". General Augusto Pinochet of Chile: "I would like to be remembered as a man who served his country". {1} P W Botha, former president of apartheid South Africa: "I am not going to repent. I am not going to ask for favours. What I did, I did for my country." {2} Pol Pot, mass murderer of Cambodia: "I want you to know that everything I did, I did for my country". {3} Tony Blair, former British prime minister, defending his role in the murder of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis: "I did what I thought was right for our country". {4} I won't bore you with what George W has said. At the end of World War II, the United States gave moral lectures to their German prisoners and to the German people on the inadmissibility of pleading that their participation in the holocaust was in obedience to their legitimate government. To prove to them how legally inadmissable this defense was, the World War II allies hanged the leading examples of such patriotic loyalty. I was once asked after a talk: "Do you love America?" I answered: "No". After pausing for a few seconds to let that sink in amidst several nervous giggles in the audience, I continued with: "I don't love any country. I'm a citizen of the world. I love certain principles, like human rights, civil liberties, democracy, an economy which puts people before profits." I don't make much of a distinction between patriotism and nationalism. Some writers equate patriotism with allegiance to one's country and government, while defining nationalism as sentiments of ethno-national superiority. However defined, in practice the psychological and behavioral manifestations of nationalism and patriotism - and the impact of such sentiments on actual policies - are not easily distinguishable. Howard Zinn has called nationalism "a set of beliefs taught to each generation in which the Motherland or the Fatherland is an object of veneration and becomes a burning cause for which one becomes willing to kill the children of other Motherlands or Fatherlands". {5} ... "Patriotism is used to create the illusion of a common interest that everybody in the country has". {6} Strong feelings of patriotism lie near the surface in the great majority of Americans. They're buried deeper in the more "liberal" and "sophisticated", but are almost always reachable, and ignitable. Alexis de Tocqueville, the mid-19th century French historian, commented about his long stay in the United States: "It is impossible to conceive a more troublesome or more garrulous patriotism; it wearies even those who are disposed to respect it". {7} George Bush Sr, pardoning former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and five others in connection with the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal: "First, the common denominator of their motivation - whether their actions were right or wrong - was patriotism". {8} What a primitive underbelly there is to this rational society. The US is the most patriotic, as well as the most religious, country of the so-called developed world. The entire American patriotism thing may be best understood as the biggest case of mass hysteria in history, whereby the crowd adores its own power as troopers of the world's only superpower, a substitute for the lack of power in the rest of their lives. Patriotism, like religion, meets people's need for something greater to which their individual lives can be anchored. So this July 4, my dear fellow Americans, some of you will raise your fists and yell: "U! S! A! U! S! A!". And you'll parade with your flags and your images of the Statue of Liberty. But do you know that the sculptor copied his mother's face for the statue, a domineering and intolerant woman who had forbidden another child to marry a Jew? "Patriotism", Dr Samuel Johnson famously said, "is the last refuge of a scoundrel". Ambrose Bierce begged to differ - It is, he said, the first. "Patriotism is the conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it". -- George Bernard Shaw "Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage - torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians - which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by 'our' side ... The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them". -- George Orwell {9} "Pledges of allegiance are marks of totalitarian states, not democracies", says David Kertzer, a Brown University anthropologist who specializes in political rituals. "I can't think of a single democracy except the United States that has a pledge of allegiance". {10} Or, he might have added, that insists that its politicians display their patriotism by wearing a flag pin. Hitler criticized German Jews and Communists for their internationalism and lack of national patriotism. Along with Mussolini in Italy, the F?hrer demanded that "true patriots" publicly vow and display their allegiance to their respective fatherlands. Postwar democratic governments of the two countries made a conscious effort to minimize such shows of national pride. (Oddly enough, the American Pledge of Allegiance was written by Francis Bellamy, a founding member, in 1889, of the Society of Christian Socialists, a group of Protestant ministers who asserted that "the teachings of Jesus Christ lead directly to some form or forms of socialism".) Following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, we could read that there's "now a high degree of patriotism in the Soviet Union because Moscow acted with impunity in Afghanistan and thus underscored who the real power in that part of the world is". {11} "Throughout the nineteenth century, and particularly throughout its latter half, there had been a great working up of this nationalism in the world ... Nationalism was taught in schools, emphasized by newspapers, preached and mocked and sung into men. It became a monstrous cant which darkened all human affairs. Men were brought to feel that they were as improper without a nationality as without their clothes in a crowded assembly. Oriental peoples, who had never heard of nationality before, took to it as they took to the cigarettes and bowler hats of the West." -- H G Wells, English writer {12} "The very existence of the state demands that there be some privileged class vitally interested in maintaining that existence. And it is precisely the group interests of that class that are called patriotism." -- Mikhail Bakunin, Russian anarchist {13} "To me, it seems a dreadful indignity to have a soul controlled by geography". -- George Santayana, American educator and philosopher Dr Strangelove There have been numerous books published on the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. I have not read one of them. There's another one just out: "One Minute to Midnight", by Washington Post writer Michael Dobbs. I will not be reading it. The reason authors keep writing these books and publishers keep publishing them is obvious: How close the world came to a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union! Arthur Schlesinger Jr, historian and adviser to President Kennedy, termed it "the most dangerous moment in human history". {14} But I've never believed that. Such a fear is based on the belief that either or both of the countries was ready and willing to unleash their nuclear weapons against the other. However, this was never in the cards because of MAD - Mutually Assured Destruction. By 1962, the nuclear arsenals of the United States and the Soviet Union had grown so large and sophisticated that neither superpower could entirely destroy the other's retaliatory force by launching a missile first, even with a surprise attack. Retaliation was certain, or certain enough. Starting a nuclear war was committing suicide. If the Japanese had had nuclear bombs, Hiroshima and Nagasaki would not have been destroyed. Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev was only looking for equality. The United States had missiles and bomber bases already in place in Turkey and other missiles in Western Europe pointed toward the Soviet Union. Khrushchev later wrote: "The Americans had surrounded our country with military bases and threatened us with nuclear weapons, and now they would learn just what it feels like to have enemy missiles pointing at you; we'd be doing nothing more than giving them a little of their own medicine ... After all, the United States had no moral or legal quarrel with us. We hadn't given the Cubans anything more than the Americans were giving to their allies. We had the same rights and opportunities as the Americans. Our conduct in the international arena was governed by the same rules and limits as the Americans." {15} Virtually every president from Truman on has been exhorted by one Dr Strangelove or another, military or civilian, to use The Bomb when things were going badly, such as in Korea or Vietnam or Cuba, or to use it against the Soviets directly, unprovoked, to once and for all get rid of those commie bastards that were causing so much trouble in so many countries. And not one president gave in to this pressure. They would have been MAD to do so. Which is why all the scary talk of recent years about Saddam Hussein and Iran and all their alleged and potential weapons of mass destruction was just that - scary talk. Hussein was not, and the Iranians are not, MAD. The only modern-day leaders I would not make this assumption about are Osama bin Laden and Dick Cheney. The latter is a genuine Dr Strangelove. In a few weeks we'll once again be marking the anniversary of the two nuclear bombings of Japan. Remarkably, the bombings are still highly controversial. I believe that the evidence clearly shows that the Japanese were already defeated and trying to surrender, thus obviating the need for the bombings. My essay on this can be found at http://members.aol.com/essays6/abomb.htm The Cold War was a marvelous era for Armageddon humor. Here is US General Thomas Power speaking in December 1960 about things like nuclear war and a first strike by the United States: "The whole idea is to kill the bastards! At the end of the war, if there are two Americans and one Russian, we win!" The response from one of those present was: "Well, you'd better make sure that they're a man and a woman". {16} Economics 101 remedial The economists who defend the perpetual crises of the capitalist system - the sundry speculative bubbles followed by bursting bubbles followed by a trail of tears - most often turn to "supply and demand" as the ultimate explanation and justification for the system. This provides an impersonal, neutral-sounding, and respectable, almost scientific, cover for the vagaries of free enterprise. They would have us believe that we shouldn't blame the crises on greed or speculation or manipulation or criminal activity because such flawed human behavior is overridden by "supply and demand". It's a law, remember, "the law of supply and demand" is its full name. And where does this "law" come from? Congress? Our ancestral British Parliament? No, nothing so commonplace, so man-made. No, they would have us believe that it must come from nature. It works virtually like a natural law, does it not? And we violate it or ignore it at our peril. Thus have we all been raised. But great cracks in the levee have been appearing in recent years, in unlikely places, such as the Senate of the United States, which issued a lengthy report in 2006 (when a gallon of gasoline had already passed the three dollar mark) entitled: "The role of market speculation in rising oil and gas prices". Here are some excerpts: "The traditional forces of supply and demand cannot fully account for these increases [in crude oil, gasoline, et cetera]. While global demand for oil has been increasing ... global oil supplies have increased by an even greater amount. As a result, global inventories have increased as well. Today, US oil inventories are at an eight-year high, and OECD [mainly European] oil inventories are at a twenty-year high. Accordingly, factors other than basic supply and demand must be examined." "Over the past few years, large financial institutions, hedge funds, pension funds, and other investment funds have been pouring billions of dollars into the energy commodities markets ... to try to take advantage of price changes or to hedge against them. Because much of this additional investment has come from financial institutions and investment funds that do not use the commodity as part of their business, it is defined as 'speculation' by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). According to the CFTC, a speculator 'does not produce or use the commodity, but risks his or her own capital trading futures in that commodity in hopes of making a profit on price changes'. [Futures contracts gamble on the price goods will fetch on a particular date in the future; the contracts are traded like stocks.] The large purchases of crude oil futures contracts by speculators have, in effect, created an additional demand for oil, driving up the price of oil to be delivered in the future in the same manner that additional demand for the immediate delivery of a physical barrel of oil drives up the price on the spot market ... Although it is difficult to quantify the effect of speculation on prices, there is substantial evidence that the large amount of speculation in the current market has significantly increased prices." The prices arrived at daily on the commodity exchanges (primarily the New York Mercantile Exchange - NYMEX), for the various kinds of oil are used as principal international pricing benchmarks, and play an important role in setting the price of gasoline at the pump. A good part of the Senate report deals with how the CFTC is no longer able to properly regulate commodity trading to prevent speculation, manipulation, or fraud because much of the trading takes place on commodity exchanges, in the US and abroad, that are not within the CFTC's purview. "Persons within the United States seeking to trade key US energy commodities - U.S. crude oil, gasoline, and heating oil futures - now can avoid all US market oversight or reporting requirements by routing their trades through the ICE Futures exchange in London instead of the NYMEX in New York ... To the extent that energy prices are the result of market manipulation or excessive speculation, only a cop on the beat with both oversight and enforcement authority will be effective ... The trading of energy commodities by large firms on OTC [over-the-counter] electronic exchanges, was exempted from CFTC oversight by a provision inserted at the behest of Enron and other large energy traders into the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000." {17} A tale told many times. While you and I go about our daily lives trying to be good citizens, the Big Boys, the Enron Boys, are busy lobbying the Congress Boys. They call it "modernization", or some other eye-rolling euphemism, and we get screwed. The Washington Post recently had this to report on the Enron and Congress Boys: "Wall Street banks and other large financial institutions have begun putting intense pressure on Congress to hold off on legislation that would curtail their highly profitable trading in oil contracts - an activity increasingly blamed by lawmakers for driving up prices to record levels ... But the executives were met with skepticism and occasional hostility. 'Spare us your lecture about supply and demand', one of the Democratic aides said, abruptly cutting off one of the executives ... A growing number of members of Congress have reacted to public outrage over skyrocketing gasoline prices by introducing at least eight bills that restrict the ability of financial companies to buy futures contracts, [require companies to] disclose more about those investments or stiffen federal oversight of energy trades." {18} Some further testimony from the 2006 Senate hearing: "There has been no shortage, and inventories of crude oil and products have continued to rise. The increase in prices has not been driven by supply and demand." -- Lord Browne, Group Chief Executive of BP (formerly British Petroleum) "Senator ... I think I have been very clear in saying that I don't think that the fundamentals of supply and demand - at least as we have traditionally looked at it - have supported the price structure that's there". -- Lee Raymond, Chairman and CEO, ExxonMobil "What's been happening since 2004 is very high prices without record-low stocks. The relationship between US [oil] inventory levels and prices has been shredded, has become irrelevant." -- Jan Stuart, Global Oil Economist, UBS Securities (which calls itself "the leading global wealth manager") In 2008, when a gallon of gasoline had passed the four dollar mark, OPEC Secretary General Abdalla Salem el-Badri stated: "There is clearly no shortage of oil in the market". El-Badri "blamed high oil prices on investors seeking 'better returns' in commodities after a drop in equity prices and the value of the dollar". {19} Finally, defenders of the way the system works insist that the oil companies have been experiencing great increases in their costs, due particularly to oil running out, so-called "peak oil". It costs much more to find and extricate the remaining oil and the companies have to pass these costs to the consumer. Well, class, if that is so, then the companies should be making about the same net profit as before peak oil - X-dollars more in expenses, X-dollars added to the price, same amount of profit, albeit a lower percentage of profit to sales, something of interest primarily to Wall Street, not to ordinary human beings. But the oil companies have not done that. Their increases in price and profit defy gravity and are not on the same planet as any increases in costs. Moreover, as economist Robert Weissman of the Multinational Monitor has observed: "While the price of oil is going up, these companies' drilling expenses are not. Oil can trade at $40 a barrel, $90 a barrel, or $130 a barrel. It still costs ExxonMobil and the rest of Big Oil only about $20 to get a barrel of oil out of the ground." {20} The above is not meant to be the last word on the subject of why our gasoline is so expensive. Too much information is hidden, by speculators, oil companies, refiners, and others; too much activity is unregulated; too much is moved by psychology more than economics. The best solution would be to get rid of all the speculative markets - unless they can demonstrate that they serve a human purpose - and nationalize the oil companies. (Oh my god, he used the "N" word!) Notes {1} Sunday Telegraph, London (July 18 1999) {2} The Independent, London (November 22 1995) {3} Far Eastern Economic Review, Hong Kong (October 30 1997), article by Nate Thayer, pages 15 and 20 {4} Washington Post (May 11 2007), page 14 {5} Passionate Declarations (2003), page 40 {6} ZNet Magazine (May 2006), interview by David Barsamian {7} Democracy in America (1840), chapter 16 {8} New York Times (December 25 1992) {9} "Notes on Nationalism", pages 83, 84 in Such, Such Were the Joys (1945) {10} Alan Colmes, Red, White and Liberal (2003), page 30 {11} San Francisco Examiner (January 20 1980), quoting a "top Soviet diplomat" {12} The Outline of History (1920), volume II, chapter XXXVII, page 782 {13} Letters on Patriotism (1869) {14} Washington Post Book World (June 24 2008), review of "One Minute to Midnight" {15} Khrushchev Remembers (London, 1971) pages 494, 496 {16} Fred Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon (1983), page 246. For many other examples of Cold War absurdity, see William Blum, Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire (2004), chapter 12: "Before there were terrorists, there were communists and the Wonderful World of Anti-Communism" {17} "The role of market speculation in rising oil and gas prices", published by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations - Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, United States Senate (June 27 2006) {18} Washington Post (June 19 2008), page D1, "Wall Street Lobbies to Protect Speculative Oil Trades" {19} Washington Post (May 10 2008), page D3 {20} "What To Do About the Price of Oil", Multinational Monitor (May 28 2008) http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/editorsblog William Blum is the author of:- Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War Two (Common Courage Press, 1995) Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower (Zed Books, 2002) West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir (Soft Skull Press, 2002) Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire (Common Courage Press, 2004) Portions of the books can be read, and copies purchased, at http://www.killinghope.org and previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website. To add yourself to this mailing list simply send an email to bblum6 at aol.com with "add" in the subject line. I'd like your name and city in the message, but that's optional. I ask for your city only in case I'll be speaking in your area. Or put "remove" in the subject line to do the opposite. Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission. I'd appreciate it if the website were mentioned. http://members.aol.com/bblum6/aer59.htm http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From nmgoro at gmail.com Sat Jul 5 07:31:42 2008 From: nmgoro at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?Q?N=C3=A9stor_Gorojovsky?=) Date: Sat, 5 Jul 2008 10:31:42 -0300 Subject: [A-List] =?utf-8?q?=28Spanish=29_Andr=C3=A9s_Soliz_Rada_on_the_Bo?= =?utf-8?q?livian_situation?= Message-ID: <2fa158550807050631x3f22045en1cdac93e04889a71@mail.gmail.com> [Sorry. No time to translate. As short as enlightening] BOLIVIA: REAGRUPAR AL MOVIMIENTO PATRIOTICO Por: Andr?s Soliz Rada El Decreto de Nacionalizaci?n de los Hidrocarburos (1-05-06), que tuvo el 95 % de aprobaci?n ciudadana, fue el cenit del gobierno de Evo Morales. Ahora acaba de perder, por estrecho margen, aunque de manera legal, la Prefectura de Chuquisaca, con lo que los refer?ndum que aprobaron estatutos auton?micos de Santa Cruz, Tarija, Beni y Pando camuflaron su ilegalidad. Cabe recordar que en pol?tica, si se quiere avanzar, m?s importante que criticar los errores ajenos, es criticar los propios errores. Los intentos separatistas en Bolivia se han incrementado en progresi?n geom?trica desde la arbitraria elecci?n de "gobernadores", la instalaci?n abusiva de un virtual parlamento, que aprueba "leyes" en Santa Cruz (publicadas en su "gaceta judicial") hasta la imposibilidad del Presidente de visitar dependencias oficiales controladas por la oposici?n, en tanto FFAA y la Polic?a no pueden contener un intermitente y progresivo golpe de Estado, mediante autonom?as regionales disgregadoras. Infelizmente, el MAS, con financiamiento de ONG, gener? los pretextos que necesitaban sus adversarios. S?lo una miop?a (o mala fe) absoluta explica que el oficialismo recibiera complacido la propuesta de Rom?n Loayza, Jefe de Bancada de sus Constituyentes, de cambiar el nombre a Bolivia por el de Tawantinsuyo y el de la Plaza "Murillo", de La Paz, por el de "Tupaj Katari". El canciller Choquehuanca dio similar paso al advertir que las empleadas dom?sticas, aymaras y quechuas, podr?an envenenar a sus empleadoras, adversarias del r?gimen. Los atropellos f?sicos cometidos por grupos irregulares contra parlamentarios, periodistas y prefectos opositores (a quienes se puso sus nombres en perros degollados en Achacachi) explican las dificultades presentes. De esta manera, se encubri? la crueldad del racismo olig?rquico, que apale?, en varias oportunidades, a quechuaymaras en Santa Cruz y desnud? a campesinos en la puerta de la "Casa de la Libertad" de Sucre. En s?ntesis, el MAS, en lugar fortalecer la alianza de ind?genas y mestizos contra oligarcas, a?sl? a los ind?genas al querer enfrentarlos con mestizos y agentes del imperialismo. El gobierno, al abandonar el cauce legal y tolerar la corrupci?n (no se juzgan, por ejemplo, graves estafas en la construcci?n de carreteras), tuvo que someterse a las ilegalidades de la oposici?n, en tanto aprobaba un atolondrado proyecto de Constituci?n Pol?tica que, al reconocer a 36 naciones ind?genas, divorci? a Evo de las capas medias. El prestar dinero de las reservas monetarias al 2 %, para recibir cr?ditos, de los mismo Bancos y entidades beneficiadas al 8 %, demostr? la fragilidad de sus convicciones antineoliberales. As? mismo, al enviar tropas a Hait? pone en duda su pr?dica antiimperialista. Sin embargo, el vicepresidente Alvaro Garc?a Linera, (quien inspir? las torpezas de Loayza y Choquehuanca), tuvo en los ?ltimos d?as el acierto de replantear el programa de gobierno del MAS, en el que el capitalismo de Estado retoma su condici?n de locomotora de la econom?a del pa?s, en reemplazo de la inviable dispersi?n ?tnica. Sobre la base de este programa, que es la expresi?n del capitalismo de Estado, el gobierno debe acabar con las lacras de la exclusi?n ind?gena y la corrupci?n que a?n subsisten y dar vigencia a autonom?as regionales que cohesionen al pa?s. La aplicaci?n coherente de este programa permitir? evitar el desmembramiento de Bolivia. De esta manera, Evo podr?a enfrentar en mejores condiciones el refer?ndum revocatorio del 10 de agosto y, si este no se realiza, las elecciones adelantadas que demandan sus opositores. Andr?s Soliz Rada La Paz - Bolivia -- N?stor Gorojovsky El texto principal de este correo puede no ser de mi autor?a -- N?stor Gorojovsky El texto principal de este correo puede no ser de mi autor?a From nscchicago at igc.org Sat Jul 5 11:02:15 2008 From: nscchicago at igc.org (NSC WORKERS COOP) Date: Sat, 5 Jul 2008 12:02:15 -0500 Subject: [A-List] HAPPY INDEPENCE DAY FROM CUBA, COLOMBIA AND GUATEMALA Message-ID: <004701c8dec0$e8bce600$0a0110ac@NSCCHICAGO> Tom Baker here, friends, and Cuba reports the CIA NED are almost walking the streets, they're everywhere. Colombia and the FARC incident. Narconews from grok gives report. Friends, the US is now United States of Snoop. Casa Guatemala Chicago has video documentary about current struggle by the indigenous of the Guatemala cloud forests to survive the merciless onslaught of neoliberalism. Friends, one more thing, the prescient statement I heard over twenty years ago as Ronnie Raygoon was having his way: Watch Out for the New Feudalism. New Feudalism? Well, folks, I see fiefdoms being carved out. I see a strategy for making All Life to be Dependant upon Lord Goon. This is the Fourth of July weekend, commemorating the Declaration of Independence. We Hold these Truths to be Self Evident...and Whenever... Friend, that little squirrel is your sister, and her buddy is your brother. Intuitively we share deep dark sense of what is coming down. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 2445 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20080705/2487e6c5/attachment.txt -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... 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From: laborexchange at aol.com Subject: [Vensteering] Cuba.Statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Date: Thu, 03 Jul 2008 17:29:16 -0400 Size: 30723 Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20080705/2487e6c5/attachment-0005.eml From shimogamo at attglobal.net Sat Jul 5 18:29:30 2008 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Bill Totten) Date: Sun, 06 Jul 2008 09:29:30 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Big Oil's 'secret' out of Iraq's closet Message-ID: <487011EA.4050506@attglobal.net> by Pepe Escobar Asia Times Roving Eye (July 04 2008) It is not about the "war on terror". It is not about weapons of mass destruction. It is not about "freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people", or to the "Afghan people". It is not about "Islamofascism". It is not about a Pentagon-coined "arc of instability" from the Middle East to Central Asia. New evidence shows once again both George W Bush administration wars - in Afghanistan and Iraq - above all are about oil and gas. Those were the days - up to a few days ago, actually - when the fateful words "war" and "oil" would never have been aligned in the same sentence anywhere in US corporate media; the days when former defense secretary and Pentagon supremo Donald Rumsfeld insisted Iraq had "literally nothing to do with oil". But now the US and European Big Oil majors that controlled the Iraqi oil industry up to the 1972 nationalization - today represented by Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP, Total and Chevron - seem to be back with a vengeance. Thus the New York Times, for instance, can redeem itself from printing 'Ahmad Chalabi fed weapons of mass destruction' nonsense on its front page for months and actually engage in news that's fit to print. This past Monday, the paper reported that "a group of American advisers led by a small State Department team played an integral part in drawing up contracts between the Iraqi government and five major Western oil companies to develop some of the largest fields in Iraq". The bland language may be misleading. This is no less than the first step in the de facto de-nationalization of the Iraqi oil industry - Vice President Dick Cheney's wet dream. As James Paul, director of the Global Policy Forum, has summarized it, this is all about: "... a new round of immensely profitable oil deals ... announced by Iraqi Oil Minister Sharistani, in which giants like Exxon Mobil can nail down long-term contracts and take away a large share of the oil from several key operating fields, like the massive Rumaila and West Qurna, some of the world's largest. "Oil can be produced in these fields for about one dollar a barrel, while its value on world markets is now around US$140. With hundreds of millions of dollars of profits at stake - and while the US occupation remains in full force - the oil giants are making their move, seeking to bypass opposition in the Iraqi parliament and ignoring suspicion and anger among the Iraqi public. With world oil supplies visibly running short and oil prices skyrocketing, this is a desperate gamble to control some of the world's largest and most lucrative fields, at huge human and environmental cost." Meanwhile in Washington, no collective breath is being held, as it's extremely unlikely the supine US Congress will be looking closer at whether the Bush administration is bypassing the Biden amendment, which prohibits the use of US funds to "exercise United States control over the oil infrastructure or oil resources of Iraq". There's too much money to be made. Big Oil hardball Hussein al-Shahristani, the Iraqi oil minister, has always been a huge cheerleader of Big Oil taking over the Iraq oil industry. He dreams of Iraq as the world's second - or at least third-biggest - oil producer, competing with Saudi Arabia and Russia. To get there he is frantically selling out, trying to get voracious, predatory production sharing agreements (PSAs) over the heads of the Iraqi parliament and even harassing Iraqi oil unions. At this early stage it's still about TSAs (technical support agreements); these are simple consultancy contracts to help Iraq raise its oil production by 500,000 barrels a day, not long-term contracts to develop juicy oil and gas fields. But oops! Iraqis have not been fooled by the smoke and mirrors - nor by Big Oil hardball. At a press conference in Baghdad on Monday, Shahristani had to admit, "We did not finalize any agreement ... because they refused to offer consultancy based on fees, as they wanted a share of the oil". Big Oil, of course, wants the "Big Prize" (copyright Cheney). What Cheney and Big Oil really want is to wallow in the extra-profitable thirty-year PSAs once the new, International Monetary Fund-redacted Iraqi oil law is forced through the gorges of the Iraqi parliament, sealing a major US-European takeover - the whole thing, of course, protected by a Status of Forces Agreement with its 58 US military bases, total control of Iraqi airspace, total legal immunity for US soldiers and the right for the Pentagon to turn Iraq upside down without even asking the hosts. And make no mistake, that's what the US power elite always wanted. Greg Muttit, co-director of the London-based oil industry research group Platform, explains that what's at stake at the current stage are "nine-year risk service contracts for six oilfields"; these are "halfway between TSAs and PSAs". Bids are due by March 2009, with signing in June 2009. As for the technical service contracts for five of the same oilfields, these are "no-bid contracts whose terms were dictated by the oil companies themselves". In other words: Big Oil is telling the Iraqi government what it wants. And here's the catch. Muttit says, "The tendering of these fields is a big policy change, as producing fields were supposed to be developed by the Iraq National Oil Company [INOC], with only new fields allocated to foreign oil companies". Big Oil, though, wants the whole cake. INOC gets only a shabby 25% stake. Muttit makes an enlightening comparison with Libya, "where the national oil company gets around eighty percent, which is much more normal for fields of this size". Meanwhile, in Central Asia ... Bush/Cheney, unfazed by their own regime's death throes - and following what was already official policy under former present Bill Clinton - now are also poised to have one more crack at the New Great Game in Central Asia, trying to thwart regional energy supremacy by both Russia and Iran. Last April, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan and India signed a Gas Pipeline Framework Agreement, deciding - not for the first time - to build the $7.6 billion TAP (now TAPI) pipeline that would deliver natural gas from Turkmenistan to Pakistan and probably India, cutting right through the heart of Afghanistan's Kandahar province, where the neo-Taliban are merrily running rings around the forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Construction should start in 2010, with gas being supplied by 2015. The project is backed by the Manila-based Asian Development Bank. The government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, which cannot even provide security for a few streets in central Kabul, has engaged in Hollywood-style suspension of disbelief by assuring unsuspecting customers it will not only get rid of millions of land mines blocking TAPI's route, it will get rid of the Taliban themselves. Inevitably, US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher weighed in, saying the US has a "fundamental strategic interest" in Afghanistan, without making a single reference to the words "oil" or "gas". In real life, with this move Bush/Cheney believe they can block the $7.5 billion Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline, also known as the "peace" pipeline. Fat chance. The three countries are all on board and the pipeline, delivering Iranian gas to South Asia, is a go. This new US adventure has also sent a frantic red alert right to the core of the Canadian government, which is now contemplating the geopolitical nightmare of having its troops, alongside NATO's, protecting a fragile pipeline in a war zone. The conservatives in power in Canada have committed to keep troops in Afghanistan at least until 2011. The Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives released a report, A Pipeline Through a Troubled Land: Afghanistan, Canada and the New Great Energy Game, written by John Foster, energy economist and former lead economist of PetroCanada, depicting TAPI as turning Afghanistan into "an energy bridge" between Central and South Asia. But Foster is very worried "the quest for 'energy security' risks drawing Canada unwittingly into a new Great Energy Game". Were investors, perhaps nursed by Afghan opium, to be delirious enough to build such a pipeline - and that's a monumental if - Afghanistan would collect a mere $160 million a year in transit fees. Well, that's maybe not so grim considering it's the equivalent of fifty percent of Karzai's current annual revenue. The Taliban would love to get a piece of the action. Forget about all that old 2001 "bringing freedom to Afghan women" rhetoric. TAP's roller-coaster history goes back to the mid-1990s Clinton era, when the Taliban were wined and dined by California-based Unocal - and the Clinton machine. Unocal beat the competition, led by Argentina's Bridas. The negotiations broke down because of money - those pesky transit fees. At the Group of Eight summit in Naples in July 2001 it was decided the US would take out the Taliban by October; September 11 2001, accelerated the schedule by a fraction. One of the first actual fruits of the US bombing of Afghanistan in 2001 was that in December, Karzai, Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf and Turkmenistan's wacky Nyazov (now dead) signed an agreement committing themselves to build TAP (by then known as the Trans-Afghan Pipeline). The Russians decided to wait for their counterpunch, and delivered it in style in September 2006. Gazprom accepted a forty percent price increase demanded by Nyazov for his gas. In return, the Russians got priceless gifts: control of all of Turkmenistan's gas surplus up to 2009; a preference for Russia to tap the new Yolotan gas fields; and Turkmenistan bowing out of any Trans-Caspian pipeline project. Nyazov pledged to supply all his country's gas to Russia. Thus, dead on arrival, lay TAP, the (invisible) star of the "good" Afghan war, as Democratic senator and presidential hopeful Barack Obama now sees it. Washington's plan has always been to seduce Nyazov to provide Turkmenistan gas to the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, and then to TAP. This was part of a US grand strategy of a "Greater Central Asia" centered on Afghanistan and India. Bush/Cheney will never give up. But India will go ahead with the Iranian pipeline. And Turkmenistan is selling all its surplus gas to Russia. Who needs a $7.6 billion, 1,600-kilometer steel serpent in a war zone? It ain't over till the fat (oil) lady sings. But if the Bush administration "vision" of a perpetual Iraqi puppet regime, with its oil wealth confiscated and under the imperial boot, takes hold, alongside the Taliban having a long pipeline to play with in Afghanistan, the least one can expect is a lot more blood on the tracks. _____ Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge (Nimble Books, 2007). He may be reached at pepeasia at yahoo.com. Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JG04Ak03.html http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From james.irldaly at ntlworld.com Sun Jul 6 03:14:33 2008 From: james.irldaly at ntlworld.com (james daly) Date: Sun, 6 Jul 2008 10:14:33 +0100 Subject: [A-List] Bolivia: Regroup the Patriotic Movement Message-ID: <379B0E0994CD4CB2BE759CED91F15522@home9sg93n9r5y> Bolivia: Regroup the Patriotic Movement by Andr?s Soliz Rada The decree to nationalize hydrocarbons (1 May 2006), which enjoyed 95% public approval, was the zenith of the Evo Morales government. Now it has lost the Chuquisaca Prefecture, by a narrow margin, but legally, which lets the referendums that approved the autonomy statutes in Santa Cruz, Tarija, Beni, and Pando camouflage their illegality. It should be remembered that, in politics, if we wish to advance, it is more important to criticize our own errors than the errors of others. The separatist schemes in Bolivia have escalated geometrically from the arbitrary election of "governors," the outrageous creation of a virtual parliament, which passes "laws" in Santa Cruz (published in its "legal gazette"), to making it impossible for the President to visit the official premises controlled by the opposition. Meanwhile, the armed forces and the police are unable to contain a creeping coup d'?tat through regional autonomies which, step by step, are disintegrating the nation. Unfortunately, the MAS, with NGO funding, gave the pretexts that their adversaries needed. Only an absolute myopia (or bad faith) explains why the officialdom welcomed the proposal of Rom?n Loayza, the head of the MAS bench, to change the name of the country from Bolivia to Tawantinsuyo and that of Plaza "Murillo" in La Paz to Plaza "Tupaj Katari." Similarly, Foreign Minister Choquehuanca couldn't resist warning that domestic workers, Aymara and Quechua, could poison their employers, opponents of the regime. The physical abuses committed by irregular groups against parliamentarians, journalists, and opposition governors (who got their names attached to dogs whose throats were slit in Achacachi) explain the present difficulties. Such actions obscure the cruelty of oligarchic racists, who, on several occasions, beat Quechuaymara Indians in Santa Cruz and stripped campesinos naked in front of the "House of Liberty" in Sucre. In short, the MAS, instead of strengthening the alliance of mestizos and the indigenous against oligarchs, isolated the indigenous by pitting them against mestizos and agents of imperialism. The government, abandoning the legal channel and tolerating corruption (not judging, for example, frauds in road construction as serious), had to submit itself to the illegalities of the opposition, since it approved a reckless draft Constitution, which, recognizing 36 indigenous nations, divorced Evo from middle strata. Lending money from Bolivia's foreign exchange reserves at 2%, only to receive loans at 8% from the very banks and entities that benefit from that money, has demonstrated the fragility of the government's anti-neoliberal convictions. Likewise, sending troops to Haiti has put its anti-imperialist rhetoric into question. However, Vice President ?lvaro Garc?a Linera, (who inspired the gaffes of Loayza and Choquehuanca), recently made the correct decision to reconsider the MAS's program of government, in which state capitalism regains its status as the engine of the country's economy, replacing the unviable politics of ethnic fragmentation. Based on this program, which is an expression of state capitalism, the government must put an end to the plagues of corruption and indigenous exclusion that still exist and must give effect to regional autonomies that bring the country together. Consistent application of this program will prevent the dismemberment of Bolivia. Then, Evo could better face the recall referendum on the tenth of August and, if that referendum doesn't come to pass, the early elections that his opponents demand. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Andr?s Soliz Rada is a former Minister of Hydrocarbons of Bolivia. The original article in Spanish was published in Rebanadas de Realidad on 5 July 2008. Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- URL: mrzine.monthlyreview.org/solizrada050708.html -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 2278 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20080706/162f93cd/attachment.gif -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/octet-stream Size: 49 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20080706/162f93cd/attachment.obj From james.irldaly at ntlworld.com Sun Jul 6 03:58:04 2008 From: james.irldaly at ntlworld.com (james daly) Date: Sun, 6 Jul 2008 10:58:04 +0100 Subject: [A-List] Violence in Zimbabwe, and the MDC and its Social Imperialist Supporters References: <5073883D33FE4AAC9D329CFB5C98DC2D@home9sg93n9r5y> <486F0D4E.7030808@mail.ngo.za> Message-ID: <02D6637C916B4867829AE56CE5D46BB4@home9sg93n9r5y> Patrick Bond wrote: * imperialism is not really concerned with what happens in Zim because very little is at stake, and there is no initiative to take Zimbabwe over by military force, and there are no real sanctions aside from loans ***** BBC headline, on the contrary, states G8 leaders face series of crises Rising food and oil prices, global warming and *Zimbabwe* ( my emphasis-- JD) face heads of the G8 group gathering for a summit in Japan. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Patrick Bond" To: "The A-List" Cc: "Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition" Sent: Saturday, July 05, 2008 6:57 AM Subject: Re: [A-List] Violence in Zimbabwe, and the MDC and its Social Imperialist Supporters -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 41 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20080706/39afa2ad/attachment.gif From shimogamo at attglobal.net Sun Jul 6 09:06:25 2008 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Bill Totten) Date: Mon, 07 Jul 2008 00:06:25 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Why Won't Corporations Take on Big Oil? Message-ID: <4870DF71.8010204@attglobal.net> Hanging Together by Ralph Nader www.counterpunch.com (June 19 2008) Here is a counter-intuitive story for you. Why don't organized corporate interests challenge damage or risks to their clear economic interests? Think about oil prices for big consumers, not just your pocketbook. Airlines are groaning, limiting flights, and laying off employees because of the skyrocketing price for aviation fuel. Executives in that industry say that fuel costs are close to forty percent of the cost of flying you to your destination. The powerful chemical industry is under pressure from the prices they're paying for petroleum - probably their main raw material. The powerful trucking industry is beside itself with diesel fuel going to $5 per gallon. You can add your own examples - cab companies, tourist industry, auto companies, et cetera. Why aren't these very influential lobbies throwing their weight around Washington to get something done about the speculators on Wall Street determining what is paid for gasoline and related petroleum products? It is in their own economic interests. To do what? Well, for starters, push Congress to legislate higher margin requirements for the speculators at the New York Mercantile Exchange - the same fellows who, based on rumors, took the price of a barrel of oil up another $10 in one day. Higher margin requirements (and wider disclosure rules) result in dampening speculation by reducing the amount of borrowed money these traders can use in their gigantic commodities casino. Long-time member of the New York Stock Exchange, Michael Robbins - an astute and fair analyst - says margin rules have historically been used to dampen speculation on stock exchanges. He mentioned a time years ago when the Federal Reserve raised the margin requirement to ninety percent - meaning the traders had to put up ninety percent of their own money on trades. There are other moves that can be made by Washington to ease the oil price crisis that is fueling inflation throughout the economy and shocking consumers. Suffice it to say that ExxonMobil testified earlier this month in Congress that absent the speculators, the price of a barrel of crude oil would be half what it is today. That would mean about $65 a barrel instead of $130 a barrel. What else do these big corporate buyers of oil need? Another area of major business firms not acting in their own interests involves the proposal in Congress (HR 676) to establish a single-payer health insurance system. That would mean government health insurance, private delivery of health care, free choice of doctor and hospital and saving about half a trillion dollars in insurance company administrative expenses and computerized billing overcharges a year. Presently, tens of millions of workers have employer-based health insurance. For years, CEOs have complained that this cost puts them at a competitive disadvantage with their corporate competitors abroad and in Canada where there is universal government health insurance. Former General Motors CEO, Jack Smith, publicly approved of the Canadian medicare system, which he had experienced when he was head of GM Canada. Under full medicare, these companies will pay less even with an assessment. So, what's up here? We don't see these weighty corporate lobbies on Capitol Hill supporting the 91 House members who have endorsed HR 676. Then there is the small business lobby ostensibly represented by the large National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB). Small business is regularly subject to government policies and market discriminations that put them at a disadvantage with their large competitors. Presently, for example, a Small Business Administration report concludes the following: "Small businesses in their commercial sector faced a thirty percent price differential for electricity and a twenty percent price differential for natural gas. In the manufacturing sector, small businesses faced a 28 percent price differential for distillate fuel oil, a 27 percent price differential for natural gas, and a fourteen percent price differential for coal." Are these volume discounts all fair for the Big Boys? Doubtful. Don't count on the NFIB to protest. More often than not, the NFIB talks small business but walks the walk of the National Chamber of Commerce, which primarily lobbies for the interests of large companies. So, why the overall reticence to fight for their own economic interests? First, corporations do not like to fight each other because they may need each other on other matters. Second, they also have exposable skeletons in their own closets. Third, they do not have to initiate a business war of retaliation. Fourth, they do not want to give their traditional labor, environmental and consumer adversaries cause to strengthen their own power by, in effect, siding with these groups' traditional causes. If investors in this country had any power over the companies they own - as individuals, or through mutual funds and pension trusts - an inquiring process could open up on this fascinating question. But as Robert Monks - a leading shareholder activist and writer - has said many times, those same CEOs have their own economic interests - think CEO compensation - in keeping investors powerless. _____ Ralph Nader is running for president as an independent. http://www.counterpunch.com/nader06192008.html http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From shimogamo at attglobal.net Sun Jul 6 19:56:16 2008 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Bill Totten) Date: Mon, 07 Jul 2008 10:56:16 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Lessons from Amateur Radio Message-ID: <487177C0.80602@attglobal.net> by John Michael Greer The Archdruid Report (July 02 2008) Druid perspectives on nature, culture, and the future of industrial society ? Of the many recent signals that peak oil has come of age as a social reality, the one I find most interesting is the efforts being made, on nearly all sides of the cultural spectrum, to find reasons not to talk about it. The ongoing superspike in the price of oil, for example, has been blamed on almost everything under the sun except the simple, easily verifiable fact that worldwide petroleum production has been stuck on a plateau since late in 2004, and shows no sign of going anywhere but down in the foreseeable future. Now of course it's true that speculation has played a role in driving up the price of oil, though as many speculators have bet on a decline in oil prices as on a continued rise - check the short interest on oil futures on any of the exchanges in recent months if you doubt that. It's also true that Russia, for example, has been using its newfound energy wealth as a political weapon, though there's rich irony to be savored in watching pundits in the United States, which built an empire on its own now-depleted petroleum reserves, criticizing Russia for doing the same thing. If oil production was still increasing at two percent per year, none of that would matter. Look at the situation in the light of the relationship between supply and demand and the nature of the current crisis is hard to miss. Over the last year, the price of oil has approximately doubled. According to conventional economics, a price increase on this scale ought to stimulate new production, since oil reserves that were economically marginal when oil was $70 a barrel are much less so when oil is $140 a barrel. During the same period, despite frantic drilling on the part of oil companies, production has remained stuck in a narrow band. This only makes sense if production is constrained by non-economic factors. That, in a nutshell, is the peak oil concept: at a certain point, geology trumps economics, because you can't pump oil that's not there any more. This may seem obvious enough. To most of the people in the world's industrial nations right now, though, this sort of logic is unthinkable, for intensely personal reasons. Accept the reality of peak oil, and the future most people have planned for themselves and their children stands revealed as one of history's all-time bad jokes. Worse still, the reality of peak oil means that all those who turned their backs on the lessons of the 1970s energy crises, and wallowed in the quarter century of excess that followed, have personally contributed to making the world their children will inhabit a poorer place. That's a hard pill to swallow at the best of times, and this goes a long way to explain the passion for finding someone else - anyone else - to blame for the unfolding crisis. They'll get over it eventually, when it becomes clear that what I have called the age of scarcity industrialism is the new reality, and no amount of scapegoat-hunting is going to change that fact. In the meantime, it seems to me, it's crucial that the peak oil movement keep going forward. Ten years ago, when the idea of oil priced above $100 a barrel was considered laughable by serious people, we correctly predicted the shape of the future. Now it's time to move on, and propose constructive responses to that future as it takes shape around us. And that, dear readers, is what landed me in a converted World War Two barracks building the Saturday before last, with a multiple choice test on the table in front of me and a group of elderly men from the American Radio Relay League to grade it. A few words of explanation are probably in order at this point. One of the major achievements of the last two hundred years, it seems to me, is the emergence of communications networks that allow news and information to move from one side of the planet to another at a faster pace than messengers on horseback or sailing ships can travel. Though there had been plenty of earlier attempts, using semaphore and other visual systems, the telegraph revolutionized communication across the industrial world, and launched a series of more complex media - telephone, radio, television, and finally the internet. Not all these were an unmixed blessing, it has to be said; every technology has its downsides, but on the whole, widespread access to long-distance communication has been much more a blessing than the opposite. There are also few dimensions of modern industrial society more vulnerable to breakdown in the age of scarcity now beginning. The internet, the crown jewel of modern communications, depends on a huge and energy-intensive infrastructure that may well prove unsustainable in the future. A single server farm can use as much electricity as a small city, and the technology that makes the internet possible in the first place requires plenty of energy, exotic raw materials, and a very high level of technology - none of which can necessarily be guaranteed in the decades to come. On a broader level, most of today's telecommunications, including the internet, support themselves through advertising sales, and the economic model that makes this work will have a hard time surviving the collapse of the consumer economy. At the same time, electronic communications media need not be as dependent on today's industrial systems as they are. It's quite possible to build a vacuum tube - the backbone of radio communications in the days before transistors - from commonly available materials using hand tools; Peter Friedrichs' excellent book Instruments of Amplification {1}, which details how to do this, has become popular reading on the more outr? end of the do-it-yourself crowd. Fifty years ago, widely available books for the teen market such as Alfred P. Morgan's The Boy's First (and so on up through Sixth) Book of Radio and Electronics {2} taught aspiring young electricians how to build remarkably sophisticated gear out of oatmeal boxes, spare parts and salvaged scrap. The possibility of viable electronics in a post-peak oil era deserves exploration. What would a viable long-distance communications network in the age of peak oil look like? To begin with, it would use the airwaves rather than land lines, to minimize infrastructure, and its energy needs would be modest enough to be met by local renewable sources. It would take the form of a decentralized network of self-supporting and self-managing stations sharing common standards and operating procedures. It would use a diverse mix of communications modalities, so that operators could climb down the technological ladder as needed, from computerized data transfer all the way to equipment that could be built locally with hand tools. It would have its own subculture, of course, in which technical knowledge and practical expertise would be rewarded, encouraged, and fostered in newcomers. Finally, it would take a particular interest in energency communications, so that operators could respond to disruptions and disasters with effective workarounds at times when having even the most basic communications net in place could save many lives. The interesting thing, of course, is that a network that fills exactly these specifications already exists, in the form of amateur radio. During a long and complex history, the original loose network of radio experimenters who pioneered the airwaves in the first three decades of the 20th century morphed into a worldwide community of radio hobbyists, who are assigned their own segments of the radio spectrum. Licensed and occasionally encouraged by governments, "ham radio" - the origins of the nickname are a subject of some debate - flies almost completely under the radar of the wider culture these days, surfacing only when someone in the media notices that in the wake of some natural disaster, a group of local radio amateurs stepped up and kept emergency communications going when all other channels shut down. All this was in my mind when I sat down two Saturdays ago and prepared to take the first of a series of FCC exams that would qualify me for an amateur radio license. Like a fair number of my generation, I'd been involved in amateur radio in my teen years - my Boy Scout troop had a ham radio club - but it got lost somewhere in the tangles of a difficult adolescence. Six months of study had, I hoped, prepared me for the most challenging test of all, the Element Four exam required to get an Amateur Extra class license, which authorizes operations on all amateur bands and all modes. Longtime readers of this blog will have already guessed that I had my Pickett slide rule with me, to crunch numbers as needed. As it happened, that six months of study paid off, and the Pickett performed splendidly. I passed all three required exams, and a week later got an envelope from the FCC containing my Amateur Extra "ticket", call sign AD7VI. The next task is to assemble a station; given the limits on my budget, that will involve a good deal of scrounging and probably some homebuilt gear as well, but that's hardly a disadvantage; a Druid interested in appropriate technology has much to gain by practicing technological salvage and getting some facility with a soldering iron. All this has several lessons that may be worth considering as we move deeper into the age of peak oil. First, of course, members of the peak oil community interested in practical responses to the future ahead of us could do worse than look into amateur radio. The internet has been the crucial framework for peak oil organization and information sharing since the dawn of the peak oil scene in the late 1990s. If the net becomes unstable, or outlying areas begin to lose access - both real possibilities as energy prices rise and infrastructure falters - having something else in place as a backup has much to recommend it. The Druid order I head has similar concerns, and similar plans in process. Second, many other technologies vulnerable to the impacts of peak oil, climate change, and the other impacts of the predicament of industrial society have potential backups and replacements in the large and little-known world of hobby subcultures. An astonishing number of what we might as well call "trailing edge technologies", from black powder firearms through handloom weaving to long-distance sailing on windpowered boats, have survived intact to the present in the form of hobbies pursued by their own community of aficionados. Those communities, and the knowledge they preserve, are potentially an immense resource as we look for more sustainable ways to do things in the aftermath of the age of oil. A third lesson, though, may be the most relevant of all. I've suggested elsewhere that our civilization is the first, and thus the most clumsy and tentative, of a new class of human societies - technic societies - as distinct from earlier forms as the first urban agricultural societies were from the tribal cultures that preceded them. One of the inevitable blind spots our historical position imposes on us is a tendency to confuse the particular cultural forms evolved by our technic society with the requirements of technic societies in general. Amateur radio is a reminder that there are ways to handle long-distance electronic communications that do not involve, say, mass broadcasting supported by huge energy inputs and the financial payback of a consumer economy. This is worth keeping in mind as we begin the long transition toward the ecotechnic societies of a sustainable future. Links: {1} http://www.lindsaybks.com/bks7/finstr/index.html {2} http://home.att.net/~jacksonharbor/apm.htm _____ ?John Michael Greer has been active in the alternative spirituality movement for more than 25 years, and is the author of a dozen books, including The Druidry Handbook (Weiser, 2006). He lives in Ashland, Oregon. http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2008/07/lessons-from-amateur-radio.html#links http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From shimogamo at attglobal.net Mon Jul 7 05:49:53 2008 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Bill Totten) Date: Mon, 07 Jul 2008 20:49:53 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Dependence Day Message-ID: <487202E1.8010009@attglobal.net> Our Fifth of July annual holiday - a proposal by Jan Lundberg Culture Change Letter #190 (July 05 2008) Our Fourth of July holiday ought to be critically evaluated for the word "Independence" - what we are celebrating. Since the concept of US's birth was based on just a document, so it seems sometimes, one might emulate the Declaration of Independence by issuing a Declaration of Dependence. What better day than every July 5th, when we can easily recall our previous day's independence-revelry? It would be too easy to just harp, "We are not independent of oil!" As a nation we are addicted to oil, as the current president said. Dare we go deeper with reflection on reasons for the addiction and the materialism it originates with? First we can take a couple of instances of lack of true independence that may amount to a mockery of the principle. One instance is the massive pollution of the air and the sound waves by July 4th festivities. Fireworks and firecrackers aren't all bad, but we are nevertheless putting poisonous heavy metals and soot into our breathing environment. Annual tonnage of fireworks sold legally is in the millions, and some say this is dwarfed by the illegal variety. The pervasive practice of the noxious but colorful shows adds up to an unsustainable use of toxic substances. We are simply too many to just do anything we want for kicks; we have a huge impact due to our numbers. It shouldn't be just an afterthought that animals run scared and are even destructive because of the violent noise. Such transgressions against nature reveal the central issue about independence and dependence as a moral one. At first it does not seem so, as people today can apparently choose to veer toward sustainable living and self-reliance, or they can feel comfortable doing no recycling, learning no new skills, buying their food from another continent, and participating in their community to a minimal extent. In the latter case, money and petroleum furnish everything, and life appears to go on with no threat of sudden upheaval or interaction with unknown neighbors. The above is a most relevant contrast in independence and dependence. The moral issue comes into the equation when we delve into what the energy cost really is to maintain a high-consumption life-style. Because the US uses about a quarter of the world's energy, and has only about five percent of the population, the inequity is easily seen. We can go further and trace one's dollars: they and their origin can always be traced to some instance of exploitation or imperialism. Or, if we don't want to "go there", we can remind ourselves that being the top greenhouse gas producer (barely surpassed recently by China) is a consequence of our energy dependence. Some might say our only problem is fossil fuel dependence, and that other forms of energy can allow us to keep on keepin' on. However, this stance fails to stand up to scrutiny when one considers energy-return ratios compared to the cheap petroleum that's gone, and when we consider petroleum's flexibility and versatility for materials as well as fuels. Solar panels and other technologies will not feed us in any way approaching the way petroleum has. Lurching toward the technofix is a waste of energy in itself, and does not address our deeper issues of dependence and independence. Because of these realities, and a series of unpopular wars when our country was not about to be invaded, waving the red-white-and-blue flag is not a sure indication of real independence. Could it be our flag has for now ceased to reflect the vigorous, independent spirit of our forefathers and their affirmation of our inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness and freedom? The Declaration of Dependence would be a conscious acknowledgment of our global behavior as well as a self-warning that we must get back to real independence soon - voluntarily or not, when petrocollapse and climate change take over completely. It can be argued that a true patriot decries today's dishonorable, unsightly dependence, and instead longs for mutual interdependence to aid the common good. (There has probably already been a Declaration of INTERdependence created and circulated, and I would probably sign it.) Unlike Thomas Jefferson's Declaration, let's try a first-person kind of pledge, as a public draft subject to modification: - I am dependent on using too much energy in a world of limited resources and high population size. - I have depended on long-distance freight for my food and other essentials, as well as for nonessentials that were supposed to make for wealth. - I live in a nation oblivious to its unpopular world role as the number one waster of energy and top generator of pollution. - I depend on the isolation of my high-consuming household to avoid working with my neighbors to manage our own local political affairs. - I have depended on corporate media and a public school system that does not tell the whole story. They have been influenced by powerful capitalists as well as religion, conditioning us to believe our lifestyle can go on forever with our know-how and "still vast" resources to exploit. - As a dependent American, looking to the good sentiments of the Declaration of Independence of July 4 1776, I strive to become truly independent of unsustainable energy use, of wasting resources, and of tolerating oppression whether against me or my neighbor or fellow world citizen. When a human being is exemplary for conduct benefiting others, the person is celebrated as all too unique; actually, the paragon is a reflection of all of us. Conversely, when one of us is unethical or a menace to society, this is a group failure of the entire population of the culture. A truly independent person is granted - thanks to a culture of mutual aid - freedom of movement and of expression. Such independence and freedom are not present in sedentary, non-nomadic societies of large population sizes. Wild nature should be at hand to roam in, and essentials of life obtained without others' control. Civilization has had slave societies and the working hell of capitalism's production. We are not really past that. For in modern sedentary society it is the literally sedentary person, whether dependent on sitting in the car or in front of a desk or a television, thus cut off from natural living, who is automatically non-independent. Reference: "Fireworks Leave Tons of Pollutants For Months" by Marla Cone, Los Angeles Times (July 04 2008): ktla.trb.com _____ Support Culture Change by making a donation: Culture Change mailing address: Post Office Box 4347, Arcata , California 95518 USA, Telephone (and fax) 1-215-243-3144. Culture Change was founded by Sustainable Energy Institute (formerly Fossil Fuels Policy Action), a nonprofit organization. http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=184&Itemid=1#cont http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From nscchicago at igc.org Sun Jul 6 19:17:53 2008 From: nscchicago at igc.org (NSC WORKERS COOP) Date: Sun, 6 Jul 2008 20:17:53 -0500 Subject: [A-List] AN EXTRAORDINARY WEB - RICH INFORMATION FROM PAN AFRICAN ROOTS Message-ID: <000d01c8dfcf$5134ac90$0a0110ac@NSCCHICAGO> Photo from Port au Prinz - 2005 Tom Baker here with encyclopedic web page composed by Banbose Shango of Pan African Roots. Please discover it, http://www.freewebs.com/banboseshango/ Banbose was born in the Bahamas and grew up in Chicago with the forming of the Black Panther Party and the civil rights movement. He is organizer with Alliance for Global Justice project Venezuela Solidarity Network His web will teach on the People of Africa, and the Diaspora It is good for churches, classrooms and personal libraries. PS Each page has a musical sound track which repeats. You can turn off the music with a button at the bottom of the page. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 2211 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20080706/05214539/attachment.txt -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 88333 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20080706/05214539/attachment-0001.jpeg From bar at idirect.com Mon Jul 7 04:43:26 2008 From: bar at idirect.com (bar at idirect.com) Date: Mon, 7 Jul 2008 06:43:26 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [A-List] Re Snubbing of a Canadian hero-June 26 Message-ID: <23514.193.220.95.205.1215427406.squirrel@webmail.look.ca> Dear Mr. Hepburn I find it curious that you refer to the "attacks" against Arbour as unfair when the facts establish that she is and has been an agent of the United States for many years. She received orders from Clinton and Albright to falsely accuse President Milosevic of war crimes at a point in the Nato war when the Gernmans and French were prepared to call for a ceasfire and negotiations. Her fabricated indictment prevented that and led to thousands more deaths by Nato bombing. She also flatly refused to even consider the well documented war crimes dossier against Nato presented by our team led by Professer Michael Mandel at Osgoode Hall Law School. She was clearly in Nato's pocket from the beginning in clear violation of the ICTY statute which requires her to be completely independent. However, her value to the Americans was first established in 1997, when she killed the investigation into the shoot down of the plane of President Habyarimana of Rwanda which was also carrying the President of Burundu and the Rwandan Army Chief of Staff, all Hutus, making three Hutu presidents murdered by the RPF in 6 months. She was advised by her investigative team into the shootdown that the RPF did it, that they had three members of the shootdown team ready to testify and documents to prove it. Instead of proceeding with charges against Paul Kagame for mass murder and war crimes she ordered Hourigan to kill the file and burn his notes on the instruction of the Americans. The Americans were implicated in many ways, including supplying the missiles and backing the RPF with financing, materiel, training and men. Two RPF officers have testified before the Rwanda tribunal that they shot down the plane, that they killed most of the dead in Rwanda and blamed it on the government forces to hoodwink the public to discredit the Rwandan government. General Ndindiliyimana, my client, testified just last week that the Americans airdropped men and materiel into the RFP zones in the north of Rwanda after the shootdown of the plane on April 6th, 1994. It is also known that the UN Rwand Emergency Office was in fact staffed by US army officers and acted as the operational headquarters for the RPF. It is also know that Herman Cohen the US Secretary of State for Africa at that time told President Habyarimana that they would kill him if he did not cede all power to the RPF. Finally it is known that the missiles were assembled in a CIA Swiss front company at the iarport in Kigali. It is for these reasons that Arbour killed the investigation into that mass murder and thereby covered it up and protected the RPF and the US. (See also Stephen Smith's two page expose of this crime by Arbour in the National Post of 2000, I beleive.) If you wish I can send you the documents Hourigan showed to Arbour which she wished deep-sixed. The role of General Dallaire is also more than suspect vis a vis his role in the murder of President Habyarimana and Prime MInister Agathe.There are many, many UN documents that reveal the reality of the war in Rwanda, but it seems the Canadian press, which should be interested in revealing the truth to its readers, is more interested in hagiography and adulation of war criminals. And I would ask that you correct your article. It was not "Rwandans" who said she is a disgrace to Canadians, it was me, in a note to the CBC on the same subject. Louise Arbour, who was my professor of criminal law at Osgoode, is bought and paid for and the cause of a lot of injustice in theis world. And now she goes to work for that CIA front group the International Crisis Group. However, since your newspaper does not pay any attention to the trials at the ICTR and the mountans of evidence agaisnt the RPF and its western allies including Canada, I suppose it is not strange that you repeat cliches instead of the truth. You are gravely misinformed. Christopher Black Lead Counsel ICTR Arusha, Tanzania (based in Toronto) 011-255-754-666-972 bar at idirect.com From the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com Mon Jul 7 08:56:56 2008 From: the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com (Leighm) Date: Mon, 07 Jul 2008 07:56:56 -0700 Subject: [A-List] Tom Hayden On Obama - OOIBC Message-ID: <48722EB8.1030003@gmail.com> Tom Hayden exposes the real Obama on Iraq from Out Of Iraq Bloggers Caucus by noreply at blogger.com (Gadfly) http://ooibc.blogspot.com/2008/07/tom-hayden-exposes-real-obama-on-iraq.html Hayden has crystal-clear analysis of the real Barack Obama position on Iraq, viewpoints that many liberal Democratic Party bloggers, may not like to discuss. More ambiguous than audacious. Check. ?(That) pledge also has been laced with loopholes all along, caveats that the mainstream media and his opponents (excepting Bill Richardson) have ignored or avoided until now. Indeed. Then he adopted the safe, nonpartisan formula of the Baker-Hamilton Study Group, which advocated the withdrawal of combat troops while leaving thousands of American counter-terrorism units, advisers and trainers behind. And, as for Obama?s ?refining,? Hayden calls him out on that right away. ?I intend to end this war.? Beyond that, Hayden notes that the whole thrust of Obama?s speech is to buck final responsibility to the military. If Petraeus says, ?too dangerous to bring them home,? well, who is Civilian Obama to overrule that? Read the whole column; Hayden is spot on. Hayden concludes with four talking point ?demands? for Obama to show his progressive peace talker bona fides. http://www.opednews.com/articles/No-Retreat--If-you-Want-to-by-Tom-Hayden-080705-57.html From critical.montages at gmail.com Mon Jul 7 10:58:15 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Mon, 7 Jul 2008 12:58:15 -0400 Subject: [A-List] US Military Planned Nerve Gas Test on Aust Troops Message-ID: US military planned nerve gas test on Aust troops Posted Sun Jul 6, 2008 9:05am AEST Updated Sun Jul 6, 2008 11:23am AEST Defence files have revealed the United States military was planning to test deadly nerve gas on Australian troops in a far north Queensland rainforest in the 1960s. Australian Defence Department files obtained by Channel Nine show the US was planning to test Sarin and VX nerve gas on up to 200 Australian combat troops by aerial bombing areas around Lockhart River. The plan never went ahead, but American survey teams inspected the proposed testing site. The prime minister at the time, Harold Holt, vetoed the plan. His former staffer, Peter Bailey, says the Australian government was concerned that its Cold War alliance with the US would be damaged if it did not acquiesce. "If they weren't pretty good and pretty faithful to the Americans we would be dumped, so I think ministers were very aware that this was probably our one main support," he said. Former Democrats Senator Lyn Allison has told Channel Nine the current Government should make the documents public. "There's apparently a whole unit which the minister says didn't conduct testing but I think we need to know what they were doing and it is time for these documents to be released," she said. "Let us have a look at what was being contemplated just 40 odd years ago - it's not the deepest, darkest history of Australia we're talking about." US wanted to test sarin on Australian troops: report Sun Jul 6, 3:40 AM ET The United States military wanted to test deadly nerve gases on Australian troops in a remote area of far north Queensland in the 1960s but Canberra refused, a report said Sunday. Washington wanted to bomb a rainforest area lying more than 600 kilometres (400 miles) north of Cairns, Channel Nine's 'Sunday' programme reported, citing newly declassified documents from the Australian Defence Department. In 1962, then US defence secretary Robert McNamara wrote to Australian officials asking that the US and Australian military conduct secret joint testing of several nerve agents, including sarin, the report said. "The United States proposes to use the agents GB (sarin), a non-persistent nerve gas, and VX, a persistent nerve gas -- both to be disseminated by aircraft delivered by bombs and tanks," it quoted one document as reading. Some 200 Australian soldiers would have been involved in the testing to "determine persistency of chemical agents on jungle foliage and pick-up of such agents by personnel traversing area under simulated military operation." The testing was vetoed by then prime minister Harold Holt in 1966. Holt's former staffer Peter Bailey told Channel Nine the nerve gas plan had been considered by the Australian government and ministers were concerned that scuttling it could damage Canberra's relationship with the US. He said the ministers felt "if they weren't pretty good and pretty faithful to the Americans we would be dumped," he said. "Forty years on I'm a bit surprised that it actually happened but it did," he said. From shimogamo at attglobal.net Mon Jul 7 19:37:37 2008 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Bill Totten) Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 10:37:37 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Fireworks Leave Tons of Pollutants For Months Message-ID: <4872C4E1.604@attglobal.net> by Marla Cone Los Angeles Times (July 04 2008) When the rockets and the bombs burst in the air tonight, spectators will experience more than a spectacular show celebrating America's birthday. When their blends of black powder, metals, oxidizers, fuels and other toxic ingredients are ignited, traces wind up in the environment, often spreading long distances and lasting for days, even months. Although pyrotechnic experts are developing environmentally friendly fireworks, Fourth of July revelers this year will be watching essentially the same high-polluting technology that their grandparents experienced decades ago. Throughout the Los Angeles region, concentrations of fine particles, or carbon soot, skyrocket for up to 24 hours after the Independence Day shows, reaching levels as high as those from wildfires. Public health officials warn that people with heart problems or respiratory diseases, such as asthma, should avoid the smoky celebrations, staying upwind or indoors. "I enjoy a fireworks display as much as anyone else, but we do have concerns about exposure to high levels of smoke and particles", said Jean Ospital, health effects officer for the South Coast Air Quality Management District. Also, traces of poisonous metals, which give fireworks their bright colors, and perchlorate, a hormone-altering substance used as an oxidizer, trickle to the ground, contaminating waterways. One Environmental Protection Agency study found that perchlorate levels in an Oklahoma lake rose 1,000-fold after a fireworks display, and they stayed high in some areas for up to eighty days. European chemists Georg Steinhauser and Thomas Klapotke wrote in a recent scientific journal that "several poisonous substances are known to be released in the course of a pyrotechnic application" and that they are dispersed over a large area. "It is clear from a vast array of studies that traditional pyrotechnics are a severe source of pollution", they wrote. The black powder, or gunpowder, used in most fireworks has an extremely high carbon content; when ignited, it fills the air with fine particles capable of inflaming airways and lodging in lungs. Every July 4 and 5, the Los Angeles region suffers "generally poor air quality for particulates", said Philip Fine, the AQMD's atmospheric measurements manager. Particulates can cause coughing, sore throats and burning eyes. For people with asthma or other respiratory or cardiovascular conditions, the effects are much worse. Hospital admissions and deaths from asthma, heart attacks and respiratory disease increase whenever particulate levels rise. In the areas around fireworks displays, particulate levels increase about 100-fold and don't return to normal until around midday on July 5, according to AQMD data. During a fireworks show in Indio in 2004, particulate measurements peaked at 847 micrograms per cubic meter of air, nearly six times the federal health standard. Particulate readings are averaged over a 24-hour period, so that was not technically a federal violation. Metals in the air also surge, although they do not exceed state health guidelines. Nonetheless, they build up in waterways and soil. Ironically, green-colored fireworks are the least "green" because the metal that produces the color, barium, is highly poisonous. Scientists in India found that airborne barium increased by a factor of 1,000 after a huge fireworks display there. Strontium, which creates red, and copper, which forms a blue hue, can also be toxic. "The use of heavy metals like barium or strontium should be reduced or, if possible, avoided", said Karina Tarantik, a chemist at the University of Munich in Germany whose lab is working on cleaner pyrotechnics. Much of the new research has been propelled by concern over perchlorate, which has been used since the 1930s to provide oxygen for pyrotechnic explosions. Perchlorate, which has contaminated many drinking water supplies from military and aerospace operations, can impair the function of the thyroid gland by blocking the intake of iodide. Fetuses are most at risk, because thyroid hormones regulate their growth. Scientists have made significant advances in low-smoke and perchlorate-free technologies, prompted by the military, which uses flares and other pyrotechnics, and by Walt Disney Company, which stages about 2,000 fireworks displays a year. In the late 1990s, Disney approached the Los Alamos National Laboratory with a request to develop cleaner fireworks to reduce smoke at Disneyland, which was prompting complaints to the AQMD from neighbors in Anaheim. Instead of carbon-based materials, scientists there experimented with nitrogen atoms, which produced far less soot and smoke. "In addition, because the high-nitrogen materials burn more cleanly, you could use less coloring agents. We were able to get much nicer colors with ... less metals", said David Chavez, a materials chemist at Los Alamos. Based on those experiments, Los Alamos chemists Michael Hiskey and Darren Naud took an entrepreneurial leave and founded DMD Systems. Their fireworks use nitrocellulose, which is inexpensive and plentiful, and they emit water, nitrogen and carbon dioxide instead of smoke and perchlorate, Hiskey said. The metal content has been reduced by about ninety percent, he said. The cost is about the same as for other U.S.-manufactured fireworks. Disney World in Florida has used his company's comets for about six months. Disneyland developed aerial launchers that replaced black powder with compressed air in 2004. The resort puts on more than 200 fireworks shows each year, burning about 60,000 pounds of fireworks, far more than all the other theme parks and stadiums in the region combined. "Now we're on a path toward creating the next generation of fireworks", said Disney Imagineering spokeswoman Marilyn Waters. She said that other ultra-low-smoke and perchlorate-free technologies are already used in some Disney shows in Anaheim, Florida and Hong Kong and that an international team of vendors and scientists is testing more innovations. But municipalities and civic groups, which buy inexpensive fireworks from China, can't afford the cleaner ones for their Independence Day celebration. So far, they cost about ten times more than the Chinese-made ones. "Everything they get is from China", Hiskey said. "It's going to be very difficult to break the China habit". But John Conkling, an adjunct professor of chemistry at Washington College in Maryland and former executive director of the American Pyrotechnics Assocation, is confident that environmental concerns are driving the industry. "Certainly if we can replace perchlorates, the world will be a better place", he said. "I'm optimistic that we will have fireworks shows down the road with much less perchlorate, if any, and we'll still have the spectacular shows we've always had", Conkling said. "I expect even by next season there will be less perchlorate in fireworks. Within a five- to ten-year period, we'll see major, major changes." In the meantime, Hiskey has some Fourth of July advice: Where there's smoke, there are toxic substances. "If I'm having trouble seeing things because it's so smoky, if the smoke is headed toward the crowd, that really stinks", he said. Copyright (c) 2008, KTLA http://ktla.trb.com/news/local/ktla-fireworks-pollution,0,7367976.story http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From critical.montages at gmail.com Mon Jul 7 23:45:05 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2008 01:45:05 -0400 Subject: [A-List] FT on Venezuela Message-ID: Uribe ascendant: Defeats for the Farc mark a shift of power in Latin America By Richard Lapper Published: July 6 2008 19:42 | Last updated: July 6 2008 19:42 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Caracas is forced to press pause on the revolution Nothing has been quite the same for Hugo Ch?vez since he suffered a stinging defeat in a referendum late last year, his first electoral setback in almost a decade as Venezuela's president. Stripped of his aura of invincibility, Mr Ch?vez has been forced into a number of policy reversals, of which his change of heart over the Farc is just one, writes Benedict Mander. On the economy, Mr Ch?vez is now grappling with inflation of more than 30 per cent and shortages of basic goods. In an attempt to boost investment, he has recently resorted to wooing a private sector that has grown increasingly alarmed this year at a series of nationalisations in the steel, cement and food sectors. After loosening price controls and attempting to damp demand by raising interest rates and cutting spending, the president summoned business leaders last month to announce that an unpopular financial transactions tax would be scrapped, while currency controls for importers would also be eased. Mr Ch?vez was also forced to shelve a controversial education law that had middle-class families up in arms, fearing that their children would be indoctrinated as socialists. Another retreat came on an espionage law that generated vigorous protests among human rights groups and the political opposition, which worried that it would clear the way for an increasingly authoritarian government. Mr Chavez himself recently appeared to address the question of whether such changes signal a lasting change in strategy or represent merely a temporary tactical retreat. "This is a government that rectifies," he said during a televised address last month. "Some say Ch?vez is backtracking. Well, whoever wants to see it that way can see it that way. No, I move on." Ra?l Baduel, a retired general who was Mr Ch?vez's defence minister until a year ago but has since turned against him, thinks the shift is temporary. "Everything Ch?vez does is oriented towards creating the conditions both internally and internationally to achieve his sole aim: to perpetuate himself in power," he says. "He's just trying to divert attention, to buy time." Others see a government in crisis that is increasingly making policy blunders. Roc?o San Miguel, an analyst in Caracas who runs Citizen Control, a non-governmental organisation that monitors Venezuela's armed forces, says chaotic and centralised decision-making often results in poor and contradictory laws that cannot stand up to criticism. "After 10 years, Ch?vez's public management is showing signs of deterioration. The method of decision-making and strategy formulation is looking burnt out, and this is having repercussions in both national and international policy," she says. The result, she adds, is a paralysis of the system. Luis Vicente Le?n, a local pollster, argues that Mr Ch?vez's more moderate stance dates back to his narrow but hugely significant referendum defeat last year. Mr Ch?vez had attempted to make sweeping changes to the constitution that would have centralised power ? including an amendment allowing the president's indefinite re-election ? and paved the way for the creation of a socialist economy. The president cannot afford another such reversal if he is to make good on his promises to bring "21st century socialism" to Venezuela. "It's not that he wants to be popular, he has to be popular," says Mr Le?n, adding that Mr Ch?vez's high approval ratings are impressive after a decade in power ? only Colombia's President Uribe is more popular in the region. Elections in November for state governorships and municipalities represent Mr Ch?vez's most considerable obstacle in the short term. Many analysts see his moderation as part of a strategy to win back support lost since his re-election by a wide margin in December 2006. "He misinterpreted the results and overplayed his hand," says Daniel Hellinger, an academic specialising in Venezuela at Webster University in the US. "Ch?vez is now presenting a more moderate position to [the] middle classes in urban areas, where he is surely going to lose some governorships and mayoralties no matter how well he does ? the question is how many." Mr Ch?vez also faces growing criticism that his "Bolivarian revolution" has failed to tackle such basic problems as crime, corruption and inflation ? in spite of his achievements in reducing poverty by about half. Barring a big turnround in the coming months, the president is likely to lose further ground in November. Mr Hellinger expects the result to be a "stalemate", leaving little room for Mr Ch?vez to radicalise his socialist project. Additional reporting from Naomi Mapstone in Lima and Anastasia Moloney in Bogot? Venezuelans enjoy costly petrol subsidy By Benedict Mander in Caracas Published: June 30 2008 17:03 | Last updated: June 30 2008 17:03 Sipping a cool midday beer on the banks of the mighty Orinoco river, Antonio frowns with distaste as he reminisces about the days when he used to work hard for a living. With international oil prices soaring and domestic petrol among the most heavily subsidised in the world, he ditched his job at a remote jungle gold mine in southern Venezuela to sell petrol illegally across the river in Colombia. "Being a miner was tough," explains Antonio, as he takes another slug of beer, adding that most of his fellow workers reached the same conclusion. The gold mine is now abandoned. "Why bother when you can earn more and work far less by buying petrol for next to nothing here and selling it for good money just on the other side of this river? Of course, it helps that the national guard turn a blind eye for a cut." Such incentives to smuggle petrol mean the practice is rife in most border areas ? locals even say that Farc, the Colombian Marxist guerilla group, is profiting handsomely from petrol contraband in the area. Venezuelans pay just 3 to 4 cents for a litre of petrol. A tank can be filled for as little as $1.50. "It is so cheap as to be practically free. As a result, consumption is disproportionately high ? people use their cars just to go to the street corner," says Domingo Maza Zavala, an economist and former director at the central bank. Together with a booming domestic economy thanks to high oil prices, this has caused Venezuela's petrol consumption to double in the last five years. Elsewhere in the world, particularly in south-east Asia, petrol subsidies are being trimmed because of increasing costs and the distortions that they bring as the price of oil rises. But in Venezuela shorter-term imperatives mean that the subsidy is unlikely to be eliminated soon. On Saturday Hugo Ch?vez, the president, said he had "no immediate plans" for a petrol price rise. Economists say the petrol subsidy is costing the government at least $10bn to $12bn (?7.6bn, ?6bn) a year in lost export revenues. However, Mr Ch?vez is already struggling to contain the highest inflation rate in the western hemisphere ? it is over 30 per cent. Raising petrol prices would only push this higher. Another formidable barrier is that such a move would be hugely unpopular ? subsidised petrol has existed in Venezuela for decades and is now practically considered a birthright. Analysts say Mr Ch?vez is not willing to risk a backlash with regional elections approaching in November. Memories of the 1989 riots triggered by a rise in petrol prices, which ultimately precipitated the downfall of the government, remain fresh. The president publicly branded the subsidy as "disgusting" early last year and Gregory Wilpert, an academic sympathetic with Mr Ch?vez, says the government remains in search of a way to increase petrol prices without affecting the poor, its core constituency. "So far they haven't come up with a good plan," he says. It certainly will not be easy ? with prices so low for so long, any meaningful adjustment would inevitably have a significant impact. "Although a small increase in petrol prices may not be too politically costly, a rise big enough to really get rid of the distortions that the subsidy currently produces could certainly be damaging," says Tamara Herrera, an economist at Caracas-based S?ntesis Financiera. To make matters worse, Venezuela's economic boom, triggered by high oil prices, has stimulated consumption across the board. Car sales in particular have soared, not least because cars have become a form of investment in an environment of negative real interest rates. Chronic traffic jams have become a part of daily life. With estimates of domestic consumption ranging from 550,000 and 780,000 barrels a day, Venezuelans consume anything from a fifth to a third of total oil production. The subsidy also creates problems by in effect diverting money away from investment in projects that would diversify the economy away from its dependence on oil, as well as from social programmes, which are the keystone of Mr Ch?vez's popular support. From critical.montages at gmail.com Mon Jul 7 23:59:59 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2008 01:59:59 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Iran: Direct, Untargeted Subsidies vs. Cash Transfers to the Poor Message-ID: Ahmadi-Nejad aims to focus subsidies on poor By Najmeh Bozorgmehr in Tehran Published: June 25 2008 03:00 | Last updated: June 25 2008 03:00 Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad has announced plans to revise Iran's costly subsidies scheme and redirect it to the poorest segments of society. The attempt to curb the spending on subsidies, which account for a third of gross domestic product, is, in theory, a move that should be welcomed by economists but it represents a significant political gamble for Iran's president. Given the government's record in implementing new decisions, analysts in Tehran said Mr AhmadiNejad's decision could prove deeply unpopular and affect his chances of re-election next year. In a televised address on Monday, Mr Ahmadi-Nejad lamented that the state forgoes as much as $97bn (?62bn, ?49bn) a year because of its energy subsidies and vowed a new targeted plan would start in October. Under the current system, 70 per cent of the subsidies go to people who have a level of income that should mean they can afford to pay for energy. The government also heavily subsidises electricity, water, public transport and basic commodities. "This change has been one of the dreams of our economists and this government is determined to do it even if we in the government get hurt," Mr Ahmadi-Nejad said. "It is worth it." Development economists and donor agencies including the World Bank have long argued that direct, untargeted subsidies for food and fuel are wasteful, encouraging overconsumption and often disproportionately benefiting the wealthier in society. Most economists recommended cushioning the impact of higher food and energy costs by cash transfers to poorer households rather than artificially suppressing the price of agricultural and fuel products. But Iranians expect their oil-rich state to spend generously on their daily needs and they sometimes revolt against any revision of subsidies which they suspect might be a first step to eliminating the scheme. About a dozen petrol stations were set on fire last June when the government rationed petrol to curb over-consumption. But the rationing has continued and the government recently stopped providing subsidised petrol for luxury cars, priced at 11 cents a litre, making the rich pay four times more. "Changing the subsidies system is the most risky step the government is taking because it is a too complicated procedure which may have social consequences," said Mohsen Safayi-Farahani, a deputy minister of economy under the former reformist government. Details of the plan are still sketchy. The government has only revealed that Iranians who would like to receive subsidies in cash must apply next month and they will receive the subsidy into their bank accounts. Many analysts say the government has no other option but to try to reduce the cost of subsidies. Excessive consumption of energy has led to uncontrollable increases in the annual cost. Mr Ahmadi-Nejad acknow-ledged that unbalanced -economic development, in-efficient taxation, two-digit inflation and unemployment were long-standing problems for the country. In a departure from his usual language, which often blames economic problems on "mafias" backed by his reformist and conservative opponents, the president called for help from all political groups. "This plan belongs to all of us and I ask you not to drag this into [political] confrontations. Help [the government] to cure this acute disease," he said. Ahmadinejad to focus subsidies on Iran's poor Wed Jun 25, 2008 1:34pm BST By Edmund Blair TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's president plans to adjust an unwieldy subsidy system so that it helps the poor more directly despite initial inflation risks, in a reform opponents said was an overdue response to criticism of his policies. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has in the past opposed reforms requiring liberalising prices of goods like gasoline and some foodstuffs for fear of driving rampant price rises still higher, the analysts say. Change may also risk social unrest. But reforms announced in a TV interview and carried by newspapers on Wednesday indicate the president, facing growing grumbles from opponents and the public, may want to rebuff at least some of his critics before the 2009 presidential election. "Mr Ahmadinejad is not able to continue the current situation. He has to do something because the fourth year of Mr Ahmadinejad's presidential term is starting and actually he did nothing for the economy," said Saeed Laylaz, a business consultant and frequent critic of the president's policies. He said he welcomed the reforms Ahmadinejad announced. Ahmadinejad has not said if he will run again but is widely expected to. Analysts say much will depend on keeping the support of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's top authority who has gently urged the government to deal with economic problems while still voicing backing for the president. Ahmadinejad came to power in 2005 pledging to share out Iran's oil wealth more fairly. Despite presiding over record crude earnings, economists say the wealth gap has widened due to profligate spending that has stoked inflation, mostly harming the poor, and via subsidies that often mainly benefit the rich. The president, whose government has in the past sought to tackle inflation by telling businesses to lower prices, accepted subsidies needed changing. "Currently, subsidies are not useful and have the reverse effect (of what was intended)," he said in comments carried by the official newspaper Iran, adding that 70 percent of subsidy spending ended up with the country's richest 30 percent. "With such subsidies, industry cannot compete with the world as it should," the president said, adding that energy subsidies cost Iran 900 trillion rials (about 50 billion pounds) a year. POLITICAL HOT POTATO Gasoline subsidies are an example where the rich benefit most because they tend to have bigger, gas-guzzling vehicles, while the poor may not even be able to afford a small car. Changes are already being made via rationing introduced last year that restricts how much subsidised fuel drivers can buy, with any extra being sold at a higher price. The government originally opposed selling any fuel more expensively. When rationing was introduced, however, several fuel stations were torched, showing how sensitive reforms can be. Ahmadinejad indicated changes in subsidies would involve means testing with Iranians filling a form to establish their position but did not say precisely how payments would be made. The economic daily Donya-ye Eqtesad, citing the president, said the first payments would be made in the second half of the Iranian year. Iran's calendar begins in March. Economists have long argued for a shake up of Iran's system of broad subsidies but say it is a political hot potato because it will initially add to inflation, currently running at more than 25 percent, even if it comes with longer term benefits. "Taking away subsidies is not an easy matter. The government seems to be doing it, but already we are seeing short-term inflationary effects," said one economist, speaking before the president's more sweeping reform was announced. In the longer term, cutting subsidies would reduce budget spending and therefore ease inflationary pressure, the economist said. In his interview, the president also said his economic plan would involve changes to the tax system to improve collection and reform of customs. He did not give a timetable. Economists say one of the main problems fuelling inflation has been the government's spending of bonanza revenues from sky-high oil prices. Although designed to help the poor by boosting spending in villages and provinces in particular, economists say the government has not used interest rates and other tools to soak up the extra liquidity. The president, for example, has been criticised for pushing to keep interest rates below inflation. (Additional reporting by Zahra Hosseinian; Editing by Dominic Evans) In the rice basket and bazaars of Iran, they feel the pain By Zahra Hosseinian Reuters Wednesday, June 25, 2008 CHALUS, Iran: From the lush paddies of northern Iran to the dusty grain bazaars of Tehran, the pain and paradoxes of rising food and fuel prices are starkly on display. Rice prices have more than doubled in Iran since March, but farmers working from sunrise to sunset in the rice-growing northern region around Chalus, a city on the Caspian Sea, say little of that money goes into their pockets. "Traders bought our rice very cheap. They have put it in storage and now capital investors are selling it for a high price," Baqer Kefayati said at his farm in Dasht-e Nesha. "We did not make a profit, but traders did." Capital investors are wealthy traders who buy rice wholesale from farmers. Dealers buy rice in small amounts from capital investors and sell it to shops. They act as brokers and tend not to make large sums of money. Some brokers blame the government, saying its tardiness this year in importing rice, a staple in Iran, helped fuel the price increase by creating a vacuum that could be exploited. Iran, one of the world's biggest producers of oil, is at once a beneficiary of the oil boom, in which prices have risen to nearly $140 a barrel, and a victim. High oil prices are one factor behind rising inflation that is punishing the country's poor. Economists blame profligate spending of windfall oil revenues by the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for stoking inflation, which rose to 25.3 percent in the year to May. Higher food prices have also contributed. Iranian newspapers in May said the popular smoked rice had jumped to 50,000 rials, or about $5.40, a kilogram, or 2.2 pounds, from 19,000 rials. The price of another variety of rice rose to 45,000 from 18,000 rials. Some other types have tripled in price, shopkeepers say. The prices remained at almost the same levels in June. The price pain has political consequences, even in tightly controlled Iran. In southern Tehran and some other cities, lower-income Iranians protested inflation and higher prices, newspapers reported. Ahmadinejad came to power in 2005 promising to spread Iran's oil wealth to the people. He faces re-election in 2009. "Ahmadinejad promised to bring the oil money to our tables, but instead he is taking away the rice from our table," said Masoumeh Nayyeri, a mother of five and a cleaner in Tehran. "Rice and bread were the only things we could afford. How will I feed my children now? Life becomes harder every day." Asian rice prices almost trebled to their highest level ever this year as export restrictions fueled insecurity about food supplies. Prices have since come off those highs amid signs of larger harvests and of export curbs being lifted. As a rice importer, Iran has been hit hard, especially as very cold winter weather followed by drought affected harvests of domestic rice, further raising prices for consumers. This month, the commerce minister was quoted in the English language Iran News as saying that Iran needed to import 1.7 million tons of rice in the year that ends in March 2009 to supplement forecast domestic production of 1.5 million tons. Consumption is estimated at 3.2 million tons. For the past few years, Iran has been trying to become self-sufficient, but because of various issues, including the drought, the state has not been able to achieve its goal. Iran has delayed buying rice on world markets - for example, from the traditional supplier Thailand - because of high prices, but to ease public concern about shortages, Iranian state TV announced in May that at least 100,000 tons had been bought from Pakistan. Prices eased, but they still remain high. Just as speculators on world markets have been blamed for inflating the oil rally and adding to volatility, so the capital investors in Iran have been accused of manipulating the retail market. Iranian officials have said some traders tried to capitalize on the drought and the reduced availability of imported rice to make a profit. Local media reports said several traders in different cities had been arrested for stockpiling rice. "Traders hid their rice as soon as they heard there was less rain this year and that global prices were rising. There was plenty of rice in the market, but traders used the opportunity," said Ali Asghar Tezval, 66, a dealer in a grain bazaar in southern Tehran. Tezval, a dealer for more than 50 years, buys rice from capital investors in the north and sells it to shop owners in other cities. "For us, high prices make no difference. We buy rice at higher prices from major traders and we sell it to shops at a higher price too," Tezval said. The traders' role angers farmers and their workers in the northern provinces of Gilan, Golestan and Mazandaran, where most of the rice farming takes place. "The price of rice has really gone up, but who benefits from it? Certainly not us, working for more than 12 hours a day," said Banafsheh Yousefi, laboring in a field near the Caspian Sea, her sleeves rolled up and her black plastic boots deep in water. "We had less rain this year, but it is traders who have pushed prices up," the 33-year-old mother of two said. Siavosh Shirinvash, a rice dealer who works near Rasht in the north, says the lack of imported grain pushed up prices by allowing traders to exploit supply fears. "Some investors bought the rice a few months ago," he said. "They store the rice and wait until there are circumstances like now, including the lack of rain and the rise in global prices, to raise the price." Tezval agrees that the government's delay in importing rice contributed to the price increases. "The government did what it could, but it would have helped if they imported the grain sooner," he said. "The government should have the pulse of the market in its hands." Date : Monday, July 7, 2008 Ahmadinejad confers with experts on economic reform plan Tehran Times Political Desk TEHRAN - President Mahmud Ahmadinejad held talks with over 100 senior Iranian economists on the government's economic reform plan on Saturday evening. Last month Ahmadinejad revealed the long-awaited proposal on economic reform which calls for eliminating energy and bread subsidies, delivering funds directly to low-income families, and reforming the customs, tax, and insurance systems. The president said the process of making fundamental reforms to the economy requires nationwide cooperation and urged the economists to stand in solidarity with the administration in the implementation of the reform plan. The Ahmadinejad administration's economic policy has pushed inflation close to 26 percent by injecting large sums of cash into the economy to fund local infrastructure projects. The economists advised the administration to "spend subsidies in a proper way, slow down the implementation of infrastructure projects, employ highly efficient economic advisors, merge parallel organizations, amend contradictory regulations, tackle financial corruption, and strengthen the private sector" to revitalize the country's ailing economy. The president said economics professors and academics will certainly play a leading role in putting the reform plan into operation. He denied allegations that his economic policy is "unscientific and impractical", saying, "I am committed to the key concepts of economics." "The government is not taking a short-term view on the reform plan" and is seeking to formulate a comprehensive economic reform plan, the president said in response to a suggestion that the administration should implement only a part of the large project. Ahmadinejad, who is expected to seek reelection next year, also asserted that the plan does not serve any political purpose and is only meant to reform the country's ailing economy. Economic talks positive in principle Economics professor Farshad Momeni said on Sunday that the meeting between the president and senior economists was positive in principle. However, "the information which was given to the economists was undeveloped and had just gone a bit beyond the usual generalizations," he told the Mehr News Agency. "The meeting was arranged to inform the economists about the government's reform plan. After the president's address, the economists raised some points in the short time that was given to them," Momeni stated. In response to the economists' warnings that granting cash subsidies would seriously harm the economy, Ahmadinejad vowed not to make hasty decisions on the matter, he added. Although the proposal has serious deficiencies, it also has the potential to prevent a national economic disaster, he noted. Momeni said the economists criticized "the government's imprudent actions under the privatization plan and in the distribution of justice shares." Justice shares are shares in state-run companies that are being privatized that are reserved especially for low-income and underprivileged citizens. The president acknowledged the fact that privatization before the private sector is strengthened can never promote economic competition but he did not give any assurances that he would revise the current wrong strategies, he stated. "The economists also said that the government's economic policy must be based on theoretical principles in order to avoid controversy and contradiction? They also expressed serious concerns over the current non-technical approach to the banking system, which could create serious problems for Iran's economy," Momeni added. Iran: Energy price reforms central to economic plan Posted: 2008/07/07 From: MNN The most important pivot of the economic reforms plan is to amend the price of energy sources in the country, an economic expert told IRNA Saturday. Expressing this, Jamshid Pajouyan added that based on a wrong decision, the price of energy has been kept stable for a decade. During the period, economic experts have always warned about the issue so as to prevent huge losses incurred by country's economy. Fortunately, the ninth government has reached the conclusion that previous strategy is no longer effective and therefore they offered a plan to lift subsidies on energy, which will surely benefit national economy. However, he said, declaring a proper policy does not imply its success; rather the way of implementation is also significant. Pajouyan also maintained that energy saving should also be considered in industries. Referring to the implementation of Article 44 of Constitution, he also said that privatization should not be limited to distributing justice shares; rather management of economic entrepreneurs should be ceded to the private sector. Labor and social security laws should also undergo amendments in tandem with fulfillment of Article 44, he noted. "It's essential to create economic and social conditions for making energy subsidies target-oriented," he said. Identifying low-income strata of the society will help determine welfare needs in the future, he said. --IRNA Iran to launch "international" fuel pricing in 2011 Fri Jun 13, 2008 4:20pm BST TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran, which has some of the cheapest fuel in the world, will begin selling gasoline at "international" prices in 2011, state radio said Friday. Iran is the world's fourth-largest oil producer but lacks enough refining capacity to meet domestic gasoline needs, forcing it to import large quantities which it then sells at heavily subsidised prices, burdening the budget. In order to curb consumption it introduced rationing in June last year, allowing motorists to buy a maximum 100 litres per month at the price of 1,000 rials (around 11 U.S. cents) per litre. The scheme was later amended to increase the subsidised quota to 120 litres per month and also to allow the sale of higher-priced gasoline for motorists who needed more, at four times the subsidised price. The radio report cited Acting Interior Minister Mehdi Hashemi as saying the move to start selling gasoline at international rates in three years' time was based on a parliament decision, without giving details. Energy officials have previously said "international" prices meant selling unsubsidised gasoline, not that the cost would reach the same levels as in the West. "The consumption of gasoline in the country is not as yet moderate and it is hoped it will attain moderation through the implementation of plans that go into effect stage by stage," Hashemi told state radio. The government spends more than $100 billion (500 million pounds) per year on energy subsidies, covering also electricity and natural gas, officials say. But Hashemi also said more public transport was needed to help curb gasoline consumption. (Reporting by Hashem Kalantari; Editing by William Hardy) From noreply at coha.org Mon Jul 7 12:50:46 2008 From: noreply at coha.org (noreply at coha.org) Date: Mon, 7 Jul 2008 14:50:46 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Duarte's Resignation in Paraguay Message-ID: <20080707185045.3D5413E4227@mx-out2.daemonmail.net> A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 7815 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20080707/48aa7e0e/attachment.txt From glparramatta at greenleft.org.au Mon Jul 7 18:08:32 2008 From: glparramatta at greenleft.org.au (glparramatta) Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 10:08:32 +1000 Subject: [A-List] What's new at Links -- Colombia; Fidel; left unity; Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia; Engels; Canada; South African Marxism Message-ID: <4872B000.1000401@greenleft.org.au> Subscribe free to /Links - International Journal of Socialist Renewal/ - at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373 Visit and bookmark http://links.org.au and add it to your RSS feed (http://links.org.au/rss.xml). If you would like us to consider an article, please send it to links at dsp.org.au Please pass on to anybody you think will be interested in /Links./ Colombia: Behind the freeing of Ingrid Betancourt By Stuart Munckton July 5, 2008 -- On July 2, an operation by the Colombian military succeeded in freeing French-Colombian citizen Ingrid Betancourt from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), who had held her prisoner since 2002. Betancourt was the highest-profile FARC-held prisoner and the action, which also liberated 14 other prisoners, captured world headlines. On July 2, an operation by the Colombian military succeeded in freeing French-Colombian citizen Ingrid Betancourt from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), who had held her prisoner since 2002. Betancourt was the highest-profile FARC-held prisoner and the action, which also liberated 14 other prisoners, captured world headlines. * Read more Michael Lebowitz: The spectre of socialism for the 21st century The following is the keynote address to the annual meeting of the Society for Socialist Studies, Vancouver, June 5, 2008. It was originally titled ``Building socialism for the 21st century''. By Michael A. Lebowitz A spectre is haunting capitalism. It is the spectre of socialism for the 21st century. Increasingly, the characteristics of this spectre are becoming clear, and we are able to see enough to understand what it is not. The only thing that is not clear at this point is whether the spectre is real - i.e., whether it is actually an earthly presence. * Read more Fidel on Colombia, FARC and opposition to US intervention: `Pax Romana' By Fidel Castro Ruz I have honestly and strongly criticised the objectively cruel methods of kidnapping and retaining prisoners under the conditions of the jungle. But I am not suggesting that anyone lay down their arms, when everyone who did so in the last 50 years did not survive to see peace. If I dared suggest anything to the FARC guerrillas, that would simply be that they declare, by any means possible to the International Red Cross, their willingness to release the hostages and prisoners they are still holding, without any preconditions. I do not intend to be heard; it is simply my duty to say what I think. Anything else would only serve to reward disloyalty and treason. * Read more Fidel on Trujillo; honesty in journalism; and the release of Ingrid Betancourt * * * Excerpt: ``Out of a basically humanist sentiment, we rejoiced at the news that Ingrid Betancourt, three US citizens and other captives had been released. The civilians should have never been kidnapped, nor should they have been kept prisoners in the conditions of the jungle. These were objectively cruel actions. No revolutionary purpose could justify it. The time will come when the subjective factors should be analysed in depth.'' * Read more Baruch Hirson: The South African left and the Russian connection (1991) Click http://links.org.au/node/507 to view a CVET video production of a seminar at the University of the Western Cape on the past, present, and future of Marxism in South Africa, held in September 1991. It was addressed by veteran South African Trotskyist activist Baruch Hirson. Participating in the seminar were Ciraj Rassool, Baruch Hirson, Andrew Nash, Colin Bundy, Adam Habib, Paul Allen and Neville Alexander. `Is Cuba done with equality?' NOT! By Fred Feldman June 28, 2008 -- I am responding to ``Of Pay and Productivity: Is Cuba Done With Equality?'', an article by Moshe Adler, director of Public Interest Economics, which appeared in the June 20 Counterpunch (a radical monthly print and daily webzine based in the US.) The article deals with the latest modifications of the country's wage structure made public June 11. I think it would be useful if I presented some general considerations * Read more Characteristics of the experiences underway in Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia By Eric Toussaint June 27, 2008 -- In Latin America, if we exclude Cuba, we can point to three general categories of governments. First, the governments of the right, the allies of Washington, that play an active role in the region and occupy a strategic position: these are the governments of ?lvaro Uribe in Colombia, Alan Garc?a in Peru and Felipe Calder?n in M?xico. Second, we find supposed "left" governments that implement a neoliberal policy and support the national or regional bourgeoisies in their projects: Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, Nicaragua and the government of Cristina Fernandez Kirchner, from Argentina's Peronists. They are governments that implement a neoliberal policy that favour grand capital, covered up with some social assistance measures. In effect, they make it a bit easier to swallow the neoliberal pill by applying social programs. For example, in Brazil poor families receive a bit of help from the government, which assures them popular support in the poorest region of the country. * Read more Friedrich Engels: the Che Guevara of his day Review by Alex Miller Engels: A Revolutionary Life By John Green Artery Publications Paperback 2008 347 pages, ?10 * Read more Canada: Saying `sorry' with a forked tongue By Mike Krebs "I want to get rid of the Indian problem. I do not think as a matter of fact, that the country ought to continuously protect a class of people who are able to stand alone... Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic and there is no Indian question, and no Indian Department, that is the whole object of this Bill" -- Duncan Campbell Scott, head of the Department of Indian Affairs and founder of the residential school system, 1920. July 1, 2008 -- On June 11, 2008, Stephen Harper, prime minister of Canada and leader of the Conservative Party, issued an "apology" for the residential school system that more than 150,000 Indigenous children were forced through. The hype before and after the statement was enormous, with extensive coverage in all major media. * Read more France: `The new anti-capitalist party is on the march' Appeal of the national coordination of action committees for a New Anti-capitalist Party The "new anti-capitalist party" proposed by the LCR in France had its first national meeting on the 28th and 29th June in St Denis near Paris. About 1000 people were present including 800 delegates from local committees. After a first session of contributions from local committees, the gathering split up into workshops on different themes such as ecology, feminism, internationalism, work in local neighbourhoods, in work places, with the sans papiers... The meeting ended with the creation of a national coordinating committee to prepare a further national meeting in the autumn and the adoption of a statement. * Read more Britain: New left regroupment effort announced An invitation to participate in the creation of a new Revolutionary Socialist Organisation This text was voted on and passed at a meeting in London on Sunday 29th June. A Steering Committee was also elected. The purpose of this document is to launch a regroupment process, which will culminate in a conference after a period of discussion. It registers the most important areas of agreement we have achieved at the beginning of this discussion. There are other areas, not included, which will have to be the subject of further discussion.1. This is a proposal made by members of the International Socialist Group (ISG), Socialist Resistance (SR), a group of former members of the SWP and some independent Marxists not presently in any organisation. It is an invitation to everyone who would be interested in establishing a new revolutionary organisation based on an understanding of the need for Marxists to build a revolutionary organisation and to work for the widest unity of the working class on economic, social and political issues. * Read more /Links/ seeks to promote the international exchange of information, experience of struggle, theoretical analysis and views of political strategy and tactics within the international left. It is a forum for open and constructive dialogue between active socialists coming from different political traditions. It seeks to bring together those in the international left who are opposed to neoliberal economic and social policies. It aims to promote the renewal of the socialist movement in the wake of the collapse of the bureaucratic model of "actually existing socialism" in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. * ATTENTION: Sign up for regular ``what's new'' announcement emails at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 15683 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20080708/b8566484/attachment.txt From james.irldaly at ntlworld.com Tue Jul 8 03:12:16 2008 From: james.irldaly at ntlworld.com (james daly) Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2008 10:12:16 +0100 Subject: [A-List] =?iso-8859-1?q?GFA_Iraq_style_--_=27We_know_a_bit_about_?= =?iso-8859-1?q?conflict=27_--_the_bit_about_minimal-conditional_su?= =?iso-8859-1?q?rrender=2E?= Message-ID: <858A49C4BE5A442C911621CB167BA0E2@home9sg93n9r5y> Fresh from the giveaway of Irish national territory*, they are now involved in the giveaway of Iraqi oil. *And while they claim they have no selfish interest in it, outside Belfast they have built the largest of new MI5 headquarters in the UK (sic). There are plans to locate the British government there if there is a nuclear or biological attack on London. IRISH TIMES Monday, July 7, 2008 McGuinness welcomes Baghdad peace agreement GERRY MORIARTY DEPUTY FIRST Minister Martin McGuinness has welcomed the weekend signing in Baghdad by all the main Iraqi political parties of a set of peace principles that are in many respects modelled on the 1998 Belfast Agreement. Mr McGuinness, former Assembly speaker Lord Alderdice and Belfast-based political consultant Quintin Oliver were in Baghdad on Saturday as observers, as local politicians signed up to the Helsinki Principles which are based on the Senator George Mitchell Principles on democracy and non-violence. The agreement was formally endorsed on Saturday by the Iraqi government and Iraqi parliamentarians, as well as by groups linked to the militias and insurgents. The principles include the prohibition on the use of arms for "all armed groups" during peace negotiations. Another key recommendation is the establishment of a body to "supervise the process of disarmament of non-governmental armed groups in a verifiable manner", similar to Gen John de Chastelain's decommissioning body. The initiative, running since last year, involved Northern Ireland and South African politicians in dialogue with senior Iraqi politicians from the Sunni, Shia and Kurdish groups, as well as with other tribal leaders and representatives of the radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. The talks were held in Helsinki last September and in April this year. Mr McGuinness, Lord Alderdice and Mr Oliver all emphasised that the Helsinki Principles were not a resolution but a framework by which progress could be made in Iraq. Mr McGuinness said he and his colleagues were willing to assist if Iraqi politicians felt their future intervention could be useful. Ireland could be a venue for such talks, he added. Mr McGuinness said the signing gained widespread media coverage in Iraq and that over the course of Saturday they met with several senior Iraqi politicians, including president Jalal Talabani. "What is critically important now is that the people of Iraq and their politicians recognise the importance of learning from other conflict situations, and agree among themselves that the best way forward is through dialogue and through a process of meaningful and inclusive negotiations." Mr McGuinness said he delivered a clear message to the Iraqi politicians. "I said that our own conflict, depending on your view of history, has lasted 30 years, or goes back to partition, or goes back 800 years. My message was that they should endeavour to engage in inclusive talks sooner rather than later, and in doing so save the lives of tens of thousands of their own people." Mr McGuinness added that the involvement of DUP junior minister Jeffrey Donaldson in the project left an impression on the Iraqis that if Sinn F?in and DUP politicians could work together, then perhaps they should also work co-operatively for the good of their people. (Mr Donaldson was unable to travel to Baghdad for the occasion as he had political business in the United States.) Lord Alderdice said his impression was that the Iraqis took hope from the Northern Ireland experience. He said the Helsinki Principles were an expanded series of principles based on the Mitchell Principles, tied up in a substantial document. "It's Mitchell plus, if you like. The Mitchell Principles will apply, but the practical details will be different." Mr Oliver, a key organisational figure in gaining a Yes vote for the 1998 Belfast Agreement, said the issue was now over to the Iraqis. "We are not telling them what to do, we are not imposing a template, we are just saying, 'We know a bit about conflict; if we can help, please learn'." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Get news, entertainment and everything you care about at Live.com. Check it out! From shimogamo at attglobal.net Tue Jul 8 08:18:17 2008 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Bill Totten) Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 23:18:17 +0900 Subject: [A-List] =?iso-2022-jp?b?V2lsbCB0aGUgV29ybGQgU3Vydml2ZSA=?= =?iso-2022-jp?b?GyRCISMhIyEjGyhC?= Message-ID: <48737729.5020509@attglobal.net> ???GM Cultures and the Damage to the Earth's Eco-Systems? by Siv O'Neall axisoflogic.com (June 13 2008) Monsanto and the other major biotech companies - Syngenta, Bunge, Cargill, et al - are all set on owning the world's food supply. Monsanto is by far the leader in this nightmare of destroying organic agriculture and millennia-old biodiversity. They have no respect whatsoever for the lives and the livelihood of farmers or, for that matter, any concern for the people who are exposed to severe health hazards from eating genetically modified foods. Corporate profit is all that counts. The greatest long-lasting danger from GMOs is the destruction of the earth's eco-systems - the degradation of the soil, the depletion of water resources and the proliferation of pests that were until now barely known, since they were kept under control by the natural balance of predatory insects keeping those that are harmful to the crops from having their potentially damaging effect. More later about this natural equilibrium. The bio-tech industries have taken a big and dangerous step towards destroying the earth as it has been known for thousands of years. Organic agriculture, biodiversity and natural pest control have made the earth a place for sustainable farming for millennia. However, at this point of delicate balance for the earth's survival, bio-tech corporations want to put an end to everything that is natural in order to make short-term profit from huge monocultures of the genetically modified products that they are falsely marketing as our saviors from world hunger and poverty. {1} India is one country that has been severely hit by the bio-tech industry with accompanying disasters. What follows after the farmers change over to GMO seeds after millennia of planting and making a livelihood in organic farming is a horror story of bad harvests, huge debts, increased costs for herbicides and fertilizers (in spite of the companies' promises of lower costs), and the suicides of thousands of farmers in Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala - among the Indian states that are hit the worst. This has been going on for decades and if it were not for a lot of activism being focused on this problem, there is no chance that anything would change, since the corporations are tied in firmly with the governments in the heavy-handed corporatism that rules the world today. The farmers are lured into buying the GM seeds because of low-interest loans and obscene propaganda about giant harvests, less work and lower costs. Bio-tech PR claims there is no need for pesticides and less need for fertilizers, all of which has proved to be inaccurate. Added to this, these seeds are not adjusted to the eco-systems where they are being planted. They frequently need more water than is available and the results are disastrous. One woman is in the forefront of the fight against the bio-tech industry. Her name is Vandana Shiva and she is based in Delhi. Dr Vandana Shiva, a former particle physicist, has for the past three decades done more than anyone else as an activist to attract the attention of the world to the deadly corporate horror story of genetically modified products. She attacks the problem from all angles, educating and organizing protest demonstrations through her organization Navdanya {2}. Navdanya means "nine seeds", and is a movement promoting diversity - fighting against the privatization of water, campaigning against Basmati biopiracy and generally leading a fight for the rights of rural farmers to a decent livelihood, uncompromised through biopiracy such as is taking place in India and all over the world. Biodiversity, the way farmers have been cultivating the land for millennia is her central argument and monocultures at the giant industrial farms are her principal enemy. She talks about food fascism and the bio-tech industry see her as their most prominent enemy in their vicious attempt of controlling the world's food supply. Vandana Shiva says on her Navdanya website {2}: "When I found that dominant science and technology served the interests of [the] powerful, I left academics to found the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology (RFSTE), a participatory, public interest research organisation. "When I found global corporations wanted to patent seeds, crops or life forms, I started Navdanya to protect biodiversity, defend farmers' rights and promote organic farming. "Navdanya/RFSTE's journey over the past two decades has taken us into creating markets for farmers and promoting tasty, healthy, high quality food for consumers. We have connected the seed to the kitchen, biodiversity to gastronomy. And now we have joined hands with Slow Food to celebrate the quality and cultural diversity of our food." SIU {3} magazine writes about Vandana Shiva: "In fact, listening to her may make you rethink many of the world's established social and political paradigms. "For example, the generally acknowledged argument that the Green Revolution, at the very least, led to an increase in food production is one of them. 'No, it did not increase production. Wheat and rice production increased, not the overall food production', argues Shiva, and launches into a lecture that concludes that whatever increase there was had nothing whatsoever to do with the Green Revolution, and that overall it has been a disaster for agriculture and food security in India." The Mealy Bug, the deadly gift from Monsanto The latest horror news on GMOs is the Mealy Bug that has been said to be "the deadly gift from Monsanto to Vidarbha, set to destroy all crops and plants". Vidarbha is the eastern part of Maharashtra state, in western India. It is India's most developed and urbanized state. In a press note Kishor Tiwari, President of 'Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti' - a farmers advocacy group - writes that the Mealy Bug is a virus that is imported with the Bt Cotton sold by multinational corporation Monsanto. In the coming summer season it will have an effect on a larger area covering almost all crops and next year it will be set to destroy not only cotton crops but all other food crops as well. Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti (VJAS) {4} has urged the Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, to ban Monsanto Bt. Cotton seeds in the agrarian crisis that has hit West Vidarbha. This is of the most urgent importance in order to save more than three million distressed and debt-trapped Vidarbha cotton farmers. The London based Institute of Science in Society (ISIS) {5} posts the following from Ram Kalaspurkar, organic farmer, Vidarbha Organic Farmers Association, Yavatmal, Maharashtra, India: "I am an organic farmer residing at Yavatmal in the state of Maharashtra. Our organisation, Vidarbha Organic Farmers Association, has been propagating organic farming since 1994. We have been helped a lot by Dr Vandana Shiva. She was the first person to tell us about terminators. Right now, we are working for her organisation Navdanya." ISIS {6} on their web site has published a letter from Ram Kalaspurkar who refers to a study where they have found that 'Organic Cotton Beats Bt Cotton in India'. They firmly recommend a return to organic cotton, saying that Bt cotton is a trap that has to be avoided. In the article published by ISIS there are photos of plants infested by mealy bugs. All the infested plots had the Bollgard label, which is supposed to control pests. It is made clear that the mealy bugs have never been found in the region before BT cotton seeds were introduced. (The mealy bug had, however, been found in China two years earlier.) After the death of the cotton plants, the bug goes over to nearby plants and it has already shifted to Congress weed and many other weeds and plants in fields close by. The Monsanto website claims {7}: "Bollgard II technology offers cotton growers efficient, effective pest control with fewer pesticide applications than in conventional cotton crops". This is just one example of what has proved to be the totally false propaganda pumped out from Monsanto. Rhea Gala reports from Andhra Pradesh - from VIDARBHA JAN ANDOLAN SAMITI {8} (the following quoted passages are excerpted from the same VJAS source) "In the fertile regions of Andhra Pradesh 'white gold' monocultures of the high-yielding hybrids of 'Green Revolution' cotton had turned the state into the pesticide capital of the world even before the advent of genetically modified (GM) Bt cotton. Now, however, the revolution is turning full circle as more and more farmers are opting for low input organic methods that are healthier and economically far more rewarding." The message is now: "Return to Organic Cotton and Avoid the Bt Cotton Trap. No more debt, pesticides and suicides for Indian cotton farmers who avoid Bt-cotton and regain livelihood, health, independence and peace of mind with organic methods." Several Non-Governmental Organizations are working in many villages promoting non-pesticide management (NPM). The government has until now supported high-chemical-input cotton production at national and state level and this has sent the wrong messages to farmers. GM cotton is falsely promoted as the answer to reducing pesticide use, and it is one of many reasons why farmers are giving in to the pressure to grow GM cotton. "Farmers initially saw the system of industrial production as timesaving and requiring far less knowledge of soils and pests; however it soon proved to be a relentless treadmill. It degraded the soil, depleted scarce water resources and proliferated cotton pests beyond the farmers' worst nightmares, as both yield and profit progressively diminished". Research backs up the case for NPM and organic cotton. A report entitled "Bt cotton vs Non Pesticidal Management of cotton: Findings of a study by the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture 2004-05 compares Bt and NPM cotton in Andhra Pradesh". The findings are unequivocally in favor of organic cotton. There are vast numbers of beneficial insects that get killed off from GM Bt cotton. Those insects are predators that attack and kill off most of the harmful insects and pests. "It reports conclusively that Bt cotton is more prone to pests and diseases and that beneficial insects are more prevalent on NPM cotton. It also reports that the cost of pest management of Bt cotton is 690 percent higher than in NPM farming systems and that seed cost of Bt cotton is 355 percent higher than conventional varieties ('Organic cotton beats Bt Cotton in India' SiS 27)". Recreating the natural balance of predators and pests "The skill of managing pests without recourse to synthetic pesticide requires knowledge of life cycle and behaviour, vigilance, an armoury of pest specific deterrents, and a healthy community of natural predators of pests. To control pests such as the spotted bollworm, American bollworm, tobacco caterpillar, pink bollworm, aphids, jassids, thrips, white fly and mites, each of which is capable of causing between thirty and fifty percent damage to a crop, natural predators are the most effective year after year." Conclusion Vandana Shiva {9} by no means limits her activism to Bt cotton. She sets as her goal to recreate natural biodiversity in rice and all the other crops that the bio-tech companies are trying to take over with their GM seeds and products. There exist 100,000 varieties of rice evolved by Indian farmers and the diversity and the 'perenniality' have to be kept alive if we want to save our environment. Genetically modified seeds will lead to increased use of agri-chemicals and will thus increase environmental problems as well as human health problems. Vandana Shiva addresses principally the dangers of GM farming in India, but the danger to the environment and to the livelihood of millions of people is obviously world-wide. Biodiversity represents the sustenance and livelihood base of small farmers all over the world and a sane environment is naturally the key to the continuation of healthy lives for the billions of people in the world. Notes & Links: 1. The problem is global, but strong resistance to GMO seeds and foods contaminated by GMOs is taking place in Corporate-friendly governments are trying to follow in the steps of pro-GM policies. The European Commission is ambivalent on the issue, but the people of Europe represented by numerous NGOs are leading the fight against this scourge of industrial GM farming in order to save the world from the dangers to people's health and from the destruction of the earth's eco-systems. See report from ISIS {10} - "Dr Mae-Wan Ho warns that further indulgence in GMOs will severely damage our chances of surviving the food crisis and global warming; organic agriculture and localised food systems are the way forward" 2. http://www.navdanya.org/about/founder-message.htm 3. The Norwegian Centre for International Cooperation in Higher Education (SIU) is a Norwegian agency that promotes international cooperation in education and research 4. http://vidarbhacrisis.blogspot.com/2008/06/mealy-bug-deadly-gift-from-monsanto-to.html 5. http://www.i-sis.org.uk/Deadly_Gift_from_Monsanto.php 6. http://www.i-sis.org.uk/OCBBCI.php 7. http://www.monsanto.com.au/layout/cotton/bollgard_ii_cotton/default.asp 8. http://vidarbhacrisis.blogspot.com/2008/06/mealy-bug-deadly-gift-from-monsanto-to.html 9. For more information on Vandana Shiva and her activism, see ' Monocultures, Monopolies, Myths and the Masculinisation of Agriculture' http://www.aislingmagazine.com/aislingmagazine/articles/TAM24/Masculinisation.html 10. http://www.i-sis.org.uk/contact.php _____ Siv O'Neall was born and raised in Sweden where she graduated from Lund University. She has lived in Paris, France and New Rochelle, New York and traveled extensively throughout the US, Europe, and other continents, including several trips to India. Siv retired after many years of teaching French in Westchester, New York and English in the Grandes Ecoles (Institutes of Technology) in France. In addition to her own writing, Siv has also provided Axis of Logic with translation services. She has been living in France for thirty years, first in Paris and now Lyon. In addition to her political activism and writing, her life is filled with family, music, animals, reading, traveling and she also feels that 'A thing of beauty is a joy for ever'. Siv can be reached via e-mail at siv at axisoflogic.com Copyright (c) 2008 by AxisofLogic.com. This material is available for republication as long as reprints include verbatim copy of the article its entirety, respecting its integrity. Reprints must cite the author and Axis of Logic as the original source including a "live link" to the article. Thank you! http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_27083.shtml http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From critical.montages at gmail.com Tue Jul 8 12:44:58 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2008 14:44:58 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Florida Unilaterally Restricts Travel to Iran, "State Sponsors of Terror" Message-ID: Florida Unilaterally Restricts Travel to Iran, "State Sponsors of Terror" Farid Zareie and Patrick Disney Jul 07, 2008 Washington, DC -- A law has been passed by the Florida legislature making it significantly more difficult for Iranian Americans to travel to Iran to visit family and friends. On June 23rd the Governor of Florida, Charlie Crist, signed into law SB 1310, which imposes heavy restrictions on Florida travel agencies that arrange trips to any state sponsors of terrorism. Among these restrictions, travel agents must pay a $1000 registration fee and secure at least a $100,000 security bond to provide services to anyone seeking to visit countries recognized by the State Department as a supporter of terrorism, including Iran. How does this affect the Iranian American community in Florida, the sixth largest population in the US? This law will make it much more expensive for Iranian Americans and anybody else in Florida to travel to Iran. Higher costs for travel agencies will be passed on to consumers, compounding the effects of record oil prices and making it much more expensive for Americans to travel. In addition, it is likely this strict regulation will discourage agencies from offering services to Iran, making it harder for people to visit relatives in their country of origin. The law, proposed by Sen. Carey Baker. of Lake County, first passed the Committee on Criminal Justice by a six to one vote, then on April 30 the bill passed the full Senate 26-2. The Florida House passed it 109-6 the same day. Sen. Paula Dockery, who was the only vote against this bill in the Criminal Justice Committee, criticized the law, saying "This is a vindictive act against travel agents that hurts people who need assistance." Currently, a group of concerned travel agencies in Florida are suing to obtain an injunction blocking enforcement of the law, which also restricts travel to Cuba. Attorney Ira Kurzban filed a law suit on June 30 on behalf of 16 Cuban-American travel agencies, recommending the law be struck down as an unconstitutional restriction on federally permissible travel. A Florida judge granted a temporary restraining order blocking the law's implementation until August 29th. The American Society for Travel Agents (ASTA) has opposed this law, calling it an unfair restraint on citizens' freedom to travel. According to ASTA, the law violates a total of four provisions of the U.S. Constitution and is in direct conflict with federal law. The Florida law contradicts the expressed interest of the Bush Administration's to increase people-to-people contacts between the US and Iran. Last month, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice said "The United States has been, for some time, trying to reach out to the Iranian people in various ways...We want more Iranians visiting the United States." NIAC continues to investigate this issue to identify avenues in which the Iranian-American community's interest can be represented. From critical.montages at gmail.com Tue Jul 8 12:51:12 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2008 14:51:12 -0400 Subject: [A-List] National Call-in Day on Iran Blockade Resolutions Message-ID: National Iranian American Council July 8, 2008 www.niacouncil.org National Call-in Day on Iran Blockade Resolutions Wednesday, July 9 is a national call-in day for H.Con.Res 362, the naval blockade resolution. H.Con.Res.362 has over 220 cosponsors; is yours one? Call your member of Congress and ask him or her not to support this act of war! Congress is considering this bill at this very moment; now is the time to act to oppose this plan for war. Groups from all over the country are joining together for a national call-in day on H.Con.Res. 362. This resolution demands that the president initiate an international effort to impose a land, sea, and air blockade on Iran to stop shipments of gasoline, and to subject all cargo entering or leaving Iran to stringent inspection requirements. Call your representative and ask him or her to oppose the blockade resolution! Imposing a blockade without United Nations authorization (which the resolution does not call for) would be considered an act of war. Though a vote on this bill has been successfully delayed so far, some Congressional sources say the House could vote on it as early as next week. They need to hear from you before the vote. Adoption of this resolution would pave the way for war and bypass diplomacy. The immediate effect would be a further increase in oil prices - with gas prices in the US inching closer to $7/gallon and beyond. Tell your member of Congress to oppose H CON RES 362 and join thousands of Americans in the rising chorus of concern over this dangerous legislation. If your Representative is a co-sponsor: ask them to withdraw their sponsorship. If your Representative is not a co-sponsor: thank them for not signing on and ask them to work to stop this dangerous legislation from going forward. Call your representative today! National Iranian American Council 1411 K Street NW, Suite 600 Washington DC, 20005 Support NIAC! Become a Member Today! From the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com Tue Jul 8 12:56:44 2008 From: the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com (Leighm) Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 11:56:44 -0700 Subject: [A-List] Florida Unilaterally Restricts Travel to Iran, "State Sponsors of Terror" In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4873B86C.5030809@gmail.com> Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: > > Florida Unilaterally Restricts Travel to Iran, "State Sponsors of Terror" > Farid Zareie and Patrick Disney > Jul 07, 2008 > > Washington, DC -- A law has been passed by the Florida legislature > making it significantly more difficult for Iranian Americans to travel > to Iran to visit family and friends. On June 23rd the Governor of > Florida, Charlie Crist, signed into law SB 1310, which imposes heavy > restrictions on Florida travel agencies that arrange trips to any > state sponsors of terrorism. Among these restrictions, travel agents > must pay a $1000 registration fee and secure at least a $100,000 > security bond to provide services to anyone seeking to visit countries > recognized by the State Department as a supporter of terrorism, > including Iran. > > How does this affect the Iranian American community in Florida, the > sixth largest population in the US? There IS NO state right to do this... as a matter of fact, it's most likely in flagrant violation of most applicable federal commerce laws. The end result is the Iranian community in Florida spending a fortune on lawyers instead of their families, children and consumer goods. Leigh From critical.montages at gmail.com Tue Jul 8 13:23:33 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2008 15:23:33 -0400 Subject: [A-List] U.S. States Continue to Divest from Businesses Tied to Iran Message-ID: U.S. States Continue to Divest from Businesses Tied to Iran Brian Radzinsky | 02 Jul 2008 World Politics Review Exclusive WASHINGTON -- Eleven U.S. states have adopted legislation to divest public pension funds from companies with financial ties to Iran's petroleum, defense, and nuclear sectors in an attempt to persuade Iran to give up its uranium enrichment program and alleged sponsorship of terrorism. Almost 20 more states are considering similar legislation to supplement existing federal and international sanctions. This is the first time that state investments have been leveraged for nonproliferation goals. During the 1980s, anti-apartheid activists urged state and local authorities and some universities to divest holdings from companies invested in or doing business with South Africa. During the 1990s, humanitarian activists persuaded Massachusetts to divest from companies "doing business with" Myanmar. More recently, almost 30 states passed legislation to divest from companies with investments in or engaged in trade with Sudan. The Iran case is unique, however, because divestment legislation explicitly references Iran's alleged sponsorship of terrorists and its uranium enrichment program. Since the 2003 discovery of Iran's clandestine uranium enrichment program, the U.N. Security Council has imposed three rounds of sanctions freezing the finances and limiting the travel of prominent members of the nuclear and ballistic missile programs. Enriched uranium can fuel nuclear reactors and provide the explosive core for a nuclear weapon. The effort by U.S. states to divest from Iran mirrors a larger change in the Bush administration's approach to Iran. For its part, the United States government has maintained various sanctions on Iran since 1979. Recently, however, Washington has moved away from advocating sanctions against individuals and organizations and toward a strategy of financial isolation. The Treasury Department in 2007 barred Iran's Bank Saderat, Bank Sepah, and Bank Melli from the U.S. financial system and cut off their ability to conduct transactions with U.S. banks through a third-party. In March, the U.N. Security Council urged member states to "exercise vigilance" about the activities of these banks. Treasury officials have recently discussed sanctioning Iran's central bank, which is said to have picked up some of the business that used to flow to sanctioned institutions. Legal Challenges State divestment efforts also face legal challenges. The National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC), a business advocacy group, in 2000 successfully sued Massachusetts over legislation to divest from Myanmar. In that case, NFTC vs. Crosby, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Massachusetts' decision hindered the president's ability to conduct foreign policy effectively. The NFTC won another legal battle in a U.S. district court over an Illinois law mandating divestment from Sudan. Lawmakers have taken steps to circumvent subsequent court challenges. Several bills pending at the federal level encourage and authorize state divestments. In both houses of Congress, the Iran Sanctions Enabling Act, sponsored by Sen. Barack Obama, the presumed Democratic presidential nominee, and Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), would publish in the Federal register the names of companies with $20 million or more invested in Iran's energy sector and authorize individual states to adopt divestment legislation. The bill also provides legal safe harbor for fund administrators who might oppose divestment on grounds that doing so would cause their funds to depreciate. To this end, the bill protects mutual fund managers from lawsuits and pension fund managers from charges of fiduciary responsibility. According to Missouri's treasurer, the Missouri post-divestment portfolio suffered minimal disruption, and in some years outperformed the original fund. Divesting from Terror Most divestment legislation adopts the criteria laid out in the 1996 Iran Sanctions Act to identify significant investment in Iran. Formerly the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act, it requires the president to sanction those foreign companies with investments of $20 million or more in Iran's energy sector. In that vein, legislation signed in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, and Michigan directs state pension administrators to divest from companies that meet this standard, as well as companies with financial ties to Iranian "terrorist organizations" identified by the U.S government. Also anathema are companies that facilitate Iran's acquisition of nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons technology or military equipment. Missouri and New Jersey have adopted explicitly "terror-free" investment policies. Terror-free investing, part of a larger initiative endorsed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Center for Security Policy, and a number of other groups, encourages U.S. states to divest from companies "reasonably known to be operating directly with the government or a government-controlled agency in U.S.-sanctioned nations, or that are engaged in the sponsorship of terrorism." Known as the "Divest Terror" movement, proponents argue that investing in such blacklisted countries as Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria poses not just a threat to national security, but to the health of the investments themselves. Of these countries, Iran stands the most to lose from widespread divestment from its economy. Iran's GDP is greater than that of Cuba, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria combined -- around $600 billion according to most sources. The movement has also gained several prominent adherents, including presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (Ariz.). In a June 2 speech at AIPAC's national convention McCain called for a "worldwide divestment campaign" in order to pressure Iran's "radical elite." The aim of state divestments, both in practice and as a part of a broader strategy to pressure Iran financially, is to cleave at companies with significant ties to Iran's energy sector. Companies potentially affected by divestments include such European giants as Spain's Repsol, France's Alcatel and Total, and Royal Dutch Shell. Some states' pension funds are too small to conceivably have an impact. On the other hand, California's Public Employees' and State Teachers' Retirement Systems invest a combined $400 billion in U.S. and international companies. An estimated $2 billion of those funds are tied up in Iran's oil sector. Matthew Levitt, a former Treasury Department official in the office of terrorism and financial intelligence and director of the Stein Counterterrorism Center at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, concedes that divestment alone will probably not force Iran to adhere to international demands. "The real issue is not divestment [by itself]," he says, "but the totality of the various [coercive] measures. Together they have a very good chance of forcing Iran to rethink its policies." Brian Radzinsky is a research intern at the Arms Control Association, specializing in nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. From nscchicago at igc.org Tue Jul 8 01:28:32 2008 From: nscchicago at igc.org (NSC WORKERS COOP) Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2008 02:28:32 -0500 Subject: [A-List] Daniel Ortega, Nicaraguan president (FSLN) on Betancourt BUT FIRST Daniel Tells the Oligarchy to Back Off Message-ID: <000001c8e109$9d1985f0$0a0110ac@NSCCHICAGO> Daniel Ortega, Nicaraguan president (FSLN) on Betancourt Ortega warns of a popular insurrection against rightwing attempts to topple Sandinista government [This report is based on news coverage from Managua's Radio La Primerisima. Source: http://www.radiolaprimerisima.com/noticias/general/32963 ] By Felipe Stuart C. On Saturday, July 5, President Daniel Ortega warned the US Embassy financed opposition to avoid provoking the people. Ortega spoke to thousands of sympathizers in an act commemorating the 29th anniversary of the retreat of revolutionary forces from the capital during the popular insurrection against the Somoza dictatorship. Youth made a strong presence in the vast throng, along with public sector unionists and militants of the FSLN and the Citiznes' Power Councils (CPC). The original June 27, 1979 retreat from Managua to the city of Masaya, about 26 kilometers southeast of the capital, was a tactical operation. It included the urban guerrilla forces of the Sandinista National Liberation Front and thousands of civilians, following several weeks of resisting the assaults of the Somocista army (Guardia Somocista) in the western and eastern barrios of the city. The guerrillas left the eastern barrios in total silence under cover of the dark. Some six thousand civilians joined the retreat because they feared being killed when the army entered the barrios that had been held by the Sandinistas. When the army detected the procession half way on its march to Masaya, they proceeded to bombard it from the air and with artillery, causing dozens of casualties. But the Guardia failed to block the success of the operation whose additional objective was to reinforce the taking of the southern cities of the country. Less than a month later, these forces would bring about the total defeat of the National Guard of the dictator Anastasio Somoza. In his message to the rally at the beginning of the commemoration, Ortega said, "We render homage to all the heroes and martyrs on this day. We say to them that will never betray their ideals and their principles. We are Sandinistas, we are anti-imperialists, we are revolutionaries, we are solidary, socialists. And we will keep on defending our ideals and our principles in all battlefields. "We love peace, but we are ready to resort to the arms of steel if they try to bring down the power of the people." Ortega added that "it would be better for those who are on the take from the US embassy to respect the norms and not provoke the people. We want reconciliation but not at the cost of the poor and enrichment of the rich." "Wherever our enemies look for us, there they will find us. Wherever the country sell-outs look for us, there they will meet us. Wherever the traitors look for us, there they will find us. Wherever those on the take from the Yankee embassy look for us, there they will encounter us, ready, as our great poet Rub?n Dar?o would say, to raise steel arms of war and the olive branch of peace. We love peace, but we are also ready to take up arms if they try to overthrow people's power, citizens' power - what they are now calling a dictatorship. If they try to overthrow the "dictatorship," which for us is nothing more than the power of the people, the power of the poor, then they are again going to run up against the insurrection of the people, with the insurrection of the masses, with the insurrection of the poor." Ortega warned those conspiring to bring down the Sandinista government to think though the logic of their actions. "It would be better for those who are conspiring, for those financed by the Yankees, for those who are financed by the imperialists, to respect the institutional norms that exist in our country; it would be better for them not to provoke the people, to not provoke the poor, to not provoke the farmers, because this power is of the people, it is greatly esteemed Sandinista power. "It is the power of the people, Sandinista power, a red and black power to defend the country's blue and white flag. Only (Augusto C.) Sandino with the red and black standard knew how to defend the blue and white flag of the country; only the Frente Sandinista, inheritor of Sandino's flag, this red and black flag, has known how to keep on defending the blue and white flag of the homeland." Ortega argued that this "is the only way that Nicaraguans can enjoy peace and tranquility. We want reconciliation, but not at the cost of exploitation of the poor, nor at the cost of making the rich richer, and the poor, poorer, not at the cost of robbing campesinos of their land, or depriving the people of access to health care and education." All these conquests were taken from our people beginning in 1990, but are now being regained by the Nicaraguan people through the Government of National Unity and Reconciliation. We have been recovering those conquests since January 10, 2007; we are defending those conquests, and we will keep on recovering more conquests and defending new conquests under the chant of Homeland or Death (Patria Libre o Morir)!" Ingrid Betancourt's liberation Ortega used the rally to explain his government's response to the freeing of and other FARC captives in Colombia. He welcomed the captives' liberation, but pointed out that only a political solution can bring about peace in that country. President Ortega reminded his listeners that the FARC is not alone in holding political prisoners. "The Colombian army holds captive thousands of human beings; human beings are being held captive not just on one side, but on the other, and they have been submitted to terrible tortures. "There are signs of harsh treatment of captives by the guerrillas, but also of torture and violation of human rights and disappearances committed by the army and its paramilitary groups." Ortega re-affirmed that under no condition would Nicaragua betray its commitment to the three women who were wounded in the attack on a FARC encampment in Ecuador that resulted in the death of dozens of people including FARC leader and negotiator Ra?l Reyes. The three include two Colombians (Doris Torres and Martha P?rez) and the Mexican Lucia Morett; they have been granted save haven in Nicaragua. Ortega stated that the Mexicans who were present in the encampment had no military role, but were there as part of a peace initiative. Nicaragua has rejected the Colombian governments demand that the three women be sent to Colombia to face "terrorism" charges. Ortega, in a speech earlier this week warned Colombian president Uribe not to send death squads into Nicaragua to try to kill the three "muchachas." The FSLN leader drew a graphic contrast between the Colombian army attack in Ecuador and the liberation of the group of prisoners including Betancourt and three US CIA agents. "Imagine the contrast. On the one hand they resort to state terrorism to attack and encampment in Ecuadoran territory, killing dozens of Colombia, Ecuadoran, and Mexican brothers and sisters, and gravely wounded these three young women; on the other hand, two or three days ago, without firing a single shot, they managed to rescue 15 people. "What does this tell us? That it is possible to win release of prisoners without firing a single shot, it is possible to attain a negotiated liberation, without firing a sing shot." Ortega offered Nicaragua's unconditional support to a peace process in Colombia. But, "we insist that the Colombian government and its army renounce any resort to acts of terrorism against their own brothers, Colombian brothers, Latin American brothers.." a.. parent b.. reply -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... 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Message-ID: <487405DE.3070106@attglobal.net> ... and the Masculinisation of Agriculture A new seed has been genetically engineered so that it will not germinate at harvest. This will ensure that farmers must buy new seed each year. The patriarchal minds behind these innovations would stunt nature so that they themselves profit economically while biodiversity, long-term sustainability and, indeed, small farmers' lives are destroyed. by Dr Vandana Shiva "In There can be no partnership between the terminator logic which destroys nature's renewability and regeneration and the commitment to continuity of life held by woman farmers of the Third World". I am writing this statement from beautiful Doon Valley in the Himalayas where the monsoons have arrived, and our Navdanya (Nine Seeds Our National Movement on Conservation of Biodiversity) team is busy with the transplanting of over 300 rice varieties which we are conserving along with the rich diversity of other agricultural crops. Our farm does not use any chemicals or external inputs. It is a self-regenerative system which preserves biodiversity while meeting human needs and needs of farm animals. Our two bullocks are the alternative to chemical fertilisers which pollute soil and water as well as to tractors and fossil fuels which pollute the atmosphere and destabilise the climate. One of the rice varieties we conserve and grow is basmati, the aromatic rice for which Dehra Dun is famous.The basmati rice which farmers in my valley have been growing for centuries is today being claimed as "an instant invention of a novel rice line" by a US Corporation called RiceTec (Patent number 5663454). The "neem" which our mothers and grandmothers have used for centuries as a pesticide and fungicide has been patented for these uses by W R Grace, another US Corporation. We have challenged Grace's patent with the Greens in the European Parliament in the European Patent Office. This phenomenon of biopiracy through which western corporations are stealing centuries of collective knowledge and innovation carried out by Third World women is now reaching epidemic proportions. Such "biopiracy" is now being justified as a new "partnership" between agribusiness and Third World women. For us, theft cannot be the basis of partnership. Partnership implies equality and mutual respect. This would imply that there is no room for biopiracy and that those who have engaged in such piracy apologise to those they have stolen from and whose intellectual and natural creativity they want to undermine through IPR monopolies. Partnership with Third World women necessitates changes in the WTO/TRIPs agreement which protects the pirates and punishes the original innovators as in the case of the US/India TRIPs dispute. It also requires changes in the US Patent Act which allows rampant piracy of our biodiversity related knowledge. These changes are essential to ensure that our collective knowledge and innovation is protected and women are recognised and respected as knowers and biodiversity experts. Women farmers have been the seed keepers and seed breeders over millenia. The basmati is just one among 100,000 varieties of rice evolved by Indian farmers. Diversity and perenniality is our culture of the seed. In Central India, which is the Vavilov Centre of rice diversity, at the beginning of the agricultural season, farmers gather at the village deity, offer their rice varieties and then share the seeds. This annual festival of "Akti" rejuvenates the duty of saving and sharing seed among farming communities. It establishes partnership among farmers and with the earth. IPRs on seeds are however criminalising this duty to the earth and to each other by making seed saving and seed exchange illegal. The attempt to prevent farmers from saving seed is not just being made through new IPR laws, it is also being made through the new genetic engineering technologies. Delta and Pine Land (now owned by Monsanto) and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) have established a new partnership through a jointly held patent (No 5723785) to seed which has been genetically engineered to ensure that it does not germinate on harvest thus forcing farmers to buy seed at each planting season. Termination of germination is a means for capital accumulation and market expansion. However, abundance in nature and for farmers shrinks as markets grow for Monsanto. When we sow seed, we pray, "May this seed be exhaustless". Monsanto and the USDA on the other hand are stating, "Let this seed be terminated so that our profits and monopoly is exhaustless". There can be no partnership between the terminator logic which destroys nature's renewability and regeneration and the commitment to continuity of life held by women farmers of the Third World. The two worldviews do not merely clash they are mutually exclusive. There can be no partnership between a logic of death on which Monsanto bases its expanding empire and the logic of life on which women farmers in the Third World base their partnership with the earth to provide food security to their families and communities. There are other dimensions of the mutually exclusive interests and perspectives of women farmers of the Third World and biotechnology corporations such as Monsanto. The most widespread application of genetic engineering in agriculture is herbicide resistance, that is, the breeding of crops to be resistant to herbicides. Monsanto's Round Up Ready Soya and Cotton are examples of this application. When introduced to Third World farming systems, this will lead to increased use of agri-chemicals thus increasing environmental problems. It will also destroy the biodiversity that is the sustenance and livelihood base of rural women. What are weeds for Monsanto are food, are fodder and medicine for Third World Women. In Indian agriculture women use 150 different species of plants for vegetables, fodder and health care. In West Bengal 124 "weed" species collected from rice fields have economic importance for farmers. In the Expana region of Veracruz, Mexico, peasants utilise about 435 wild plant and animal species of which 229 are eaten. The spread of Round Up Ready crops would destroy this diversity and the value it provides to farmers. It would also undermine the soil conservation functions of cover crops and crop mixtures, thus leading to accelerated soil erosion. Contrary to Monsanto myths, Round Up Ready crops are a recipe for soil erosion, not a method for soil conservation. Instead of falsely labelling the patriarchal projects of intellectual property rights on seed and genetic engineering in agriculture which are destroying biodiversity and the small farmers of the Third World as "partnership" with Third World women, it would be more fruitful to redirect agricultural policy towards women centred systems which promote biodiversity based small farm agriculture. A common myth used by Monsanto and the Biotechnology industry is that without genetic engineering, the world cannot be fed. However, while biotechnology is projected as increasing food production four times, small ecological farms have productivity hundreds of times higher than large industrial farms based on conventional farms. "This Phenomenon of biopiracy through which western corporations are stealing centuries of collective knowledge and innovation carried out by Third World women is now reaching epidemic propotions". Women farmers in the Third World are predominantly small farmers. They provide the basis of food security, and they provide food security in partnership with other species. The partnership between women and biodiversity has kept the world fed through history, at present, and will feed the world in the future. It is this partnership that needs to be preserved and promoted to ensure food security. Agriculture based on diversity, decentralisation and improving small farm productivity through ecological methods is a women-centred, nature-friendly agriculture. In this women-centred agriculture, knowledge is shared, other species and plants are kin, not "property", and sustainability is based on renewal of the earth's fertility and renewal and regeneration of biodiversity and species richness on farms to provide internal inputs. In our paradigms, there is no place for monocultures of genetically engineered crops and IPR monopolies on seeds. Monocultures and monopolies symbolise a masculinisation of agriculture. The war mentality underlying military-industrial agriculture is evident from the names given to herbicides which destroy the economic basis of the survival of the poorest women in the rural areas of the Third World. Monsanto's herbicides are called "Round Up", "Machete", "Lasso". American Home Products which has merged with Monsanto calls its herbicides "Pentagon", "Prowl", "Scepter", "Squadron", "Cadre", "Lightening", "Assert", "Avenge". This is the language of war, not sustainability. Sustainability is based on peace with the earth. The violence intrinsic to methods and metaphors used by the global agribusiness and biotechnology corporations is a violence against nature's biodiversity and women's expertise and productivity. The violence intrinsic to destruction of diversity through monocultures and the destruction of the freedom to save and exchange seeds through IPR monopolies is inconsistent with women's diverse non-violent ways of knowing nature and providing food security. This diversity of knowledge systems and production systems is the way forward for ensuring that Third World women continue to play a central role as knowers, producers and providers of food. Genetic Engineering and IPRs will rob Third World women and their creativity, innovation and decision making power in agriculture. In place of women deciding what is grown in fields and served in kitchens, agriculture based on globalisation, genetic engineering and corporate monopolies on seeds will establish a food system and worldview in which men controlling global corporations control what is grown in our fields and what we eat. Corporate men investing financial capital in theft and biopiracy will present themselves as creators and owners of life. We do not want a partnership in this violent usurpation of the creativity of creation and Third World women by global biotechnology corporations who call themselves the "Life Sciences Industry" even while they push millions of species and millions of small farmers to extinction. _____ Dr Vandana Shiva is one of the world's most dynamic and provocative thinkers on the environment, women's rights and international affairs. A physicist, ecologist and activist, she won the alternative Nobel Prize in 1993. Her recent publication Biopiracy, The Plunder of knowledge and Nature (1997) is published by Green Books. Secretariat of Diverse Women for Diversity Research Foundation for Science, technology and Ecology A-60, Haux khas New Delhi - 110016, India Telephone 91-11-6856795 Email: vshiva at giasdel01.vsnl.net.in vandana at twn.unv.ernet.in http://www.indiaserver.com/betas/vshiva http://www.aislingmagazine.com/aislingmagazine/articles/TAM24/Masculinisation.html http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From critical.montages at gmail.com Tue Jul 8 19:07:00 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2008 21:07:00 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Israelis Sue Lebanese Banks Claiming They Helped Hezbollah Message-ID: Lebanon's Central Bank governor criticizes New York lawsuit claiming banks helped Hezbollah The Associated Press Tuesday, July 8, 2008 BEIRUT, Lebanon: Lebanon's Central Bank governor on Tuesday criticized a lawsuit filed in New York in which several Israeli victims of Hezbollah rocket attacks blame some Lebanese banks for helping fund the militant group. The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan Thursday seeks at least $100 million in damages on behalf of 57 victims. It notes that the Lebanese banks maintained relationships with various U.S. banks through which, the lawsuit says, the Lebanese banks were able to provide Hezbollah with "regular, systemic and unfettered access to U.S. currency," enabling it to buy missiles and other weapons. The banks were identified as Fransabank Sal, Banque Libanese Pour Le Commerce, Bank of Beirut Sal, Banque Libano-Francaise Sal and the Middle East Africa Bank. The banks did not immediately reply to the lawsuit in court, and it was not clear who might represent them there. An e-mail sent to Banque Libano-Francaise Sal on Monday was not immediately returned. But Governor Riyad Salemeh said in a terse statement commenting on the lawsuit Tuesday that the Lebanese banking sector "is committed to international standards" and operates within international laws. He did not elaborate. The lawsuit says the plaintiffs were all victims of missile attacks launched by Hezbollah against civilian targets in Israel during the 2006 summer war between Israel and Hezbollah. More than 1,200 Lebanese, mostly civilians, were killed in that war. Israel lost about 160 people in the 34-day conflict, most of them soldiers. There was no immediate comment from Hezbollah on the lawsuit. The lawsuit based its conclusions on an analysis of publicly available U.S., Israeli and United Nations reports, news articles, academic journals, public policy center publications and police and medical reports. The lawsuit said the banks violated international law by providing financial services to Hezbollah, including its military fundraising arm, the Islamic Resistance Support Organization. The lawsuit said a fundraising form of the organization asks donors whether they wish to fund specific items such as missiles or small arms. From critical.montages at gmail.com Tue Jul 8 20:55:11 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2008 22:55:11 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Nuclear Disarmament Will Usher in Era of Tranquility: Ahmadinejad Message-ID: FWIW: Date : Wednesday, July 9, 2008 Nuclear disarmament will usher in era of tranquility: Ahmadinejad Tehran Times Political Desk TEHRAN -- In a letter to a Japanese newspaper, Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad has called for the formation of a committee tasked with disarming those nuclear powers that have an evil record as part of the efforts to establish trust and calm in the world. "It seems that if certain powers obey the law and if an independent committee for disarming those nuclear-armed powers which have a record of evil is formed? we can re-establish tranquility and confidence in the world." In a reference to the U.S. atomic attacks on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II, Ahmadinejad said those who killed hundreds of thousands of people in Japan and "today have even filled their depots with third and fourth generation nuclear weapons cannot and should not be plaintiffs." In the letter to Yomiuri Shimbun, entitled "Spirituality, Justice and Kindness", which was published on Tuesday, Ahmadinejad stated that the era of the major powers' unilateral domination of the world has come to an end. The letter coincided with the annual G8 summit, which began Monday on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, drawing leaders including U.S. President George W. Bush and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. "They (the G8 leaders) may imagine that they can maintain the orderly establishment and get rid of their own problems without paying attention to others' benefit or dignity," AFP quoted Ahmadinejad as saying in the letter. "But such an attitude has ended in failure again and again and it's as if they were walking faster on the road to an abrupt cliff," Ahmadinejad added. All countries know the end of the single superpower world, dominated by the United States, is drawing near, the Iranian president stated. "If they are worried about (the future) of human beings, they have to accept the change and correct themselves," he added. In the letter, he rejected the calls for Iran to suspend uranium enrichment as a precondition for talks with the world powers. "We are not going to accept any illegitimate demand," he wrote From bar at idirect.com Wed Jul 9 04:21:48 2008 From: bar at idirect.com (bar at idirect.com) Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2008 06:21:48 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [A-List] RWANDA:The FDLR seek international justice not to be cowed by the manoeuvres of the criminal regime in Kigali and the African Union to reconsider its unconditional support to the bloodthirsty regime of Kagame.] Message-ID: <55377.193.220.86.132.1215598908.squirrel@webmail.look.ca> PRESS RELEASE N? 01/SE/CD/FDLR/JULY/2008 OF THE FDLR ? The FDLR seek international justice not to be cowed by the manoeuvres of the criminal regime in Kigali and the African Union to reconsider its unconditional support to the bloodthirsty regime of Kagame. The Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda (FDLR) are very shocked and appalled that Rwanda dares to ask the African Union not to execute the international arrest warrants issued by French Judge Jean-Louis Brugui?re and Spanish Judge Andreu Merelles against military and civilian dignitaries of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF-Inkotanyi) for their responsibility in the Rwandan genocide and massacres of civil populations in Rwanda and in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The FDLR are surprised and offended by the decision of the 11th summit of the African Union not to help European justice to track dignitaries of the criminal regime in Kigali, accused of crimes of genocide, crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity in the African Great Lakes region, especially in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) since 1 October 1990. This decision is all the more shocking that it denies the right to justice more than 3 million of Rwandans and more than 4.5 millions of Congolese killed in barbaric and unnecessary wars conducted by the RPF-Inkotanyi. ? Worse, it is surprising to see that African leaders support a criminal like Kagame who did not hesitate to coldly assassinate two of their counterparts Juv?nal Habyarimana of Rwanda and Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi. Such support, in addition to be seen as a licence to the killers of Heads of State, it constitutes a dangerous precedent that can only be detrimental to the entire continent already facing recurrent crises. The Kigali regime, which has forced this decision is claiming at the same time that the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) be transferred to Rwanda so that it can control it as it pleases. The height of the shame is that it is the same Kagame who has been asking with strong insistence that the International Community track Hutus suspected of genocide wherever they could be, but he changes language when it comes to his close associates to be indicted by international justice. Moreover, the FDLR find shocking the order of the United States of America to the Secretary-General of the United Nations to maintain in office General Karenzi Karake Emmanuel although the latter has clearly been indicted by Judge Merelles in various killings in Rwanda and the DRC. ? The FDLR urge all countries worldwide, in particular the European Union and the African Union to spare no effort to bring justice to Congolese and Rwandan people who are victims of senseless wars that Kagame and his acolytes have imposed to them, to track, apprehend and bring to justice all those dignitaries of the Kigali regime, whose primary responsibility in the Rwandan genocide is well known. ? The FDLR remain convinced that there will be no true reconciliation among the different layers of Rwandan society, all victims of the Rwandan tragedy together, as long as the main perpetrators of this tragedy, namely members of the RPF-Inkotanyi, have not all been brought to international justice. The FDLR renew their request to Kagame who is the primarily responsible for the tragedies of Rwanda and DRC to hand over without delay to the ICTR all criminal suspects indicted? by Judges Merelles and Brugui?re, and then surrender himself voluntarily to the ICTR to answer for their crimes. That is the only guarantee of peace, justice and national reconciliation in Rwanda. The FDLR declare that any act intended to prevent the arrest of war criminals, suspected of genocide and those accused of crimes against humanity in Rwanda and the DRC or to support their positions in United Nations Missions or in State affairs would be a serious obstruction of justice and a gesture of complicity with these criminals. The FDLR declare that History will remember such acts. The FDLR remain convinced that no immunity should protect perpetrators of crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes of aggression and insistently request that justice is done to the peoples of the African Great Lakes region, especially the peoples of Rwanda and DRC, victims of hegemonic wars imposed to them by a clique of criminals in order to control and exploit the immense wealth of this region. Done in Paris on July 7, 2008 ? Callixte Mbarushimana Executive Secretary of the FDLR. _____________________________________________________________________________ Envoyez avec Yahoo! Mail. Une boite mail plus intelligente http://mail.yahoo.fr -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: untitled-1.2 Type: text/html Size: 11187 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20080709/27f60d02/attachment.txt -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: FDLR PRESS  RELEASE N01 July 2008.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 48909 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20080709/27f60d02/attachment-0001.pdf From shimogamo at attglobal.net Wed Jul 9 02:41:42 2008 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Bill Totten) Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2008 17:41:42 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Where We're At Message-ID: <487479C6.1030602@attglobal.net> Clusterfuck Nation by Jim Kunstler Comment on current events by the author of The Long Emergency (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2005) www.kunstler.com (July 07 2008) Every time I saw a car towing a motorboat this holiday weekend, I wondered what was going through the head of the towee. Did they have a sense that darkness was falling on their careers in motor sports? Did they have an inkling that an oil-and-gas crisis is upon us and just not give a shit? Or were they just going through the motions, following some implacable rote programming induced by, say, forty-odd years of TV addiction and a diet based on corn-syrup byproducts? The holiday to me was a creepy hiatus from an ever more desperate reality overtaking the nation like a miasma. Meanwhile, the mainstream media's ongoing narrative has gotten stuck in the moronic groove of "drill drill drill". The belief of people like Larry Kudlow of CNBC and uber-mega-idiot John Stossel of ABC-News is that we could go back to $1.50 gasoline if only congress would open the offshore exploration areas and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This view is just plain erroneous. Nothing we get out of these regions will come close to offsetting the ongoing depletion of worldwide oil resources, or even arresting our own losses. Larry King had a particularly dreary debate Sunday night between Robert F Kennedy, Jr, and a grab bag of "drill drill drill" advocates. Kennedy took the position that the US could achieve a sort of energy independence by massive deployments of wind and solar equipment. It's an understandable wish, I suppose, but not something I view as consistent with reality. The unfortunate part of the Larry King presentation is that it gives the public an idea that these two fantasies are the only possible responses to our predicament. No one is interested in changing our current behavior. In the background of these energy conundrums is the sickening spectacle of the nation's fatal insolvency, which remains partially disguised by the machinations of the Federal Reserve, using the various new loan "windows" to maintain the illusion that the major banks have not swindled themselves out of existence - and in doing so, caused at least $3 trillion (so far) in capital to vanish in a black hole. This three-card-monte game has gone on for a whole year now, and the consequences are hitting home. No more money can be lent into existence now. One consequence is that other nations sitting on our exported dollars (from our massive trade deficit) have apparently decided to spend off those dollars rather than wait for the fullblown financial collapse of the nation issuing them. My guess is that they are spending those dollars on oil, the primary resource of industrial economies, and that they are prepared to outbid other contestants (including the USA) no matter what - because they know the dollar is losing value, and that those losses are apt to accelerate over time, and what else would they spend them on? I suspect this is behind the rising price of oil more than anything else - certainly more than the phantom "speculators" the right wing is yelling about - and that behind the spending off of those exported dollars are the geological facts of oil being a finite resource inequitably distributed around the world. But to get back to my prior point, things are hitting home anyway, and with force. The US economy is crumbling because the way we conduct the activities of daily life is insane relative to our circumstances. We've spent sixty years ramping up a suburban living arrangement that has suddenly entered a state of failure, and all its accessories and furnishings are failing in concert. The far-flung McHouse tracts are becoming both useless and worthless in the face of gasoline prices that will never be cheap again. The strip malls and office "parks" are following the residential real estate off a cliff. The retail tenants of all those places are hemorrhaging customers who have maxed out every last credit card. The lack of business is now leading to substantial layoffs. The airline industry is dying and will probably cease to exist in its familiar form in 24 months. The trucking industry is dying, threatening the entire just-in-time distribution system of things that even people with little money to spend still need, like food. These conditions will now get a lot worse, no matter whether the banks continue to conceal their problems. All of it leads to an inflection point that coincides with the November election. By then, I expect that quite a few banks will be toast, job layoffs will rise spectacularly, foreclosures and bankruptcies will be raging across the land, and homeowners north of the magnolia belt will be shattered by the cost of staying warm this winter. All this hardship and woe will be blamed on the Republican party. It may actually kill off the party. Political parties do go out of business in American history, and this one deserves to die - with its aggressive no-nothingism, its avaricious, punitive religious extremism (the religious part often being fake), its stunning inattention to financial malfeasance in areas under its direct supervision, and its gross incompetent mismanagement of the nation's strategic interests. That said, I will feel a little sorry for Mr Obama if he gets to the White House. He'll have to find a gentle way to tell the truth to the people who elected him, people who will be suffering mightily, and who will be very sore about their losses. He'll have to tell them that the previous "release" of the American Dream software is obsolete, and the new version will require a whole lot more of them in the way of earnest effort, delayed gratification, and revised expectations. There's a whole lot we can do to greet the new circumstances awaiting us, but the one thing we can't afford to do is put all our efforts into keeping the current system running as is. Reality simply won't permit it. We would squander our dwindling remaining resources trying to keep it all going. The next president is going to have to lead us through the awful process of cutting our losses. So far, the debate has been about how to avoid that. ____________________________________ My new novel of the post-oil future, World Made By Hand, is available at all booksellers. http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/2008/07/where-were-at.html http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From critical.montages at gmail.com Wed Jul 9 10:44:29 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2008 12:44:29 -0400 Subject: [A-List] The Impact of the Housing Crash on Family Wealth Message-ID: The Impact of the Housing Crash on Family Wealth July 2008, Dean Baker and David Rosnick This paper extrapolates from data from the 2004 Survey of Consumer Finance to project household wealth, by wealth quintile, in 2009 under three alternative scenarios. The first scenario assumes that real house prices fall no further than their level as of March 2008. The second scenario assumes that real house prices fall an additional 10 percent as a 2009 average. The third scenario assumes that real house prices fall an additional 20 percent for a 2009 average. The projections show that the vast majority of families will see a substantial reduction in wealth by 2009 in any of these scenarios and that the cohorts just approaching retirement will have very little to support themselves in retirement other than their Social Security. The projections also show that a large number of families will have little or no equity in their homes in 2009. From critical.montages at gmail.com Wed Jul 9 10:46:31 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2008 12:46:31 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Rencontre avec Bachar Al-Assad Message-ID: Rencontre avec Bachar Al-Assad ? L'ABSENCE DE PAIX POUSSE LA R?GION AU CONSERVATISME ET ? L'EXTR?MISME ? http://blog.mondediplo.net/2008-07-09-Rencontre-avec-Bachar-Al-Assad ____________________________________________________ Il nous re?oit sur le pas de la porte, ? l'entr?e d'une maison d'un ?tage situ?e sur les hauteurs de Damas. Aucun protocole, aucune mesure de s?curit? ; nous ne sommes pas fouill?s ni nos appareils d'enregistrement contr?l?s. ? Ici, c'est la maison o? je lis, o? je travaille. Il y a seulement ce salon, une salle de conf?rence et une cuisine. Et, bien s?r, Internet et la t?l?vision. Ma femme Bassma y vient souvent aussi. Ici je suis productif ; au palais pr?sidentiel, ce n'est pas le cas. ? Pendant pr?s de deux heures, il aborde tous les sujets, n'?lude aucune question. Il prend un plaisir ?vident ? la discussion et utilise ses mains pour appuyer ses arguments. A la veille de sa visite en France, le pr?sident Bachar Al-Assad est confiant, d?contract?, volubile. L'isolement impos? ? la Syrie par Washington et l'Union europ?enne depuis environ quatre ans se fracture. L'entente entre le gouvernement et l'opposition libanaise au mois de mai 2008 a clos une page. ? On a mal compris la position de la Syrie, on a d?form? nos points de vue. Mais l'accord sur le Liban a ramen? les gens ? la r?alit?. Il faut accepter que nous soyons une partie de la solution au Liban, mais aussi en Irak et en Palestine. On a besoin de nous pour combattre le terrorisme comme pour atteindre la paix. On ne peut nous isoler, ni r?soudre les probl?mes de la r?gion en manipulant les mots comme le "bien" et le "mal," le "noir" et le "blanc". Il faut n?gocier, m?me si on n'est pas d'accord sur tout... ? Lire la suite de cet article in?dit d'Alain GRESH : http://blog.mondediplo.net/2008-07-09-Rencontre-avec-Bachar-Al-Assad From the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com Wed Jul 9 12:12:04 2008 From: the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com (Leighm) Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2008 11:12:04 -0700 Subject: [A-List] Israeli Nuclear Secrets 'On The Web' Message-ID: <4874FF74.20308@gmail.com> Courtesy EMM News (directorate of general communications, EU) http://press.jrc.it/NewsBrief/dynamic?language=en&page=1&edition=morebreakingedition&option=Israeli Website exposes Israeli 'nuke secrets' Leftist Israeli website claims to expose nuclear secrets published by foreign sources Tal Rabinovsky Published: 07.09.08, 18:25 / Israel News Are Israel's nuke secrets available online? The Armageddon website claims to sport vast amounts of information about Israel's nuclear program and its manufacturing and storage facilities, as published by various foreign sources. The site is the brainchild of a large group of Israeli intellectuals, journalists and philosophers affiliated with an Israeli group advocating a Middle East free of atomic, biological, and chemical weapons; the organization says Knesset Member Dov Khenin (Hadash) is among its supporters. According to the website's owners, the site is registered on an Israeli domain and is hosted on Australian-based servers. Armageddon's owners claim to be the proprietors of a second domain ? armagedonz.org ? which they can use in case the Military Censor tries to take it of the air. The details of the second domain's owner are kept confidential ? unlike those of the Israeli domain owner. The group behind the website, backed by several organizations that oppose the distribution of weapons of mass destruction, decided that the topic of WMDs is not given its appropriate place in public debate and that its increasingly growing urgency in the Middle East calls for something to be done. In full with linkage: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3566189,00.html From tal1 at cogeco.ca Wed Jul 9 12:29:49 2008 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2008 14:29:49 -0400 Subject: [A-List] India: Left Ends Support, Congress Vows US, Israel Military Ties Message-ID: <66E0C84911934859AAEFF103CB718734@TonyPC> ----- Original Message ----- From: Rick Rozoff To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2008 10:09 PM Subject: [stopnato] India: Left Ends Support, Congress Vows US, Israel Military Ties http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008\07\09\story_9-7-2008_pg1_12 Daily Times (Pakistan) July 9, 2008 India to seek more deals with US after Left exit Iftikhar Gilani NEW DELHI - The Indian government is planning to pursue several defence deals with the United States and Israel following the Left parties' withdrawal from the government. Sources within the government said that various deals had not been completed with both these countries due to the strong opposition presented by the Left parties. They said that as soon as the news of the Left's withdrawal was made public, Defence Minister AK Antony ordered several steps to ensure that the pending defence deals with US companies were completed promptly. ------------------------------------------------------ http://www.ptinews.com/pti/ptisite.nsf/$All/A200C1ADEFF31D7C6525748000538B47?OpenDocument Left annouces withdrawal of support from UPA govt New Delhi - An angry Left today announced withdrawal of their support to the UPA government which appeared unfazed and declared that it will seek a vote of confidence in the Lok Sabha during a short session this month after which it will move to operationalise the Indo-US nuclear deal. Ending their four-and-a-half year acrimonious relationship with the Congress over the nuclear deal, the four Left parties with a total of 59 MPs will formally announce their withdrawal at 12 noon tomorrow when they will meet President Pratibha Patil. The Left's decision, though expected, set off a flurry of political maneouverings with the government.... Singh, who is in the Japanese island of Sappro, said "we will go to the IAEA as soon as possible". .... ------------------------------------------------------ http://www.hindu.com/2008/07/09/stories/2008070958370100.htm Left parties withdraw support Vinay Kumar NEW DELHI - Political developments over the civilian nuclear deal with the United States reached a crescendo on Tuesday with four Left parties announcing withdrawal of support to the United Progressive Alliance government over its move to go to the International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors to seal the safeguards accord. Left leaders will meet President Pratibha Patil on Wednesday and formally hand over a letter of withdrawal of support. Announcing the decision after a meeting of the CPI(M), CPI, RSP and Forward Bloc, CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat said the Left parties decided that if the government "goes to the IAEA Board of Governors, they will withdraw support. In view of the Prime Minister's announcement, that time has come." On way to Japan on Monday, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced that the government would go to the IAEA "very soon." At a press conference, Mr. Karat reminded External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee that since the UPA refused to provide the text of the safeguards agreement to the members of the UPA-Left committee on the deal, "no purpose will be served by having a meeting on July 10." Reading out their reply to Mr. Mukherjee's letter in which he proposed a meeting of the committee on July 10, Mr. Karat said that at the sixth meeting of the committee on November 16, 2007, it was decided that the "government will proceed with the talks with the IAEA and the outcome will be presented to the committee for its consideration before it finalises its findings." The Left reply said, "Till now, the 'outcome of the talks', i.e., the text of the Safeguards Agreements negotiated with the IAEA Secretariat, has not been made available to the Committee. Without the text, the Committee cannot come to any findings. Since the UPA has refused to provide the text to the members of the Committee, no purpose will be served by having a meeting on July 10." The reply was signed by Mr. Karat and the general secretaries of the CPI, Forward Bloc and Revolutionary Socialist Party, A. B. Bardhan, Debabrata Biswas and T. J. Chandrachoodan. =========================== Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato To subscribe, send an e-mail to: stopnato-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages http://lists.topica.com/lists/ANTINATO/read ============================== __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Database | Polls | Calendar MARKETPLACE You rock! Blockbuster wants to give you a complimentary trial of - Blockbuster Total Access. Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required) Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch format to Traditional Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe Recent Activity 6New Members Visit Your Group Real Food Group Share recipes, restaurant ratings and favorite meals. Healthy Living Learn to live life to the fullest on Yahoo! Groups. Y! Groups blog the best source for the latest scoop on Groups.. __,_._,___ From tal1 at cogeco.ca Wed Jul 9 12:31:44 2008 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2008 14:31:44 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Afghan War: US Shifts Aircraft Carrier From Persian Gulf Message-ID: ----- Original Message ----- From: Rick Rozoff To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2008 10:21 PM Subject: [stopnato] Afghan War: US Shifts Aircraft Carrier From Persian Gulf http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=56054 Stars and Stripes Mideast Edition July 9, 2008 USS Abraham Lincoln in Arabian Sea to support Afghan operations By Jeff Schogol ARLINGTON, Va. - The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln has moved from the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea to support operations in Afghanistan. NBC News first reported Monday night that the carrier has been moved because of the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan.... A spokesman for 5th Fleet confirmed the move Tuesday. "Conditions are worsening on the ground in Afghanistan and commanders have requested additional air support," said Lt. Nathan Christensen. .... For security reasons, Christensen could not say how long the Lincoln would provide air support for Afghanistan, or when it is expected to leave the 5th Fleet area of operations. "They are there for the foreseeable future," said Lt. Cmdr. Bill Speaks, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command. Speaks would not say if the move was prompted by the worsening situation in Afghanistan. "This is simply a move to ensure strategic flexibility and responsiveness through the posturing of our forces," he said. He also could not say if the Lincoln's trip to the Arabian Sea had been planned or was an adjustment due to conditions on the ground. "These kinds of things are constantly under review and assessment," he said. "I honestly don't how long ago that decision was made or thought of." A Navy official could not give a specific date on when the Lincoln would be replaced by the USS Ronald Reagan. The Reagan is currently in the western Pacific filling in for the USS Kitty Hawk, which is taking part in the Rim of the Pacific exercises in place of the USS George Washington, which is being repaired following a fire in May, the official said. If needed, the Navy can send carriers to the 5th Fleet area of operations ahead of schedule, such as the USS Theodore Roosevelt, which is slated to deploy in late summer or early fall, the official said. =========================== Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato To subscribe, send an e-mail to: stopnato-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages http://lists.topica.com/lists/ANTINATO/read ============================== __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Database | Polls | Calendar MARKETPLACE Special offer for Yahoo! Groups from Blockbuster! Get a free 1-month trial with no late fees or due dates. Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required) Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch format to Traditional Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe Recent Activity 6New Members Visit Your Group Share Photos Put your favorite photos and more online. Special K Group on Yahoo! Groups Join the challenge and lose weight. Check out the Y! Groups blog Stay up to speed on all things Groups!. __,_._,___ From tal1 at cogeco.ca Wed Jul 9 12:34:23 2008 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2008 14:34:23 -0400 Subject: [A-List] US Encircles Russia With Missiles, Brands It 'Bellicose' Message-ID: <152FDF4D43C44D39B6F3DA00B768A628@TonyPC> ----- Original Message ----- From: Rick Rozoff To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2008 10:38 PM Subject: [stopnato] US Encircles Russia With Missiles, Brands It 'Bellicose' http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7496725.stm BBC News July 9, 2008 US criticises 'bellicose' Russia =The reaction was "designed to make Europeans nervous about participating" said a Pentagon spokesman. [Pentagonese: US missiles and missile radar bases in Europe (for starters Poland, the Czech Republic, Britain and Norway, with Lithuania, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Ukraine already hinted to host similar facilities, and at the other end of Russia in Japan, the Alaskan mainland and the Aleutian Islands) aren't a problem - Russia's response to them is.] The United States has criticised what it calls "bellicose rhetoric" from Russia over US plans to develop a missile shield in Europe. Russia said it would be forced to react with military means if the US went ahead with its plan for a shield based partly in the Czech Republic. The reaction was "designed to make Europeans nervous about participating" said a Pentagon spokesman. .... Moscow says siting the system near its borders could weaken its own defences.... It has previously threatened to aim its own missiles at any eventual base in Poland or the Czech Republic. A deal, signed by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Prague on Tuesday, allows a tracking radar base to be set up on Czech territory. 'Not our choice' The Russian foreign ministry statement said: "If a US strategic anti-missile shield starts to be deployed near our borders, we will be forced to react not in a diplomatic fashion but with military-technical means." It said there was "no doubt that the grouping of elements of the strategic US arsenal faced towards Russian territory" would mean Moscow had to "take adequate measures to compensate for the threats to its national security". "This is not our choice," it added. The foreign ministry said it would continue to monitor developments but would remain open to constructive talks on issues of strategic stability. The BBC's Adam Brookes in Washington cites Russia's ambassador to the UN as suggesting that the phrase "military-technical means" does not mean military action, but more likely a change in Russia's strategic posture, perhaps by redeploying its own missiles. .... The next question, he says, is whether Poland will accept missile defence facilities as well, and how the Russians will respond to that. The plans remain unpopular in the Czech Republic, while the US has failed to reach agreement with Poland on placing other parts of the system there. The plans involve siting the tracking radar system in the Czech Republic and 10 interceptor missiles in Poland. The US wants the sites to be in operation by about 2012. =========================== Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato To subscribe, send an e-mail to: stopnato-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages http://lists.topica.com/lists/ANTINATO/read ============================== __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Database | Polls | Calendar MARKETPLACE Blockbuster is giving away a FREE trial of - Blockbuster Total Access. Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required) Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch format to Traditional Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe Recent Activity 6New Members Visit Your Group Dog Groups on Yahoo! Groups discuss everything related to dogs. Y! Groups blog the best source for the latest scoop on Groups. Share Photos Put your favorite photos and more online.. __,_._,___ From tal1 at cogeco.ca Wed Jul 9 13:17:25 2008 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2008 15:17:25 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Are They Really Oil Wars? Message-ID: <79695EE7707C44EEA7E74B539ADE2273@TonyPC> ...There are some problems with this analysis (i.e. re the massive, attempted takeover of Iraqi oil reserves by Western firms; the fact that those who pay the cost of the war - taxpayers and, through dollar hegemony, foreign treasury bill holders - and those who reap the profits are simply different groups). Still, the argument that is primarily the military-industrial complex in conjunction with 'special interests' (like AIPAC), rather than oil interests, that are driving US militarism are, otherwise well supported. Discussion? Tony Shell Games Are They Really Oil Wars? By ISMAEL HOSSEIN-ZADEH A most widely-cited factor behind the recent U.S. wars of choice is said to be oil. "No Blood for Oil" has been a rallying cry for most of the opponents of the war. While some of these opponents argue that the war is driven by the U.S. desire for cheap oil, others claim that it is prompted by big oil's wish for high oil prices and profits. Interestingly, most antiwar forces use both claims interchangeably without paying attention to the fact that they are diametrically-opposed assertions. Not only do the two arguments contradict each other, but each argument is also wanting and unconvincing on its own grounds; not because the U.S. does not wish for cheap oil, or because Big Oil does not desire higher oil prices, but because war is no longer the way to control or gain access to energy resources. Colonial-type occupation or direct control of energy resources is no longer efficient or economical and has, therefore, been abandoned for more than four decades. The view that recent U.S. military adventures in the Middle East and the broader Central Asia are driven by energy considerations is further reinforced by the dubious theory of Peak Oil, which maintains that, having peaked, world oil resources are now dwindling and that, therefore, war power and military strength are key to access or control of the shrinking energy resources. In this study I will first argue that the Peak Oil theory is unscientific, unrealistic, and perhaps even fraudulent. I will then show that war and military force are no longer the necessary or appropriate means to gain access to sources of energy, and that resorting to military measures can, indeed, lead to costly, not cheap, oil. Next, I will demonstrate that, despite the lucrative spoils of war resulting from high oil prices and profits, Big Oil prefers peace and stability, not war and geopolitical turbulence, in global energy markets. Finally, I will argue a case that behind the drive to war and military adventures in the Middle East lie some powerful special interests (vested in war, militarism, and geopolitical concerns of Israel) that use oil as an issue of "national interest"-as a fa?ade or pretext-in order to justify military adventures to derive high dividends, both economic and geopolitical, from war. Has Oil Really Peaked-and Is It Running Out? Peak oil thesis, as noted above, maintains that world oil reserves, having reached their maximum capacity, are now dwindling-with grave consequences of oil shortage and high energy prices. While this has led many to call for more vigorous conservation, it has led others to argue in favor of unrestrained exploration and extraction of oil reserves, especially those located in the Alaskan Wildlife regions. Significant policy and/or political implications follow from the view that oil is running out. For one thing, this view provides fodder for the cannons of war profiteering militarists who are constantly on the look out to invent new enemies and find new pretexts for continued war and escalation of military spending. For another, it tends to disarm many antiwar forces that accept this thesis and, therefore, "internalize responsibility for U.S. foreign policy every time they fill their gas tank. Thus they own the wars."[1] The Peak Oil thesis serves as a powerful trap and a clever manipulation in that it lets the real forces of war and militarism (the military-industrial complex and the pro-Israel lobby) "off the hook; it is a fabulous redirection. All evils are blamed on a commodity upon which we are all utterly dependent."[2] The fact, however, is that there is no hard evidence that oil has peaked, or that global oil reserves are shrinking, or that the current skyrocketing price of oil is due to a supply shortage. (As shown below, there is actually an oil surplus, no shortage.) Peak oil theory is not altogether new. It was originally floated around in the 1940s, arguing that world oil reserves would be exhausted within the next two decades or so. It then resurfaced in the 1970s and early 1980s in reaction to the oil price hikes of those years-which were, incidentally, precipitated not by oil shortages but by international political convulsions, revolutions and wars. But it died down once the price of oil fell back to pre-crises levels. As recent geopolitical convulsions in the Middle East (especially the U.S. war on Iraq, and the resultant booming speculation in oil markets) have triggered a new round of oil price hikes, Peak Oil theory has once again become fashionable. The theory is being promoted not only by war profiteers and proponents of an unbridled domestic oil exploration and extraction, especially in Alaska, but also by some apparently antiwar liberals such as Michael T. Klare and James H. Kunstler.[3] Peak oil theory is based on a number of assumptions and omissions that make it less than reliable. To begin with, it discounts or disregards the fact that energy-saving technologies have drastically improved (and will continue to further improve) the efficiency of oil consumption. Evidence shows that, for example, "over a period of five years (1994-99), U.S. GDP expanded over 20 percent while oil usage rose by only nine percent. Before the 1973 oil shock, the ratio was about one to one."[4] Second, Peak Oil theory pays scant attention to the drastically enabling new technologies that have made (and will continue to make) possible discovery and extraction of oil reserves that were inaccessible only a short time ago. One of the results of the more efficient means of research and development has been a far higher success rate in finding new oil fields. The success rate has risen in twenty years from less than 70 percent to over 80 percent. Computers have helped to reduce the number of dry holes. Horizontal drilling has boosted extraction. Another important development has been deep-water offshore drilling, which the new technologies now permit. Good examples are the North Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, and more recently, the promising offshore oil fields of West Africa.[5] Third, Peak Oil theory also pays short shrift to what is sometimes called non-conventional oil. These include Canada's giant reserves of extra-heavy bitumen that can be processed to produce conventional oil. Although this was originally considered cost inefficient, experts working in this area now claim that they have brought down the cost from over $20 a barrel to $8 per barrel. Similar developments are taking place in Venezuela. It is thanks to developments like these that since 1970, world oil reserves have more than doubled, despite the extraction of hundreds of millions of barrels.[6] Fourth, Peak Oil thesis pays insufficient attention to energy sources other than oil. These include solar, wind, non-food bio-fuel, and nuclear energies. They also include natural gas. Gas is now about 25 percent of energy demand worldwide. It is estimated that by 2050 it will be the main source of energy in the world. A number of American, European, and Japanese firms have and are investing heavily in developing fuel cells for cars and other vehicles that would significantly reduce gasoline consumption.[7] Fifth, proponents of Peak Oil tend to exaggerate the impact of the increased oil demand coming from China and India on both the amount and the price of oil in global markets. The alleged disparity between supply and demand is said to be due to the rapidly growing demand coming from China and India. But that rapid growth in demand is largely offset by a number of counterbalancing factors. These include slower growth in U.S. demand due to its slower economic growth, efficient energy utilization in industrially advanced countries, and increases in oil production by OPEC, Russia, and other oil producing countries. Finally, and perhaps more importantly, claims of "peaked and dwindling" oil are refuted by the available facts and figures on global oil supply. Statistical evidence shows that there is absolutely no supply-demand imbalance in global oil markets. Contrary to the claims of the proponents of Peak Oil and champions of war and militarism, the current oil price shocks are a direct consequence of the destabilizing wars and geopolitical insecurity in the Middle East, not oil shortages. These include not only the raging wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also the threat of a looming war against Iran. The record of soaring oil prices shows that anytime there is a renewed U.S. military threat against Iran, fuel prices move up several notches. The war also contributes to the escalation of fuel prices in indirect ways-for example, by plunging the U.S. ever deeper into debt and depreciating the dollar, or by creating favorable grounds for speculation. As oil is priced largely in U.S. dollars, oil exporting countries ask for more dollars per barrel of oil as the dollar loses value. Perhaps more importantly, an atmosphere of war and geopolitical instability in global oil markets serves as an auspicious ground for hoarding and speculation in commodity markets, especially oil, which is heavily contributing to the recently soaring oil prices. As much as 60% of today's crude oil price is pure speculation driven by large trader banks and hedge funds. It has nothing to do with the convenient myths of Peak Oil. It has to do with control of oil and its price. . . . Since the advent of oil futures trading and the two major London and New York oil futures contracts, control of oil prices has left OPEC and gone to Wall Street. It is a classic case of the 'tail that wags the dog.'[8] Wall Street financial giants that created the Third World debt crisis in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the tech bubble in the 1990s, and the housing bubble in the 2000s are now hard at work creating the oil bubble. By purchasing large numbers of futures contracts, and thereby pushing up futures prices to even higher levels than current prices, speculators have provided a financial incentive for oil companies to buy even more oil and place it in storage. A refiner will purchase extra oil today, even if it costs $115 per barrel, if the futures price is even higher.[9] This has led to a steady rise in crude oil inventories over the last two years, "resulting in US crude oil inventories that are now higher than at any time in the previous eight years. The large influx of speculative investment into oil futures has led to a situation where we have both high supplies of crude oil and high crude oil prices. . . . In fact, during this period global supplies have exceeded demand, according to the US Department of Energy."[10] The fact that the skyrocketing oil prices of late have been accompanied by a surplus in global oil markets was also brought to the attention of President George W. Bush by Saudi officials when he asked them during a recent trip to the kingdom to increase production in order to stem the rising prices. Saudi officials reminded the President that "there is plenty of oil on the market. Iran has put some 30 million barrels of oil that it can't sell into floating storage. 'If we produced more oil, it wouldn't find buyers,' says the Saudi source. It wouldn't affect the price at all."[11] And why producing more oil "wouldn't affect the price at all"? Well, because what is driving the soaring oil prices is not shortage but speculation: "with so much investment money sloshing around in the commodities markets, the Saudis calculate they have no hope of controlling short-term price fluctuations. They blame the recent price run-ups on speculation and fear of shortages [not real shortages], factors they say are beyond their control."[12] War for Cheap Oil? The widely-shared view that the U.S. desire for access to abundant and cheap oil lurks behind the Bush administration's drive to war in the Middle East rests on the implicit but dubious assumption that access to energy resources requires direct control of oil fields and/or oil producing countries. There are at least three problems with this postulation. First, if control of or influence over oil producing countries in the Middle East is a requirement for access to cheap oil, the United States already enjoys significant influence over some of the major oil producers in the region-Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and a number of other smaller producers. Why, then, would the U.S. want to bring about war and political turmoil in the region that might undermine that long and firmly-established influence? Let us assume for a moment that the neoconservative militarists are sincere in their alleged desire to bring about democratic rule and representational government in the Middle East. Let us further assume that they succeed in realizing this purported objective. Would, then, the thus-emerging democratic governments, representing the wishes of the majority of their citizens, be as accommodating to U.S. economic and geopolitical objectives, including its oil needs, as are its currently friendly rulers in the region? Most probably not. Secondly, and more importantly, access to oil no longer requires control of oil fields or oil producers-as was the case in times past. For more than a century, that is, from the early days of oil extraction in the United States in the 1870s until the mid-1970s, the price of oil was determined administratively, that is, by independent producers operating in different parts of the world without having to compete with each other. Under those circumstances, colonial or imperial wars of conquest and occupation were crucial to the control of oil (and other) resources. Beginning with the 1950s, however, that pattern of local, non-competitive price determination began to gradually change in favor of regional and/or international markets. By the mid 1970s, an internationally competitive oil market emerged that effectively ended the century-old pattern of local, administrative pricing. Today, oil prices (like most other commodity prices) are determined largely by the forces of supply and demand in competitive global energy markets; and any country or company can have as much oil as they wish if they pay the going market (or spot) price.[13] To the extent that competitive oil markets and/or prices are occasionally manipulated, such subversions of competitive market forces are often brought about not so much by OPEC or other oil producing countries as by manipulative speculations of financial giants in New York and London. As was discussed earlier, gigantic Wall Street financial institutions have accomplished this feat through "innovative" financial instruments such as establishment of energy hedge funds and speculative oil futures markets in New York and London.[14] It is true that collective supply decisions of oil producing countries can, and sometimes does, affect the competitively determined market price. But a number of important issues need to be considered here. To begin with, although such supply manipulations obviously affect or influence market-determined prices, they do not determine those prices. In other words, competitive international oil markets determine its price with or without oil producers' supply manipulations. Such supply managements are, however, designed not to create volatility in energy markets, or chronic oil price hikes. Instead, they are designed to stabilize global oil prices because oil exporting countries prefer stability, predictability and long-term planning for their economic development and industrialization projects. Here is how Cyrus Bina and Minh Vo describe this relationship: As a result, we conclude that the global oil market is the prime mover [i.e., prime determinant of oil price] and OPEC indeed follows its trajectory accordingly and consistently. . . . When market price (both spot and futures) is falling, OPEC decreases its output; when market price is rising, OPEC attempts to increase its output; and when market price is steady, OPEC keeps its output unchanged. . . . And, this is a kind of oil market we have experienced after the dust settled following the crisis of de-cartelization and globalization of oil industry in the 1970s.[15] Producers' policy to sometimes curtail or limit the supply of oil, the so-called "limited flow" policy, is designed to raise the actual trading price above the market-determined price in order to keep high-cost U.S. producers in business while leaving low-cost Middle East producers with an above average, or "super," profit. While for low-cost producers this limited flow policy is largely a matter of making more or less profits, for high-cost U.S. producers it is a matter of survival, of being able to stay in or go out of business-an important but rarely mentioned or acknowledged fact. A hypothetical numerical example might be helpful here. Suppose that the market-determined, or free-flow, price of oil is $30 per barrel. Further, suppose this price entails an average rate of profit of 10 percent, or $3 per barrel. The word "average" in this context refers to average conditions of production, that is, producers who produce under average conditions of production in terms of productivity and cost of production. This means that producers who produce under better-than-average conditions, that is, low-cost, high productivity producers, will make a profit higher than $3 per barrel while high-cost, low efficiency producers will end up making less than $3 per barrel. This also means that some of the high-cost producers may end up going out of business altogether. Now, if the limited flow policy raises the actual trading price to $35 per barrel, it will raise the profits of all producers accordingly, thereby also keeping in business some high-cost producers that might otherwise have gone out of business. Furthermore, supply manipulation (in pursuit of price manipulation) is not limited to the oil industry. In today's economic environment of giant corporations and big businesses, many of the major industries try, and often succeed in controlling supply in order to control price. Take, for example, the automobile industry. Theoretically, automobile producers could flood the market with a huge supply of cars. But that would not be good business as it would lower prices and profits. So, they control supply, just as do oil producers, in order to manipulate price. During the past several decades, the price of automobiles, in real terms, has been going up every year, at least to the tune of inflation. During this period, the industry (and the economy in general) has enjoyed a many-fold increase in labor productivity. Increased labor productivity is supposed to translate into lower costs and, therefore, lower prices. Yet, that has not materialized in the case of this industry-as it has in the case of, for example, pocket calculators or computers. Another example of price control through supply manipulation is the case of U.S. grain producers. The so-called "set aside" policy that pays farmers not to cultivate part of their land in order to curtail supply and prop up price is not different-nay, it is worse- than OPEC's policy of supply and/or price manipulation. It is also necessary to keep in mind that OPEC's desire to sometimes limit the supply of oil in order to shore up its price is limited by a number of factors. For one thing, the share, and hence the influence, of Middle Eastern oil producers as a percentage of world oil production has steadily declined over time, from almost 40 percent when OPEC was established to about 30 percent today.[16] For another, OPEC members are not unmindful of the fact that inordinately high oil prices can hurt their own long-term interests as this might prompt oil importers to economize on oil consumption and search for alternative sources of energy, thereby limiting producers' export markets. OPEC members also know that inordinately high oil prices could precipitate economic recessions in oil importing countries that would, once again, lower demand for their oil. In addition, high oil prices tend to raise the cost of oil producers' imports of manufactured products as high energy costs are bound to affect production costs of those manufactured products. War for Expensive Oil? Now let us consider the widely-shared view that attributes the Bush administration's drive to war to the influence of big oil companies in pursuit of higher oil prices and profits. As noted, this is obviously the opposite of the "war for cheap oil" argument, as it claims that Big Oil tends to instigate war and political tension in the Middle East in order to cause an oil price hike and increase its profits. Like the "war for cheap oil" theory, this claim is not supported by facts. Although the claim has an element of a prima facie reasonableness, that apparently facile credibility rests more on precedent and perception than reality. Part of the perception is due to the exaggerated notion that both President Bush and Vice President Cheney were "oil men" before coming to the White House. But the fact is that George W. Bush was never more than an unsuccessful petty oil prospector and Dick Cheney headed a company, the notorious Halliburton, that sold (and still sells) services to oil companies and the Pentagon. The larger part of the perception, however, stems from the fact that oil companies do benefit from oil price hikes that result from war and political turbulence in the Middle East. Such benefits are, however, largely incidental. Surely, American oil companies would welcome the spoils of the war (that result from oil price hikes) in Iraq or anywhere else in the world. From the largely incidental oil price hikes that follow war and political convulsion, some observers automatically conclude that, therefore, Big Oil must have been behind the war.[17] But there is no evidence that, at least in the case of the current invasion of Iraq, oil companies pushed for or supported the war. On the contrary, there is strong evidence that, in fact, oil companies did not welcome the war because they prefer stability and predictability to periodic oil spikes that follow war and political convulsion: "Looking back over the last 20 years, there is plenty of evidence showing the industry's push for stability and cooperation with Middle Eastern countries and leaders, and the U.S. government's drive for hegemony works against the oil industry."[18] As Thierry Desmarest, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of France's giant oil company, TotalFinaElf, put it, "A few months of cash generation is not a big deal. Stable, not volatile, prices and a $25 price (per barrel) would be convenient for everyone."[19] It is true that for a long time, from the beginning of Middle Eastern oil exploration and discovery in the early twentieth century until the mid-1970s, colonial and/or imperial powers controlled oil either directly or through control of oil producing countries-at times, even by military force. But that pattern of colonial or imperialist exploitation of global markets and resources has changed now. Most of the current theories of imperialism and hegemony that continue invoking that old pattern of Big Oil behavior tend to suffer from an ahistorical perspective. Today, as discussed earlier, even physically occupying and controlling another country's oil fields will not necessarily be beneficial to oil interests. Not only will military adventures place the operations of current energy projects at jeopardy, but they will also make the future plans precarious and unpredictable. Big Oil interests, of course, know this; and that's why they did not countenance the war on Iraq: "The big oil companies were not enthusiastic about the Iraqi war," says Fareed Mohamedi of PFC Energy, an energy consultancy firm based in Washington D.C. that advises petroleum firms. "Corporations like Exxon-Mobil and Chevron-Texaco want stability, and this is not what Bush is providing in Iraq and the Gulf region," adds Mohamedi.[20] Big Oil interests also know that not only is war no longer the way to gain access to oil, it is in fact an obstacle to gaining that access. Exclusion of U.S. oil companies from vast oil resources in countries such as Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and a number of central Asian countries due to militaristic U.S. foreign policy is a clear testament to this fact. Many of these countries (including, yes, Iran) would be glad to have major U.S. oil companies invest, explore and extract oil from their rich reserves. Needless to say that U.S. oil companies would be delighted to have access to those oil resources. But U.S. champions of war and militarism have successfully torpedoed such opportunities through their unilateral wars of aggression and their penchant for a Cold War-like international atmosphere. When Vladimir Putin first became president of Russia he was willing to allow American energy companies to continue with the one-sided contracts they had drawn up during Boris Yeltsin's presidency. Putin built a seemingly trusting relationship with George Bush who looked into Putin's soul and liked what he saw. The two leaders grew even closer in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on World Trade Centre and the Pentagon-when Russia provided "help for America's invasion of Afghanistan." Soon after this generous cooperation, however, "Bush repudiated the anti-ballistic missile treaty in the belief that America could develop the technology for winning a nuclear war. This posed a huge strategic threat to Russia."[21] Describing the heavy-handed, imperial U.S. policy toward Russia, Stephen F. Cohen writes: "The real US policy has been very different-a relentless, winner-take-all exploitation of Russia's post-1991 weakness. Accompanied by broken American promises, condescending lectures and demands for unilateral concessions, it has been even more aggressive and uncompromising than was Washington's approach to Soviet Communist Russia."[22] Bush's withdrawal from the ABM treaty not merely posed an existential threat to Russia but was almost a betrayal of the trust that Putin had put in him. This led to Putin's disenchantment with America. "Eventually he seems to have decided that every time America transgressed against Russian interests he would retaliate by stopping another American company from exploiting Russian resources."[23] During the past few decades, major oil companies have consistently opposed U.S. policies and military threats against countries like Iran, Iraq, and Libya. They have, indeed, time and again, lobbied U.S. foreign policy makers for the establishment of peaceful relations and diplomatic rapprochement with those countries. The Iran-Libya Sanction Act of 1996 (ILSA) is a strong testament to the fact that oil companies nowadays view wars, economic sanctions, and international political tensions as harmful to their long-term business interests and, accordingly, strive for peace, not war, in international relations. On March 15, 1995 President Clinton issued Executive Order 12957 which banned all U.S. contributions to the development of Iran's petroleum resources, a crushing blow to the oil industry, especially to the Conoco oil company that had just signed a $1 billion contract to develop fields in Iran. The deal marked a strong indication that Iran was willing to improve its relationship with the United States, only to have President Clinton effectively nullify it. Two months later, sighting "an extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy and economy of the U.S.," President Clinton issued another order, 1259, that expanded the sanctions to become a total trade and investment embargo against Iran. Then a year later came ILSA which extended the sanctions imposed on Iran to Libya as well. It is no secret that the major force behind the Iran-Libya Sanction Act was the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the main Zionist lobby in Washington. The success of AIPAC in passing ILSA through both the Congress and the White House over the opposition of the major U.S. oil companies is testament to the fact that, in the context of U.S. policy in the Middle East, even the influence of the oil industry pales vis-?-vis the influence of the Zionist lobby.[24] ILSA was originally to be imposed on both U.S. and foreign companies. However, in the end it was the U.S. companies that suffered the most due to waivers that were given to European companies after pressure from the European Union. In 1996 the EU pursued its distaste of ILSA by lodging complaints with the World Trade Organization (WTO) against the U.S. and through adopting "blocking legislation" that would prevent EU companies from complying with ILSA. Meanwhile, the contract that Iran had originally signed with Conoco was awarded to TotalFinaElf of France for $760 million; the deal also left the door open for Total to sign an additional contract with Iran for $2 billion in 1997 with their partners Gazprom and Petronas. In May of 1997 major U.S. oil companies such as Conoco, Exxon, Atlantic Richfield, and Occidental Petroleum joined other (non-military) U.S. companies to create an anti-sanction coalition. Earlier that same year Conoco's Chief Executive Archie Dunham publicly took a stance against unilateral U.S. sanctions by stating that "U.S. companies, not rogue regimes, are the ones that suffer when the United States imposes economic sanctions." Texaco officials have also argued that the U.S. can be more effective in bringing about change in other countries by allowing U.S. companies to do business with those countries instead of imposing economic sanctions that tend to be counterproductive. Alas, Washington's perverse, misguided and ineffectual policy of economic sanctions for political purposes-often in compliance with the wishes of some powerful special interests-continues unabated. "Even with the increased pro-trade lobbying efforts of the oil industry and groups like USAEngage, whose membership ranges from farmers and small business owners to Wall Street executives and oilmen, the lack of support from Washington and the Bush administration could not allow them [major oil companies and other non-military transnational companies] to overtake or counteract the already rolling momentum of AIPAC's influence on Middle East policy or the renewal of ISLA."[25] Despite the fact that oil companies nowadays view war and political turmoil in the Middle East as detrimental to their long-term interests and, therefore, do not support policies that are conducive to war and militarism, and despite the fact that war is no longer the way to gain access to oil, the widespread perception that every U.S. military engagement in the region, including the current invasion of Iraq, is prompted by oil considerations continues. The question is why? Behind the Myth of War for Oil The widely-shared but erroneous view that recent U.S. wars of choice are driven by oil concerns is partly due to precedence: the fact that for a long time military force was key to colonial or imperialist control and exploitation of foreign markets and resources, including oil. It is also partly due to perception: the exaggerated notion that both President Bush and Vice President Cheney were "oil men" before coming to the White House. But, as noted earlier, George W. Bush was never more than an ineffective minor oil prospector and Dick Cheney was never really an oil man; he headed the notorious Halliburton company that sold (and still sells) services to oil companies and the Pentagon. But the major reason for the persistence of this pervasive myth seems to stem from certain deliberate efforts that are designed to perpetuate the legend in order to camouflage some real economic and geopolitical special interests that drive U.S. military adventures in the Middle East. There is evidence that both the military-industrial complex and hard-line Zionist proponents of "greater Israel" disingenuously use oil (as an issue of national interest) in order to disguise their own nefarious special interests and objectives: justification of continued expansion of military spending, extension of sales markets for military hardware, and recasting the geopolitical map of the Middle East in favor of Israel. There is also evidence that for every dollar's worth of oil imported from the Persian Gulf region the Pentagon takes five dollars out of the Federal budget to "secure" the flow of that oil! This is a clear indication that the claim that the U.S. military presence in the Middle East is due to oil consideration is a fraud .[26] While anecdotal, an example of how partisans of war and militarism use oil as a pretext to cover up the real forces behind war and militarism can be instructive. In the early stages of the invasion of Iraq, when the anti-occupation resistance in Iraq had not yet taken shape and the invasion seemed to be proceeding smoothly, two of the leading champions of the invasion, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz, often boasting of the apparent or pre-mature success of the invasion at those early stages, gave frequent news conferences and press reports. During one of those press reports (at the end of an address to delegates at an Asian security summit in Singapore in early June 2003), Wolfowitz was asked why North Korea was being treated differently from Iraq, where hardly any weapons of mass destruction had been found. Wolfowitz's response was: "Let's look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil."[27] Many opponents of the war jumped on this statement, so to speak, as corroboration of what they had been saying or suspecting all along: that the war on Iraq was prompted by oil interests. Yet, there is strong evidence-some of which presented in the preceding pages-that for the last several decades oil interests have not favored war and turbulence in the Middle East, including the current invasion of Iraq. Nor is war any longer the way to gain access to oil. Major oil companies, along with many other non-military transnational corporations, have lobbied both the Clinton and Bush administrations in support of changing the aggressive, militaristic U.S. policy toward countries like Iran, Iraq and Libya in favor of establishing normal, non-confrontational trade and diplomatic relations. Such efforts at normalization of trade and diplomatic relations, however, have failed time and again precisely because Wolfowitz and his cohorts, working through AIPAC and other war-mongering think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Project for the New American Century (PNAC), and Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) oppose them. These think tanks, in collaboration with a whole host of similar militaristic lobbying entities like Center for Security Affairs (CSA) and National Institute for Public Policy (NIPP), working largely as institutional fa?ades to serve the defacto alliance of the military-industrial complex and the pro-Israel lobby, have repeatedly thwarted efforts at peace and reconciliation in the Middle East-often over the objections and frustrations of major U.S. oil companies. It is a well established fact that Wolfowitz has been a devoted champion of these jingoistic think tanks and their aggressive unilateral policies in the Middle East. In light of his professional record and political loyalties, his claim that he championed the war on Iraq because of oil considerations can be characterized only as demagogic: it contradicts his political record and defies the policies he has been advocating for the last several decades; it is designed to divert attention from the main forces behind the war, the armaments lobby and the pro-Israel lobby. These powerful interests are careful not to draw attention to the fact that they are the prime instigators of war and militarism in the Middle East. Therefore, they tend to deliberately perpetuate the popular perception that oil is the driving force behind the war in the region. They even do not mind having their aggressive foreign policies labeled as imperialistic as long as imperialism implies some vague or general connotations of hegemony and domination, that is, as long as it thus camouflages the real, special interests behind the war and political turbulence in the Middle East. The oil and other non-military transnational corporations' aversion to war and military adventures in the Middle East stem, of course, from the logical behavior of global or transnational capital in the era of integrated world markets, which tends to be loath to war and international political convulsions. Considering the fact that both importers and exporters of oil prefer peace and stability to war and militarism, why would, then, the flow of oil be in jeopardy if the powerful beneficiaries of war and political tension in the Middle East stopped their aggressive policies in the region? Partisans of war in the Middle East tend to portray U.S. military operations in the region as reactions to terrorism and political turbulence in order to "safeguard the interests of the United States and its allies." Yet, a close scrutiny of action-reaction or cause-effect relationship between U.S. military adventures and socio-political turbulence in the region reveals that perhaps the causality is the other way around. That is, social upheavals and political convulsions in the Middle East are more likely to be the result, not the cause, of U.S. foreign policy in the region, especially its one-sided, prejudicial Israeli-Palestinian policy. The U.S. policy of war and militarism in the region seems to resemble the behavior of a corrupt cop, or a mafia godfather, who would instigate fights and frictions in the neighborhood or community in order to, then, portray his parasitic role as necessary for the safety and security of the community and, in the process, fill out his deep pockets. No matter how crucial oil is to the world economy, the fact remains that it is, after all, a commodity. As such, international trade in oil is as important to its importers as it is to its exporters. There is absolutely no reason that, in a world free of the influence of the beneficiaries of war and militarism and their powerful lobbies (the armaments and the pro-Israel lobbies), the flow of oil could not be guaranteed by international trade conventions and commercial treaties. Ismael Hossein-zadeh, author of the recently published The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism (Palgrave-Macmillan 2007), teaches economics at Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa. From critical.montages at gmail.com Wed Jul 9 13:35:40 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2008 15:35:40 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Are They Really Oil Wars? In-Reply-To: <79695EE7707C44EEA7E74B539ADE2273@TonyPC> References: <79695EE7707C44EEA7E74B539ADE2273@TonyPC> Message-ID: On Wed, Jul 9, 2008 at 3:17 PM, Tony B. wrote: > ...There are some problems with this analysis (i.e. re the massive, > attempted takeover of Iraqi oil reserves by Western firms; the fact that > those who pay the cost of the war - taxpayers and, through dollar hegemony, > foreign treasury bill holders - and those who reap the profits are simply > different groups). Still, the argument that is primarily the > military-industrial complex in conjunction with 'special interests' (like > AIPAC), rather than oil interests, that are driving US militarism are, > otherwise well supported. > > Discussion? I agree with Ismael Hossein-zadeh, (and Cyrus Bina whom he cites), that (1) not only the "peak oil" theory cannot be proven but also it is detrimental to the Left, for it gives a false impression that the Bush White House's Middle East policy at least makes capitalist and imperialist economic sense; (2) the oil industry today, unlike in the past, cannot be "controlled" by waging wars and occupying foreign countries; and (3) that imperialism, especially its wars of choice, has made oil prices higher and made energy supply more insecure. What Hossein-zadeh does not take into account is that underinvestment in the oil industry (as well as many others) in the age of neoiberal capitalism and growing energy demand of China, India, the Middle East, Latin America, etc. are real, so the rising prices cannot be fully attributed to the wars and other geopolitical problems created or aggravated by the empire and the falling dollar and the speculation that it encourages. Yoshie From the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com Wed Jul 9 13:40:59 2008 From: the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com (Leighm) Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2008 12:40:59 -0700 Subject: [A-List] Are They Really Oil Wars? In-Reply-To: <79695EE7707C44EEA7E74B539ADE2273@TonyPC> References: <79695EE7707C44EEA7E74B539ADE2273@TonyPC> Message-ID: <4875144B.7070306@gmail.com> Ok, heres a starter: > Peak oil theory is based on a number of assumptions and omissions that > make it less than reliable. To begin with, it discounts or disregards > the fact that energy-saving technologies have drastically improved > (and will continue to further improve) the efficiency of oil > consumption. Evidence shows that, for example, "over a period of five > years (1994-99), U.S. GDP expanded over 20 percent while oil usage > rose by only nine percent. Before the 1973 oil shock, the ratio was > about one to one."[4] The discrepancy is most likely due to the fact that the US is not an industrial powerhouse anymore. In 1974, I was working for Stanley Tool Company and American industrial manufacturing capacity was just starting to be offshored, including Stanley Tool, who's former CEO was later quoted (Excerpted from "The Disposable American" by Louis Uchitelle.) on Alternet of his regrets for doing such. Any change in the ratio of GDP to oil usage (if indeed it REALLY proves anything at all related to efficiency) needs to take into account WHERE the factories are. Follow the Supertankers... They ain't flocking to Bayonne New Jersey the way they did then, low in the water, just waiting for the prices to increase... It was quite the spectacle, with people from all over the eastern seaboard showing up with binoculars and telescopes to watch the flotilla just sit there. Waiting... Leigh Tony B. wrote: > ...There are some problems with this analysis (i.e. re the massive, > attempted takeover of Iraqi oil reserves by Western firms; the fact > that those who pay the cost of the war - taxpayers and, through dollar > hegemony, foreign treasury bill holders - and those who reap the > profits are simply different groups). Still, the argument that is > primarily the military-industrial complex in conjunction with 'special > interests' (like AIPAC), rather than oil interests, that are driving > US militarism are, otherwise well supported. > > Discussion? > From critical.montages at gmail.com Wed Jul 9 13:48:56 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2008 15:48:56 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Are They Really Oil Wars? In-Reply-To: <4875144B.7070306@gmail.com> References: <79695EE7707C44EEA7E74B539ADE2273@TonyPC> <4875144B.7070306@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Jul 9, 2008 at 3:40 PM, Leighm wrote: > Ok, heres a starter: >> >> Peak oil theory is based on a number of assumptions and omissions that >> make it less than reliable. To begin with, it discounts or disregards the >> fact that energy-saving technologies have drastically improved (and will >> continue to further improve) the efficiency of oil consumption. Evidence >> shows that, for example, "over a period of five years (1994-99), U.S. GDP >> expanded over 20 percent while oil usage rose by only nine percent. Before >> the 1973 oil shock, the ratio was about one to one."[4] > > The discrepancy is most likely due to the fact that the US is not an > industrial powerhouse anymore. That is largely correct. But the "peak oil" theory cannot by proven in the absence of investment. As in anything capitalist, from agriculture to infrastrucutre, you underinvest, and you undermine output and efficiency. The age of neoliberalism has unleashed the capitalist ethos that had been checked by socialism and social democracy: pay as little as possible and make as much profit as possible. Now we are feeling the effects of damages caused by it, in energy and food prices first of all. Yoshie From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Wed Jul 9 15:48:01 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2008 17:48:01 -0400 Subject: [A-List] PAX ROMANA Message-ID: <4874F9D1.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> Reflections by comrade Fidel http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/reflexiones/2008/ing/f050708i.html PAX ROMANA I basically drew these data from statements made by William Brownfield, US ambassador to Colombia, from that country?s press and television, from the international press, and other sources. It?s impressive the show of technology and economic resources at play. While in Colombia the senior military officers went to great pains to explain that Ingrid Betancourt?s rescue had been an entirely Colombian operation, the US authorities were saying that ?it was the result of years of intense military cooperation of the Colombian and United States? armies.? ??The truth is that we have been able to get along as we seldom have in the United States, except with our oldest allies, mostly in NATO,? said Brownfield, referring to his country?s relationships with the Colombian security forces, which have received over 4 billion USD in military assistance since the year 2000.? ??on various occasions it became necessary for the US Administration to make decisions at the top levels concerning this operation. ?The US spy satellites helped in locating the hostages during a month period starting on May 31st until the rescue action on Wednesday.? ?The Colombians installed video surveillance equipment, supplied by the United States. Operated by remote control, these can take close-ups and pan along the rivers which are the only transportation routes through thick forests, said the Colombian and US authorities.? ?US surveillance aircraft intercepted the rebels? radio and satellite phone talks and used imaging equipment that can break through the forest foliage.? ??The defector will receive a considerable sum of the close to one- hundred-million-dollars reward offered by the government?, stated the Commander General of the Colombian Army.? On Wednesday, July 1st, the London BBC reported that Cesar Mauricio Velasquez, press secretary at Casa de Nari?o (Colombian Government House) had informed that delegates from France and Switzerland had met with Alfonso Cano, chief of the FARC. According to the BBC, that would be the first contact with international delegates accepted by the new chief after the death of Manuel Marulanda. The false information of the meeting of two European envoys with Cano had been released in Bogota. The deceased leader of the FARC had been born on May 12, 1932, according to his father?s testimony. Marulanda, a poor peasant with a liberal thinking and a Gaitan follower, had started his armed resistance 60 years back. He was a guerrilla before us; he had reacted to the carnage of peasants carried out by the oligarchy. The Communist Party he later joined, the same as every other in Latin America, was under the influence of the Communist Party of the USSR and not of Cuba. They were in solidarity with our Revolution but they were not subordinated to it. It was the drug-traffickers and not the FARC that unleashed terror in that sister nation as part of their feuds over the United States market. They caused powerful bomb blasts and even blew up trucks loaded with plastic explosives destroying facilities and injuring or killing countless people. The Colombian Communist Party never contemplated the idea of conquering power through the armed struggle. The guerrilla was a resistance front and not the basic instrument to conquer revolutionary power, as it had been the case in Cuba. In 1993, at the 8th FARC Conference, they decided to break ranks with the Communist Party. Its leader, Manuel Marulanda, took over the leadership of that Party?s guerrillas which had always excelled in their narrow sectarianism when admitting combatants as well as in their strong and compartmented commanding methods. Marulanda, a man with a remarkable natural talent and a leader?s gift, did not have the opportunity to study when he was young. It is said that he had only completed the 5th grade of grammar school. He conceived a long and extended struggle; I disagreed with this point of view. But, I never had the chance to talk with him. The FARC became considerable strong with over 10 thousand combatants. Many had been born during the war and had known nothing else. Other leftist organizations rivaled the FARC in the struggle. By then the Colombian territory had become the largest source of cocaine production in the world. Then, extreme violence, kidnappings, taxes and demands from the drug producers became widespread. The paramilitary forces, armed by the oligarchy, drew basically from the great amount of men enlisted in the country?s armed forces who were discharged from duty every year without a secure job. These created in Colombia a very complex situation with only one way out: real peace, albeit remote and difficult as many other goals Humanity have set itself. This is the option that, for three decades, Cuba has advocated for that nation. While our journalists meeting in their 8th Congress debated on the new technologies of information, the principles and ethic of social communicators, I meditated on the abovementioned developments. I have expressed, very clearly, our position in favor of peace in Colombia; but, we are neither in favor of foreign military intervention nor of the policy of force that the United States intends to impose at all costs on that long-suffering and industrious people. I have honestly and strongly criticized the objectively cruel methods of kidnapping and retaining prisoners under the conditions of the jungle. But I am not suggesting that anyone laid down their arms, when everyone who did so in the last 50 years did not survive to see peace. If I dared suggest anything to the FARC guerrillas that would simply be that they declare, by any means possible to the International Red Cross, their willingness to release the hostages and prisoners they are still holding, without any precondition. I do not intend to be heard; it is simply my duty to say what I think. Anything else would only serve to reward disloyalty and treason. I will never support the pax romana that the empire tries to impose on Latin America. Fidel Castro Ruz July 5, 2008 8:12 p.m. This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Wed Jul 9 16:11:02 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2008 18:11:02 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Elections in the US Message-ID: <4874FF36.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> GRANMA July 8, 2008 Elections in the United States Obama's Plan to Win RAMON SANCHEZ-PARODI MONTOTO* Most commentators and analysts coincide that following the process of US primary elections, Barack Obama is the candidate to beat in the November 4 elections. Signs supporting this observation are strong. John McCain will have to carry out an uphill battle if he wants to succeed George W. Bush at the White House beginning January 20, 2009. Recent events and data help demonstrate Obama's strategy for winning and the circumstances in which he should develop it. Money is the essential factor for a candidate who aspires to win the election in the United States. And we're talking about big money. According to calculations, more than one billion dollars has already been spent in the 2008 presidential elections and another billion will probably be spent over the next five months. Here, an expression attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte can be applied: "Money, money and money are the three things I need to win the war." That's the reason why, despite his promises of the opposite, Obama announced as expected on June 19 that he would reject the option of accepting the federal funds for the campaign and would resort to collecting the money through his own means. It's hardly surprising when you take into account that if he accepted the federal financing he could have only spent some 85 millions beginning September (complemented by another 85 million from his own sources), while it's calculated that, upon rejecting federal funds, his campaign could collect between 300 and 500 million dollars to be spent in the same time period. Added to that boost, is the support the campaign will receive from the two largest labor organizations in the United States, the AFL-CIO (56 trade unions with 9 million affiliates) and Change to Win (6 million affiliates). The first just decided to back Obama after remaining neutral during the primary elections, and the latter had already thrown its support to Obama. All in all, the two organizations have some 300 million dollars to spend of their own during the campaign. As an example of what this support could represent, the American Federation of County, State and Municipal Employees (AFCSME) which groups non-federal public employees, joined the liberal organization MoveOn.org and invested 543,000 dollars in one week of advertisements broadcast by CNN and MSNBC, aimed at attacking McCain's political positions, especially in the neighboring states of Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin. In this way, Obama will have funds to have some type of organization and presence in all fifty US states. This is an essential element to project his strategy in the 15 "red" states (that traditionally vote Republican) and "purple" swing states he hopes to win, in all of which he will maintain professional teams and invest funds in ad campaigns in the mass media. He will also have at his disposal enough money to work on the "blue" (traditionally Democratic Party) states and particularly in those he considers necessary to defend from McCain's attempts to snatch them from him. A total of 10,000 volunteers have already been sent to these states to work. In the 14 states won by Bush and that Obama hopes to capture in these elections, there are four that will receive maximum attention: Iowa, New Mexico, Ohio and Nevada (All of them are "purple" swing states that together contribute 37 electoral votes). Half of the other ten are also "purple" (Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Montana y Georgia - 65 electoral votes) and the other five are "red" (Virginia, North Carolina, North Dakota, Indiana and Alaska - 45 electoral votes). Obama's campaign aims at maintaining a "purple" state that was won by John Kerry in 2004: New Hampshire, with four electoral votes. That's why it wasn't by sheer chance that Obama and Clinton made their first joint appearance in the electoral campaign on June 27 in the small town of Unity, New Hampshire. It was a good opportunity for the two of them to speak during their 70 minutes of flight and 60 minutes by road between Washington DC and Unity. (Despite representing few electoral votes, it's a state where McCain has a strong base). Additionally, in Nebraska, a "red" state, Obama's objective is to win the second congressional district (the city of Omaha and its surroundings) where the Republican incumbent will not compete for the seat and a strong Democrat candidate is presented. The reason for this is that, unlike what happens in other states, Nebraska's five electoral votes are won according to the presidential candidate that obtains the majority of votes in a given district. To win district two would mean an electoral vote for Obama, which could be decisive in a tough election. Lastly, Obama's strategy includes the defense of the "blue" states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin (48 electoral votes) which McCain's campaign is working to win in November. If Obama achieved all those objectives, absolutely a "mission impossible" he would mean win the election by a landslide. The way things are at the moment, there are signs that Obama is ahead of McCain and that's expressed in some recent surveys, although there are substantial differences with respect to the magnitude of this lead. In two national surveys taken in June, the results of presidential preference varied from 47% for Obama and 42% for McCain by Reuters/Zogby, to another showing 51% for Obama and 36% for McCain. Obama's main disadvantages in terms of electoral preference lie in being seen as inexperienced in governmental management, or for his "weird" name, or lack of confidence due to his "background." The ethnic aspect is an issue that raises the sensitivity of a substantial part of voters, but the effect it has on the decision of black and white people at the time of voting doesn't reveal, according to surveys, a great difference in the way they previously voted for Democrat presidential candidates. An important element for Obama's hopes is the development of the fusion of his campaign organization with Hillary Clinton's, so he can win the vote of those who supported her in the primaries. The most recent surveys indicate that 53% of them would vote for Obama and more than 20% for McCain. A renowned lawyer from Washington, Robert Barnett -who has negotiated contracts worth millions of dollars for the publication of books on the Clinton's and of Obama- is acting as an intermediary between the two groups to define crucial issues such as how to pay off Hillary's campaign debt; the role William Clinton will play; the way Hillary and her delegates will participate in the National Democrat Convention: if Hillary's name is written even symbolically as an aspirant to the nomination, how would delegates favoring Hillary feel, and other logistic aspects. A campaign baptized as "United for Change" has been launched to stress the need of unity between the two groups. In that direction some 3,000 meetings have been scheduled in homes in the 50 states. *The author is a specialist in International Relations and was the head of the Cuban Interest Section in the United States from September, 1977 to April, 1989. This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From nscchicago at igc.org Wed Jul 9 12:15:30 2008 From: nscchicago at igc.org (NSC WORKERS COOP) Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2008 13:15:30 -0500 Subject: [A-List] POLICE BRUTALITY WRONGFUL ARRESTS DIFFERENT CONTINENTS, SAME STORY Message-ID: <002a01c8e1ef$ce061e80$0a0110ac@NSCCHICAGO> Tom Baker here and we are being called upon the take some phone call action in behalf of movement leaders brutally arrested and wrongly convicted. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 830 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20080709/fb01989e/attachment.txt -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... 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From: jpj at mutualaid.org Subject: [LASolidarity] Make a Call Against Racism and Police Harrassment Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2008 09:19:50 -0700 (PDT) Size: 7467 Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20080709/fb01989e/attachment-0003.eml From nscchicago at igc.org Wed Jul 9 14:39:14 2008 From: nscchicago at igc.org (NSC WORKERS COOP) Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2008 15:39:14 -0500 Subject: [A-List] [Vensteering] Fw: Ingrid Betancourt, Colombia, and Venezuela Message-ID: <00bd01c8e203$e1eb1b80$0a0110ac@NSCCHICAGO> ----- Original Message ----- From: geodale1 Subject: [Vensteering] Fw: Ingrid Betancourt, Colombia, and Venezuela ----- Hello TFA folks, I've been looking for "the rest of the story" about Ingrid Betancourt, the Green Party Colombian presidential candidate who was held hostage until recently. Here's a story by Clif Ross, who has traveled extensively in Venezuela and other parts of Latin America (and the world). The "rescue" looks like a McCain campaign piece. Laura Wells http://www.counterpunch.org/ross07072008.html What Really Happened in Colombia? A Rescue Staged for the Screen By CLIFTON ROSS What drew me to the Sunday edition of Diario Vea wasn't just the headline "Venezuela will never again be a colony of anyone" and a cover photo of women soldiers in full uniform, wearing make-up and carrying bazookas on their shoulders. I confess to a weakness for strong women and this was so very Venezuelan: The women, demonstrating the strength of the nation, nevertheless didn't neglect putting on eyeliner, eyeshadow and lip gloss. And for me the clincher was the woman in the middle of the photo, looking over her bazooka at the camera and smiling widely, as if to say, "Even in war we won't lose our warmth nor our sense of humor." But if you spend any time at all in Venezuela it's hard to avoid that conclusion. I was trying to catch a bus to Tabay, just a half hour outside of Merida, and I didn't want to carry the Sunday tomes the other papers offered with glossy mags and advertisements stuffed inside what is essentially a fluffy journalistic taco. Diario Vea is dependably lightweight on Sundays as it carries no advertising other than the lackluster government ads that seem to be the paper's major source of income. Vea, as it's known, is a left paper run by Guillermo Garc?a Ponce, rumored to be an old Communist who has lined up behind Chavez. Indeed, Vea is the only pro-government paper available in Venezuela, and that was the real reason I wanted to read Diario Vea today. Experience has taught me that US media shows and government lies broadcast as gospel have a life of maximum one week before reality bleeds through the cell doors where it's locked away and tortured by those same media conglomerates and lying government. Keep in mind that five or so corporations control 90% of all we hear, see, read and, ultimately, therefore, think. Those five corporations form our opinions for that crucial first week after a story, which is about when the alternative media, like Diario Vea, have a chance to pick up the real story and get at the truth concealed by the "facts." Such has been the case this week in the wake of the "dramatic rescue" of Ingrid Betancourt, the three U.S. mercenaries and ten or so soldiers and police flown by helicopter into Bogot? while U.S. presidential candidate John McCain coincidentally toured the country. The whole event, even as broadcast here in Venezuela on government television stations, had the look and feel of an event staged for the screen and today's Diario Vea points out that the reason was because it was, indeed, an event staged for the screen and the "facts," which remain unacknowledged by the mainstream press in the U.S. and Colombia, tell a very different story from the media's fairy tale version of the event. The story entitled "There was no such rescue but a media 'show'" that appeared in today's Diario Vea was drawn from the work of Bolivarian Press Agency writer Narciso Isa Conde and the Popular News Agency of Venezuela. According to the article the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) had agreed to turn over Ingrid Betancourt and the other hostages to Swiss and French negotiators who agreed to arrange to pick up the hostages from various locations in two helicopters. The Colombian military got wind of the upcoming release and took control of the helicopters. The collusion of the U.S. in the media spin, while yet to be proven, is quite likely, especially since McCain just "happened" to be in the neighborhood and would be able to take the spotlight in a crassly opportunistic attempt to boost his pathetic presidential campaign. And so the "rescue" ironically turned out to be a hostage taking in reverse in which the FARC's goodwill gesture was blindsided for the glorification the paramilitary, drug-dealing President Uribe and his friend, John McCain, as the armed forces of Colombia seized two civilian helicopters full of prisoners, who had, in fact, been released, and not "rescued." But presidential vanity wasn't the only thing behind this media show. The mainstream media leaked what may have been the major motives. In the July 5 edition of the Houston Chronicle, Bennett Roth writes, in a story entitled "Hostage rescue (sic) will likely reinforce U.S. ties" that the media show, which Roth calls a "commando operation," will "strengthen?security ties with the United States" with Colombia. The article quotes Riordan Roett of Johns Hopkins as saying that the non-event of the "rescue" "validates to a great degree Plan Colombia." In an AP story on the same page, a headline announces that "Chavez [is] left on the sideline" by the "bold rescue," and that the Venezuelan leader "could do little more than phone congratulations to President Uribe," as if Chavez's role as a world leader consisted only in his work to free FARC hostages. The article ends with a statement by Betancourt that with "the help of our neighbors" the FARC could be shown "that there's room in Latin America to win power the democratic way." So much for the lessons about this "bold rescue" from the perspective of the U.S. press and Ms. Betancourt. Colombians who have suffered terror and worse at the hands of the narco-government of Alvaro Uribe with his media shows and many other Latin Americans who have watched the civil war in Colombia for many years know otherwise. In this same issue of today's Diario Vea there is an exclusive interview with Nicol?s Rodr?guez Bautista, "Gabino," the commander of the National Liberation Army, Colombia's other major guerrilla, composed of revolutionary Christians, Marxists and workers from the oil fields and others. He reminds readers of Diario Vea that the last time leftists lay down their arms and took up legal paths of political struggle, the Colombian state and oligarchy murdered six thousand militants, beheading the legal left of Colombia. For Gabino, Chavez can play a much greater role in the conflict as mediator, despite his recent calls for the Colombian guerrilla to what appears to be an unconditional surrender. "His declarations are no obstacle to his being a facilitator for peace in Colombia. His essential role as ruler and his status as leader on the continent hasn't changed." So far the U.S. press, unfortunately including much of the alternative media, have largely gone along with the "official" version of events in Colombia, a story in which a "terrorist" guerrilla insurgency has plagued the country with irrational kidnappings, drug dealing and massive violence which can only be defeated by the combined forces of the U.S. and its faithful sidekick, the Colombian government. Nevertheless, Diario Vea presents a very different picture of the country. As the interview with Gabino highlights, it is the paramilitaries, allied with the government and oligarchy of Colombia, that have been most involved in the drug trade and the violence, including kidnappings. Since Uribe has been in power, over four hundred union activists have been killed by those same forces. In defiance of international law, the Colombian military has bombed Ecuador to kill members of the FARC and the government still offers no guarantees of protection to a legal left. Hopefully in the future media in the U.S. will follow suit with Diario Vea and Venezuelan news agencies and do a more critical analysis of the joint fabrications of the U.S. and Colombian governments. Clifton Ross, translator and co-editor with Ben Clarke of "Voice of Fire: Communiques and Interviews from the Zapatista National Liberation Army," is the writer and director of "Venezuela: Revolution from the Inside Out," a feature-length documentary released May 20 of this year and available from PM Press (www.pmpress.org). He can be reached at clifross1 at yahoo.com - www.laurawells.org -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ You are subscribed to the Vensteering mailing list http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/vensteering To Unsubscribe from this or any mutualaid.org hosted mailing list, visit: http://lists.mutualaid.org/unsub.php -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 10925 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20080709/6e667687/attachment.txt -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 20288 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20080709/6e667687/attachment.jpeg From the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com Wed Jul 9 17:51:20 2008 From: the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com (Leighm) Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2008 16:51:20 -0700 Subject: [A-List] Elections in the US In-Reply-To: <4874FF36.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> References: <4874FF36.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> Message-ID: <48754EF8.6040505@gmail.com> Charles Brown wrote: > Obama's campaign aims at maintaining a "purple" state... For 'Purple Thumb' voters electing 'Purple Thumb' vetted candidates who all support sanctions on Iraq... The continuing of the embargo and further incursions into Cuban national sovereignty, the indirectly and directly (how many million have been spent to train a PLO proxy army in Jordan?) funded slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza... I could go on. I vote with my feet thanks. Leigh > GRANMA > July 8, 2008 > > Elections in the United States > > Obama's Plan to Win > > RAMON SANCHEZ-PARODI MONTOTO* > > Most commentators and analysts coincide that following the process of > US primary elections, Barack Obama is the candidate to beat in the > November 4 elections. Signs supporting this observation are strong. > John McCain will have to carry out an uphill battle if he wants to > succeed George W. Bush at the White House beginning January 20, 2009. > > Recent events and data help demonstrate Obama's strategy for winning > and the circumstances in which he should develop it. > > Money is the essential factor for a candidate who aspires to win the > election in the United States. And we're talking about big money. > According to calculations, more than one billion dollars has already > been spent in the 2008 presidential elections and another billion > will probably be spent over the next five months. Here, an expression > attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte can be applied: "Money, money and > money are the three things I need to win the war." > > That's the reason why, despite his promises of the opposite, Obama > announced as expected on June 19 that he would reject the option of > accepting the federal funds for the campaign and would resort to > collecting the money through his own means. It's hardly surprising > when you take into account that if he accepted the federal financing > he could have only spent some 85 millions beginning September > (complemented by another 85 million from his own sources), while it's > calculated that, upon rejecting federal funds, his campaign could > collect between 300 and 500 million dollars to be spent in the same > time period. > > Added to that boost, is the support the campaign will receive from > the two largest labor organizations in the United States, the AFL-CIO > (56 trade unions with 9 million affiliates) and Change to Win (6 > million affiliates). The first just decided to back Obama after > remaining neutral during the primary elections, and the latter > had already thrown its support to Obama. All in all, the two > organizations have some 300 million dollars to spend of their own > during the campaign. As an example of what this support could > represent, the American Federation of County, State and Municipal > Employees (AFCSME) which groups non-federal public employees, joined > the liberal organization MoveOn.org and invested 543,000 dollars in > one week of advertisements broadcast by CNN and MSNBC, aimed at > attacking McCain's political positions, especially in the neighboring > states of Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin. > > In this way, Obama will have funds to have some type of organization > and presence in all fifty US states. This is an essential element to > project his strategy in the 15 "red" states (that traditionally vote > Republican) and "purple" swing states he hopes to win, in all of > which he will maintain professional teams and invest funds in ad > campaigns in the mass media. He will also have at his disposal enough > money to work on the "blue" (traditionally Democratic Party) states > and particularly in those he considers necessary to defend from > McCain's attempts to snatch them from him. A total of 10,000 > volunteers have already been sent to these states to work. > > In the 14 states won by Bush and that Obama hopes to capture in these > elections, there are four that will receive maximum attention: Iowa, > New Mexico, Ohio and Nevada (All of them are "purple" swing states > that together contribute 37 electoral votes). Half of the other ten > are also "purple" (Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Montana y Georgia - > 65 electoral votes) and the other five are "red" (Virginia, North > Carolina, North Dakota, Indiana and Alaska - 45 electoral votes). > > Obama's campaign aims at maintaining a "purple" state that was won by > John Kerry in 2004: New Hampshire, with four electoral votes. That's > why it wasn't by sheer chance that Obama and Clinton made their first > joint appearance in the electoral campaign on June 27 in the small > town of Unity, New Hampshire. It was a good opportunity for the two > of them to speak during their 70 minutes of flight and 60 minutes by > road between Washington DC and Unity. (Despite representing few > electoral votes, it's a state where McCain has a strong base). > > Additionally, in Nebraska, a "red" state, Obama's objective is to > win the second congressional district (the city of Omaha and its > surroundings) where the Republican incumbent will not compete for the > seat and a strong Democrat candidate is presented. The reason for > this is that, unlike what happens in other states, Nebraska's five > electoral votes are won according to the presidential candidate that > obtains the majority of votes in a given district. To win district > two would mean an electoral vote for Obama, which could be decisive > in a tough election. > > Lastly, Obama's strategy includes the defense of the "blue" states of > Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin (48 electoral votes) which > McCain's campaign is working to win in November. > > If Obama achieved all those objectives, absolutely a "mission > impossible" he would mean win the election by a landslide. The way > things are at the moment, there are signs that Obama is ahead of > McCain and that's expressed in some recent surveys, although there > are substantial differences with respect to the magnitude of this > lead. In two national surveys taken in June, the results of > presidential preference varied from 47% for Obama and 42% for McCain > by Reuters/Zogby, to another showing 51% for Obama and 36% for > McCain. > > Obama's main disadvantages in terms of electoral preference lie in > being seen as inexperienced in governmental management, or for his > "weird" name, or lack of confidence due to his "background." > The ethnic aspect is an issue that raises the sensitivity of a > substantial part of voters, but the effect it has on the decision of > black and white people at the time of voting doesn't reveal, > according to surveys, a great difference in the way they previously > voted for Democrat presidential candidates. > > An important element for Obama's hopes is the development of the > fusion of his campaign organization with Hillary Clinton's, so he can > win the vote of those who supported her in the primaries. The most > recent surveys indicate that 53% of them would vote for Obama and > more than 20% for McCain. > > A renowned lawyer from Washington, Robert Barnett -who has negotiated > contracts worth millions of dollars for the publication of books on > the Clinton's and of Obama- is acting as an intermediary between the > two groups to define crucial issues such as how to pay off Hillary's > campaign debt; the role William Clinton will play; the way Hillary > and her delegates will participate in the National Democrat > Convention: if Hillary's name is written even symbolically as an > aspirant to the nomination, how would delegates favoring Hillary > feel, and other logistic aspects. > > A campaign baptized as "United for Change" has been launched to > stress the need of unity between the two groups. In that direction > some 3,000 meetings have been scheduled in homes in the 50 states. > > *The author is a specialist in International Relations and was the > head of the Cuban Interest Section in the United States from > September, 1977 to April, 1989. > > > > This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com > > > From the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com Wed Jul 9 18:07:22 2008 From: the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com (Leighm) Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2008 17:07:22 -0700 Subject: [A-List] Americans riding the Anybody But Bush (McCain) wave Message-ID: <487552BA.70009@gmail.com> "Candidates are like Corn Flakes"[tm] ... and Ralph Nader is right about Obama. http://youtube.com/watch?v=oUalYTU9EWE H/t: http://www.notmytribe.com/2008/mumia-abu-jamal-about-americans-riding-the-anybody-but-bush-mccain-wave-83668.html From shimogamo at attglobal.net Wed Jul 9 18:22:40 2008 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Bill Totten) Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 09:22:40 +0900 Subject: [A-List] The Peak Oil Crisis: Assessing $200 Oil Message-ID: <48755650.60103@attglobal.net> by Tom Whipple Falls Church News-Press (July 03 2008) Three months ago anyone talking about $200 oil was considered a fear monger, or worse, but things happen fast these days. In the intervening period, oil prices have risen by nearly $40 a barrel and show no signs of stopping. All of a sudden it has become fashionable to start talking about much higher prices and to start thinking about the implications of multi-hundred dollar oil. Among the many debates going on over oil is one holding that crude will never get much beyond $200 a barrel because at such an extreme price, demand for oil products will drop so much that prices will fall back to more affordable levels. Countering this argument are those who point out that nearly half the world's population can buy oil products subsidized by their governments or national oil companies, will never be subjected to the high world prices and will go merrily along increasing their consumption for a while longer. While demand for oil products in the US, Europe and other OECD countries is starting to slip, this drop in consumption is more than being made up in the subsidized societies of Russia, the Middle East, India and China. If oil prices move from $140 to $200 the impact is going to be felt more harshly than during the climb from $20 to $140 that has taken place in the last few years. To the surprise of many, oil consumption in the US did not begin to drop noticeably until the price moved beyond $100 a barrel and even then it is only in the last few months as gasoline approached $4 a gallon that a significant drop in consumption was noted. As oil approaches $200 a barrel, the impact will be distributed unevenly, depending on one's circumstances, job, lifestyle, geographical location and a host of other factors. It may be easy to say that consumers will simply cut back on discretionary spending, but in the US's "service economy", a large share of the jobs currently depend on discretionary spending. As a larger share of disposable income goes for the essentials of life - food, shelter, clothing, medical services and of course transportation to places of employment - discretionary spending on vacations, recreation, entertainment, eating out and "stuff" is bound to fall sharply. It is easy to conclude that the mix of essential/discretionary spending will shift, but to quantify just how bad things will get is far more difficult. The situation of course is muddled by the current financial crisis that shows every sign of becoming much worse with each passing day. Last week the Los Angeles Times ran a story entitled "Envisioning a World of $200-a-Barrel Oil" {1} which was sort of a tour d'horizone of all the bad things that are going to happen when oil reaches $200 a barrel. The story was replete with quotes such as "You'd have massive changes going on throughout the economy", and "Some activities are just plain going to be shut down". Other quotes were apocalyptic "The American people would be kicked in the teeth so darned hard by $200-a-barrel oil that they won't have the ability to buy much of anything". The authors recognize that nearly every aspect of our current lifestyles will be affected from simply having a job to getting to work. Naturally, costs of nearly everything made from oil will increase and even shipping stuff from China will increase its costs by fifteen percent. Major declines in the stock market will create havoc with pensions and personal wealth. There will, however, be a few upsides to $200 oil such as less traffic and more opportunity for local manufacturing and agriculture. It is well enough to point out that a myriad of problems will come with $200 oil, but so far few have attempted to quantify just what might happen in the next few years. One recent effort to assess $200 oil was undertaken by Canada's CIBC bank. Starting with the well publicized decline in auto sales, the bank concludes that US light vehicle (cars, trucks, SUV, and vans) sales will be down to eleven million by 2012 from seventeen million a few years ago. The share of SUVs and light trucks is expected to be less that half that of their banner years. Increased scrapping of light vehicles combined with lower sales leads the bank to conclude that there will be roughly ten million fewer registered vehicles on US roads by 2012. While this may sound like an impressive number, Americans are currently driving around 230 million light vehicles so ten million less is not too significant. The more important question is how much the remaining vehicles are going to be used. Here the bank foresees a fifteen percent drop in the average miles driven by 2012. Presumably an increasing share of these miles will be driven in newer, more efficient vehicles so that that the drop in US gasoline consumption would be greater than fifteen percent. The CIBC study, which deals primarily with transportation, certainly anticipates a relatively benign world in which we scrap our old cars, don't buy SUVs and those households earning less than $25,000 a year and have access to public transportation, take the bus. The people interviewed by the Los Angeles Times seem to have a much darker view of the immediate future. There are simply too many unknowns out there to form a conclusion as to just how bad it may get. The Bank's $200 oil in 2010 could easily prove to be optimistic for some are talking about $200 before the year is out even without a major supply disruption. Then we have the hurricane season. And many are convinced that the Bush administration will not leave office with an Iranian nuclear program still in place. While some sort of quantitative evaluation of our future would be nice, $200 oil easily could be here before anyone can crunch the numbers. Link {1} "Envisioning a World of $200-a-Barrel Oil" by Martin Zimmerman, Los Angeles Times (June 28 2008) http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-oil28-2008jun28,0,5485259.story http://www.fcnp.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3249:the-peak-oil-crisis-assesing-200-oil&catid=17:national-commentary&Itemid=79 http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From shimogamo at attglobal.net Wed Jul 9 18:22:40 2008 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Bill Totten) Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 09:22:40 +0900 Subject: [A-List] The Peak Oil Crisis: Assessing $200 Oil Message-ID: <48755650.60103@attglobal.net> by Tom Whipple Falls Church News-Press (July 03 2008) Three months ago anyone talking about $200 oil was considered a fear monger, or worse, but things happen fast these days. In the intervening period, oil prices have risen by nearly $40 a barrel and show no signs of stopping. All of a sudden it has become fashionable to start talking about much higher prices and to start thinking about the implications of multi-hundred dollar oil. Among the many debates going on over oil is one holding that crude will never get much beyond $200 a barrel because at such an extreme price, demand for oil products will drop so much that prices will fall back to more affordable levels. Countering this argument are those who point out that nearly half the world's population can buy oil products subsidized by their governments or national oil companies, will never be subjected to the high world prices and will go merrily along increasing their consumption for a while longer. While demand for oil products in the US, Europe and other OECD countries is starting to slip, this drop in consumption is more than being made up in the subsidized societies of Russia, the Middle East, India and China. If oil prices move from $140 to $200 the impact is going to be felt more harshly than during the climb from $20 to $140 that has taken place in the last few years. To the surprise of many, oil consumption in the US did not begin to drop noticeably until the price moved beyond $100 a barrel and even then it is only in the last few months as gasoline approached $4 a gallon that a significant drop in consumption was noted. As oil approaches $200 a barrel, the impact will be distributed unevenly, depending on one's circumstances, job, lifestyle, geographical location and a host of other factors. It may be easy to say that consumers will simply cut back on discretionary spending, but in the US's "service economy", a large share of the jobs currently depend on discretionary spending. As a larger share of disposable income goes for the essentials of life - food, shelter, clothing, medical services and of course transportation to places of employment - discretionary spending on vacations, recreation, entertainment, eating out and "stuff" is bound to fall sharply. It is easy to conclude that the mix of essential/discretionary spending will shift, but to quantify just how bad things will get is far more difficult. The situation of course is muddled by the current financial crisis that shows every sign of becoming much worse with each passing day. Last week the Los Angeles Times ran a story entitled "Envisioning a World of $200-a-Barrel Oil" {1} which was sort of a tour d'horizone of all the bad things that are going to happen when oil reaches $200 a barrel. The story was replete with quotes such as "You'd have massive changes going on throughout the economy", and "Some activities are just plain going to be shut down". Other quotes were apocalyptic "The American people would be kicked in the teeth so darned hard by $200-a-barrel oil that they won't have the ability to buy much of anything". The authors recognize that nearly every aspect of our current lifestyles will be affected from simply having a job to getting to work. Naturally, costs of nearly everything made from oil will increase and even shipping stuff from China will increase its costs by fifteen percent. Major declines in the stock market will create havoc with pensions and personal wealth. There will, however, be a few upsides to $200 oil such as less traffic and more opportunity for local manufacturing and agriculture. It is well enough to point out that a myriad of problems will come with $200 oil, but so far few have attempted to quantify just what might happen in the next few years. One recent effort to assess $200 oil was undertaken by Canada's CIBC bank. Starting with the well publicized decline in auto sales, the bank concludes that US light vehicle (cars, trucks, SUV, and vans) sales will be down to eleven million by 2012 from seventeen million a few years ago. The share of SUVs and light trucks is expected to be less that half that of their banner years. Increased scrapping of light vehicles combined with lower sales leads the bank to conclude that there will be roughly ten million fewer registered vehicles on US roads by 2012. While this may sound like an impressive number, Americans are currently driving around 230 million light vehicles so ten million less is not too significant. The more important question is how much the remaining vehicles are going to be used. Here the bank foresees a fifteen percent drop in the average miles driven by 2012. Presumably an increasing share of these miles will be driven in newer, more efficient vehicles so that that the drop in US gasoline consumption would be greater than fifteen percent. The CIBC study, which deals primarily with transportation, certainly anticipates a relatively benign world in which we scrap our old cars, don't buy SUVs and those households earning less than $25,000 a year and have access to public transportation, take the bus. The people interviewed by the Los Angeles Times seem to have a much darker view of the immediate future. There are simply too many unknowns out there to form a conclusion as to just how bad it may get. The Bank's $200 oil in 2010 could easily prove to be optimistic for some are talking about $200 before the year is out even without a major supply disruption. Then we have the hurricane season. And many are convinced that the Bush administration will not leave office with an Iranian nuclear program still in place. While some sort of quantitative evaluation of our future would be nice, $200 oil easily could be here before anyone can crunch the numbers. Link {1} "Envisioning a World of $200-a-Barrel Oil" by Martin Zimmerman, Los Angeles Times (June 28 2008) http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-oil28-2008jun28,0,5485259.story http://www.fcnp.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3249:the-peak-oil-crisis-assesing-200-oil&catid=17:national-commentary&Itemid=79 http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From shimogamo at attglobal.net Thu Jul 10 03:26:09 2008 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Bill Totten) Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 18:26:09 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Envisioning a World of $200-a-Barrel Oil Message-ID: <4875D5B1.703@attglobal.net> by Martin Zimmerman Los Angeles Times (June 28 2008) The more expensive oil gets, the more Katherine Carver's life shrinks. She's given up RV trips. She stays home most weekends. She's scrapped her twice-a-month volunteer stint at a Malibu wildlife refuge - the trek from her home in Palmdale just got too expensive. How much higher would fuel prices have to go before she quit her job? Already, the 170-mile round-trip commute to her job with Los Angeles County Child Support Services in Commerce is costing her close to $1,000 a month - a fifth of her salary. It's got the 55-year-old thinking about retirement. "It's definitely pushing me to that point", Carver said. The point could be closer than anyone thinks. Three months ago, when oil was around $108 a barrel, a few Wall Street analysts began predicting that it could rise to $200. Many observers scoffed at the forecasts as sensational, or motivated by a desire among energy companies and investors to drive prices higher. But with oil closing above $140 a barrel Friday, more experts are taking those predictions seriously - and shuddering at the inflation-fueled chaos that $200-a-barrel crude could bring. They foresee fundamental shifts in the way we work, where we live and how we spend our free time. "You'd have massive changes going on throughout the economy", said Robert Wescott, president of Keybridge Research, a Washington economic analysis firm. "Some activities are just plain going to be shut down". Besides the obvious effect $7-a-gallon gasoline would have on commuters, automakers, airlines, truckers and shipping firms, $200 oil would drive up the price of a broad spectrum of products: Insecticides and hand lotions, cosmetics and food preservatives, shaving cream and rubber cement, plastic bottles and crayons - all have ingredients derived from oil. The pain would probably be particularly intense in Southern California, which is known for its long commutes and high cost of living. "Throughout our history, we have grown on the assumption that energy costs would be low", said Michael Woo, a former Los Angeles city councilman and a current member of the city Planning Commission. "Now that those assumptions are shifting, it changes assumptions about housing, cars and how cities grow". Push prices up fast enough, he said, and "it would be the urban-planning equivalent of an earthquake". Consumers With every penny hike in the price of gas costing American consumers about $1 billion a year, sharply higher pump prices would lead to "significant bankruptcies and store closings", said Scott Hoyt, director of consumer economics at Moody's Economy.com. Consumer spending has held up surprisingly well in the face of skyrocketing pump prices - bolstered in part, perhaps, by federal tax rebates. But the same day the government reported a 0.8% rise in May consumer spending, a research firm said consumer confidence had plunged to its lowest level since 1980 - hinting at the catastrophic effect another big gas price surge could have on retailers and customers. "The purchasing power of the American people would be kicked in the teeth so darned hard by $200-a-barrel oil that they won't have the ability to buy much of anything", said S David Freeman, president of the Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners and author of the 2007 book Winning Our Energy Independence. BIGresearch of Worthington, Ohio, said more than half of Californians in a recent survey said they were driving less because of high gas prices. Almost 42% said they had reduced vacation travel and forty percent said they were dining out less. If any retailers would benefit, it would be those on the Internet. In a recent survey by Harris Interactive, one-third of adults said high gas prices had made them more likely to shop online to avoid driving. Restaurant operators such as Brinker International, which owns the Chili's and Romano's Macaroni Grill chains, are suffering and are likely to struggle even more as consumers look for ways to reduce spending. Fast-food chains wouldn't be immune, experts say, although they might fare better as families downscale their dining choices. Vehicle sales, too, would probably continue to tank. Sales of new cars, sport utility vehicles and light trucks fell more than eighteen percent in California in the first quarter compared with a year earlier. Although some consumers have been shopping for smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles, many dealers are demanding premiums for gas-sipping hybrids, wiping out much of the financial advantage of buying one. Nationwide, $200 oil and $7 gasoline would force Americans to take ten million vehicles off the roads over the next four years, Jeff Rubin, chief economist at CIBC World Markets, wrote in a recent report. As for the state's beleaguered housing market, prices are falling faster in areas requiring long commutes - such as Lancaster and Palmdale - than in neighborhoods closer to job centers. Sky-high gas prices "would basically reorient society to where proximity would be more valuable", said Tom Gilligan, finance professor at USC. Americans may also feel the effects of a rise in energy-related crime. Ads for locking gas caps are becoming more prevalent. Restaurant owners are complaining that thieves are helping themselves to used barrels of cooking oil, which can be home-brewed into biodiesel fuel. Transportation Workers stuck with long commutes and gas-guzzling cars would look increasingly to public transit, experts say. Already Californians' mobility is being curbed. Traffic on the state's freeways fell almost four percent in April compared with a year earlier, and ridership on many subway and bus lines operated by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority has risen in recent months. But a huge influx of riders would strain aspects of the system, MTA says, noting that many buses are overcrowded at rush hour now. Quickly adding capacity to meet demand from new riders wouldn't be easy, because new buses cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and take up to two years to deliver. Transit advocate Kymberleigh Richards said new riders on popular routes such as Wilshire Boulevard, Vermont Avenue or Sherman Way in the San Fernando Valley "are going to have a bit of a culture shock. It's a different world to be using public transit when you're used to being in your own vehicle by yourself." Just how many drivers would become public-transit riders if oil surges to $200 a barrel is hard to predict, but there's a big pool of potential customers. About 87% of Southern Californians commute by car, according to 2005 data from transportation expert Alan Pisarski. That compares with 63% in New York and its environs. Travelers can also expect much fuller airplanes and much more expensive flights - when they're available at all. Delta Air Lines Inc, for example, recently said it was cutting about thirteen percent of its flights from Los Angeles International Airport to save fuel. It also could mean shifting flights from outlying airports such as Ontario to LAX to cut overhead costs, said Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. Carriers probably would also trim flights in highly competitive air corridors such as Los Angeles to the San Francisco Bay Area. Even the cost of getting away from it all on Santa Catalina Island would go up. Greg Bombard, president of the Catalina Express ferry service, has trimmed schedules, raised fares and reduced hiring to make up for fuel costs that have risen sevenfold since 2002. Another big increase and he says he'll have to ask state regulators, who control his rates, to OK another fare hike. Trade The fee increases on the ferry would be nothing compared with the added cost of transoceanic shipping if oil goes to $200. Some experts say high energy costs are altering global trade and slowing the pace of globalization. It takes about 7,000 tons of bunker-fuel to fill the tanks of a 5,000-container cargo ship for a trip from Shanghai to Los Angeles. Over the last year and half, the cost of that fuel has jumped 87% to $552 a ton, according to the World Shipping Council, boosting the cost of a fill-up to more than $3.8 million. "To put things in perspective, today's extra shipping cost from East Asia is the equivalent of imposing a nine percent tariff on East Asian goods entering North America", said Rubin of CIBC World Markets. "At $200 per barrel, the tariff equivalent rate will rise to fifteen percent". If oil continues to rise from current levels, officials at the Port of Los Angeles believe West Coast ports would gain business because they are ten to twelve days' sailing time from Asia, versus the eighteen- to twenty- day route from Asia to the East Coast through the Panama Canal. But local ports could lose business if shipping costs get so out of hand that companies begin shifting production back to North America from Asia - something that's happening in the steel industry, Rubin said. Local distribution patterns could change too. Stephen Gaddis, chief executive of Pacific Cheese Company, a Hayward, California, cheese processing and packaging firm, thinks high fuel prices will push restaurants, retailers and food manufacturers to look for suppliers closer to their operations. "Local sourcing is ideal. You won't pay as much for freight, and when you use less fuel it's better for the environment", Gaddis said. Soaring diesel prices will make companies rethink whether they should have large, centralized plants or build smaller ones around the country. That's what Pacific Cheese is doing. It's building a packaging plant in Texas to be closer to one of its larger suppliers and expects to serve its Southwestern clients from there. In the near future, however, consumers can expect to pay for the higher cost of producing food and moving it around the country, say food executives, farmers and economists. Even having a deep-dish pizza with extra cheese brought to your door costs more now that chains such as Pizza Hut are charging for delivery. The workplace Dramatically higher transportation costs would usher in an era of virtual mobility, or zero mobility, for many workers. "We're seeing companies go to four-day workweeks, place increased emphasis on working at home, show bigger interest in setting up satellite offices - anything that gets commute times down and gets people off the road", said analyst Rob Enderle of Enderle Group in San Jose. Videoconferencing, touted as "the next big thing" for years, would finally have its day, thanks to improved technology and a desperation to cut corporate travel budgets. Telecommuting, or working from home, is easier than ever because of the spread of high-speed Internet access, said Jonathan Spira, chief analyst at Basex Inc, a business research firm in New York. In particular, workers in "knowledge" jobs that can be performed with computers and phones would benefit. But Gilligan of USC noted that lower-income workers tend to be in jobs that don't favor telecommuting, such as retail and food service. "These are the same people who are already being creamed by the mortgage crisis", he said. "The impacts of energy price increases are highly disparate". Although white-collar workers may be able to telecommute, they could also take a serious financial hit because soaring energy prices tend to wreak havoc on the stock market. The explosion of 401(k) plans and similar retirement accounts in the last few decades - and the decline of traditional pensions with guaranteed payouts - have tied workers' financial futures more closely to stocks than they were during the 1970s oil shocks. A prolonged Wall Street downturn could mean a no-frills retirement, or none at all. Upsides It wouldn't all be bad, of course. Some industries could boom, providing jobs and tax dollars. California has seen a jump in drilling activity as oil companies try to extract more crude from the state's fields. Regulators expect a record 4,000 wells to be drilled in the state this year. "Every rig and every crew that's available is working right now", said Hal Bopp, the state's oil and gas supervisor. And as rising oil prices make alternative-fuel vehicles more cost-effective, California companies such as Tesla Motors Inc, which recently began production of a $100,000 all-electric sports car, could become important leaders in an emerging industry. Tourist attractions may also see an upswing in local business as families look for less-expensive vacation alternatives close to home. A recent survey by travel insurer Access America found that 26% of Americans would cut back on recreational travel as a first response to higher gas prices. In Southern California, with its many natural wonders, theme parks and other attractions, the prospect of a "staycation" may be less disappointing than for a resident of, say, Nebraska. And movies, a staple of the local economy, may prosper as Americans seek escapism and a (relatively) cheap night out. And spending less time stuck in traffic on the 405? Priceless. "More carpooling, fewer people on the freeways, more telecommuting - in many ways, what would happen is what people have been trying to make happen for a long time", USC's Gilligan said. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-oil28-2008jun28,0,5485259.story http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Thu Jul 10 09:27:44 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 11:27:44 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Green Party Taps Hip-Hop Activist Rosa Clemente For VP Message-ID: <4875F22F.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> Wednesday, July 09, 2008 Green Party Taps Hip-Hop Activist Rosa Clemente For VP Signaling it is serious about courting the hip-hop vote, Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney has tapped respected hip-hop activist Rosa Clemente as her Vice Presidential pick. If the Green Party accepts McKinney's nomination this weekend at its convention, Clemente will make history as the first hip-hop generation candidate on a presidential ticket, and together with McKinney make up the first all-female of color ticket in U.S. history. McKinney is African American. Clemente identifies herself as Puerto Rican of African descent. Clemente joins Brooklyn Congressional candidate Brooklyn Congressional candidate Kevin Powell as another prominent hip-hop writer/activist competing in the 2008 elections. Maryland hip-hop activist and scholar Jared Ball also competed for the Green Party presidential nomination, ending his run this past January. "This campaign is the opportunity the Hip-Hop generation has been working for," Clemente wrote in an email to supporters this morning. "This is our time to address the issues affecting our communities - rising unemployment, the high cost of food and housing, a lack of quality public education and access to higher education, the prison-industrial complex, and unaccountable corporate media. These issues are not being addressed by either the Republican or Democratic nominee." Clemente has been one of the most prominent national hip-hop activists for nearly a decade. She was one of the co-founders of the National Hip-Hop Political Convention and of REACHip-Hop , a New York City-based coalition that launched a boycott of Hot 97 for greater accountability and balance on the airwaves. Affiliated with the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement , Clemente has been a prominent national organizer around securing aid to Gulf Coast victims of Katrina, and against the verdicts in the Sean Bell case. Clemente's potential VP run was welcomed by many in the hip-hop community. "I've never voted in the Presidential election; I've never felt strongly enough about a candidate to, said rapper M1 of Dead Prez. "I feel that now is the greatest opportunity for the Hip-Hop community to put our collective strength and power to the test and vote for someone who represents who we are and what we stand for." "It's a good sign of political maturity for hip-hop," Troy Nkrumah, 2008 Chair of the National Hip-Hop Political Convention , said of Clemente's run. "There are issues we've been screaming about to the candidates and they've ignored them--whether police accountability, the prison system, or the war in Iraq. They touch the issues on the surface, they talk about change, but their policies are in line with Bush. A lot of us were turned off." "But Rosa is one of the people that knows we need systemic change, especially the youth community," he added. "She has a history of speaking her mind, not holding her tongue, and telling the truth." This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Thu Jul 10 10:44:51 2008 From: charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us (Charles Brown) Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 12:44:51 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Agro-Profiteering and Predictable Food Scarcity Message-ID: <48760442.84C9.00BF.0@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> Agro-Profiteering and Predictable Food Scarcity The Human Right to Eat By JOAN P. MENCHER http://www.counterpunch.org/mencher06282008.html This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com From critical.montages at gmail.com Thu Jul 10 11:01:16 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:01:16 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Total Steps Back from Investing in Iran Message-ID: Total steps back from investing in Iran By Carola Hoyos in London and Daniel Dombey in Washington Published: July 9 2008 23:34 | Last updated: July 9 2008 23:34 Iran has lost the last major western energy group that had been considering making a significant investment to develop the country's huge gas reserves in a victory for Washington's efforts to isolate Tehran over its nuclear ambitions. Total, the French energy group, told the FT it was now too risky to invest in Iran, making it highly unlikely that the group will invest in a liquefied natural gas project linked to Iran's South Pars gas field in the near future. The comments from Christophe de Margerie, chief executive, follow weeks of increasing tensions between Iran and Israel. On Wednesday, Tehran test-fired nine missiles and warned that it would provide massive retaliation to any military strike. The US has also stepped up its push to impose tougher sanctions on Tehran in the dispute over Iran's nuclear programme. Mr de Margerie said: "Today we would be taking too much political risk to invest in Iran because people will say: 'Total will do anything for money'." Together with Malaysia's Petronas, Total was due to develop phase 11 of the South Pars field and had until Wednesday maintained it had not decided to drop its interest in the project. After May's announcement that Royal Dutch Shell and Repsol YPF of Spain would pull out of Phase 13, Total was left exposed. Total's move is a big blow for Iran, which is now unlikely to be able to significantly raise its gas exports until late in the next decade at the soonest. Samuel Ciszuk, Middle East energy analyst at Global Insight, called Total's decision "a death blow" for Iran's LNG ambitions, because the country would now be unable to gain the knowhow it needed for such complex projects, even if it teamed up with Russia or China. None of the western oil companies including Total is willing definitively to close the door on Iran's massive hydrocarbon reserves. Shell and Repsol said they could still join later stages of the development of the field. In a further sign of the increased scrutiny over investments in Iran's energy sector, William Burns, the US state department's top official on Iran, told a US congressional committee on Wednesday that Washington would conduct a "serious review" to see whether the Norwegian group StatoilHydro had violated US law by carrying out a large investment in Iran. Washington had been particularly worried about Total, and US officials concede measures affecting the transfer of western investment and knowhow to Iran's energy sector have a much greater impact than do financial sanctions. But Mr de Margerie voiced his anger at the policy, saying: "You take two major countries [Iran and Iraq] out of the system and then you say: 'There is not enough oil and gas.' Oh no, surprise, surprise." Wednesday's test firing left the oil market unfazed, with oil prices failing to make up recent losses and trading at $136.20 a barrel. From critical.montages at gmail.com Thu Jul 10 11:07:50 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:07:50 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Gazprom Offers to Buy All Libya's Gas Message-ID: Gazprom offers to buy all Libya's gas By Ed Crooks and Catherine Belton Published: July 9 2008 22:54 | Last updated: July 9 2008 22:54 Gazprom, Russia's state-?controlled gas company, said on Wednesday it was in talks to buy all of Libya's oil and gas exports, in its latest effort to strengthen its influence over world energy markets. Alexei Miller, Gazprom's chief executive, made the offer in talks with Muammer Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, in Tripoli. In a statement after the meeting, Gazprom said: "Libya positively evaluated Gazprom's proposition to buy all future volumes of gas, oil and [liquefied natural gas] designed for export at a market price." The offer fits Gazprom's strategy of seeking to secure sources of supply outside its Russian base and, in particular, to tie up future gas imports into western Europe. It will raise concerns in the European Union that Gazprom is seeking to increase its dominance of Europe's gas market, already set to grow as production in countries such as the UK and the Netherlands falls. Libya is a member of Opec, the oil cartel, and produces 1.7m barrels of oil per day. However, it has been attracting more interest recently for its potential as a gas exporter to the EU. It held its first gas-only licensing round last year, in which Gazprom was one of the successful bidders. BP and ExxonMobil have also signed deals to look for gas in the country. Mr Miller has been dismissive of the idea of a possible "gas Opec", a cartel of gas producers that would co-operate to support prices. But Gazprom's interest in securing Libya's future gas exports will fuel fears that it is attempting to create just such a cartel. Gazprom, which has a monopoly on Russia's gas exports, has also recently opened an office in Algeria, one of the three leading gas suppliers to the EU, along with Russia and Norway. Alexander Medvedev, its deputy chief executive,said last month: "Co-operation between our companies in Russia and Algeria is a priority." Gazprom has also been in talks with Nigeria about becoming involved in the planned gas pipeline from that country to Algeria, and future projects for LNG exports. However, these initiatives are generally embryonic. A Gazprom official said the company was seeking to "strengthen its position on world markets", adding: "We need to diversify our markets and sources." He said the offer to Libya was a "non-binding proposal" and that talks could go on for some time. Gazprom said the two sides had also discussed creating a joint venture for the exploration and development of oil and gas fields, and for building energy infrastructure in Libya, as well as gas pipelines to the EU. In one of his last foreign trips as president, Vladimir Putin in April became the first Russian leader since 1985 to visit Libya. Huge reserves Libya had total proven oil reserves of 41.5bn barrels in 2007 ? the largest in Africa. About 80 per cent is located in the Sirte basin but analysts believe only about 25 per cent of the country's reserves are covered by exploration agreements with oil companies. Most of the country's oil exports, which in 2006 stood at 1.5m barrels a day, are sold to European countries including Italy, Germany, Spain and France. Libya's proven natural gas reserves at the beginning of 2007 were estimated at 52,700bn cubic feet, the fourth largest in Africa. Since United Nations and US sanctions were lifted in 2003 and 2004, oil groups have stepped up exploration efforts for oil and natural gas and tried enhanced oil recovery techniques to increase production at maturing fields. From tal1 at cogeco.ca Thu Jul 10 11:53:32 2008 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:53:32 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Are They Really Oil Wars? In-Reply-To: References: <79695EE7707C44EEA7E74B539ADE2273@TonyPC> Message-ID: Just a little 'thinking out loud' here: re 'peak oil can't be proven' : Though its true that the current price of oil is largely speculatively driven, this does in no way undermine the *geological case* for declining oil supplies. To dimiss the claims of the likes of Collin Campbell and Matthew Simmons on these matters based merely on current speculative price surges is, imho, throwing out the baby with the bathwater. (Though I do agree that 'peak oil' is somewhat 'detrimental to the Left' by its playing into a superficial 'rationale' of sorts for imperialism). re 'the oil industry can't be controlled, as in the past, by waging wars and occupying foreign countries': Well, in fact, it can be argued that that is precisely what the US is doing in Iraq....and in the intricate, very serious machinations in the new Great Game for Caspian energy (witness the US's aggressive forward military expansionism in Eastern Europe). In this regard, recall Rosa Luxemberg's dictum that, 'imperialism is not the last stage of capitalism, but its constant and necessary condition'; that capitalism is dependent not just in its primitive accumulative phase on imperialism, but that imperialism/colonialism *is its essential and never-ending lifeblood*. re 'imperialism has simply made oil prices higher and energy more insecure': Well, again the higher prices do benefit some very high profile 'usual suspects'. But more importantly, it is the *control* of these resources in an anticipated future era of scarcity which is, I believe, paramount here. Sure, the US could have competed economically with everyone else for Iraq's oil, except for the fact that it knows that it is declining as an economic power. Moreover, physically controlling these resources is, as has oft been cited, a means of gaining leverage over not just its ostensible enemies, but its ostensible 'friends' (i.e. the EU) as well. Tony ----- Original Message ----- From: "Yoshie Furuhashi" To: "The A-List" Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2008 3:35 PM Subject: Re: [A-List] Are They Really Oil Wars? > On Wed, Jul 9, 2008 at 3:17 PM, Tony B. wrote: >> ...There are some problems with this analysis (i.e. re the massive, >> attempted takeover of Iraqi oil reserves by Western firms; the fact that >> those who pay the cost of the war - taxpayers and, through dollar >> hegemony, >> foreign treasury bill holders - and those who reap the profits are simply >> different groups). Still, the argument that is primarily the >> military-industrial complex in conjunction with 'special interests' (like >> AIPAC), rather than oil interests, that are driving US militarism are, >> otherwise well supported. >> >> Discussion? > > I agree with Ismael Hossein-zadeh, (and Cyrus Bina whom he cites), > that (1) not only the "peak oil" theory cannot be proven but also it > is detrimental to the Left, for it gives a false impression that the > Bush White House's Middle East policy at least makes capitalist and > imperialist economic sense; (2) the oil industry today, unlike in the > past, cannot be "controlled" by waging wars and occupying foreign > countries; and (3) that imperialism, especially its wars of choice, > has made oil prices higher and made energy supply more insecure. > > What Hossein-zadeh does not take into account is that underinvestment > in the oil industry (as well as many others) in the age of neoiberal > capitalism and growing energy demand of China, India, the Middle East, > Latin America, etc. are real, so the rising prices cannot be fully > attributed to the wars and other geopolitical problems created or > aggravated by the empire and the falling dollar and the speculation > that it encourages. > > Yoshie > > From the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com Thu Jul 10 12:22:57 2008 From: the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com (Leighm) Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 11:22:57 -0700 Subject: [A-List] Are They Really Oil Wars? In-Reply-To: References: <79695EE7707C44EEA7E74B539ADE2273@TonyPC> Message-ID: <48765381.4030002@gmail.com> This was Travus T. Hipp's Morning Commentary today. *[July 10 2008] Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: Since American Geographic Skills Are Sorely Lacking? A Historical Travelogue And Petro-Geographical Review Of The Persian Gulf* He talks up the potential for the Iranians to quite simply drop a couple of mines in the Straits of Hormuz and totally throw the global oil supply into the dumper. I attached an excerpt and link to a transcript on just the US Army's oil usage (and they don't use anywhere near what the navy and air force uses). Internet Archive: http://www.archive.org/details/tth_080710 My Site: http://leighm.net/wp/2008/07/10/tth_080710/ In The News: The art of politics is ?Compromise Solution?. The shiny new FISA bill appears to protect American citizens from phone company spying? If the government and the phone company obey laws they didn?t obey the last time. Hillary Clinton voted against it because of the retroactive immunity. Barack Obama and John McCain were MIA. Details. In other senate voting, the 10% cut in MediCare payments to doctors is surgically removed, and the recovering-from-brain-surgery Ted Kennedy was there to vote to eliminate the cut. More. John McCain calls a vet to speak at a PR affair and the vet CALLS HIM OUT! McCain answers none of his questions. More. Hamza bin-Laden, Osama?s son, 16 years old, has a poem for us all, and he says he?s going to lead the jihad. The Pentagon loses the power to grant a USAF re-fueling tanker contract after the original deal with the EU?s AirBus gets examined by the legislature and found? corrupt? Hmmmm. A Boeing Grumman consortium will most likely get the contract now. Iran fires another round of missiles in the Persian Gulf across the strait of Hormuz(twenty miles across). Tony B. wrote: > Just a little 'thinking out loud' here: > > re 'peak oil can't be proven' : Though its true that the current price > of oil is largely speculatively driven, this does in no way undermine > the *geological case* for declining oil supplies. To dimiss the claims > of the likes of Collin Campbell and Matthew Simmons on these matters > based merely on current speculative price surges is, imho, throwing > out the baby with the bathwater. > (Though I do agree that 'peak oil' is somewhat 'detrimental to the > Left' by its playing into a superficial 'rationale' of sorts for > imperialism). > > re 'the oil industry can't be controlled, as in the past, by waging > wars and occupying foreign countries': Well, in fact, it can be argued > that that is precisely what the US is doing in Iraq....and in the > intricate, very serious machinations in the new Great Game for Caspian > energy (witness the US's aggressive forward military expansionism in > Eastern Europe). In this regard, recall Rosa Luxemberg's dictum that, > 'imperialism is not the last stage of capitalism, but its constant and > necessary condition'; that capitalism is dependent not just in its > primitive accumulative phase on imperialism, but that > imperialism/colonialism *is its essential and never-ending lifeblood*. > > re 'imperialism has simply made oil prices higher and energy more > insecure': Well, again the higher prices do benefit some very high > profile 'usual suspects'. But more importantly, it is the *control* of > these resources in an anticipated future era of scarcity which is, I > believe, paramount here. Sure, the US could have competed economically > with everyone else for Iraq's oil, except for the fact that it knows > that it is declining as an economic power. Moreover, physically > controlling these resources is, as has oft been cited, a means of > gaining leverage over not just its ostensible enemies, but its > ostensible 'friends' (i.e. the EU) as well. > > Tony > > > ----- Original Message ----- From: "Yoshie Furuhashi" > > To: "The A-List" > Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2008 3:35 PM > Subject: Re: [A-List] Are They Really Oil Wars? > > >> On Wed, Jul 9, 2008 at 3:17 PM, Tony B. wrote: >>> ...There are some problems with this analysis (i.e. re the massive, >>> attempted takeover of Iraqi oil reserves by Western firms; the fact >>> that >>> those who pay the cost of the war - taxpayers and, through dollar >>> hegemony, >>> foreign treasury bill holders - and those who reap the profits are >>> simply >>> different groups). Still, the argument that is primarily the >>> military-industrial complex in conjunction with 'special interests' >>> (like >>> AIPAC), rather than oil interests, that are driving US militarism are, >>> otherwise well supported. >>> >>> Discussion? >> >> I agree with Ismael Hossein-zadeh, (and Cyrus Bina whom he cites), >> that (1) not only the "peak oil" theory cannot be proven but also it >> is detrimental to the Left, for it gives a false impression that the >> Bush White House's Middle East policy at least makes capitalist and >> imperialist economic sense; (2) the oil industry today, unlike in the >> past, cannot be "controlled" by waging wars and occupying foreign >> countries; and (3) that imperialism, especially its wars of choice, >> has made oil prices higher and made energy supply more insecure. >> >> What Hossein-zadeh does not take into account is that underinvestment >> in the oil industry (as well as many others) in the age of neoiberal >> capitalism and growing energy demand of China, India, the Middle East, >> Latin America, etc. are real, so the rising prices cannot be fully >> attributed to the wars and other geopolitical problems created or >> aggravated by the empire and the falling dollar and the speculation >> that it encourages. >> >> Yoshie >> >> > > > > From tal1 at cogeco.ca Thu Jul 10 12:25:28 2008 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 14:25:28 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Total Steps Back from Investing in Iran In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: ....Though this is a little in the vein of 'cutting off your nose to spite your face', as now Iran will be pulled almost entirely into the Russia -China -India energy/security orbit. Tony ----- Original Message ----- From: "Yoshie Furuhashi" To: "A-List" ; "Rad-Green" Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2008 1:01 PM Subject: [A-List] Total Steps Back from Investing in Iran > > Total steps back from investing in Iran > > By Carola Hoyos in London and Daniel Dombey in Washington > > Published: July 9 2008 23:34 | Last updated: July 9 2008 23:34 > > Iran has lost the last major western energy group that had been > considering making a significant investment to develop the country's > huge gas reserves in a victory for Washington's efforts to isolate > Tehran over its nuclear ambitions. > > Total, the French energy group, told the FT it was now too risky to > invest in Iran, making it highly unlikely that the group will invest > in a liquefied natural gas project linked to Iran's South Pars gas > field in the near future. > > The comments from Christophe de Margerie, chief executive, follow > weeks of increasing tensions between Iran and Israel. On Wednesday, > Tehran test-fired nine missiles and warned that it would provide > massive retaliation to any military strike. > > The US has also stepped up its push to impose tougher sanctions on > Tehran in the dispute over Iran's nuclear programme. > > Mr de Margerie said: "Today we would be taking too much political risk > to invest in Iran because people will say: 'Total will do anything for > money'." > > Together with Malaysia's Petronas, Total was due to develop phase 11 > of the South Pars field and had until Wednesday maintained it had not > decided to drop its interest in the project. After May's announcement > that Royal Dutch Shell and Repsol YPF of Spain would pull out of Phase > 13, Total was left exposed. > > Total's move is a big blow for Iran, which is now unlikely to be able > to significantly raise its gas exports until late in the next decade > at the soonest. Samuel Ciszuk, Middle East energy analyst at Global > Insight, called Total's decision "a death blow" for Iran's LNG > ambitions, because the country would now be unable to gain the knowhow > it needed for such complex projects, even if it teamed up with Russia > or China. > > None of the western oil companies including Total is willing > definitively to close the door on Iran's massive hydrocarbon reserves. > Shell and Repsol said they could still join later stages of the > development of the field. > > In a further sign of the increased scrutiny over investments in Iran's > energy sector, William Burns, the US state department's top official > on Iran, told a US congressional committee on Wednesday that > Washington would conduct a "serious review" to see whether the > Norwegian group StatoilHydro had violated US law by carrying out a > large investment in Iran. > > Washington had been particularly worried about Total, and US officials > concede measures affecting the transfer of western investment and > knowhow to Iran's energy sector have a much greater impact than do > financial sanctions. But Mr de Margerie voiced his anger at the > policy, saying: "You take two major countries [Iran and Iraq] out of > the system and then you say: 'There is not enough oil and gas.' Oh no, > surprise, surprise." > > Wednesday's test firing left the oil market unfazed, with oil prices > failing to make up recent losses and trading at $136.20 a barrel. > > From tal1 at cogeco.ca Thu Jul 10 12:33:07 2008 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 14:33:07 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Russian Planes Fly Over South Ossetia To Prevent Georgian Invasion Message-ID: ----- Original Message ----- From: Rick Rozoff To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2008 11:34 AM Subject: [stopnato] Russian Planes Fly Over South Ossetia To Prevent Georgian Invasion http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=12859233&PageNum=0 Itar-Tass July 10, 2008 Russian planes fly over South Ossetia to avert Georgia invasion MOSCOW - Russian military planes were flying over South Ossetia to avert a possible invasion from Georgia, the information and press department of the Russian Foreign Ministry reported on Thursday. "On July 9, tensions have mounted sharply in the South Ossetia conflict zone. "We received information, including from the command of the peacekeeping forces, about a possible direct invasion of Georgian troops allegedly aimed at the release of four servicemen who were detained by the South Ossetian law enforcement agencies," the ministry's department said. "To clarify the situation Russian military planes have made a short flight over South Ossetia," the department said. "As later events showed even this step allowed the cooling down the hot heads in Tbilisi and avert a scenario with the use of force that was quite real," the Foreign Ministry' s department said. =========================== Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato To subscribe, send an e-mail to: stopnato-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages http://lists.topica.com/lists/ANTINATO/read ============================== __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Database | Polls | Calendar MARKETPLACE Special offer for Yahoo! Groups from Blockbuster! Get a free 1-month trial with no late fees or due dates. Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required) Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch format to Traditional Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe Recent Activity 8New Members Visit Your Group Yahoo! Groups Join people over 40 who are finding ways to stay in shape. Yahoo! Groups Cat Zone Connect w/ others who love cats. Drive Traffic Sponsored Search can help increase your site traffic.. __,_._,___ From tal1 at cogeco.ca Thu Jul 10 12:34:35 2008 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 14:34:35 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Russia May Withdraw From Missile Treaty Over US Missile System Message-ID: <7564266AE20443EBBB8D20344E608156@TonyPC> ----- Original Message ----- From: Rick Rozoff To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2008 11:07 AM Subject: [stopnato] Russia May Withdraw From Missile Treaty Over US Missile System http://en.rian.ru/russia/20080710/113695372.html Russian Information Agency Novosti July 10, 2008 Russia may scrap missile deal over U.S. shield - military expert -[Czech Foreign Minister Karel] Schwarzenberg earlier said that NATO could discuss the possible use of the Gabala [Azerbaijan] radar after Russia's lease expires. MOSCOW - Russia may respond to U.S. plans for missile defense bases in Central Europe with a host of measures, including the withdrawal from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, a senior military expert said on Thursday. President Dmitry Medvedev said on Wednesday that Russia would respond to the U.S. missile shield program in Central Europe, adding that Moscow was "dismayed" by the signing of a U.S.-Czech missile deal. He did not specify what steps Russia would take. In an interview with the Nezavisimaya Gazeta daily, Col. Gen. Viktor Yesin, a former commander of the Russian Strategic Missile Forces, said Moscow could deploy tactical Iskander-M missiles in the Kaliningrad Region, from where they could reach U.S. ground based interceptors in Poland, and also station there strategic bombers, primarily Tu-22 M3s, armed with long-range cruise missiles. He said Moscow could also call a stop to the disbanding of a missile division based in the town of Kozelsk, central Russia, in accordance with the U.S.-Russian Treaty on Strategic Offensive Reductions (May 2002), and deploy advanced hypersonic missiles there, which can effectively penetrate missile defenses. Gen. Yesin stressed that such measures would not be in conflict with Russia's international obligations. Moscow has strongly opposed the possible deployment by the U.S. of 10 interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic as a threat to its security and nuclear deterrence. Washington says the defenses are needed to deter possible strikes from "rogue states." The Czech president said on Wednesday he was ready to put his signature to a U.S.-Czech missile shield agreement. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg signed an agreement on Tuesday on the deployment of a missile-tracking radar on Czech soil. First Deputy Foreign Minister Tomas Pojar has said the Czech parliament could ratify the deal by the end of the year. Russia has offered the United States the use of its radar stations in Armavir in southern Russia and Gabala in Azerbaijan as alternatives, but Washington said they could only be used as "supplements," if at all. Schwarzenberg earlier said that NATO could discuss the possible use of the Gabala radar after Russia's lease expires. =========================== Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato To subscribe, send an e-mail to: stopnato-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages http://lists.topica.com/lists/ANTINATO/read ============================== __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Database | Polls | Calendar MARKETPLACE You rock! Blockbuster wants to give you a complimentary trial of Blockbuster Total Access. Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required) Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch format to Traditional Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe Recent Activity 8New Members Visit Your Group Biz Resources Y! Small Business Articles, tools, forms, and more. Dog Fanatics on Yahoo! Groups Find people who are crazy about dogs. Yahoo! Groups Come check out featured healthy living groups on Yahoo!. __,_._,___ From tal1 at cogeco.ca Thu Jul 10 12:35:25 2008 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 14:35:25 -0400 Subject: [A-List] US May Secretly Deploy Nuclear-Tipped Missiles In Poland: Expert Message-ID: ----- Original Message ----- From: Rick Rozoff To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2008 11:01 AM Subject: [stopnato] US May Secretly Deploy Nuclear-Tipped Missiles In Poland: Expert http://en.rian.ru/russia/20080710/113709664.html Russian Information Agency Novosti July 10, 2008 U.S. may secretly deploy ballistic missiles in Poland - expert -[T]here is no way of verifying that the U.S. will really deploy interceptor missiles with conventional warheads. "These missiles look very much like intermediary and shorter-range ballistic missiles." -"[W]e should make a worst-scenario assumption that ballistic missiles with a very short target approach time will be deployed." -Col. Gen. Viktor Yesin, a former commander of the Russian Strategic Missile Forces, said Moscow could deploy tactical Iskander-M missiles in the Kaliningrad Region, from where they could reach U.S. ground based interceptors in Poland, and also station there strategic bombers, primarily Tu-22 M3s, armed with long-range cruise missiles. MOSCOW - The U.S. may station intermediary and shorter-range ballistic missiles in Poland under the guise of interceptors, a Russian expert said Thursday. Moscow has strongly opposed the possible deployment by the United States of 10 interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar station in the Czech Republic as a threat to its security and nuclear deterrent. Washington says the defenses are needed to deter possible strikes from "rogue states." Alexander Pikayev, head of the disarmament and conflict resolution department at the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of World Economy and International Relations, said there is no way of verifying that the U.S. will really deploy interceptor missiles with conventional warheads. "These missiles look very much like intermediary and shorter-range ballistic missiles," he said. He said that if Russian military officers were not given access to U.S. missile-defense facilities in Central Europe, Russia would be unable to verity what types of missiles were located in silos on Polish soil. "Therefore, we should make a worst-scenario assumption that ballistic missiles with a very short target approach time will be deployed," he said, adding it would be naive to believe that U.S. missile-defense elements will not be included in the list of Russia's legitimate targets. "This is inevitable, and both the Czech Republic and Poland must know it," the expert said. President Dmitry Medvedev said Wednesday that Russia would respond to the U.S. missile shield program in Central Europe, adding that Moscow was "dismayed" by the signing of a U.S.-Czech missile deal. He did not specify what steps Russia would take. A senior military expert said earlier Thursday that Russia could respond to U.S. plans for missile defense bases in Central Europe with a range of measures, including the withdrawal from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. In an interview with the Nezavisimaya Gazeta daily, Col. Gen. Viktor Yesin, a former commander of the Russian Strategic Missile Forces, said Moscow could deploy tactical Iskander-M missiles in the Kaliningrad Region, from where they could reach U.S. ground based interceptors in Poland, and also station there strategic bombers, primarily Tu-22 M3s, armed with long-range cruise missiles. He said Moscow could also call a stop to the disbanding of a missile division based in the town of Kozelsk, central Russia, in accordance with the U.S.-Russian Treaty on Strategic Offensive Reductions (May 2002), and deploy advanced hypersonic missiles there, which can effectively penetrate missile defenses. =========================== Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato To subscribe, send an e-mail to: stopnato-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages http://lists.topica.com/lists/ANTINATO/read ============================== __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Database | Polls | Calendar MARKETPLACE Yahoo! Groups users, take advantage of a free trial offer from Blockbuster! Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required) Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch format to Traditional Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe Recent Activity 8New Members Visit Your Group Biz Resources Y! Small Business Articles, tools, forms, and more. Yahoo! Groups Wellness Spot A resource for Curves and weight loss. Change your life with Yahoo! Groups balance nutrition, activity & well-being.. __,_._,___ From tal1 at cogeco.ca Thu Jul 10 12:39:51 2008 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 14:39:51 -0400 Subject: [A-List] AFRICOM: US, NATO Allies Take Over Oil-Rich Gulf Of Guinea Message-ID: <73809BF364DC458690A7601037AF77E3@TonyPC> ----- Original Message ----- From: Rick Rozoff To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2008 10:22 PM Subject: [stopnato] AFRICOM: US, NATO Allies Take Over Oil-Rich Gulf Of Guinea http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=56085 Stars and Stripes European Edition July 10, 2008 Cutter on West Africa training visits By Sandra Jontz [The US currently imports 15% of its oil from West Africa and is expected soon to increase that to 25%. The formerly Portuguese islands of Sao Tome and Principe were revealed in a series of articles in the Financial Times about five years ago to be sitting on a previously unsuspected oil bonanza and the talk at that time was of Washington establishing a naval base on its territory. Gulf of Guinea oil has the double advantage of being high-grade and capable of being shipped on tankers directly across the Atlantic, thereby avoiding 'security threats'...and duties.] -The APS [Africa Partnership Station] program dovetails with, and will serve as a model for, similar missions to be taken on by U.S. Africa Command when it becomes fully operational in October....The U.S. Naval Forces Europe-led APS "folds nicely in the way AFRICOM is developing," Naval Forces Europe spokesman Lt. Brian Badura said. The program is "multilateral, multi-agency and multinational in flavor." Naval Forces Europe began a three-day enduring partners conference in Naples, Italy. Representatives of 15 European and African nations will plan for the next large-scale APS mission, slated to begin in January.... A U.S. Coast Guard cutter is visiting several West African nations under the U.S. Navy's continuing Africa Partnership Station in the Gulf of Guinea. The Dallas arrived Tuesday in Equatorial Guinea for a three-day visit after making a port call to the island-nation of Sao Tome and Principe last week, according to Navy officials. .... The Navy had periodically sent ships to the gulf over the past few years. The APS program dovetails with, and will serve as a model for, similar missions to be taken on by U.S. Africa Command when it becomes fully operational in October, command spokesman Vince Crawley said Tuesday. APS "provides a good example of what the newly established U.S. Africa Command is all about as it relates to helping our partner nations on the continent of Africa build their capacity to better govern their spaces [and] to have more effect in providing the security of their people," AFRICOM leader Gen. William "Kip" Ward said during an October press briefing in Washington. The U.S. Naval Forces Europe-led APS "folds nicely in the way AFRICOM is developing," Naval Forces Europe spokesman Lt. Brian Badura said. The program is "multilateral, multi-agency and multinational in flavor." On Wednesday, Naval Forces Europe began a three-day enduring partners conference in Naples, Italy. Representatives of 15 European and African nations will plan for the next large-scale APS mission, slated to begin in January, Badura said. Representatives will iron out details of missions, port visits, training and the curriculum.... The APS program officially started in November with the USS Fort McHenry and the High Speed Vessel Swift 2, and other ships that periodically joined while in the region. Part of the program includes officials from African nations sailing aboard the U.S. ships. In the cutter's case, two Equatorial Guinea navy officers sailed for a month with the Dallas crew.... =========================== Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato To subscribe, send an e-mail to: stopnato-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages http://lists.topica.com/lists/ANTINATO/read ============================== __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Database | Polls | Calendar MARKETPLACE Yahoo! Groups users, check out this limited time offer from Blockbuster! Rent DVDs free for a month! Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required) Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch format to Traditional Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe Recent Activity 8New Members Visit Your Group Biz Resources Y! Small Business Articles, tools, forms, and more. Yahoo! Groups Familyographer Zone Join a group and share your pictures. Real Food Group Share recipes and favorite meals w/ Real Food lovers.. __,_._,___ From tal1 at cogeco.ca Thu Jul 10 12:42:12 2008 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 14:42:12 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Afghan President Told To Resign Over NATO Killing Of Civilians Message-ID: ----- Original Message ----- From: Rick Rozoff To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2008 9:43 PM Subject: [stopnato] Afghan President Told To Resign Over NATO Killing Of Civilians http://www.pajhwok.com/viewstory.asp?lng=eng&id=58157 Pajhwok Afghan News July 7, 2008 Nangarhar Council closes office to protest airstrikes Moeed Hashmi and Saboor Mangal KABUL - The Nangarhar Provincial Council has closed its office in protest over the killing of almost two dozen civilians in the bombing of a wedding party by US-led coalition forces. The deputy head of the council, Maulvi Abdul Aziz, said he convened an emergency meeting of the body. The council unanimously decided on closing its office for three days as a mark of protest over civilian deaths. He told Pajhwok Afghan News the death toll from Sundays bombing had soared to 30 dead - all civilians. The bombing in Haska Mena districts Deh Bala village wounded 10 people. The bride was among the dead Spokesman for Nangarhar governor Ahmad Zia said 27 people were killed in the imprecise airstrike, which prompted President Karzai to order an investigation of the attack. Civilian casualties in Nangarhar came days after a similar bombing of villagers and government servants in the neighbouring Nuristan province. There, too, some 20 people were killed by the US-led coalition. On Monday, two children and as many women were wounded in a missile attack that apparently targetted a base of foreign and Afghan forces in the southeastern Khost province. .... ------------------------------------------------------ http://www.pajhwok.com/viewstory.asp?lng=eng&id=58156 Pajhwok Afghan News July 7, 2008 Karzai urged to quit over civilian deaths Zubair Babakarkhel -The Front expressed its apprehensions days after US-led coalition troops killed 50 civilians in Paktika, 17 in Nuristan and 22 in Nangarhar. KABUL - The Afghanistan Islamic Front for Peace and Understanding (AIFPU), expressing concern at the killing of civilians in NATO airstrikes in Afghanistan, has urged President Hamid Karzai to resign. Addressing a press conference here on Monday, the AIFPU chief alleged dozens of civilians were massacred this month in NATO and coalition raids in Nangarhar Paktika, Paktia, Nuristan and other provinces during a month. Eng. Ahmad Shah Ahmadzai condemned the attacks as inhuman acts against Afghans. "Foreign forces should stop killing civilians and flouting all human values in Afghanistan," he demanded while accusing Karzai of failing to protect the people. Bringing stability to the war-wracked country was impossible as long as foreign troops remained in Afghanistan, he claimed, insisting that the international military presence was no longer welcomed by the citizens, who might rise against American forces. Ahmedzai urged Karzai to stand down as president while acknowledging his failure in bringing peace and security to the war-weary nation. He lampooned the government for its inability to protect Afghans, saying it only released press statements regarding the killing of innocent people. He proposed that a Loya Jirga should be convened after Karzai resigned his job. The jirga would decide on the formation of an interim government tasked with conducting a transparent general election, he proposed. The Front expressed its apprehensions days after US-led coalition troops killed 50 civilians in Paktika, 17 in Nuristan and 22 in Nangarhar. Karzai has already ordered a probe into the civilian deaths. =========================== Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato To subscribe, send an e-mail to: stopnato-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages http://lists.topica.com/lists/ANTINATO/read ============================== __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Database | Polls | Calendar MARKETPLACE You rock! Blockbuster wants to give you a complimentary trial of - Blockbuster Total Access. Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required) Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch format to Traditional Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe Recent Activity 8New Members Visit Your Group Real Food Group on Yahoo! Groups What does real food mean to you? Best of Y! Groups Check it out and nominate your group to be featured. Cat Fanatics on Yahoo! Groups Find people who are crazy about cats.. __,_._,___ From the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com Thu Jul 10 12:42:21 2008 From: the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com (Leighm) Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 11:42:21 -0700 Subject: [A-List] Total Steps Back from Investing in Iran In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4876580D.7030106@gmail.com> Tony B. wrote: > ....Though this is a little in the vein of 'cutting off your nose to > spite > your face', as now Iran will be pulled almost entirely into the > Russia -China -India energy/security orbit. > > Tony > It DOES gives the opportunity to pander to Western Fear/Hate of Iran though. "...and Dick Cheney is peeing all over himself in spasmodic glee." http://www.archive.org/details/PoliticalHipHopMix Leigh > > ----- Original Message ----- From: "Yoshie Furuhashi" > > To: "A-List" ; "Rad-Green" > > Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2008 1:01 PM > Subject: [A-List] Total Steps Back from Investing in Iran > > >> >> Total steps back from investing in Iran >> >> By Carola Hoyos in London and Daniel Dombey in Washington >> >> Published: July 9 2008 23:34 | Last updated: July 9 2008 23:34 >> >> Iran has lost the last major western energy group that had been >> considering making a significant investment to develop the country's >> huge gas reserves in a victory for Washington's efforts to isolate >> Tehran over its nuclear ambitions. >> >> Total, the French energy group, told the FT it was now too risky to >> invest in Iran, making it highly unlikely that the group will invest >> in a liquefied natural gas project linked to Iran's South Pars gas >> field in the near future. >> >> The comments from Christophe de Margerie, chief executive, follow >> weeks of increasing tensions between Iran and Israel. On Wednesday, >> Tehran test-fired nine missiles and warned that it would provide >> massive retaliation to any military strike. >> >> The US has also stepped up its push to impose tougher sanctions on >> Tehran in the dispute over Iran's nuclear programme. >> >> Mr de Margerie said: "Today we would be taking too much political risk >> to invest in Iran because people will say: 'Total will do anything for >> money'." >> >> Together with Malaysia's Petronas, Total was due to develop phase 11 >> of the South Pars field and had until Wednesday maintained it had not >> decided to drop its interest in the project. After May's announcement >> that Royal Dutch Shell and Repsol YPF of Spain would pull out of Phase >> 13, Total was left exposed. >> >> Total's move is a big blow for Iran, which is now unlikely to be able >> to significantly raise its gas exports until late in the next decade >> at the soonest. Samuel Ciszuk, Middle East energy analyst at Global >> Insight, called Total's decision "a death blow" for Iran's LNG >> ambitions, because the country would now be unable to gain the knowhow >> it needed for such complex projects, even if it teamed up with Russia >> or China. >> >> None of the western oil companies including Total is willing >> definitively to close the door on Iran's massive hydrocarbon reserves. >> Shell and Repsol said they could still join later stages of the >> development of the field. >> >> In a further sign of the increased scrutiny over investments in Iran's >> energy sector, William Burns, the US state department's top official >> on Iran, told a US congressional committee on Wednesday that >> Washington would conduct a "serious review" to see whether the >> Norwegian group StatoilHydro had violated US law by carrying out a >> large investment in Iran. >> >> Washington had been particularly worried about Total, and US officials >> concede measures affecting the transfer of western investment and >> knowhow to Iran's energy sector have a much greater impact than do >> financial sanctions. But Mr de Margerie voiced his anger at the >> policy, saying: "You take two major countries [Iran and Iraq] out of >> the system and then you say: 'There is not enough oil and gas.' Oh no, >> surprise, surprise." >> >> Wednesday's test firing left the oil market unfazed, with oil prices >> failing to make up recent losses and trading at $136.20 a barrel. >> >> > > > > From tal1 at cogeco.ca Thu Jul 10 13:12:45 2008 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 15:12:45 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Libya Says Sarkozy Plans New Roman Empire Message-ID: ----- Original Message ----- From: Rick Rozoff To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2008 10:52 PM Subject: [stopnato] Mare Nostrum: Libya Says Sarkozy Plans New Roman Empire http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/2277517/Gaddafi-attacks-Sarkozy-plan-for-Union-of-the-Med.html Daily Telegraph July 10, 2008 Gaddafi attacks Sarkozy plan for Union of the Med By Bruno Waterfield in Tripoli [A perfect complement to NATO's almost seven-year-old Operation Active Endeavor.] -Sarkozy has invited all the EU's 27 leaders plus premiers from 17 Mediterranean countries to a summit launching the new "Union" in Paris next week. But Libya, which will boycott the meeting, has accused the EU of trying to divide Africa and the broader Arab world by drawing a Mediterranean Union map that echoes old colonialist designs for the region. -"We shall have another Roman empire and imperialist design." -"I believe this project of the Union for the Mediterranean would increase illegal migration and terrorism and give a justification to Islamist extremists to step up Jihad attacks...." -"The headquarters will be in Brussels. Should I come and say I handed over the capital city of my country to Brussels?" Nicolas Sarkozy's plans for a Mediterranean Union will fuel Islamist terrorism and will be regarded as "imperialism" by many in Africa and the Arab world, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi warned yesterday. The comments by the Libyan leader are a major setback to the French President's Mediterranean project, his highest-profile initiative during France's turn at the European Union's six-month rotating presidency which began last week. Mr Sarkozy has invited all the EU's 27 leaders plus premiers from 17 Mediterranean countries to a summit launching the new "Union" in Paris next week. But Libya, which will boycott the meeting, has accused the EU of trying to divide Africa and the broader Arab world by drawing a Mediterranean Union map that echoes old colonialist designs for the region. "We shall have another Roman empire and imperialist design," Col Gaddafi said in Tripoli, the Libyan capital, yesterday. "There are imperialist maps and designs that we have already rolled up. We should not have them again." Speaking at the Bab Alazizya palace, the same building that was attacked by US fighter planes over 20 years ago in retaliation for a Libyan-sponsored bombing in Berlin, Col Gaddafi predicted that that the EU blueprint for the Mediterranean will be a pretext for a new generation of terrorists. "I believe this project of the Union for the Mediterranean would increase illegal migration and terrorism and give a justification to Islamist extremists to step up Jihad attacks. These extremists would explain it as crusade against Islam and European colonisation," he said. "They will talk about jihad in Europe. This project is frightening. This project is dangerous. "They will interpret it as a new crusade to contain Muslim forces. They will see it as a new colonialism and they will accuse the Arabs that they are traitors, who have abandoned principles and sold out their countries." Col Gaddafi is angry that original plans to build closer co-operation among a only few southern European and North African states that border the Mediterranean were changed to include the whole EU, the Middle East - and Israel - in the new "Union". "It is unbelievable that I would come to my own country and people and say that I have a union with Israel. It is very dangerous," he said. "We Arabs have not been able to unite together. How can we have a union with Scotland or Scandinavia or Israel?" .... Col Gaddafi, along with other Arab and Middle Eastern leaders, has felt left out of discussions in Brussels over the Mediterranean Union's membership, scope and subordination to the wider EU. "They ask us just to come and sign it. That is just an insult," he said. "They decide and then they tell us. The headquarters will be in Brussels. Should I come and say I handed over the capital city of my country to Brussels?" .... "I predict this project will be a complete failure," said Col Gaddafi. .... =========================== Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato To subscribe, send an e-mail to: stopnato-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages http://lists.topica.com/lists/ANTINATO/read ============================== __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Database | Polls | Calendar MARKETPLACE Blockbuster is giving away a FREE trial of - Blockbuster Total Access. Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required) Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch format to Traditional Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe Recent Activity 8New Members Visit Your Group Sitebuilder Build a web site quickly & easily with Sitebuilder. Yahoo! Groups Familyographer Zone Learn how to capture family moments. Cat Zone on Yahoo! Groups Join a Group all about cats.. __,_._,___ From critical.montages at gmail.com Thu Jul 10 15:13:45 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 17:13:45 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Call to Action July 19-21: No War With Iran Message-ID: FYI: Call to Action July 19-21: No War With Iran July 7th, 2008 Responding to the renewed threats of a U.S./Israeli attack on Iran before President Bush leaves office, United for Peace and Justice calls for coordinated Days of Action across the United States on July 19-21. Now is the time to speak out against any U.S./Israeli military attack on Iran. U.S. officials say Israel is mounting a "full court press" to get the Bush administration to strike Iran's nuclear complex, CBS News reports. In The New Yorker, Seymour Hersh reports that congressional leaders agreed last year to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran. New York Newsday and the Seattle-Post Intelligencer warn that Congress is considering a resolution promoted by AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) that would effectively endorse a naval blockade of Iran, an act of war. Voices in the U.S. calling for real diplomacy and negotiations with Iran are being silenced. Few people in this country know Iran has an offer on the table for comprehensive negotiations with the United States that could resolve the nuclear stand-off and other issues. Nor do they know that talks with Iran without preconditions are supported by independent experts like Thomas Pickering, the U.S. Ambassador to the UN during the first Bush administration. To counter the renewed threats of military action, we are calling for National Days of Coordinated Action against war with Iran on July 19-21, including: * call-ins and letter-writing to Washington and local congressional offices; * lobbying in Washington and at local congressional offices; * demonstrations at congressional offices, federal buildings, Israeli consulates or other sites chosen by local organizers (check our calendar in the coming days for details about events near you). Click here to list your organization's national or local event as part of these National Days of Action (please be sure to choose "No War on Iran" as your event type). Averting a War with Iran: Research and Resources UFPJ: The Time to Stop a War on Iran Is NOW! o Various actions people/groups can take to prevent a war with Iran http://www.unitedforpeace.org/article.php?list=type&type=98 NIAC: o Update: Is a New Congressional Resolution Declaring War with Iran? http://www.niacouncil.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1141&Itemid=2 o Gallup poll confirms majority of Americans favor diplomacy with Iran http://www.niacouncil.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1133&Itemid=2 CASMII: o Iranians Float an Offer the West Should Not Refuse: Will Anti-War Forces Seize this Opportunity? http://www.campaigniran.org/casmii/index.php?q=node/5456 o U.S. Mayors Mobilizing Against a War with Iran http://www.campaigniran.org/casmii/index.php?q=node/5449 PSR: o Medical Consequences of a Nuclear Attack on Iran-Fact Sheet http://psr.convio.net/site/PageServer?pagename=security_main_iranfactsheet o War Is Not the Answer with Iran http://psr.convio.net/site/PageServer?pagename=NoWarOnIran Iran Nuclear Watch o Links, blogs, and informative articles http://irannuclearwatch.blogspot.com/ The Center for Arms Control and Nuclear Non-Proliferation o Background on Iran-US nuclear relationship o Iran's nuclear timeline o Their policy statement on Iran's nuclear issue o Center for a New American Security, "Diplomatic Strategies for Dealing with Iran: Where Are We? How Did We Get to This Point? And What Should We Do Now?" released March 2008 http://www.armscontrolcenter.org/policy/iran/ Peace Action o National campaign to prevent a war with Iran http://www.peace-action.org/Iran/campaigns/current.htm?petition_KEY=358 o Fact Sheet on Iran http://www.peace-action.org/Iran/campaigns/Iran_Fact_New.pdf o History of US interactions with Iran http://www.peace-action.org/Iran/campaigns/current.htm?petition_KEY=358 o Media http://www.peace-action.org/Iran/media/media.htm Iran Coverage o Tehran's reaction to Military Threats http://irancoverage.com/2008/06/29/tehran-reaction-to-military-threats/ Scott Ritter o Iraq Will Have to Wait: Get Ready for the War Against Iran http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=RIT20070930&articleId=6937 William Polk o Moves toward War with Iran: How to Prevent War ... Part 4 http://hnn.us/articles/31522.html From noreply at coha.org Thu Jul 10 13:22:20 2008 From: noreply at coha.org (Council on Hemispheric Affairs) Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 15:22:20 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Colombia: the Betancourt Rescue and Beyond Message-ID: <20080710192222.9E1773E49FE@mx-out.daemonmail.net> A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 8332 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20080710/db7ad6fd/attachment.txt From the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com Thu Jul 10 18:49:27 2008 From: the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com (Leighm) Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 17:49:27 -0700 Subject: [A-List] Cuban American groups keep pressure on Obama Message-ID: <4876AE17.4000106@gmail.com> Cuban American groups pressure Obama from The Swamp http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/07/barack_obama_cuban_american.html by Katie Fretland Eight Cuban American exile groups are demanding that presidential hopeful Barack Obama remove two campaign advisors who were involved in the Elian Gonzalez case. Representatives of the organizations wrote a letter to Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and Miami Mayor Manny Diaz with a call for Obama to get rid of senior foreign policy advisor Greg Craig and vice presidential vetter Eric Holder. The groups said the men's role in the campaign is a "great offense" to the Cuban American community. "As you well know, both these men played prominent roles in what we consider a very dark page in the history of the Cuban exile community - the forced return of Elian Gonzalez to the communist island to live in tyranny," the letter states. Craig represented Elian's father in a battle over custody of the child. Holder was deputy U.S. attorney general when Elian was ordered to return to Cuba. In 1999, Elian crossed from Cuba to the United States in a small boat, losing his mother during the trip. In 2000, gun-wielding government agents removed Elian from his relatives' Miami home. Read more in the Swamp about how Elian Gonzalez remains a factor in Florida. Continue reading for a copy of the letter to Nelson, Menendez and Diaz: Open Letter to Florida Senator Bill Nelson, New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez and Miami Mayor Manny D?az As representatives of Cuban American exile organizations, we reach out to you as our friend and elected representative to bring your attention to a situation that is of profound concern to us. We are deeply troubled by the continued presence of senior adviser Greg Craig and vice presidential screener Eric Holder on Senator Barack Obama's campaign. That one of these men is advising Barack Obama on foreign policy issues and one is helping select his vice presidential running mate is a great offense to the Cuban American community. As you well know, both these men played prominent roles in what we consider a very dark page in the history of the Cuban exile community - the forced return of Elian Gonzalez to the communist island to live in tyranny. Just a few days ago, we saw the painful image of a now l4 year old Elian Gonzalez joining Cuba's Communist Youth. It was just eight years ago the same child was forcibly taken from his new home in Miami and sent back to Cuba. While Elian's mother gave her life fleeing Castro's oppressive regime to bring her child to freedom in America, her ultimate sacrifice turned out to be in vain. Eric Holder defended and played a role in Elian's seizure by the Justice Department, and the unnecessary use of brute force by armed government agents, to send the child back to the country his mother had tried so hard for them to escape from. Greg Craig is equally, if not more, culpable. Although he might have been officially hired by a church group to represent Elian's father, Greg Craig was actually benefitting Fidel Castro and his regime. Given the relationship of Greg Craig with the Castro regime and his advisory role with Senator Obama, it is not surprising that Senator Obama would propose meeting without preconditions with Raul Castro, another affront to the Cuban-American community. What is most concerning is that Holder and Craig remain on Obama's team, even after he was informed of their involvement in the Elian Gonzalez case. It is cause for indignation that these men sit so closely to a presidential contender while our families, friends and neighbors 90 miles to the South are held captive by a tyrannical regime. Had it not been for the actions of these two men, lending themselves as instruments to Fidel Castro, Elian could today be enjoying the freedom his mother died to provide for him. You know only too well, how divisive and hurtful the Elian experience was for the Cuban-American community. You also know that it demonstrates a shocking level of political insensitivity towards the Cuban American community for Senator Obama to have these two men play such important roles in his campaign. Taking into consideration Senator Obama's lack of experience and knowledge of foreign policy, particularly as it relates to Latin America and Cuba, the role of advisors becomes that much more important. That those advisors would be of the ilk of Greg Craig and Eric Holder is unacceptable. We look upon you to speak for us and carry our message. We ask that you condition your support of Senator Obama and any activities on behalf of his campaign on Senator Obama, immediately severing ties with Eric Holder and Greg Craig. When asked recently whether Elian should have been deported to Cuba, Senator Obama brushed the ordeal off as being in the past, stating "that was eight years ago and obviously it was a wrenching situation for the families involved. But I'm running for president in 2008... " Sadly, Elian Gonzalez is not the past. His mother's sacrifice is not the past. The millions of people who still today live under an oppressive government that daily violates their human rights, is not the past. We fight for Cuba's freedom today and every day. The fight for freedom for the Cuban people is for us the here and now, part of our daily lives. We ask you to step forward and demonstrate the respect you have always shown us, the respect that Senator Obama has neglected to show our community and the rest of the country. It is our hope that Senator Obama would show you more respect and deference than he has shown our community until now. He would be well served to take your advice and not that of Eric Holder and Greg Craig. It is our sincere hope that you will counsel him to immediately ask for the resignations of Eric Holder and Greg Craig. Miami, Florida July 8, 2008 M?ximo Cruz Brigada de Asalto 2506 Sylvia Iriondo MAR por Cuba Alfredo Garc?a Menocal Consejo del Presidio Pol?tico Cubano Mario Echevarr?a Municipios de Cuba en el Exilio Dr. Alberto M. Hern?ndez Consejo por la Libertad de Cuba Rodolfo S. San Rom?n Presidio Pol?tico Hist?rico Casa del Preso Julio Cabarga Junta Patri?tica Frank Alonso Unidad Cubana From glparramatta at greenleft.org.au Thu Jul 10 18:54:59 2008 From: glparramatta at greenleft.org.au (glparramatta) Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2008 10:54:59 +1000 Subject: [A-List] The crisis of the global economy | Links Message-ID: <4876AF63.7010005@greenleft.org.au> *A report of the Institute of Globalisation and Social Movements, Moscow* By *Vasily Koltashov* Translated by *Renfrey Clarke*, /Links ? International Journal of Socialist Renewal/ (http://links.org.au) Moscow, June 9, 2008 -- In the early weeks of 2008 virtually all Russian and foreign experts viewed the situation in the world economy favourably. Warnings from a few analysts that a major economic crisis lay ahead were not taken especially seriously by optimistic-minded populations. On January 22 the stock exchanges were shaken by the first slump, followed by a series of new collapses. The world?s share markets were destabilised. Inflation accelerated, with food prices beginning to rise sharply. A number of American and European banks announced colossal losses in their results for 2007. The scale of the economic problems in the US became evident. A new world crisis had begun. The emergence of its first symptoms provoked numerous questions concerning the nature of the crisis, the reasons behind it, and the logic shaping its probable development. Full: http://links.org.au/node/517 Subscribe free to /Links - International Journal of Socialist Renewal/ - at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373 From shimogamo at attglobal.net Thu Jul 10 21:00:06 2008 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Bill Totten) Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2008 12:00:06 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Surviving the Fourth of July Message-ID: <4876CCB6.9030700@attglobal.net> by Chris Hedges www.truthdig.com (July 07 2008) I survive the degradation that has become America - a land that exalts itself as a bastion of freedom and liberty while it tortures human beings, stripped of their rights, in offshore penal colonies, a land that wages wars defined under international law as criminal wars of aggression, a land that turns its back on its poor, its weak, its mentally ill, in a relentless drive to embrace totalitarian capitalism - because I read books. I have 5,000 of them. They line every wall of my house. And I do not own a television. I survive the gradual, and I now fear inevitable, disintegration of our democracy because great literature and poetry, great philosophy and theology, the great works of history, remind me that there were other ages of collapse and despotism. They remind me that through it all men and women of conscience endured and communicated, at least with each other, and that it is possible to refuse to participate in the process of self-annihilation, even if this means we are pushed to the margins of society. They remind me, as the poet W H Auden wrote, that "ironic points of light flash out wherever the Just exchange their messages". And if you tire, as all who can think critically must, of the empty cant and hypocrisy of John McCain and Barack Obama, of the simplistic and intellectually deadening epistemology of television and the consumer age, you can retreat to your library. Books were my salvation during the wars and conflicts I covered for two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, Africa, the Middle East and the Balkans. They are my salvation now. The fundamental questions about the meaning, or meaninglessness, of our existence are laid bare when we sink to the lowest depths. And it is those depths that Homer, Euripides, William Shakespeare, Fyodor Dostoevsky, George Eliot, Joseph Conrad, Marcel Proust, Vasily Grossman, George Orwell, Albert Camus and Flannery O'Connor understood. "The practice of art isn't to make a living", Kurt Vonnegut said. "It's to make your soul grow". The historian Will Durant calculated that there have been only 29 years in all of human history during which a war was not under way somewhere. Rather than being aberrations, war and tyranny expose a side of human nature that is masked by the often unacknowledged constraints that glue society together. Our cultivated conventions and little lies of civility lull us into a refined and idealistic view of ourselves. But look at our last two decades - two million dead in the war in Afghanistan, 1.5 million dead in the fighting in Sudan, some 800,000 butchered in the ninety-day slaughter of Tutsis and moderate Hutus by soldiers and militias directed by the Hutu government in Rwanda, a half-million dead in Angola, a quarter of a million dead in Bosnia, 200,000 dead in Guatemala, 150,000 dead in Liberia, a quarter of a million dead in Burundi, 75,000 dead in Algeria, at least 600,000 dead in Iraq and untold tens of thousands lost in the border conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea, the fighting in Colombia, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Chechnya, Sri Lanka, southeastern Turkey, Sierra Leone, Northern Ireland, Kosovo. Civil war, brutality, ideological intolerance, conspiracy and murderous repression are the daily fare for all but the privileged few in the industrialized world. "The gallows", the gravediggers in "Hamlet" aptly remind us, "is built stronger than the church". I have little connection, however, with academics. Most professors of literature, who read the same books I read, who study the same authors, are to literature what forensic medicine is to the human body. These academics seem to spend more time sucking the life out of books than absorbing the profound truths the authors struggle to communicate. Perhaps it is because academics, sheltered in their gardens of privilege, often have hyper-developed intellects and the emotional maturity of twelve-year-olds. Perhaps it is because they fear the awful revelations in front of them, truths that, deeply understood, would demand they fight back. It is easier to eviscerate the form, the style and the structure with textual analysis and ignore the passionate call for our common humanity. "As long as reading is for us the instigator whose magic keys have opened the door to those dwelling-places deep within us that we would not have known how to enter, its role in our lives is salutary", Proust wrote. "It becomes dangerous, on the other hand, when, instead of awakening us to the personal life of the mind, reading tends to take its place ..." Although Shakespeare's Jack Falstaff is a coward, a liar and a cheat, although he embodies all the scourges of human frailty Henry V rejects, I delight more in Falstaff's address to himself in the Boar's Head Tavern, where he at least admits to serving to his own hedonism, than I do in Henry's heroic call to arms before Agincourt. Falstaff personifies a lust for life and the mockery of heaven and hell, of the crown and all other instruments of authority. He disdains history, honor and glory. Falstaff is a much more accurate picture of the common soldier who wants to save his own hide and finds little in the rhetoric of officers who urge him into danger. Prince Hal is a hero and defeats Percy while Falstaff pretends to be a corpse. But Falstaff embodies the basic desires we all have. He is baser than most. He lacks the essential comradeship necessary among soldiers, but he clings to life in a way a soldier under fire can sympathize with. It is to the ale houses and the taverns, not the court, that these soldiers return when the war is done. Jack Falstaff's selfish lust for pleasure hurts few, while Henry's selfish lust for power leaves corpses strewn across muddy battlefields. And while we have been saturated with the rhetoric of Henry V this past July 4 holiday we would be better off listening to the truth spoken by Falstaff. There is a moment in "Henry IV, Part I", when Falstaff leads his motley band of followers to the place where the army has assembled. Lined up behind him are cripples and beggars, all in rags, because those with influence and money, like George W Bush, evade military service. Prince Hal looks askance at the pathetic collection before him, but Falstaff says, "Tut, tut, good enough to toss, food for powder, food for powder. They'll fill a pit as well as better. Tush, man, mortal men, mortal men." I have seen the pits in the torpid heat in El Salvador, the arid valleys in northern Iraq and the forested slopes in Bosnia. Falstaff is right. Despite the promises never to forget the sacrifices of the dead, of those crippled and maimed by war, the loss and suffering eventually become superfluous. The pain is relegated to the pages of dusty books, the corridors of poorly funded VA hospitals, and sustained by grieving families who still visit the headstone of a man or woman who died too young. This will be the fate of our dead and wounded from Iraq and Afghanistan. It is the fate of all those who go to war. We honor them only in the abstract. The causes that drove the nation to war, and for which they gave their lives, are soon forgotten, replaced by new ones that are equally absurd. Stratis Myrivilis in his novel Life in the Tomb (2004) makes this point: "A few years from now, I told him", Myrvilis wrote nearly a century ago, "perhaps others would be killing each other for anti-nationalist ideals. Then they would laugh at our own killings just as we had laughed at those of the Byzantines. These others would indulge in mutual slaughter with the same enthusiasm, though their ideals were new. Warfare under the entirely fresh banners would be just as disgraceful as always. They might even rip out each other's guts then with religious zeal, claiming that they were ?fighting to end all fighting'. But they too would be followed by still others who would laugh at them with the same gusto." Patriotic duty and the disease of nationalism lure us to deny our common humanity. Yet to pursue, in the broadest sense, what is human, what is moral, in the midst of conflict or under the heel of the totalitarian state is often a form of self-destruction. And while Shakespeare, Proust and Conrad meditate on success, they honor the nobility of failure, knowing that there is more to how a life is lived than what it achieves. Lear and Richard II gain knowledge only as they are pushed down the ladder, as they are stripped of power and the illusions which power makes possible. Late one night, unable to sleep during the war in El Salvador, I picked up "Macbeth". It was not a calculated decision. I had come that day from a village where about a dozen people had been murdered by the death squads, their thumbs tied behind their backs with wire and their throats slit. I had read the play before as a student. Now it took on a new, electric force. A thirst for power at the cost of human life was no longer an abstraction. It had become part of my own experience. I came upon Lady Macduff's speech, made when the murderers, sent by Macbeth, arrive to kill her and her small children. "Whither should I fly?" she asks. I have done no harm. But I remember now I am in this earthly world, where to do harm Is often laudable, to do good sometime Accounted dangerous folly. Those words seized me like Furies and cried out for the dead I had seen lined up that day in a dusty market square, and the dead I would see later: the 3,000 children killed in Sarajevo, the dead in unmarked mass graves in Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, Sudan, Algeria, El Salvador, the dead who are my own, who carried notebooks, cameras and a vanquished idealism into war and never returned. Of course resistance is usually folly, of course power exercised with ruthlessness will win, of course force easily snuffs out gentleness, compassion and decency. In the end, all we can cling to is each other. Thucydides, knowing that Athens was doomed in the war with Sparta, consoled himself with the belief that his city's artistic and intellectual achievements would in the coming centuries overshadow raw Spartan militarism. Beauty and knowledge could, ultimately, triumph over power. But we may not live to see such a triumph. And on this weekend of collective exaltation I did not attend fireworks or hang a flag outside my house. I did not participate in rituals designed to hide from ourselves who we have become. I read the "Eclogues" by Virgil. These poems were written during Rome's brutal civil war. They consoled me in their wisdom and despair. Virgil understood that the words of a poet were no match for war. He understood that the chant of the crowd urges nearly all to collective madness, and yet he wrote with the hope that there were some among his readers who might continue, even when faced with defeat, to sing his hymns of compassion. ... sed carmina tantum nostra valent, Lycida, tela inter Martia, quantum Chaonias dicunt aquila veniente columbas. ... but songs of ours Avail among the War-God's weapons, Lycidas, As much as Chaonian doves, they say, when the eagle comes. _____ A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion. Editor, Robert Scheer. Publisher, Zuade Kaufman. Copyright (c) 2008 Truthdig, LLC. All rights reserved. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080707_surviving_the_fourth_of_july/ http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From critical.montages at gmail.com Thu Jul 10 22:48:40 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2008 00:48:40 -0400 Subject: [A-List] =?iso-8859-1?q?Venezuelans_to_Support_Colombians_+_Presi?= =?iso-8859-1?q?dente_Ch=E1vez_en_desacuerdo_con_PCV_y_PPT_por_cand?= =?iso-8859-1?q?idaturas_y_marcha_del_viernes?= Message-ID: FYI: Venezuelans to Support Colombians Caracas, Jul 10 (Prensa Latina) Venezuelan political and social organizations are organizing a mass rally for Friday to support the Colombian people and condemn President Alvaro Uribe's policy. A meeting between the Colombian president and his Venezuelan counterpart, Hugo Chavez, is scheduled for July 11 in the state of Falcon, where the two heads of State will talk about the normalization of bilateral relations, which were damaged on March 1, when Colombian military forces attacked Ecuador. Venezuela described that action, in which Raul Reyes, one of the main leaders of the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC), was killed, as a violation of Ecuador's sovereignty. Uribe accused Venezuela of supporting the guerrilla group, an accusation that Chavez rejected. In a press conference, Yul Jabour, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of Venezuela, called on the people to condemn Uribe's policy, which he described as warmongering and servile to US interests. The call, which has been supported by students, workers and women organizations, the International Solidarity Committee, the Anti-imperialist Front and the Communist Youth of Venezuela, condemns all actions of the Colombia Plan and its extrapolation to bordering countries. The text condemns the attempts against Venezuela's revolutionary process and against the changes being made in Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua and other Latin American countries. It also rejects the Colombian Army's recent assassinations of members of Indigenous Communities in the department of Cauca, as well as of trade union and students leaders this year. The call questions the presence of the 4th US Fleet off maritime borders of Latin American and Caribbean countries. hr/jg/dsa PL-10 (VIDEO) Presidente Ch?vez en desacuerdo con PCV y PPT por candidaturas y marcha del viernes Por: YVKE Mundial (Luigino Bracci Roa) Fecha de publicaci?n: 10/07/08 08 de julio 2008. - El Presidente Hugo Ch?vez acudi? este mi?rcoles a una reuni?n del Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (Psuv) en el estado Aragua, donde hizo severas cr?ticas a los partidos revolucionarios miembros de la Alianza Patri?tica, que no han aceptado plegarse a algunas candidaturas del Psuv en determinados estados y municipios del pa?s. A pesar de sus cr?ticas, Ch?vez sin embargo recomend? a la directiva del Psuv actuar con mucha paciencia y tacto, con el objetivo de no quebrar la alianza. Fue particularmente duro con Eduardo Manuitt, actual gobernador del estado Gu?rico, y su hija, Lenny Manuitt, quien se lanz? a las elecciones primarias del Psuv para ese estado. Manuitt, al llegar de segunda, decidi? abandonar el Psuv y lanzarse como candidata del partido Patria Para Todos (PPT). Ch?vez igualmente, indic? que convers? telef?nicamente con los secretarios generales de PPT y del Partido Comunista de Venezuela (PCV), "para oirlos y hacer algunas reflexiones". En el caso del PCV, denunci? su molestia debido a que ese partido lanz? a un candidato a gobernador en Trujillo, quien era del Psuv pero, al no obtener la candidatura, se lanz? por su cuenta con el apoyo del Partido Comunista. "?Ustedes creen que eso es posible? Est?n jugando a la divisi?n del pueblo y est?n actuando como contrarrevolucionario", dijo Ch?vez. El PCV manifiesta en Trujillo su apoyo a Octaviano Mej?as, quien lleg? de primer lugar en las elecciones internas del Psuv el pasado 1 de junio, con 27,77 por ciento de los votos. Mej?as, sin embargo, obtuvo s?lo 3 por ciento de ventaja por encima de Hugo Cabezas, quien lleg? en segundo lugar. La directiva del Psuv decidi? darle la candidatura a Cabezas, lo que caus? que Mej?as se lanzara por su cuenta. En torno a la marcha contra la visita de Uribe Tambi?n critic? con dureza que el Partido Comunista est? planificando una marcha este viernes 11 de julio frente al consulado de Colombia en Chaca?to, en rechazo a la visita del Presidente ?lvaro Uribe. La marcha, en realidad, es convocada por numerosos movimientos sociales a los cuales el Partido Comunista se uni? el pasado lunes. "El PCV ha convocado a una marcha para oponerse a la visita del presidente de Colombia. Yo invit? al Presidente de Colombia", dijo Ch?vez, recordando que su prop?sito es hacer las paces con Colombia y evitar a toda costa que se vaya a una guerra. "Ustedes pueden hacer su marcha, pero yo no recuerdo que el PCV haya convocado a una marcha cuando el presidente de Estados Unidos, Bill Clinton, vino aqu?" a Venezuela, record? Ch?vez. "?Porque estaban apoyando a Caldera! Son verdades que hay que recordarlas para que reflexionen y se ubiquen", dijo el Presidente venezolano, pidi?ndoles que no sean "m?s papistas que el Papa". "Nosotros no vamos a hacer guerra con Colombia. Yo invito al Presidente de Colombia para darle la mano, para conversar y buscar la integraci?n, respetando las particularidades, ?porque Colombia es una Patria Hermana! Y estamos obligados a entendernos con el gobierno que haya en Colombia. Yo soy un Jefe de Estado, y como tal tengo que actuar". La marcha del viernes En un comunicado emitido este mi?rcoles, diferentes organizaciones adem?s del PCV hicieron el llamado a la marcha: el Polo Democr?tico Alternativo, el Frente Antiimperialista, el Comit? de Solidaridad Internacional (COSI), el Movimiento de Mujeres "Clara Zetkin, Corriente Clasista de Trabajadores "Cruz Villegas", el Movimiento Estudiantil Revolucionario de la Unefa, el Movimiento Estudiantil Jos? F?lix Ribas "Lanceros de Apure de la UNEXPO", el Frente Estudiantil Livia Gouverneur, el Colectivo Frente de Estudiantes Universitarios "Mariscal Sucre" y la Juventud Comunista de Venezuela. El comunicado, que est? publicado en Tribuna Popular (peri?dico del PCV) y el sitio revolucionario Aporrea, manifiesta "nuestra firme convicci?n en el proceso revolucionario bolivariano y el liderazgo indiscutible del Presidente Hugo Ch?vez Fr?as. en la lucha por la soberan?a, la independencia, la democracia, la paz y el socialismo", pero tambi?n indica: "aprovechamos la presencia de ?lvaro Uribe V?lez en la cuna de Sim?n Bol?var, para manifestarle que no est? siendo consecuente con los postulados de nuestro Libertador y que fue elegido mediante procedimientos fraudulentos y amenazas a la poblaci?n por cuenta de sus secuaces paramilitares. Es un presidente ileg?timo, ligado adem?s a las mafias del narcotr?fico." Igualmente, el manifiesto condena "los recientes asesinatos de integrantes de Cabildos Ind?genas en el Departamento del Cauca, a manos del ej?rcito colombiano, as? como el asesinato de 28 dirigentes sindicales y populares en lo que va del a?o, y de 17 j?venes estudiantes en los ?ltimos tres a?os, a manos de paramilitares al servicio del gobierno de Uribe V?lez." El PCV y Caldera El Partido Comunista y otros partidos de izquierda apoyaron a Rafael Caldera en las elecciones de 1993, luego de que el pol?tico socialcristiano, proveniente de la derecha tradicional, fuera uno de los pocos que ofrecieran un discurso distinto al de los pol?ticos tradicionales tras la insurrecci?n militar de Hugo Ch?vez el 4 de febrero de 1992. Caldera afirm? ese d?a que "es dif?cil pedirle al pueblo que se inmole por la libertad y por la democracia, cuando piensa que la libertad y la democracia no son capaces de darle de comer". La frase pr?cticamente lo lanz? directo a la presidencia, a?n cuando Caldera debi? separarse del derechista partido Copei y agruparse en torno a un amasijo de partidos de izquierda y derecha que fueron conocidos como "el chiripero". El PCV estuvo entre esos partidos. Caldera asumi? la presidencia en 1994, y a pesar de sus promesas presidenciales, su gobierno acudi? al Fondo Monetario Internacional y aplic? la cl?sica receta de ese ente neoliberal: devaluaci?n del bol?var, eliminaci?n del control de cambios, privatizaci?n de diferentes industrias del Estado, inicio de la "apertura" petrolera en v?as a una privatizaci?n de Pdvsa, aumento del precio del combustible y liberaci?n de los tipos de inter?s. Numerosas instituciones bancarias, encabezadas por el Banco Latino, se iban a la quiebra dejando a decenas de miles de personas sin acceso a sus ahorros. A los pocos meses de instalado este nuevo gobierno, el PCV anunci? su ruptura con el Presidente Caldera por diferencias irreconciliables con la orientaci?n econ?mica y la direcci?n pol?tica general de ?ste. El presidente estadounidense, Bill Clinton, visit? Venezuela a?os despu?s, en octubre de 1997. Quince meses despu?s, en enero de 1999, Hugo Ch?vez ya era presidente electo y visit? a Clinton en Washington DC , luego de que el gobierno estadounidense finalmente aceptara darle una visa, que le hab?a negado en el pasado alegando que particip? en la insurrecci?n militar de 1992. Ch?vez: Desacuerdos y "paciencia" con el PPT Este mi?rcoles, durante su alocuci?n, el Presidente venezolano tambi?n hizo p?blicos sus desacuerdos con Jos? Albornoz, secretario general del PPT, debido a que ?l renunci? a su precandidatura en Gu?rico para cederle la oportunidad a Lenny Manuitt. "Eso es extra?o, y es una actitud divisionista y contrarrevolucionaria. Absolutamente contrarrevolucionaria, se?or, porque est?n jugando a la divisi?n". "El PPT est? apoyando en Gu?rico a la contrarrevoluci?n", dijo Ch?vez "para llamarlos a la reflexi?n. Ahora, si ellos no reflexionan, ?que mantengan su apoyo a la contrarrevoluci?n! Pero ellos deben entender que as? es muy dif?cil hacer una alianza, porque ellos est?n pasando al campo contrarrevolucionario." "Sin embargo -dijo sin pausar- estamos con las puertas abiertas. Hay que tener mucha paciencia con ellos, llamarlos, volverlos a llamar". Acot? despu?s que, en palabras del propio Albornoz, el PPT apoya la gran mayor?a de las candidaturas del Psuv. Ch?vez indic? que, de haber permanecido Albornoz como candidato del PPT para Gu?rico, hubieran podido esperar algunas semanas para luego decidir de forma conjunta si el PSUV declinaba su candidatura, o si la declinaba el PPT, dependiendo de las circunstancias. El Presidente record? nuevamente que ?l convers? mucho con el gobernador Manuitt, de quien -reiter?- hab?a apoyado a mafias latufundistas de su estado, incluyendo a su hermano, Pablo Manuitt, propietario en aquel entonces del hato El Roblecito. "Manuitt lleg? a amenazar, arma en mano, al presidente del Instituto Nacional de Tierras (Inti), y resulta que uno de los latifundios era propiedad del hermano del gobernador". Ch?vez acot? que en esas y en otras ocasiones debi? enviar al Ej?rcito al estado Gu?rico para poner orden. Tambi?n denunci? que Manuitt apoyaba mafias que se hab?an apoderado de los silos propiedad del Estado, usando la polic?a guarique?a. Por ello, Ch?vez debi? usar de nuevo las fuerzas militares en contra del gobernador guarique?o. "Yo voy a recorrer los pueblos del Gu?rico, para contarle la verdad a los pueblos del Gu?rico", dijo Ch?vez. "El actual gobernador del Gu?rico, Eduardo Manuitt, es verdaderamente un contrarrevolucionario (...) ?Hay que sacarlo, a ?l y a su hija, y que gane Willian Lara!" Dijo que son falsas las palabras de Lenny Manuitt, quien dijo que es revolucionaria y que apoya a Ch?vez. "Es parte del plan de continuismo contrarrevolucionario. ?Es contra Ch?vez!" From critical.montages at gmail.com Thu Jul 10 23:44:46 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2008 01:44:46 -0400 Subject: [A-List] OPEC Leader Issues Warning about Iran and Oil Supply Message-ID: July 11, 2008 OPEC Leader Issues Warning About Iran and Oil Supply By JAMES KANTER VIENNA ? The head of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries warned on Thursday that oil prices would experience an "unlimited" increase in the event of a military conflict involving Iran because the group's members would be unable to make up the lost production. "We really cannot replace Iran's production ? it's not feasible to replace it," Abdalla Salem el-Badri, the OPEC secretary general, said in an interview. Iran, the second-largest producing country in OPEC after Saudi Arabia, produces about four million barrels of oil a day out of the daily worldwide production of close to 87 million barrels. The country has been locked in a long dispute with Western nations over its nuclear ambitions. In recent weeks, the price of oil has risen higher on speculation that Israel could be preparing an attack on the country's nuclear facilities. The saber rattling intensified this week with missile tests by Iran. That has further unnerved oil markets because of concerns that any conflict with Iran could disrupt oil shipments from the gulf. In New York, crude oil climbed $5.60, to $141.65 a barrel. "The prices would go unlimited," Mr. Badri said during the interview, referring to the effect of a military conflict. "I can't give you a number." Iran has insisted that its nuclear program is for purely peaceful purposes. Mr. Badri, a former oil executive who has headed the oil industry in Libya and served as deputy prime minister of that country, called for a peaceful solution, and he hinted that an additional conflict in the Middle East besides the continuing conflict in Iraq would be severe and long-lasting. "If something happened there, nobody would be able to solve it," he said, referring to a war involving Iran. He said that current geopolitical tensions were among the main reasons for the high price of oil. He said that a shortfall in refining capacity and a weak dollar were other factors, but he reiterated OPEC's position that speculation on oil markets probably was the most important one. He insisted that reserves of oil were plentiful and that worries about scarcity were misplaced. Supplies from Russia and Norway and other nations outside the 13-member OPEC will keep growing, helped by technologies like turning gas and coal into liquid fuel and extracting oil from tar sands and shale, he said. Even so, he also sought to assuage concerns about a supply shock, saying that OPEC members, which contribute about 40 percent of daily worldwide production, were already investing $160 billion in new production capacity up to 2012. But he said investment in future capacity could be frozen, potentially sharpening a dispute with customers over whether sufficient steps were being taken to meet demand. Steps by the European Union and in the United States to cut dependence on fossil fuels meant that OPEC had no alternative but to take a cautious approach before going ahead with plans to invest up to $540 billion in oil production up to 2020. "If we don't see the demand, we are not going to invest," Mr. Badri said, adding there was doubt over how much money members would invest after 2012. OPEC members "don't want to spend their money on something they cannot use," he said. From shimogamo at attglobal.net Fri Jul 11 03:42:19 2008 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Bill Totten) Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2008 18:42:19 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Green Lifeline Message-ID: <48772AFB.500@attglobal.net> A radical new idea could save the world's ecosystems. But what will it do to the economy? by George Monbiot Published in the Guardian (July 01 2008) Almost everyone seems to agree: governments now face a choice between saving the planet and saving the economy. As recession looms, the political pressure to abandon green policies intensifies. A report published yesterday by Ernst and Young suggests that the EU's puny carbon target will raise energy bills by twenty per cent over the next twelve years {1}. Last week the prime minister's advisers admitted to the Guardian that his renewable energy plans were "on the margins" of what people will tolerate {2}. But these fears are based on a false assumption: that there is a cheap alternative to a green economy. Last week New Scientist reported a survey of oil industry experts, which found that most of them believe global oil supplies will peak by 2010 {3}. If they are right, the game is up. A report published by the US Department of Energy in 2005 argued that unless the world begins a crash programme of replacements ten or twenty years before oil peaks, a crisis "unlike any yet faced by modern industrial society" is unavoidable {4}. If the world is sliding into recession, it's partly because governments believed that they could choose between economy and ecology. The price of oil is so high and it hurts so much because there has been no serious effort to reduce our dependency. Yesterday in the Guardian, Rajendra Pachauri suggested that an impending recession could force us to confront the flaws in the global economy {5}. Sadly it seems so far to have had the opposite effect: a recent Ipsos Mori poll suggests that people are losing interest in climate change {6}. Opportunities for energy populism abound: it cannot be long before one of the major parties abandons the pale green consensus and starts invoking an oil cornucopia it cannot possibly deliver. The British government maintains both positions at once. In his speech last week, Gordon Brown said he wanted "to facilitate a reduction in short term global oil prices" while seeking "to reduce progressively our dependence on oil" {7}. He knows that the first objective makes the second one harder to achieve. The government's policy is to build more of everything - more coal plants, more nuclear power, more oil rigs, more renewables, more roads, more airports - and hope no one spots the contradictions. Is there a way out? Could we abandon the fossil fuel economy without provoking a blistering backlash? Two things are obvious. We need a global system, and the current one, the Kyoto Protocol, is bust. It sets no cap on global carbon pollution, its targets bear no relation to current science and are unenforceable anyway, it contains loopholes and get-out clauses wide enough to sail an oil tanker through. Until recently I supported an alternative system called contraction and convergence. Every country, this system proposes, should end up with the same quota of carbon dioxide per person. The richest countries must produce much less than they do today; the poorest ones could pollute more. Another proposal flows logically from this one: carbon rationing. Having been assigned its carbon quota, each nation would divide up part of it equally among its citizens, who could use it to buy energy or trade it among themselves. These proposals have the merit of capping global pollution, of being fair, progressive and easy to understand and of encouraging us to think about our use of energy. But, after reading the proofs of a book by the independent thinker Oliver Tickell, to be published this month, I have changed my view. In Kyoto2: how to manage the global greenhouse, Tickell slaughters my favourite ideas {8}. He shows that there is no logical basis for dividing up the right to pollute among nation states. It gives them too much power over this commodity, and there is no guarantee that they would pass the pollution rights on to their citizens, or use the money they raised to green the economy. Carbon rationing, he argues, requires a level of economic literacy that's far from universal in the most advanced economies, let alone in countries where most people don't have bank accounts. Instead Tickell proposes setting a global limit for carbon pollution then selling permits to pollute to companies extracting or refining fossil fuels. This has the advantage of regulating a few thousand corporations - running oil refineries, coal washeries, gas pipelines and cement and fertiliser works for example - rather than a few billion citizens. These firms would buy their permits in a global auction, run by a coalition of the world's central banks. There's a reserve price, to ensure that the cost of carbon doesn't fall too low, and a ceiling price, at which the banks promise to sell permits, to ensure that the cost doesn't cripple the global economy. In this case companies would be borrowing permits from the future. But because the money raised would be invested in renewables, the demand for fossil fuels would fall, so fewer permits would need to be issued in later years. Tickell calculates that if the cap were set low enough to ensure that the world became carbon neutral by 2050, the total cost of permits would be about $1 trillion a year, or roughly 1.5% of the global economy. The money would be spent on helping the poor to adapt to climate change, paying countries to protect forests and other ecosystems, developing low-carbon farming, promoting energy efficiency and building renewable power plants. But his figure seems too low. Like many of the world's climate scientists, Oliver Tickell proposes that the concentration of greenhouse gases should eventually be stabilised at 350 parts per million (carbon dioxide equivalent) in the atmosphere, and his calculations are based on this target. Last week Lord Stern suggested that meeting a less stringent target (500 parts per million) would cost two per cent of world gross domestic product {9}. If the price of the carbon permits sold at auction were much higher than Tickell suggests, the extra money could be used for massive tax rebates and social spending, aimed especially at the poor. But could the world afford it? This money doesn't disappear, it gets spent. Tickell's proposal could represent a classic Keynesian solution to economic crisis. The $1, $2 or even $5 trillion the system would cost is used to kick-start a green industrial revolution, a new New Deal not that different from the original one (whose most successful component was Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps, which protected forests and farmland) {10}. This would not be the first time that business was rescued by the measures it most stoutly resists: there's a long history of corporate lobbying against the kind of government spending that eventually saves the corporate economy. Do we want to save it, even if we can? It is hard to see how the current global growth rate of 3.7% a year (which means the global economy doubles every nineteen years) could be sustained{11}, even if the whole thing were powered by the wind and the sun. But that is a question for another column and perhaps another time, when the current economic panic has abated. For now we have to find a means of saving us from ourselves. _____ George Monbiot has received an honorary doctorate from the University of St Andrews. www.monbiot.com References: 1. BBC Online, 30th June 2008. Green target 'to hike fuel bills'. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7480204.stm 2. Juliette Jowit and Patrick Wintour, 26th June 2008. Cost of tackling global climate change has doubled, warns Stern. The Guardian. 3. Ian Sample, 25th June 2008. Oil: The final warning. New Scientist. 4. Robert L Hirsch, Roger Bezdek and Robert Wendling, February 2005. Peaking Of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, & Risk Management. US Department of Energy. This was originally leaked and found its way onto this site: http://www.hilltoplancers.org/stories/hirsch0502.pdf 5. Rajendra Pachauri, 30th June 2008. The world's will to tackle climate change is irresistible. The Guardian. 6. Juliette Jowit, 22nd June 2008. Poll: most Britons doubt cause of climate change. The Observer. 7. Gordon Brown, 26th June 2008. Creating a low carbon economy. http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page15846.asp 8. Oliver Tickell, forthcoming. Kyoto2: how to manage the global greenhouse. Zed Books, London. 9. Juliette Jowit and Patrick Wintour, ibid. 10. Neil M Maher, 2008. Nature's New Deal. Oxford University Press. 11. http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/survey/so/2008/res040908a.htm Copyright (c) 2006 Monbiot.com http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/07/01/green-lifeline/ http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From glparramatta at greenleft.org.au Fri Jul 11 01:55:17 2008 From: glparramatta at greenleft.org.au (glparramatta) Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2008 17:55:17 +1000 Subject: [A-List] The crisis of the global economy | Links Message-ID: <487711E5.8060608@greenleft.org.au> *A report of the Institute of Globalisation and Social Movements, Moscow* By *Vasily Koltashov* Translated by *Renfrey Clarke*, /Links ? International Journal of Socialist Renewal/ (http://links.org.au) Moscow, June 9, 2008 -- In the early weeks of 2008 virtually all Russian and foreign experts viewed the situation in the world economy favourably. Warnings from a few analysts that a major economic crisis lay ahead were not taken especially seriously by optimistic-minded populations. On January 22 the stock exchanges were shaken by the first slump, followed by a series of new collapses. The world?s share markets were destabilised. Inflation accelerated, with food prices beginning to rise sharply. A number of American and European banks announced colossal losses in their results for 2007. The scale of the economic problems in the US became evident. A new world crisis had begun. The emergence of its first symptoms provoked numerous questions concerning the nature of the crisis, the reasons behind it, and the logic shaping its probable development. Full: http://links.org.au/node/517 Subscribe free to /Links - International Journal of Socialist Renewal/ - at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373 From cbcox at ilstu.edu Fri Jul 11 06:07:26 2008 From: cbcox at ilstu.edu (Carrol Cox) Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2008 07:07:26 -0500 Subject: [A-List] Are They Really Oil Wars? References: <79695EE7707C44EEA7E74B539ADE2273@TonyPC> <4875144B.7070306@gmail.com> Message-ID: <48774CFE.9DB918E9@ilstu.edu> Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: > > > The discrepancy is most likely due to the fact that the US is not an > > industrial powerhouse anymore. > > That is largely correct. But the "peak oil" theory cannot by proven > in the absence of investment. As in anything capitalist, from > agriculture to infrastrucutre, you underinvest, and you undermine > output and efficiency. The age of neoliberalism has unleashed the > capitalist ethos that had been checked by socialism and social > democracy: pay as little as possible and make as much profit as > possible. Now we are feeling the effects of damages caused by it, in > energy and food prices first of all. The chief problems with peak oil is that are (a) that it gets people arguing over an empirical question that can only be settled empirically and not by public discussion, and that therefore (b) it fucks up the intelligence of leftists who worry it, (c) it has no political grip: that is true or false it is worse than useless as an agitational issue, and (d) even if true has no present or near-future impact on capitalist decision making, except in the fancy of leftists who waste their time yelping peak oil when they ought to be using their brains and time to try to formulate current tactcs and strategy. Left discussion and writing ought to be something other than a drama review of the latest melodrama the bourgeoisie presents for the delectation and mental dispersal of the working classes. Carrol From critical.montages at gmail.com Fri Jul 11 09:21:39 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2008 11:21:39 -0400 Subject: [A-List] The FBI's Plan to "Profile" Muslims Message-ID: The FBI's plan to "profile" Muslims It's unconstitutional, un-American -- and it might hurt, rather than help, the FBI's effort to stop real acts of terror. By Juan Cole Jul. 10, 2008 | The U.S. Justice Department is considering a change in the grounds on which the FBI can investigate citizens and legal residents of the United States. Till now, DOJ guidelines have required the FBI to have some evidence of wrongdoing before it opens an investigation. The impending new rules, which would be implemented later this summer, allow bureau agents to establish a terrorist profile or pattern of behavior and attributes and, on the basis of that profile, start investigating an individual or group. Agents would be permitted to ask "open-ended questions" concerning the activities of Muslim Americans and Arab-Americans. A person's travel and occupation, as well as race or ethnicity, could be grounds for opening a national security investigation. The rumored changes have provoked protests from Muslim American and Arab-American groups. The Council on American Islamic Relations, among the more effective lobbies for Muslim Americans' civil liberties, immediately denounced the plan, as did James Zogby, the president of the Arab-American Institute. Said Zogby, "There are millions of Americans who, under the reported new parameters, could become subject to arbitrary and subjective ethnic and religious profiling." Zogby, who noted that the Bush administration's history with profiling is not reassuring, warned that all Americans would suffer from a weakening of civil liberties. In fact, Zogby's statement only begins to touch on the many problems with these proposed rules. The new guidelines would lead to many bogus prosecutions, but they would also prove counterproductive in the effort to disrupt real terror plots. And then there's Attorney General Michael Mukasey's rationale for revising the rules in the first place. "It's necessary," he explained in a June news conference, "to put in place regulations that will allow the FBI to transform itself as it is transforming itself into an intelligence-gathering organization." When did Congress, or we as a nation, have a debate about whether we want to authorize the establishment of a domestic intelligence agency? Indeed, late last month Congress signaled its discomfort with the concept by denying the FBI's $11 million funding request for its data-mining center. Establishing a profile that would aid in identifying suspects is not in and of itself illegal, though the practice generally makes civil libertarians nervous. When looking for drug couriers, Drug Enforcement Agency agents were permitted by the Supreme Court in United States v. Sokolow (1989) to use indicators such as the use of an alias, nervous or evasive behavior, cash payments for tickets, brief trips to major drug-trafficking cities, type of clothing, and the lack of checked luggage. This technique, however, specifically excluded the use of skin color or other racial features in building the profile. In contrast, using race and ethnicity as the -- or even a -- primary factor in deciding whom to stop and search, despite being widespread among police forces, is illegal. Just this spring, the Maryland State Police settled out of court with the ACLU and an African-American man after having been sued for the practice of stopping black and Latino men and searching them for drugs. New Jersey police also got into trouble over stopping people on the grounds of race. The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled last year in State v. Calvin Lee that a defendant's plausible allegation that the arrest was initiated primarily because of race would be grounds for discovery: The defense attorney could then request relevant documents from the prosecution that might show discriminatory attitudes and actions on the part of the police. Because racial profiling is most often felt by juries to be inappropriate, its use could backfire on the FBI. Suspects charged on the basis of an investigation primarily triggered by their race could end up being acquitted as victims of government discrimination. If the aim is to identify al-Qaida operatives or close sympathizers in the United States, racial profiling is counterproductive. Such tiny, cultlike terror organizations are multinational. Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, is a Briton whose father hailed from Jamaica, and no racial profile of him would have predicted his al-Qaida ties. Adam Gadahn, an al-Qaida spokesman, is from a mixed Jewish and Christian heritage and hails from suburban Orange County, Calif. When I broached the topic of FBI profiling to some Muslim American friends on Facebook, a scientist in San Francisco replied, "Profiling Muslims or Arabs will just make al-Qaida look outside Islam for its bombers. There are many other disgruntled groups aside from those that worship Allah." It is a mystery why the Department of Justice has not learned the lesson that terrorists are best tracked down through good police work brought to bear on specific illegal acts, rather than by vast fishing expeditions. After Sept. 11, the DOJ called thousands of Muslim men in the United States for what it termed voluntary interviews. Not a single terrorist was identified in this manner, though a handful of the interviewees ended up being deported for minor visa offenses. Once it became clear that the interviews might eventuate in arbitrary actions against them, the willingness of American Muslims to cooperate declined rapidly, and so the whole operation badly backfired. The fiasco of the prosecution of the Detroit Four should also have been instructive. These four Arab men apparently had the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, having moved into an apartment in southwest Detroit recently vacated by a man suspected of al-Qaida ties. The prosecution alleged that innocent vacation videotapes of places such as Disneyland found in the apartment were part of a terror plot, and that vague doodles in a notebook depicted targets abroad such as a Jordanian hospital and Incirlik Air Force Base in Turkey. The prosecution relied heavily on an Arab-American informer who might reduce his own prison sentence for various acts of criminal fraud if a conviction were obtained, and whose testimony against the four suspects evolved dramatically over time. The initial conviction of two of the men, Karim Koubriti and Abdel-Ilah Elmardoudi on charges of giving material support to terrorism, which was hailed as an achievement by the Bush administration, was overturned when the prosecution was discovered to have withheld key exculpatory evidence. In a startling reversal, two members of the prosecuting team were tried for criminal misconduct, and although they were acquitted, their misconduct was not in question. A Detroit judge even apologized to a third man, who was held for three and a half years on a minor fraud charge and then deported. The entire affair raised questions about whether Muslim-Americans could hope for justice if for any reason they got accidentally caught up in the Justice Department's frantic search for Muslim terror cells on American soil (very few have been found). The flimsy case against the four men would have had no plausibility at all had they been white upper-middle-class residents of Connecticut. Not only has the Justice Department engaged in prosecutorial misconduct with regard to Muslims, but at least one FBI operation also appears to have involved actual entrapment. Narseal Batiste, Patrick Abraham, Burson Augustine, Rothschild Augustine, Stanley Grant Phanor, Naudimar Herrera and Lyglenson Lemorin were arrested in June 2006, and accused of being an al-Qaida cell plotting to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago. Batiste, aka Brother Naz or Prince Manna, led a small cult in a poor neighborhood of Miami called Seas of David, which was apparently an offshoot of the Moorish Temple Science, an African-American folk religion. The cult mixed themes from Judaism, Christianity and Islam but was not identifiably Muslim. The group met in a warehouse and talked big. The FBI put an informant among them who repeatedly offered them money and equipment for their activities, some of which he appears to have suggested. Batiste maintained in the trial that he was just stringing along the informant in hopes of extracting a promised $50,000, and that he was insincere in pledging allegiance to al-Qaida. When the Justice Department announced the arrest in 2006, the indictment went on about the belief of the group in jihad, or Muslim holy war, but it is a little unlikely that these individuals knew anything about Islam at all. Both attempts to prosecute them ended in mistrials, primarily because the FBI could produce no evidence that when they were arrested they had any weapons or explosives in their possession. They were full of crazy talk, but even some of that was suggested to them by the Department of Justice. Muslim Americans and Arab-Americans, along with members of some other ethnic groups, are therefore understandably alarmed that the Department of Justice may soon have the tools to bring them under investigation without any proof of wrongdoing. As CAIR national legislative director Corey Saylor noted in a statement, "Any new Justice Department guidelines must preserve the presumption of innocence that is the basis of our entire legal system ... Initiating criminal investigations based on racial or religious profiling is both unconstitutional and un-American." Muslim Americans and Arab-Americans have already suffered from being profiled in a de facto sense. Unsurprisingly, to have that injustice become policy concerns them. The protests would be even louder if so many in the community were not afraid to speak up and draw attention to themselves, as one of my Muslim American Facebook correspondents pointed out to me. Another remarked sadly that not only had George W. Bush not brought democracy to the Muslim Middle East, but he had also damaged its prospects in America itself. -- By Juan Cole From critical.montages at gmail.com Fri Jul 11 09:57:29 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2008 11:57:29 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Los escenarios pos FARC In-Reply-To: <4877755F.6060307@alai.info> References: <4877755F.6060307@alai.info> Message-ID: FYI: Los escenarios pos FARC Ra?l Zibechi ALAI AMLATINA, 11/07/2008, Montevideo.- En el primer semestre de 2008 se ha producido un fuerte viraje pol?tico, que le permite a las derechas, locales y globales, y a las multinacionales, recuperar posiciones y retomar la ofensiva. El viraje no se circunscribe a Colombia, aunque tiene all? su epicentro mayor, sino que se extiende a pa?ses como Argentina, Bolivia y Per?, pero en lo esencial afecta a toda la regi?n. En Colombia, si alguna vez hubo alg?n equilibrio estrat?gico entre las FARC y las fuerzas armadas, en los ?ltimos meses se ha quebrado a favor del Estado. La guerrilla perdi? toda posibilidad de negociar un acuerdo humanitario en condiciones favorables, no puede mantener ofensivas militares ni pol?ticas, sufre un agudo descr?dito entre la poblaci?n y ya no cuenta con aliados significativos en la regi?n ni en el mundo. A?n as?, lo m?s probable es que las FARC sigan adelante, con menguada capacidad de iniciativa y con la probable fragmentaci?n entre sus mandos y frentes, como lo sugiere el desenlace de la liberaci?n de los 15 secuestrados. La estrategia delineada por el Comando Sur y el Pent?gono, y plasmada en el Plan Colombia II, no contempla ni la derrota definitiva ni la negociaci?n con la guerrilla. Eliminar a las FARC del escenario ser?a un p?simo negocio para la estrategia imperial de desestabilizaci?n y recolonizaci?n de la regi?n andina, a la que Fidel Castro defini? como "paz romana". Ese proyecto no puede llevarse a cabo sin guerra, directa o indirecta, o sea sin la desestabilizaci?n permanente como forma de reconfiguraci?n territorial y pol?tica de la estrat?gica regi?n que incluye el arco que va de Venezuela a Bolivia y Paraguay, pasando por Colombia, Ecuador y Per?. Por un lado, se trata de despejar la regi?n andina para facilitar el negocio multinacional actual (miner?a a cielo abierto, hidrocarburos, biodiversidad, monocultivos para agrocombustibles) que supone tanto la apropiaci?n de los bienes comunes como el desplazamiento de las poblaciones que a?n sobreviven en esos espacios. No estamos ante un capitalismo, digamos, "normal", el que fue capaz en su momento de establecer alianzas y pactos que dieron vida al Estado benefactor, en base a la triple alianza entre Estado, empresarios nacionales y sindicatos. Se trata de un modelo financiero-especulativo y de acumulaci?n por desposesi?n, que sustituye las negoaciones por las guerras y la extracci?n de plusvalor por la apropiaci?n de la naturaleza. O sea, un capitalismo de guerra para tiempos de decadencia imperial. Este sistema asume la forma de capitalismo criminal o mafioso en pa?ses como Colombia, porque no s?lo es funcional a la guerra y al robo, sino que ellas forman su n?cleo central, su principal modo de acumulaci?n. Eso explica la alianza estrecha entre empresas privadas de guerra, que cuentan en ese pa?s con 2 a 3 mil mercenarios apodados ahora "contratistas", con un Estado paramilitar como el que encabeza Alvaro Uribe, asentado en la alianza con paramilitares y narcotraficantes. En Colombia, a ese orden de cosas le han hecho frente tres fuerzas: la guerrilla, la izquierda del Polo Democr?tico y los movimientos sociales. La primera cree que puede vencer con las armas o negociar con ese nuevo poder. El Polo desestima el papel de Washington y de las multinacionales, como dise?adores y usufructuarios del Estado paramilitar mafioso, y sobreestima por lo tanto los m?rgenes democr?ticos. Los movimientos, por su parte, tienen grandes dificultades para superar la escala local y sectorial y no est?n en condiciones, por ahora, de erigirse en actores alternativos. El Plan Colombia II fue el encargado de dise?ar ese Estado militarista y en este momento busca afianzarlo. Ahora que las FARC no representan riesgo mayor para ese proyecto, aparece con claridad el objetivo de largo plazo trazado. Lejos de abrir espacios para la negociaci?n, como desea la izquierda, el mensaje de los ?ltimos meses indica un solo camino: ni la paz ni la rendici?n les garantiza la vida a los guerrilleros. O combaten y resisten o les espera el exterminio, como sucedi? a fines de la d?cada de 1980. Se trata de golpear sus n?cleos territoriales para desplazarlos hacia las zonas fronterizas con Venezuela y Ecuador, donde el Plan Colombia II aspira a convertirlos en instrumento de la desestabilizaci?n regional. Por eso Venezuela y Hugo Ch?vez adoptaron la estrategia de reducir la tensi?n con el gobierno de Uribe. No se trata de una cuesti?n ideol?gica, como pretenden algunos analistas. Ese debate vale para las mesas de caf? o los despachos acad?micos, pero tiene escasa utilidad cuando se trata de la sobrevivencia de proyectos de cambio social. Si se consolida el proyecto imperial, toda la regi?n sufrir? con la polarizaci?n, de ah? la urgencia por desmontar los conflictos, tanto en Colombia como en Argentina y Bolivia. Un eventual triunfo de Barack Obama tampoco modificar? las cosas. Puede atemperar los rasgos m?s autoritarios del uribismo, lo que explica el nerviosismo del gobierno de Bogot? y su sol?cita alianza con el candidato republicano. Lo cierto es que los planes del Comando Sur no dependen del inquilino de la Casa Blanca, y que estos apuntan a promover una acci?n integral en la regi?n que la convierta en una zona estable y un baluarte inexpugnable para mantener la hegemon?a estadounidense a escala global. En suma, las elites imperiales aspiran usar la fuerza de las armas para revertir su decadencia, que pasa por la recolonizaci?n de Am?rica Latina. En un per?odo como el actual, s?lo la movilizaci?n popular y las v?as pol?ticas pueden contribuir a debilitar la ofensiva que viene del Norte. - Ra?l Zibechi, periodista uruguayo, es docente e investigador en la Multiversidad Franciscana de Am?rica Latina, y asesor de varios grupos sociales. From shimogamo at attglobal.net Fri Jul 11 18:11:48 2008 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Bill Totten) Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2008 09:11:48 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Final warning Message-ID: <4877F6C4.3090704@attglobal.net> New Scientist via Acquire Media NewsEdge by Ian Sample www.tmcnet.com (June 27 2008) HOWLS of protest have been echoing round the globe as the price of oil punches through record highs with every passing week. In the UK, last month, hundreds of truckers descended on London to demand that planned fuel tax rises be scrapped. In continental Europe, where police clashed violently with truckers, two people died during the protests. Fishermen and farmers blockaded ports and depots in protest against the rocketing cost of diesel. Similar scenes played out across South America and Asia. In the US, the world's thirstiest oil consumer, gasoline reached an all-time high of $4 per gallon, forcing the administration to lean on domestic producers and consider suing foreign oil exporters for allegedly rigging the market. When President Bush implored Saudi Arabia, which controls the lion's share of the world's proven reserves, to pump more from its wells, the Saudis came up with only a token increase. The situation is not about to improve. Bankers Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have both suggested that the crude oil price could rise from the high of $139 a barrel (as New Scientist went to press) to $200 or more, while the financial speculator George Soros predicts that rising oil prices could send the US economy into recession. Expensive fuel at the pumps is just the start. These battles over the price of oil could be the harbinger of something even scarier. There is a growing realisation that we are teetering on the edge of an economic catastrophe which could be triggered next time there is a glitch in the world's oil supply. A number of converging forces are making such an event more likely than ever before. First, there is the spectacular rise in global oil consumption, which, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA) now stands at 87 million barrels of crude (about ten billion litres) a day. Most geologists now accept we have reached, or will imminently reach, peak oil. Some fields in the US and the North Sea have been pumped dry and production is becoming increasingly concentrated within fewer countries. Add a boost from speculators betting that things will get even worse, chicanery by the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) cartel which over the past two years has added Angola and Ecuador to its ranks to mask the decline in production of its existing members, and it's not hard to see why prices have been forced ever upwards. But price conceals the much more complex mess we're in. In the past, it has usually been possible to ride out any disruption to world oil flows - whether from accidents or hostile acts - by pumping more oil from the ground. That spare capacity has now all but vanished, as oil producers cash in on soaring prices by extracting as much of the stuff as they can. "There is absolutely no slack in the system any more", says Gal Luft, executive director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, a Washington DC-based think tank specialising in energy security {1}. It is this lack of wriggle-room that has brought us to the brink. In the days when oil producers had more leeway, they could make up for a disruption somewhere in the system by quickly raising production by around three million barrels a day, says Nick Butler, head of the Cambridge Centre for Energy Studies, part of the University of Cambridge's Judge Business School. That crucial reserve capacity has now fallen below the daily output of some producers - meaning that if the taps were turned off in any one of a number of unstable oil-supplying nations, such as Nigeria, Iraq, Iran or Angola, the impact would be felt almost immediately. This has left the oil market so fragile that a few well-placed explosives, an energy-sapping cold winter or an unusually intense hurricane season could send shock waves across the globe. The potential consequences are so serious that governments are drawing up emergency plans to cope should the worst happen. According to one analyst who took part in a simulation of just such a crisis, the situation most experts fear is what they call a "psychological avalanche". Here's what happens. A small, distant country one day finds it can no longer import enough oil because of a spike in prices or problems with local supply. The news media whip this up into a story suggesting an oil shock is on the way, and the resulting panic buying by the public degenerates into a global grab for oil. Most industrialised countries keep an emergency reserve as a first line of defence, but in the face of worldwide panic buying this may not be enough. Countries in which the oil runs out face transport meltdown, wreaking havoc with international trade and domestic necessities such as food distribution, emergency services and daily commerce. Without oil everything stops. The roots of our oil addiction can be traced back to the end of the 19th century, when petroleum began to be pumped from wells across America. It wasn't long before it become obvious what a great transport fuel it could provide. Oil-based fuels paved the way for intensive farming and extensive road networks; they drove the influx of populations into cities, drove growth in shipping and eventually made mass air travel possible. "Oil has shaped our civilisation. Without crude oil you'd have no cars, no shipping, no planes", says Gideon Samid, head of the Innovation Appraisal Group (IAG) at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio {2}. And it's not just about fuels. A giant chemical industry relies on oil as its feedstock, and without it many of the products we now take for granted would vanish. "You'd see no plastics, no bags, no toys, no cases on TVs, computers or radios. It's absolutely everywhere", says Samid. "Much of the economic expansion and growth of the human population in the 20th century is directly tied to the availability of large amounts of cheap oil", says Cutler Cleveland {3}, director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies at Boston University. "There isn't a single good or service consumed on the planet, except in rural economies, that doesn't have oil embedded in it. Oil is the lifeblood of the global economy." The secret of oil's success is its portability and extraordinarily high energy density. One barrel of oil contains the energy equivalent of 46 US gallons of gasoline; burn it and it will release more than six billion joules of heat energy, equivalent to the amount of energy expended by five agricultural labourers working twelve-hour days non-stop for a year. The vast majority of oil is consumed by transport. In the US, that sector accounts for nearly seventy per cent of the 20.7 million barrels the country gets through each day. . More than half of the world's oil comes from seven countries, the leading supplier being Saudi Arabia, which produces more than ten million barrels a day. Then come Russia, the US, Iran, China, Mexico and Canada. Twenty years ago, there were fifteen oilfields able to supply one million barrels a day. Now, there are only four. The largest is the Ghawar field in Saudi Arabia. The IEA, which advises 27 countries on oil emergencies, requires its members to hold at least ninety days' worth of fuel, which can be pooled and released onto the market if a crisis looms. The system last swung into action in 2005 when hurricane Katrina caused the shutdown of more than 23 per cent of the US's oil production capacity. A few days after Katrina struck, the IEA ordered the release of two million barrels a day from reserve stocks for a month, the first time reserves had been released since the Gulf war in 1991. About half the world's oil is distributed by tankers mainly plying a handful of key routes across the oceans. The rest goes through an extensive network of pipelines that can carry different grades of crude and synthetic compounds, such as lubricants. The bewildering complex of pipelines - extending 90,000 kilometres in the US alone - crosses continents and dips under oceans. The pipelines are often above ground and vulnerable to accidental damage or attacks by saboteurs. When working, however, they provide an extremely efficient way of transporting oil. A pipeline that pumps a relatively modest 150,000 barrels per day delivers the equivalent of 750 oil tanker truck loads or one delivery every two minutes, day and night. Even if a pipeline is damaged, it can usually be quickly repaired. Valves at intervals along the pipe can isolate the leak while the damaged section is replaced. Disruption can still be costly. A report in 2005 by a US House of Representatives subcommittee on terrorism reported that sabotage to oil pipelines in Iraq had cost the country more than $10 billion in lost revenues, even though protection had been a high priority for the coalition troops since they invaded two years before. The report suggested that groups hostile to the US and its allies were becoming increasingly expert at mounting these attacks. Choke points Even outside a conflict zone, accidents can cause serious disruption. Last year, the IEA was on standby to release reserves after an explosion in Minnesota shut down part of the 5000-kilometre Enbridge pipeline, which pumps 1.9 million barrels of crude a day from Canada to the US Midwest. This single incident halted one-fifth of US oil imports for days. Oil deliveries by sea are vulnerable too. A fleet of 4000 tankers plying six main routes delivers more than 43 million barrels of oil every day. Many of these routes pass through narrow "choke points", and if any of these were to become impassable, even temporarily, the effect on oil supplies could be dramatic. For instance, more than sixteen million barrels of oil a day are shipped through the Strait of Hormuz, at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, taking oil from Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to the US, western Europe and Asia. At its narrowest point, the strait is only 33 kilometres wide. If necessary, some of Saudi Arabia's exports could be diverted through the 1200-kilometre East-West pipeline to the Red Sea, but its maximum capacity is only five million barrels a day, half of which is already taken up. Between 1984 and 1987, during the Iran-Iraq war, both countries attacked tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, causing shipping to drop by 25 per cent. In 2003, the Bush administration claimed it had prevented further attacks on shipping in the strait. Another pinch point occurs in the Strait of Malacca, which narrows to just 2.7 kilometres between Sumatra and Singapore. Tankers from the Persian Gulf and west Africa transport some fifteen million barrels a day through the strait en route to Japan, China and other Pacific destinations. A report by Luft claims that some tankers have been hijacked here by would-be terrorists whose initial aim has been simply to learn how to operate them. In 2003 a small chemical tanker called Dewi Madrim was taken over by ten armed men, who sailed it through the strait before leaving with equipment and technical documents. One scenario being suggested is that hijackers might commandeer a liquid natural gas tanker plying one of these shipping routes, load it with explosives and use it to ram an oil tanker. If this floating bomb produced a burning oil slick, it could render the passage impassable for months, tipping the global economy into crisis as alternative routes would fail to make up the lost supplies. Another key element in the global oil infrastructure is Abqaiq, an enormous processing facility in Saudi Arabia, which removes sulphur from two-thirds of the country's crude. The CIA estimates that seven months after a large-scale attack, output would still be only forty per cent of its full capacity. More than half the oil from Abqaiq is pumped to the largest offshore oil terminal in the world, Ras Tanura on the Persian Gulf, which handles one-tenth of the world's oil. This makes it a prime target for attack, and the site is as heavily defended as a military base. "If you have a facility like this and a plane crashed into it, or terrorists get in and somehow succeed in blowing it up, then you have a very, very significant disruption on your hands. That is what analysts see as a doomsday scenario", Luft says. Reuters reported that one planned attack on the terminal was thwarted in 2006. Saudi oil production is particularly vulnerable because it is concentrated in a few massive production and distribution sites. "If one or two of these facilities goes down, then the entire system goes down", says Luft. So what would the impact be if oil supplies choked? In 2005, a group of current and former US government and national security officials were asked to address this in a live role-play exercise. Playing the part of the national security adviser was Robert Gates, who the following year became Secretary of Defense. The scenarios that unfolded were developed with officials from the Shell oil company in the Netherlands, a former US presidential counter-terrorism adviser and industry analysts. The simulation kicked off with an upsurge of political violence in Nigeria, the fifth-largest supplier of oil to the US. In the ensuing turmoil 600,000 barrels of oil production a day were lost from the Niger delta. The violence coincided with the start of a cold winter in the northern hemisphere, which increased demand by 700,000 barrels a day. Together, these events boosted the price of a barrel of oil from $58 to $82; a proportional rise today would push the price beyond $195. Events began to gather pace when, a month later, the simulation threw in an attack on the Haradh natural-gas processing plant in Saudi Arabia, which forced the country to cut 250,000 barrels per day from its exports - equivalent to the oil consumed every day in Switzerland - to meet domestic needs. Next, news arrived of an attempt to ram a hijacked supertanker into another vessel moored at a jetty at Ras Tanura. This was closely followed by a similar attack at the oil port of Valdez in Alaska, as well as a ground attack which set fuel depots alight. With the world oil shortfall now at 3.4 million barrels per day, the price per barrel had shot up to $123. Against the recent peak price of $139, that rise would take the cost per barrel to $295. The turmoil leads to an aggressive crackdown on anti-western groups and their sympathisers, which temporarily quells further attacks. Then, six months into the simulation, a terrorist campaign is launched against foreign workers in Saudi Arabia, killing 200 and wounding 250 within 48 hours. Evacuation of foreign workers follows. Though oil production continues unchecked, this loss of expertise leaves Saudi Arabia unable to meet future demand and with no spare capacity. Fears that this could lead to shortages in the future bring speculators into the market, and the price per barrel rises to $161. At the end of the simulation, global production has fallen by 3.5 million barrels a day, or four per cent of world oil supplies. One of the participants, Jim Woolsey, a former head of the CIA, described the scenarios as "relatively mild compared to what is possible", yet this proved enough to almost triple the price of a barrel of crude. The key conclusion being drawn from this scenario is how reliant the global oil market is on Saudi Arabia's ability to ramp up production on demand. If this extra oil is not available, the price rockets. Saudi Arabia's recent reluctance to increase production and the ensuing price rises in today's real-life oil market amply bear out this prediction. So where does this leave us at a time when global oil production is approaching the point when it stops growing and starts to decline? Most industry experts, including geoscientists and economists, who were polled by Samid in 2007 said that peak production will occur by 2010. This contrasted with a similar survey conducted two years earlier, in which respondents were split, with many of the economists opting for a later date. "Now, a real consensus is emerging", says Samid. This tells us that we will have to start making serious attempts to wean ourselves off oil, and fast. It will be no easy task. "It's hardly conceivable that the world could function without oil", says Didier Houssin, director of oil markets and emergency preparedness at the IEA. Finding a replacement fuel for transport is the biggest challenge. So far all the alternatives have hit the skids. For example, hydrogen, which could potentially replace oil as a green fuel if made using renewable sources of energy, has storage and distribution problems. While biofuels, which could be an easier replacement for fossil fuels, require feedstocks that compete with food crops for water and agricultural land. "To get these alternatives close to what oil can do, you have to invest a lot of money", says Cleveland, something most governments and energy companies have done reluctantly, and at pathetically low levels. "These aren't insurmountable problems, but they suggest the transition has some formidable challenges", he adds. One way or another oil will become more scarce, even more costly and will always have the disadvantage of generating carbon dioxide when it's burned. However hard it may be, the sooner we make the break, the better. Links: {1} http://www.iags.org/galluft.htm {2} http://www.peakoilwhen.org/ {3} http://www.bu.edu/cees/people/faculty/cutler/index.html _____ Ian Sample is science correspondent for The Guardian newspaper in London Copyright (c) 2008 Reed Business Information - UK. All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2008 Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC) - All rights reserved http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2008/06/27/3521248.htm http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From critical.montages at gmail.com Fri Jul 11 18:32:35 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2008 20:32:35 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Russia and China Veto U.N. Sanctions on Zimbabwe Message-ID: I wish they had vetoed the Iran sanctions, too. July 11, 2008 Russia and China Veto U.N. Sanctions on Zimbabwe By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 6:42 p.m. ET UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Russia and China vetoed proposed sanctions on Zimbabwe's leaders Friday, rejecting U.S. efforts to step up punitive measures against the authoritarian regime after a widely discredited presidential election. Western powers mustered nine votes, the minimum needed to gain approval in the 15-nation council. But the resolution pushed by the Bush administration failed because of the action by two of the five veto-wielding permanent members. The other three states with veto power -- the U.S., Britain and France -- argued that sanctions were needed to respond to the state-sanctioned violence and intimidation against opponents of President Robert Mugabe before and after Zimbabwe's recent presidential election. The proposal would have imposed an international travel ban and freeze on personal assets of Mugabe and 13 key officials. Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said sanctions would have taken the U.N. beyond its mandate in trying to punish political disputes by ''artificially elevating them to the level of a threat'' to international peace and security. Chinese Ambassador Wang Guangya, whose nation is one of Zimbabwe's major trading partners, also expressed fears of nation-tinkering and said Zimbabwe was should be left to conduct its own talks on how to resolve its political crisis. ''The development of the situation in Zimbabwe until now has not exceeded the context of domestic affairs,'' Wang said. ''It will unavoidably interfere with the negotiation process.'' South Africa, a Zimbabwe neighbor that holds one of the council's non-permanent seats, led the opposition to the sanctions, arguing that Zimbabwe is not a threat to international peace. Supporters of the resolution had counted Burkina Faso's Ambassador Michel Kafando as the crucial swing vote. ''As a means of exerting pressure, it could help,'' he said of the sanctions resolution before the vote. U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad expressed disappointment and said he found it ''disturbing'' that China joined with Russia. In London, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband criticized the veto, saying that ''it will appear incomprehensible to the people of Zimbabwe.'' The action put an end for now to efforts to apply more international pressure on Mugabe's regime and force it to share power with the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai. Both sides say they are willing to share power, if only during a transition to new elections, but differ on who should lead it. The long-ruling ZANU-PF party wants Mugabe at the head, something the opposition and Mugabe's critics in the West have rejected. From tal1 at cogeco.ca Fri Jul 11 21:34:40 2008 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2008 23:34:40 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Cell phones = Pop-corn Message-ID: > > Check this out > > > > http://www.koreus.com/video/telephone-portable-mais-popcorn.html > > > From tully2 at gmail.com Fri Jul 11 22:15:35 2008 From: tully2 at gmail.com (tully) Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2008 00:15:35 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Cell phones = Pop-corn In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200807120015.35271.tully2@gmail.com> http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/tech/2008/07/09/carroll.cellphone.popcorn.cnn On Friday 11 July 2008, Tony B. wrote: >> Check this out >> >> >> >> http://www.koreus.com/video/telephone-portable-mais-popcorn.h >>tml From critical.montages at gmail.com Sat Jul 12 04:20:46 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2008 06:20:46 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Czechs See Oil Flow Fall and Suspect Russian Ire on Missile System Message-ID: July 12, 2008 Czechs See Oil Flow Fall and Suspect Russian Ire on Missile System By ANDREW E. KRAMER MOSCOW ? Three days after the Czech Republic signed an agreement with the United States to host a tracking radar for an antiballistic missile system that Russia vehemently opposes, the authorities in Prague said the flow of Russian oil to their country was beginning to dwindle. In a statement on Friday, Czech officials declined to link the reduced supply to the deal signed Tuesday in Prague. Still, though the flow of oil can vary for technical reasons, it was clear that the Czechs suspected a connection and intended to ask the Russians to explain the decline. Russia maintains that the missiles meant to shoot down other missiles pose a threat to its own nuclear deterrence. The Bush administration says they are intended instead to counter a threat from Iran, which launched nine missiles on Wednesday. In the deal, the Czech Republic agreed to have the United States place a tracking radar on Czech territory. That radar would be linked to interceptor missiles elsewhere; the United States is in talks with Poland and Lithuania to host those. In one of his first foreign policy tests since becoming Russia's president, Dmitri A. Medvedev said this week that Russia intended to retaliate. "We are extremely upset by this situation," Mr. Medvedev said at a news conference in Japan, where he was attending a Group of 8 summit meeting. "We will not be hysterical about this, but we will think of retaliatory steps," he said. Shipments to Czech oil refineries through the Druzhba pipeline, which ties Siberian fields to the Czech Republic, are declining, the Czech Ministry of Industry and Trade said. It did not say by how much. It said in a statement that it was "trying to find out what is the cause via the Czech Embassy in Moscow." The Czech Republic has oil reserves to cover 95 days of demand, it said. A Czech Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Zuzana Opletalova, declined in a telephone interview to link the reduced oil supply to accepting the antimissile radar. "We don't want to say if this is related," Ms. Opletalova said, adding that the ministry hoped for clarification on Monday. Written questions sent to Russia's pipeline operator, Transneft, were not answered after working hours on Friday. In any case, the Czech Republic is far less vulnerable than Ukraine, which was severely hurt two years ago by a cut in Russian natural gas. In the 1990s the Czechs built, at great expense, a transnational oil pipeline from the West to open an alternative to Russian oil and reduce their vulnerability. This pipeline from Germany taps Western European networks supplied from the Middle East and the North Sea. The Ministry of Industry and Trade said this supply route could fully compensate for even a total Russian shutoff. The Russian leadership, emboldened by new wealth, is seen by critics as intent on restoring lost spheres of influence in Eastern Europe. Russia is the world's largest energy exporting nation, if oil and natural gas are counted together. Many Eastern European nations are wholly dependent on Russia for fuel. This dependence has stirred some fears of a spreading politicization of energy, at a time of soaring prices, akin to the 1973 Arab oil embargo of the United States. Russian officials have consistently denied exploiting energy as an instrument of foreign policy. The Russian prime minister, Vladimir V. Putin, said Friday that Russia would "comply with all our commitments to our foreign partners now, in the midterm and in the long term," the Interfax news agency reported. "We will behave responsibly, as usual," he said. In January 2006, Gazprom, Russia's gas company, cut gas supplies to Ukraine for three days, about a year after the protests known as the Orange Revolution ushered in a pro-Western government. The cutoff was ostensibly over a pricing dispute. Later in 2006, after Lithuanian authorities sold an important oil refinery to a non-Russian company, the Russian pipeline operator closed the pipe to that refinery, blaming technical problems. Judy Dempsey contributed reporting from Berlin. From critical.montages at gmail.com Sat Jul 12 04:42:38 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2008 06:42:38 -0400 Subject: [A-List] 2 Vetoes Quash U.N. Sanctions on Zimbabwe Message-ID: July 12, 2008 2 Vetoes Quash U.N. Sanctions on Zimbabwe By NEIL MacFARQUHAR UNITED NATIONS ? An American-led effort to impose sanctions against Zimbabwe failed in the Security Council on Friday, with Russia and China exercising a rare double veto to quash a resolution that they said represented excessive interference in the country's domestic matters. The United States, having earlier in the week mustered the nine votes needed to pass the sanctions, stalled on bringing the resolution to a vote until it became absolutely clear that Russia was determined to stop it. Once the Russians announced on Friday that they would exercise their veto, the Chinese, often leery of taking a lone stand on delicate human rights issues, followed suit. "The key thing is that the Russians decided to vote against it," said John Sawers, the British ambassador to the United Nations. "The assessment here is that China would not have vetoed it on its own because they have a range of conflicting interests at stake." Among other issues, China's reluctance to criticize the human rights records of African governments it trades with has come under international criticism as the Olympics in Beijing draw near. The United States and its allies supported sanctions as a way of getting President Robert Mugabe to take seriously mediation efforts to bring the opposition into the government. Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador to the United Nations, was particularly scathing in his remarks about Russia, saying that Moscow had supported a joint statement criticizing the situation in Zimbabwe by the leaders of the Group of 8 industrialized nations meeting in Japan this week. But he also singled out President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa as a target for barbed remarks. "The U-turn in the Russian position is particularly surprising and disturbing," Mr. Khalilzad said in remarks to the Security Council, saying it raised questions about Russia's reliability as a partner. The United States proposed an arms embargo, the appointment of a United Nations mediator, and travel and financial restrictions against Mr. Mugabe and 13 top military and government officials. The Council has moved away from broad trade sanctions in recent years because they were considered too harmful to the civilian population. The move for sanctions came after a June 23 agreement by all 15 Security Council members on a statement criticizing pre-election violence and saying that it was impossible to hold free and fair elections in Zimbabwe. In the first round of elections, on March 29, the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, won more votes than Mr. Mugabe, nearly 48 percent compared with about 42 percent for the president, according to the official tally. But Mr. Tsvangirai withdrew from the second round after a campaign of killing and intimidation directed at his supporters. Thomas Pickering, the United States ambassador to the United Nations from 1989 to 1992, said that convincing the Russians was usually the key to avoiding a veto on issues involving human rights. "If you can get the Russians, you can move the Chinese to an abstention," he said, noting that China usually only exercises its veto on issues involving Taiwan or the use of force. "They don't want to be the odd man out on a veto." Russia and China do not often exercise their veto together, the last time being in January 2007 when they blocked a Council effort to criticize human rights violations in Myanmar. Russia worked to bring the Chinese along on the veto on Friday, one senior diplomat said. The United States and its European allies have been trying to push more issues of good governance and democracy onto the Security Council's agenda in recent years, said Mr. Sawers, the British ambassador. They find themselves opposed by "those with an old-fashioned and literal view that the affairs of a country are a matter for itself, and the Security Council should not intervene," he said. "The Russians and Chinese have not been comfortable with that and the vote today reflects that." The Security Council's mandate specifies that it should only deal with matters that are a threat to international peace and security, and the differing sides on the resolution vote took opposite views of whether Zimbabwe constituted such a threat. Russia had indicated all week, without committing itself, that it was willing to show some flexibility on the issue, Mr. Khalilzad said, but at noon on Friday announced that it would exercise its veto power as a permanent Council member. "They decided to make a point on this issue, to say 'nyet,' " Mr. Khalilzad said. "Something happened in Moscow." Even though the United States knew at that point that it would lose, it decided to proceed with the vote anyway, to force the Russians and eventually the Chinese to publicly take a stand in support of Mr. Mugabe and the violence promulgated by his supporters to steal the election. Vitaly Churkin, Russia's ambassador to the United Nations, argued that the sanctions exceeded the Security Council's mandate. "We believe such practices to be illegitimate and dangerous," he said, calling the resolution one more obvious "attempt to take the Council beyond its charter prerogatives." China echoed that argument but also expressed concern about whether the sanctions would impede mediation efforts by South Africa. "We feel that the important thing is for the political parties to get together to discuss this issue seriously to sort out their differences," the Chinese ambassador, Wang Guangya, said before rejecting the resolution. "It will interfere with the negotiating process and lead to the further deterioration of the situation." In the end, nine Council members voted to support the measure: the United States, Britain, France, Belgium, Italy, Panama, Costa Rica, Croatia and Burkina Faso. The United States had initially been confident in getting the resolution passed because it had the support of Burkina Faso as well as other African states not on the Council, like Liberia and Sierra Leone. Burkina Faso's support was considered crucial. Besides the two vetoes, the other votes against the sanctions were cast by Libya, Vietnam and South Africa. Indonesia abstained. Throughout the debate on the Zimbabwe elections, South Africa had led much of the opposition, with its ambassador, Dumisani Kumalo, saying that the Security Council should let Africa try to solve its own problems. Mr. Kumalo said the resolution went too far in criticizing only the ruling party in Zimbabwe, the ZANU-PF, while wholly supporting Mr. Tsvangirai and his Movement for Democratic Change. That made it an unbalanced basis for mediation, Mr. Kumalo said, and on Friday he noted in his Security Council remarks that the talks between the two sides, which had started in Pretoria, South Africa, needed to be given some space without sanctions to succeed. Critics have suggested Mr. Mbeki, the South African president, has been overly indulgent toward Mr. Mugabe because both of them came from liberation organizations and face increasingly vocal trade union movements that want to replace them. Mr. Khalilzad accused South Africa of protecting the "horrible regime in Zimbabwe," calling it particularly disturbing given that sanctions eventually undermined the apartheid government that had oppressed South Africa. The American ambassador disparaged the mediation effort and Mr. Mbeki's position. "There isn't anything serious going on in terms of negotiations ," Mr. Khalilzad said. "The South African effort, President Mbeki's effort, so far has been a failure. President Mbeki's actions appear to be protecting Mr. Mugabe, and to be working hand in glove with him at times, while he, Mugabe, uses violent means to fragment and weaken the opposition." Mr. Kumalo said that while some pressure was necessary, the leap to sanctions was too fast and they should be threatened before being applied. Mr. Khalilzad said the United States had been willing to consider various options, including a longer timetable to apply sanctions, but ultimately Security Council members opposed to the resolution decided to reject it outright rather than negotiate. From the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com Sat Jul 12 10:02:13 2008 From: the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com (Leighm) Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2008 09:02:13 -0700 Subject: [A-List] Cell phones = Pop-corn In-Reply-To: <200807120015.35271.tully2@gmail.com> References: <200807120015.35271.tully2@gmail.com> Message-ID: <4878D585.90005@gmail.com> I knew something was wrong because when the phone is ringing, it's receiving, which really doesn't cause much if any RF. Still, the long term effect of heavy usage is unknown. Microwaves, if not directly damaging, are certainly mutagenic. FWIW, on the lower bands (I think cellphones are now in the 1.2, 2.4, and 4.8 gighz range now), like the 2 meter ham band (144 mhz) and the 152 mhz police/fire frequencies, the wavelength is approximately the same distance as the front to back distance of the eyeball, and the insurance companies WERE worried about high intensity usage as a beat police officer might causing cataracts. If there were any studies done, they were deep-sixed. It's one of the reasons for the move to lapel mikes and earbuds early on, not just officer convenience and security. There were also studies done on Ham Radio operator who used power amplifiers (2,000 watt pep) on the low bands (160-40 meters). These amplifier units are affectionately known as 'footwarmers' because back when they were tube amps, they were rather large and were put under the desk to kick your feet up on... Higher incidences of Lymphomas and other tumorous disorders in the lower body were noted, but due to the nature of Ham radio culture, it was not really possible to have a diverse statistical group.. Microwaves are much lower power, but high frequencies don't require as much power to achieve the same ...intensity, for want of a better word. Same is true for sound. In a PA system, hypothetically, the bass bins will use 1000 watts, the midrange speakers 100, and the tweeters will use 10. My opinion. The prognosis for heavy users who put the phone to their head all the time... Unknown, but of concern... especially if the phone has no extendable antenna (Sprint and some others others require vendors to supply phones with antennas due to better network connectivity) causing the whole unit to be the radiating element. Most heavy users don't hold the phone to their ear now days so this may be moot. For occasional users... I doubt any long term effect from the RF itself... BUT DON'T USE PHONES WITHOUT EXTENDABLE ANTENNAS! (and extend the one you DO have) Change providers if you have to. Socio-culturally.... long term effect unknown, but some things are observable. I've watched a flock of high school kids on a city bus sitting silently and texting furiously to people who weren't even there while their 'friends' sitting next to them did the same. No talking on the bus... It was eeerie. Gave me the creeps. Leigh tully wrote: > http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/tech/2008/07/09/carroll.cellphone.popcorn.cnn > > On Friday 11 July 2008, Tony B. wrote: > >>> Check this out >>> >>> >>> >>> http://www.koreus.com/video/telephone-portable-mais-popcorn.h >>> tml >>> > > > > > From tully2 at gmail.com Sat Jul 12 10:28:04 2008 From: tully2 at gmail.com (tully) Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2008 12:28:04 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Cell phones = Pop-corn In-Reply-To: <4878D585.90005@gmail.com> References: <200807120015.35271.tully2@gmail.com> <4878D585.90005@gmail.com> Message-ID: <200807121228.04934.tully2@gmail.com> On Saturday 12 July 2008, Leighm wrote: >Still, the long term effect of heavy usage is unknown. > Microwaves, if not directly damaging, are certainly mutagenic. I stayed away from cellphones for years because of this. But then I discovered that I could connect my laptop to the internet with one... Now I always use a wired headset with boom or put it on speakerphone. I also distrust bluetooth headsets because they are transmitting, too, albeit with less power. I wonder if in 10 to 20 years large numbers of people will be suffering brain tumors... and if so, whether it would get publicized... --tully From seanfischer at earthlink.net Sat Jul 12 12:10:47 2008 From: seanfischer at earthlink.net (Sean Fischer) Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2008 14:10:47 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [A-List] Russia And China Veto U.N. Zimbabwe Sanctions Message-ID: <31787301.1215886247481.JavaMail.root@mswamui-blood.atl.sa.earthlink.net> http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-zimbabwe-crisis-un.html July 11, 2008 Russia And China Veto U.N. Zimbabwe Sanctions By REUTERS Filed at 8:00 p.m. ET UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Russia and China vetoed on Friday a Western-backed U.N. Security Council resolution to impose sanctions on Zimbabwe for holding a violent presidential poll that was boycotted by the opposition candidate. The resolution would have imposed an arms embargo on the southern African country and financial and travel restrictions on President Robert Mugabe and 13 other officials, and called for a U.N. special envoy for Zimbabwe to be appointed. Nine countries voted for the U.S.-drafted text, five -- including veto-holding Russia and China -- opposed it and one abstained in the 15-nation council. The result marked a failure by the Western bloc to induce Russia and China to at least abstain because of the gravity of the crisis in Zimbabwe. It also sparked angry exchanges between the big powers. U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad accused Russia of a "U-turn" from its position at a Group of Eight summit in Japan earlier this week, when Moscow joined a statement backing sanctions against Mugabe's government. Russia's performance on Zimbabwe "raises doubts about its reliability as a G8 partner," Khalilzad told the council. Opponents of the resolution, which also included South Africa, Libya and Vietnam, argued that Zimbabwe was not a threat to international peace and security -- the qualification for council action. They said imposing sanctions over an election was interference in Zimbabwe's internal affairs and called for current talks in South Africa between the country's ruling and opposition parties to be given a chance. But British Ambassador John Sawers told the council it had "failed to shoulder its responsibility to do what it can to prevent a national tragedy deepening and spreading its effects across southern Africa." He called the Russian and Chinese decisions "deeply damaging to the long-term interests of Zimbabwe's people ... (and to) prospects for bringing to an early end the violence and the oppression in Zimbabwe." Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin responded that the resolution was "an ever more obvious attempt to take the council beyond its charter prerogatives and beyond maintaining international peace and security. We believe such practices to be illegitimate and dangerous." Chinese Ambassador Wang Guangya told reporters before the vote Beijing could not accept the language of the resolution and wanted dialogue between Zimbabwe's parties, "so to adopt such a resolution at this time would not be helpful." FRESH VIOLENCE Zimbabwean Ambassador Boniface Chidyausiku said the Security Council had refused to be "intimidated" by Britain -- former colonial ruler of Zimbabwe -- and the United States. "The United Nations has stuck to the Charter," he said. Voting for the resolution were the United States, Britain, France, Italy, Belgium, Croatia, Burkina Faso, Panama and Costa Rica. Indonesia abstained. In Zimbabwe, the opposition on Friday accused government security forces of murdering a polling agent in fresh political violence that could undermine the talks in South Africa. Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai withdrew from a June 27 presidential run-off poll, citing attacks on his supporters by pro-Mugabe militia. The MDC and Western powers branded Mugabe's landslide re-election a sham. Tsvangirai's MDC and a smaller faction began preliminary discussions on Thursday with officials from Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF under the auspices of South African mediators in Pretoria, the South African capital. "Yes, the talks are continuing," a diplomatic source close to the talks told Reuters on Friday. The MDC has played down the importance of the talks. Party spokesman Nelson Chamisa said there had so far been no real dialogue, merely "consultative contacts" aimed at outlining a framework for negotiation. A total of 113 MDC activists have been killed in election-related violence since the first round of elections in late March, the party said in a statement announcing the death of one of its officials, Gift Mutsvungunu. His decomposing body was found in a Harare suburb on Thursday, with eyes gouged out and a severely burned backside, it said. "There is reasonable suspicion that state security agents killed him." Tsvangirai defeated Mugabe in a March 29 presidential election but failed to win the absolute majority needed to avoid a second ballot. The MDC leader has refused to negotiate a power-sharing deal until the government halts the bloodshed. Once prosperous Zimbabwe has the world's worst inflation rate, estimated to be at least 2 million percent. Millions of people have fled to neighboring states to seek food and work. (Additional reporting by MacDonald Dzirutwe in Harare, Muchena Zigomo in Pretoria and Ellen Wulfhorst at the United Nations; Editing by Eric Beech) From seanfischer at earthlink.net Sat Jul 12 12:17:05 2008 From: seanfischer at earthlink.net (Sean Fischer) Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2008 14:17:05 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [A-List] Cell phones = Pop-corn FACTS Message-ID: <8329482.1215886625921.JavaMail.root@mswamui-blood.atl.sa.earthlink.net> Check this out http://www.snopes.com/science/cookegg.asp -----Original Message----- >From: "Tony B." >Sent: Jul 11, 2008 11:34 PM >To: A-List >Subject: [A-List] Cell phones = Pop-corn > > > >> >> Check this out >> >> >> >> http://www.koreus.com/video/telephone-portable-mais-popcorn.html >> >> >> > > From tal1 at cogeco.ca Sat Jul 12 14:46:09 2008 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2008 16:46:09 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Fw: Cell phones = Pop-corn Message-ID: <559AC92A63AB4A039331720EF9C15A45@TonyPC> The Toronto area health authorities *today* issued a blanket warning advising children and teenagers to severly limit usage of cell phones. The article ( in the Hamilton Spectator) did not specify the cause of the renewed concern. One thing that must be pointed out w.r.t. microwaves: their effect on animal physiology is likely *not* limited to their 'cooking' (i.e. heating/power spectrum) potential. Just as a 'for instance', I was only last year perusing some aging research papers sitting on the desk of a Prof. of biology friend of mine, and just casually noticed in one - and this reported entirely incidentally to the main thrust of the paper - that microwaves in the approx. 2 gigahertz range (cell phones) were seen to cause specific and repeatable alterations to gene transcription factors in a number of the genes relevant to the paper's topic...My reaction...'Holy crap!' In this regard, a doctor by the name of Robert O. Becker, wrote a book in 1985 entitled 'The Body Electric' in which, among other topics, he cited extensive research into the physiological effects of all manner of electromagnetic radiation done not only by Western scientists, but even more by Soviet era scientists (His claim - and seemingly reasonable - was that the results have been largely covered up and/or ignored by Western regulators in aid of maintaining 'business as usual' etc). One of his conclusions, in line with the pre-cautionary principle, was that a moratorium should be implemented on all further development of large scale EM radiation sources..especially those involving ringing the earth with satellites... this until these safety issues could by adequately addressed...He also reckoned the likelihood of such a moratorium being established..as nil. Becker, by the way, also reckoned that, according to his research, the most phsyiologically active part of the EM spectrum was the very low frequency range, i.e. 60 c.p.s ....you know, like that given off by your lamp. Tony ----- Original Message ----- From: "tully" To: "The A-List" Sent: Saturday, July 12, 2008 12:28 PM Subject: Re: [A-List] Cell phones = Pop-corn > On Saturday 12 July 2008, Leighm wrote: >>Still, the long term effect of heavy usage is unknown. >> Microwaves, if not directly damaging, are certainly mutagenic. > > I stayed away from cellphones for years because of this. But > then I discovered that I could connect my laptop to the internet > with one... > > Now I always use a wired headset with boom or put it on > speakerphone. I also distrust bluetooth headsets because they > are transmitting, too, albeit with less power. > > I wonder if in 10 to 20 years large numbers of people will be > suffering brain tumors... and if so, whether it would get > publicized... > > --tully > > > > From tal1 at cogeco.ca Sat Jul 12 15:07:20 2008 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2008 17:07:20 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Fw: Cell phones = Pop-corn In-Reply-To: <559AC92A63AB4A039331720EF9C15A45@TonyPC> References: <559AC92A63AB4A039331720EF9C15A45@TonyPC> Message-ID: Just a quick addendum: I realized I didn't necessarily make clear the relation between microwaves, 'alterations in gene transcription factors' and my claim that 'power' is not the only issue. The point I wished to make is that there is a subtantial body of evidence suggesting that certain EM frequencies (and these can vary extremely widely in their effect depending upon target and circumstances) can, *even with very low power densities* (usually measured in microwatts per square centimeter) can initiate small, but significant changes in physiological control systems, especially those involving endocrine, cardiovascular, nervous and growth processes. And just a last note: The potential physiological effects of EM radiation must further be couched in terms of their pulsation as well, i.e. A microwave frequency pulsed in 60 cycle bursts would, essentially, carry effects from both frequencies. In this regard, the potential for interference effects takes the subject to a much greater level of complexity. T. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tony B." To: "A-List" Sent: Saturday, July 12, 2008 4:46 PM Subject: [A-List] Fw: Cell phones = Pop-corn > The Toronto area health authorities *today* issued a blanket warning > advising children and teenagers to severly limit usage of cell phones. The > article ( in the Hamilton Spectator) did not specify the cause of the > renewed concern. > > One thing that must be pointed out w.r.t. microwaves: their effect on > animal physiology is likely *not* limited to their 'cooking' (i.e. > heating/power spectrum) potential. Just as a 'for instance', I was only > last year perusing some aging research papers sitting on the desk of a > Prof. of biology friend of mine, and just casually noticed in one - and > this reported entirely incidentally to the main thrust of the paper - that > microwaves in the approx. 2 gigahertz range (cell phones) were seen to > cause specific and repeatable alterations to gene transcription factors in > a number of the genes relevant to the paper's topic...My reaction...'Holy > crap!' > > In this regard, a doctor by the name of Robert O. Becker, wrote a book in > 1985 entitled 'The Body Electric' in which, among other topics, he cited > extensive research into the physiological effects of all manner of > electromagnetic radiation done not only by Western scientists, but even > more by Soviet era scientists (His claim - and seemingly reasonable - was > that the results have been largely covered up and/or ignored by Western > regulators in aid of maintaining 'business as usual' etc). One of his > conclusions, in line with the pre-cautionary principle, was that a > moratorium should be implemented on all further development of large scale > EM radiation sources..especially those involving ringing the earth with > satellites... this until these safety issues could by adequately > addressed...He also reckoned the likelihood of such a moratorium being > established..as nil. > > Becker, by the way, also reckoned that, according to his research, the > most phsyiologically active part of the EM spectrum was the very low > frequency range, i.e. 60 c.p.s ....you know, like that given off by your > lamp. > > Tony > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "tully" > To: "The A-List" > Sent: Saturday, July 12, 2008 12:28 PM > Subject: Re: [A-List] Cell phones = Pop-corn > > >> On Saturday 12 July 2008, Leighm wrote: >>>Still, the long term effect of heavy usage is unknown. >>> Microwaves, if not directly damaging, are certainly mutagenic. >> >> I stayed away from cellphones for years because of this. But >> then I discovered that I could connect my laptop to the internet >> with one... >> >> Now I always use a wired headset with boom or put it on >> speakerphone. I also distrust bluetooth headsets because they >> are transmitting, too, albeit with less power. >> >> I wonder if in 10 to 20 years large numbers of people will be >> suffering brain tumors... and if so, whether it would get >> publicized... >> >> --tully >> >> >> >> > > > > From nmgoro at gmail.com Sat Jul 12 18:16:38 2008 From: nmgoro at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?Q?N=C3=A9stor_Gorojovsky?=) Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2008 21:16:38 -0300 Subject: [A-List] China and Russia not vetoing harassment on Iran Message-ID: <2fa158550807121716qf7eee73w5db221bc3a930f67@mail.gmail.com> Why didn't -up to this moment, at least- Russia and China veto aggressions against Iran, when they do veto actions against Mugabe? This is an interesting point broached by Yoshie today. Maybe because Zimbabwe is very weak and support to Zimbabwe is a free meal that does not bring unsavory consequences such as bolstering a oh-too-independent country which is too near to both China and Russia for them to wish it to become too strong. Who knows. -- N?stor Gorojovsky El texto principal de este correo puede no ser de mi autor?a From shimogamo at attglobal.net Sat Jul 12 20:37:22 2008 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Bill Totten) Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 11:37:22 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Numbers Racket Message-ID: <48796A62.3010408@attglobal.net> Why the economy is worse than we know by Kevin Phillips Harper's Magazine Report (May 2008) Almost four decades have passed since the United States scrapped its last currency ties to precious metals. Our copper and nickel coinage still retains some metallic value, but not nearly enough for the purpose of currency tampering - the historic temptation of inflation-plagued or otherwise wayward governments, including, at times, our own. Instead, since the 1960s, Washington has been forced to gull its citizens and creditors by debasing official statistics: the vital instruments with which the vigor and muscle of the American economy are measured. The effect, over the past twenty-five years, has been to create a false sense of economic achievement and rectitude, allowing us to maintain artificially low interest rates, massive government borrowing, and a dangerous reliance on mortgage and financial debt even as real economic growth has been slower than claimed. If Washington's harping on weapons of mass destruction was essential to buoy public support for the invasion of Iraq, the use of deceptive statistics has played its own vital role in convincing many Americans that the US economy is stronger, fairer, more productive, more dominant, and richer with opportunity than it actually is. The corruption has tainted the very measures that most shape public perception of the economy - the monthly Consumer Price Index (CPI), which serves as the chief bellwether of inflation; the quarterly Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which tracks the US economy's overall growth; and the monthly unemployment figure, which for the general public is perhaps the most vivid indicator of economic health or infirmity. Not only do governments, businesses, and individuals use these yardsticks in their decision-making but minor revisions in the data can mean major changes in household circumstances - inflation measurements help determine interest rates, federal interest payments on the national debt, and cost-of-living increases for wages, pensions, and Social Security benefits. And, of course, our statistics have political consequences too. An administration is helped when it can mouth banalities about price levels being "anchored" as food and energy costs begin to soar. The truth, though it would not exactly set Americans free, would at least open a window to wider economic and political understanding. Readers should ask themselves how much angrier the electorate might be if the media, over the past five years, had been citing eight percent unemployment (instead of five percent), five percent inflation (instead of two percent), and average annual growth in the one percent range (instead of the three to four percent range). We might ponder as well who profits from a low-growth US economy hidden under statistical camouflage. Might it be Washington politicos and affluent elites, anxious to mislead voters, coddle the financial markets, and tamp down expensive cost-of-living increases for wages and pensions? Let me stipulate: the deception arose gradually, at no stage stemming from any concerted or cynical scheme. There was no grand conspiracy, just accumulating opportunisms. As we will see, the political blame for the slow, piecemeal distortion is bipartisan - both Democratic and Republican administrations had a hand in the abetting of political dishonesty, reckless debt, and a casino-like financial sector. To see how, we must revisit forty years of economic and statistical dissembling. A Short History of "Pollyanna Creep" This apt phrase originated with John Williams, a California-based economic analyst and statistician who "shadows", as he puts it, the official Washington numbers. In a 2006 interview, Williams noted that although few Americans ever see the fine print, the government "always footnotes the changes and provides all the fine detail. Nonetheless, some of the changes are nothing short of remarkable, and the pattern over time is what I call Pollyanna Creep." Williams is one of the small group of economists and analysts who have paid any attention to the phenomenon. A few have pointed out the understatement of the Consumer Price Index - the billionaire bond manager Bill Gross has described it as an "haute con job", and Bloomberg columnist John Wasik has dismissed it as "a testament to the art of spin". In 2003, a University of Chicago economist named Austan Goolsbee (now a senior economic adviser to Barack Obama's presidential campaign) published an op-ed in the New York Times pointing out how the government had minimized the depth of the 2001-2002 US recession, having "cooked the books" to misstate and minimize the unemployment numbers. Unfortunately, the critics have tended to train their axes on a single abuse, missing the broad forest of statistical misinformation that has grown up over the past four decades. The story starts after the inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1961, when high jobless numbers marred the image of Camelot-on-the-Potomac and the new administration appointed a committee to weigh changes. The result, implemented a few years later, was that out-of-work Americans who had stopped looking for jobs - even if this was because none could be found - were labeled "discouraged workers" and excluded from the ranks of the unemployed, where many, if not most, of them had been previously classified. Lyndon Johnson, for his part, was widely rumored to have personally scrutinized and sometimes tweaked Gross National Product numbers before their release; and by the 1969 fiscal year, Johnson had orchestrated a "unified budget" that combined Social Security with the rest of the federal outlays. This innovation allowed the surplus receipts in the former to mask the emerging deficit in the latter. Richard Nixon, besides continuing the unified budget, developed his own taste for statistical improvement. He proposed - albeit unsuccessfully - that the Labor Department, which prepared both seasonally adjusted and non-adjusted unemployment numbers, should just publish whichever number was lower. In a more consequential move, he asked his second Federal Reserve chairman, Arthur Burns, to develop what became an ultimately famous division between "core" inflation and headline inflation. If the Consumer Price Index was calculated by tracking a bundle of prices, so-called core inflation would simply exclude, because of "volatility", categories that happened to be troublesome: at that time, food and energy. Core inflation could be spotlighted when the headline number was embarrassing, as it was in 1973 and 1974. (The economic commentator Barry Ritholtz has joked that core inflation is better called "inflation ex-inflation" - that is, inflation after the inflation has been excluded.) In 1983, under the Reagan Administration, inflation was further finagled when the Bureau of Labor Statistics decided that housing, too, was overstating the Consumer Price Index; the BLS substituted an entirely different "Owner Equivalent Rent" measurement, based on what a homeowner might get for renting his or her house. This methodology, controversial at the time but still in place today, simply sidestepped what was happening in the real world of homeowner costs. Because low inflation encourages low interest rates, which in turn make it much easier to borrow money, the BLS's decision no doubt encouraged, during the late 1980s, the large and often speculative expansion in private debt - much of which involved real estate, and some of which went spectacularly bad between 1989 and 1992 in the savings-and-loan, real estate, and junk-bond scandals. Also, on the unemployment front, as Austan Goolsbee pointed out in his New York Times op-ed, the Reagan Administration further trimmed the number by reclassifying members of the military as "employed" instead of outside the labor force. The distortional inclinations of the next president, George H W Bush, came into focus in 1990, when Michael Boskin, the chairman of his Council of Economic Advisers, proposed to reorient US economic statistics principally to reduce the measured rate of inflation. His stated grand ambition was to move the calculus away from old industrial-era methodologies toward the emerging services economy and the expanding retail and financial sectors. Skeptics, however, countered that the underlying goal, driven by worry over federal budget deficits, was to reduce the inflation rate in order to reduce federal payments - from interest on the national debt to cost-of-living outlays for government employees, retirees, and Social Security recipients. It was left to the Clinton Administration to implement these convoluted CPI measurements, which were reiterated in 1996 through a commission headed by Boskin and promoted by Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. The Clintonites also extended the Pollyanna Creep of the nation's employment figures. Although expunged from the ranks of the unemployed, discouraged workers had nevertheless been counted in the larger workforce. But in 1994, the Bureau of Labor Statistics redefined the workforce to include only that small percentage of the discouraged who had been seeking work for less than a year. The longer-term discouraged - some four million US adults - fell out of the main monthly tally. Some now call them the "hidden unemployed". For its last four years, the Clinton Administration also thinned the monthly household economic sampling by one sixth, from 60,000 to 50,000, and a disproportionate number of the dropped households were in the inner cities; the reduced sample (and a new adjustment formula) is believed to have reduced black unemployment estimates and eased worsening poverty figures. Despite the present Bush Administration's overall penchant for manipulating data (for example, Iraq, climate change), it has yet to match its predecessor in economic revisions. In 2002, the administration did, however, for two months fail to publish the Mass Layoff Statistics report, because of its embarrassing nature after the 2001 recession had supposedly ended; it introduced, that same year, an "experimental" new CPI calculation (the C-CPI-U), which shaved another 0.3 percent off the official CPI; and since 2006 it has stopped publishing the M-3 money supply numbers, which captured rising inflationary impetus from bank credit activity. In 2005, Bush proposed, but Congress shunned, a new, narrower historical wage basis for calculating future retiree Social Security benefits. By late last year, the Gallup Poll reported that public faith in the federal government had sunk below even post-Watergate levels. Whether statistical deceit played any direct role is unclear, but it does seem that citizens have got the right general idea. After forty years of manipulation, more than a few measurements of the US economy have been distorted beyond recognition. America's "Opacity" Crisis Last year, the word "opacity", hitherto reserved for Scrabble games, became a mainstay of the financial press. A credit market panic had been triggered by something called collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), which in some cases were too complicated to be fathomed even by experts. The packagers and marketers of CDOs were forced to acknowledge that their hypertechnical securities were fraught with "opacity" - a convenient, ethically and legally judgment-free word for lack of honest labeling. And far from being rare, opacity is commonplace in contemporary finance. Intricacy has become a conduit for deception. Exotic derivative instruments with alphabet-soup initials command notional values in the hundreds of trillions of dollars, but nobody knows what they are really worth. Some days, half of the trades on major stock exchanges come from so-called black boxes programmed with everything from binomial trees to algorithms; most federal securities regulators couldn't explain them, much less monitor them. Transparency is the hallmark of democracy, but we now find ourselves with economic statistics every bit as opaque - and as vulnerable to double-dealing - as a subprime CDO. Of the "big three" statistics, let us start with unemployment. Most of the people tired of looking for work, as mentioned above, are no longer counted in the workforce, though they do still show up in one of the auxiliary unemployment numbers. The BLS has six different regular jobless measurements - U-l, U-2, U-3 (the one routinely cited), U-4, U-5, and U-6. In January 2008, the U-4 to U-6 series produced unemployment numbers ranging from 5.2 percent to 9.0 percent, all above the "official" number. The series nearest to real-world conditions is, not surprisingly, the highest: U-6, which includes part-timers looking for full-time employment as well as other members of the "marginally attached", a new catchall meaning those not looking for a job but who say they want one. Yet this does not even include the Americans who (as Austan Goolsbee puts it) have been "bought off the unemployment rolls" by government programs such as Social Security disability, whose recipients are classified as outside the labor force. Second is the Gross Domestic Product, which in itself represents something of a fudge: federal economists used the Gross National Product until 1991, when rising US international debt costs made the narrower GDP assessment more palatable. The GDP has been subject to many further fiddles, the most manipulatable of which are the adjustments made for the presumed starting up and ending of businesses (the "birth/death of businesses" equation) and the amounts that the Bureau of Economic Analysis "imputes" to nationwide personal income data (known as phantom income boosters, or imputations; for example, the imputed income from living in one's own home, or the benefit one receives from a free checking account, or the value of employer-paid health- and life- insurance premiums). During 2007, believe it or not, imputed income accounted for some fifteen percent of GDP. John Williams, the economic statistician, is briskly contemptuous of GDP numbers over the past quarter century. "Upward growth biases built into GDP modeling since the early 1980s have rendered this important series nearly worthless", he wrote in 2004. "[T]he recessions of 1990/1991 and 2001 were much longer and deeper than currently reported [and] lesser downturns in 1986 and 1995 were missed completely". Nothing, however, can match the tortured evolution of the third key number, the somewhat misnamed Consumer Price Index. Government economists themselves admit that the revisions during the Clinton years worked to reduce the current inflation figures by more than a percentage point, but the overall distortion has been considerably more severe. Just the 1983 manipulation, which substituted "owner equivalent rent" for home-ownership costs, served to understate or reduce inflation during the recent housing boom by three to four percentage points. Moreover, since the 1990s, the CPI has been subjected to three other adjustments, all downward and all dubious: product substitution (if flank steak gets too expensive, people are assumed to shift to hamburger, but nobody is assumed to move up to filet mignon) , geometric weighting (goods and services in which costs are rising most rapidly get a lower weighting for a presumed reduction in consumption), and, most bizarrely, hedonic adjustment, an unusual computation by which additional quality is attributed to a product or service. The hedonic adjustment, in particular, is as hard to estimate as it is to take seriously. (That it was launched during the tenure of the Oval Office's preeminent hedonist, William Jefferson Clinton, only adds to the absurdity.) No small part of the condemnation must lie in the timing. If quality improvements are to be counted, that count should have begun in the 1950s and 1960s, when such products and services as air-conditioning, air travel, and automatic transmissions - and these are just the A's! - improved consumer satisfaction to a comparable or greater degree than have more recent innovations. That the change was made only in the late Nineties shrieks of politics and opportunism, not integrity of measurement. Most of the time, hedonic adjustment is used to reduce the effective cost of goods, which in turn reduces the stated rate of inflation. Reversing the theory, however, the declining quality of goods or services should adjust effective prices and thereby add to inflation, but that side of the equation generally goes missing. "All in all", Williams points out, "if you were to peel back changes that were made in the CPI going back to the Carter years, you'd see that the CPI would now be 3.5 percent to 4 percent higher" - meaning that, because of lost CPI increases, Social Security checks would be seventy percent greater than they currently are. Furthermore, when discussing price pressure, government officials invariably bring up "core" inflation, which excludes precisely the two categories - food and energy - now verging on another 1970s-style price surge. This year we have already seen major US food and grocery companies, among them Kellogg and Kraft, report sharp declines in earnings caused by rising grain and dairy prices. Central banks from Europe to Japan worry that the biggest inflation jumps in ten to fifteen years could get in the way of reducing interest rates to cope with weakening economies. Even the US Labor Department acknowledged that in January, the price of imported goods had increased 13.7 percent compared with a year earlier, the biggest surge since record-keeping began in 1982. From Maine to Australia, from Alaska to the Middle East, a hydra-headed inflation is on the loose, unleashed by the many years of rapid growth in the supply of money from the world's central banks (not least the US Federal Reserve), as well as by massive public and private debt creation. The US Economy Ex-Distortion The real numbers, to most economically minded Americans, would be a face full of cold water. Based on the criteria in place a quarter century ago, today's US unemployment rate is somewhere between nine percent and twelve percent; the inflation rate is as high as seven or even ten percent; economic growth since the recession of 2001 has been mediocre, despite a huge surge in the wealth and incomes of the superrich, and we are falling back into recession. If what we have been sold in recent years has been delusional "Pollyanna Creep", what we really need today is a picture of our economy ex-distortion. For what it would reveal is a nation in deep difficulty not just domestically but globally. Undermeasurement of inflation, in particular, hangs over our heads like a guillotine. To acknowledge it would send interest rates climbing, and thereby would endanger the viability of the massive buildup of public and private debt (from less than $11 trillion in 1987 to $49 trillion last year) that props up the American economy. Moreover, the rising cost of pensions, benefits, borrowing, and interest payments - all indexed or related to inflation - could join with the cost of financial bailouts to overwhelm the federal budget. As inflation and interest rates have been kept artificially suppressed, the United States has been indentured to its volatile financial sector, with its predilection for leverage and risky buccaneering. Arguably, the unraveling has already begun. As Robert Hardaway, a professor at the University of Denver, pointed out last September, the subprime lending crisis "can be directly traced back to the [1983] BLS decision to exclude the price of housing from the CPI ... With the illusion of low inflation inducing lenders to offer six percent loans, not only has speculation run rampant on the expectations of ever-rising home prices, but home buyers by the millions have been tricked into buying homes even though they only qualified for the teaser rates". Were mainstream interest rates to jump into the seven to nine percent range - which could happen if inflation were to spur new concern - both Washington and Wall Street would be walking in quicksand. The make-believe economy of the past two decades, with its asset bubbles, massive borrowing, and rampant data distortion, would be in serious jeopardy. The US dollar, off more than forty percent against the euro since 2002, could slip down an even rockier slope. The credit markets are fearful, and the financial markets are nervous. If gloom continues, our humbugged nation may truly regret losing sight of history, risk, and common sense. _____ Kevin Phillips's new book, Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism, was published last month by Viking. http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From critical.montages at gmail.com Sat Jul 12 21:38:26 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2008 23:38:26 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Haaretz: "Arab State Tells Israel It Won't Oppose Iran Strike" Message-ID: I can find this article only in the Google cache. -- Yoshie Last update - 09:00 11/07/2008 Arab state tells Israel it won't oppose Iran strike By Yoav Stern, Mazal Mualem and Barak Ravid :Tags Iran, Israel, Arab state Official representatives of an Arab country have hinted in meetings with Israeli officials that they would not oppose an Israeli military operation against Iran, sources in Jerusalem said this week. According to the sources, the representatives of the Arab country said they are worried by Iran's growing influence in the region, primarily among Shi'ite communities in Arab states. "Defense Minister Ehud Barak hinted Thursday that Israel would be willing to attack Iran when he said that "Israel is the strongest country in the region and has proved in the past that it is not deterred from activity when there is concern that its vital interests could be harmed. The representatives told the Israeli officials that other Arab countries are also troubled by Iran's policy. Some Arab states are afraid that Iran's growing power will create a rift between Sunnis and Shi'ites. That concern is especially rife in Arab countries with a Shi'ite minority. Political sources in Israel told Haaretz that Iran's increasingly belligerent statements have worried the Gulf states, which want American protection against Tehran. "If this is how Iran threatens when it doesn't have nuclear weapons, what will it do when its nuclear program ripens?" one Israeli source said. "Addressing the Iranian issue during a Labor Party meeting in Tel Aviv on Thursday, Barak said that "at the moment the focus is on international sanctions and intensive diplomatic activity, and these channels have to be exhausted. From tal1 at cogeco.ca Sat Jul 12 21:47:49 2008 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2008 23:47:49 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Cell phones = Pop-corn FACTS In-Reply-To: <8329482.1215886625921.JavaMail.root@mswamui-blood.atl.sa.earthlink.net> References: <8329482.1215886625921.JavaMail.root@mswamui-blood.atl.sa.earthlink.net> Message-ID: <45DA1CD8269B4E418FF1275BB68524A8@TonyPC> ..Yeh, a stream of 'reports' - but without any real support either - was coming my way claiming the popcorn thing was a fraud...so thanks for the reference. Tony ----- Original Message ----- From: "Sean Fischer" To: "The A-List" ; "A-List" Sent: Saturday, July 12, 2008 2:17 PM Subject: Re: [A-List] Cell phones = Pop-corn FACTS > Check this out > > > http://www.snopes.com/science/cookegg.asp > > > > > -----Original Message----- >>From: "Tony B." >>Sent: Jul 11, 2008 11:34 PM >>To: A-List >>Subject: [A-List] Cell phones = Pop-corn >> >> >> >>> >>> Check this out >>> >>> >>> >>> http://www.koreus.com/video/telephone-portable-mais-popcorn.html >>> >>> >>> >> >> > > > From critical.montages at gmail.com Sat Jul 12 22:16:07 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 00:16:07 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Africa Faces Another Rising Expense: Fuel Message-ID: July 12, 2008 Africa Faces Another Rising Expense: Fuel By LYDIA POLGREEN DAKAR, Senegal ? In the United States, where the median household income is about $48,000, $4-a-gallon gas is painful. In Nigeria, most of whose 140 million citizens live on less than $2 a day despite their country's status as the world's eighth largest oil exporter, $5.50-a-gallon diesel is excruciating. Daniel Idoko runs a small business center in Abuja, Nigeria's capital, and because the country's electricity supply is so balky, he relies on a diesel generator to run his computers, fax machines and copiers. The price of diesel has increased by 110 percent in the past few months, transforming his once prosperous small business from an asset to a liability. "I employ six people and pay rent for this shop, salaries, and I maintain equipment," Mr. Idoko said Friday, with a mix of frustration and resignation. "How much do I have to make to break even?" Rising global food prices have sent discontent rippling across Africa in recent months, prompting riots and demonstrations from Zambia to Senegal, Tanzania to Niger. Now fuel prices are causing rumblings as well. On Friday, fuel tanker drivers in Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation, went on strike over rising prices of diesel fuel and poor road conditions, a move that could cripple the economy. In Africa, fuel prices are a much less emotional issue than food prices. Food takes up 50 percent or more of a household's budget, but since most people do not have cars, the price of gas is meaningful only as it relates to bus and taxi fares. But now those are rising rapidly, too. In Namibia this week, bus and taxi drivers increased fares by 10 percent after the country's sixth fuel price increase this year. In Senegal, a ride in a private minibus that once cost 50 cents can now cost double that. Fuel prices are also eroding the profits of businesses across Africa ? where a single breadwinner sometimes supports a dozen people or more ? hurting some of the neediest people in the world. Prices have risen so fast that they threaten to undermine the continent's nascent economic boom, which has been driven in large part by high prices for the natural resources that many countries export. Benedicte Christensen, acting director of the International Monetary Fund's Africa department, told reporters earlier this month that price shocks had raised import costs across Africa, undermining growth. In Senegal, where power generation is largely dependent on diesel, the state-run electrical company has struggled to provide continuous power to large swaths of the country. Oumar Ba, a tailor who shares a large workshop with dozens of others here in Dakar, said the electricity was usually off half the day, cutting deeply into his income. "It is very hard to work like this," Mr. Ba said. "But I have people in the village depending on me, so I try to keep going." Countries that set national fuel prices, facing huge import expenses, have had to raise prices. Burundi, a tiny, impoverished nation that has suffered through civil war and mass killings, just raised its prices by 8 percent. Ivory Coast, a onetime regional economic powerhouse also struggling to recover from civil war, raised its fuel prices this week to more than $7 a gallon. In Nigeria, where corruption and misrule have squandered, by some estimates, as much as $400 billion in oil profits over the past 40 years, cheap gas is nothing less than a birthright. But Nigeria's dilapidated refineries cannot produce enough gasoline to supply the country. The government imports about $4 billion a year of petroleum products. Government subsidies have kept regular gasoline selling for about $2 a gallon, but the price of diesel, crucial for businesses and heavy transport, has rapidly risen. "The cost of diesel is too much so we can't even use the generators any more," said Dennis Mbang, 35, a pharmacist in a military hospital in Lagos. "The common man doesn't feel fine. The wealth is here, oil is here, but the masses are suffering." High fuel costs are a particularly bitter pill for Nigeria because its own troubles have helped raise prices. Attacks on oil installations by militants in the oil-rich Niger Delta region have helped briefly to knock Nigeria out of its spot as Africa's top oil producer, in favor of Angola. The International Monetary Fund's recent analysis of the effects of rising oil and food prices warned that at least 18 countries in Africa would be pushed to the tipping point by high fuel prices. "It is a potential source of instability, particularly when you combine the galloping price of petrol with food prices," said Philippe de Pontet, an analyst with the Eurasia Group, a political risk analysis consulting firm. In Liberia, one of the world's poorest countries after 14 years of civil war, price increases for oil and food would consume almost all of the country's foreign reserves. Higher oil prices will cost Ghana, which has one of West Africa's most promising economies, 8.1 percent of its gross domestic product, according to the monetary fund. Will Connors contributed reporting from Lagos, Nigeria, and John Alechenu contributed reporting from Abuja, Nigeria. From critical.montages at gmail.com Sat Jul 12 23:07:05 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 01:07:05 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Oil Prices and the Economy: Adhip Chaudhuri vs. Paul Krugman Message-ID: Q&A: Oil prices and the economy With oil prices having more than doubled over the last 12 months, various reasons are being cited for the price increases. Adhip Chaudhuri, a visiting professor of economics at Georgetown University's campus in Doha, Qatar, explains the cause and effect of high oil prices. [Q] Is the increase in oil prices plunging the global economy into stagflation? [A] The United States is, for all practical purposes, in a recession. The European Union's growth rates are being revised downwards below 2 per cent. The shine is coming off even China, India and Korea. The recessions and the low growth rates represent stagnation and hence connote the 'stag' part of "stagflation", and high oil prices have a lot do with it. Oil prices, together with simultaneous, huge increases in food prices, have increased worldwide inflation rates. Both China and India now have high inflation rates with China at almost 8 per cent and India at 11 per cent. The rising inflation is the "flation" part of "stagflation". The worse thing about stagflation is that the central banks find themselves in a dilemma. If they lowered interest rates to spur growth, they would raise inflationary expectations. On the other hand, if they fought inflation by raising interest rates, the reduction in money supply will have contractionary effects on the GDPs of their countries. For policymakers stagflation is a "lose - lose" situation. [Q] Is the growth in world demand for oil the main reason? Demand is one part of what the money market calls "fundamentals". The other is, of course, supply. In the opinion of the Bush administration, and the majority of the Wall Street establishment in the US, demand is the principal reason why oil prices are going up astronomically. However, this point of view does not correspond to facts. Consider first the oft-mentioned demand from "China and India" which is frequently put forward as the principal reason why oil prices are going up. According to official statistics published by the United States government, China consumed an additional 377,000 barrels of oil per day during 2007. However, during the same time period Germany and Japan together decreased their consumption by 380,000, and hence, the net effect of China's increased consumption is zero. Even if China doubled its consumption in the first half of 2008, say to stockpile for the Olympics, the increment would be a drop in the bucket of total world consumption of 86 million barrels per day. The same is true of India. It increased consumption by only 150,000 barrels per day during 2007, which is virtually indiscernible in the total world demand. Notice also that the sum of additional consumption from "China and India" barely exceeds 500,000 barrels, an amount that Saudi Arabia has promised to increase production by. Finally, the US has projected that the net increase in oil consumption during 2008 will increase by one million barrels per day, which is about 1.1 per cent. How can such a small increase in demand increase oil prices by 100 per cent between July 2007 and July 2008? [Q] What is happening with the supply of oil? [A] The supply of crude oil has been remarkably stagnant over the last three years. According to official US statistics, the production of crude worldwide was 84.63 million barrels per day in 2005, and it was 84.55 million barrels per day in 2007. Thus, even small increases in demand over the last three years have put upward pressures on prices. The near-term supply situation, according to the International Energy Agency, is not all that bad. Saudi Arabia will be adding to their capacity, deepwater Nigerian production will start in 2008, and Iraqi production will see an increase. If one added up the growth in all forms of energy, namely crude oil, natural gas, and biofuels, according to IEA there should be an increase in supply capacity of 1.5 million barrels during 2008. Notice that amount of increase in supply is greater than the projected increase in demand for 2008 amounting to 1 million barrels per day. The supply projection for 2009 is even better. The supply capacity is expected to increase by 2.5 million barrels, which will outstrip the growth in demand comfortably. It is the very short-term supply disruptions which seem to be more important for an increase in oil prices. Real disruptions may come from labour strikes in Venezuela, hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico, and rebel attacks in Nigeria. Given that the demand and supply situation is so tight, even the slightest of bad news can increase the price of oil in the futures and spot markets noticeably. [Q] Can the weak dollar be blamed for high oil prices? [A] Asserting that the "weak dollar" is a significant reason behind the rise in oil prices has become as ritualistic as asserting that "China and India" are the cause. And yet, the forces which determine the foreign exchange value of the dollar against the euro, the yen, or the pound are distinctively different from those that determine the price of oil. There is, however, one logical argument which can sometimes provide a sufficient explanation as to why a depreciating dollar and increasing oil prices are inversely related - If the dollar weakens against the euro, the ability of the oil-exporting countries to buy European goods will decline because their oil exports are denominated in dollars. The Europeans, at the same time, will be able to pay the higher dollar prices of oil because the euro has appreciated. Clearly, to keep their purchasing power over European goods constant, the oil-exporting countries need an increase in oil price approximately equal to the depreciation of the dollar. However, for the first six months of 2008 the dollar has depreciated against the euro by only 7.5 per cent, while oil prices have gone up by about 50 per cent. Surely, both Americans and Europeans are paying much higher prices for oil than can be explained by a "weak dollar". [Q] Is speculation, then, a major factor? [A] The energy ministers of Saudi Arabia and Qatar asserted for the first time in public at the recent Jeddah meeting of major oil producing and consuming nations, that speculation in the oil futures markets was the most important reason why current oil prices are going up. The United States Senate has been holding hearings in front of several committees since 2006 on the lack of regulation and oversight by the official Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) one of the two locations for oil futures. In a recent testimony to the Senate, a hedge fund trader presented data to show that outstanding speculative positions in all commodities futures has reached $250 billion by March 2008, as compared to only $13 billion at the end of 2003. As far as speculation specifically in oil futures is concerned, representative Bart Stupak (Democrat-Michigan), the head of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, announced recently that 71 per cent of all oil futures were owned by institutional investors. The institutional investors, which consist of but is not confined to state pension funds and university endowments from the United States, have been pouring funds into indexed commodity funds as part of a strategy of portfolio diversification. The traditional assets, in which they would have otherwise invested in, namely stocks and bonds, have been yielding negative returns after inflation. These investors can buy futures contracts with only a 5 per cent margin down payment. In addition the regulatory environment is very slack, filled with loopholes which bypass whatever few regulations that are on the books. While there are dollar limits to positions that the institutional investors might take in the NYMEX, they are allowed to conduct "swaps" with the investment banks like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, and thereby manage to roll over their "buy" positions. This way they never have to take physical possession of the oil that they put in "buy" orders for. If speculation is what is driving oil prices up, then it stands to reason that such high prices should lead to an excess supply of crude in the world. There are signs that such an excess supply is indeed building up, albeit slowly, much like the way the excess supply of housing emerged in the United States. Fuel consumption has declined in the US sharply. We have already noted that oil consumption in Japan and Germany are actually decreasing. Consumers in China and India have been insulated from the high world prices of oil until very recently with domestic subsidies. However, China has raised the prices of various petroleum products amounting to an average increase of 18 per cent, and so has India, by 13 per cent. The decrease in the demand for oil will start strengthening soon. The biggest argument for speculation to be the single-most important cause for oil price increases in 2008 is: What else could have doubled the price of oil in one year? The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Al Jazeera. May 12, 2008 Op-Ed Columnist The Oil Nonbubble By PAUL KRUGMAN "The Oil Bubble: Set to Burst?" That was the headline of an October 2004 article in National Review, which argued that oil prices, then $50 a barrel, would soon collapse. Ten months later, oil was selling for $70 a barrel. "It's a huge bubble," declared Steve Forbes, the publisher, who warned that the coming crash in oil prices would make the popping of the technology bubble "look like a picnic." All through oil's five-year price surge, which has taken it from $25 a barrel to last week's close above $125, there have been many voices declaring that it's all a bubble, unsupported by the fundamentals of supply and demand. So here are two questions: Are speculators mainly, or even largely, responsible for high oil prices? And if they aren't, why have so many commentators insisted, year after year, that there's an oil bubble? Now, speculators do sometimes push commodity prices far above the level justified by fundamentals. But when that happens, there are telltale signs that just aren't there in today's oil market. Imagine what would happen if the oil market were humming along, with supply and demand balanced at a price of $25 a barrel, and a bunch of speculators came in and drove the price up to $100. Even if this were purely a financial play on the part of the speculators, it would have major consequences in the material world. Faced with higher prices, drivers would cut back on their driving; homeowners would turn down their thermostats; owners of marginal oil wells would put them back into production. As a result, the initial balance between supply and demand would be broken, replaced with a situation in which supply exceeded demand. This excess supply would, in turn, drive prices back down again ? unless someone were willing to buy up the excess and take it off the market. The only way speculation can have a persistent effect on oil prices, then, is if it leads to physical hoarding ? an increase in private inventories of black gunk. This actually happened in the late 1970s, when the effects of disrupted Iranian supply were amplified by widespread panic stockpiling. But it hasn't happened this time: all through the period of the alleged bubble, inventories have remained at more or less normal levels. This tells us that the rise in oil prices isn't the result of runaway speculation; it's the result of fundamental factors, mainly the growing difficulty of finding oil and the rapid growth of emerging economies like China. The rise in oil prices these past few years had to happen to keep demand growth from exceeding supply growth. Saying that high-priced oil isn't a bubble doesn't mean that oil prices will never decline. I wouldn't be shocked if a pullback in demand, driven by delayed effects of high prices, sends the price of crude back below $100 for a while. But it does mean that speculators aren't at the heart of the story. Why, then, do we keep hearing assertions that they are? Part of the answer may be the undoubted fact that many people are now investing in oil futures ? which feeds suspicion that speculators are running the show, even though there's no good evidence that prices have gotten out of line. But there's also a political component. Traditionally, denunciations of speculators come from the left of the political spectrum. In the case of oil prices, however, the most vociferous proponents of the view that it's all the speculators' fault have been conservatives ? people whom you wouldn't normally expect to see warning about the nefarious activities of investment banks and hedge funds. The explanation of this seeming paradox is that wishful thinking has trumped pro-market ideology. After all, a realistic view of what's happened over the past few years suggests that we're heading into an era of increasingly scarce, costly oil. The consequences of that scarcity probably won't be apocalyptic: France consumes only half as much oil per capita as America, yet the last time I looked, Paris wasn't a howling wasteland. But the odds are that we're looking at a future in which energy conservation becomes increasingly important, in which many people may even ? gasp ? take public transit to work. I don't find that vision particularly abhorrent, but a lot of people, especially on the right, do. And so they want to believe that if only Goldman Sachs would stop having such a negative attitude, we'd quickly return to the good old days of abundant oil. Again, I wouldn't be shocked if oil prices dip in the near future ? although I also take seriously Goldman's recent warning that the price could go to $200. But let's drop all the talk about an oil bubble. From critical.montages at gmail.com Sat Jul 12 23:57:48 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 01:57:48 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Global Refinery Shortages Message-ID: From critical.montages at gmail.com Sun Jul 13 00:39:29 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 02:39:29 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Oil Shale, ANWR, and Offshore Drilling in the USA vs. Investment in the MENA Message-ID: What is the most environmentally destructive idea? That the USA must achieve "energy independence" in a world of "peak oil." That's the idea used to sell biofuels, oil shale, drilling offshore and in the ANWR, despite their high social, economic, and environmental costs. It would be much better environmentally to invest where conventional crude oil and gas reserves exist, such as the MENA region. But the US power elite want to pollute their own country, aggravating climate change, while curbing investment in important oil and gas producers in the South, such as Iraq, Iran (whose thoughtful power elite wish to turn their country into the France of the Middle East, meeting domestic electricity demand through nuclear power and exporting more oil and gas to the rest of what ought to be a grateful, energy-hungry world), Sudan, Venezuela, Bolivia, etc. through war, sanctions, coup d'etats, etc. -- Yoshie July 13, 2008, 12:10AM Despite 800 billion barrel potential, oil shale a hard sell Can industry overcome hurdles to tap rich fuel veins in West? By DAVID IVANOVICH Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle RIFLE, Colo. ? Along the western slope of the Rocky Mountains lies a possible path toward energy independence. The world's largest deposit of oil shale is hidden here, beneath a landscape dotted by pinyon pines and twisted junipers. If the oil industry can learn how to extract oil and gas from the oil shale in a cost-effective manner, the United States could lay claim to oil reserves totaling, perhaps, 800 billion barrels ? three times Saudi Arabia's. With oil prices riding high and conventional crude reserves ever more difficult to find and produce, companies including Shell Oil Co., Chevron Corp., Exxon Mobil Corp. and Schlumberger are conducting research on a resource that could forever alter the geopolitics of energy. But the history of oil shale has been a story of grand plans and locked gates. And its future is anything but certain. At best production is years away, while upredictable oil markets, growing water demand, sizable electricity needs and climate change all pose potentially huge hurdles. "We're working on the tough stuff," concedes Rick Mykitta, operations manager for Shell Oil Co.'s Mahogany oil shale research project. President Bush last month linked oil shale with his oft-repeated calls to open Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and more areas offshore to oil and gas drilling, hailing the "extraordinary potential of oil shale." But Democrats have barred the Bureau of Land Management from leasing any federal land forcommercial-scale oil shale projects. And whether a nation now focused on boosting use of renewables and lowering dependence on fossil fuels will give oil shale another look remains an open question. The Utes who populated this part of the West long before there were oil companies described oil shale to settlers as "rock that burns." Oil shale is not a shale at all, geologists say, but a type of rock called marlstone containing kerogen, an organic material left over from ancient lakes. The trick is to convert the kerogen into usable oil and gas. Skeptic Randy Udall of nearby Carbondale, Colo., argues that oil shale is but a poor cousin to other fossil fuels, with an energy content per ton less than one-third that of cattle manure and only slightly better than the potato. But oil shale's allure is understandable. The Green River Formation that sprawls across portions of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming is estimated to hold 500 billion to 1.1 trillion barrels of recoverable shale oil resources, a 2005 Rand Corp. study found. Experiment collapsed The Piceance Creek Basin alone here in western Colorado could contain as much oil as all the proven reserves in the world, the Rand study said. The energy crisis of the 1970s, with the twin oil price shocks sparked by the Arab oil embargo and the Iranian Revolution, prompted a great oil shale boom. Encouraged by incentives from a government-funded entity called the U.S. Synthetic Fuels Corp., oil companies rushed in. Expectations reached the fantastical. Exxon hoped to produce 8 million barrels of oil a day from the oil shale by 2010, according to Andrew Gulliford, author of Boomtown Blues: Colorado Oil Shale. The technology of that time called for mining the oil shale, crushing the material and then cooking it in kilns known as "retorts" to convert the kerogen into oil and gas. Chevron Corp.'s old Red Point Mine north of De Beque, Colo., is a reminder of those heady days when trucks loaded with oil shale snaked down the cliff side. The rock face around the mine entrance is blackened, evidence of lightning strikes on the exposed oil shale. The great oil shale experiment came to a crashing halt in the early 1980s with a collapse of world oil prices. Exxon, after spending more than $1 billion according to a Bureau of Land Management report, shut its oil shale operation. And within a few years, the federal synthetic fuels program had been abolished. Today, natural gas is the game, as producers employ new drilling techniques that enable them to get at gas trapped in tight sand formations. But policymakers in Washington never fully abandoned hope of developing the oil shale. A 2004 Energy Department report argued that America's oil shale, together with Canada's Alberta oil sands, could serve as "North America's energy bridge to the future." In 2005, the Bureau of Land Management launched a program to spur interest in the oil shale, handing out six leases for research and development projects on federal lands, where most of the oil shale is located. Shell, by nearly all accounts the industry leader in oil shale research, landed three of the leases. The subsequent ban on commercial shale leases doesn't prohibit research activities. Rather than return to the mining techniques, Shell is experimenting with a plan to heat the oil shale in situ, Latin for in place. Shell officials believe that by slowly heating up the oil shale underground, the company can derive high quality oil suitable for products like jet fuel, as well as natural gas, while also being more environmentally friendly. On lands near where coyotes scamper across the road, a golden eagle roosts on an electric transmission tower and wild horses graze in the distance, Shell has been tinkering with heating elements contained in metal casing that would be inserted around an oil shale formation. Udall calls it an "underground toaster oven." Project would need water Shell also has been experimenting with a process to create a "freeze wall," a technique used in mining and skyscraper construction, to keep groundwater from migrating in and cooling the heating oil shale. Any oil shale project in this region would mean new water demands on the Colorado River and its tributaries, vital waterways for much of the western U.S. and northern Mexico. Mining oil shale requires water to control dust and cool retorts, while an in situ process would need water for cooling, power production and refining, the Rand report noted. Shell officials say the old retort systems used seven to eight barrels of water per barrel of oil produced, while they expect their method would use about half that. The Rand report pointed to assumptions that oil shale would use about three barrels of water per barrel of shale oil produced. Shell acknowledges it has long been acquiring water rights in the area. That potential demand for water worries rancher David Smith of nearby Meeker, Colo., who relies on water from the White River that he fears will be diverted to the oil shale operations. The oil companies, Smith said, could help ease concerns by sharing in the cost of a water storage project. "They have not offered to do that," Smith said. And it would need power Besides water, Shell's oil shale project would require far more electricity than the existing power grid could supply. That likely means construction of a new power plant. In this part of the country, the most economical way to fire a power plant would be with coal. But in the next Congress, lawmakers are likely to pass legislation to limit greenhouse emissions, and coal-fired plants are huge emitters of carbon dioxide. That would add to cost, ever oil shale's nemesis. Shell, according to the 2005 Rand study, had anticipated its process would be competitive with oil prices in the mid-$20-a-barrel range. Oil has been trading recently at more than five times that level. Oilfield service costs have risen sharply since 2005. Today, Shell spokesman Tracy Boyd would say only that the project would be economical with oil prices at half the current levels. Shell won't decide whether to go commercial until the middle of the next decade, with production unlikely before 2020. Competitors are pursuing different approaches. Chevron, working with experts at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the University of Utah, hopes to avoid the need for so much power by extracting oil and gas through a chemical process. Exxon Mobil is investigating using an electric current to heat the shale, and Schlumberger ? with technology developed by Raytheon Co. ? is examining using radio waves to heat the rock. Oil Shale Exploration Co. could beat all these players to the punch. It's considering returning to the mining and retorting method to develop oil shale. The privately held, Utah-based firm announced last month that Brazil's oil company, Petrobras, and Japan's Mitsui & Co. had purchased minority stakes in the venture. "Whoever cracks the nut is going to be sitting high," said Carroll Campbell, a retired Shell operations supervisor. Fight over leases Whatever its technical prospects, oil shale also is caught in the tug of war that long has characterized the energy policy debate on Capitol Hill. When Republicans were in control of Congress in late 2005, GOP leaders inserted language into the Energy Policy Act of 2005 laying out a timetable for the Bureau of Land Management to craft regulations and begin large-scale commercial leasing of oil shale property. Last year, with Democrats commanding Capitol Hill, Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., and Randy Udall's brother, Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo., inserted language in a large spending bill that barred the Bureau of Land Management from moving beyond the research leases to commercial leasing. That moratorium likely will continue at least into the next Congress. Salazar, in an interview, said he supports looking at oil shale as a possible energy source for the nation. "I just want to do it in the right way." But he contends issues like water needs and other environmental impacts must be understood before leasing acreage for full-scale commercial operations. Meanwhile, the U.S. is trying to look beyond oil and gas. "Do we really want to add that much more fossil burning to the planet?" asks Steve Smith of The Wilderness Society. About 25 years ago, the nation turned away from oil shale. The question is whether America will do so again. david.ivanovich at chron.com From critical.montages at gmail.com Sun Jul 13 01:05:08 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 03:05:08 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Weather Risks Cloud Promise of Biofuel Message-ID: July 1, 2008 Weather Risks Cloud Promise of Biofuel By JAD MOUAWAD The record storms and floods that swept through the Midwest last month struck at the heart of America's corn region, drowning fields and dashing hopes of a bumper crop. They also brought into sharp relief a new economic hazard. As America grows more reliant on corn for its fuel supply, it is becoming vulnerable to the many hazards that can damage crops, ranging from droughts to plagues to storms. The floods have helped send the price of ethanol up 19 percent in a month. They appear to have had little effect on the price of gasoline at the pump, as ethanol represents only about 6 percent of the nation's transport fuel today. But that share is expected to rise to at least 20 percent in coming decades. Experts fear that a future crop failure could take so much fuel out of the market that it would send prices soaring at the pump. Eventually, the cost of filling Americans' gas tanks could be influenced as much by hail in Iowa as by the bombing of an oil pipeline in Nigeria. "We are holding ourselves hostage to the weather," said John M. Reilly, a senior lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an ethanol expert. "Agricultural markets are subject to wide variability and big price spikes, just like oil markets." Three years ago, Americans discovered that the vicissitudes of the weather could have a powerful effect on energy prices when two hurricanes struck the Gulf Coast. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita interrupted a quarter of the nation's oil production and closed dozens of refineries for weeks. Lines formed for the first time since the 1970s as gasoline spiked above $3 a gallon, a record at the time. The nation's increasing dependence on crops for motor fuel adds another level of vulnerability from the weather. It is still too early to estimate damage to corn crops from the recent floods, or their impact on ethanol output. Iowa, the biggest corn state, may have lost as much as 10 percent of its harvest, according to preliminary estimates. But concerns that the floods could tighten corn supplies this year have pushed up both corn and ethanol prices. Ethanol, which was already rising before the floods, has nearly doubled from its low of $1.50 a gallon in September. Unexpected interruptions in oil supplies have been a factor driving oil prices above $140 a barrel lately. Given the tight oil market, there is little untapped capacity that can be brought online to make up for sudden supply interruptions, whether of oil itself or of the biofuels that are increasingly substituting for oil. In the 1980s, the oil capacity cushion peaked at around 20 percent of global consumption. Today, it represents only about 2 percent ? less than Iran's petroleum exports. Analysts have warned that such record-low levels of spare capacity pose unprecedented risks to the stability of oil markets and introduce a significant premium in the price of oil. "There is now a vulnerability to perfect storms, not just in a metaphorical sense, but increasingly in a literal sense," said Daniel Yergin, the chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a consulting firm. "In addition to geopolitical risks, you must now add weather risks." While storms, torrential rains and hurricanes have always been a part of energy production, the areas where most of the nation's new oil and ethanol supplies are coming from ? the corn belt and the Gulf of Mexico ? are especially vulnerable to hazardous weather. "Our energy policy is like playing Russian roulette with every chamber loaded," said Lawrence J. Goldstein, an energy analyst at the Energy Policy Research Foundation, a group backed by the oil industry. "We've doubled up on the weather risk." Both the government and the ethanol industry recognize the risks of tying fuels to crops. The secretaries of energy and agriculture, in a joint letter to the Senate, recently said: "If we assumed a supply disruption of ethanol, we would expect a fairly large increase in the price of gasoline until ethanol supply were re-established or new market equilibriums were achieved." Backers of biofuels contend that growing ethanol supply is keeping gasoline prices from rising even higher than they have, by anywhere from 35 cents to 50 cents a gallon, in their estimation. They also point out that the government's ethanol mandate, which requires oil companies to blend ethanol into motor fuel, can be suspended in an emergency. Finally, they say that future ethanol supplies will be derived from materials like switchgrass or wood chips that are resistant to bad weather. Bob Dinneen, the president of the Renewable Fuels Association, the industry's main trade group, said only two out of 160 ethanol refineries nationwide shut down because of the storms. Both will reopen soon, he said. "There is a lot of overblown concern that is not really justified by the facts on the ground," Mr. Dinneen said. "Certainly the weather is going to have an impact on all sorts of industries. It had an impact when Katrina wreaked havoc on the refining industry. It has an impact on ethanol production, but it has been minimal." In recent years, corn ethanol has been one of the few sources of supply growth in transport fuels. Indeed, biofuels have become the single biggest source of new fuels produced outside of countries belonging to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. Production worldwide is expected to grow by 330,000 barrels a day this year, to 1.4 million barrels a day, according to the International Energy Agency. In the United States, bipartisan public policies have driven the rise of the ethanol industry. Congress has set rising requirements for oil companies to blend ethanol with gasoline, backed with generous subsidies that should total $12 billion this year, according to estimates by Barclays Capital. The ethanol mandate is set at nine billion gallons for 2008 and is scheduled to rise to 36 billion gallons a year by 2022. By various estimates, that would represent 20 to 25 percent of the nation's gasoline consumption by then. Corn ethanol is capped at 15 billion gallons from 2015 onward. The rest is supposed to come from advanced biofuels. They would not require food crops, but bringing them to market depends on perfecting techniques that are still experimental. Farmers who support the government's ethanol policy argue that truly disastrous weather in the corn belt does not happen often. "The last time we had real weather problems in the corn belt was 1988," said Tom Buis, the president of the National Farmers Union. "That's pretty rare." Emerson D. Nafziger, a professor of agronomy at the University of Illinois, said farmers still had time to recover this year, to some degree. But he said this year's storms were the first real test for the nascent ethanol industry. "We may end up feeling we dodged a bullet this year," he said. "We've had a run of fairly favorable weather in recent years. But there is no guarantee it will stay that way." From tal1 at cogeco.ca Sun Jul 13 01:07:24 2008 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 03:07:24 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Pakistan: US Shifts War Focus From Iraq To South Asia Message-ID: <96DAC18E76704CCAA07D4027CA2B2440@TonyPC> ----- Original Message ----- From: Rick Rozoff To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Sent: Saturday, July 12, 2008 8:44 PM Subject: [stopnato] Pakistan: US Shifts War Focus From Iraq To South Asia http://thenews.jang.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=123788 Daily Jang (Pakistan) July 13, 2008 The Yanks are coming Dr Farrukh Saleem One, in the month of June, for the first time ever, there were more coalition military fatalities in Afghanistan than in Iraq. Two, on July 7, President George Bush told the US News and World Report (http://www.usnews.com) that the "biggest challenge for the next president of the United States would be Pakistan and not Iraq or even Afghanistan." Three, Captain Patrick Hall, Commanding Officer of USS Abraham Lincoln, has new orders. This Nimitz-class, nuclear-powered aircraft carrier has been ordered out of the Persian Gulf into the Arabian Sea. The Abraham Lincoln Strike Group has USS Abraham Lincoln as the nucleus of the carrier battle group which include the following: a Ticonderoga class guided-missile cruiser that carries Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles; an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer; a Spruance-class destroyer for anti-submarine warfare; an Oliver Hazard Perry-class guided missile frigate; a Los Angeles-class submarine, a Sacramento-class fast combat support ship and replenishment ships. Abraham Lincoln has enough electricity generating capability to power 100,000 homes. Abraham Lincoln has three strike fighter squadrons of F/A-18 Hornets, a marine fighter attack squadron, an electronic attack squadron of EA-6B Prowlers, a squadron of S-3B Vikings, an early warning squadron of E-2C Hawkeyes and one helicopter antisubmarine squadron of SH-60F and HH-60H Seahawks. Four, on July 10, General David Petraeus, the commanding general Multi-National Force-Iraq (MNF-I), was confirmed by the United States Senate as commander, United States Central Command (CENTCOM is a "theatre-level Unified Combatant Command" whose area of responsibility include Pakistan and Afghanistan). Five, on May 22, General David Petraeus endorsed a US intelligence "assessment that the next 9/11-type attack on the US soil would come from Al Qaeda bases in Pakistan." Six, on April 12, during an interview with ABC News, President George Bush said that "Pakistan, and not Afghanistan or Iraq, is now the most likely place where a plot could be hatched to carry out any 9/11-type attack in the US" Seven, Robert Mueller, director of the Untied States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), in prepared remarks, told the Council on Foreign Relations (http://www.cfr.org), that "Al Qaeda has found new sanctuaries in the ungoverned spaces, tribal areas, and frontier provinces of Pakistan. As a result, Al Qaeda is regenerating its capability to attack." Eight, on April 6, US Senate Democrats sent a letter to President George Bush "urging him to shift anti-terror efforts from Iraq to Afghanistan and Pakistan." The letter said the "White House has committed too much of US resources to Iraq while neglecting 'terror-havens' of Afghanistan and Pakistan." The letter also asserted that "While violence and the drug trade have surged in Afghanistan and Pakistan's security remains fragile, we are distracted by an endless civil war in Iraq." Nine, on July 5, Michael Chertoff, the chief of America's Homeland Security, said, "Al Qaeda is regrouping in the border areas of Pakistan " and that he fears that "Al Qaeda and other militant organizations could resume their activities after turning the Pakistani tribal areas bordering Afghanistan into their centre." Ten, on July 10, the New York Times, quoting American military and intelligence officials, wrote: "There has been an increase in recent months in the number of foreign fighters who have travelled to Pakistan's tribal areas to join with militants there. The flow may reflect a change that is making Pakistan, not Iraq, the preferred destination for some Sunni extremists from the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia who are seeking to take up arms against the west." General Petraeus has defeated Al Qaeda in Iraq, physically and ideologically. On July 11, Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told BBC, "Pakistan was not doing enough to stop militants from crossing over into Afghanistan." What is Battlefield Band's next destination? =========================== Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato To subscribe, send an e-mail to: stopnato-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages http://lists.topica.com/lists/ANTINATO/read ============================== __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Database | Polls | Calendar MARKETPLACE Yahoo! Groups users, check out this limited time offer from Blockbuster! Rent DVDs free for a month! Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required) Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch format to Traditional Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe Recent Activity 3New Members Visit Your Group Drive Traffic Sponsored Search can help increase your site traffic. Popular Y! Groups Is your group one? Check it out and see. Yahoo! Groups Discover healthy living groups and live a full life.. __,_._,___ From tal1 at cogeco.ca Sun Jul 13 01:08:46 2008 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 03:08:46 -0400 Subject: [A-List] NATO, Pakistani Military Exchange Fire Message-ID: <0CD3B29C6EA94193922FBB979C52CCD2@TonyPC> ----- Original Message ----- From: Rick Rozoff To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Sent: Saturday, July 12, 2008 8:43 PM Subject: [stopnato] NATO, Pakistani Military Exchange Fire http://www.istockanalyst.com/article/viewiStockNews+articleid_2390163~title_Pakistan-Troops-Said.html The News (Pakistan) July 12, 2008 Nine soldiers hurt as Nato planes bomb Angoor Adda Mushtaq Yusufzai -A local resident of Angoor Adda, Mohammad Gulzar, said the bombing had shaken the whole town and terrified the residents. "The bombing was so heavy that rocked the whole town." -[A]fter the bombing by the two NATO planes, several mortar rounds were fired at Pakistani territory. -In retaliation to the unprovoked mortar attack, the Pak troops opened fire, which resulted in several casualties on the other side of the border. Peshawar - Eleven people, including nine Pakistani soldiers and two tribesmen, were injured when two NATO warplanes blitzed Pakistan's Angoor Adda town, a border village on the Pak-Afghan border in South Waziristan, on the night between Thursday and Friday [11 July]. Angoor Adda, which is about 25 kilometers west of Wana, often comes under attacks by the US and Afghan troops from the Paktika province. Official and local residents of the border town told this correspondent by telephone that two NATO planes had bombed the mountainous areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan. They said several bombs fell inside the Pakistani territory and hit the border towns of Zayara Leeta and Musa Neeka areas near Angoor Adda. The sources said a joint post of Pakistan Army and paramilitary Frontier Corps (FC) on the border also came under attack that caused serious injuries to nine soldiers. The injured soldiers, reportedly belonged to Pakistan Army, were airlifted to a military hospital in Bannu. Some of them were identified as Naik Omar Iqbal, Sepoy Imran, Sepoy Ali Gul, Sepoy Rafiq, Waqas Maseeh and barber Faisal. Two local tribesmen living in Angoor Adda were also injured in the attack. The residents said four vehicles owned by the tribesmen were damaged in the bombing. A local resident of Angoor Adda, Mohammad Gulzar said the bombing had shaken the whole town and terrified the residents. "The bombing was so heavy that rocked the whole town," remarked Gulzar. Also, he said after the bombing by the two NATO planes, several mortar rounds were fired at the Pakistani territory. The sources said all the rounds fell inside Pakistan. A senior government official in Wana, the headquarters of South Waziristan, confirmed that the Pakistani post was destroyed, but said he was not clear whether it was hit by planes or mortar rounds. There were also reports that mortar rounds were fired at the Pakistani territory when some militants attacked the US military camp at Birmal area in Afghanistan's Paktika province. Similarly, residents in Wana told this correspondent that a US spy plane was seen flying over Wana, Azam Warsak and Angoor Adda towns on Thursday night. The attack by NATO forces created a sense of insecurity among the people living in the border areas with Afghanistan. Several attempts were made to approach the Pakistan Army spokesman, Maj Gen Athar Abbas, for comments but he was unavailable. Meanwhile, ISPR [Inter Services Public Relations] press release says that six personnel of paramilitary troops sustained injuries on Friday when mortar shells fired from across the Afghan border hit Sera checkpost in Angoor Adda of South Waziristan Agency (SWA). In retaliation to the unprovoked mortar attack, the Pak troops opened fire, which resulted in several casualties on the other side of the border. However, the number of deaths could not be ascertained. Pakistan lodged a strong protest with the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) headquarters. =========================== Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato To subscribe, send an e-mail to: stopnato-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages http://lists.topica.com/lists/ANTINATO/read ============================== __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Database | Polls | Calendar MARKETPLACE Special offer for Yahoo! Groups from Blockbuster! Get a free 1-month trial with no late fees or due dates. Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required) Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch format to Traditional Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe Recent Activity 3New Members Visit Your Group Cat Zone on Yahoo! Groups Join a Group all about cats. Discover Tips on healthy living and healthy eating on Yahoo! Groups. Best of Y! Groups Check out the best of what Yahoo! Groups has to offer.. __,_._,___ From shimogamo at attglobal.net Sun Jul 13 08:50:23 2008 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Bill Totten) Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 23:50:23 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Internet Purchases Shouldn't Be Subsidized Message-ID: <487A162F.3000904@attglobal.net> by Mark Weisbrot The Huffington Post (June 16 2008) Can our state and local governments afford to subsidize businesses that conduct their sales only on the internet, rather than through physical retail stores? And if we could, is there a good reason to do so? These are the two most obvious questions when addressing the issue of whether internet businesses, such as the e-commerce pioneer Amazon.com, should have to collect and pay the same sales taxes as your neighborhood brick-and-mortar music store (if you have one) has to do. Currently they do not. On the affordability question, the answer appears to be no and getting more no. Fiscal year 2009 begins in a few weeks, and at least 29 states plus the District of Columbia are facing budget shortfalls. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, these states have faced a combined shortfall of $48 billion, or more than nine percent of their general fund budgets. Although many of these states have been taking measures to close their budget gaps, the current projections are likely to wind up being over-optimistic. The recession in this country has barely begun, and most governments are very likely under-estimating their revenue declines for the coming fiscal year. The housing bubble that accumulated between 1996 and 2006 gave homeowners an extra $8 trillion of paper wealth. But what a bubble giveth, it taketh away too, and only about half of this bubble has deflated. As the rest of the bubble collapses, there will be a lot less property tax revenue to fund schools, police, and other government services. As the recession deepens, unemployment rises, and consumers cut back on spending, state and local government revenue from income tax, sales tax, and other sources will decline more than anticipated. Unlike the federal government, most states cannot borrow to cover an operational budget deficit. This means that they will cut spending, including such items as health insurance for children and low-income families, child care, and elementary education. In fact, at least eighteen states are already making these kinds of cuts, and the recession has barely started. In the last recession, which lasted only eight months and was mild compared to what can be expected this time, more than a million people lost health coverage because of state spending cuts. So we cannot afford to lose tens of billions of dollars in state and local tax revenues by exempting internet sales. But even if it were affordable, there is no good economic reason to do so. Why should our governments favor far-away internet distribution centers over local businesses? This is not good for local or regional economic development. The problem will worsen as internet sales increase each year. It has been argued that the burden of following the sales tax regulations for fifty states and thousands of local taxing jurisdictions is too much for internet businesses. But the availability of software and service companies has taken the wind out of this argument. Others complain that sales taxes are in general regressive - that is, such taxes take proportionately more from lower-income groups. This is true, but exempting internet sales makes the tax system even more regressive, since internet buyers as a group have higher-than-average income. So if your local sporting goods store can collect and pay a sales tax on the running shoes that it sells, the big internet retailers can do the same. No need to give e-commerce a four to nine percent advantage to ship from across the country and use more packaging and delivery services. They can compete on the same terms as everyone else, and stop draining badly needed revenue from our state and local governments. _____ This column was distributed by McClatchy Tribune Information Services on June 10 2008 and published in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and other newspapers. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-weisbrot/internet-purchases-should_b_107407.html http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From critical.montages at gmail.com Sun Jul 13 09:10:43 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 11:10:43 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Martin Feldstein: "We Can Lower Oil Prices Now" Message-ID: July 1, 2008 We Can Lower Oil Prices Now By MARTIN FELDSTEIN July 1, 2008; Page A17 Although most experts agree that financial speculation was not responsible for the surge in the global prices of food and energy, many people remain puzzled about the source of these remarkable price rises. Economics offers a simple supply-and-demand explanation and reason for optimism about the future of commodity prices. In the case of oil, economics also suggests how policy changes today that affect the future could quickly lower the current price of oil. We all know that rising incomes in China, India and the Gulf states have increased the demand for oil and many other commodities. But how could the modest, one-year rise of these demands lead to 100% increases in the prices of oil and other commodities? Let's take a look first at perishable agricultural commodities. In the short run, there is little scope for increasing the supply of corn in response to a global increase in demand. For demand and supply to balance ? for the market to clear ? the price of corn must rise. If the demand for corn were very price-sensitive, a relatively small increase in price would reduce global demand by enough to offset the initial rise in demand. However, since demand is actually quite insensitive to price in the short run, it takes a very large price rise to bring global demand into line with supply. Here is a simplified picture of what happened in the past year. The quantity of corn demanded by high-growth countries rose gradually, increasing eventually by an amount equal to, say, 10% of the previous total global level of corn consumption. Since the supply of corn did not increase, the price had to increase enough to reduce corn consumption in other countries by 10%. If it takes a 10% increase in the price to reduce the quantity of corn demanded in the first year by just 1%, it would take a 100% increase in the price of corn to offset the initial 10% rise in the quantity of corn demanded. In reality, the picture is complicated by the substitution in both supply and demand among different agricultural commodities, and by the role of the corn ethanol program. But the basic explanation holds: With a very low short-run price sensitivity of demand and little scope to raise supply in the short run, even a relatively small increase in corn demand by the high-growth economies can lead to a very large short-run rise in the price of corn. Fortunately, the price sensitivity of both demand and supply will increase with time. This implies that the rising demand from China and other countries may eventually be accommodated with a price lower than today's level. The situation for oil is more complex, but the outcome for prices is potentially more favorable. Unlike perishable agricultural products, oil can be stored in the ground. So when will an owner of oil reduce production or increase inventories instead of selling his oil and converting the proceeds into investible cash? A simplified answer is that he will keep the oil in the ground if its price is _expected_ to rise faster than the interest rate that could be earned on the money obtained from selling the oil. The _actual_ price of oil may rise faster or slower than is expected, but the decision to sell (or hold) the oil depends on the expected price rise. There are of course considerations of risk, and of the impact of price changes on long-term consumer behavior, that complicate the oil owner's decision ? and therefore the behavior of prices. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (the OPEC cartel), with its strong pricing power, still plays a role. But the fundamental insight is that owners of oil will adjust their production and inventories until the price of oil is expected to rise at the rate of interest, appropriately adjusted for risk. If the price of oil is expected to rise faster, they'll keep the oil in the ground. In contrast, if the price of oil is not expected to rise as fast as the rate of interest, the owners will extract more and invest the proceeds. The relationship between future and current oil prices implies that an expected change in the future price of oil will have an immediate impact on the current price of oil. Thus, when oil producers concluded that the demand for oil in China and some other countries will grow more rapidly in future years than they had previously expected, they inferred that the future price of oil would be higher than they had previously believed. They responded by reducing supply and raising the spot price enough to bring the expected price rise back to its initial rate. Hence, with no change in the current demand for oil, the expectation of a greater future demand and a higher future price caused the current price to rise. Similarly, credible reports about the future decline of oil production in Russia and in Mexico implied a higher future global price of oil ? and that also required an increase in the current oil price to maintain the initial expected rate of increase in the price of oil. Once this relation is understood, it is easy to see how news stories, rumors and industry reports can cause substantial fluctuations in current prices ? all without anything happening to current demand or supply. Of course, a rise in the spot price of oil triggered by a change in expectations about future prices will cause a decline in the current quantity of oil that consumers demand. If current supply and demand were initially in balance, the OPEC countries and other oil producers would respond by reducing sales to bring supply into line with the temporary reduction in demand. A rise in the expected future demand for oil thus causes a current decline in the amount of oil being supplied. This is what happened as the Saudis and others cut supply in 2007. Now here is the good news. Any policy that causes the expected future oil price to fall can cause the current price to fall, or to rise less than it would otherwise do. In other words, it is possible to bring down today's price of oil with policies that will have their physical impact on oil demand or supply only in the future. For example, increases in government subsidies to develop technology that will make future cars more efficient, or tighter standards that gradually improve the gas mileage of the stock of cars, would lower the future demand for oil and therefore the price of oil today. Similarly, increasing the expected future supply of oil would also reduce today's price. That fall in the current price would induce an immediate rise in oil consumption that would be matched by an increase in supply from the OPEC producers and others with some current excess capacity or available inventories. Any steps that can be taken now to increase the future supply of oil, or reduce the future demand for oil in the U.S. or elsewhere, can therefore lead both to lower prices and increased consumption today. Mr. Feldstein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Reagan, is a professor at Harvard and a member of The Wall Street Journal's board of contributors. From critical.montages at gmail.com Sun Jul 13 09:50:27 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 11:50:27 -0400 Subject: [A-List] OPEC and US Fuel Figures at Odds + OPEC Sees Future Fall in Demand for Its Oil Message-ID: The history of great oil price volatility helps create self-fulfilling expectations of long-term price volatility, which in turn worsens short-term price volatility today, leading to far higher prices than actual demand and supply today justify (supply still outpacing demand even in the context of relatively low spare production capacity -- see the charts on the right at and listen to Adhip Chaudhuri at ). That, in addition to direct impacts of conversion to biofuels, indirectly helps escalate food prices, triggering social unrests in many nations -- including oil producers -- and diminishing political stability, which in turn feeds back into self-fulfilling expectations of price volatility. (Imperialists are in part motivated by all this and foolishly take actions that make it all worse, since they are, contrary to their self-image, destabilizers rather than stabilizers.) Oil illustrates the problem of market anarchy -- lack of planned coordination between producers and consumers -- like nothing else. But instead of analyzing this problem, a number of otherwise outstanding leftists turn to "peak oil" theory, which, like hedgers and speculators, adds to self-fulfilling expectations of price volatility. What is ironic is that "peak oil" theorists on the Left, many of whom are Marxists or Keynesians or Marxian-Keynesians and friends of planning and counter-cyclical policy-making, are in essence spreading an unfounded idea that intensifies market anarchy and miseries it causes. -- Yoshie Opec and US fuel figures at odds By Carola Hoyos in London Published: June 26 2008 02:47 | Last updated: June 26 2008 02:47 Opec believes it will need to produce far less oil over the next 12 years than does the US, creating uncertainty over whether the oil cartel's members will invest enough to boost production capacity to stop oil prices rising. The US Energy Information Agency on Wednesday predicted the world would need more than 37m barrels of oil a day from Opec by 2010 and 44.4m b/d in 2020. But in a concurrent report, Opec said new supply from other regions and biofuels would reduce the need for its oil from 32m b/d today, to 31m b/d in 2012 before it rose again, but only to 35.5m b/d in 2020 ? more than 9m b/d less than the EIA expects. The differing views matter because the long-term forecasts will be one of the main determinants of how much resource-holders invest in future production capacity. "The oil industry faces great uncertainties over how much to invest," Opec said in a background paper. The oil cartel has long argued that consuming countries' policies to boost car efficiencies and support alternative fuels make it difficult to know how much oil it will have to produce to meet global demand in the longer term. This thinking is already having an impact. Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter, recently postponed plans to expand its production capacity past the 12.5m b/d it is expected to reach next year, arguing the demand it anticipated did not warrant the investment. Other Opec countries ? most notably Qatar in terms of natural gas ? have also put expansion plans on hold as record oil prices have dampened the urgency to boost production. But these countries are also worried that biofuels will make their oil redundant ? in what could be a misplaced fear, as a barrel of ethanol is still far more expensive to produce than a barrel of Middle Eastern oil. The EIA sees the use of biofuels doubling from 2010 to 2030, to reach 2.7m b/d, rather than the group's previous estimate of 1.7m b/d. US ethanol production will account for more than half of that increase, the EIA said on Wednesday. Renewable fuels are expected to make up about 8.5 per cent of global energy use by 2030, up from about 7.7 per cent in 2005, the EIA said. Because of its higher price forecast, the EIA, cut its oil demand figures, with needs reaching 89.2m b/d by 2010, rather than the previous estimated 90.7m. Most of that cut came from outside Opec. Non-Opec oil production estimates in 2010 were reduced to 51.8m b/d, down 1.1m b/d, while Opec's estimated supply dropped only 400,000 b/d. to 37.4m b/d. "We do think that over the next five to 10 years the high [oil] prices will bring on new supplies that will put downward pressure on price. But we're not going back to the historic prices we saw in the 1980s and 1990s," said Guy Caruso, head of the EIA. Opec sees future fall in demand for its oil By Carola Hoyos in London Published: July 11 2008 03:15 | Last updated: July 11 2008 03:15 The Opec oil cartel on Thursday warned it might need to slow investment in its oilfields as consuming countries reduce their oil demand through conservation and by increasingly turning to alternatives, such as biofuels. Abdalla Salem El-Badri, the group's secretary-general, said: "Why should we invest in spare capacity that will not be used? We see plenty of spare capacity until 2020." Opec said new projects from outside the group could reduce the need for the ?cartel's oil to 31m b/d by 2012. In its most recent annual report, the group also cut its demand forecasts for 2030, estimating that the world would need 113m b/d, 4m fewer barrels than it had previously predicted. The report cites the efficiency gains and demand erosion that come with high prices as their reason. Opec doubled its price assumption to $70-$90 a barrel in its latest report. Some of the biggest recent changes in demand have come in the US where petrol has remained at more than $4 a gallon for a month, according to a survey by the American Automobile Association. In July, petrol use in the US fell to its lowest level since 2003, dropping 3.3 per cent from levels at the same time last year, the Energy Information Administration, the statistical arm of the US department of energy, said this week. But in other parts of the world, particularly Asia and the Middle East, analysts still expect rapid growth. Many say Opec is being too optimistic about the ability of countries outside its club to add new barrels. Some, such as Matthew Simmons, a Texas-based energy investment banker, have even speculated that Opec, and particularly Saudi Arabia, its biggest member, are hiding behind lower demand forecasts to obscure the fact that they will be unable to squeeze as much oil out of their ageing fields as they have claimed. From critical.montages at gmail.com Sun Jul 13 10:24:01 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 12:24:01 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Russia to Allocate $1.5 Million for Support of Islam + Moscow Conference: "Islam Will Beat Terrorism" Message-ID: What a splendid idea. Make books, not war. -- Yoshie 26 June 2008, 16:18 Russia to allocate $1.5 million for support of Islam Moscow, June 26, Interfax - A project of joint efforts has been signed by Russia's Fund for the Support of Islamic Culture, Science and Education and the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO), the fund told Interfax-Religion. The agreement provides for grants and stipends to students of Russian Islamic institutes for research, the translation and publication of books on Islam in Russian, and for material support to Islamic institutes. In addition, the agreement provides for international seminars on "The Role of Russia and the Islamic World in Strengthening the Alliance of Civilizations." 04 July 2008, 11:37 Moscow hosts Islamic anti-terrorist conference Moscow, July 4, Interfax - Islam is essentially a peaceful religion and today's international terrorism should not be treated as a merely Islamic phenomenon, said the participants of an international conference entitled "Islam will beat terrorism," which opened in Moscow on Thursday. The conference, organized by the Fund for the Support of Islamic Culture, Science and Education, was opened with the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's address read out to the conference participants. Chairman of the Fund's board of trustees and President of the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry Yevgeny Primakov said that fighting international terrorism is one of today's challenges and very often "some extremist groups dress themselves in Islamic clothing, which contradicts the spirit of Islam." Some Western politicians "in a bid to find a new enemy, are trying to force on the world a new division based on cultural and religious differences," he said. Without Muslims themselves, international terrorism cannot not be beaten today, Primakov said. Arab League Ambassador to Russia Giuma Ibrahim al Ferjani said in his speech that after the September 11 attacks in New York the international community reached a certain consensus in seeing terrorism as "the enemy of all nations and the enemy of progress." However, this consensus was soon broken after "one country decided that it was entitled to decide other nations' fates and ignore their opinions," the ambassador said. The consolidated positions of a number of extremist forces in the world "matched with the interests of U.S. politicians," he said. The latter started using the rising extremism as a pretext for starting local wars in a number of world's regions. The Arab League official urged the conference participants to adopt an address to the United Nations, condemning terrorism and criminalizing any encroachment on the religion. Jordan's Minister of Islamic Affairs Abdul Fattah Salah has also warned of the danger of "linking terrorism with a group of persons of a certain religion or culture." Today, the fight against the terrorist threat is "the task and responsibility of not only Muslims, it is a joint international task," he said. Ignoring this threat will lead to "everyone becoming a victim of terrorism, regardless of their nationality," the minister said. Kuwait's Minister of Islamic Affairs Adel Al-Falah has said that his country wants to assume a moderate approach on Islam, which rules out any extremist manifestations. "We in Kuwait believe that being moderate is the best way of fighting extremism. We should stick to this approach because it urges Muslims to do the good things to everyone, regardless of skin color," the Kuwait's minister said. The Secretary General at the Office of the Grand Mufti of the Sultanate, Ahmed bin Saud Al-Siyabi, has said that his country's authorities highly appreciate Russia's role in the dialogue between various cultures and religions and has agreed with other conference participants that, "terrorism does not belong to any religion." Chairman of the Russian Council of Muftis Ravil Gainutdin also said that Islam "will not tolerate extremism" and added that today's Muslims from across the globe are trying to promote a moderate Islam. The Council of Muftis earlier repeatedly condemned terrorism and extremism, emphasizing the unacceptability of the attempts to justify their acts by the principles of the Qur'an. From critical.montages at gmail.com Sun Jul 13 11:21:36 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 13:21:36 -0400 Subject: [A-List] China and Russia not vetoing harassment on Iran In-Reply-To: <2fa158550807121716qf7eee73w5db221bc3a930f67@mail.gmail.com> References: <2fa158550807121716qf7eee73w5db221bc3a930f67@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Jul 12, 2008 at 8:16 PM, N?stor Gorojovsky wrote: > Why didn't -up to this moment, at least- Russia and China veto > aggressions against Iran, when they do veto actions against Mugabe? > This is an interesting point broached by Yoshie today. > > Maybe because Zimbabwe is very weak and support to Zimbabwe is a free > meal that does not bring unsavory consequences such as bolstering a > oh-too-independent country which is too near to both China and Russia > for them to wish it to become too strong. > > Who knows. I don't know Russia's and China's thinking. Here are a few speculations. 1. Iran matters more to Russia (geopolitically), China (economically), and the West (politically and economically) than Zimbabwe, so the stakes are higher. This fact can work in Iran's favor but it can work against it, too, as you suggest. 2. The ostensible issue regarding Zimbabwe is purely domestic politics (elections and human rights), whereas the conflict between Iran and the West is ostensibly about an issue that is automatically turned into an international one (nuclear technology). Perhaps, Russia and China feel it more urgent to veto the idea of making the Security Council an instrument for interference on the pretext of human rights and free elections. The West at least accepts Russia's and China's possession of nuclear weapons, but Russia and China, too, can face (mainly propaganda) attacks on the human rights and liberal democracy front (still worrisome to them especially since both face separatists). At the same time, no existing nuclear weapons state exactly welcomes dilution of their oligopoly. While Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapons program, and Russia and China have repeatedly vouched for that, too, but learning how to enrich uranium means acquiring a crucial part of know-how which theoretically can be put to future military purposes if the Iranians change their mind. 3. China and Russia are perhaps still hoping that Iran and the West will make peace with each other much the same way that North Korea and the West have, in which they can claim credit as mediators. 4. China and Russia don't feel it urgent that the conflict between Iran and the West get solved any time soon if it stays at the current level. This conflict actually helps them gain access to Iran's resources that the West denies itself on better terms than without the sanctions. Yoshie From tal1 at cogeco.ca Sun Jul 13 12:16:38 2008 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 14:16:38 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Historical Amnesia..and the shootdown of Air Flight 655 Message-ID: ...CounterPunch, July 11/08 Historical Amnesia The Shoot Down of Iran Air Flight 655 By SASAN FAYAZMANESH In a daily press briefing on July 2, 2008, the following set of questions and answers took place between an unidentified reporter and Department of State Spokesman Sean McCormack [1]: QUESTION: Tomorrow marks the 20 years since the U.S. Navy warship Vincennes gunned down the IR655 civilian airliner, killing all 300 people on board, 71 of whom were children. And while the United States Government settled the incident in the International Court of Justice in 1996 at $61.1 million in compensation to the families, they, till this day, refuse to apologize - MR. MCCORMACK: Mm-hmm. QUESTION: - as requested by the Iranian Government. And actually, officials in the Iranian Government said today that they're planning on a commemoration tomorrow and it would, you know, show a sign of diplomatic reconciliation if the United States apologized for this incident. MR. MCCORMACK: Mm-hmm. QUESTION: Do you think it sends a positive message if, on the 20th anniversary of this incident, the United States Government apologized for (inaudible)? MR. MCCORMACK: You know, to be honest with you, I'll have to look back and see the history of what we have said about this - about the issue. I honestly don't know. Look, nobody wants to see - everybody mourns innocent life lost. But in terms of our official U.S. Government response to it, I can't - I have to confess to you, I don't know the history of it. I'd be happy to post you an answer over to your question. QUESTION: Well, do you think it show - do you think it would show a positive message as - in the midst of all this war talk -- MR. MCCORMACK: Like I said, you know, you've asked the question. I've been trying to be - I've tried to be very up front with you. I don't know the history. There's obviously a long history to this issue. Let me understand the history to that issue before I provide you a response. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Could this be true? Could the spokesman for the State Department not know anything about the role that the US played in the Iran-Iraq war in general and Iranian Air Flight 655 in particular? Is it possible that the entire US Department of State is ignorant of that history? Is it conceivable that the current US policy towards Iran is being made by a host of ignoramuses? This is, indeed, a frightening prospect. At a time when the world is continuously rattled by the prospect of a US-Israeli attack on Iran and the resulting uncertainty in the oil market, escalating energy prices, possibility of a worldwide economic stagnation and spiraling inflation, it is terrifying to think that those who are beating the war drums are suffering from historical amnesia. The frightening prospect is not helped at all by the correction that appeared on the website of the US Department of State shortly after the above set of questions and answers took place. The correction read [2]: Iran Air Flight 655 (Taken Question) Question: Does the State Department have anything to say on the 20th anniversary of the accidental downing of an Iran Air flight? Answer: The accidental shooting down of Iran Air Flight 655 was a terrible human tragedy, and U.S. officials at the time expressed our deep regret over the tragic loss of life. We would certainly renew our expression of sympathy and condolences to the families of the deceased who perished in the tragedy. The "terrible human tragedy" was not exactly "accidental," at least not from the perspective of many Iranians. Nor did the United States "at the time" express its "deep regret over the tragic loss of life." Since even after some research the US policy makers could not get their facts staright, it might be helpful to refresh their memories about Iran Air Flight 655. The shooting down of Iran Air Flight 655 by the cruiser U.S.S. Vincennes marked the end of an eight war between Iran and Iraq, a war that in all probability started with the help of the US government and was certainly prolonged by the US and Israel as part of the policy of dual containment of Iran and Iraq. As I have explained elsewhere, in the eight year war the Reagan Administration tried to prevent Iran from winning the war against Saddam Hussein by providing him with intelligence, extension of credit and, indirectly, weapons.[3] The US also established full diplomatic relations with Hussein's government, lifted trade sanctions against Iraq, and imposed economic sanctions against Iran. In addition, the US closed its eyes to the use of chemical weapons by Iraq in the war, and, indeed, supplied Saddam Hussein with chemical compounds that had multiple uses, including making poison gas. In 1984 the US policy of helping Saddam Hussein in the war took on a new dimension. The United States started to escort the tankers carrying Iraq's and its allies' oil, particularly those of Kuwait, safely through the Persian Gulf but allowed Iraq to hit at will tankers carrying Iranian oil. Soon afterwards, the US also offered to re-flag Iraqi allies' tankers. This situation continued until early 1986, when Iranian forces started to score military victories by capturing the Iraqi Faw peninsula. Iraq increased the intensity of its tanker war on Iran and Iran retaliated. Kuwait asked the UN Security Council in late 1986 for protection of its tankers in the Gulf. Shortly afterwards, the US started to re-flag Kuwaiti tankers with the American flag. This was the beginning of the US directly entering an undeclared war against Iran at the behest of Saddam Hussein. In the undeclared war that followed the US started to attack Iranian ships. For example, The Washington Post reported on September 23, 1987, that two days earlier American helicopters had attacked an Iranian vessel on the pretext that it was laying mines. As a result of the attack, the report went on to say, a number of Iranian sailors were killed, injured, or missing. A day after the attack, according to the same report, US Navy commandos boarded and captured the Iranian ship, and then fired warning shots at an Iranian hovercraft that came toward the disabled vessel. A few days later, the US Navy blew up and sank the ship (Sunday Mail, September 27, 1987). The US actions were viewed not only by Iran but also by the US Congress as something akin to declaration of war against Iran by the Reagan Administration. On September 25, 1987, the COURIER-MAIL reported that the "Iranian President, Mr Khamenei, said yesterday he feared United States actions in the Persian Gulf would lead to an American invasion of his country." The report further quoted Khamenei as saying that the "presence of the US in the Gulf is a sign of war. . . . All these battleships and the great armada there are not for defence, they are for invasion." On September 23, 1987, The Washington Post reported that the US Congress had asked "for constraints on U.S. tanker-escort operations" and that some were considering invoking the "1973 War Powers Resolution," which requires congressional approval for sustained US combat operations. Engaging Iran at the behest of Saddam Hussein continued throughout the rest of 1987 and 1988. For example, on October 9, 1987, the Guardian reported the sinking of three Iranian gunboats by the US on the pretext that they had "hostile intent," and on April 19, 1988, The Washington Post reported the sinking or crippling of six more Iranian ships by the US. Also in this period the US started to attack Iranian oil platforms. For example, according to the COURIER-MAIL of October 21, 1987, the US attacked two Iranian oil platforms two days earlier "in response to that country's missile attacks on tankers flying the US flag." According to the same source, "Mr Reagan was asked if the attack meant the two nations were at war", and he responded by saying "No, we're not going to have a war with Iran, they're not that stupid." Similarly, the Journal of Commerce reported on April 19, 1988 that a day earlier the US Navy destroyed two offshore Iranian oil platforms. In this same period (1987-8) the US also started to engage the Iranian air force. For example, according to the Financial Times of September 23, 1987, on August 8 of the same year "a carrier-borne F-14 Tomcat fighter unleashed two missiles at an Iranian jet spotted on its radar which had flown too close for comfort to an unarmed US surveillance aircraft." Similarly, the Journal of Commerce reported on April 19, 1988, that a "U.S. warship fired missiles at two approaching Iranian jet fighters, but the fighters reversed course." By early 1988 it was clear that Iran could not win a war against the combined forces of Saddam Hussein and the US. Even the gains by Iranian forces in the eight-year war were now being lost. The coordinated and jointly planned actions between the US and Iraq in April of 1988, for example, resulted in Saddam Hussein's government retaking the Faw peninsula. On April 19, 1988, The Washington Post reported the US attack on Iranian ships and oil platform. It also reported that, according to Iran, the retaking of Faw by the Iraqi forces was supported by US helicopters. The time had come for Iran to take the bullet and accept a humiliating ceasefire offered by the US-dominated United Nations, the same institution that after eight years of war, and despite all evidence to the contrary, could not still determine which party was guilty of starting it. The last major event that brought about the final capitulation of Iran occurred on July 3, 1988. On that day the American warship Vincennes shot down Iran Air Flight 655 over the Persian Gulf, killing all 290 passengers on board. True to its pattern of denying any role in the Iran-Iraq war, at first the United States government tried to deny culpability in the downing of the civilian airliner. On July 3 AP reported that the "Pentagon said U.S. Navy forces in the gulf sank two Iranian patrol boats and downed an F-14 fighter jet in the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday during an exchange of fire." The report also said that, according to Iran, the US shot down not an F-14 but a civilian airliner killing all passengers on board. "U.S. Navy officials in the gulf," the report went on say, "denied the Iranian claim." Many similar reports were made by foreign journalists, particularly the Japan Economic Newswire, which also reported on July 3, 1988 that the "U.S. Defense Department issued a statement on the crash of an Iran air airbus Sunday and denied U.S. involvement in the incident as claimed by Iran." However, once the charred bodies of passengers of the Iran Air Flight 655 were shown floating in the ocean, the US admitted that the plane brought down was not an F-14 but a civilian airliner. In what The New York Times of July 4, 1988, titled the "Quotation of the Day," Admiral William J. Crowe Jr., Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated: "After receiving further data and evaluating information available from the Persian Gulf, we believe that the cruiser U.S.S. Vincennes, while actively engaged with threatening Iranian surface units and protecting itself from what was concluded to be a hostile aircraft, shot down an Iranian airliner over the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. Government deeply regrets this incident." Subsequently, the US claimed that the "Iranian airliner, in some ways, was not acting like a passenger plane . . . It was heading directly for the ship, appeared to be descending (as though it might be 40 The United States and Iran attacking) and was about four miles outside the usual commercial air corridor" (The Washington Post, July 4, 1988). The Pentagon further asserted that USS Vincennes was in international waters, i.e. outside the territorial waters of Iran, and that the passenger plane was emitting a military electronic code. Slowly but surely, all the above claims were proved to be false. Vincennes was not in international waters, but in Iran's territorial waters. The Iranian Airbus was not heading for the ship or even descending but ascending. The plane was not four miles outside of the usual commercial air corridor, but well within it. Moreover, Flight 655 was not emitting any military signals but regular transponder signals, which identified it as a commercial aircraft. All these contradictions resurfaced four years later, when on July 1, 1992, the ABC News program Nightline broadcast a piece, investigated jointly with Newsweek magazine, entitled "The USS Vincennes: Public War, Secret War." Newsweek magazine itself published on July 13, 1992, a separate article by John Barry and Roger Charles which appeared under the title "Sea of Lies." Both pieces showed the contradictions in the US claims, four years earlier, concerning the downing of the Iranian civilian plane. Indeed, with regard to the answers provided by the US government to the questions "Where, precisely, was the Vincennes at the time of the shoot down?" and "What was she doing there?" ABC's Nightline stated that the "official response to those two questions has been a tissue of lies, fabrications, half-truths and omissions." For example, on the issue of the exact position of USS Vincennes when it shot the Iranian airliner, the following exchange between Ted Koppel of Nightline and Admiral William J. Crowe Jr. took place: TED KOPPEL: But if I were to ask you today, was the Vincennes in international waters at the time that she shot down the Airbus- WILLIAM J. CROWE JR.: Yes, she was. TED KOPPEL: In international waters? WILLIAM J. CROWE JR.: No, no, no. She was in Iran's territorial waters. TED KOPPEL: Let me ask you again. Where was the Vincennes at the time that she shot down the Airbus? WILLIAM J. CROWE JR.: She was in Iran's territorial waters. After showing more such contradictions in the official US account of the incident, the program concentrated on the second question: "What was USS Vincennes doing in Iran's territorial waters?" The answer given by Nightline was that Vincennes, as well as other US naval forces in the Persian Gulf, was there as part of an "undeclared," "covert," or "secret war" against Iran. In this war USS Vincennes had entered Iran's territorial waters provoking the Iranian navy to engage in a fight when it shot down Iran Air Flight 655. "Sea of Lies" told the same story but in greater detail. It recounted how the "trigger happy" captain of USS Vincennes, Will Rogers III, had invaded the territorial waters of Iran looking for a fight under the pretext of rescuing a Liberian tanker, the Stoval, which in reality did not exist. Then, after creating a tense situation, the inevitable happened: it shot down a civilian airliner. What followed was a campaign of lies and fabrications at the highest levels of US government to "cover up" what had actually happened and the place of this incident within the broader US war against Iran. "The top Pentagon brass," write John Barry and Roger Charles, "understood from the beginning that if the whole truth about the Vincennes came out, it would mean months of humiliating headlines. So the U.S. Navy did what all navies do after terrible blunders at sea: it told lies and handed out medals." If one knows the history of the US's role in the Iran-Iraq war, then the USS Vincennes affair does not come as a big surprise. In the absence of such knowledge, however, the Nightline and the subsequent Newsweek magazine reports appeared to be revelations. Many newspapers wrote about what had been reported. The Washington Post of July 1, 1992, for example, called "Public War, Secret War" a "provocative report" with an "entirely different take on the story." It further said that ABC News and Newsweek reporter John Barry and Nightline anchor Ted Koppel made "the persuasive-though not conclusive-case that the United States not only provoked the incident but also lied to cover it up." But, The Washington Post went on to say, once the report claimed that the US was engaged in a "'secret war' against Iran on behalf of its erstwhile ally in the region, Iraq," then it moved onto "shakier ground." Obviously The Washington Post had no clue as to how deep, long, and extensive the "secret war" of the US against Iran was. Even some US Congressmen appeared to be surprised by the reporting. For example, according to The Washington Post of July 7, 1992, following the Nightline and Newsweek reports, Senator Sam Nunn, then Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, wrote to Defense Secretary Richard B. Cheney to request "an expeditious inquiry into these serious allegations." Needless to say, nothing came out of these inquiries. The New York Times reported on July 22, 1992, that Admiral Crowe appeared before the House Armed Services Committee, and delivered a 27-page response to the report, denying that "American military had cooperated with the Iraqi military as part of a secret war against the Iranians. 'The accusations of a cover-up are preposterous and unfounded,' Admiral Crowe said." However, he "acknowledged that the Vincennes was in Iranian waters when she shot the airliner but asserted that the location did not have an important bearing on the investigation," the report said. From tal1 at cogeco.ca Sun Jul 13 12:21:48 2008 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 14:21:48 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Bush's Rampage in Somalia Message-ID: If anything puts the lie to the so-called 'humanitarian' intentions of the West in relation to Zimbabwe....this does. Tony ...CounterPunch, July 8/08 "They Are Slaughtering Somalis Like Goats" Bush's Rampage in Somalia By MIKE WHITNEY While George Bush was breezing through photo-ops at the G-8 summit in Japan; his Ethiopian proxy-army in Somalia was grinding out more carnage on the streets of Mogadishu. More than 40 civilians have been killed in the last 48 hours. On Sunday, Osman Ali Ahmed, the head of the UN Development Program in Somalia, was shot gangland style as he left a mosque after prayers. He died before reaching the hospital with wounds to the head and chest. Ali Ahmed is just the latest of the peace-keepers who have been killed in the ongoing battle between Bush's Ethiopian occupiers and the Somali guerrillas. US foreign policy in Somalia has resulted in disaster. Millions of Somalis have been forced to flee their homes and relocate to tent cities in the south to escape the fighting. The latest surge in violence has been the worst in a decade and the security situation continues to deteriorate despite the arrival of 2,600 troops from the African Union and a tentative truce that was signed in June between some of the warring factions. The western media has stubbornly refused to report on the rising death-toll in Somalia, choosing instead to focus all of their attention on America's "villain du jour", Robert Mugabe. Mugabe appears to be next on the neocon's list for regime change. (Paul Wolfowitz even composed a postmortem for Zimbabwe's president in a recent Wall Street Journal editorial "How to Put the Heat on Mugabe") In 2006, the United States supported an alliance of Somali warlords known as the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) who established a base of operations in the western city of Baidoa. With the help of the US-backed Ethiopian army, western mercenaries, US Navy warships, and AC-130 gunships; the TFG was able capture Mogadishu and force the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) and their allies to retreat to the south. But, much like Iraq and Afghanistan, the resistance has coalesced into a tenacious guerrilla army which has returned to the capital and resumed the fight making it impossible for their Ethiopian adversaries to govern. As the struggle continues, the humanitarian situation has gone from bad to worse. At least 2.6 million Somalis are now facing famine due to acute food shortages spurred by a prolonged drought, violence and high inflation. UN monitors have warned that the figure could hit exceed 3.5 million by the end of 2008. The UN Security Council has helped facilitate the violence by failing to condemn US support for Ethiopia's invasion and by promising to send peacekeepers to mop up after fighting ends. They've shown no interest in stopping the bloodshed or threatening sanctions against the aggressors. The UNSC has become little more than an accomplice in Bush's rampages. In an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now, Salim Lone, a columnist for the Daily Nation in Kenya and a former spokesperson for the UN mission in Iraq explains the UN's role in providing the "go ahead" for the US invasion: "The lawlessness of this particular war is astounding; the most lawless war of our generation. You know, all aggressive wars are illegal. But in this particular one, there have been violations of the UN Charter and gross violations of international human rights. But, in addition, there have been very concrete violations by the United States of two Security Council resolutions. The first one was the arms embargo imposed on Somalia, which the United States has been routinely flaunting for many years now. But then the US decided that that resolution was no longer useful, and they pushed through an appalling resolution in December, which basically gave the green light to Ethiopia to invade. They pushed through a resolution which said that the situation in Somalia was a threat to international peace and security, at a time when every independent report indicated, and Chatham House's report on Wednesday also indicated, that the Islamic Courts Union had brought a high level of peace and stability that Somalia had not enjoyed in sixteen years. So here was the UN Security Council going along with the American demand to pass a blatantly falsified UN resolution. And that resolution actually was a violation (of the) the UN Charter. You know, the UN Charter is like the American Constitution and the Security Council is not allowed to pass laws or rules that violate the Charter. And yet, who is going to correct them?" (Democracy Now) The Bush administration has predictably invoked the "terrorist" hobgoblin to justify its involvement in Somalia, but no one is buying it. The ICU is not an Al Qaida affiliate or a terrorist organization despite the absurd claims of the State Department. It is true that the ICU was trying to enforce Sharia Law, but a much milder form of Sharia than America's ally, Saudi Arabia. The ICU was the first government in over a decade to restore security and order to Somalia and--generally speaking--the people were supportive of the new regime. Political analyst James Petras summed it up like this: "The ICU was a relatively honest administration, which ended warlord corruption and extortion. Personal safety and property were protected, ending arbitrary seizures and kidnappings by warlords and their armed thugs. The ICU is a broad multi-tendency movement that includes moderates and radical Islamists, civilian politicians and armed fighters, liberals and populists, electoralists and authoritarians. Most important, the Courts succeeded in unifying the country and creating some semblance of nationhood, overcoming clan fragmentation." The real motives behind the invasion were oil and geopolitics. According to most estimates 30 per cent of America's oil will come from Africa in the next ten years. Bush's new warlord-friends in the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) have already indicated that they are ready to pass a new oil law that will encourage foreign oil companies to return to Somalia. The same oil giants that are now lining up in Iraq will soon be making their way to Somalia as well. The Horn of Africa is also critical for its deep-water ports and its strategic location for future military bases. It's all part of the Grand Schema for reconfiguring the region to accommodate America's hegemonic ambitions. Humanitarian Catastrophe: "The Ethiopian invasion has destroyed all the life-sustaining systems" Heavy fighting and artillery fire have reduced large parts of Mogadishu to rubble. More than 700,000 people have been forced to leave the capital with nothing more than what they can carry on their backs. Entire districts have been evacuated and turned into ghost towns. The main hospital has been bombed and is no longer taking patients. Ethiopian snipers are perched atop rooftops across the city. Over 3.5 million people are now huddled in the south in tent cities without sufficient food, clean water or medical supplies. It is the greatest humanitarian crisis in Africa today; a man-made Hell entirely conjured up in Washington. Just weeks ago, Amnesty International reported that it had heard many accounts that Ethiopian troops were "slaughtering (Somalis) like goats." In one case, "a young child's throat was slit by Ethiopian soldiers in front of the child's mother." In another Democracy Now interview, Abdi Samatar, professor of Global Studies at the University of Minnesota, had this to say: "The Ethiopian invasion, which was sanctioned by the US government, has destroyed virtually all the life-sustaining economic systems which the population have built without the government for the last fifteen years. And the militia that are supposed to protect the population have been looting shops. For instance, the Bakara market, which is the largest market in Mogadishu, has been looted repeatedly by the militias of the so-called Transitional Federal Government of Somalia, supported by Ethiopian troops. And the new prime minister of Somalia, Mr. Hassan Nur Hussein, has himself announced in the BBC that it was his militias that-who have looted this place. So what you have is a population that's hit from both sides--on one side, by the militias of the so-called Transitional Federal Government, which is recognized by the United States, and on the other side, by the Ethiopian invaders who seem to be bent on ensuring that they break the will of the people to resist as free people in their own country.... What you have is really terror in the worst sense of the word, a million people have been displaced that the Ethiopians have been denying humanitarian aid, and the United States which seems to just watch and let it happen. It's like there's has been a calculated decision made somewhere in the world, maybe in Washington, maybe in Addis Ababa, maybe in Mogadishu itself, to starve these people until they submit themselves to the whims of the American military and the Ethiopians, who are acting on their behalf." Amnesty International has called for an investigation of the United States role in Somalia. Regrettably, neither the United Nations nor the establishment media are at all interested in Bush's war crimes in Africa. All they care about is Mugabe. Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at: fergiewhitney at msn.com Notes Somalia: Troops killing people 'like goats' by slitting throats, Amnesty report From critical.montages at gmail.com Sun Jul 13 12:24:05 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 14:24:05 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Gazprom to Step Deeper into Iran after Total Pulls Back from South Pars Message-ID: Iran, Russia's Gazprom sign energy cooperation deal 2 hours ago TEHRAN (AFP) ? Iran and Gazprom Sunday signed an agreement for the Russian energy giant to help Tehran develop its oil and gas fields, days after Total dropped out of a multi-billion-dollar gas deal. "The Iranian National Oil Company and Gazprom signed an agreement in which the two sides will cooperate in the development of Iran's oil and gas fields," the oil ministry's Shana news agency said. No financial details were given but the agreement signals Iran's determination to secure Russian help for exploiting its energy resources as Western countries pull out due to political pressure. The head of French energy giant Total last week said it was dropping out of a multi-billion-dollar gas investment to develop phase 11 of the South Pars gas field, saying it was currently too risky politically to invest in Iran. Western governments have pressured firms to cut their ties with Iran over the country's controversial nuclear programme, which world powers fear could be aimed at seeking atomic weapons -- a charge vehemently denied by Tehran. The United States, Iran's arch enemy, has also been urging global energy giants to cut their ties with Tehran, saying that doing business sends the wrong message at a time of growing tensions in the nuclear crisis. "Gazprom will be a cooperative partner for the Islamic Republic of Iran," Iranian state television quoted Alexei Miller, CEO of the Russian state-controlled firm, as telling President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a meeting. Other issues covered in the cooperation agreement include possible participation of Gazprom in the planned peace pipeline that would deliver Iranian gas to India and Pakistan, Shana said. Improving recovery rates in Iran's ageing oil fields and Russian help in transferring Caspian Sea crude oil to the Gulf of Oman are also mentioned. Cooperation in the development of Iran's North Azadegan oil field, part of the vast Azadegan filed in southwestern Iran, was also mooted in the agreement, Shana said. It said that working groups would be formed to implement the cooperation and a joint company would be set up between the two countries for cooperation in oil and gas. State television said Miller expressed willingness for Gazprom to participate "in big oil and gas projects; in South and North Pars, Azadegan and the Caspian Sea fields." Ahmadinejad, for his part, said that Iran was "interested in expanding ties with Russia in oil and gas as far as possible," state television said. The South Pars field in the Gulf has around 500 trillion cubic feet (14 trillion cubic metres) of gas, which represents about eight percent of world reserves. But the lack of foreign investment has so far delayed the development of the giant offshore field and dented Iran's hopes of becoming a major gas exporter. Azadegan is Iran's biggest onshore oil field with an estimated 42 billion barrels of crude oil in place and production started in February using only Iranian firms after the Japanese partner Inpex quit the project. Iran sits on the world's second largest proven oil reserves worldwide and is the number four crude producer worldwide and the second in the oil cartel OPEC. It also has the second biggest proven global gas reserves after Russia but so far has played only a minor role on the gas export market. Russia, while approving three sets of UN sanctions against Tehran, has repeatedly argued the nuclear standoff should be solved through diplomacy and still has significant economic interests in Iran. Iran, Gazprom set to sign cooperation memorandum 12:42 | 13/ 07/ 2008 TEHRAN, July 13 (RIA Novosti) - Russian energy giant Gazprom [RTS: GAZP] and Iran's Ministry of Petroleum will sign on Sunday a memorandum of cooperation in the oil and gas sphere, an Iranian deputy oil minister said. "Interaction between Iran and Russia in all spheres and especially in the energy sphere is very wide. We expect to further broaden this cooperation in the future," Hossein Noghrehkar Shirazi said. Shirazi said a series of discussions would precede the signing of the cooperation memorandum. Iran ranks fourth in terms of crude reserves after Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Kuwait, as well as fourth in terms of oil production after Saudi Arabia, the United States and Russia. Iran's proven gas reserves total more than 28 trillion cubic meters. Iran vows to press on after Total pull-out By Carola Hoyos and Najmeh Bozorgmehr in Tehran Published: July 10 2008 19:08 | Last updated: July 10 2008 19:08 Iran on Thursday played down the loss of Total of France, which this week became the final large western energy company to pull back from investing in the country's huge South Pars gas field. Gholamhossein Nozari, energy minister, said: "This is our message: we will proceed with development with or without them." He was speaking less than 24 hours after Total said international political tensions over Tehran's nuclear programme made it too risky to make fresh investments. Akbar Torkan, deputy oil minister for planning, said Iran could shift some longer-term liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects in South Pars ? the world's biggest gas field ? to ones that instead export gas through pipelines. This is a popular option within Iran's oil and gas industry. He said: "We can construct the pipeline in our land with our investments to reach the border, while Europeans, like Austria and Switzerland, can do the same from their lands to reach Iran's borders without facing investment obstacles." But analysts said Iran faced significant hurdles. They doubted it would be able to proceed with LNG ? an expensive, complex and highly technical undertaking ? especially as much of the know-how is restricted to a few big companies and some of the most important propriety technology is American and thus barred by US sanctions. This meant Iran was unlikely to be able to significantly raise gas exports until late in the next decade at the soonest, they said. Total's project was key to the Iranians, who hoped to learn enough from it to eventually embark alone on LNG. That was one reason Washington had been so intent on stopping the project, though the likelihood of it going ahead was always a long shot. The decision by Total creates a problem for the wider world and not just Iran. The demise of Tehran's LNG projects represent a loss of about 80bcm a year of potential gas supply, roughly equivalent to Germany's needs, said analysts. That creates a huge hole in potential supply at a time when demand from Asia and the Middle East threatens to outpace the substantial capacity being built world wide. Samuel Ciszuk, Middle East energy analyst at Global Insight, argued that national energy groups, such as Russia's Gazprom, and companies from China would fail to fill the vacuum left by Total. "It is almost impossible. Without the technology and experience they don't have the resources to do it," he said. The western energy companies know this and are quick to stress they are not pulling out of Iran or ending negotiations over projects far in the future. Indeed, Total, Royal Dutch Shell, Eni and StatoilHydro among others already have a presence in Iran and intend to honour their contracts despite US pressure. But all of them have also said they have, for now, put new investments on hold. In private, executives say their decisions were prompted by the combination of the adverse political climate and the sub-par financial terms offered by the Iranians. That leaves Iran with two large export possibilities and both face significant hurdles: the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline and a possible link to Europe's Nabucco pipeline. The first is bogged down by security concerns along the route, a pricing dispute between India and Pakistan, and pressure from the US, while the second is far from a done deal because European politicians have yet to agree to snub Washington by accepting Iranian gas in the Nabucco pipe, despite the substantial benefit it would offer in terms of reducing the region's dependence on Russia. Christophe de Margerie, chief executive of Total, has been one of the few international oil company executives willing to address the issue of reduced supply as a consequence of Iran's isolation. He said the international standoff made for an "extremely delicate political environment". He also said politicians who launched military campaigns in Iraq and enacted economic sanctions against Iran needed to be aware that such actions seriously constrained international oil and gas supplies and drove up prices. Mr Ciszuk agreed with Mr de Margerie that politicians calling on the Opec cartel of oil-producing nations ? of which Iraq and Iran are members ? to boost production were also making decisions that rendered that almost impossible. Robin West, chairman of PFC Energy, the consulting firm, said: "Over time, supplying gas markets may become as big a challenge as supplying oil markets. Removing Iran from export markets will accelerate this problem." From critical.montages at gmail.com Sun Jul 13 12:37:15 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 14:37:15 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Turkey Seeks Negotiated End to Iran's N. Issue Message-ID: Maybe this is unlikely to come to pass, given that the AKP and Erdogan are facing the party closure and and bans (brought about by Turkey's Kemalist judiciary), but it's not completely impossible for Turkey to emerge as the Great Mediator, mediating between Syria and Israel, mediating between Iran and Israel and the West, and mediating between Iran and Russia (regarding pipelines to Europe), helping everyone make peace and money. Islam, in its centrist varieties, is a religion of peace and business, or so I have been told. Turkey Seeks Negotiated End to Iran's N. Issue TEHRAN (FNA)- Turkey may soon mediate talks on Iran's nuclear program, following indirect peace talks between Israel and Syria, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday. Erdogan told a conference on "Leadership" that Turkey has now become a country to set the agenda in its region. "Turkey mediates peace talks between Israel and Syria. Maybe, the mediator role regarding Iran's nuclear issue will soon be given to Turkey, because the idea of 'settling the issue with Turkey in this geography' has been prevailing recently. "This is the result of confidence provided (by Turkey)," Erdogan said. The United States and its Western allies accuse Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of a civilian nuclear program, while they have never presented any corroborative document to substantiate their allegations. Iran denies the charges and insists that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only. Tehran stresses that the country has always pursued a civilian path to provide power to the growing number of Iranian population, whose fossil fuel would eventually run dry. Despite the rules enshrined in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) entitling every member state, including Iran, to the right of uranium enrichment, Tehran is now under three rounds of UN Security Council sanctions for turning down West's illegitimate calls to give up its right of enrichment. Tehran has dismisses West's demands as politically tainted and illogical, stressing that sanctions and pressures merely consolidate Iranians' national resolve to continue the path. Iran has also insisted that it would continue enriching uranium because it needs to provide fuel to a 300-megawatt light-water reactor it is building in the southwestern town of Darkhoveyn as well as its first nuclear power plant in the southern port city of Bushehr. The US is mainly at loggerheads with Iran over the independent and home-grown nature of Tehran's nuclear technology, which gives the Islamic Republic the potential to turn into a world power and a role model for other third-world countries. Washington has laid much pressure on Iran to make it give up the most sensitive and advanced part of the technology, which is uranium enrichment, a process used for producing nuclear fuel for power plants. Washington's push for additional UN penalties contradicted the report by 16 US intelligence bodies that endorsed the civilian nature of Iran's programs. Following the US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) and similar reports by the IAEA head - one in November and the other one in February - which praised Iran's truthfulness about key aspects of its past nuclear activities and announced settlement of outstanding issues with Tehran, any effort to impose further sanctions on Iran seems to be completely irrational. The February report by the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, praised Iran's cooperation in clearing up all of the past questions over its nuclear program, vindicating Iran's nuclear program and leaving no justification for any new UN sanctions. Following the said reports by the US and international bodies, many world states have called the UN Security Council pressure against Tehran unjustified, demanding that Iran's case must be normalized and returned from the UNSC to the IAEA. US President George W. Bush finished a tour of the Middle East in winter to gain the consensus of his Arab allies to unite against Iran. But hosting officials of the regional nations dismissed Bush's allegations, describing Tehran as a good friend of their countries. Bush's attempt to rally international pressure against Iran has lost steam due to the growing international vigilance, specially following the latest IAEA and US intelligence reports. From sabri_oncu at yahoo.com Sun Jul 13 12:45:18 2008 From: sabri_oncu at yahoo.com (Sabri Oncu) Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 11:45:18 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [A-List] Michael Hudson Interview Message-ID: <172308.18415.qm@web55202.mail.re4.yahoo.com> http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney07012008.html From shimogamo at attglobal.net Sun Jul 13 20:01:52 2008 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Bill Totten) Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2008 11:01:52 +0900 Subject: [A-List] The Cure for High Gas and Food Prices Message-ID: <487AB390.6060003@attglobal.net> Vital Businesses Need Nationalization by Ted Rall www.rall.com (June 26 2008) The gas station attendant came outside. Wow, I thought, full serve! Ignoring me, she flung a magnetic price decal on top of the price per gallon. Regular unleaded had gone up twenty cents in the time it took me to drive from the curb to the pump. "You're kidding me", I moaned. "It's three o'clock", she shrugged. "Just got the new price". There has to be a better way, I thought. And there is. It isn't drilling in the Alaskan wilderness. It sure isn't John McCain's plan to offer $300 million to the first person to come up with a longer-lasting car battery Gas prices could hit $7 a gallon before long, Wall Street analysts say, but Americans - always optimists! - take a little comfort in the fact that Europeans have paid more than that for years. But a lot of foreigners are laughing at us even harder than we're laughing at the Euros. Did you know that Venezuelans pay a mere nineteen cents per gallon? It's 38 cents in Nigeria. Turkmenistanis might not have electoral democracy, but they only shell out $4.50 to fill a fifteen-gallon tank. Before we replaced Saddam Hussein with ... with whatever they have in Iraq now, Iraqis paid less than a dime for a gallon of gas. One of the things that these countries have in common, of course, is that they're oil-producing states. Countries that export oil and gas have trouble explaining to their citizens why they should pay for their own natural resources - and most are smart enough not to try. Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Burma, Malaysia, Kuwait, China and South Korea are just a few of the countries that keep fuel prices low in order to stimulate economic growth. But they also share something else: common sense. Strange it might sound to Americans used to reading about big oil windfalls, they consider cheap gas more of an economic necessity than lining the pockets of energy company CEOs. So they don't consider energy a profit center. To the contrary; government subsidies (Venezuela spends $2 billion a year on fuel subsidies) and nationalized oil companies keep gas prices low. Unlike corporations, governments don't care about turning a profit. They care about remaining in power. Their reliance on political support (or, if you're cynical, pandering) allows them to do things our much-vaunted free market system can't, such as make sure that people can afford to eat and buy enough gas to get to work. Like the rest of the world, Venezuelan consumers have been squeezed by rising prices, and even shortages, of groceries. In 2007 Venezuela's socialist-leaning government decided to do something about it. First they imposed price controls on staple items. When suppliers began to hoard supplies to drive up prices, President Hugo Chavez threatened to nationalize them. "If they remain committed to violating the interests of the people, the constitution, the laws, I'm going to take the food storage units, corner stores, supermarkets and nationalize them", he said. Food profiteers grumbled. Then they straightened up. Not even international corporations are immune from Chavez's determination to put the needs of ordinary Venezuelans ahead of the for-profit food industry. Faced with severe shortages of milk earlier this year, Chavez threatened Nestle and Parmalat's Venezuelan operations with nationalization unless they opened the spigot. "This government needs to tighten the screws", he said in February 2008, promising to "intervene and nationalize the plants" belonging to the two transnational corporations. Miraculously, milk is turning up on the shelves. When it works, nothing is better at creating an endless variety of reality TV shows than free market capitalism. But when it doesn't, it isn't just that extra brand of clear dishwashing liquid that goes away. Businesses fold. Banks foreclose. People starve. And no one can stop it. The G8 nations met in Osaka last week to try to address soaring food and energy prices - a double threat that could plunge the global economy into a ruinous depression. But the summit ended in failure. "Any hope that the G8 meeting would result in coordinated monetary action - or concerted intervention in foreign exchange markets - to counter rises, principally in commodity prices, was dispelled by their failure to agree on the phenomenon's underlying causes", reported Forbes. So the G8 ministers punted. "Due to the lack of consensus, they have stated the need for further study", wrote the magazine. The problem isn't the weak dollar or the non-existent housing market. It's capitalism. A sane government doesn't leave essential goods and services - food, fuel, housing, healthcare, transportation, education - to the vicissitudes of "magic" markets. Non-discretionary economic sectors should be strictly controlled by - indeed, owned by - the government. Consider, on the one hand, snail mail and public education. The Postal Service and public schools both have their flaws. But what if they were privatized? It would cost a lot more than 42 cents to mail a letter from Tampa to Maui. And poor children wouldn't get an education. Privatization, particularly of essential services, has always proven disastrous. From California's Enron-driven rotating blackouts to for-profit healthcare that has left 47 million Americans uninsured to predatory lenders pimping the housing bubble to Blackwater's atrocities in Iraq, market-based corporations' fiduciary obligation to maximize profits that is inherently incompatible with a stable economy whose goal is to provide people with a decent quality of life. Postscriipt: If you're reading this in Caracas, please mail me some gas. Ted Rall is the author of the book Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East? (2006), an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis of America's next big foreign policy challenge.) Copyright 2008 Ted Rall http://www.uexpress.com/tedrall/?uc_full_date=20080626 http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From critical.montages at gmail.com Sun Jul 13 20:43:39 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 22:43:39 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Oil Prices Hit Military Budgets Hard Message-ID: Every cloud has a silver lining. Oil prices hit military budgets hard Soaring fuel prices have the armed services scrambling for ways to economize. So far, the added costs are surpassing savings from conserva