From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Wed Apr 1 04:01:18 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Wed, 01 Apr 2009 19:01:18 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Ishmael by Daniel Quinn Message-ID: <49D33B6E.3080108@ashisuto.co.jp> Book Review by Harold W Wood, Jr www.pantheist.net We seek renewed reverence for the biosphere as the ultimate context for human existence ... Pantheists have found a new prophet, and he is a Gorilla. No ordinary Gorilla, Ishmael is uncommonly intelligent, with an ability to not merely understand human speech but to recognize the fundamental flaw of contemporary western culture and, what's more, to point the way toward a solution. Who better than a Gorilla that has been held in captivity for decades to describe the human condition as a form of captivity? Ishmael points out that modern humans, for the most part, are "captives of a civilization system that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order to live". The frustration that Pantheists share with environmentalists - the increasingly rapid loss of the natural world - is one that a few environmental laws, a few scientific studies, and a few people recycling their newspapers seem to do little to allay. One thing that Pantheists recognize - as only a few environmentalists seem to do - as the root of the environmental crisis is the intellectual disease of anthropocentrism. What Daniel Quinn has done in this novel is provide us with not only a thorough analysis of anthropocentrism in a sort of ecological My Dinner with Andre (1981), but to point us in the direction of how we can change from a "Taker" society to a "Leaver" society. Fiction often has served as a motivator for change. Just as Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) helped inspire the effort to free the slaves, so Ishmael will help inspire Pantheists to oppose the arrogant world-view of anthropocentrism and replace it with a view of reverence for the earth. The winner of the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship in 1992, the author of the book, Daniel Quinn, has received enthusiastic letters from readers in every corner of the world: the Near East, the Far East, Africa, Australia, South America, Europe, and Canada. It is being used in an astounding variety of classroom courses, from midschool to graduate school (from animal behavior to zoology and everything in between, including anthropology, ethics, geography, and history). The book is now available in German, Italian, Hungarian, Spanish, Portuguese, Korean, and Japanese as well as English. Ishmael eloquently achieves the purpose of the Turner award to encourage authors to write fiction that produces creative and positive solutions to global problems. For a novel, it doesn't have much of a plot, but that's not the point. The exposition of ideas occurs through the medium of a hyper-intelligent Gorilla conversing with a human who seeks nothing less than simply "how to save the world". This turns out to be an excellent device for expressing ideas that many people, as captives of our culture, have difficulty in understanding or accepting. And rather than simply asserting a conclusion - as most writers railing against anthropocentrism have done in the past - Ishmael takes us step-by-step through the fundamental mythology of our culture to explain how things got the way they are, and how they could be different. This entails a re-analysis of the Genesis stories of Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel that sets standard theology on its ear, but it is an analysis utterly compelling in its logic and its painstaking accuracy with the discoveries of anthropology. The trick is to get outside the cultural mind-set of Western culture, the Taker culture, which permeates "civilized" societies all over the world, of whatever race, religion, language, or other idiosyncrasies. The Taker culture, as expressed in Ishmael, is based upon the fundamental premise that the world was made for man. If you accept that premise, which our culture most certainly does, than it follows that the Earth "belongs to us and we can do what we damn well please with it". This, of course, is the mythology of our culture, so embedded that we don't even perceive it as a "myth" but perceive rather as an inherent truth that never even needs to be mentioned, much less defended. The dominant myth of anthropocentrism is expressed in the tacit assumption of Western culture that the end of man is to grow "forever" and dominate the Earth with his technological marvels and sheer numbers. "You hear this fifty times a day ... Man is conquering the deserts, man is conquering the oceans, man is conquering the atom, man is conquering the elements, man is conquering outer space", Ishmael tells us. "The mythology of your culture hums in your ears so constantly that no one pays the slightest bit of attention to it". As a result, mankind is trying to live in a way that is plainly not sustainable over the long run. What Ishmael successfully points out is that this viewpoint is not the only possible one to take in human life and culture, and that in fact there are cultures - dubbed by Ishmael as Leaver cultures - which have enacted a different story. The dominant mythology of anthropocentrism isn't necessary to be human, it is only happens to be ingrained in a culture "which casts mankind as the enemy of the world". Ishmael tells us, "The mythology of human superiority justifies their doing whatever they please with the world, just the way Hitler's mythology of Aryan superiority justified his doing whatever he pleased with Europe. But in the end this mythology is not deeply satisfying. The Takers are a profoundly lonely people". Of course, part of the Taker mythology is that the Leavers are just primitive people, and that acting as if the world was made for man and only for man is a necessary part of an advanced civilization. But Ishmael identifies the fallacy of that myth as well, pointing out that it is the idea or myth upon which the culture is based that determines our affect on the world, not merely the level of technology. Ancient "Taker" cultures could destroy the environment with minimal technology; just as any modern culture can do with use of modern technology. But the difference is that the Taker's mythology has adopted a process of destruction of the Earth that has become almost routine, whereas "Leaver" societies have found ways to not only live sustainably with the earth, but to live in a way that provides for the welfare of all the members of the community.. Ishmael argues that it is possible for us today to convert modern culture from a "Taker" culture to a "Leaver" culture, which allows for the survival of other creatures than ourselves, and would also provide for our own physical and psychological needs that are not always provided in "Taker" culture. . The premise of a Leaver culture is the opposite of the Taker Culture. It is simply that Man belongs to the world. This doesn't mean that man is merely an animal; in fact quite the contrary: because man belonged to the world, it was Nature's forces of evolution that made him bright and dexterous. If we would adopt the Leaver premise, , but instead the preservation of creation. To save the world, according to Ishmael, "people need more than to be scolded, more than to be made to feel stupid and guilty. They need more than a vision of doom. They need a vision of the world and of themselves that inspires them." "Stopping pollution is not inspiring. Sorting your trash is not inspiring. Cutting down on fluorocarbons is not inspiring." But thinking of ourselves in a new way is inspiring. Some of these new ways of thinking may relate only to some small questions. Ishmael asks us, "Does being civilized make you incapable of giving the creatures around you a little space in which to live?" In fact, Ishmael explores the biological laws that other creatures live that ensures not only their survival, but the survival of the entire ecological community of which they are a part. There is no reason that modern culture cannot follow these same laws. After all, human life and settlement isn't against the law, it's subject to the law. "And if being civilized means anything at all, it should mean that you're leaders of the club [of the community of life], not its only criminals and destroyers". Ishmael describes eloquently the fundamental importance of changing the way we think about the world and the place of humanity within it. To make the necessary changes, Ishmael asserts, "You can't change these things with laws. You must change people's minds." Importantly, Ishmael further teaches us that "you can't just root out a harmful complex of ideas and leave a void behind; you have to give people something that is as meaningful as what they've lost - something that makes better sense than the hold horror of Man Supreme, wiping out everything on this planet that doesn't serve his needs directly or indirectly". And the solution proposed by Ishmael is not necessarily an easy one, but it is at least an inspiring one. We must "break out" of the prison of western culture, stop fighting over the redistribution of power and wealth within the prison itself, to re-formulate the end of man itself. Ishmael's re-formulation does not deny that man's place is the first of evolution to possess self-awareness, but that man's place is "to be the first, without being the last ... Man's place is to figure out how it's possible to do that - and then to make some room for all the rest who are capable of becoming what he's become". Ishmael never uses the terms biocentrism or pantheism, but these are the concepts that Ishmael points toward for our adoption of a new mythology, for recognizing ourselves as belonging to the world instead of the world belonging to us. I urge you to read this book, and to get your friends to read it too. This book is indeed more than a book. It's ideas are not entirely new, but as a work of fiction it is launching a movement, not a mere political movement, but a revolution of ideas. You will find the gospel according to Ishmael to be not only compelling, but of immense help in transforming the world-views of those who remain prisoners of the Taker culture. Let's take this book and help them break out of prison! Editor's Note: I think that Ishmael is the most important book we've ever reviewed in Pantheist Vision. For more information about Pantheism, or questions about this website please contact Harold Wood at ups at pantheist.net Pantheism \Pan"the*ism\, n. [Pan- + theism.] Any doctrine, philosophy, or religious practice that holds universe [cosmos], taken or conceived of as the totality of forces and/or matter, is synonymous with the theological principle of God. Copyright is held by the indicated organization and/ or author. All rights are reserved. All other material, Copyright (c) 1998, 1999, 2000 Universal Pantheist Society. All rights are reserved. http://www.pantheist.net/society/ishmael_book_review.html http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From noreply at coha.org Wed Apr 1 13:33:01 2009 From: noreply at coha.org (Council on Hemispheric Affairs) Date: Wed, 1 Apr 2009 15:33:01 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Time to Debate a Change in Washington's Failed Latin American Drug Policies & Undersung Latin American Heroes Part III Message-ID: <20090401193243.9905F3E471D@mx-out.daemonmail.net> A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 5639 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090401/714526fe/attachment.txt From tboyle at rosehill.net Wed Apr 1 14:11:56 2009 From: tboyle at rosehill.net (Todd Boyle) Date: Wed, 01 Apr 2009 12:11:56 -0800 Subject: [A-List] [riseup] alert - The Empire will require Riseup data logging. Message-ID: >Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2009 22:10:09 -0700 >To: newsletter at lists.riseup.net >From: newsletter at lists.riseup.net >Subject: [riseup] newsletter > >[en] This newsletter is for all riseup.net list admins and mail account >users. It contains vital information, technical tips, and news about Riseup. > >[es] Este bolet??n es para todxs lxs administradorxs de listas y >usuarixs de cuentas de correo. Contiene informaci??n vital, consejos >t??cnicos y noticias sobre Riseup. > >[ru] etc. etc. > > >=================== english =================== >March 2009 Contents > >Two Lovebirds >Hey, people in the U.S.! >Answering a question >Hey, student groups! > > >Two Lovebirds >-------------------------- >We are pleased to announce that Gadfly Petrel and Arara got married in >the merry merry month of February! We wish them all the best and hope >their feathers will be always soft, their nest warm, and that they make >beautiful migratory patterns together. > > >Hey, people in the U.S.! >--------------------------- >Listen up! There is something rotten going on in the House and Senate, a >bill was filed to make it so Riseup would >be required to keep logs of all your activity for the purposes of aiding >law enforcement! This *sucks* and we need your help to make this go away >because even those Democrats are supporting it and if this passes things >are just going to get worse. > >Call some people and get angry! We are pessimistic it will do anything >too, but we must try whatever we can, so how about it, lets try calling >them up and chewing them out. Calling up your Senator(s) >(http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm) and >Representatives (https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml) and >tell them that this bill is terrible and about as practical as asking >people to keep a filing cabinet full of photographs of every footprint >that shows up their garden. Or just give them a piece of your mind, >whatever makes you feel better. Please do something before it's too late! > >And another link for people in the USA---the Electronic Frontier >Foundation, an organization Riseup loves and trusts, has published a >(US-focused) Surveillance Self-Defense site at https://ssd.eff.org/. >Check it out! > > >Answering a question >--------------------- >Last month we asked you all to send in questions and ideas for riseup >and the world of technology. We got lots of lovely responses (and a few >irate ones). Some of them were great ideas we also dream about, some of >them were brand new shiny thoughts, and some were questions about how >and why and what riseup does. We're going to be answering some of them >in this newsletter. If you sent in a question about something that is >broken, please resend that as a help ticket >(https://user.riseup.net/forms.) If you have come up with any new >dreams, ideas, or questions for riseup, you can email pigeon at riseup.net. >So, here we go... > >Question: I am concerned that riseup.net emails will not carry >attachments. We often have cases that have to be carried and they are >always rejected. Even what we consider a small attachment can???t be >carried to our network. > >Response: The maximum email size is restricted to 300k, which we >consider generously high. There are many reasons to limit the size of >list email. Large attachments can be very costly for us. We have a lot >of bandwidth, but we pay for what we use. For example, suppose you sent >a 1 meg PDF flyer as an attachment to a list with 100 subscribers. All >you have to upload is the 1 meg file, but our humble little server then >must send out 100 megs. Also, we have to archive the attachment and keep >backups of it forever. As long as message size is small, this is manageable. > >The good news is that large attachments are not needed because you can >create a "shared web space." Shared web spaces allow a list subscriber >to upload a file using their web browser. When you send out an email, >include the URL of the file in the shared web space (an example URL >might be lists.riseup.net/www/d_read/newsletter/readme.txt). Other >subscribers can then download the file using their web browser. > >Want to know more geeky details? Info at >http://help.riseup.net/lists/admin/faq/#what_is_the_maximum_size_for_list_email > > >Hey, student groups! >-------- >Sunbird recently flew to a university because a student group said >"Riseup, send a bird to talk with us and we'll give you some money, >because our university has money for speakers." If you go to such a >university, and would like to hang out with a riseup bird and hear us >squawk about responsible technology, net surveillance, free software, >how to start a radical tech collective, etc, drop us a line. We might >not be able to come right away, as we are busy birds who care about the >environment, but we can try to make it work (maybe there is already a >riseup bird living in a tree near you!) It seems like a great way to >transfer money from the academic-industrial complex to the movement. >Send an email to collective AT riseup DOT net. > > >$$$ >----- >The economy is crumbling. Maybe some states will be falling soon, too. >Maybe the time has come to invest in some autonomous technology >structures. http://riseup.net/donate > > > >=================== espa??ol =================== >Contenidos Marzo 2009 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 6281 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090401/fc9db756/attachment.txt From tboyle at rosehill.net Wed Apr 1 17:02:10 2009 From: tboyle at rosehill.net (Todd Boyle) Date: Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:02:10 -0800 Subject: [A-List] Transition Guide to Money In-Reply-To: <716A1992CBE2A94AAB5793D46FE703FA01E55A3A@STAFFMBX1.livad.l iv.ac.uk> References: <716A1992CBE2A94AAB5793D46FE703FA01E55A37@STAFFMBX1.livad.liv.ac.uk> <716A1992CBE2A94AAB5793D46FE703FA01E55A3A@STAFFMBX1.livad.liv.ac.uk> Message-ID: Thanks Pete. In Seattle we have heard propositions from *numerous* leaders on how to address global warming. I think they boil down to three variants. 1) tax models, 2) credits trading models, and 3) simple regulatory ban models. If rights to release CO2 are propertized or privatized, in a carbon credits markets, we do NOT want those credits to be expressed in money since that would allow the rich, the bankers and financiers, to pollute to their hearts' content while the rest of the population cannot afford to drive or heat our homes. This point in history is a critical moment for experts in Alternative Communities to explain the potentials for a carbon currency, completely separate from money, in which every human is allocated the same quantity of CO2 rights, on a per-capita basis. At that point you will have to swipe your carbon card, right after your money debit card, to pay for your gasoline, airline ticket, utility bills, etc. And when you are "out of CO2 credits", that is the end of your fun. They must *not* be tradable for money. Todd At 02:58 AM 4/1/2009, North, Peter wrote: >At the risk of shameless self promotion, my "Transition Guide to >Money" is now available for pre-order..... >Pete >http://greenbooks.co.uk/store/transition-guide-money-p-320.html?osCsid=ec74b45eb344dd51eca281733ce83a8f THE TRANSITION GUIDE TO MONEY by North, Peter Creating alternative systems for your community The Transition Guide to Money shows how local money can help us unleash the financial power of our communities to build a resilient, low-carbon future. In past recessions and depressions, a popular response from communities has been to create their own forms of money. The jobs aren't there, and the money has dried up, but needs remain. How can local money help communities in times of hardship and cut as much carbon out of their economies as possible? An inspiring yet practical new book, The Transition Guide to Money helps you understand what money is and what makes good and bad money. It draws on the considerable track record of experimentation with local money around the world and gives ideas to those in the Transition movement and beyond about what has been tried, what works, and what to avoid. Different models of alternative currencies are reviewed, from the Local Exchange Trading System (LETS) and Timebanks that work within communities, to paper currencies like Berkshares, German regional currencies and Ithaca 'hours' that circulate between local businesses as an alternative to their losing trade to the big box retailers. How can local banks and bonds help us move our cities, communities and homes on to a more sustainable footing? The book suggests how groups can create future forms of local money that can deepen local resilience and support the development of more local production of the things we need, such as food and power, whilst reducing a community's CO2 emissions at the same time. The Author: Peter North teaches Geography at Liverpool University. He first heard about local currencies while doing a Masters in Peace Studies in 1992, and has been exploring local currencies worldwide since then. He is one of the founder members of Transition South Liverpool. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 3635 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090401/4f821636/attachment.txt From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Wed Apr 1 17:58:22 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Thu, 02 Apr 2009 08:58:22 +0900 Subject: [A-List] An Attack of the Bellamoids Message-ID: <49D3FF9E.3020803@ashisuto.co.jp> James Lovelock says the government's enthusiasm for wind farms approaches fascism. What is he on about? by George Monbiot The Guardian (March 31 2009) Renewable power is drifting away on the wind like thistledown. The credit has gone; the price of fossil fuels has fallen; it is impossible to work in a country whose people treat wind farms like the Black Death. The investors have blown overseas or put their cash back into coal. So James Lovelock's timing is, to say the least, eccentric. Just as several major companies reveal that they are packing their bags, the venerable father of Gaia theory, possessor of one of the world's greatest minds, announces in Sunday's Observer that "intemperate injunctions about green imperatives could make [environmentalism] as dangerous" as the ideology of the Axis Powers {1}. He told the Guardian that a new planning regime for wind farms is "an erosion of our freedom [that] draws near to what I see as fascism". {2} His grounds? The energy secretary Ed Miliband had mused that it should be "socially unacceptable to be against wind turbines in your area - like not wearing your seatbelt or driving past a zebra crossing". {3} I have great respect for Professor Lovelock. He has done more to advance our understanding of the planet's response to climate change than any other living person. But he appears to be suffering from an acute case of bellamoids*. He is old enough to know what fascism looks like. It embraces a wide and contradictory set of movements, but its common feature is violence in the pursuit of political aims. If Professor Lovelock knows of people who have been killed as a result of their opposition to wind farms, he should tell us. Fascism also has a reputation for being ruthlessly efficient in implementing its chosen schemes - building autobahns, mobilizing panzer divisions, making the trains run on time. This is not a charge that could be laid at the door of Mr Miliband's department. His statement was in fact an expression of utter impotence: a hand-wringing entreaty to the public after all else has failed. The government, as far as I can tell, has not yet formally renounced the target it set in 2000: that ten per cent of our electricity supply should come from renewables by 2010 {4}. So far it has managed 4.9% {5, 6}, and it has nine months in which to make up the difference. Its objective for 2020 is beginning to look almost as unrealistic. Despite the fact that the UK has richer ambient energy resources than any other country in Europe, the government managed to beat its target for renewable power down to fifteen per cent of total energy supply, rather than the twenty per cent adopted across the Union. Even so, this means that by 2020 35% of our electricity must be produced by wind, hydro, wave, tidal, solar or biomass generators {7}. The technology that could be most widely deployed is wind power, but investment is melting away faster than an Andean glacier. Shell has pulled out completely {8}. Centrica, E.On and BT are reviewing their plans. Sun Microsystems has suspended its projects {9}. The Spanish company Iberdrola is cutting its investment in the UK by forty per cent {10}. Scores of smaller firms are going bust. Can you hear the jackboots yet? Such is the state's failure that even Lord Browne, the former chief executive of BP, who worshipped at the alter of the free market as fervently as any, now calls for "a new strategic direction and a new framework of rules, laid down by government". {11} As it happens, the government is prepared to be ruthlessly interventionist in pursuit of other energy aims. To promote its policy of "maximising the UK's existing oil and gas reserves" {12}, it confiscates the licences of any company which fails to make full use of them. In 2007, it seized 32 blocks and parts of forty others {13}. It calls this approach "forcing unworked blocks back into play" {14}. But the state dares not be so dirigiste when dealing with renewables. It allows people of Professor Lovelock's persuasion to trample all over the industry. I understand their concerns. I don't believe that wind farms should be built anywhere and everywhere. (Now that I live among them, however, I like them much more than I used to.) But the battle against wind power has grown out of all proportion to the threat it presents. The Campaign to Protect Rural England and its equivalent in Wales, the CPRW, appear to be obsessed; the CPRW should be renamed the Campaign to Publicly Rubbish Wind. Local authorities are supposed to deal with planning applications within sixteen weeks. They process seventy per cent of other major developments - supermarkets, airport extensions, housing estates and the rest - in this period. They manage to work through just five per cent of windfarms in the same amount of time: such is the public outcry {15}. You might imagine that the objectors are in the majority. They are not. In a survey by the department for business, 64% of respondents agreed that they would be happy to live within five kilometres of a wind development; eighteen per cent disagreed {16}. But a very powerful middle-class constituency drives all before it, often using falsehoods to make its case. Even Professor Lovelock is not above using such tactics. In the Observer he used German figures to make his point about the UK: "the turbines are only seventeen per cent efficient". All the authoritative sources I have seen report a capacity factor for onshore wind in the UK of between 25 and forty per cent, and around 35% for offshore wind {17, 18, 19}. The objectors assert that the new Planning Act will force communities to accept wind farms. It's true that the infrastructure planning commission, rather than local authorities, will decide on projects bigger than fifty megawatts. But just seven per cent of the 7,000 megawatts of onshore applications stuck in the planning process in England and Wales cross this threshold {20}. Councils will have no discretion over new coal-burning power stations, roads and airports, but they will be able to settle the great majority of wind power proposals. There is plenty to object to in the pernicious new act, but it's hard to see why wind farms should be singled out. The windbags have now driven most proposals offshore. But here, though the turbines can be bigger, the costs of establishment are much higher, not least because developers have to pay for their own connections to the national grid, which means laying down a long undersea cable. When you throw in the collapse of the carbon market, the reduction in the price of gas and coal, the shrivelling of credit lines and the devaluation of the pound, it's hardly surprising that investors have found something better to do. As wind was the primary means by which the government was hoping to replace fossil fuels, the great pull-out appears to destroy any remaining likelihood that this country can meet its obligations under either the European directive or the UK's climate change act. This is grim news for all but one of the earth's people. Professor Lovelock might not be around when it happens, but at least he will have the equivocal satisfaction of knowing that his prophecy - the total collapse of human society - is more likely to come true. www.monbiot.com * An unexpected attack of irrationality first noted in David Bellamy. References: 1. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/29/lovelock-wind-farms 2. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/29/lovelock-wind 3. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/24/wind-farms-opposition-ed-miliband 4. This target is still posted on the website of the new energy and climate change department: http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/what_we_do/uk_supply/energy_mix/renewable/renewable.aspx 5. See Table 5.2 here: http://www.berr.gov.uk/energy/statistics/source/electricity/page18527.html 6. and Table 7.4 here: http://www.berr.gov.uk/energy/statistics/source/renewables/page18513.html 7. http://renewableconsultation.berr.gov.uk/consultation/consultation_summary 8. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/mar/17/royaldutchshell-energy 9. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/21/renewable-energy1 10. http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_resources/article5977714.ece 11. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/25/clean-energy-uk-browne 12. Department of Trade and Industry, 19th December 2006. West of Shetland task force forge ahead into new year. http://www.gnn.gov.uk/environment/fullDetail.asp?ReleaseID=251607&NewsAreaID=2&NavigatedFromDepartment=False 13. BERR, 20th February 2008. Search for oil and gas continues as Hutton announces 25th Offshore Oil and Gas Licensing Round. http://nds.coi.gov.uk/environment/fullDetail.asp?ReleaseID=354046&NewsAreaID=2&NavigatedFromDepartment=True 14. Department of Trade and Industry, 1st February 2007. Oil is well under the North Sea. http://www.gnn.gov.uk/environment/fullDetail.asp?ReleaseID=261127&NewsAreaID=2&NavigatedFromDepartment=False 15. http://www.bwea.com/pdf/2010/0709%20Progress%20to%202010.pdf 16. DBERR, 2008. UK Renewable Energy Consultation. Chapter 3, Figure 3.5. http://renewableconsultation.berr.gov.uk/consultation/chapter-3a/executive-summary/ 17. http://www.planningrenewables.org.uk/cgi-bin/page.cgi?1006 18. Godfrey Boyle {Editor}, 2004. Renewable Energy, page 279. OUP, Oxford. 19. David JC MacKay, 2009. Sustainable Energy - without the hot air, page 267. UIT, Cambridge. 20. The British Wind Energy Association tells me that this applies to 247 megawatts in England and 254 megawatts in Wales. Copyright (c) 2006 Monbiot.com http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/03/31/an-attack-of-the-bellamoids/ http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From critical.montages at gmail.com Wed Apr 1 20:06:48 2009 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Wed, 1 Apr 2009 22:06:48 -0400 Subject: [A-List] China Invests to Be Leader in Electric Vehicles Message-ID: This is the sort of program that Green Keynesians in the USA think that the USG should pursue, taking over the Big 3 and retooling them from R&D to production. But workers are not in revolt in the USA, so the USG is under no pressure to invest, let alone invest environmentally. Rather, it's busy robbing workers (cf. ) and the rest of the public (cf. ) to re-enrich the capitalist class -- Yoshie April 2, 2009 China Invests to Be Leader in Electric Vehicles By KEITH BRADSHER TIANJIN, China ? Chinese leaders have adopted a plan aimed at turning the country into one of the leading producers of hybrid and all-electric vehicles within three years, and making it the world leader in electric cars and buses after that. The goal, which radiates from the very top of the Chinese government, suggests that Detroit?s Big Three, already struggling to stay alive, will face even stiffer foreign competition on the next field of automotive technology than they do today. ?China is well positioned to lead in this,? said David Tulauskas, director of China government policy at General Motors. To some extent, China is making a virtue of a liability. It is behind the United States, Japan and other countries when it comes to making gas-powered vehicles, but by skipping the current technology, China hopes to get a jump on the next. Japan is the market leader in hybrids today, which run on both electricity and gasoline, with cars like the Toyota Prius and Honda Insight. The United States has been a laggard in alternative vehicles. G.M.?s plug-in hybrid Chevrolet Volt is scheduled to go on sale next year, and will use rechargeable batteries imported from LG in South Korea. China?s intention, in addition to creating a world-leading industry that will produce jobs and exports, is to reduce urban pollution and decrease its dependence on oil, which comes from the Mideast and travels over sea routes controlled by the United States Navy. But electric vehicles may do little to clear the country?s smog-darkened sky or curb its rapidly rising emissions of global warming gases. China gets three-fourths of its electricity from coal, which produces more soot and more greenhouse gases than other fuels. A report by McKinsey & Company last autumn estimated that replacing a gasoline-powered car with a similar-size electric car in China would reduce greenhouse emissions by only 19 percent. It would reduce urban pollution, however, by shifting the source of smog from car exhaust pipes to power plants, which are often located outside cities. Beyond manufacturing, subsidies of up to $8,800 are being offered to taxi fleets and local government agencies in 13 Chinese cities for each hybrid or all-electric vehicle they purchase. The state electricity grid has been ordered to set up electric car charging stations in Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin. Government research subsidies for electric car designs are increasing rapidly. And an interagency panel is planning tax credits for consumers who buy alternative energy vehicles. China wants to raise its annual production capacity to 500,000 hybrid or all-electric cars and buses by the end of 2011, from 2,100 last year, government officials and Chinese auto executives said. By comparison, CSM Worldwide, a consulting firm that does forecasts for automakers, predicts that Japan and South Korea together will be producing 1.1 million hybrid or all-electric light vehicles by then and North America will be making 267,000. The United States Department of Energy has its own $25 billion program to develop electric-powered cars and improve battery technology, and will receive another $2 billion for battery development as part of the economic stimulus program enacted by Congress. Premier Wen Jiabao highlighted the importance of electric cars two years ago with his unlikely choice to become minister of science and technology: Wan Gang, a Shanghai-born former Audi auto engineer in Germany who later became the chief scientist for the Chinese government?s research panel on electric vehicles. Mr. Wan is the first minister in at least three decades who is not a member of the Communist Party. And Premier Wen has his own connection to the electric car industry. He was born and grew up here in Tianjin, the longtime capital of China?s battery industry, 70 miles southeast of Beijing. Tianjin has thrived in the six years since Mr. Wen became premier. It now has China?s first bullet train service (to Beijing), a new Airbus factory and an immaculate new airport. Tianjin has also received a surge of research subsidies for enterprises like the Tianjin-Qingyuan Electric Vehicle Company. Electric cars have several practical advantages in China. Intercity driving is rare. Commutes are fairly short and frequently at low speeds because of traffic jams. So the limitations of all-electric cars ? the latest models in China have a top speed of 60 miles an hour and a range of 120 miles between charges ? are less of a problem. First-time car buyers also make up four-fifths of the Chinese market, and these buyers have not yet grown accustomed to the greater power and range of gasoline-powered cars. But the electric car industry faces several obstacles here too. Most urban Chinese live in apartments, and cannot install recharging devices in driveways, so more public charging centers need to be set up. Rechargeable lithium-ion batteries also have a poor reputation in China. Counterfeit lithium-ion batteries in cellphones occasionally explode, causing injuries. And Sony had to recall genuine lithium-ion batteries in laptops in 2006 and 2008 after some overheated and caught fire or exploded. These safety problems have been associated with lithium-ion cobalt batteries, however, not the more chemically stable lithium-ion phosphate batteries now being adapted to automotive use. The tougher challenge is that all lithium-ion batteries are expensive, whether made with cobalt or phosphate. That will be a hurdle for thrifty Chinese consumers, especially if gas prices stay relatively low compared to their highs last summer. China is tackling the challenges with the same tools that helped it speed industrialization and put on the Olympics: immense amounts of energy, money and people. BYD has 5,000 auto engineers and an equal number of battery engineers, most of them living at its headquarters in Shenzhen in a cluster of 15 yellow apartment buildings, each 18 stories high. Young engineers earn less than $600 a month, including benefits. When Tianjin-Qingyuan puts its entirely battery-powered Saibao midsize sedan on sale this autumn, the body will come from a sedan that normally sells for $14,600 when equipped with a gasoline engine. But the engine and gas tank will be replaced with a $14,000 battery pack and electric motor, said Wu Zhixin, the company?s general manager. That means the retail price will nearly double, to almost $30,000. Even if the government awards the maximum subsidy of $8,800 to buyers, that is a hefty premium. Large-scale production could drive down the cost of the battery pack and electric motor by 30 or 40 percent, still leaving electric cars more expensive than gasoline-powered ones, Mr. Wu said. But Mr. Wu has plenty of money to pursue improvements. He interrupted an interview at his company?s headquarters on Thursday to take a call on his cellphone, politely declined an offer from the caller, and hung up. The general manager of a state-controlled bank had called to ask if he needed a loan, he explained. From cbcox at ilstu.edu Wed Apr 1 21:10:59 2009 From: cbcox at ilstu.edu (Carrol Cox) Date: Wed, 01 Apr 2009 22:10:59 -0500 Subject: [A-List] China Invests to Be Leader in Electric Vehicles References: Message-ID: <49D42CC3.77DFDE7D@ilstu.edu> I've never been quite clear on whether electric vehicles will really make a difference. Their batteries of course will need to be charged, which will probably produce greenhouse gases (very possibly from coal-fired burners). Highways will still have to be built and endlessly rebuilt for them, and trucks and construction equipment (not electric) will run on those highways, as well as remaining gasoline-powered autos (which will be the majority for a long time anyhow). The auto will therefore still make _real_ intger-city public transportation (trains and buses) non-competitive. Besides, it's not really the technology (however destructive that may be) that makes capitalism so destructive of the ennvironment: it is the absolute need of the capitalist economy to grow and grow and grow and gfrow....endlessly. And it won't fall if we don't hit it. In fact it won't fall unless we hit it in its hearlands: U.S., EKurope, Japan -- and probably before long Russia & China. Carrol From critical.montages at gmail.com Wed Apr 1 22:34:21 2009 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 00:34:21 -0400 Subject: [A-List] China Invests to Be Leader in Electric Vehicles In-Reply-To: <49D42CC3.77DFDE7D@ilstu.edu> References: <49D42CC3.77DFDE7D@ilstu.edu> Message-ID: There isn't any method of transportation that produces zero greenhouse gases. Replacing gasoline-powered cars by electric or natural-gas powered ones for intra-city traffic is a technically feasible idea that can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As for growth, the world GDP will shrink this year, for the first time since WW2: "The World Bank said its latest projections show the global economy shrinking by 1.7 percent in 2009," . It won't start growing for a while, given that only a few countries like China are implementing Keynesian policies. The rest of the world are still stuck with neoliberal economics. On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 11:10 PM, Carrol Cox wrote: > I've never been quite ?clear on whether electric vehicles will really > make a difference. Their batteries of course will need to be charged, > which will probably produce greenhouse gases (very possibly from > coal-fired burners). Highways will still have to be built and endlessly > rebuilt for them, and trucks and construction equipment (not electric) > will run on those highways, as well as remaining gasoline-powered autos > (which will be the majority for a long time anyhow). The auto will > therefore still make _real_ intger-city public transportation (trains > and buses) non-competitive. > > Besides, it's not really the technology (however destructive that may > be) that makes capitalism so destructive of the ennvironment: it is the > absolute need of the capitalist economy to grow and grow and grow and > gfrow....endlessly. > > And it won't fall if we don't hit it. > > In fact it won't fall unless we hit it in its hearlands: U.S., EKurope, > Japan -- and probably before long Russia & China. > > Carrol > > > From suzannedk at gmail.com Wed Apr 1 22:42:19 2009 From: suzannedk at gmail.com (Suzanne de Kuyper) Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 06:42:19 +0200 Subject: [A-List] Fwd: Surveilling for clues of evil intent In-Reply-To: <8CB815CEF0F865C-14E8-253D@WEBMAIL-MY25.sysops.aol.com> References: <8CB815CEF0F865C-14E8-253D@WEBMAIL-MY25.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Date: Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 5:47 AM Subject: Surveilling for clues of evil intent To: suzannedk at gmail.com http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/apr/01/surveilling-for-clues-of-evil-intent/ FEIN: Surveilling for clues of evil intent An American Stasi operating in 'fusion centers'? *COMMENTARY:* The Soviet Union had its KGB, East Germanyhad its Stasi, and the United States should profit by those examples. It should abandon fusion centers that engage 800,000 state and local law enforcement officers in the business of gathering and sharing purported domestic or international terrorism intelligence. The vast majority conceive this task as synonymous with monitoring and scorning political dissent and association protected by the First Amendment. To a hammer everything looks like a nail. To an intelligence agent, informant or law enforcement officer, everything unconventional or unorthodox looks like at least a pre-embryonic terrorist danger. The United States should not fall victim to the French Bourbon monarchy disease of forgetting nothing, and learning nothing, as with the A. Mitchell Palmer Raids, McCarthyism, COINTELPRO or Operation Shamrock. Fusion centers pivot on the idea that the best way to forestall a second edition of Sept. 11, 2001, or a variation is to spy on American citizens in search of clues of an inclination toward future terrorism. Under U.S. law, an earmark of terrorism includes acts that "appear to be intended ... to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion." Any dissidence or political dissident is suspect to fusion centers. Their mischief is more than speculation or Aristotelian logic. On Feb. 19, the North Central Texas Fusion System issued a routine Prevention Awareness Bulletin that easily might have been penned by recruits from East Germany's Stasi. In bold letters, the bulletin worries that freedom of speech, the freedom to petition government for redress of grievances, and freedom of association are being exploited by Islamic groups to advance their Islamic-based goals by peaceful and lawful means. In other words, democracy is the enemy. The bulletin screams: "Middle Eastern Terrorist groups and their supporting organizations have been successful in gaining support for Islamic goals in the United States and providing an environment for terrorist organizations to flourish." It continues: "A number of organizations in the U.S. have been lobbying Islamic-based issues for many years. These lobbying efforts have turned public and political support towards radical goals such as Shariah law and support of terrorist military action against Western nations." That disparagement of freedom of speech and association in search of political change was rebuked by U.S. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes in De Jonge v. Oregon in 1937: "The greater the importance of safeguarding the community from incitements to the overthrow of our institutions by force and violence, the more imperative is the need to preserve inviolate the constitutional rights of free speech, free press and free assembly in order to maintain the opportunity for free political discussion, to the end that government may be responsive to the will of the people and that changes, if desired, may be obtained by peaceful means. Therein lies the security of the Republic, the very foundation of constitutional government." The fusion center's bulletin next attacks the Constitution's celebration of religious accommodation and diversity with a cri de coeur against voluntary bows toward Islamic practices and the possibility of altering American law accordingly: "Taken in that context, pushing an aggressive, pro-Islam agenda that's been increasingly successful in recent years takes on a new light. The following list taken in isolation seems rather innocuous: Muslim cab drivers in Minneapolis refuse to carry passengers who have alcohol in their possession; The Indianapolis airport in 2007 installed footbaths to accommodate Muslim prayer; Public schools schedule prayer breaks to accommodate Muslim students; Pork is banned in the workplace; etc. "Tolerance is growing in more formal areas. The Department of Treasury recently hosted a conference titled 'Islamic Finance 101,' which indicates the government hopes to secure recycled petrodollars in exchange for conforming to Shariah economic doctrine. ... A Houston bank now offers Islamic Financing for home loans." [and so???? These guys have no clue what a pluralistic society is all about. Of course it IS Bush's dear land of Texas] Los Angeles Police Department Special Order No. 11, of March 5, 2008, declares it is the department's policy to "gather, record, and analyze information of a criminal or noncriminal nature, that could indicate activity or intentions related to either foreign or domestic terrorism," and includes a list of 65 behaviors Los Angeles police officers "shall" report, for instance, "taking notes." The director of national intelligence has promoted the LAPD as an intelligence collection model. First Amendment principles will never be honored by law enforcement officers or public officials in the business of intelligence collection. They are rewarded financially and professionally by the volume of intelligence collected. There are no serious quality controls. Few if any are capable of separating the terrorist wheat from the innocuous chaff. There are no reliable earmarks of a would-be terrorist. Timothy McVeigh was not a prime suspect in the immediate aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing. Arab Muslims were. Because anything might be a clue as to a possible psychological inclination to commit terrorism, everything is fair game for intelligence collection. But when everything is relevant, nothing is relevant. That may explain why there is no credible evidence that fusion centers have frustrated a single terrorist plot - their primary raison d'etre. They are no more American than was the House Un-American Activities Committee, and they deserve the same fate. *Bruce Fein is a constitutional lawyer at Bruce Fein & Associates Inc., and author of "Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for our Constitution and Democracy."* ------------------------------ New Low Prices on Dell Laptops - Starting at $399 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 7884 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090402/14533472/attachment.txt From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Thu Apr 2 07:34:43 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Thu, 02 Apr 2009 22:34:43 +0900 Subject: [A-List] From Global Finance to the Nationalization of the Banks Message-ID: <49D4BEF3.3080801@ashisuto.co.jp> Eight Theses on the Economic Crisis by Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin Socialist Project - E-Bulletin No 189 The B u l l e t (February 25 2009) 1. The current economic crisis has to be understood in terms of the historical dynamics and contradictions of capitalist finance in the second half of the 20th century. Even though the spheres of capitalist finance and production are obviously intertwined (in significant ways today more than ever before), the origins of today's US-based financial crisis are not rooted in a profitability crisis in the sphere of production, as was the case with the crisis of the 1970s, nor in the global trade imbalances that have emerged since. Although the growing significance of finance in the major capitalist economies was already strongly registered by the 1960s, it was the role finance played in resolving the economic crisis of the 1970s that explains the central place it came to occupy in the making of global capitalism. The inflation that was the main symptom of that crisis had a strong negative impact on those holding financial assets and destabilized the international role of the dollar. Under the guidance of the US Federal Reserve, financial markets used very high interest rates to drive up unemployment, defeat trade union militancy and restrict public welfare expenditures in the early 1980s - all of which had come to be seen as the source of the intractable profitability and inflation problems of the previous decade. Yet it was precisely the contradictory ways finance contributed to global capitalism's successes in the closing decades of the 20th century that laid the foundation for the massive capitalist crisis that now closes the first decade of the 21st century. 2. The spatial expansion and social deepening of capitalism in the last quarter century could not have occurred without innovations in finance. The development of securitized financial markets and the internationalization of American finance allowed for the hedging and spreading of the risks associated with the global integration of investment, production and trade. This provided risk insurance in a complex global economy without which capital accumulation would otherwise have been significantly restricted. At the same time, finance penetrated more and more deeply into society, integrating subordinate classes as debtors, savers, and even investors through private pensions, consumer credit and mortgages for private housing. This became especially important in facilitating the maintenance of consumer demand in a period of wage stagnation and growing inequality. In terms of directly fostering capital accumulation, finance was not only an important site of technological innovation in computerization and information systems, but also facilitated innovation more generally in high tech sectors through venture capital, especially in the US. The central role of the US dollar and Treasury bonds in the global economy as the key store of value and the basis for all other calculations of value, alongside the global institutional predominance of US financial institutions, acted as a vortex for drawing the global surplus to American financial markets and instruments. This allowed for the mobilization of cheap global credit for the US economy, and sustained its place as the major import and consumer market in the global economy. The lowering of US interest rates was important to the macroeconomic stability reflected in the fewer and milder recessions within the US in comparison with the post-war era ('The Great Moderation', as economists refer to the 1983 to 2007 period). 3. The competitive volatility of global finance produced a series of financial crises whose containment required repeated state intervention. Global financial competition for higher yields led to institutional and market innovations that allowed greater leveraging and therefore more credit relative to the capital base. This in fact amounted to a vast increase in the effective money supply, but rather than yielding the price inflation that monetarists predicted, the defeat of labour and the increased corporate ability to fund investments with internal funds meant that increased liquidity translated into asset inflation. This asset inflation was uneven across sectors, producing financial bubbles from stock markets to real estate at various times, while the size of these bubbles was expanded by virtue of the material expansions in the real economy related to each of these areas. The bursting of these bubbles became a common feature of capitalism and the state interventions required to contain them reinforced the confidence that supported future bubbles. The alleged withdrawal of states from markets amidst the globalization of capitalism was a neoliberal ideological illusion: states in the developed capitalist countries pumped more liquidity into the banks in the face of financial crises, while they ensuring that crises in the developing countries were generally used to impose financial discipline. The neoliberal American state played the most active role as the imperial guarantor, coordinator and fire-fighter-in-chief for global capitalism. 4. Both finance's central role in the making of global capitalism and the American state's role in sustaining it produced the bubble that emerged inside the US housing sector. Rising demand for home ownership at all income levels, partly reflecting limits on public housing since the crisis of the 1970s, was encouraged by US government support for meeting housing needs through financial markets backed by mortgage tax deductions. And, reflecting the increasingly unequal income distribution that was the consequence of the defeat of labour generally and the restructuring of production and employment, a broad stratum of the working class population also sustained their consumption through taking out second mortgages on the bubble-inflated values of their homes, But all this was really only made possible by the acceleration of financial securitization and the creation of a broader market for mortgage-backed securities in particular. This developed amidst rising house prices that apparently increased the wealth and credit-worthiness of those borrowing, and gave rise to the acceptance of lower standards (including for 'teaser' subprime mortgage rates) by regulatory agencies, largely supported by both parties in Congress. The Federal Reserve's low interest rate policies, especially in the wake of the bursting of the dot-com bubble, reinforced by the high demand for US Treasury securities as the safest store of value in a highly volatile global financial system, intensified competitive pressures on finance everywhere to get higher yields through greater leveraging of assets and innovative securitization to stretch the boundaries of risk. The historical safety of collateralized home loans (with such a large portion having been backed by the US government) reinforced the confidence in perpetually rising home prices and made housing debt the most attractive arena for the systemic exercise of arbitrage between low-interest US Treasury bonds and high-interest mortgage-backed securities. 5. The inevitable bursting of the housing bubble had such a profound impact because of its centrality to sustaining both US consumer demand and global financial markets. The eventual bursting of the housing bubble was inevitable once, as was the case by 2005, housing prices peaked. By this time, not only had the Fed's low interest rate policy come to an end, but teaser rates on many subprimes had run out. The rise in foreclosures and the number of houses offered for resale had immediate effects on housing prices, new home construction and furniture and appliance sales. Moreover, by virtue of the loss in value of the primary asset figuring in workers' perceptions of their personal wealth, this in turn led to an overall decline in US consumer spending and import demand in a way that the bursting of stock market bubbles had not. At the same time, since the spreading of risk in subprime mortgages had been effected through their packaging into derivative securities with more highly-rated tranches of debts, the housing crisis undermined the econometric equations that valued these assets in global financial markets. Mortgage-backed securities became difficult to value and to sell, and this produced a contagion throughout financial and inter-bank markets that spread the collapse internationally. Taken together with the impact of the housing crisis on mass consumption behaviour, and thus on the US economy's ability to function as the key global consumer, illusions that other regions might be able decouple from the US in this crisis were quickly dispelled. 6. The crisis reinforced the centrality of the American state in the global capitalist economy while multiplying the difficulties entailed in managing it. The rise of the US dollar in currency markets and the enormous demand for US Treasury bonds as the crisis unfolded reflected the extent to which the world remained on the dollar standard and the American state continued to be regarded as the ultimate guarantor of value. Treasury bonds are in demand because they remain the most stable store of value in a highly volatile capitalist world: illusions that foreign states were previously doing the US a favour by buying Treasury securities may finally be dispelled by this crisis. The American state's central role in terms of global crisis management - from currency swaps to provide other states with much needed dollars to overseeing policy cooperation among central banks and finance ministries - has also been confirmed in this crisis. Yet despite its very active interventions, the American state has proved unable to contain the effects of this particular crisis. The massive drops of liquidity that it has helicoptered onto the financial system since August 2007 have not restored the banks' capacity or willingness to lend at anything like previous rates - even to each other, let alone to firms or to consumers. The whole system of securitized finance that has grown up over the past few decades - whereby the risk on mortgages, consumer credit and business loans is sliced, diced, repackaged and traded around the world - has imploded. 7. The scale of the crisis today is such that nationalization of the financial system cannot be kept off the political agenda. It is increasingly apparent, that monetary and fiscal stimulation alone are unlikely to succeed in ending the crisis since the banking system's dysfunctionality today undermines the multiplier effect, just as new regulations are supposed to make finance more cautious and prudent in their lending. Indeed, there has been an increasing realization that it may not be possible to keep off the political agenda much longer the issue of bringing large portions of the financial system into public ownership. This is advanced today along the lines of the temporary nationalizations that took place in Sweden and Japan during their financial crises in the 1990s whereby the state took on the banks' bad debts and then passed the banks back to the private sector. It is a measure of the severity of the crisis that nationalization is now being quite generally proposed even within the US although it poses a host of problems as a way of saving global capitalism. It is highly significant that the last time the nationalization of the banks was seriously raised, at least in the advanced capitalist countries, was in response to the 1970s crisis by those elements on the left who recognized that the only way to overcome the contradictions of the Keynesian welfare state in a positive manner was to take the financial system into public control. Now that bank nationalization is back on the political agenda (albeit now coming from very different sources), it is very important to contrast the type of band-aid nationalization now being canvassed with the demand for turning the whole banking system into a public utility, which would allow for the distribution of credit and capital to be undertaken in conformity with democratically established criteria. And it is necessary to point out that this would have to involve not only capital controls in relation to international finance but also controls over domestic investment, since the point of making finance into a public utility is to transform the uses to which it is now put. 8. The call for nationalization of the banks provides an opening for advancing broader strategies that begin to take up the need for systemic alternatives to capitalism. The severity of today's economic crisis once again exposes the old irrationality of the basic logic of capitalist markets. As each firm (and indeed state agency) lays off workers and tries to pay less to those kept on, this has the effect of further undercutting overall demand in the economy. At the same time, the financial crisis exposes new irrationalities, not least those contained in the widespread proposals for trading in carbon credits as a solution to the climate crisis, which involve depending on volatile derivatives markets that are inherently open to the manipulation of accounts and to credit crashes. In the context of such readily visible irrationalities, a strong case can be made that - to save jobs and the communities that depend on them in a way that converts production to ecologically-sustainable priorities during the course of this crisis - we need to break with the logics of capitalist markets rather than use state institutions to reinforce them. We need to put on the public agenda the need to change our economic and political institutions so as to allow for democratic planning to collectively decide how and where we produce what we need to sustain our lives and our relationship to our environment. However deep the crisis, however confused and demoralized are capitalist elites both inside and outside the state, and however widespread the popular outrage against them, making this case will certainly require hard and committed work by a great many activists, many of whom will see the need for building new movements and parties to this end. This is what is really needed if this crisis is not to go to waste. _____ Leo Panitch is Canada Research Chair in Comparative Political Economy at York University. His most recent books are American Empire and the Political Economy of International Finance (2008) and Renewing Socialism: Transforming Democracy, Strategy and Imagination (2007). Sam Gindin, formerly Chief Economist and Assistant to the President of the Canadian Autoworkers Union, holds the Packer Professorship in Social Justice at York University. He is the author of The Canadian Auto Workers: The Birth and Transformation of a Union (1995) and (with Panitch) Global Capitalism and American Empire (2004). http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/bullet189.html http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From suzannedk at gmail.com Thu Apr 2 02:35:19 2009 From: suzannedk at gmail.com (Suzanne de Kuyper) Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 10:35:19 +0200 Subject: [A-List] Fwd: [R-G] The secrets of Obama's surge these facts are in direct opposition to US, EU, Isreali terrorist collection centers In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Suzanne de Kuyper Date: Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 10:31 AM Subject: Fwd: [R-G] The secrets of Obama's surge these facts are in direct opposition to US, EU,Isreali terrorist collection centers To: "kcourtenay at aol.com" Instead showing the reason they cry TERROR so as not to show what the US is really doing. Unsustainable. When Gaza and the Palestinians are gone, the waters will be rising, the end of oil announcing itself and two to three billion humans protesting, CNN will not be able to contain things. Sixty percent of the Netherlands, if still not awash, will be foreign born citizens, if not seventy percent in thirty years. The Islamic community here has always had as many children as is possible. Many are reaching articulate young adulthood, as is true of the far smaller Muslim communities in the US. Since the US will continue to refuse Muslom immigrants from its many Muslim wars, they will flow into Europe, into Russia, into the Christian Orthodox countries, slowly changing the balance of power as the way it is being handled by the US and its old and new (NATO) allies will further be self destroying their own power in all ways, helpully creating the power vacuum that Islam will enter and fill. Interesting times. Suzette ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Anthony Fenton Date: Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 10:32 PM Subject: [R-G] The secrets of Obama's surge To: Suzanne de Kuyper http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KD02Df03.html Apr 2, 2009 THE ROVING EYE The secrets of Obama's surge By Pepe Escobar Is United States President Barack Obama telling it like it is as far as his new strategy for the Afghanistan and Pakistan war theater - AfPak, in Pentagonspeak - is concerned? There are reasons to believe otherwise. Obama's relentless media blitzkrieg stressed the new strategy is refocusing on al-Qaeda. Washington, we got a problem. Why deploy 17,000 troops against "the Taliban" in the poppy-growing province of Helmand, not in the east near the Pakistani tribal areas, where "al- Qaeda" is holed up, plus 4,000 advisers to train the Afghan Army, when Washington actually wants to fight no more than 200 or 300 al-Qaeda jihadis roaming in Afghanistan, plus another 400 maximum in the Pakistani tribal areas? And by the way they are not Afghans - they are overwhelmingly Arabs, with a few Uzbeks, Chechens and Uyghurs thrown in. President Hamid Karzai, the puppet in Kabul which has left Washington beyond exasperated, loved Obama's plan to "disrupt, dismantle and defeat" al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Especially because it involves the improbable "hunt for the good Taliban" (always bribable by loads of US dollars) mixed with Special Ops inside Pakistan, and not Afghanistan. Former Pakistani premier Benazir Bhutto's widower, President Asif Ali Zardari, the puppet in Islamabad, loved it too. But as the Pakistani daily Dawn revealed, his Foreign Office diplomats definitely did not. The Afghanistan-Pakistan war has got to be 2009's prime theater of the absurd. It took the New York Times and the usual "American officials" something like 13 years to "discover" that the Pakistani Inter- Services Intelligence (ISI) - a Central Intelligence Agency twin - helps the Taliban. And this while the CIA, alongside their ISI pals, is compiling a mega hit list in the Pashtun tribal areas inside Pakistan. Maybe this is what US Central Command supremo General David "I'm always positioning myself for 2012" Petraeus means by a "trilateral" love affair, as he told CNN's State of the Union. The Pentagon's preferred pal is doubtless Pakistani Army Chief General Ashfaq Kayani, who happens to approve of what's not in Obama's presentation of the surge: the relentless drone war - with inevitable "collateral damage" - over what is for a fact Pashtunistan. As for the Pakistani masses, which have no say in all of this, they see the whole thing as a charade, and al-Qaeda as a threat to the US - not to Pakistan. Obama is selling the surge basically as nation building, based on trust. A hard sell if there ever was one - as Washington cannot trust the ISI or the Pakistani government, while the Pakistani masses don't trust Washington. Insistent rumors in Washington point to a troika - Holbrooke-Petraeus- Clinton - finally being able to convince Obama that the surge should be just the first step towards long-range nation building. Anyone with minimal familiarity with Afghanistan knows this is an impossible strategic target. The Salvador option And then Richard Holbrooke, Obama's special envoy to AfPak, finally let it slip on CNN: the "people we are fighting in Afghanistan" are essentially ... Pashtuns. This was followed by a stark admission: "In the informational side ... we don't have a strong enough counter- informational program to combat the Taliban and al-Qaeda." So this amounts to the State Department admitting that the Pentagon/ Petraeus "humint" (human intelligence) component of counter-insurgency in AfPak, hailed as a gift from the Messiah all across US corporate media, is essentially useless. This also means there's no way of winning local hearts and minds. In the absence of "humint", what prevails is inevitably The Salvador option, performed by a Dick Cheney-supervised-style "executive assassination wing", as investigative icon Seymour Hersh first revealed in a talk at the University of Minnesota on March 10, "going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or to the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving". The "assassination wing" is in fact the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) - a shadowy, ultra-elite unit including Navy Seals and Delta Force commandos immune to Congressional investigations. So if you have such a unit killing "al-Qaeda" jihadis at random from Iraq to Kenya, from Somalia to countries in South and Central America (these are not necessarily "al-Qaeda"; let?s say they are inimical to "US interests"), why not let them loose in Afghanistan and the Pakistani tribal areas? Instead of a $5 million bounty on his head, why not send a crack JSOC commando to South Waziristan and take out Pakistani Taliban superstar Baitullah Mehsud, who has just boasted his outfit will "soon launch an attack on Washington that will amaze everyone in the world?" Well, maybe because US "humint" on South Waziristan is negligible - and even JSOC cannot infiltrate. JSOC by now should have been more than fully equipped to find Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. Anyway, Vice-President Joseph Biden, to whom the unit would have to answer to, could at least come clean and state the "Salvador option" is not on the cards anymore. Or maybe it still is. The Obama administration is mum about it. A priceless, self-described "hip pocket" manual prepared by the US Army Training and Doctrine Command - TRADOC, one more wonderful, Pentagon acronym to memorize - and available only to "US government personnel, government contractors and additional cleared personnel for national security purposes and homeland defense " spells out what's (visibly) going on. On page 5, one learns this is a US war against, yes, Pashtuns, as Holbrooke said on CNN. The overwhelming majority of the "insurgent syndicate", they are funded by drug smuggling and US allies in the Gulf such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the Emirates, and are trained and assisted by, yes, the ISI, with some - in fact marginal - al-Qaeda assistance. Al-Qaeda is a detail here. TRADOC does not seem to understand that al- Qaeda has a pan-Islamic agenda while the various groups bundled as "Taliban" are essentially in a war against foreign occupation and interference, with no dreams of establishing a Caliphate. On page 7, TRADOC estimates the Taliban in Afghanistan to be around 30,000, half of them Pakistani, and supported by the ISI. That's correct. But they overestimate al-Qaeda to be 2,000; these "Arab- Afghans" plus some recently arrived "white moors" (European Arabs) are probably no more than 700. On page 10, TRADOC finally admits that Karzai in Kabul is supported by a myriad of "warlord militias" profiting from crime, narco-trafficking and smuggling. The key element here is not "terrorism" - but regional wars for control over ultra-profitable poppy/heroin manufacturing and smuggling routes. Then there's this stark admission, by former Taliban commander Mullah Abdul Salam, currently governor of a town in poppy-infested Helmand province. He told Reuters that the Taliban are not the real enemy. If Kabul was not so corrupt, and capable of providing security to the rest of the country, most Pashtuns would not even be Taliban. No wonder the Obama administration has stacks of reasons to get rid of Karzai. An opening in The Hague Asia knows this whole thing is upside down. The crucial Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), grouping China, Russia and the Central Asian "stans", all concerned neighbors of Afghanistan, met in Moscow last Friday to discuss it, ahead of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) meeting in The Hague this Tuesday privileged by the US. This is how Asia sees it - and that's an absolutely taboo issue for Obama to touch upon every time he faces American public opinion: Asians simply don't want US military bases in Central Asia. No wonder Iran, which is currently an observer, and soon to become a full member, officially said the SCO is the right forum to solve the Afghan tragedy, not NATO. A minimum of 40% of Afghans are either Shi'ites or they speak Dari, a Persian language. Well, at least Holbrooke admits "the door is open" for Iran to have a say on Afghanistan, but always with conditions attached ("plus our NATO allies"). If Holbrooke is clever, he should immediately buy dinner for legendary mujahid Ishmail Khan, the Lion of Herat, in Western Afghanistan. Khan, a complex mix of feudal warlord and economic developer, told al-Jazeera English "friendship between Iran and America" is essential to solve the Afghan riddle. What Washington has to admit is that Iran has been deeply involved for years in visible, post-Taliban reconstruction in Afghanistan - from roads and railroads to restoration of mosques, financing of libraries and madrassas and the provision of electricity. The Iranian Consulate in Herat, for instance, houses no less than 40 diplomats. Khan - the key Iranian liaison in Herat - was so successful in spite of Kabul that Karzai, under US pressure, stripped him off his enormous powers as local governor and gave him an innocuous ministry in Kabul. At the UN-sponsored, US-backed international conference on Afghanistan this Tuesday in The Hague, Mohammad Mehdi Akhundzadeh - one of Iran's deputy foreign ministers - officially broke the ice, offering to help the rebuilding and stabilization of Afghanistan, something that Iran is already doing anyway. Akhunzadeh was specifically referring to projects fighting drug trafficking - which badly affects Iranian society. But he was also very clear on how Iran views NATO: "The presence of foreign forces has not improved things in the country and it seems that an increase in the number of foreign forces will prove ineffective, too." But, significantly, he tipped his hat to Obama's decision to send those 4,000 trainers for the Afghan Army, when he stressed "Afghanization should lead the government-building process". As for US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, she described corruption in the Kabul government, ie Karzai and his gang, as a "cancer" as threatening to Afghanistan as the Taliban. One more sign from Washington that Karzai?s days may be numbered. Follow the money Did Obama's "strategic reviewers" read this Carnegie Endowment report ( http://carnegieendowment.org/files/afghan_war-strategy.pdf)? Apparently not. It states flatly "the mere presence of foreign soldiers fighting a war in Afghanistan is probably the single most important factor in the resurgence of the Taliban". So the question Americans must ask themselves is this: Would you buy a used car - sorry - war from people like Mullen, Petraeus, McKiernan? Well, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, who's seen them all since John F Kennedy, wouldn't. For him, "they resemble all too closely the gutless general officers who never looked down at what was really happening in Vietnam. The Joint Chiefs of Staff of the time have been called, not without reason, 'a sewer of deceit'." So what if the AfPak quagmire had nothing to do with "terrorists" but with these facts: 1. A Cold War mentality in action still prevailing at the Pentagon. That explains a Vietnam-style surge - expanding the war to Cambodia then, expanding it to Pakistan now. As University of Michigan's Juan Cole has pointed out, the rationale is the same old fallacious domino theory (communism will take over Southeast Asia, terrorism will take over Central/South Asia). The Taliban are simply not able to take over and control the whole of Afghanistan (they didn't from 1996 to 2001). Al-Qaeda simply can't have bases in Afghanistan: they would be bombed to smithereens by the 80,000-strong Afghan Army plus Bagram-based US air strikes. 2. The US Empire of Bases still in overdrive, and in New Great Game mode - which implies very close surveillance over Russia and China via bases such as Bagram, and the drive to block Russia from establishing a commercial route to the Middle East via Pakistan. 3. The fear of a spectacular NATO failure. NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, absolutely despised by progressives in Brussels and assorted European capitals, is pressuring everyone for more troops to avoid what he calls the "Americanization" of the war. No one is impressed - especially because Scheffer himself was forced to admit troops will have to stay on the ground "for the foreseeable future". 4. Last but not least, the energy wars. And that involves that occult, almost supernatural entity, the $7.6 billion Turkmenistan-Afghanistan- Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline, which would carry gas from eastern Turkmenistan through Afghanistan east of Herat and down Taliban- controlled Nimruz and Helmand provinces, down Balochistan in Pakistan and then to the Pakistani port of Gwadar in the Arabian Sea. No investor in his right mind will invest in a pipeline in a war zone, thus Afghanistan must be "stabilized" at all costs. So is AfPak the Pentagon's AIG - we gotta bail them out, can't let them fail? Is it a Predator drone war disguised as nation building? Will it become Obama?s Vietnam? Whatever it is, it's not about "terrorists". Not really. Follow the money. Follow the energy. Follow the map. 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. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). He may be reached at pepeasia at yahoo.com. (Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.) _______________________________________________ Rad-Green mailing list Rad-Green at lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 17896 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090402/82614811/attachment.txt From suzannedk at gmail.com Thu Apr 2 03:06:19 2009 From: suzannedk at gmail.com (Suzanne de Kuyper) Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 11:06:19 +0200 Subject: [A-List] Fwd: [R-G] International dismay as Karzai backs law ravaging women's rights In-Reply-To: References: <262120494.4055731238624908884.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Suzanne de Kuyper Date: Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 11:04 AM Subject: Fwd: [R-G] International dismay as Karzai backs law ravaging women's rights To: "kcourtenay at aol.com" Sorry to send so many articles, but briefly this means the EU will have to remove both support and their soldiers and make it clearer world wide that the US approves of marital rape as well as Palestinian genocide. If support is not removed that means that International Human Rights Laws that base the EU, are legally shredded, by the EU itself. A vacuum Islam may fill! ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Sid Shniad Date: Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 12:28 AM Subject: [R-G] International dismay as Karzai backs law ravaging women's rights To: Suzanne de Kuyper http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090401.wafghan01/BNStory/Afghanistan/?page=rss&id=RTGAM.20090401.wafghan01 Globe and Mail April 1, 2009 International dismay as Karzai backs law ravaging women's rights Law would legalize rape within marriage, UN says, putting damper on Afghanistan summit hopes and outraging ministers Doug Saunders The Hague ? An effort by ministers from the United States, Canada and other members of the 42-nation coalition fighting in Afghanistan to put an optimistic face on the war's progress came close to collapse on Tuesday when Afghan President Hamid Karzai was publicly accused of supporting a law that dramatically limits the rights of women. Attended in total by 72 countries and organizations interested in rebuilding the country, The Hague summit was meant to be a ?big tent? show of support for U.S. President Barack Obama's new Afghanistan war plans. But by day's end the participants had been forced to confront the reality of a government riddled with corruption and committed to legislating sexual inequality. According to United Nations organizations that have seen it, a law backed by the Karzai government would legalize rape within marriage and would forbid women from going to the doctor or leaving their home without their husband's protection. It also reportedly grants custody of children only to fathers or grandfathers. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Afghan President Hamid Karzai meet in The Hague on Tuesday. Reports say Ms. Clinton reproached Mr. Karzai over a law that dramatically limits the rights of women. (PETER DEJONG/AP) When the law was brought to the attention of the summit by the Finnish Foreign Minister Tuesday afternoon, forcing U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to back away from her optimistic message, it marked the culmination of a day in which public statements of progress in Afghanistan were contradicted by private expressions of deep concern. ?Things are going worse for us than they have during the past four or five years ? the Taliban controls more of our territory than before, and we have made no progress at all on corruption,? a Canadian official said moments before Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon told the summit that he was ?immediately able to see the results and impacts of our efforts? in Afghanistan. The rape-law allegations were an especially severe blow to a conference meant to be what Ms. Clinton called a ?blank slate,? in which the 42 countries in the coalition would commit themselves with renewed vigour to the eight-year-old UN-mandated campaign, with support from 4,000 additional U.S. troops and a long-term commitment from Mr. Obama. Faced with questions about the law Tuesday afternoon, Ms. Clinton expressed dismay. She is said to have upbraided Mr. Karzai, whose presidency has been backed and promoted by the United States for years, in a private meeting. ?This is an area of absolute concern for the United States,? she told reporters. ?My message is very clear. Women's rights are a central part of the foreign policy of the Obama administration.? Officials from other countries had even more trouble hiding their disappointment with a government that was meant to signal a turn away from the sexual oppression of the ousted Taliban regime. In Ottawa, Trade Minister Stockwell Day, chairman of the cabinet committee on Afghanistan, suggested that if the reports are true, Canada's support for the Afghan government will be affected. ?If these prove to be true, this will create serious problems for the government of Canada, for the people of Canada,? Mr. Day said. ?The onus is upon the government of Afghanistan to live up to its human-rights responsibilities, absolutely including the rights of women. If there is any wavering on this point ? this will create serious difficulties, serious problems for the government of Canada.? He added: ?We expect this to be addressed. We expect the government of Afghanistan to live up to its responsibilities to protect the rights of people, to respect the rights of women. Spousal sexual assault is an offence in most parts of the Western world, and became a crime in Canada in 1983. In its 1993 declaration on the elimination of violence against women, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights established marital rape as a human-rights violation. For many officials, the reports of Mr. Karzai's support for the law making rape exclusively an extramarital crime mark the culmination of years of frustration with the corruption, inertia and culture of impunity for which his government is known. One Canadian official said that Mr. Karzai no longer has the support of any country fighting in Afghanistan, but nothing can be said in public because he is likely to win the presidential election scheduled for this summer. A British cabinet minister was more explicit. ?We are caught in the Catch-22 that the Afghans obviously have the right to write their own laws,? Lord Malloch Brown, the foreign secretary for Africa and Asia, told the Guardian newspaper Tuesday. ?But there is dismay. The rights of women was one of the reasons the U.K. and many in the West threw ourselves into the struggle in Afghanistan. It matters greatly to us and our public opinion.? The outcry over Mr. Karzai's government masked a difficult moment for the Canadians, who have taken on an important and potentially influential role in the NATO coalition on the eve of their departure. With 2,800 soldiers fighting in the most dangerous part of Afghanistan, Canada has suffered the highest casualty rate of any coalition member, and has an important leadership role in the country's troubled south. The Canadian approach to counterinsurgency, with civilian teams providing nation-building work in an effort to win over the population, has been studied and in some ways emulated by U.S. forces. Mr. Cannon was able to proclaim a Canadian victory in having built a new agreement between Pakistani and Afghan border officials, after talks organized by Canada. But there was a distinct sense that Canada is no longer being treated as a major coalition partner now that both the governing Conservatives and the opposition Liberals have made it clear that they will withdraw all combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2011. Canada did not share in the major international development of the day, a public diplomatic contact between the United States and Iran for the first time in 30 years. Signalling a possible rapprochement between Iran and the West, Iran sent a mid-level official to the meeting and held talks in which Tehran agreed to co-operate with drug-eradication schemes in Afghanistan and allow non-military supplies to be sent across its borders ? in both cases solving difficult logistical problems for the coalition. Although Canada has better diplomatic relations with Iran than does the United States, which has had no embassy in the country since the Islamic revolution in 1979, there is no sense that Canada is sharing in any possible reconciliation with the Americans. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has taken uncompromisingly negative positions toward Iran, Russia and other countries that have troubled relations with NATO. Some officials said that this has denied Canada its traditional role as a middle power conciliator at such summits. There were no meetings between the Iranians and the Canadians, Mr. Cannon said. With reports from Campbell Clark in Ottawa and Caroline Alphonso. _______________________________________________ Rad-Green mailing list Rad-Green at lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 10825 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090402/bf469837/attachment.txt From suzannedk at gmail.com Thu Apr 2 03:14:39 2009 From: suzannedk at gmail.com (Suzanne de Kuyper) Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 11:14:39 +0200 Subject: [A-List] [R-G] China Invests to Be Leader in Electric Vehicles In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: This is wonderful news! Added to the financial essay written by the China bank minister or president about the dangers of keeping the USD as the only world currency on note, China begins to enter the NATO-clogged power vacuum the US is so busy digging. Suzanne suzannedk at gmail.com On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 4:06 AM, Yoshie Furuhashi < critical.montages at gmail.com> wrote: > This is the sort of program that Green Keynesians in the USA think > that the USG should pursue, taking over the Big 3 and retooling them > from R&D to production. But workers are not in revolt in the USA, so > the USG is under no pressure to invest, let alone invest > environmentally. Rather, it's busy robbing workers (cf. > ) > and the rest of the public (cf. > ) to > re-enrich the capitalist class -- Yoshie > > > April 2, 2009 > China Invests to Be Leader in Electric Vehicles > By KEITH BRADSHER > > TIANJIN, China ? Chinese leaders have adopted a plan aimed at turning > the country into one of the leading producers of hybrid and > all-electric vehicles within three years, and making it the world > leader in electric cars and buses after that. > > The goal, which radiates from the very top of the Chinese government, > suggests that Detroit?s Big Three, already struggling to stay alive, > will face even stiffer foreign competition on the next field of > automotive technology than they do today. > > ?China is well positioned to lead in this,? said David Tulauskas, > director of China government policy at General Motors. > > To some extent, China is making a virtue of a liability. It is behind > the United States, Japan and other countries when it comes to making > gas-powered vehicles, but by skipping the current technology, China > hopes to get a jump on the next. > > Japan is the market leader in hybrids today, which run on both > electricity and gasoline, with cars like the Toyota Prius and Honda > Insight. The United States has been a laggard in alternative vehicles. > G.M.?s plug-in hybrid Chevrolet Volt is scheduled to go on sale next > year, and will use rechargeable batteries imported from LG in South > Korea. > > China?s intention, in addition to creating a world-leading industry > that will produce jobs and exports, is to reduce urban pollution and > decrease its dependence on oil, which comes from the Mideast and > travels over sea routes controlled by the United States Navy. > > But electric vehicles may do little to clear the country?s > smog-darkened sky or curb its rapidly rising emissions of global > warming gases. China gets three-fourths of its electricity from coal, > which produces more soot and more greenhouse gases than other fuels. > > A report by McKinsey & Company last autumn estimated that replacing a > gasoline-powered car with a similar-size electric car in China would > reduce greenhouse emissions by only 19 percent. It would reduce urban > pollution, however, by shifting the source of smog from car exhaust > pipes to power plants, which are often located outside cities. > > Beyond manufacturing, subsidies of up to $8,800 are being offered to > taxi fleets and local government agencies in 13 Chinese cities for > each hybrid or all-electric vehicle they purchase. The state > electricity grid has been ordered to set up electric car charging > stations in Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin. > > Government research subsidies for electric car designs are increasing > rapidly. And an interagency panel is planning tax credits for > consumers who buy alternative energy vehicles. > > China wants to raise its annual production capacity to 500,000 hybrid > or all-electric cars and buses by the end of 2011, from 2,100 last > year, government officials and Chinese auto executives said. By > comparison, CSM Worldwide, a consulting firm that does forecasts for > automakers, predicts that Japan and South Korea together will be > producing 1.1 million hybrid or all-electric light vehicles by then > and North America will be making 267,000. > > The United States Department of Energy has its own $25 billion program > to develop electric-powered cars and improve battery technology, and > will receive another $2 billion for battery development as part of the > economic stimulus program enacted by Congress. > > Premier Wen Jiabao highlighted the importance of electric cars two > years ago with his unlikely choice to become minister of science and > technology: Wan Gang, a Shanghai-born former Audi auto engineer in > Germany who later became the chief scientist for the Chinese > government?s research panel on electric vehicles. > > Mr. Wan is the first minister in at least three decades who is not a > member of the Communist Party. > > And Premier Wen has his own connection to the electric car industry. > He was born and grew up here in Tianjin, the longtime capital of > China?s battery industry, 70 miles southeast of Beijing. > > Tianjin has thrived in the six years since Mr. Wen became premier. It > now has China?s first bullet train service (to Beijing), a new Airbus > factory and an immaculate new airport. Tianjin has also received a > surge of research subsidies for enterprises like the Tianjin-Qingyuan > Electric Vehicle Company. > > Electric cars have several practical advantages in China. Intercity > driving is rare. Commutes are fairly short and frequently at low > speeds because of traffic jams. So the limitations of all-electric > cars ? the latest models in China have a top speed of 60 miles an hour > and a range of 120 miles between charges ? are less of a problem. > > First-time car buyers also make up four-fifths of the Chinese market, > and these buyers have not yet grown accustomed to the greater power > and range of gasoline-powered cars. > > But the electric car industry faces several obstacles here too. Most > urban Chinese live in apartments, and cannot install recharging > devices in driveways, so more public charging centers need to be set > up. > > Rechargeable lithium-ion batteries also have a poor reputation in > China. Counterfeit lithium-ion batteries in cellphones occasionally > explode, causing injuries. And Sony had to recall genuine lithium-ion > batteries in laptops in 2006 and 2008 after some overheated and caught > fire or exploded. > > These safety problems have been associated with lithium-ion cobalt > batteries, however, not the more chemically stable lithium-ion > phosphate batteries now being adapted to automotive use. > > The tougher challenge is that all lithium-ion batteries are expensive, > whether made with cobalt or phosphate. That will be a hurdle for > thrifty Chinese consumers, especially if gas prices stay relatively > low compared to their highs last summer. > > China is tackling the challenges with the same tools that helped it > speed industrialization and put on the Olympics: immense amounts of > energy, money and people. > > BYD has 5,000 auto engineers and an equal number of battery engineers, > most of them living at its headquarters in Shenzhen in a cluster of 15 > yellow apartment buildings, each 18 stories high. Young engineers earn > less than $600 a month, including benefits. > > When Tianjin-Qingyuan puts its entirely battery-powered Saibao midsize > sedan on sale this autumn, the body will come from a sedan that > normally sells for $14,600 when equipped with a gasoline engine. But > the engine and gas tank will be replaced with a $14,000 battery pack > and electric motor, said Wu Zhixin, the company?s general manager. > > That means the retail price will nearly double, to almost $30,000. > Even if the government awards the maximum subsidy of $8,800 to buyers, > that is a hefty premium. > > Large-scale production could drive down the cost of the battery pack > and electric motor by 30 or 40 percent, still leaving electric cars > more expensive than gasoline-powered ones, Mr. Wu said. > > But Mr. Wu has plenty of money to pursue improvements. He interrupted > an interview at his company?s headquarters on Thursday to take a call > on his cellphone, politely declined an offer from the caller, and hung > up. > > The general manager of a state-controlled bank had called to ask if he > needed a loan, he explained. > > _______________________________________________ > Rad-Green mailing list > Rad-Green at lists.econ.utah.edu > To change your options or unsubscribe go to: > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green > -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 9746 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090402/d7ca282d/attachment.txt From annewilliamson at msn.com Thu Apr 2 04:14:49 2009 From: annewilliamson at msn.com (Anne Williamson) Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 06:14:49 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Fwd: Surveilling for clues of evil intent In-Reply-To: References: <8CB815CEF0F865C-14E8-253D@WEBMAIL-MY25.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: You may have missed this on the A-List: Missouri's 'Fusion Center' designated support for Rep. Ron Paul as a terrorist "flag" and listed 'Ron Paul' bumper stickers as just one of many behavorial indicators to which authorities should be alert ....the folks at Campaign for Liberty, the entity formed in the wake of Ron's presidential campaign to which he donated his remaining campaign donations and which is dedicated to returning the US to Constitutional governance, Constitutional money (no Fed) and a fully operative Bill of Rights. Once news of this got out, quite an uproar ensued, and a publicly-humiliated Missouri retracted the designation. The fact that this editorial was published in the Bush-supporting Washington Times indicates Missouri's warning shot was heard loud and clear. Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 06:42:19 +0200 From: suzannedk at gmail.com To: a-list at lists.econ.utah.edu Subject: [A-List] Fwd: Surveilling for clues of evil intent ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Date: Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 5:47 AM Subject: Surveilling for clues of evil intent To: suzannedk at gmail.com http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/apr/01/surveilling-for-clues-of-evil-intent/ FEIN: Surveilling for clues of evil intent An American Stasi operating in 'fusion centers'? COMMENTARY: The Soviet Union had its KGB, East Germany had its Stasi, and the United States should profit by those examples. It should abandon fusion centers that engage 800,000 state and local law enforcement officers in the business of gathering and sharing purported domestic or international terrorism intelligence. The vast majority conceive this task as synonymous with monitoring and scorning political dissent and association protected by the First Amendment. To a hammer everything looks like a nail. To an intelligence agent, informant or law enforcement officer, everything unconventional or unorthodox looks like at least a pre-embryonic terrorist danger. The United States should not fall victim to the French Bourbon monarchy disease of forgetting nothing, and learning nothing, as with the A. Mitchell Palmer Raids, McCarthyism, COINTELPRO or Operation Shamrock. Fusion centers pivot on the idea that the best way to forestall a second edition of Sept. 11, 2001, or a variation is to spy on American citizens in search of clues of an inclination toward future terrorism. Under U.S. law, an earmark of terrorism includes acts that "appear to be intended ... to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion." Any dissidence or political dissident is suspect to fusion centers. Their mischief is more than speculation or Aristotelian logic. On Feb. 19, the North Central Texas Fusion System issued a routine Prevention Awareness Bulletin that easily might have been penned by recruits from East Germany's Stasi. In bold letters, the bulletin worries that freedom of speech, the freedom to petition government for redress of grievances, and freedom of association are being exploited by Islamic groups to advance their Islamic-based goals by peaceful and lawful means. In other words, democracy is the enemy. The bulletin screams: "Middle Eastern Terrorist groups and their supporting organizations have been successful in gaining support for Islamic goals in the United States and providing an environment for terrorist organizations to flourish." It continues: "A number of organizations in the U.S. have been lobbying Islamic-based issues for many years. These lobbying efforts have turned public and political support towards radical goals such as Shariah law and support of terrorist military action against Western nations." That disparagement of freedom of speech and association in search of political change was rebuked by U.S. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes in De Jonge v. Oregon in 1937: "The greater the importance of safeguarding the community from incitements to the overthrow of our institutions by force and violence, the more imperative is the need to preserve inviolate the constitutional rights of free speech, free press and free assembly in order to maintain the opportunity for free political discussion, to the end that government may be responsive to the will of the people and that changes, if desired, may be obtained by peaceful means. Therein lies the security of the Republic, the very foundation of constitutional government." The fusion center's bulletin next attacks the Constitution's celebration of religious accommodation and diversity with a cri de coeur against voluntary bows toward Islamic practices and the possibility of altering American law accordingly: "Taken in that context, pushing an aggressive, pro-Islam agenda that's been increasingly successful in recent years takes on a new light. The following list taken in isolation seems rather innocuous: Muslim cab drivers in Minneapolis refuse to carry passengers who have alcohol in their possession; The Indianapolis airport in 2007 installed footbaths to accommodate Muslim prayer; Public schools schedule prayer breaks to accommodate Muslim students; Pork is banned in the workplace; etc. "Tolerance is growing in more formal areas. The Department of Treasury recently hosted a conference titled 'Islamic Finance 101,' which indicates the government hopes to secure recycled petrodollars in exchange for conforming to Shariah economic doctrine. ... A Houston bank now offers Islamic Financing for home loans." [and so???? These guys have no clue what a pluralistic society is all about. Of course it IS Bush's dear land of Texas] Los Angeles Police Department Special Order No. 11, of March 5, 2008, declares it is the department's policy to "gather, record, and analyze information of a criminal or noncriminal nature, that could indicate activity or intentions related to either foreign or domestic terrorism," and includes a list of 65 behaviors Los Angeles police officers "shall" report, for instance, "taking notes." The director of national intelligence has promoted the LAPD as an intelligence collection model. First Amendment principles will never be honored by law enforcement officers or public officials in the business of intelligence collection. They are rewarded financially and professionally by the volume of intelligence collected. There are no serious quality controls. Few if any are capable of separating the terrorist wheat from the innocuous chaff. There are no reliable earmarks of a would-be terrorist. Timothy McVeigh was not a prime suspect in the immediate aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing. Arab Muslims were. Because anything might be a clue as to a possible psychological inclination to commit terrorism, everything is fair game for intelligence collection. But when everything is relevant, nothing is relevant. That may explain why there is no credible evidence that fusion centers have frustrated a single terrorist plot - their primary raison d'etre. They are no more American than was the House Un-American Activities Committee, and they deserve the same fate. Bruce Fein is a constitutional lawyer at Bruce Fein & Associates Inc., and author of "Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for our Constitution and Democracy." New Low Prices on Dell Laptops - Starting at $399 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 8805 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090402/68c35bf0/attachment.txt From noreply at coha.org Thu Apr 2 08:48:41 2009 From: noreply at coha.org (Council on Hemispheric Affairs) Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 10:48:41 -0400 Subject: [A-List] G20 Summit and Latin America Message-ID: <20090402144816.A19343E4212@mx-out.daemonmail.net> A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 4037 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090402/ad307b0e/attachment.txt From critical.montages at gmail.com Thu Apr 2 10:56:40 2009 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 12:56:40 -0400 Subject: [A-List] [R-G] China Invests to Be Leader in Electric Vehicles In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I think China's investment program (which probably is sufficient to save China from the worst impacts of the crisis and prepare it for its further rise after the crisis, though it won't make China the savior of the rest of the world as some capitalists hope) is better than its monetary reform proposal. I linked China's Central Bank Governor's proposal () to MRZine, because it is an indication that China's leadership is wondering what is to be done about the prospect of the USG solving the crisis of its economy in part by debauching its currency and depreciating foreigners' claims on its wealth (as well as by robbing American workers and taxpayers). But in the entire essay there is no acknowledgment that the problem can't be solved just by a monetary reform and that the dollar hegemony which allows the US to run "deficits without tears" depends on the model of export-led growth that China and the rest of East Asia have followed for decades and on the developing world accumulating surpluses (allegedly as an insurance policy against a balance of payment crisis) and transferring them to the West (the policy followed by even left-wing governments of Latin America). A substantial monetary reform is not possible without changing the rest of the relations of production. Yoshie On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 5:14 AM, Suzanne de Kuyper wrote: > This is wonderful news!??? Added to the financial essay written by the China > bank minister or president about the dangers of keeping the USD as the only > world currency on note, China begins to enter the NATO-clogged power vacuum > the US is so busy digging.????? Suzanne > suzannedk at gmail.com > > On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 4:06 AM, Yoshie Furuhashi > wrote: >> >> This is the sort of program that Green Keynesians in the USA think >> that the USG should pursue, taking over the Big 3 and retooling them >> from R&D to production. ?But workers are not in revolt in the USA, so >> the USG is under no pressure to invest, let alone invest >> environmentally. ?Rather, it's busy robbing workers (cf. >> ) >> and the rest of the public (cf. >> ) to >> re-enrich the capitalist class -- Yoshie >> >> >> April 2, 2009 >> China Invests to Be Leader in Electric Vehicles >> By KEITH BRADSHER >> >> TIANJIN, China ? Chinese leaders have adopted a plan aimed at turning >> the country into one of the leading producers of hybrid and >> all-electric vehicles within three years, and making it the world >> leader in electric cars and buses after that. >> >> The goal, which radiates from the very top of the Chinese government, >> suggests that Detroit?s Big Three, already struggling to stay alive, >> will face even stiffer foreign competition on the next field of >> automotive technology than they do today. >> >> ?China is well positioned to lead in this,? said David Tulauskas, >> director of China government policy at General Motors. >> >> To some extent, China is making a virtue of a liability. It is behind >> the United States, Japan and other countries when it comes to making >> gas-powered vehicles, but by skipping the current technology, China >> hopes to get a jump on the next. >> >> Japan is the market leader in hybrids today, which run on both >> electricity and gasoline, with cars like the Toyota Prius and Honda >> Insight. The United States has been a laggard in alternative vehicles. >> G.M.?s plug-in hybrid Chevrolet Volt is scheduled to go on sale next >> year, and will use rechargeable batteries imported from LG in South >> Korea. >> >> China?s intention, in addition to creating a world-leading industry >> that will produce jobs and exports, is to reduce urban pollution and >> decrease its dependence on oil, which comes from the Mideast and >> travels over sea routes controlled by the United States Navy. >> >> But electric vehicles may do little to clear the country?s >> smog-darkened sky or curb its rapidly rising emissions of global >> warming gases. China gets three-fourths of its electricity from coal, >> which produces more soot and more greenhouse gases than other fuels. >> >> A report by McKinsey & Company last autumn estimated that replacing a >> gasoline-powered car with a similar-size electric car in China would >> reduce greenhouse emissions by only 19 percent. It would reduce urban >> pollution, however, by shifting the source of smog from car exhaust >> pipes to power plants, which are often located outside cities. >> >> Beyond manufacturing, subsidies of up to $8,800 are being offered to >> taxi fleets and local government agencies in 13 Chinese cities for >> each hybrid or all-electric vehicle they purchase. The state >> electricity grid has been ordered to set up electric car charging >> stations in Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin. >> >> Government research subsidies for electric car designs are increasing >> rapidly. And an interagency panel is planning tax credits for >> consumers who buy alternative energy vehicles. >> >> China wants to raise its annual production capacity to 500,000 hybrid >> or all-electric cars and buses by the end of 2011, from 2,100 last >> year, government officials and Chinese auto executives said. By >> comparison, CSM Worldwide, a consulting firm that does forecasts for >> automakers, predicts that Japan and South Korea together will be >> producing 1.1 million hybrid or all-electric light vehicles by then >> and North America will be making 267,000. >> >> The United States Department of Energy has its own $25 billion program >> to develop electric-powered cars and improve battery technology, and >> will receive another $2 billion for battery development as part of the >> economic stimulus program enacted by Congress. >> >> Premier Wen Jiabao highlighted the importance of electric cars two >> years ago with his unlikely choice to become minister of science and >> technology: Wan Gang, a Shanghai-born former Audi auto engineer in >> Germany who later became the chief scientist for the Chinese >> government?s research panel on electric vehicles. >> >> Mr. Wan is the first minister in at least three decades who is not a >> member of the Communist Party. >> >> And Premier Wen has his own connection to the electric car industry. >> He was born and grew up here in Tianjin, the longtime capital of >> China?s battery industry, 70 miles southeast of Beijing. >> >> Tianjin has thrived in the six years since Mr. Wen became premier. It >> now has China?s first bullet train service (to Beijing), a new Airbus >> factory and an immaculate new airport. Tianjin has also received a >> surge of research subsidies for enterprises like the Tianjin-Qingyuan >> Electric Vehicle Company. >> >> Electric cars have several practical advantages in China. Intercity >> driving is rare. Commutes are fairly short and frequently at low >> speeds because of traffic jams. So the limitations of all-electric >> cars ? the latest models in China have a top speed of 60 miles an hour >> and a range of 120 miles between charges ? are less of a problem. >> >> First-time car buyers also make up four-fifths of the Chinese market, >> and these buyers have not yet grown accustomed to the greater power >> and range of gasoline-powered cars. >> >> But the electric car industry faces several obstacles here too. Most >> urban Chinese live in apartments, and cannot install recharging >> devices in driveways, so more public charging centers need to be set >> up. >> >> Rechargeable lithium-ion batteries also have a poor reputation in >> China. Counterfeit lithium-ion batteries in cellphones occasionally >> explode, causing injuries. And Sony had to recall genuine lithium-ion >> batteries in laptops in 2006 and 2008 after some overheated and caught >> fire or exploded. >> >> These safety problems have been associated with lithium-ion cobalt >> batteries, however, not the more chemically stable lithium-ion >> phosphate batteries now being adapted to automotive use. >> >> The tougher challenge is that all lithium-ion batteries are expensive, >> whether made with cobalt or phosphate. That will be a hurdle for >> thrifty Chinese consumers, especially if gas prices stay relatively >> low compared to their highs last summer. >> >> China is tackling the challenges with the same tools that helped it >> speed industrialization and put on the Olympics: immense amounts of >> energy, money and people. >> >> BYD has 5,000 auto engineers and an equal number of battery engineers, >> most of them living at its headquarters in Shenzhen in a cluster of 15 >> yellow apartment buildings, each 18 stories high. Young engineers earn >> less than $600 a month, including benefits. >> >> When Tianjin-Qingyuan puts its entirely battery-powered Saibao midsize >> sedan on sale this autumn, the body will come from a sedan that >> normally sells for $14,600 when equipped with a gasoline engine. But >> the engine and gas tank will be replaced with a $14,000 battery pack >> and electric motor, said Wu Zhixin, the company?s general manager. >> >> That means the retail price will nearly double, to almost $30,000. >> Even if the government awards the maximum subsidy of $8,800 to buyers, >> that is a hefty premium. >> >> Large-scale production could drive down the cost of the battery pack >> and electric motor by 30 or 40 percent, still leaving electric cars >> more expensive than gasoline-powered ones, Mr. Wu said. >> >> But Mr. Wu has plenty of money to pursue improvements. He interrupted >> an interview at his company?s headquarters on Thursday to take a call >> on his cellphone, politely declined an offer from the caller, and hung >> up. >> >> The general manager of a state-controlled bank had called to ask if he >> needed a loan, he explained. >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Rad-Green mailing list >> Rad-Green at lists.econ.utah.edu >> To change your options or unsubscribe go to: >> http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green > > From ioriwase at mail.mohawknationnews.com Thu Apr 2 09:16:03 2009 From: ioriwase at mail.mohawknationnews.com (Mohawk Nation News) Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 11:16:03 -0400 Subject: [A-List] MNN Operative Journalists trying to set up Indigenous for attack?? Message-ID: <012f7f7e$39905$0b1e4694795949@xnote> ?OPERATIVE? JOURNALISTS TRYING TO SET U P INDIGENOUS PEOPLE FOR ATTACK? MNN. April 1, 2009. The colonies of U.S. and Canada know we, the Rotinoshonnionwe, have a birthright to conduct trade and commerce on our homeland, Onowaregeh, Great Turtle Island. State and Federal authorities cannot legally stop us except by coercion, breaking laws, criminalizing and threatening us. We are peaceful, law abiding and take care of our families and communities. The misnomer Center for Public Integrity out of Washington DC has been putting out propaganda to produce racial hatred against us. ?Serial warfare? uses the media to set up the target for the attack. ?Investigative journalists? seek the truth. ?Operative journalists? use deceit, misinformation, destruction, psychological attacks and exaggeration on their ?mark?. They create suspicion and biases against us by falsely connecting us to ?guns?, ?contraband?, ?drugs?, ?organized crime?, ?smuggling? and ?global terrorism?, to set the stage for an attack by U.S. and Canadian occupational forces, both military and corporate. We are being criminalized by the foreigners for something that is not a crime. We have a right to trade and commerce. Tobacco is our product which we create on our homeland. No violence is associated with any of our legitimate businesses. The only violence is that perpetrated on us by foreign cops and outside interests. No one supports those few business people who may be involved in drugs, similar to the U.S. government that was trading drugs for guns in the Iran-Contra affair, or the CIA releasing drugs in East LA [GaryWebb: Dark Alliance]. The colonists constantly criminalize almost anything we do that would make us independent. We have tried to play by the rules. The government raised the taxes and demands so high to try to control us that we could not sustain our businesses. If most U.S. and Canadian businesses were criminalized or taxed too high to be viable, they may be forced to break their own laws to survive. The state has been trying to determine that the Mohawk People are ?insurgents? to remove any human rights protections we have according to international law. We would never carry out criminal economic enterprises like Bernie Madoff, AIG, Wall Street bankers and all the other corrupt scrum bags who have created the worldwide melt down. These are the kinds of interests that are coming after us. The ?operative media? plays a major role. Mainstream papers are losing circulation, influence and advertising. Many like the Montreal Gazette have become cheap sensation seeking rags. They divert the public from their own dire situations by ganging up on the ?Indians?, a target they think can?t defend themselves. The Center for Public Integrity is a propagandist of racial hatred which is a precursor to genocide. They criminalize and slander us for whoever hired them to set us up for the kill. This group of media whores may be lobbying for Big Tobacco and the foundations that fund them. They are "generously" funded by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. NYC Mayor and billionaire, Michael Bloomberg, constantly condemns "Indians" and tobacco and hires journalistic ?hit men? to assassinate both. Other donators are the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Ford Foundation, JEHT Foundation, John D. and Catharine T. MacArthur Foundation, Park Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and PIERS Port Import Export Reporting Services. Their propaganda does not mention that the police forces are involved in stealing our products and money such as the Ontario Provincial Police, Surete du Quebec, RCMP, NYS Troopers, U.S. and Canada Customs Border Patrol, Cornwall, Montreal and other city cops. They hijack our products and then sell them to their own customers. This is known as the silent ?blue market?. Many of our people don?t get a summons to go to court to reclaim our possessions. We sometimes find our vehicles in the parking lots of various donut shops. Big Tobacco companies such as Rothman?s, Imperial and RJ Reynolds are headquartered in Britain. They don?t want any competition or for Indigenous to profit from trade in our own products. They want to be the only game in town, make the rules for everybody and call in the military on some made up pretext. Tobacco is legal. The fear is that the profits are being invested in our youth, families and communities which will make us stronger. Onowaregeh, Great Turtle Island, is the richest territory in the world. The invaders want to keep us as the poorest. If we had a real share of our own resources, we would not have to resort to what they call the ?underground economy?. We are not afraid to work in the light of day because we aren?t criminals. This is not about lost revenue or health care expenses in the U.S. and Canada. It?s about loss of control over this aspect of our lives. The ?extortion? they are crying over is chump change compared to the trillions of dollars they are stealing from us. Yes, we have organized crime in our communities called ?Indian Affairs? and other colonial agencies. Non-native business people and the colonial state, with the help of their ?Indian? mules, use the protection of the colonial Indian Act and Federal Indian law ?band? and ?tribal? recognition to make money. They help build casinos and other developments on our lands from which we do not benefit or control. The ?kingpins? are all on the outside. We?re left with trying to clean up their mess! [MNN ?Canada & Big Tobacco..? 2/6/09]. Big Tobacco and their global cohorts want everybody in the world to be under their thumb or otherwise eliminated. They are trying to corner us and cut us off from any means to survive. The streets of Kahnawake, Akwesasne, Kanehsatake, Cattaraugus and Tuscarora are safer than any street in Montreal, New York, Buffalo or Washington, D.C. This fear mongering hyperbole by the journalistic ?guns for hire? of the multinationals and their colonial agents means we better get ready to defend ourselves. A big attack by the combined forces of the U.S. and Canada may be coming our way soon! MNN Staff, Mohawk Nation News & Native Pride www.mohawknationnews.com www.letstalknativepride.blogspot.com katenies20 at yahoo.com kahentinetha2 at yahoo.com Note: At this time your financial help is urgently needed and appreciated for the lawsuit against the Canadian government for assault of Indigenous women at the Cornwall border. Please send your donations to PayPal at www.mohawknationnews.com, or by check or money order to ?MNN Mohawk Nation News?, Box 991, Kahnawake [Quebec, Canada] J0L 1B0. Nia:wen thank you very much. Go to MNN ?General? category for more stories on this; New MNN Books Available now! Purchase t-shirts, mugs and more at our CafePressStore http://www.cafepress.com/mohawknews; Subscribe to MNN for breaking news updates http://.mohawknationnews.com/news/subscription.php; Sign Women Title Holders petition! http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/Iroquois GLUTTONOUS SNOUTS IN THE TROUGH WHOSE GREED KNOWS NO BOUNDS: Prime Min. Stephen Harper pm at pm.ca; RJ. Reynolds America www.rjrt.com, Salem NC; Rothman UK Holding Ltd. www.fundinguniverse.com 15 Hill St., London W1X 7FB 071-491-4366; Imperial Tobacco Group PLC www.imperial-tobacco.com P.O. Box 244, Upton Rd., Bristol BS99 7UJ +44-0-177-963-6636; See Rothmans UK Holdings Limited London (071) 491-4366 Fax (071) 493-8404; JOSEPH GOEBBELS SCHOOL OF DIARRHEA JOURNALISM: Center for Public Integrity www.publicintegrity.org; William ?Who-needs-a-carton-of-Immodium-to-cure-his-diarrhea-of-the-mouth? Marsden wmarsden at thegazette.canwest.com; Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health www.jhsph.edu; Carnegie Foundation www.carnegie.org; Ford Foundation fordfound.org; JHET Foundation www.jehtfoundation.org; John D. & Catharine T. MacArthur Foundation www.found.org; Park Foundation info at parkfoundation.org; Rockefeller Foundation rockfound.org; PIERS info at piers.com. Note: Upper Cut School of Journalism looking for suitable candidates with integrity. From the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com Thu Apr 2 12:32:12 2009 From: the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com (Leigh Meyers) Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 11:32:12 -0700 Subject: [A-List] A Sea Shepherd April Fools Message-ID: "We realize that some Magdalen Islanders and Newfoundlanders are addicted to clubbing baby seals," said psychiatrist and ice crewmember Dr. Brigitte Bartlett (28) from County Cork, Ireland. "We thought it would be a good public service to provide the sealers with some therapy." Sea Shepherd Crew Plant 500 Fake Baby Seals on the Ice A 12-person Sea Shepherd crew quietly landed on the ice of the Gulf of St. Lawrence with three Jetranger helicopters today to plant 500 fake baby seals on the ice. "Our objective is to place decoys for the sealers from the Magdalen Islands into clubbing the fake seals and not the real seals," said Captain Paul Watson. These ice puppies have built in transmitters that will question the masculinity of any sealer that approaches them. As the sealer approaches, a motion sensor triggers a recording that says, "Hey, over here baby killer, prove you're a real man and show me your Canadian club." Another message says, "I'm cute, I'm innocent, and I'm helpless, so your wives and children will appreciate it if you beat me instead." The seal pups are rigged to explode in a burst of red dye and cherry Jell-O when struck with a club. "The seal slaughter will be ended soon, the markets for this despicably obscene, cruel massacre of seal pups have nearly all been destroyed. In this recession no one is going to waste money on a bloody vanity product like this - so we thought this year we would have some fun with the thugs with the clubs," said Captain Paul Watson. "We realize that some Magdalen Islanders and Newfoundlanders are addicted to clubbing baby seals," said psychiatrist and ice crewmember Dr. Brigitte Bartlett (28) from County Cork, Ireland. "We thought it would be a good public service to provide the sealers with some therapy. The urge to club is a difficult one to suppress. These men once they begin killing have this gnawing desire to kill again. It's a classic pathology found in many serial killers." The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society were able to land their crew, deploy the fake seals, and return to shore without being detected or stopped by the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans. http://66.17.141.136/news-and-media/news-090401-1.html ___________________________________________________________ Sent by ePrompter, the premier email notification software. Free download at http://www.ePrompter.com. From the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com Thu Apr 2 14:06:20 2009 From: the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com (Leighm) Date: Thu, 02 Apr 2009 13:06:20 -0700 Subject: [A-List] China Invests to Be Leader in Electric Vehicles In-Reply-To: References: <49D42CC3.77DFDE7D@ilstu.edu> Message-ID: <49D51ABC.8090000@gmail.com> Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: > There isn't any method of transportation that produces zero greenhouse > gases. Replacing gasoline-powered cars by electric or natural-gas > powered ones for intra-city traffic is a technically feasible idea > that can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. > Getting people out of their cars, no matter the power source, and on to public transport is the ONLY solution, even in the short/mid term, Any sort of 'personal' transportation just delays the inevitable and postpones the refreshing of our environment and rebuilding of our communities and cities to not require that type of transport. In electric vehicles, the batteries are life-threateningly toxic in the immediate sense of contact with the materials (cadmium, lithium and others) AND the long range. WHAT WILL WE DO WITH MILLIONS to BILLIONS OF THEM after they're 'spent'? Dump 'em at Yucca Mountain? Leave them by the side of the road? ...or, just throw the whole damn (still mostly non-recyclable) piece of 10 year old mostlyplasticthing in a 'junkyard'. The batteries don't last forever ya' know.... and they're probably the most expensive individual part of the vehicle. It may be low-tech, but the lithium battery in my mp3 player is ostensibly rated for 700 charging cycles. How much better does anyone think the L-ion battery in an 'ecar' will last?The manufacturers NEED to sell more cars (What Carrol said about capitalism's 'growth problem'). Example: International Harvester (now Navistar) dropped out of the personal vehicle business (A pickup the farmer and 'Travelall' for the farmer's wife while he was in town negotiating for a new Combine) because they built the things so rugged that once you bought one of their light trucks, you never needed to buy another one, effectively killing their repeat sales) Locally, I've been on a city bus where a person whose car was in for repairs boarded, boxing the corners with his eyes and looking for a seat next to someone who didn't look 'threatening', like the 'new fish' in the prison yard. I know, because I was the least 'threatening' that day. The socio-economic damage done by little metal boxes with wheels and seats, that spew noxious fumes as they move us about in utter isolation (and often psychological despair) is more than just the destruction of the physical environment... It causes the destruction of our 'mental environment'(per Adbusters magazine) as well. The outside world is a scary place when viewed from the other side of the windshield allowing the almost continual isolation of human from human , and through that fear, we can be sold anything. Including wars for oil so we can afford to remain isolated from our fellow human beings. FWIW, the EPA is going to regulate greenhouse gas emissions due to a ruling that it is a 'a danger to the public welfare'. That means Cow farts, almost every power generating facility in the US, AND OUR CARS, are now officially hazards in the same league as cigarettes. Kick the car habit. Bike, walk, or take public transportation whenever possible. It's ALMOST ALWAYS possible. [March 26 2009] Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: ?Artichoke Theory Of Politics? Pick Of The Week - The EPA Declares CO2 (therefore your car and most of the American power generation industry) A Health Hazard My Site: http://leighm.net/wp/2009/03/26/tth_090326/ ArchiveDOTorg: http://www.archive.org/details/tth_090326 After the commentary, Tom Lehrer elaborates on Travus?s comment. Courtesy of the respective artists and KPIG radio Freedom California Earth] > As for growth, the world GDP will shrink this year, for the first time > since WW2: "The World Bank said its latest projections show the global > economy shrinking by 1.7 percent in 2009," > . > It won't start growing for a while, given that only a few countries > like China are implementing Keynesian policies. The rest of the world > are still stuck with neoliberal economics. > > On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 11:10 PM, Carrol Cox wrote: > >> I've never been quite clear on whether electric vehicles will really >> make a difference. Their batteries of course will need to be charged, >> which will probably produce greenhouse gases (very possibly from >> coal-fired burners). Highways will still have to be built and endlessly >> rebuilt for them, and trucks and construction equipment (not electric) >> will run on those highways, as well as remaining gasoline-powered autos >> (which will be the majority for a long time anyhow). The auto will >> therefore still make _real_ intger-city public transportation (trains >> and buses) non-competitive. >> >> Besides, it's not really the technology (however destructive that may >> be) that makes capitalism so destructive of the ennvironment: it is the >> absolute need of the capitalist economy to grow and grow and grow and >> gfrow....endlessly. >> >> And it won't fall if we don't hit it. >> >> In fact it won't fall unless we hit it in its hearlands: U.S., EKurope, >> Japan -- and probably before long Russia & China. >> >> Carrol >> >> >> >> > > > From the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com Thu Apr 2 16:28:26 2009 From: the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com (Leigh Meyers) Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 15:28:26 -0700 Subject: [A-List] Churchill wins his case, awarded $1 in damages Message-ID: http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2009/apr/02/ward-churchill-trial-blog-jury-university-colorado/ ___________________________________________________________ Sent by ePrompter, the premier email notification software. Free download at http://www.ePrompter.com. From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Thu Apr 2 17:35:43 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Fri, 03 Apr 2009 08:35:43 +0900 Subject: [A-List] The Three Ways China May Deal With Growing US Debt Message-ID: <49D54BCF.5050906@ashisuto.co.jp> by William Patalon III and Jason Simpkins, Money Morning Editors Although there's a veritable laundry list of obstacles that could blunt the US government's ongoing economic turnaround efforts, its single-biggest challenge may come from its single-biggest creditor - China. When China announced a new array of stimulus measures earlier this month, this very important plan was overshadowed by China Premier Wen Jiabao's concerns about the United States' quickly growing debt load. "We have lent a huge amount of money to the United States", Premier Wen said. "Of course we are concerned about the safety of our assets. To be honest, I am definitely a little bit worried. I request the US to maintain its good credit, to honor its promises and to guarantee the safety of China's assets." China has cause to be concerned: As of December, the most recent figures available, China held $727.4 billion in Treasuries - about 26% more than the $578 billion in US government securities the Asian giant held at the end of 2007. More than half of China's nearly $2 trillion in foreign currency reserves are tied up in US Treasuries and notes issued by other affiliated agencies of the US government - including beleaguered mortgage giants Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE). However, the value of US Treasuries has dropped steadily since the government began selling record amounts of debt to finance its economic stimulus packages. Investors have lost an average of 2.7% in 2009, according to Merrill Lynch & Co Incorporated US Treasury Master Index. China's leaders "are worried about forever-rising deficits, which may devalue Treasuries by pushing interest rates higher", JP Morgan & Co (JPM) analyst Frank Gong told The Associated Press. "Inside China there has been a lot of debate about whether they should continue to buy Treasuries". And as the US debt soars as the government works to halt the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, China's concerns about this country's growing deficits - and its creditworthiness - are escalating in kind. America's Foreign Creditors: See http://www.moneymorning.com/images2/foreigncreditors.GIF Depending upon how it did so, were China to stop buying US debt - or even worse, to start dumping it - the economic fallout could be widespread, and perhaps even catastrophic: * The US dollar would drop fifteen to twenty percent. * US stocks would get hammered. * Inflation would spike and interest rates on Treasuries would jump into the eight percent range. * And the economy would end up flat on its back - where it would stay, with no rebound on the horizon. Detailing the Deficit During the first five months of the 2009 fiscal year, which began October 1, the US budget deficit hit a record $764.5 billion. Last month, President Obama outlined a $3.94 trillion budget plan that would take the deficit to $1.75 trillion by the time the fiscal year ends September 30. The plan then calls for a $1.17 trillion deficit for fiscal 2010. As currently projected, the US budget deficit is forecast to run at about twelve percent of gross domestic product (GDP) - even worse than the perennially anemic Japan, where the deficit is running at eleven percent. And the debt picture is certain to get worse. The Treasury Department has the government's printing presses running overtime just to finance the $787 billion stimulus passed by Congress earlier this year. And in order to pay for all the stimulus, bailout and fix-it plans that are being put in place to arrest the US economic decline, the US government is assuming a murderous amount of debt: Over the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office projects that the White House budget will run $9.3 trillion in deficits. That's $2.3 trillion more than the Obama administration had forecast. But even the CBO projection could prove way too low: It assumes that the US economy - after declining 1.5% this year - will turn around an advance at a racy 4.1% clip in both 2010 and 2011, a forecast that seems far too rosy, given the depths that the US economy appears to have reached. And that brings us to China. Enter the (Red) Dragon During the past several years, government-operated "sovereign-wealth funds" (SWFs) from virtually every major economic powerhouse around the world had been on a global shopping spree, buying up assets and bidding up prices as they did so. China was no exception. So when worldwide financial-asset prices began to slide - and then to nosedive - China abandoned many of its riskier holdings, choosing to boost its stockpile of US Treasury securities. That underscores one marketplace truism: Despite Premier Wen's reservations, the market for US debt is the only market large enough, liquid enough, and stable enough to accommodate China's large-scale investments. That's forced China to engage in a kind of global investor activism - although, so far, most of that activism has been aimed at one country: The United States. About one-fifth of China's currency reserves were tied up in Fannie and Freddie debt last fall when the two mortgage firms were placed under government conservatorship, The Washington Post reported. In fact, as Money Morning detailed back in September as part of its ongoing investigation of the bailout of the US banking system, that US government decision to take control of Fannie and Freddie was driven not by worries about the fading US housing market, but by concerns that foreign central banks in China, Japan, Europe, the Middle East and Russia might stop buying our bonds. China clearly made its risk concerns known at that time, adding to the sense of urgency US officials felt to make a move. Today, as US debt continues to mount at an obscene rate, financial and economic risks also escalate. This could lead to a spike in inflation and interest rates - a double-whammy that could cause any recovery that's under way to sputter and stall. That duo of higher inflation and interest rates could also hammer bond values, including the Treasuries held in such large quantities by China. So it's no wonder the risk concerns China articulated back at the time of the Fannie and Freddie takeovers go double or triple now. Indeed, when Premier Wen unveiled the spending measures earlier this month, he made the point of saying that China should seek to "fend off risks" by further diversifying its reserves. "We have already adopted a guiding management policy of diversifying our foreign exchange reserves, and at present our foreign exchange reserves are safe overall", Wen said. "Our first principle in managing foreign currency is averting risk. We have always adhered to the principles of foreign currency security, liquidity and maintaining value, and implemented a strategy of diversification". When it comes to US government debt, that strategy will take one of three forms, and will have the following potential effects: 1. Quietly threatening to stop purchasing (or even threatening to "dump") US Treasuries, a form of "back-channel" communications that can generate results (just look at how China forced the US government to place Fannie and Freddie in conservatorship). Because this is back channel, it stays out of the marketplace, so long as the US government finds some ways to appease Chinese investors by somehow reducing risk. 2. Quietly slowing or stopping its purchases of US government debt. If China does this effectively and systematically, the fact that it's cutting back on purchases doesn't surface until the plan is executed. If China is able to pull this off - and it faces long odds to do so - the fact that it's cutting back on US debt doesn't roil the markets too badly, especially if it doesn't leak out until after the fact. 3. Publicly dumping US debt. Self-explanatory in nature - and also the most unlikely, if it wants to maintain its "friendly" status with the United States - this is the worst-case scenario, and is the one that ends up with the dollar and the stock market getting stomped. If China chooses this route, it's also essentially cutting off its nose to spite its face. The reason: By publicly dumping US debt, the Treasury market will also take a beating - meaning China's remaining US debt holdings would take a haircut of twenty to thirty percent. The Marketplace Realities International demand for long-term US financial assets actually fell in January, reflecting China's smallest net purchase since May, Bloomberg reported. International investors sold a net $8.4 billion in US corporate debt in January, the report showed. Net foreign purchases of Treasury notes and bonds were a net $10.7 billion in for the month, after purchases of $15 billion a month earlier. Few analysts believe China will abandon its Treasury holdings altogether, as that would hammer the dollar, hurt the value of its debt holdings and ruin its political relationship with the United States. Besides, it's becoming increasingly clear that Beijing wants a voice in Washington. Yu Yongding, a former advisor to the Bank of China said last month that China should seek guarantees from the US government that its holdings won't be diminished by "reckless policies". Premier Wen echoed that request last week when he called on the United States to "honor its promises and guarantee the safety of China's assets". "I think what they're trying to say right now is, 'Don't take any steps that would impair our ability to access your market'," Auggie Tantillo, executive director of the American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition, told The Post. "The Chinese are starting to flex their muscles, they are becoming more powerful commercially and economically, and they want us to know it". The very possibility that China and other foreign countries would stop buying US bonds already was enough to prompt the US government to take control of foundering mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. http://www.moneymorning.com/2009/03/25/china-us-debt http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com Thu Apr 2 17:50:22 2009 From: the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com (Leighm) Date: Thu, 02 Apr 2009 16:50:22 -0700 Subject: [A-List] Clean Safe Energy (NOT!) - NRC to distribute 9 million potassium iodide tablets around U.S. nuclear plants Message-ID: <49D54F3E.6060103@gmail.com> Because I get too many newsletters... Government Security News.com: NRC to distribute 9 million potassium iodide tablets around U.S. nuclear plants By Jacob Goodwin, Editor-in-Chief Published March 30th, 2009 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is planning to distribute approximately nine million potassium iodide tablets to state and local governments and Native-American tribes. The tablets will be stockpiled for populations living within a ?10-mile emergency planning zone? surrounding commercial nuclear power plants across the country. Revised rules issued by the NRC in 2001 require that state, local and tribal governments ?consider including potassium iodide (KI) as a protective measure for the general public to supplement sheltering and evacuation in the unlikely event of a severe nuclear power plant accident,? according to a solicitation released by the NRC earlier this month. ?Potassium iodide is a salt, similar to table salt,? explains the NRC?s Web site. ?It is routinely added to table salt to make it ?iodized.? Potassium iodide, if taken within the appropriate time and at the appropriate dosage, blocks the thyroid gland's uptake of radioactive iodine and thus reduces the risk of thyroid cancers and other diseases that might otherwise be caused by thyroid uptake of radioactive iodine that could be dispersed in a severe reactor accident.? When the NRC originally considered this policy, it had planned to distribute adult-sized tablets with a dosage of 130 mg, but since the Food and Drug Administration has approved a pediatric dose of 65 mg, the NRC has decided to distribute that smaller tablet. ?Each tablet shall be scored-in to enable the user to break the tablet into at least two pieces,? says the solicitation, and each tablet will be individually wrapped in blister packaging. The NRC solicitation listed more than 30 possible locations across the country that might receive distributions of the KI tablets. Delivery will be required within three months of contract award, and the tablets must have a shelf life of at least five years and nine months thereafter, says the solicitation. Additional information is available from Sheila Bumpass, of the NRC?s contracts division, at 301-492-3484. http://www.gsnmagazine.com/cms/features/news-analysis/1757.html From tal1 at cogeco.ca Thu Apr 2 21:09:40 2009 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 23:09:40 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Cynthia McKinney Reports on the G20 Summit in London on War Crimes and Justice Message-ID: <3B6ED86F540E44B2A780F7583EDA05F4@TonyPC> Sent: Thursday, April 02, 2009 3:12 PM Subject: Cynthia McKinney Reports on the G20 Summit in London on War Crimes and Justice Cynthia McKinney Reports on the G20 Summit in London Green Party Presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney and Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of the Pan-African News Wire, after a campaign rally at the International Institute in Detroit on Aug. 30, 2008. (Photo: Alan Pollock). Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File PhotosCynthia McKinney Reports on the G20 Summit in London What an impressive Conference put on by the Government of Malaysia and the Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War (KLFCW). Absolutely incredible. And the audience was packed with information. I will definitely make a more detailed report later and include the information learned at this Conference in my next economics report, too, on the state of our economy and common sense solutions as I promised you. The Malaysian Foreign Minister, Dr. Rais Yatim, spoke passionately this morning about the need for accountability in the face of war crimes. And so too, did the founder of the KLFCW, Tun Dr. Mahathir. Dr. Mahathir spoke of the long history of Zionism, starting with the Balfour Declaration, and explained that we were in London because there had been a request from a British citizen in Malaysia attending our Forum for Palestine there, to take this information to the source of the problem--England. Dr. Mahathir recommended that we remember the Balfour Declaration and all the events leading up to the creation of the state of Israel for a better understanding of the challenges we face on our road to peace. Dr. Mahathir knows a lot about what's happening in our economy, too. Remember, he faced down George Soros and the currency speculators and was vilified (by them) for keeping Malaysia out of their snares. Today, Malaysia has a public Central Bank and a national system of public banks. Needless to say, the ringgit is doing just fine. Malaysia is strong to take a stand today because Dr. Mahathir took the unpopular stand yesterday--unpopular that is, with the monied interests of the world. More on that, later. After our tea break (of course, we were in London), Lauren Booth, PressTV reporter who was trapped in Gaza for one month, reported on her experiences with individual life stories of how life is made unbearable by the Israelis as they deny health care and education to Palestinian women and children. Lauren is also a Free Gaza Movement success story as she was on one of the boats that successfully challenged the Israeli seige. Unlike me, she made it into Gaza and received a hero's welcome. She was also with George Galloway as he successfully entered Gaza City by land in a convoy of over 100 vehicles. Then I spoke. My comments are included at the end of this report. Former M.P. Tony Benn delivered wonderful historical context and gave us hope for the future. All day, for some reason, speakers kept calling him Tony Blair, instead of Benn. It was quite funny, since I think Blair is Lauren Booth's brother-in-law and was pretty much reviled roundly by everyone in the audience. At one point, Benn leaned over to me and asked wryly, "You think I can win the Nobel Peace Prize?" And at that point, I remembered that I was the sole vote against honoring him (Blair) for his support of the "Global War on Terror." And Rabbi Aharon Cohen of Naturei Karta explained to us what their perspective is on Israel. Paraphrasing, Rabbi Cohen said that Zionism is the root of the problem and until Zionism is addressed, there will continue to be a problem. Even in the panel discussion, he brought us back to the problem of Zionism, itself. He made it clear that Zionism is not Judaism. His remarks were particularly educational since I had never had the opportunity to dialog with member of Naturei Karta before. He also gave the significance of the name that means, protectors of the city. For when the Zionists came to the land, Jews and non-Jews lived together in harmony. But the Zionists came to steal the land from the non-Jews and the Jews joined with the non-Jews to protect the City, thus, Naturei Karta--protectors of the City. I will defintely read more about them. Finally, Sir Gerald Bernard Kaufman basically said that Israel, by its actions, is becoming indefensible. He said this: "The Israeli electorate have proven themselves incorrigible," noting that only 3% of Israelis voted for peace in Israel's last election. He has said as much on the Floor of the House of Commons, and a tape was played at the Conference of him saying it. He talked about his hate mail. Well, I think we could go toe-to-toe on the hate mail. Only, in the mail he receives, they call him a self-hating Jew. Finally, there was a panel discussion where the audience asked questions of the speakers. And just before people left the room, I was able to make an announcement. When the gentleman showed me his blackberry, I was sure he was joking. That he was playing some kind of cruel joke on me. [I thought] That it was a hoax. Because all the night before and in my remarks, as you will see, I touted the judges of Spain and their courage as one of our hopes for justice in the legal arena. And when I didn't believe him, he showed his blackberry to me and I could see that it was a real news item: Spain had agreed to investigate Bush and his cronies for war crimes. Hallelujah!! What a wonderful end to a wonderful Conference. What a wonderful way to welcome the G20 into town!!!! For those of you who are new to my messages and are not on my e-list, please send a message authorizing me to add you to my e-list and you can get these messages from me all the time. Let me hear from you! Here are my remarks: Cynthia McKinney Forum for Palestine London/March 31, 2009 Not too long ago, I received an invitation to participate in the Malaysia Peace Organization's effort to Criminalize War and establish a tribunal to try the heads of state who violated the peace and led their countries into war and occupation. When I was in Kuala Lumpur, I had the opportunity to meet one of my heroes, Tun Dr. Mahathir, who stood up against the very same individuals who are today wreaking havoc on the U.S. economy in a feeding frenzy on the imperial carcass. As a result, Malaysia became an outpost of resistance in Asia. Dr. Mahathir's bold action was the first time I came to know Malaysia, and that was by way of the news reports. And when I had the opportunity to travel there for the purpose of fashioning a world without war, I dubbed Kuala Lumpur the world capital of peace. Thank you, Malaysia, for showing the world, along with Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, and others, that national dignity is possible. For dignity depends on peace, and peace depends on justice, and justice depends on truth. So, our charge today is to help the world attain dignity. At that 2007 Kuala Lumpur peace conference, I met victims of war crimes, torture, and crimes against humanity, all made possible because of U.S. policy and U.S. taxpayers. It was an emotional Conference for me, because I came face to face with the scars borne by victims of war. The next year, I spent International Human Rights Day 2008 in Havana, Cuba with family members of victims of U.S. aggression against that fiercely independent island country. And while I was there, over and over and over again I heard the word "dignity." And how there is dignity in resistance. I can't help but remember that it was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who, forty years ago, said that the United States was the greatest purveyor of violence on the planet. Sadly, violence sponsored by the U.S. directly or indirectly has only intensified. And because I stand in London right now, where tens of thousands of people are about to take to the streets in protest of war and occupation, I must not omit the roles that London and Europe have played in promoting this worldwide violence. The world is rising up against the lies that we've been told. People are reclaiming their dignity. Against the greed, corruption, and theft that have been committed in our name, with our tax dollars. In the streets, you will hear the word dignity. That's what the U.S. civil rights movement was all about. And its spirit of resistance to injustice shaped my childhood experiences. I saw what is possible when people stand up. On the night before his murder, Dr. King said that he was proud to be alive at the end of the 20th Century when people were rising up saying, "We want to be free." Today, we are rising up and saying that we want to be free from hatred, division, oppression, and war. I admire those stood up on the national stage, and I've tried to do my part to take a stand, too. Thus, in 1991, as a Member of the Georgia Legislature, when President George Herbert Walker Bush bombed Baghdad, I asked the Speaker of the House if I could speak on a point of Personal Privilege to explain my opposition to Operation Desert Storm. My colleagues stood up and walked out on me during my remarks. And then, when I decided to run for the United States Congress, I knew that the foundation of all U.S. policy-whether domestic or foreign--had to be: respect for human rights. So, when the marginalized and dispossessed of the world came to me, I did my best to help them. There was no room in my view for policies promoting nuclear weapons, NATO expansion, or discrimination against any person, group, or country. I voted against every Pentagon budget that came before Congress. I introduced legislation to stop the transfer of U.S. weapons to regimes that did not respect human rights and to eliminate the use of depleted uranium. I spoke out against President Clinton's sanctions against Iraq, and President George W. Bush's war against and occupation of Iraq. I represented the Congressional Black Caucus at the Durban World Conference Against Racism, despite intense pressure to not attend in order to avoid a discussion of Zionism. I worked with a team of internationally-respected lawyers to prosecute Sharon, Barak, and Netanyahu for war crimes as well as those responsible for incitement of genocide in Gujurat, India. I even turned down a politician's dream: fame, fortune, and re-election if I would just get arrested in front of the Sudan Embassy and let a famous Zionist lawyer bail me out of jail. Underlying it all was my belief that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ought to have universal application. Afterall, it was Dr. King who reminded us that justice is indivisible: injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. But when the subject was justice for Palestine, while I stood my ground, the political resolve underneath me dissolved beneath my feet. When the pro-Israel Lobby targeted me for defeat, even lifelong family friends abandoned me and those I thought stood for principle, shrank in utter fear. For all the talk about justice, the principles underlying the Universal Declaration of Human Rights melted away when the topic was Palestine. Or any other project of the pro-Israel Lobby. Like Durban, Sudan, Rwanda, Congo, or protecting their interests in Blood Diamonds. Unfortunately for me, all the issues I had taken on with great enthusiasm pitted me for the people, but against the interests of the powerful pro-Israel Lobby. And then, they decided in 2002 that I had to go. That came after I questioned the Bush Administration's version of what happened on September 11, 2001. The pro-Israel lobby activated its operatives inside both the Republican and Democratic Parties, and I lost my campaign for re-election to Congress. Even though, two years later, in 2004, I ran again and regained my seat, I still wore a target on my forehead. And again, pro-Israel, pro-war Democrats and Republicans joined to oust me from Congress in 2006, when I was the only Democratic Member of Congress to lose reelection. The significance of the 2006 election was this: The very first bill to fund the war came up for a vote and passed with exactly the number of votes required. Had I been there to cast my no vote, the bill would have failed. It became clear to me that the "War Party" inside the United States, that consists of pro-war elements inside both the Democratic and Republican parties, do a darn good job of making sure they control enough Congressional votes to keep our country at war. So, after leaving Congress in January of 2007, I declared my independence from every bomb dropped, every child killed, and every veteran maimed as a part of the U.S. war machine. In 2008, the Green Party, the largest of the small parties in the U.S., nominated me to lead their ticket and I ran for President. And now, I'm trying to launch "Dignity," a movement for peace and justice inside the United States as a counter to the war party. So, the day after Israel began bombing Gaza, the co-founder of the Free Gaza Movement asked me to travel the next day to Gaza with some doctors and deliver 3 tons of medical supplies. It didn't take me 5 minutes to say yes. And so began my voyage aboard the pleasure boat, Dignity, that was rammed in international waters by an Israeli warship and that almost cost me my life. Onboard the Dignity was Sami El-Hajj-the Al Jazeera reporter from Sudan who, while covering the U.S. military operation in Afghanistan, was captured and became known as prisoner 345 in Guantanamo for six years. Once again, I came face to face with a victim of U.S. war policy, against Afghanistan and also against his home country of Sudan. I apologized to him. Dr. David Halpin is here. Stand up Dr. Halpin. He was onboard the Dignity with me and is the one who told me to prepare myself mentally to die after the Israelis attacked us. He also noticed that I had my life jacket on upside down and helped me put it on right side up after we had been rammed. It is clear that those who favor war use every trick in the book to rob us of our human dignity. And then, feeling powerless, we allow them to do to us what they want. But effective resistance requires that perpetrators of crime, especially torture, genocide, war crimes, and crimes against the peace, be brought to justice. It's a shame that I have to even say that. But currently, we have a situation in which the killer of one might go to jail, but the killer of one hundred thousand is invited to peace talks. It seems that in this upside down world, the more one kills, the more impunity one acquires. But true justice requires the absence of impunity. And that's what brings us here today. We want to criminalize war. Many people's tribunals have been initiated precisely because of the lack of justice in the politicized courts of the United States, and increasingly, in the world Courts. Those with political power have been able to seize these courts and manipulate them to favor injustice. This includes the conduct of the International Criminal Court, which to date, has not engendered hope. In his piece entitled "White Collar War Crimes, Black African Fall Guys," investigative journalist Keith Snow writes: "First note that the ICC can now be viewed as a tool of hegemonic U.S. foreign policy, where the weapons deployed by the U.S. and its allies include the accusations of, and indictments for, human rights violations, war crimes and crimes against humanity. To understand this, we can ask why no white man has yet been charged with these or other offenses at the ICC, which now holds five black African warlords and seeks to incarcerate and bring to trial another black man, also an Arab, Omar Bashir. Why hasn't George W. Bush been indicted? Or what about Donald Rumsfeld? Dick Cheney? Henry Kissinger? Ehud Olmert? Tony Blair?" The sad fact is that the International Criminal Court has become terribly politicized, as has the entire international justice apparatus. The ICC has issued indictments, for the first time in history, against a sitting head of state. Meanwhile, according to Snow, an Israeli weapons dealer, also a reputed Mossad operative, is revealed to be shipping weapons into Sudan with Pentagon support. And Belgium changed its law rather than prosecute Ariel Sharon for war crimes. The double standard cries out to us. One country in the West, however, increasingly stands out as a place where justice can be found-and that is Spain. With its landmark indictment of Pinochet and its current consideration of Israeli war crimes in Lebanon and U.S. torture in Guantanamo, we increasingly look to the Spanish Courts with hope. It was the Spanish courts that returned indictments against Rwandan soldiers for genocide even as the world coddles U.S. proxy Rwanda and its leader, Paul Kagame. Now, why is curbing impunity important? Just this week Israel and the US admitted that Israel murdered approximately 800 refugees as Israel attacked Sudan in January and February using unmanned killer drones. Israel unleashed death squads to commit targeted assassinations all over the world. To save the Palestinians from Israel, is to save the rest of us from Israeli abuse, and of course, saves the Israelis from themselves. Even Israeli soldiers are telling the sad truth about Gaza. Doctors tell us that Gaza was a weapons testing laboratory. The world is rightly outraged about Israeli Operation Cast Lead. And of the Sudan operation, of which we are only just now learning, Olmert is reported to have said: "There is no place where Israel cannot operate. There is no such place." Now, I've been questioned about my passion because I'm not Arab; I'm not Muslim; why do I care so much about justice in Palestine? My answer is this: I struggle every day for the human rights and dignity of blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, Muslims, Arabs, the poor and others discriminated against in America. I learned from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who broke with his friends in the civil rights movement because they did not want to alienate themselves from President Johnson by criticizing the Vietnam War. Dr. King decided that conscience compelled him to speak out against the war even if it meant losing his friends. Even if it meant losing his life. And when asked about it, Dr. King said that he had fought segregation too long to segregate his moral concerns. The people of the world want war criminals held accountable. Bolivia wants to hold Israeli leaders accountable for their crimes in Gaza. The International Criminal Court says it is investigating whether Israel committed war crimes in Gaza. Now is the time for us to stand firm. That's why I support the Malaysia Peace Organization, the Brussels Tribunal, the Hurricane Katrina Tribunal, and other efforts to hold national leadership accountable for their actions. And I specifically support Malaysia's efforts to criminalize war. Because of what happened to our Dignity boat while in international waters, the Free Gaza Movement wants to bring Israel to justice for its war crime against us. I applaud George Galloway's success in entering Gaza by land. The Free Gaza Movement will try again by sea. I paid the ultimate political price for standing by the idea that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ought to have universal application. You can rest assured that I will do all I can to promote dignity, a vision of peace that relies on truth and justice for all of us. Thank you. http://panafricannews.blogspot.com/2009/04/cynthia-mckinney-reports-on-g20-summit.html *** (highlights added) Silence and inaction is consent to tyranny and servitude. I choose, therefore to act and to speak out. - War Criminals OUT! www.warcriminalsout.com ...it's the OTHER War on Terrorism ...silly! Now with a new friend-happy design! Try the new Yahoo! Canada Messenger From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Fri Apr 3 04:02:29 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Fri, 03 Apr 2009 19:02:29 +0900 Subject: [A-List] China's empty threat Message-ID: <49D5DEB5.9090801@ashisuto.co.jp> If Wen Jiabao stops buying US debt, China's currency will rise - which is what America has wanted all along by Dean Baker guardian.co.uk (March 30 2009) When China's prime minister, Wen Jiabao, expressed concern about the ability of the US government to repay its bonds, his comments prompted headlines everywhere. The newspapers were filled with gloomy warnings that China may no longer be willing to buy up US debt, which supposedly would have dire consequences for us all. Unfortunately, too little thought was given to what these "dire consequences" might be, and who would end up suffering them. Suppose that China stops buying US government debt. That would mean that the dollar would plummet in value against the yuan. Chinese imports would suddenly become much more expensive for consumers in the United States, making domestically produced items far more competitive. The opposite would happen in China. Goods and services made in the United States would suddenly be much cheaper. As a result, we would expect to export much more to China, and see many more Chinese come to the United States as tourists or for business purposes. The reduction in imports from China and the increase in exports would substantially improve our balance of trade. In other words, if Wen was threatening to stop buying dollar-denominated assets and therefore let the yuan rise against the dollar, he was threatening to do exactly what the US government has been demanding that China do. He will stop "manipulating" China's currency - meaning he will stop deliberately intervening in the market to keep the yuan's value from rising. There is an alternative interpretation of Wen's threat. Perhaps he will stop buying long-term government bonds, but continue to buy short-term debt. This will have some impact on raising long-term interest rates in the United States, but it hardly provides a basis for panic. The reason that Wen's threat should not be serious cause for concern is that if we want to keep long-term interest rates low, we already have a mechanism: it's called the Federal Reserve Board. Just last week Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke announced that he was going to buy up more than $1 trillion in long-term government or agency (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) bonds over the next several months. This purchase far exceeds any possible purchases of long bonds by the Chinese. If Wen pulls out of the market, Bernanke can simply increase his purchases to offset the lost demand. Does this policy risk inflation? Actually, the Chinese purchase of Treasury bills and the Fed's buying up the long-term bonds would have the same impact on inflation. It really doesn't matter whether the Chinese government or the Fed is buying bonds to hold down the long-term interest rate - the impact on the inflation rate will be the same. Of course in a period where there are serious concerns about deflation, a modest increase in the inflation rate would be a good thing. There is one other irony about Wen's threat that is worth noting. In 2004, Alan Greenspan began to raise short-term interest rates. He expressed surprise that long-term interest rates stayed constant or even fell slightly. He described this as a "conundrum". There was actually nothing mysterious about the situation at all. As Greenspan was acting to raise short-term interest rates, the Chinese and other foreign central banks were intervening directly in the long-term market, buying up long-term bonds in order to keep long-term interests down. Did Greenspan fail to recognise the impact of the Chinese intervention in the same way that he managed to miss an $8 trillion housing bubble? In short, Wen has nothing with which to threaten the United States. He is proposing to do something that Congress and the Bush and Obama administrations have all urged him to do: stop propping up the value of the dollar against the yuan. This will lead to an adjustment process involving some pain on both sides. In China's case, the reduction in exports to the United States will require increasing the size of its domestic market, or at least finding alternative destinations for its exports. In the case of the United States, we will have to pay more for our imports, which will mean some increase in the rate of inflation and, in the short term, a modest decline in our standard of living. But we always knew that China would not subsidise its exports to the United States forever. It would have been better for us if they had stopped a decade ago, before we developed a huge trade imbalance and developed a housing bubble-led growth path. Still, better late than never. Wen has made a promise, not a threat - and we should encourage him to follow through on it. guardian.co.uk (c) Guardian News and Media Limited 2009 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/mar/30/us-economy-china-debt?commentpage=1 QUESTIONS: Dean Baker's comment's refer only to relations between the United States and China. But as http://www.moneymorning.com/images2/foreigncreditors.GIF shows, various nations hold more three trillion dollars of US Treasury Bonds, denominated in US dollars. Japan holds 626 billion dollars of those bonds. All would lose severely from any significant devaluation of the US dollar vis-a-vis their own currencies. Wouldn't those losses cripple the credibility of the US dollar and the US's ability to make up for its paucity of saving and taxation by borrowing from foreigners? Would those losses spark a worldwide run on the US dollar? Bill Totten http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From tboyle at rosehill.net Thu Apr 2 14:05:51 2009 From: tboyle at rosehill.net (Todd Boyle) Date: Thu, 02 Apr 2009 12:05:51 -0800 Subject: [A-List] Fwd: [PJH] Le Monde: Minute-by-minute cascade of major announcements follows end of G20 Message-ID: >To: jensenmk82 at gmail.com >From: jensenmk at plu.edu >Date: Thu, 02 Apr 2009 10:16:40 -0700 (PDT) >Subject: [PJH] Le Monde: Minute-by-minute >cascade of major announcements follows end > of G20 > >TRANSLATION: Minute-by-minute cascade of major announcements follows end >of G20 (Le Monde) > >[There was an extraordinary cascade of major news announcements in a >two-hour period at the conclusion Thursday afternoon in London of the G20 >summit. -- They were reported minute-by-minute on the web site of *Le >Monde* (Paris) in brief squibs translated below.[1] --Mark] > >http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/8502/ > >1. > >[Translated from *Le Monde* (Paris)] > >Economy > >THE G20 SUMMIT IN LONDON > >Le Monde (Paris) >April 2, 2009 > >http://www.lemonde.fr/la-crise-financiere/actu-minute/2009/04/02/le-sommet-du-g20-a-londres_1175641_1101386.html > >17:51 [08:51 PDT] -- STOCK MARKETS EUPHORIC > >Stock markets are reacting very positively to the G20 announcements. The >CAC 40 is up 5.37%, the Footsie (London) is up 4.28%, and the DAX >(Frankfurt) is up 6.07%. > >17:47 [08:47 PDT] -- DEMONSTRATIONS RESUME IN THE CITY OF LONDON > >The BBC and the *Guardian* say that demonstrations in the City of London, >which had remained relatively calm today, are taking a more violent tone >since the end of the summit. > >17:45 [08:45 PDT] -- OPTIMISM FOR WORLD PRODUCTION > >According to the final G20 communiqu?, the measures taken by the summit >should lead to a growth in world production on the order of 4% between now >and the end of 2010. This initiative "will save or create millions of >jobs that would have been destroyed," adds the communiqu?. > >17:41 [08:41 PDT] -- $1,100 BILLION IN ALL > >The sum announced by the G20 is made up of $500 billion for the IMF, plus >$250 billion of newly created special drawing rights. An additional $250 >billion will be devoted to helping to finance trade in order to stimulate >world exchanges. The G20 is also granting $100 billion in aid to >development banks. > >17:22 [08:22 PDT] -- GOLD PRICES FALL >Gordon Brown's announcement about the sale of a part of the IMF's gold >reserves caused the price to fall to less than $900 an ounce. The IMF >will use the income from these sales to come to the aid of the least >developed countries. > >17:18 [08:18 PDT] -- TAX HAVEN LIST TO BE PUBLISHED IN LESS THAN TWO HOURS > >Nicolas Sarkozy, speaking at the same time as Gordon Brown, announced that >the list of tax havens will be made public in the next two hours. This >list was drawn up by OECD members. > >17:16 [08:16 PDT] -- THE G20 WILL MEET AGAIN BEFORE THE END OF THE YEAR > >Gordon Brown has decided to convene a new G20 summit before the end of >2009 to verify progress on the decisions reached in London. > >17:14 [08:14 PDT] -- NEW RULES ON SALARIES AND BONUSES > >The G20 has agreed to enact "new rules" on salaries and bonuses on a >global scale. > >17:12 [08:12 PDT] -- THE END OF BANKING SECRECY > >For Gordon Brown, the London G20 summit marks the end of banking secrecy. >He has also announced strict controls of "hedge funds" and ratings >agencies. > >17:09 [08:09 PDT] -- MORE ROOM FOR DEVELOPING COUNTRIES > >In his speech closing the summit, Gordon Brown is announcing that more >room will be made for emerging markets and developing countries within >international institutions. The unstated rule privileging Americans and >Europeans should disappear. > >17:04 [08:04 PDT] -- $1,000 BILLION TO STIMULATE GROWTH > >Gordon Brown is confirming a $1,000 billion aid plan to simulate growth >through international institutions. > >17:00 [08:00 PDT] -- NICOLAS SARKOZY SPEAKING AT THE SAME TIME AS GORDON >BROWN > >As Gordon Brown holds the summit's closing press conference, Nicolas >Sarkozy has organized his own speaking forum in another room of the ExCel >Exhibition Center. > >16:56 [07:56 PDT] -- THE SUMMIT IS ENDING > >British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is speaking at a summit-closing press >conference. He is announcing an "unprecedented" plan of financial aid to >international institutions. > >16:46 [07:46 PDT] -- FRAN?OIS FILLON WANTS A LIST OF TAX HAVENS PUBLISHED > >Traveling in Poitiers for the FNSEA conference, [French Prime Minister] >Fran?ois Fillon reminded listeners that he favored the publication of a >list of tax havens by G20 members. "Frankly, I would be extraordinarily >disappointed should the leaders of the 20 largest economies in the world >not be able to agree on a minimum of regulation, such as what we are >proposing, and in particular should the president of the United States not >make the publication of a list of tax havens a priority." > >16:36 [07:36 PDT] -- BERLIN WANTS A G20 ON CLIMATE > >On the margins of the G20, the German environment minister, Sigmar >Gabriel, has made a case for the organization of a G20 summit on climate >protection as a tool for economic stimulus. He said the protection of the >environment should also be seen as "a means to job security." > >16:22 [07:22 PDT] -- ONE-UPMANSHIP ON NEW AID > >As the summit prepares to issue its final statement, the figures on aid to >international institutions are continuing to climb. First announced at >$250 billion for the IMF, they now are reaching, according to some >negotiators, to nearly $1,100 billion for the IMF, World Bank, and >development banks. > >16:16 [07:16 PDT] -- TOO BAD FOR THE "FAMILY PHOTO" > >The G20 leaders will not have managed to gather for a "family photo" to >immortalize the summit. This would only have been a formality, but during >the first attempt this morning, the Canadian prime minister was absent. A >second session took place, but this time it was the Italian leader Silvio >Berlusconi and the Indonesian leader Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono who failed >to show. The organizers gave up on making a third attempt. > >16:08 [07:08 PDT] -- RUSSIA WANTS TO DISCUSS A NEW INTERNATIONAL CURRENCY > >The discussion about creating a new international currency based on IMF >special drawing rights to replace the dollar was not on the summit >program. But "isolated discussions on this subject in a bilateral format" >took place, according to the Kremlin's chief adviser. China and Russia >say they are in favor of "looking more deeply" into the question in the >next few months. > >16:02 [07:02 PDT] -- FOR OXFAM, A LIST OF TAX HAVENS IS "INDISPENSABLE" > >The organization Oxfam France is calling on leaders at the G20 to issue a >list of tax havens. "Without a list, no sanctions are possible," says the >group, which says it deplores the fact that some countries attending the >summit are willing to give this up. > >15:52 [06:52 PDT] -- WALL STREET REACTS POSITIVELY TO G20 > >The New York Stock Exchange opened up and greeted with optimism the G20 >members' first statements. The Dow Jones opened up 2.03%. It had already >risen in late trading yesterday after the announcement of home sales >figures in the United States were not as bad as expected. > >-- >Translated by Mark K. Jensen >Associate Professor of French >Chair, Department of Languages and Literatures >Pacific Lutheran University >Tacoma, WA 98447-0003 >Phone: 253-535-7219 >Web page: http://www.plu.edu/~jensenmk/ >E-mail: jensenmk at plu.edu > > > > > >------------------------------------ > >PPJH's website is located at >http://www.tacomapjh.org/ -- others may join by sending an email >to tacomapjh-subscribe at yahoogroups.comYahoo! Groups Links > ><*> To visit your group on the web, go to: > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tacomapjh/ > ><*> Your email settings: > Individual Email | Traditional > ><*> To change settings online go to: > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tacomapjh/join > (Yahoo! ID required) > ><*> To change settings via email: > mailto:tacomapjh-digest at yahoogroups.com > mailto:tacomapjh-fullfeatured at yahoogroups.com > ><*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: > tacomapjh-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com > ><*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: > http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 9834 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090402/0a654ebc/attachment.txt From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Fri Apr 3 18:23:52 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Sat, 04 Apr 2009 09:23:52 +0900 Subject: [A-List] China's Calculated Currency Rhetoric Message-ID: <49D6A898.8090905@ashisuto.co.jp> by Stratfor (March 25 2009) One of the more popular conventional wisdoms is that the United States is in decline and that it is a simple matter to select options that will edge the United States out of its dominant position in the world. In an editorial published Tuesday, Chinese central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan spoke to one of the more popular financial conspiracy theories in this vein when he wrote that the time had come to establish a new scrip to replace the US dollar as the global reserve currency. The issue is close to Beijing?s heart: The Chinese reserve fund is a significant holder of US debt, with some $750 billion in US Treasury bills. China does not purchase US debt out of choice, but out of a lack of choice. China is a state with serious social stability issues that are mitigated only by state intervention in the economic structure to maintain mass employment. Since there isn?t much internal demand for the goods these employed masses produce - due in part to a high savings rate and low incomes - China must peddle its goods abroad. The US consumer market, with annual sales of approximately $10 trillion, is roughly equivalent in bulk to the next six consumer markets combined. Sales to the United States and other countries hardwired into the American supply chain - which includes the bulk of East Asia - are the only reasonable option. And so the Chinese yuan has a de facto peg to the US dollar. That is hardly the extent to which the Chinese are bound to the dollar, however. Because China lacks the financial and industrial infrastructure needed to metabolize the massive revenues generated by exports, the income must be stored in some sort of non-Chinese asset. Outstanding US Treasury bills currently total $11 trillion, which - with the notable exception of Japanese government debt, which very few foreigners even touch - is greater than the next five government debt issues combined, by a ratio of two to one. US debt outsizes combined euro-denominated government debt by more than three to one. Corporate debt isn?t much of an option either, even though the combined global corporate debt market is sufficiently large to absorb China?s currency reserves. Whenever an investor holds a substantial portion of any company?s debt, market liquidity is constrained and trading dynamics are altered. The solution is a highly diversified - and therefore actively managed - portfolio. But the administrative cost of a trillion-dollar portfolio so diversified that it does not affect the value of any particular asset would be staggering. In contrast, US government debt is a one-stop shop that requires - at most - minimal management. That China?s income is primarily in either dollars or dollar-linked currencies only strengthens the rationale for pouring surplus income into American assets in general, and US government debt in particular. Plainly put, China cannot put its income anywhere else because there is no other option available. There have been some mild attempts to diversify, but a dearth of options means that "mild" is about as dynamic as a diversification program for China can get. As to a world beyond the dollar, the issue is that a reserve currency is not decided upon; it creates itself. Two things are needed to create a reserve currency. First, there must be sufficient liquidity to support a global system. That requires a central bank with an enormous amount of autonomy from a state government, and the US Federal Reserve is unparalleled on this count. Not even the European Central Bank can compete. Second, the economy upon which the currency is based must be large enough to withstand fluctuations caused by other economies buying and selling its assets in massive amounts. Again, the United States is the only economy that potentially could qualify. Part and parcel of any replacement of the US dollar would be a large-scale abandonment of US Treasury bills as the core of Chinese currency reserves, which - as the conventional wisdom holds - would force intractable economic problems upon the United States. But a closer look reveals that this is not the case. First, selling US Treasury bills en masse simply is not possible. Every seller requires a buyer, and the volumes at hand cannot be exchanged quickly. Second, starting down that road would cause the value of the securities in question to plummet, destroying the savings the Chinese have been building up for years. The so-called "nuclear option" really is not an option at all. So why are the Chinese bringing this up in the first place? Beijing clearly has done the math already and knows that this idea - even if it had broad support - is a nonstarter. There are two reasons. First, officials in Beijing know that any direct confrontation - whether military or financial - with the United States would end in disaster for Chinese national interests. Therefore, they wants to foster anything they can that would create an international structure to restrain American power; failing that, something that just gets people thinking in that direction will have to do. Second, China is more severely affected by the ongoing financial crisis than it would like the world to register. The Chinese need sustained international demand to maintain their export industries and, consequently, their high employment levels. Espousing rhetoric that makes it appear that you have more options than you do, while redirecting attention toward a foreign power, always plays well at home. A Stratfor Intelligence Report. http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2009/03/chinas_calculated_currency_rhe.html http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Sat Apr 4 01:08:08 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Sat, 04 Apr 2009 16:08:08 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Facing Decline, Facing Ourselves Message-ID: <49D70758.5050906@ashisuto.co.jp> by John Michael Greer The Archdruid Report (April 01 2009) Druid perspectives on nature, culture, and the future of industrial society Of all the fallacies that surround the contemporary crisis of industrial civilization, and have done so much to bring that crisis down on us, the most seductive is the assumption that it's a technical problem that can be solved by technical means. That's an easy assumption to make, for a variety of reasons, but it puts us in the situation of the drunkard in the old joke who looks for his keys under the streetlight half a block from the dark sidewalk where he dropped them, since under the streetlight he can at least see what he's doing. The technical aspects of our predicament, though challenging, are the least of our worries; it's the other aspects that have proven intractable. Consider the project of cutting US per capita energy consumption to a third of its present level. Given that the average European uses a third as much energy each year as the average American, and in many ways gets a better standard of living out of it, this is far from impossible; a great deal of the technology is sitting on the shelf only one continent away, in effect, and simply needs to be put to work. Now of course such a project would require a great deal of investment in railways, mass transit, urban redevelopment, and the like, but what's been spent on recent military adventures in the Middle East would cover much of it - and let's not even talk about what could be done with the funds being wasted right now to prop up Wall Street banks looted by their own executives in the final blowoff of an epoch of corporate kleptocracy. The return on the investment needed to cut our energy use to European levels, in turn, would be immense. Since the US still produces more than a third of the oil it uses, to name only one result, we would no longer be sending billions of dollars a year to line the pockets of Middle Eastern despots; we'd be a net exporter of oil - even, quite conceivably, a member of OPEC. So why isn't so sensible a project being debated right now in the halls of Congress? Why, more broadly, has energy conservation through lifestyle change - arguably the single easiest and most cost effective option we have on hand in dealing with the end of the age of cheap oil - been entirely off the political and cultural radar screens since the end of the 1970s, so much so that most of those who have noticed that we're running out of cheap abundant energy have framed the issue entirely in terms of finding some technical gimmick that will let us keep on living the way we live now? This is where the technical dimension of our predicament gives way to a region where the forces that matter are not the cut-and-dried facts of physics and engineering, but murkier factors - political, cultural, psychological, and (let's whisper the word) spiritual - and what's theoretically possible matters a great deal less than what's culturally and emotionally acceptable. Most writers on peak oil, though not all, have tended to shy away from this unsettled and unsettling territory. This is quite understandable; industrial culture privileges technical knowledge and rewards those who can (or say they can) make the machinery of our daily life purr more smoothly and profitably, and shuts its ears against those who ask questions about the purposes the machines serve and the emotional drives that make those purposes seem to make sense. Still, this leaves us scrabbling around with the drunkard under the streetlight, searching for keys that are lying in the dark half a block away. It's for this reason, among others, that I was pleased to get a copy of Carolyn Baker's new book, Sacred Demise: Walking the Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse (2009). Those of my readers who are familiar with Baker's blog and mine will probably be able to imagine, if they don't happen to have followed, some of the lively disagreements we've had, and it will doubtless come as no surprise that some of the arguments made in Sacred Demise seem problematic to me. Still, those issues of detail are less important than what Baker has tried, with quite some success, to accomplish with this book. What Sacred Demise represents is the first really sustained effort to pull the debate over the future of industrial civilization out of the comfortable realm of technical questions, and force it to confront the deeper and fundamentally nonrational factors that have done so much to keep effective solutions out of reach. The title of the book may need some explanation, because Sacred Demise deals at least as much with psychology as with religion. Admittedly the line between these two has become blurred in recent years; as the modern West has redefined religion wholly in terms of personal relationships with the transcendent, and made its collective aspects increasingly hard to sustain, psychology has come to play the role in modern religious movements that theology still plays in their more traditional sisters. While this shift has had its share of dubious results, it has allowed some crucial religious themes - the imminence of death, the quest for meaning in human existence, and the challenge both these level at individuals and societies alike, among others - to remain live issues in a passionately secular age. These themes, in turn, frame Baker's approach. She argues that we are long past the point at which the unraveling of the industrial age can be prevented, and our options at this point are limited to facing the difficult future ahead of us, on the one hand, or pretending it isn't there until it overwhelms us, on the other. She dissects the logic of those who only want to hear about solutions, tracing it back into its deep roots in the fear of death and the attempt to cling to familiar patterns of meaning even when those no longer make sense of our experience, and she tackles the awkward but necessary issues all of us have to confront as decline and fall sets in: the need to mourn, to confront the reality of death, to find new narratives to make sense of a rapidly changing world. . For Baker, then, the core task of our time is not how to prevent collapse; decades of mishandled opportunities have put that hope out of reach. Nor does she embrace the futile strategy of trying to hide out in survivalist enclaves until the rubble stops bouncing. Instead, she calls us to face collapse squarely and personally, as a reality that is already shaping our lives, and will do so ever more forcefully in the years to come. Facing collapse, in turn, requires us to deal with the whole realm of personal baggage we each bring to the experience of decline and fall. That's a crucial issue, for the unstated psychological and religious subtexts of the crisis of industrial civilization have played a huge role in confusing the already complex issues facing the world just now. Thus it's vital to realize, when somebody insists that technological progress will inevitably lead our species to immortality among the stars, or when somebody else insists that contemporary civilization has become the ultimate incarnation of everything evil and will shortly be destroyed so that the righteous remnant can inhabit a perfect world, that what they're saying has very little to do with the facts on the ground. Rather, these are statements of religious belief that coat mythic themes millennia old in a single coat of secular spraypaint. If, dear reader, one or the other of these is your religion, that's fine - you have as much right to your faith as I have to mine - but please, for the love of Darwin, could you at least admit that it's a religious belief, an act of faith in a particular constellation of numinous experience, rather than a self-evident truth that any sane and moral person must automatically accept? This last point, I have to admit, goes a little beyond what Baker has to say, and in fact my central criticism of Sacred Demise is precisely that it doesn't quite manage to apply its sharpest insights to Baker's own point of view. That view is perilously close to the latter of the religious viewpoints mentioned above; for Baker, the diverse and morally complex reality of the industrial world is flattened into a single vast and terrible abstraction labeled by turns Civilization and Empire, the exact equivalent of Babylon and the kingdom of Satan in her historical mythology. Psychologically, this might best be described in Jungian terms as a bad case of projecting the shadow; in religious terms, it represents a drastic confusion between the realms of being, mistakenly mapping one of the great themes of myth and religious vision onto the messy and prosaic realities of everyday existence. For all that, Sacred Demise is a crucially important book. It is not the last word on the subject, nor do I think Baker would want it to be; rather, it's the first word in a conversation that we desperately need to start, as the high notes of economic crisis mingle with the basso-profundo of declining energy reserves, pushing us further and further away from the world of business-as-usual fantasy we have tried to inhabit for the last quarter century. We need to start talking about how we can hold onto our humanity in bitter times; about how we can find reasons for hope and sources of necessary joy as so many of our former certainties crumble to dust; about what stories we can use to bring meaning to the world when so many of our familiar meanings no longer make sense of anything. In order to face the realities of decline, in other words, we have to face ourselves, and Baker's book is a significant contribution to that vital task. _____ ?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 (2006) and The Long Descent: A User's Guide to the End of the Industrial Age" (2008). He lives in Ashland, Oregon. http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2009/04/facing-decline-facing-ourselves.html http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From noreply at coha.org Fri Apr 3 11:02:15 2009 From: noreply at coha.org (Council on Hemispheric Affairs) Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2009 13:02:15 -0400 Subject: [A-List] An Eyewitness Account of the Salvadoran Elections; Forthcoming from COHA Message-ID: <20090403170140.F0AA23E49A1@mx-out.daemonmail.net> A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 5511 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090403/d68bfd4f/attachment.txt From suzannedk at gmail.com Fri Apr 3 14:38:52 2009 From: suzannedk at gmail.com (Suzanne de Kuyper) Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2009 22:38:52 +0200 Subject: [A-List] Fwd: [R-G] Unmanned aircraft to patrol Michigan-Ontario border......and, a photo to die for Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Suzanne de Kuyper Date: Fri, Apr 3, 2009 at 10:36 PM Subject: Fwd: [R-G] Unmanned aircraft to patrol Michigan-Ontario border To: Nikki Palmer Dear Niki: The law that as writtien about the time of the Civil War that no troops were ever tp be stationed watching their own people, was removed by Bush and Cheney and the Homeland guy, Chertoff just before Obama came in. Therefor the drones...they are niether safe nor really legal as they are used specificaly to scare US citizens not to agitate in rage at having been cheated out of everything! They were ued in the Gaza genocide bombiing. Obama is same same but for the way of talking, and, in a way, worse because we really needed a change so terribly and its not going to be. This depression may last ten years and more! Ron Paul warns......China is losing billions each day the dollar goes down in value. Each 'bailout' weakens the value of the dollar. London Times is good paper! Wasn't that picture great with Michelle with her left arm arounf Queen Elizabth and Queen Elizabeth with her right arm around Michelle? Oh, my! Is worth his presidency. That may trun out to be the best he will do...and, it may be enough! So glad you start living in UK soon! Fly safe. Suzette ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Anthony Fenton Date: Fri, Apr 3, 2009 at 5:55 PM Subject: [R-G] Unmanned aircraft to patrol Michigan-Ontario border To: Suzanne de Kuyper photo of drone: http://www.richard-seaman.com/Aircraft/AirShows/Nellis2006/Highlights/Predator2006.jpg April 2, 2009 Unmanned aircraft to patrol Michigan-Ontario border By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Military personnel adjust the placement of the US Air Force MQ-1 Predator aircraft at March Air Reserve Base in Riverside County, Calif., June 25, 2008. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS/Damian Dovarganes DETROIT - U.S. authorities plan to use an unmanned aircraft to patrol the border between Michigan and Ontario. U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman Juan Munoz-Torres tells the Detroit Free Press that the Predator aircraft likely would be based in the Alpena, Mich., area. A date hasn't been set for patrols to start. Customs and Border Protection has other unmanned aircraft, including one that patrols the northern U.S. border from North Dakota. The Predator has been used along the southern border with Mexico since 2005. Known by many as a drone, the Predator has been used by U.S. forces in military operations overseas. _______________________________________________ Rad-Green mailing list Rad-Green at lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 3736 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090403/47c8c234/attachment.txt From nscchicago at igc.org Fri Apr 3 16:18:52 2009 From: nscchicago at igc.org (NSC WORKERS COOP) Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2009 17:18:52 -0500 Subject: [A-List] Serfs' emancipation day celebrated in Tibet - THE PAST IS NOT GONE References: Message-ID: <33F9A29E55E0498C8E8049FBDCBCF5FE@NSCCHICAGO> Tom Baker here and I have some buzz thoughts Serfs' Liberation Day. I suggest to you that conditions of feudalism exist today. Call it Old World and it seems to me the history is really unbroken, ie., continuous from its start. Old World, all shared in same history. I say it is clearly dominating the World. Maybe we live in feudal cities. ----- Original Message ----- From: Fight Back News Service Subject: Serfs' emancipation day celebrated in Tibet http://fightbacknews.org/2009/03/serfs-emancipation-day-celebrated-in-tibet.htm Serfs' emancipation day celebrated in Tibet Fight Back News Service is circulating the following article from the New China News Agency on the celebration of Serfs Emancipation Day in Tibet. Celebration for Serfs Emancipation Day starts in Tibet A grand celebration to mark Tibet's first Serfs Emancipation Day was held Saturday, March 28 morning at the square in front of the Potala Palace in the Tibet Autonomous Region. The meeting was presided over in both Tibetan and Mandarin by Qiangba Puncog, chairman of the regional government of Tibet, who was dressed in a traditional Tibetan robe. It was attended by about 13,280 people. After the national flag was hoisted against the backdrop of the grand Potala Palace and snow-capped mountains in the distance, representatives of former serfs, soldiers from the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and students delivered speeches. LIFE CHANGES Tsondre, a 69-year-old farmer from the suburbs of Lhasa, recalled changes in his life after democratic reform. "I was born to a serf's family and was made a monk in the Sera Monastery when I was young," said the old man, adding that he would never forget his tragedy. He cited a Tibetan adage to describe the misery of serfs: "All that I can take is my own shadow, all that I can leave are my footprints." He was at the lowest level in the monastery, doing all kinds of chores throughout the year without getting enough to eat. "Due to hunger, many people like me went out to beg for food, but if we were discovered by high-level monks, we could be clubbed or whipped." Sun Huanxun, a PLA veteran who went to Tibet in 1950 and stayed there, recalled what he saw in Lhasa before the democratic reform. "Slaves wailed and begged from passers-by, some of whom had their legs chopped by the landlords, some have their eyes gouged out and some without hands," he said. In contrast, the landlords were in luxurious dress, some riding on the backs of their slaves. "In their houses there hung whips, knives and shackles," he added. On March 28, 1959, the central government announced it would dissolve the aristocratic local government of Tibet and replace it with a preparatory committee for establishing the Tibet Autonomous Region. That meant the end of serfdom and the abolition of the hierarchic social system characterized by theocracy. After democratic reform, serfs were given land, cattle and means of production. "New buildings mushroomed and our savings grew, a road was built to my home, television and telephone service came to my house, all children could receive an education ... the change was dramatic," Tsondre said. "If some people want to separate our country and destroy our happiness, we would never agree," he said. REMEMBER AND UNDERSTAND Tibetan legislators endorsed a bill on Jan. 19 to designate March 28 as an annual Serfs Emancipation Day, to mark the date on which about 1 million serfs in the region, accounting for 90 percent of the Tibetan population, were freed 50 years ago. The move was intended to have people, especially the young, understand and remember the misery of serfdom and cherish the life they enjoy now. Soldier Jamyang Sherab's grandparents were serfs. "My grandfather was hounded to death by the landlord and my grandmother lived a miserable life with my father and aunt, until the PLA soldiers came," he said. "They then gained land and cattle, settling down in Jomda County in Qamdo prefecture." Growing up with this story, Jamyang Sherab developed an affinity for the army and became a soldier in 1998. "I was sent to Estonia for an international contest among scouts, and our team was the runner-up," said the uniformed soldier proudly. Namgyel Lhamo, an 11th-grader in Lhasa, said she was lucky not to have experienced the old society. "Now that children don't have to live in despair for not being able to attend school, don't have to subsist under the whip of landlords or in dark and wet stables ... we shiver at the cruelties we heard of and could hardly imagine how could such feudal serfdom based on the blood and tears of serfs could have existed," she said. Last year on March 14 "when we were sitting in the classroom, rioters came ... and torched our school. We were scared for quite a long time. We can't let anyone ruin our peaceful life," she said. Tibet's Communist Party chief Zhang Qingli was the last to speak. "Burying feudal serfdom and liberating the one million slaves in Tibet was a natural development in history ... a milestone in the worldwide campaign to abolish slavery, a sign of progress in human rights," he said. "Just as Europe couldn't return to the medieval era, and the United States couldn't go back to the times before the Civil War, Tibet would never restore the old system," he said. "Tibet belongs to China, not the a few separatists or the international forces against China. Any conspiracy attempting to separate the region from China is doomed to fail," he noted. The ceremony lasted for more than an hour, before attendants, sitting under the blue sky, waved katas upon its conclusion. _____________________________________________________ Fight Back News Service | www.fightbacknews.org If you received this from somebody else, you can subscribe to Fight Back News Service at http://www.fightbacknews.org/fbns/?p=subscribe&id=1 -- If you do not want to receive any more emails from Fight Back News Service visit this link To update your preferences and to unsubscribe visit this link -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 8857 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090403/ab8ae2d4/attachment.txt -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 4008 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090403/ab8ae2d4/attachment-0001.jpeg -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/png Size: 2408 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090403/ab8ae2d4/attachment-0001.png From tboyle at rosehill.net Fri Apr 3 18:44:44 2009 From: tboyle at rosehill.net (Todd Boyle) Date: Fri, 03 Apr 2009 16:44:44 -0800 Subject: [A-List] China's empty threat In-Reply-To: <49D5DEB5.9090801@ashisuto.co.jp> References: <49D5DEB5.9090801@ashisuto.co.jp> Message-ID: Hi Bill. Your first question is oddly framed; it seems to reflect a value judgment that devaluation is bad, and Americans are bad for their low savings rate, etc. I can't deal with that framing--my limitation,I guess. In fact Americans are rational enough. Why buy an American product when Chinese products cost half as much. Why would an investor build a factory in the US while labor is cheaper elsewhere. etc. The savings rate (and the trade deficit, fiscal deficits, etc) are effects, not causes. They are not the prime mover. The prime mover is the will and intention of global capitalists who run the U.S. The dollar itself has no credibility. Credibility is something that applies to the sponsors and managers of the dollar. That would be the Fed, the Treasury, Congress and the President. There will be no run on the dollar, I suppose, unless a substantial consensus develops among global capitalists for such a run. Since wall street largely controls who gets nominated or elected to the Presidency and Congress, they control the value of the dollar. You may have noticed a terrific deflation in 2008. This proves they can do deflation. Obviously they can do inflation, any child could do that, if you provide the password to the issuance computer at the Fed. But who cares? Many of us understand that working in the money economy is not only morally wrong, environmental and cultural suicide but ultimately, a dead end. There is not even freedom waiting for you when you retire-- the rats are in the granary, stealing your economic surplus, and your savings will not be there when you're 65. The corporate economy is very intimidating. Very impressive. But we are losing at least 90% of our lifetime economic output to waste, and thieves in this system. We cannot even accumulate savings. I think working outside the money system is a more favorable proposition than ever before. Most of this is informal, group loyalty today, lubricated by a lot of P2P/bilateral barter and offbook money transactions. It will work a lot better with multiparty barter, too bad there's no website for that. It would be so easy to develop. Todd At 02:02 AM 4/3/2009, Bill Totten asked: >.. various nations hold more three trillion dollars of US Treasury Bonds, >denominated in US dollars. Japan holds 626 billion dollars of those >bonds. All would lose severely from any significant devaluation of the >US dollar vis-a-vis their own currencies. > >Wouldn't those losses cripple the credibility of the US dollar and the >US's ability to make up for its paucity of saving and taxation by >borrowing from foreigners? > >Would those losses spark a worldwide run on the US dollar? > >Bill Totten -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 3142 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090403/182754c5/attachment.txt From tal1 at cogeco.ca Sat Apr 4 11:13:01 2009 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Sat, 4 Apr 2009 13:13:01 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Brasschech TV: The assassination of Martin Luther King Message-ID: > Though the video is long (1hr, 20min) one can safely scroll through the > first 40 or even 55 minutes (giving the political context) to get to the > nitty-gritty. > > Tony > > > >> Today is the birthday of Martin Luther King. >> >> Had he not been murdered, he and his family >> would have celebrated his 80th birthday today. >> >> Who killed him? >> >> A lone nut with a vague grudge? >> >> Yeah, right. >> >> Details: >> >> http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/590.html >> >> - Brasscheck >> >> P.S. Please share Brasscheck TV e-mails and >> videos with friends and colleagues. >> >> That's how we grow. Thanks. >> >> ============================== >> >> >> >> Brasscheck TV >> 2380 California St. >> San Francisco, CA 94115 >> >> To unsubscribe or change subscriber options visit: >> http://www.aweber.com/z/r/?zAxs7OwctMwcLIysjIzMtEa0LKyc7AzsHA== >> >> > From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Sat Apr 4 21:12:04 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Sun, 05 Apr 2009 12:12:04 +0900 Subject: [A-List] The Anti-Empire Report Message-ID: <49D82184.5040405@ashisuto.co.jp> by William Blum www.killinghope.org (April 04 2009) Some thoughts about socialism "History is littered with post-crisis regulations. If there are undue restrictions on the operations of businesses, they may view it to be their job to get around them, and you sow the seeds of the next crisis." -- Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment analyst, CharlesSchwab & Company, a leading US provider of investment services. {1} And so it goes. Corporations, whether financial or not, strive to maximize profit as inevitably as water seeks its own level. We've been trying to "regulate" them since the 19th century. Or is it the 18th? Nothing helps for long. You close one loophole and the slime oozes out of another hole. Wall Street has not only an army of lawyers and accountants, but a horde of mathematicians with advanced degrees searching for the perfect equations to separate people from their money. After all the stimulus money has come and gone, after all the speeches by our leaders condemning greed and swearing to reforms, after the last congressional hearing deploring the corporate executives to their faces, the boys of Wall Street, shrugging off a few bruises, will resume churning out their assortment of financial entities, documents, and packages that go by names like hedge funds, derivatives, collateralized debt obligations, index funds, credit default swaps, structured investment vehicles, subprime mortgages, and many other pieces of paper with exotic names, for which, it must be kept in mind, there had been no public need or strident demand. Speculation, bonuses, and scotch will flow again, and the boys will be all the wiser, perhaps shaken a bit that they're so reviled, but knowing better now what to flaunt and what to disguise. This is another reminder that communism or socialism have almost always been given just one chance to work, if that much, while capitalism has been given numerous chances to do so following its perennial fiascos. Ralph Nader has observed: "Capitalism will never fail because socialism will always be there to bail it out". In the West, one of the most unfortunate results of the Cold War was that seventy years of anti-communist education and media stamped in people's minds a lasting association between socialism and what the Soviet Union called communism. Socialism meant a dictatorship, it meant Stalinist repression, a suffocating "command economy", no freedom of enterprise, no freedom to change jobs, few avenues for personal expression, and other similar truths and untruths. This is a set of beliefs clung to even amongst many Americans opposed to US foreign policy. No matter how bad the economy is, Americans think, the only alternative available is something called "communism", and they know how awful that is. Adding to the purposeful confusion, the conservatives in England, for thirty years following the end of World War Two, filled the minds of the public with the idea that the Labour Party was socialist, and when recession hit (as it does regularly in capitalist countries) the public was then told, and believed, that "socialism had failed". Yet, ever since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, polls taken in Russia have shown a nostalgia for the old system. In the latest example, "Russia Now", a Moscow publication that appears as a supplement in the Washington Post, asked Russians: "What socio-economic system do you favor?" The results were: "State planning and distribution": 58% ... "Based on private property and market relations": 28% ... "Hard to say": 14%. {2} In 1994, Mark Brzezinski (son of Zbigniew) was a Fulbright Scholar teaching in Warsaw. He has written: "I asked my students to define democracy. Expecting a discussion on individual liberties and authentically elected institutions, I was surprised to hear my students respond that to them, democracy means a government obligation to maintain a certain standard of living and to provide health care, education and housing for all. In other words, socialism." {3} Many Americans cannot go along with the notion of a planned, centralized society. To some extent it's the terminology that bothers them because they were raised to equate a planned society with the worst excesses of Stalinism. Okay, let's forget the scary labels; let's describe it as people sitting down to discuss a particular serious societal problem, what the available options there are to solve the problem, and what institutions and forces in the society have the best access, experience, and assets to deliver those options. So, the idea is to prepare these institutions and forces to deal with the problem in a highly organized, rational manner without having to worry about which corporation's profits might be adversely affected, without relying on "the magic of the marketplace". Now it happens that all this is usually called "planning" and if the organization and planning stem from a government body it can be called "centralized". There's no reason to assume that this has to result in some kind of very authoritarian regime. All of us over a certain age - individually and collectively - have learned a lot about such things from the past. We know the warning signs; that's why the Bush administration's authoritarianism was so early and so strongly condemned. The overwhelming majority of people in the United States work for a salary. They don't need to be motivated by the quest for profit. It's not in our genes. Virtually everybody, if given the choice, would prefer to work at jobs where the main motivations are to produce goods and services that improve the quality of life of the society, to help others, and to provide themselves with meaningful and satisfying work. It's not natural to be primarily motivated by trying to win or steal "customers" from other people, no holds barred, survival of the fittest or the most ruthless. A major war can be the supreme test of a nation, a time when it's put under the greatest stress. In World War Two, the US government commandeered the auto manufacturers to make tanks and jeeps instead of private cars. When a pressing need for an atom bomb was seen, Washington did not ask for bids from the private sector; it created the Manhattan Project to do it itself, with no concern for balance sheets or profit and loss statements. Women and blacks were given skilled factory jobs they had been traditionally denied. Hollywood was enlisted to make propaganda films. Indeed, much of the nation's activities, including farming, manufacturing, mining, communications, labor, education, and cultural undertakings were in some fashion brought under new and significant government control, with the war effort coming before private profit. In peacetime, we can think of socialism as putting people before profit, with all the basics guaranteed - health care, all education, decent housing, food, jobs. Those who swear by free enterprise argue that the "socialism" of World War Two was instituted only because of the exigencies of the war. That's true, but it doesn't alter the key point that it had been immediately recognized by the government that the wasteful and inefficient capitalist system, always in need of proper financial care and feeding, was no way to run a country trying to win a war. It's also no way to run a society of human beings with human needs. Most Americans agree with this but are not consciously aware that they hold such a belief. In 1987, nearly half of 1,004 Americans surveyed by the Hearst press believed Karl Marx's aphorism: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" was to be found in the US Constitution. {4} Along these lines, I've written an essay entitled: "The United States invades, bombs, and kills for it, but do Americans really believe in free enterprise?" {5} I cannot describe in detail what every nut and bolt of my socialist system would look like. That might appear rather pretentious on my part; most of it would evolve through trial and error anyway; the important thing is that the foundation - the crucial factors in making the important decisions - would rest on people's welfare and the common good coming before profit. Humankind's desperate need to halt environmental degradation regularly runs smack into the profit motive, as does the American health-care system. It's more than a matter of ideology; it's a matter of the quality of life, sustainability, and survival. "Omission is the most powerful form of lie". -- George Orwell I am asked occasionally why I am so critical of the mainstream media when I quote from them repeatedly in my writings. The answer is simple. The American media's gravest shortcoming is much more their errors of omission than their errors of commission. It's what they leave out that distorts the news more than any factual errors or out-and-out lies. So I can make good use of the facts they report, which a large, rich organization can easier provide than the alternative media. In early March, the Washington Post ran an article about Iran which stated that "Iranian leaders ... reiterated that the Holocaust was 'a lie' ". The article then went on to add that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "repeated his assertion that the Holocaust is a 'big lie' ". {6} That's all we're told. What is the poor reader to conclude but that some Iranian leaders must be amongst that much vilified and ridiculed group called "Holocaust deniers"? What the article fails to mention is that these Iranian leaders use the word "lie" to refer to only particular features of the Holocaust. There is no report of any of them simply, clearly, unambiguously, and unequivocally asserting that what we know as the Holocaust never took place. Ahmadinejad, for example, has instead commented about the peculiarity and injustice of a Holocaust which took place in Europe resulting in a state for the Jews in the Middle East instead of in Europe. Why are the Palestinians paying a price for a German crime? he asks. And he wonders about the accuracy of the number of Jews - six million - allegedly killed in the Holocaust, as have many other people of all political stripes and nationalities, including the noted Italian author Primo Levi, a Holocaust survivor. Even Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian National Authority - Israel and Washington's favorite Palestinian because of his opposition to Hamas, their least favored Palestinians - wrote in his doctoral dissertation: "The truth of the matter is that no one can verify this number, or completely deny it. In other words, the number of Jewish victims might be six million and might be much smaller - even less than one million." {7} It is also worth noting that at the end of the Post article we learn that "a senior Israeli official in Washington, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not cleared to discuss such matters publicly" has asserted that "Iran would be unlikely to use its missiles in an attack [against Israel] because of the certainty of retaliation". Really? That's what I and others have been saying for years. It should have been the story's headline, not the very last sentence, literally. Yet, we can be certain that Israeli and American officials and their disciples will continue to warn the world of the danger of Iranian missile attacks. So will the Washington Post, engaging in future omissions of its own news story. What actually has long worried Israeli and US officials about possible Iranian nuclear weapons is not that Iran might attack anyone, but that Israel's beloved security blanket - being the only nuclear power in the Middle East - would at risk, as might be Washington's dominance of the area. Later in March, the Los Angeles Times ran an obituary of Janet Jagan, the former president of Guyana and widow of Cheddi Jagan who had earlier also been president. The obituary says not a word about the fact that for eleven years, 1953-64, two of the oldest democracies in the world, Great Britain and the United States, went to great lengths in their repeated attempts to prevent the democratically elected Cheddi Jagan from occupying his office. {8} I've selected these examples of omission virtually at random. If I wanted to report on each media omission concerning significant US foreign policy matters I could fill this newsletter each month with nothing else. It happens that in late March the Washington Post also provided us with the less common out-and-out lie. In an editorial about the leftist former guerillas in El Salvador, the FMLN, winning the presidential election with their candidate Mauricio Funes, the Post said: "If Mr Funes as well as the election's losers now respect the rule of law, the result could be the consolidation of the political system the United States was aiming for when it intervened in El Salvador's civil war during the 1980s. At the time, the goal of a successful Salvadoran democracy was dismissed as a mission impossible, just as some now say democracy is unattainable in Iraq and Afghanistan." {9} The idea that the US intervention in the Salvadoran civil war stemmed from a desire to bring democracy to the country is so breathtaking in its audacity that it's conceivable the Post editorial writer is suffering from early-stage Alzheimer's; it's wholly comparable to saying that the Apartheid regime of South Africa strove to increase harmony and equality between blacks and whites. In the process of supporting a Salvadoran government of remarkable tyranny, brutality and human-rights violations, the United States provided the country's armed forces with a never-ending supply of funds, weapons and training that brought continual destruction and suffering to the people of El Salvador. The Post's "disclosure" will not send historians scurrying to rewrite their books. Nor can it serve to conceal the fact that the United States is not fighting for "democracy" in Iraq and Afghanistan any more than it did in El Salvador. The ideology of Barack Obama In the past two months: * US Vice President Joe Biden was asked by reporters at a summit in Chile if Washington plans to put an end to the near-fifty-year-old economic embargo against Cuba. He replied "No". {10} * Israeli authorities broke up a series of Palestinian cultural events in Jerusalem, disrupting a children's march and bursting balloons at a schoolyard celebration. {11} There has not been, nor will there be, any embargo of any kind by the United States against Israel. Nor will President Obama make any comment about what he really feels about invading a children's party and bursting their balloons. * The White House and the Pentagon appear to be having a competition over who can announce the most troops being sent to Afghanistan. Is anyone keeping a body count? * US drones continue to drop bombs on people's homes and wedding parties in Pakistan. No one in Washington publicly admits to this or comments in any way about the legality or morality of it all. * Bolivia and Ecuador have expelled American diplomats for what their hosts saw as conspiring to undermine the government. Any number of other examples can be given of how alike the foreign policies of the Bush and Obama administrations are, how little, if any, change has occurred; certainly nothing of any significance. Yet, my saying such a thing is precisely what most often bothers Obama supporters who read or hear my comments. They're in love with the man with the toothpaste-advertisement smile, who's "smart" (whatever that means), who plays basketball, and is not George W Bush, and his wife who puts her arm around the queen of England. Obama's popularity around the world is enhanced, to an important extent, by the fact that he has endeavored to conceal or obscure his real ideology. As an example, in early March, in an interview with the New York Times, he was asked: "Is there a one word name for your philosophy? If you're not a socialist, are you a liberal? Are you progressive? One word?" "No, I'm not going to engage in that", replied the president. {12} The next day he called the Times reporter, telling him: "It was hard for me to believe that you were entirely serious about that socialist question". Obama then gave the reporter several examples of why his policies show that he isn't a socialist. {13} He didn't have to convince me. Obama's centrist bent is clear to anyone who bothers to look. But after the Times incident - which apparently bothered him - he may have felt the need to be more clear about his ideological leanings to avoid any further silly "socialist" episodes. The next day, meeting at the White House with members of the New Democrat Coalition, a group of centrist Democratic members of the House, Obama said at one point: "I am a New Democrat". {14} Most conservatives will probably continue to see him as a dangerous leftist. They should be happy that Obama is the president and not any kind of real progressive or socialist or even a genuine liberal, but the right wing is greedy. Notes 1. Washington Post, March 29 2009 2. "Russia Now", in Washington Post, March 25 2009 3. Los Angeles Times, September 02 1994 4. Frank Bernack, Jr, Hearst Corp. President, address to the American Bar Association, early 1987, reported in In These Times magazine (Chicago), June 24 - July 7 1987 5. William Blum, "Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower", chapter 26 6. Washington Post, March 05 2009 7. The Middle East Media Research Institute, "Inquiry and Analysis", No 95, May 30 2002; also see Wikipedia, entry for Mahmoud Abbas, "Doctoral Dissertation" section. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Abbas#Doctoral_dissertation 8. Los Angeles Times, March 29 2009. See William Blum, "Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War Two", chapter 16 for what was left out. 9. Washington Post, March 21 2009 10. Miami Herald, March 28 2009 11. Washington Post, March 22 2009 12. New York Times, March 07 2009 13. New York Times, March 08 2009 14. Politico magazine, online, March 10 2009 http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/19862.html 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://www.killinghope.org/bblum6/aer67.html http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From tal1 at cogeco.ca Sun Apr 5 18:54:18 2009 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 20:54:18 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Report: One Million Pakistanis Have Fled US Missile Attacks Message-ID: <7508CA2CFAA44890AE6E972D9E36A118@TonyPC> ----- Original Message ----- From: Rick Rozoff To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Sent: Sunday, April 05, 2009 9:44 AM Subject: [stopnato] Report: One Million Pakistanis Have Fled US Missile Attacks http://www.focus-fen.net/?id=n176648 Focus News Agency April 5, 2009 Thousands flee bomb attacks by US drones Data Khel - American drone attacks on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan are causing a massive humanitarian emergency, Pakistani officials claimed after a new attack yesterday killed 13 people, according to the Times. The dead and injured included foreign militants, but women and children were also killed when two missiles hit a house in the village of Data Khel, near the Afghan border, according to local officials. As many as 1 million people have fled their homes in the Tribal Areas to escape attacks by the unmanned spy planes as well as bombings by the Pakistani army. In Bajaur agency entire villages have been flattened by Pakistani troops under growing American pressure to act against Al-Qaeda militants, who have made the area their base. Kacha Garhi is one of 11 tented camps across Pakistan?s frontier province once used by Afghan refugees and now inhabited by hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis made homeless in their own land. So far 546,000 have registered as internally displaced people (IDPs) according to figures provided by Rabia Ali, spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and Maqbool Shah Roghani, administrator for IDPs at the Commission for Afghan Refugees. The commissioner?s office says there are thousands more unregistered people who have taken refuge with relatives and friends or who are in rented accommodation. Jamil Amjad, the commissioner in charge of the refugees, says the government is running short of resources to feed and shelter such large numbers. A fortnight ago two refugees were killed and six injured in clashes with police during protests over shortages of water, food and tents. On the road outside Kacha Garhi camp, eight-year-old Zafarullah and his little brother are among a number of children begging for coins and scraps. ?I want to go back to my village and school,? he said. With the attacks increasing, refugees have little hope of returning home and conditions in the camps will worsen as summer approaches and the temperatures soar. Many have terrible stories. Baksha Zeb lost everything when his village, Anayat Kalay in Bajaur, was demolished by Pakistani forces. His eight-year-old son is a kidney patient needing dialysis and he has been left with no means to pay. ?Our houses have been flattened, our cattle killed and our farms and crops destroyed,? he complained. ?There is not a single structure in my village still standing. There is no way we can go back.? He sold his taxi to pay for food for his family and treatment for his son but the money has almost run out. ?God bestowed me with a son after 15 years of marriage,? he said. ?Now I have no job and I don?t know how we will survive.? Pakistani forces say they have killed 1,500 militants since launching anti-Taliban operations in Bajaur in August. Locals who fled claim that only civilians were killed. Zeb said he saw dozens of his friends and relatives killed. Villagers were forced to leave bodies unburied as they fled. Pakistani officials say drone attacks have been stepped up since President Barack Obama took office in Washington, killing at least 81 people.... =========================== Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato To subscribe, send an e-mail to: stopnato-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Daily digest option available. Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages ============================== __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Database | Polls 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 Give Back Yahoo! for Good Get inspired by a good cause. Y! Toolbar Get it Free! easy 1-click access to your groups. Yahoo! Groups Start a group in 3 easy steps. Connect with others.. __,_._,___ From tal1 at cogeco.ca Sun Apr 5 18:55:22 2009 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 20:55:22 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Missile Shield And Satellites Good And Bad Message-ID: <1526CA009A0C419E90EE89F03EAA49A3@TonyPC> ----- Original Message ----- From: Rick Rozoff To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Sent: Sunday, April 05, 2009 9:40 AM Subject: [stopnato] Missile Shield And Satellites Good And Bad 1) US President Demands "Resolute International Response" To North Korean Launch 2) Itar-Tass: North Korea Launches Communication Satellite 3) Pentagon Launches New-Generation Military Communication Satellite 1) http://www.focus-fen.net/?id=n176698 Focus News Agency April 5, 2009 N Korea violated rules and its actions enjoin international response Prague - US President Barak Obama said in a statement in Prague whole world must response to N Korea actions in reference to rocket launch and to stop spread of nuclear weapons, RIA Novisti informs. ?It is time for resolute international response. N Korea violated the rules. The world must give resolute response so that N Korea will keep these rules and will not threat with nuclear weapons any more,? Obama said. In his words ?all countries have to establish strong global regime? so that this can happen and to ?insist N Korea to change its course. ---------------------------------------------------------- 2) http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=13758792&PageNum=0 Itar-Tass April 5, 2009 North Korea puts into orbit communication satellite PYONGYANG - The North Korean mass media reported a successful launch of an experimental communications ?Unha-2? satellite. The Kwangmyongsong-2 satellite was put into orbit at 11. 29 local time (6.29 Moscow time), says here a report, circulated by the KCNA news agency. ---------------------------------------------------------- 3) http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123142879 Air Force Link American Forces Press Service April 4, 2009 Military communications satellite successfully launched CAPE CANAVERAL AIR FORCE STATION, Fla. - An Air Force team successfully launched a new-generation military communication satellite from here April 3 at 8:31 p.m. (EDT) when an Atlas V rocket carried a Wideband Global Satellite Communication satellite into space. These satellites are designed to provide high-capacity communications to U.S. military forces. It will augment and eventually replace the Defense Satellite Communication System. The satellite provides a giant leap in communications bandwidth and technology. "We're helping to give the most versatile and sophisticated technology to our warfighters," said Brig. Gen. Edward L. Bolton Jr., 45th Space Wing commander. "Congratulations to the entire team for their hard work and dedication to the mission." "We only have one chance to get it right," said Capt. Jeffrey Fisher, Wideband Global SATCOM-2 mission lead. "In this profession you have to be meticulous to detail and patient to ensure mission success." The Atlas V family of Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicles has achieved 100 percent mission success in launches from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. This mission marked the 14th flight of an Atlas V rocket from here and the third launch this year from Cape Canaveral AFS. =========================== Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato To subscribe, send an e-mail to: stopnato-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Daily digest option available. Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages ============================== __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Database | Polls MARKETPLACE From bogus@does.not.exist.com Thu Apr 2 09:08:15 2009 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Thu, 02 Apr 2009 15:08:15 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required) Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch forma= t=20 to Traditional Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe Recent Activi= ty 1New Members Visit Your Group Yahoo! Groups Weight Management Challenge Join others who are losing pounds. Yahoo! Groups Auto Enthusiast Zone Auto Enthusiast Zone Car groups and more! Find helpful tips for Moderators on the Yahoo! Groups team blog.. __,_._,___=20 From tal1 at cogeco.ca Sun Apr 5 19:00:37 2009 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 21:00:37 -0400 Subject: [A-List] NATO's Afgahn War: From 10, 000 To 115, 000 Troops In 6 Years Message-ID: ----- Original Message ----- From: Rick Rozoff To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Sent: Saturday, April 04, 2009 7:05 PM Subject: [stopnato] NATO's Afgahn War: From 10,000 To 115,000 Troops In 6 Years http://www.inthenews.co.uk/infocus/features/in-focus/in-numbers-war-in-afghanistan-$1285673.htm [Using the the figures in this report, there are 58,390 troops serving under NATO command and 17,100 US troops with Operation Enduring Freedom. Washington has pledged an additional 30,000 troops this year, then added another 4,000 trainers. Today it's been announced that other NATO states are to provide 5,000 more troops. Total: 114,490. In 2003 there were 5,000 NATO troops and some 8,000 American, serving both with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force and with Operation Enduring Freedom.] InTheNews April 4, 2009 In numbers: War in Afghanistan More than 1,120 coalition troops have died in Afghanistan since the war began in 2001 The majority of foreign troops in Afghanistan operate under Nato's International Security Assistance Force (Isaf). In 2003, there were 5,000 troops supporting the Isaf mission in Afghanistan. There are now 58,390 covering 650,000 square kilometres of land. These troops come from 42 countries, including all 26 Nato members. Countries with the fewest Isaf troops in Afghanistan include Georgia, with just one soldier [but hundreds now pledged], Austria and Bosnia and Herzegovina with two, and Ireland and Jordan with seven each. The total number of servicemen from all countries killed in Afghanistan is estimated to be 1,123. After the US and the UK, the country that has suffered the most fatalities in the conflict is Canada. Nato forces are working alongside the Afghan National Army, which currently number 82,708. Over 90 per cent of Isaf operations are carried out in conjunction with the Afghan National Army. The United States has the largest number of Isaf troops stationed in Afghanistan at 26,215. Other large contingents include Canada with 2,830 and Italy has 2,350 soldiers serving in the country. United States army The US also has an additional 17,100 troops working under Operation Enduring Freedom in the east of the country, which are not connected with Isaf. American troops are mainly based in east and north eastern Afghanistan. The total number of US forces killed since 2001 is 673. The deadliest year for American troops was 2008 when 155 soldiers killed. British army Coalition forces first deployed to Afghanistan in October 2001; UK forces entered a month later. The Ministry of Defence puts the number of troops currently in Afghanistan at 8,300, from 67 different units. The majority of UK troops are stationed in the south of the country, alongside Canadian and Dutch soldiers. 152 British soldiers have died in Afghanistan so far. 123 died in battle, while 29 died as a result of illness, accidents or injuries not sustained in combat. Sources: Ministry of Defence, Isaf, iCasualties.org =========================== Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato To subscribe, send an e-mail to: stopnato-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Daily digest option available. Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages ============================== __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Database | Polls 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 Give Back Yahoo! for Good Get inspired by a good cause. Y! Toolbar Get it Free! easy 1-click access to your groups. Yahoo! Groups Start a group in 3 easy steps. Connect with others.. __,_._,___ From tal1 at cogeco.ca Sun Apr 5 19:34:39 2009 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 21:34:39 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Analysis: US Plans Cambodia-Kosovo Model For Pakistan Message-ID: <9493EB90C98644EEA4C8C3CE51AEB038@TonyPC> http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/balochistan/why-aren-t-we-acting-now-hs Dawn (Pakistan) March 21, 2009 Why aren?t we acting now? By Arshad Zaman -Even though the contextual background of the US bombing of Kampuchea departs from the situation in Pakistan on many points, what is common to the two is that US troops are bogged down in adjacent Afghanistan, the Americans believe that their ?enemy? is able to find ?sanctuaries? and ?safe havens? in Pakistan, and they have been conducting covert bombing operations in Pakistan for some time, which have progressively intensified. -[T]he closure of the Manas airbase outside Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan in February has been a severe blow to US supply capabilities from the north. A solution to these problems can be found by creating an independent corridor to the Arabian Sea in Balochistan. This corridor, together with the occupation of Afghanistan, would also ensure US access to Central Asian crude oil, the raison d?etre of the so-called war on terror. -The groundwork for this scenario has already been laid by influential US groups in the military and intelligence community: comparing Pakistan to Yugoslavia, predicting civil war and advocating break-up supported by a map in the 2006 US Armed Forces Journal. These proposals would be endorsed by US Vice President Joe Biden, who supports the division of Iraq along ethnic lines. The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), trained and financed by US and British intelligence services (among others), is said to be Washington?s chosen model to be replicated in Balochistan. This article poses two questions: on the day after US/Nato forces invade and occupy some of Balochistan and Waziristan, what will we say we should have done, and why aren?t we doing it now? Is this far-fetched? The facts suggest otherwise. Like the US invasion of Iraq, plans for covert operations and military strikes against Pakistan have not only circulated for long among influential US groups, they are visibly under implementation. Again, like Bush, the Obama presidency has provided the opportunity to implement these plans. Obama has been elected on a Democratic Party platform that holds that ?The greatest threat to the security of the Afghan people ? and the American people ? lies in the tribal regions of Pakistan, where terrorists train, plot attacks and strike into Afghanistan and move back across the border. We cannot tolerate a sanctuary for Al Qaeda.? It defines Pakistan as ?a nuclear-armed nation at the nexus of terror, extremism and instability? and goes on to promise that ?we will lead a global effort to secure all nuclear weapons material at vulnerable sites within four years?. There cannot be a clearer statement of US intentions. Nor are the outlines of likely US actions entirely unknown. The logic of the US action will be provided by Kampuchea [Cambodia]; the tactics of Kosovo on our western borders and Palestine on our eastern borders. Naturally, historical analogies are far from exact, but they do merit study. Even though the contextual background of the US bombing of Kampuchea departs from the situation in Pakistan on many points, what is common to the two is that US troops are bogged down in adjacent Afghanistan, the Americans believe that their ?enemy? is able to find ?sanctuaries? and ?safe havens? in Pakistan, and they have been conducting covert bombing operations in Pakistan for some time, which have progressively intensified. We should not be misled by diplomatic pleasantries. In April 1969, Richard Nixon assured Prince Sihanouk that the US respected ?the sovereignty, neutrality and territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Cambodia.? Over the next 14 months the US dropped 2,750,000 tons of bombs on Kampuchea, more than the total dropped by the Allies in the Second World War. In 1970, Prince Sihanouk was deposed by his pro-American prime minister, Lon Nol. The country?s borders were closed, and the US and the Republic of Vietnam Army (ARVN) launched incursions into Kampuchea to attack the People?s Army of Vietnam and the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (VPA/NLF) bases. The coup against Sihanouk and the US bombing destabilised Kampuchea and increased support for the Khmer Rouge. The parallels to recent developments in Pakistan are obvious. Unlike Vietnam and Kampuchea around 1960, however, the Americans do not intend to withdraw from Afghanistan. Instead, in pursuit of a ?surge? strategy, some 17,000 US troops are expected to arrive in Afghanistan in the coming months; and the US appears to be digging in for a long stay. This creates enormous supply problems to which solutions, significantly, are being put together without dependence on Pakistan. On March 17, 2009, Gen Duncan McNab testified before the armed services committee that the US military is reconsidering the long-term viability of the Khyber Pass supply route, through which 140 containers pass every day. Earlier this month therefore the US inaugurated the Northern Distribution Network (NDN) a rail-truck transit corridor passing through Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, with a capacity of 100 containers of non-lethal supplies per day. To consolidate the NDN, officials from US, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey met in Baku on March 9-10, 2009 to establish a supply spur in the Caucasus. Even so, the closure of the Manas airbase outside Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan in February has been a severe blow to US supply capabilities from the north. A solution to these problems can be found by creating an independent corridor to the Arabian Sea in Balochistan. This corridor, together with the occupation of Afghanistan, would also ensure US access to Central Asian crude oil, the raison d?etre of the so-called war on terror. The groundwork for this scenario has already been laid by influential US groups in the military and intelligence community: comparing Pakistan to Yugoslavia, predicting civil war and advocating break-up supported by a map in the 2006 US Armed Forces Journal. These proposals would be endorsed by US Vice President Joe Biden, who supports the division of Iraq along ethnic lines. The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), trained and financed by US and British intelligence services (among others), is said to be Washington?s chosen model to be replicated in Balochistan. On the eastern front the Indians have been pressing the Americans to accept their right to unilateral military strikes inside Pakistan in self-defence, as they accept Israel?s rights in Palestinian territories; and as the Americans have claimed for themselves throughout the world. For well over a decade now, Israel has been teaching the Indians what they have learned in their repression of the Palestinians. In the wake of the Mumbai incident, Indian planes crossed over into Pakistani air space. According to press reports, US Admiral Mullen sought formal approval for Indians to execute ?surgical strikes? inside Pakistan, like the US does, but Pakistan refused. Clearly, this is not the last we have heard of this and India will continue to pursue its policy of keeping Pakistan under the maximal sustainable military, diplomatic and economic pressure. To conclude, then, there are good reasons to believe that a US-Israel-India axis is in pursuit of a coordinated plan to balkanise militarily consequential Muslim states (next Pakistan, then Iran ? the order reversed by Musharraf?s weak military policies); ?secure? Pakistan?s nuclear weapons; support Baloch irredentism not only to open a corridor both for logistic support of its troops in Afghanistan and for export of Central Asian crude oil, but also to weaken Iran and Pakistan in the long-term; coerce the Pakistan Army into a civil war (advocating suppression of the Taliban by force in Pakistan, while admitting the failure of exactly this policy in Afghanistan); and further consolidate its hold over civilian leadership by creating the kind of financial dependency that would allow it to control ?democratic? elections, and to annul their results if they were unfavourable (as Israel did with Hamas). Reportedly, Obama is expected to consider and approve options soon, and increased US military activity should take place once the snow melts. One hopes that a small group of patriotic officers in Pakistan are also asking themselves what can be done, and why aren?t we doing it now. =========================== Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato To subscribe, send an e-mail to: stopnato-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Daily digest option available. Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages ============================== __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Database | Polls MARKETPLACE From bogus@does.not.exist.com Thu Apr 2 09:08:15 2009 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Thu, 02 Apr 2009 15:08:15 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required) Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch forma= t=20 to Traditional Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe Recent Activi= ty 1New Members Visit Your Group Group Charity Citizen Schools Best after school program in the US Check out the Y! Groups blog Stay up to speed on all things Groups! Yahoo! Groups Auto Enthusiast Zone Discover Car Groups Auto Enthusiast Zone. __,_._,___=20 From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Sun Apr 5 20:15:12 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Mon, 06 Apr 2009 11:15:12 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Change You Can Parse Message-ID: <49D965B0.2080900@ashisuto.co.jp> Obama Abandons Bush's Talk, Keeps His Walk by Ted Rall rall.com (March 19 2009) You can't blame Dick Cheney for being annoyed at Barack Obama. Obama is closing Guantanamo. He's ordering the CIA to interrogate prisoners according to the rules written in the Army Field Manual, which doesn't allow torture. He's even phasing out such classic Bushian phrases as "enemy combatant" and "war on terror". But the dark prince of neoconservatism should relax. Obama's inaugural address may have promised to "reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals", but - in all the ways that matter - he's keeping all of Bush's outrageous policies in place. Sure, he talks a good game about "moving forward". But nothing has really changed. From reading your e-mails to asserting the right to assassinate American citizens to bailing out companies whose executives pay themselves big bonuses, Obama's changes are nothing but toothless rhetoric. Closing Gitmo, reported The New York Times, was merely "a move that seemed intended to symbolically separate the new administration from Bush detention policies. But in a much anticipated court filing, the Justice Department argued that the president has the authority to detain terrorism suspects there without criminal charges, much as the Bush administration had asserted. It provided a broad definition of those who can be held, which was not significantly different from the one used by the Bush administration." What will happen to the 241 POWs still at Gitmo? They won't be called "enemy combatants" anymore but most won't be going home. "The filing signaled that, as long as Guantanamo remains open, the new Administration will aggressively defend its ability to hold some detainees there", wrote the Times. Where will they go after that? Welcome to Gitmo II - courtesy of Barack Obama. Countless victims have been tortured by US military personnel at Bagram, the US airbase in Afghanistan where Bush imprisoned 600 people without charges. Some were murdered in the camp's notorious "salt pit". "Even children have not been spared", says Amnesty International. Now Bagram is being expanded - nearly doubled in size - in order to accommodate 200-plus detainees from Gitmo, as well as future POWs from Obama's expanded war against Afghanistan. As bad as Guantanamo was, conditions at Bagram are worse. Unless you believe indefinite detention without due process to be torture, Obama says his detainees won't be tortured. Mostly. Probably. Maybe. The Washington Post quotes an Administration insider as saying that the CIA will enjoy "more leeway" than the Army Field Manual allows, in order to "take into account the differences between battlefield interrogations and those aimed at eliciting intelligence about terrorist groups and their plans". Extraordinary renditions, the Times reports in a different article, will continue under Obama. "In little-noticed confirmation testimony recently", says the paper, "Obama nominees endorsed continuing the CIA's program of transferring prisoners to other countries without legal rights, and indefinitely detaining terrorism suspects without trials even if they were arrested far from a war zone". During the 2008 campaign Obama's critics accused him of saying nothing, albeit beautifully. Now that we've gotten to know him a bit, it's time to refine that assessment: He's just a weasel. An eloquent weasel. But a weasel who says the right things while doing the opposite. On March 9th Obama ordered federal agencies to suspend Bush's infamous "signing statements", sneaky documents issued after the signing of a bill that ordered government agencies not to enforce the very same bill he'd just approved in front of the cameras. Signing statements, says the American Bar Association, use one-man dictatorial rule to negate the people's will as expressed by Congress and are thus "contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional separation of powers". "Yet two days later - literally - Obama signed a $410 billion spending bill and appended to it a signing statement claiming that he had the Constitutional authority to ignore several of its oversight provisions", writes Glenn Greenwald of Slate. Greenwald regrets having to quote the vile Rich Lowry of the right-wing National Review magazine. So do I. But even the right is right sometimes: Unlike the word count limit of this column, Obama's perfidy knows no limits. He's already become more dangerous to democracy and basic human rights than George W Bush. Unlike Bush, he has no political opposition. Cheney may nitpick, but most Republicans are happy to see Bush's policies remain in place. Meanwhile, liberals remain loyal, silent, and tacitly pro-torture. Copyright 2009 Ted Rall http://www.uexpress.com/tedrall/?uc_full_date=20090319 http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From critical.montages at gmail.com Sun Apr 5 20:38:28 2009 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 22:38:28 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Why Neoliberalism Is Alive and Kicking Message-ID: Neoliberalism is alive and kicking -- kicking the asses of American workers, _hard_. And it's no wonder. Read the kick-me sign slapped on the backs of all US workers: Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers, said there were smarter things to do than demonstrating against layoffs -- for instance, pushing Congress and the states to make sure the stimulus plan creates the maximum number of jobs in the United States. "I actually believe that Americans believe in their political system more than workers do in other parts of the world," Mr. Gerard said. He said large labor demonstrations are often warranted in Canada and European countries to pressure parliamentary leaders. Demonstrations are less needed in the United States, he said, because often all that is needed is some expert lobbying in Washington to line up the support of a half-dozen senators. (Steven Greenhouse, "In America, Labor Has an Unusually Long Fuse," http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/05/weekinreview/05greenhouse.html New York Times, 5 April 2009) From noreply at coha.org Mon Apr 6 12:01:16 2009 From: noreply at coha.org (Council on Hemispheric Affairs) Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2009 14:01:16 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Canada and the Mexican War on Drugs; Tomorrow's Analysis from COHA Message-ID: <20090406180016.1E6A83E43B6@mx-out2.daemonmail.net> A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 4345 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090406/135514cc/attachment.txt From suzannedk at gmail.com Mon Apr 6 13:08:21 2009 From: suzannedk at gmail.com (suzannedk at gmail.com) Date: 6 Apr 2009 15:08:21 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Economist: US collapse driven by 'fraud'; Geithner covering up bank insolvency Message-ID: <20090406190821.26534.qmail@ltf1553.tam.us.siteprotect.com> In an explosive interview on PBS' Bill Moyers Journal, William K. Black, a professor of economics and law with the University of Missouri, alleged that American banks and credit agencies conspired to create a system in which so-called "liars loans" could receive AAA ratings and zero oversight, amounting to a massive "fraud" at the epicenter of US finance. But worse still, said Black, Timothy Geithner, President Barack Obama's Secretary of the Treasury, is currently engaged in a cover-up to keep the truth of America's financial insolvency from its citizens. The interview, which aired Friday night, is carried .. http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Economist_US_collapse_driven_by_fraud_0404.html Hey, I just saw this article over at RawStory.com I thought you might like. Check it out! From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Mon Apr 6 17:46:37 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Tue, 07 Apr 2009 08:46:37 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Harvard's masters of the apocalypse Message-ID: <49DA945D.9010605@ashisuto.co.jp> If his fellow Harvard MBAs are all so clever, how come so many are now in disgrace? by Philip Delves Broughton The Sunday Times (March 01 2009) If Robespierre were to ascend from hell and seek out today's guillotine fodder, he might start with a list of those with three incriminating initials beside their names: MBA. The Masters of Business Administration, that swollen class of jargon-spewing, value-destroying financiers and consultants have done more than any other group of people to create the economic misery we find ourselves in. >From Royal Bank of Scotland to Merrill Lynch, from HBOS to Lehman Brothers, the Masters of Disaster have their fingerprints on every recent financial fiasco. I write as the holder of an MBA from Harvard Business School - once regarded as a golden ticket to riches, but these days more like scarlet letters of shame. We MBAs are haunted by the thought that the tag really stands for Mediocre But Arrogant, Mighty Big Attitude, Me Before Anyone and Management By Accident. For today's purposes, perhaps it should be Masters of the Business Apocalypse. Harvard Business School alumni include Stan O'Neal and John Thain, the last two heads of Merrill Lynch, plus Andy Hornby, former chief executive of HBOS, who graduated top of his class. And then of course, there's George W Bush, Hank Paulson, the former US Treasury secretary, and Christopher Cox, the former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), a remarkable trinity who more than fulfilled the mission of their alma mater: "To educate leaders who make a difference in the world". It just wasn't the difference the school had hoped for. Business schools have shown a remarkable ability to miss the economic catastrophes unfolding before their eyes. In the late 1990s, their faculties rushed to write paeans to Enron, the firm of the future, the new economic paradigm. The admiration was mutual: Enron was stuffed with Harvard Business School alumni, from Jeff Skilling, the chief executive, down. When Enron, rotten to the core, collapsed, the old case studies were thrust in a closet and removed from the syllabus, and new ones were promptly written about the ethical and accounting issues posed by Enron's misadventures. Much the same appears to have happened with Royal Bank of Scotland. When I was a student at Harvard Business School, between 2004 and 2006, I recall a distinguished professor of organisational behaviour, Joel Podolny, telling us proudly of his work with Fred Goodwin at RBS. At the time, RBS looked like a corporate supermodel and Podolny was keen to trumpet his role in its transformation. A Harvard Business School case study of the firm entitled The Royal Bank of Scotland: Masters of Integration, written in 2003, began with a quote from the man we now know as Fred the Shred or the World's Worst Banker: "Hard work, focus, discipline and concentrating on what our customers need. It's quite a simple formula really, but we've just been very, very consistent with it." The authors of the case, two Harvard Business School professors, described the "new architecture" formed by RBS after its acquisition of NatWest, the clusters of customer-facing units, the successful "buy-in" by employees. Goodwin came across as a management master, saying: "A leader's job is to create the conditions that enable people to believe, in their hearts and minds, in the value of what they are doing". Then just last December, Harvard Business School revised and republished another homage to RBS - The Royal Bank of Scotland Group: The Human Capital Strategy. It is tragic to read now of all the effort put in by those under Goodwin, from "pulse surveys" to track employee performance to "the big thank you", a website where managers could recognise individual excellence in customer service. Every trendy business school idea was being implemented, it seemed, while what really mattered - the bank's risk assessment, cash flow and capital structure - was going to hell. To be fair, neither Podolny nor the authors of the case studies were finance professors, but it's still pretty shocking that a school that purports to teach general management should fail to see the gaping problems at a firm they studied in such depth. Is there a pattern here? Go back to the 1980s, and you find that Harvard MBAs played a big enough role in the insider trading scandals that washed through Wall Street for a former chairman of the SEC to consider it a good move to donate millions of dollars for the teaching of ethics at the school. Time after time, and scandal after scandal, it seems that a school that graduates just 900 students a year finds itself in the thick of it. Yet there is remarkably little contrition. Last October, Harvard Business School celebrated its 100th birthday with a global summit in Boston. While Wall Street and Washington descended into an economic inferno, Jay Light, the dean of the school and a board member at the Blackstone private equity group, opened the festivities by shrugging off any responsibility. "We all failed to understand how much [the financial system] had changed in the past fifteen years or so, and how fragile it might be because of increased leverage, decreased transparency and decreased liquidity: three of the crucial things in the world of financial markets", he said. "We all failed to understand how that fragility could evidence itself in a frozen short-term credit system, something that hadn't really happened since 1907. We also probably overestimated the ability of the political process to deal with the realities of what could happen if real trouble developed. "What we have witnessed is a stunning and sobering failure of financial safeguards, of financial markets, of financial institutions and mostly of leadership at many levels. We will leave the talk of fixing the blame to others. That is not very interesting. But we must be involved in fact in fixing the problem." You would think after failing on so many levels, the school that provides more business leaders than any other might feel some remorse. Not in the least. It's onwards and upwards, with the very people who blew apart the world's financial plumbing now demanding to fix the leak. You can draw up a list of the greatest entrepreneurs of recent history, from Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google and Bill Gates of Microsoft, to Michael Dell, Richard Branson, Lakshmi Mittal - and there's not an MBA between them. Yet the MBA industry continues to grow, and business schools provide vital income to academic institutions: 500,000 people around the world now graduate each year with an MBA, 150,000 of those in the United States, creating their own management class within global business. Given the present chaos, shouldn't we be asking if business education is not just a waste of time, but actually damaging to our economic health? If doctors or lawyers wreaked such havoc in their own professions, we would certainly reconsider what is being taught at medical and law schools. During my time at the school, fifty students were chosen to participate in a detailed survey of their development. Scott Snook, the professor who ran it, reported that about a third of students were inclined to define right and wrong simply in terms of what everyone else was doing. "They can't really step back and take a critical view", he said. "They're totally defined by others and by the outcomes of what they're doing". A group of people unable to see their actions in the broader context of the society they inhabit have no business being self-regulating. Yet in the financial services industry this is pretty much what they demanded and to a large extent got - with catastrophic consequences. The happiest in my cohort, which graduated into the rosy economic conditions of 2006, are now certainly those who went off to do the unfashionable jobs: a friend who spurned Wall Street to join a Mid-western industrial firm, and now finds himself running the agricultural division of an Indian conglomerate; one who joined a foundation promoting entrepreneurship; one who went into Boston city government, another who moved to Russia to run a cinema chain. However, these were the rarities: 42% of my class went into financial services and another 21% into consulting, both wretched sectors to be in today and for the foreseeable future. Applications to business schools in America and Europe are broadly up, as people search for a safe haven from the recession. What are they thinking? Many MBA jobs will not be coming back. Students who stump up more than GBP 60,000 for a two-year MBA can expect a long wait to make that back. For those about to graduate from business school, these are grim times. Financial and consulting firms, which used to soak up two-thirds of the MBAs from top schools, have all but vanished from campuses. Suddenly jobs in government and at nonprofit organisations are in hot demand from students who used to consider them laughably underpaid. A dose of modesty among MBAs and business schools is long overdue. But it's not going to come from Harvard. Light, told his audience in October: "The need for leadership in the world today is at least as great as it has ever been. The need for what we do is at least as great as it has ever been." A bold claim to which many might say: please, spare us. _____ Philip Delves Broughton is the author of What They Teach You at Harvard Business School (2005), published by Viking at GBP 12.99. Copies can be ordered for GBP 11.69, including postage, from The Sunday Times BooksFirst on 0845 271 2135 Copyright 2009 Times Newspapers Ltd. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/education/article5821706.ece http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From critical.montages at gmail.com Mon Apr 6 22:25:48 2009 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 00:25:48 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Lean Times for the Anti-War Movement Message-ID: A lot of left-of-center US activists and organizations backed Obama explicitly or implicitly. The result is that they have put themselves out of business, empowering their class enemy rather than building up their own bases. -- Yoshie CQ WEEKLY ? VANTAGE POINT March 28, 2009 ? 1:31 p.m. Lean Times for the Anti-War Movement By Shawn Zeller, CQ Staff In the months leading up to the war in Iraq and over the course of the bloody insurgency that followed the 2003 invasion, no anti-war group was bigger than United for Peace and Justice. Although it never boasted a huge staff or budget ? topping out at nine paid employees and $450,000 in annual revenue from foundations and individuals ? United for Peace played a crucial role in coordinating hundreds of demonstrations, including a 2003 global day of protest that featured a rally at U.N. headquarters in New York that the group says drew more than 500,000 participants. But with an anti-war president now in office and the economy in tatters, the organization is tiptoeing on the edge of bankruptcy. This winter, United for Peace sent out desperate appeals informing donors that it was in danger of closing its doors if it could not raise new revenue. The response was good, providing some stability through the spring, says longtime national coordinator Leslie Cagan. Even so, the group issued another appeal this month, saying it is ?not yet out of the difficult financial straits.? Nor is it alone. The anti-war protest movement in general seems to be suffering financially for its political success. The Act Now to Stop War and End Racism Coalition, another umbrella group, has recently faced money problems as well, while struggling to keep its members motivated. This month?s Washington rally by the group, known as Answer, drew only about 3,000 protestors to the steps of the pentagon, according to police. ?You certainly see that the promises the Obama campaign made have had some impact on the anti-war movement,? says Answer?s national staff coordinator, Sarah Sloan. Additionally, the coalition has been distracted lately by a long-running fight with the District of Columbia over whether it put up posters illegally. The city wants Answer to pay more than $60,000 in fines; Sloan says the coalition has abided by local regulations and has no intention of paying. The colorful activist group Code Pink says it has maintained its fundraising of $350,000 per year and has done it, according to national media coordinator Jean Stevens, by shifting its focus away from the Iraq War to the AIG bonus scandal, Afghanistan and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. ?We?re seeing a sense that, ?OK, that?s over,?? she says of grass-roots activists? feelings about Iraq. ?The general sense within the country is it?s an old issue.? In recent strategy sessions, Stevens says, the group?s leaders have thought about ways to fire up grass-roots activists by linking the current financial imbroglio with the war. Stevens says Code Pink is now making the case that, absent the Iraq War, more attention might have been focused on financial regulation and more money spent on pressing domestic issues. But Stevens concedes that some people find that a bit of a leap. ?To motivate people that this is money worth spending, they want to feel they are going to see some immediate return, and that?s tough,? she says. Cagan, meanwhile, says fundraising at United for Peace has fallen by as much as 50 percent. ?It?s been a really dramatic decline,? she says, and it?s because President Obama is in office. ?Some people believe that with the new administration and the changes in Washington, the work of the anti-war movement is not as important as some of the other issues of the day,? Cagan says. One result is that Cagan has had to reduce her staff by two-thirds: Only three people now work in the group?s New York office. And in early April, that number will fall to two when Cagan, 61, steps down after leading the group since its founding. No replacement has been hired. An advertisement for the post on the group?s Web site indicates United for Peace expects to maintain a budget of $250,000 going forward, a 44 percent decline from its peak. All this comes at a time, Cagan says, when anti-war activism is still important. She, like many activists, is not happy with the time frame Obama has laid out for a full withdrawal from Iraq ? he?s pledged to remove all troops by the end of 2011 ? or with Obama?s plan to increase the U.S. presence in Afghanistan. But many of United for Peace?s past donors, stretched by the financial crisis, are not so passionate. ?It?s enough for many of them,? says Cagan, ?that Obama has a plan to end the war and that things are moving in the right direction.? From glparramatta at greenleft.org.au Mon Apr 6 18:46:43 2009 From: glparramatta at greenleft.org.au (glparramatta) Date: Tue, 07 Apr 2009 10:46:43 +1000 Subject: [A-List] What's new at Links: economic crisis; G20; Nepal; World at a Crossroads; Sudan & ICC; apartheid Israel; El Salvador; photo essay; EU election Message-ID: <49DAA273.4020002@greenleft.org.au> What's new at Links: economic crisis; G20; Nepal; World at a Crossroads; Sudan & ICC; apartheid Israel; El Salvador; photo essay; EU election * * * 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/. You can now follow Links on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LinksSocialism * * * Atilio Bor?n: From infinite war to infinite crisis By Atilio Bor?n[*], translated by Machetera, Scott Campbell, Christine Lewis Carroll and Manuel Talens March 25, 2009 -- Some thoughts on the current capitalist crisis, its probable "solutions" and the role that a socialist option might play in the present juncture. * Read more Eric Toussaint on G20: `Putting a fresh coat of paint on a world that is collapsing'; police attack protesters By Eric Toussaint and Damien Millet, translated by Christine Pagnoulle in collaboration with Elisabeth Anne April 1, 2009 -- The G20 summit meeting in London from April 1 onward was loudly announced and publicised. Those 20 industrialised and emergent countries (G20) are meeting to find solutions to the economic crisis. But long before the end of the summit, it is clear that they will not rise to the challenge. * Read more Sydney, April 10-12, 2009: `World at a Crossroads' 21st century socialism conference day-by-day agenda World at a Crossroads: Fighting for socialism in the 21st Century Easter 2009, April 10-12, Sydney Venue: Sydney Girls High School World At A Crossroads is a conference that brings together hundreds of socialists, progressive activists and Marxist thinkers from around Australia, Latin America, Asia-Pacific and North America in dozens of panel presentations and workshops dealing with the urgent questions that confront us all: war, imperialism, food security, racism, workers' rights, sexism, the media and culture. * Get day-by-day agenda and more info here Nepal: `We call on progressive and leftist forces of the world to support us' Kathmandu -- On April 2, 2009, Ben Peterson -- a socialist activist visiting from Australia -- had the opportunity to interview Suresh Kumar Ale Magar, who is an elected member of Nepal's Constituent Assembly and a militant of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). * * * ``We see the policies and the struggle of the people in Venezuela, Bolivia and the Latin American countries against imperialism, particularly against US imperialism... I strongly believe that in the future that there could be an international anti-imperialist organisation, of which those countries would be a major part.'' * Read more Review: John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff's `The Great Financial Crisis' The Great Financial Crisis By John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff New York, Monthly Review Press, 2009 ISBN: 978-1-58367-184-9 paper Review by Patrick Bond * Read more Sudan: ICC indictment of Omar al-Bashir -- justice or a poisoned chalice? By Steven Fake and Kevin Funk March 21, 2009 -- After an hour and a half of walking under the intense Sudanese sun, armed with crude maps printed from the internet, we paused before a field of rubble in an industrial area of North Khartoum. Two teenagers sat on the porch in front of the still-partially standing building, conversing and watching the world go by in this gritty, dusty area of the Sudanese capital. "Al-Shifa?", we mustered as a question, the name of the massive pharmaceutical plant that stood on this site until just over a decade ago. They nodded. "Bill Clinton", we responded, pointing to the ruins of the facility that his administration bombed in 1998. The two boys chuckled. Just over a decade after the US bombing of al-Shifa, on March 4 of this year, a different leader -- Sudanese head of state Omar al-Bashir -- was indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes and crimes against humanity. * Read more Nepal's Blue Diamond Society: Hopes high for LGBTI rights March 17, 2009 -- Kathmandu -- Ben Peterson interviewed Subash Pokharel, coordinator of Nepal's Blue Diamond Society. The Blue Diamond Society is the largest LGBTI (lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender and intergender people) rights organisation in Nepal. * Read more Salim Vally: The campaign to isolate apartheid Israel -- lessons from South Africa By Salim Vally [Salim Vally, a leading member of the Palestine Solidarity Committee in South Africa and a veteran anti-apartheid activist, will be a featured guest at the World at a Crossroads conference, to be held in Sydney, Australia, on April 10-12, 2009, organised by the Democratic Socialist Perspective, Resistance and Green Left Weekly. Visit http://www.worldATACrossroads.org for full agenda and to book your tickets.] * Read more David Harvey: Their crisis, our challenge In a far reaching interview with Red Pepper, David Harvey argues that the current financial crisis and bank bail-outs could lead to a massive consolidation of the banking system and a return to capitalist ``business as usual'' -- unless there is sustained revolt and pressure for a dramatic redistribution and socialisation of wealth. David Harvey was interviewed by Marco Berlinguer and Hilary Wainwright. * Read more El Salvador's FMLN: The road to victory and beyond By the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador March 24, 2009 -- Starting at 7am on Sunday, March 15, Salvadorans headed en masse to the polls to cast their ballots for the future president; by 9:30pm Mauricio Funes, presidential candidate of the Farabundo Mart? National Liberation Front (FMLN), pronounced himself president-elect of El Salvador--the very first leftist head of state in the country's history. * Read more Photo essay: Fighting back against home foreclosure Photos by David Bacon Oakland, California, March 12, 2009 -- On the steps of the Alameda County courthouse, community activists in the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) protest against the auction of the foreclosed home of Armando Ramos and Fernanda Cardenas. Their home mortgage, held by the mortgage company OCWEN, had an adjustable rate. When it went up, Ramos and Cardenas could no longer make the payments. OCWEN then decided to auction off the home on the courthouse steps. * Read more Britain: New left alliance for EU elections March 24, 2009 -- Last week saw the launch of the ``No2EU -- Yes to Democracy'' electoral front, which is critical of the European Union and opposed to the Lisbon Treaty. The alliance is an initiative of Bob Crow, head of Britian's biggest transport union, the RMT. Below, Crow explains why activists have taken the decision to challenge British Labour Party complaceny on this viciously anti-working class treaty. * 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: 14591 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090407/737a0ac4/attachment.txt From barmy_basket at yahoo.es Tue Apr 7 01:27:48 2009 From: barmy_basket at yahoo.es (peripatetic) Date: Tue, 07 Apr 2009 09:27:48 +0200 Subject: [A-List] "Toxic Assets Correctly Priced: They are Actually Crapola", Say Harvard And Princeton Professors In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <49DB0074.3090707@yahoo.es> http://webabuser.blogspot.com/2009/04/toxic-assets-correctly-priced-they-are.html See the impressive graphic of the exponential growth of derivatives from the early nineties compared to world economic output. > From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Tue Apr 7 03:46:21 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Tue, 07 Apr 2009 18:46:21 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Japan proves folly of stimulus plan Message-ID: <49DB20ED.3090702@ashisuto.co.jp> by Professor Richard A Werner Financial Times FT.com (April 03 2009) Sir, In his interview with the FT (April 1), Taro Aso, Japan's prime minister, claims that "because of the experience of the past fifteen years", Japan knows what is necessary to stimulate the economy: "I think there are countries that understand the importance of fiscal mobilisation and there are some other countries that do not - which is why, I believe, Germany has come up with their views". In other words, Mr Aso is asserting that it is out of ignorance of the facts, especially concerning Japan's fiscal experience, that the German leader objects to further fiscal stimulation. A bit rich, I think, coming from the leader of a country where for almost two decades government and central bank have failed to create a sustainable recovery. It is precisely the Japanese experience that has demonstrated, with an unusually high degree of statistical probability, that fiscal stimulation per se will have no positive impact on economic growth but merely leave us with a costly debt burden. I show in an empirical research paper {1}, available on the School of Management's website {2}, that for every yen the Japanese government injected in fiscal stimulation, private demand declined by one yen. This is due to the bond financing of the fiscal spending: effectively, while the government injects money with its right hand, it takes it out of the economy with its left hand via its bond financing. Angela Merkel is right on fiscal policy. This crisis is a monetary phenomenon. Thus monetary policy - credit creation policy to be precise - is required to get out of it speedily and with least cost to society. Richard A Werner, Director, Centre for Banking, Finance and Sustainable Development, School of Management, University of Southampton, UK Links: {1} http://www.management.soton.ac.uk/research/Werner%20Unintended%20Consequence s%20of%20the%20Debt%202008.pdf {2} http://www.management.soton.ac.uk/research/CBFSD.php Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009 "FT" and "Financial Times" are trademarks of the Financial Times. (c) Copyright The Financial Times Ltd 2009. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/30d5ab72-1fe6-11de-a1df-00144feabdc0.html http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From noreply at coha.org Tue Apr 7 08:38:29 2009 From: noreply at coha.org (Council on Hemispheric Affairs) Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 10:38:29 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Autonomy in the Netherlands Antilles Message-ID: <20090407143722.18EB63E4528@mx-out2.daemonmail.net> A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 4406 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090407/2ac6e745/attachment.txt From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Tue Apr 7 19:54:59 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Wed, 08 Apr 2009 10:54:59 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Strange Days Message-ID: <49DC03F3.6040309@ashisuto.co.jp> Clusterfuck Nation by Jim Kunstler Comment on current events by the author of The Long Emergency (2005) www.kunstler.com (April 06 2009) Even while a wave of reflex nausea washed over America last week, and the unemployment rolls swelled by much more than another half million, the greatest stock market suckers' rally in seventy years pulled in the last of the credulous. These are strange days. The earth is heaving and the buds swelling again - at least north of the equator, where most of the action is - and the global economy, which was supposed to be a permanent new add-on to the human condition, is sloughing away in big horrid gobs. But no one in charge of anything can believe it. The banking fiasco has introduced so much noise into the system that world leadership can't think straight. What they're missing is real simple: peak oil means no more ability to service debt at all levels, personal, corporate, and government. End of story. All the other exertions being performed in opposition to this basic fact of life amount to a spastic soft-shoe performed before a smokescreen concealing a world of hurt. If the "quantitative easing" (money creation) and fiscal legerdemain (TARPs, TARFs, et cetera) happen to jack up the "velocity" of the new funny-money, and the world resumes its previous level of oil use, the price of oil would rise again - this time astronomically because the previous crash of oil prices crushed the development of new oil projects to offset depletion - and the global economy will crash again. Only the next phase of the disease is liable to move beyond the financial and into the social and political realms. Disorder of various kinds will rule - toppled governments, civil unrest, international tension and conflict. The US is doing everything possible to avoid these awful realities, but probably the worst self-deception is the idea that everything would be okay if we could just "re-start lending". That's just not going to happen. There is no more capacity to service the debt we've already piled on. Americans borrowed too much, and the bankers who made obscene fortunes in fees and bonuses in fraudulent lending managed to leverage this unpayable debt into the greatest collective swindle the world has ever known. The swindle has sent poison into every cell of the macro socio-economic organism, and further swindles are unlikely to revive it. The rally in stocks, the financials in particular, could go on for another month or two. In the meantime, banks are striving desperately to avoid calling in more bad loans - especially in commercial real estate, malls, strip malls, Big Box power centers - because they don't want any more losses on their balance sheets. That can only go on for so long, too. Sooner or later the daisy chain of credibility in the fundamental transactions of business lose legitimacy and something's got to give. My guess is it will first take the form, sometime after Memorial Day (but maybe sooner) of wholesale liquidations of everything under the North American sun: companies, households, chattels, US Treasury paper of all kinds, and, of course, the S & P 500. We'll soon find out whether an organism the size of the United States can run an economy based on one family selling the contents of its garage to the family next door. My guess is that this type of economy won't support the standards of living previously enjoyed in places like Dallas and Minneapolis. The socio-political fallout from the inherent anger and disappointment in all this is liable to be severe. The public is already warming up for it, with cheerleaders such as Glen Beck on Fox TV News calling for the formation of militias, and gun sales moving out-of-sight. One mistake that the banking elite and their lawyer paladins made the past decade was their show of conspicuous acquisition - of houses especially - in easy-to-get-to places where anyone can see them, for instance an angry mob in Fairfield County, Connecticut, or Easthampton, New York. Unlike the beleaguered elites of South Africa (where I visited recently), who live behind layers of fortification, the executives of Citibank, Goldman Sachs, J P Morgan, and a long list of hedge funds, will be found cringing in their wine-lockers behind a measly layer of privet hedge when the tattooed minions of Glen Beck come a'calling. This could perhaps be avoided if someone in authority like US Attorney General Eric Holder took an aggressive interest in the multiple swindles of the decade past, and commenced some prosecutions. But the window of opportunity for this sort of meliorating action may close sooner than the government and the mainstream media believe. Social phase-change, as in the formations of mobs, is nothing to screw around with. Once the first window is broken, all bets are off for social stability. My guess is that the various bail-out gifts to the bankers are long past having gone too far in the eyes of this increasingly flammable public. We have no previous experience with this type of social unrest. The violence of the Vietnam era will look very limited and reasonable in comparison - in the sense that it was an uprising on the grounds of principle, not survival. And the Civil War was a wholly regimented affair between two rival factions. This time, people with little interest in principle beyond some dim idea of economic fairness, will be hoisting the flaming brands out of sheer grievance and malice. By the time Lloyd Blankfein sees the torches flickering through his privet, it will be too late to defend the honor of his cappuccino machine. President Obama will have to starkly change his current game plan if this outcome is to be avoided. I think he's capable of turning off the mob - of preventing the grasshoppers from turning into ravening locusts - but it may take an extraordinary exercise in authority to do it, such as the true (not pretend) nationalization of the big banks, engineering the exit of Ben Bernanke from the Federal Reserve, sucking up the ignominy of having to replace failed regulator Tim Geithner in the Treasury Department, and calling out the dogs on the swindlers who had the gall to play their country for a sucker. As I've averred more than a few times in this space before, the standard of living in America has got to come way down. We mortgaged our future and the future has now begun. Tough noogies for us. But the broad public won't accept the reality of this as long as the grandees of finance and their myrmidons appear to still enjoy the high life. They've got to be brought down hard, perhaps even disgraced and humiliated in the courts, and certainly parted from some of their fortunes - if only in lawyer's fees. Mr Obama pretty much served notice to this effect last week, telling a delegation of bankers in the White House that he was the only thing standing between them and "the pitchforks". It's possible he understands the situation. _____ My new novel of the post-oil future, World Made By Hand, is available at all booksellers. http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/2009/04/strange-days.html http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Wed Apr 8 05:57:59 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Wed, 08 Apr 2009 20:57:59 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Shine, Perishing Republicans Message-ID: <49DC9147.2030103@ashisuto.co.jp> by Garret Keizer Harper's Magazine Notebook (April 2009) For man it is certainly more grave, or at least much more dangerous, to deny original sin than to deny God. -- Georges Bernanos Perhaps the self-proclaimed party of family values and Judeo-Christian morality might appreciate - in lieu of the more prosaic soul-searching in which it is now engaged - an analysis of its resounding electoral defeat and resultant marginalization rendered in the form of an old-fashioned parable. He that hath an ear, let him hear. The Republican Party is like unto an indulgent father who would not discipline his only son. Though his own father, even Ike, who had begotten him, prophesied against this slackness while the grandson was yet a suckling babe, bestowing upon the child the name of Military-Industrial Complex, the heart of the child's father would not repent. And though the father spake many curses against "permissive society", yet in the rearing up of his son he was the very marrow of permissiveness. When his servants came unto him and said, "This thy son is ruining thine house", he replied, "What is mine house if not a place for my son to play? And is it not written that the spilled wine of a prosperous son doth trickle down to sweeten the tongues of his bondsmen? Be patient then, and the trickled-down wine of my drunkard son may yet be fragrant upon thy beards". It continued in this wise for many years, until the son said to himself, "It is not enough for me that I have my father's heart and my father's servants at my command, that they beat mine enemies and enlarge my purse, and that I am free to enrich myself and hide my treasure across the sea. For I have found me a friend, a youth after mine own heart, who is like my very frat brother, and my love for this W exceedeth my love for womankind. And between us we shall enjoy all that pleaseth our hearts, yea though it breaketh the heart of my dotard father like a potsherd." Saying this, the son and his friend seized the mother of the boy, even Nasdaq the delight of his father's eyes, and stripped her of her raiment and ravished her upon the ground and spoiled the riches of her chamber and greatly shamed her in the eyes of the people. And when he saw this, the father rent his garments and said, "How is it that this crisis has come upon me, and why hast the Lord of hosts visited this calamity upon mine house so that I shall pay the price of it unto my children's children?" But his neighbors and all those in the surrounding countryside said, "How now, but what shall prevent these motherfuckers from doing the same and worse to us, and indeed already we are made like paupers and captives in our own houses". For the son and his friend W had been abroad like a plague on the land. And seizing the father by the hairs of his head, the people of that place cast him out to wander the country like a leper, and with W they did likewise. But the son, the Military-Industrial Complex, they could not seize because of his great strength. And the son continued to oppress them and to commit robbery and abomination wherever he could. And this was about the time when Obama was anointed King. The biblical language comes naturally, not only because of my background - I was raised on the King James Bible by people who were both Calvinist and Republican, not necessarily in that order - but also because the irony of the Republican Party's fall strikes me as essentially theological. That the party seems unable to grasp this may be a measure of just how far it has fallen. Ask someone on the street or in the blogosphere to describe what makes the party's current predicament so ironic, and you might hear something like this: The Republican Party was supposed to stand for small government and fiscal restraint, and instead it has given us big government and the virtual socialization of large segments of our economy. Ask David Brooks of the New York Times and you will hear that such a development was more inevitable than ironic, and not necessarily a bad thing. Ask Ron Paul and he'll say nuts to David Brooks. But all of this is to miss the most basic question, which is why the Republican Party - or, more precisely, its dominant conservative wing - came to stand for smaller government in the first place. This is where it helps to employ a theological language, perhaps while recalling that the rise of the modern conservative movement is sometimes dated to the 1951 publication of William F Buckley's God and Man at Yale. If conservatives have traditionally believed in limited government it is because they also subscribe, contra many liberals and progressives, to an anthropology based on some notion of original sin. That is to say, the politically conserving impulse grows out of a deep-seated pessimism in regard to the ability of human beings to improve their lot merely by wishing to do so. A conservative tells us we had better look at history - hell, we had better examine our own thoughts and deeds since our last coffee break - and that in the light of those all-too-sobering examinations we had better be cautious about jettisoning old institutions and time-tested traditions, which, though flawed as all things human must be flawed, may be our best bulwark against evil itself. That a good law made in our best moments, and in the light of public scrutiny, is our strongest defense against what each of us is capable of doing in his worst moments and under the cover of dark. (I am old enough to remember a time when the battle cry of American conservatism, at least in my neighborhood, was "Law and Order".) The role of a conservative, as I understand it, is to challenge the yes-we-can progressivism of people like me, which is why I have always valued a conservative when I could manage to find one. Cheapskates and chauvinists I've found aplenty, but conservatives are a rarer breed. Take, for example, that "archconservative" Ronald Reagan, who from the perspective of a hundred years will be seen as the last of the California hippies, a man who told us that if we just let the markets run wild and the Magic Bus of juggernaut capitalism go barrel-assing down the road with its freak flag flying all would be groovy and out of sight. What was his "Morning in America" bit but a cover of "Aquarius"; what was his presidency but the last act of Hair? - preferable, I admit, to the helter-skelter criminality of Cheney and Bush. But to call either administration "conservative" in its blithe overconfidence is to hold up a picture of your brain on drugs. Beyond all the prattle about big and small government, this is the mega-irony of the Republican Party: that of all people conservatives ought to have been the first to grasp the dangers of unregulated markets. If big government is susceptible to the abuses of "sinful" human beings, how much more susceptible is a corporate system that is bigger than any government? The right wing of the party ought to have seen this better than the center, and the religious right ought to have seen it best of all. That they failed to see it bespeaks a spiritual bankruptcy beside which the financial plight of an auto industry is as a gnat unto a camel. Given its inability to grasp that irony, we should not be surprised if the Republican Party evinces a similar inability to grasp the primal values of its base. There has been quite some groping about for those values of late, and quite a lot of talk about "the base", but I'm not sure the party would know its base if it fell down drunk and broke its nose on the same, which in a manner of speaking I suppose that it has. This came home to me several years ago when my state representative Cola Hudson (as the story goes, his mother wanted to name him Kohler, but the doctor had had a few nips before he signed the birth certificate) dropped by my house for a visit. Cola was an old-school conservative Republican of the kind that made Vermont notorious for being one of only two states that didn't support Franklin Roosevelt in the election of 1936. (This was several decades before my tribe moved in.) A lifelong bachelor, Cola lived in the farmhouse where he was born and worked as a school janitor between legislative sessions. He died a little over a year ago, and I miss him. Touchingly, Cola arrived at my house with a few clips about his record as an officeholder and with some photocopied pages from what he regarded as the seminal text of his political philosophy: Emerson's essay "Self-Reliance". If the essay was a formative influence for Cola, his reverence for it was something of an epiphany for me. It was also a shot of deja vu. There were none of Emerson's essays in the house where I grew up, or very many other books for that matter, but in addition to the Bible, we had shop manuals and parts lists for every car we ever owned, these being supplemented in later years by a Physicians' Desk Reference. (When my octogenarian father is prescribed some new medicine, he informs the doctor of the side effects.) At bottom, and I mean the demographic as well as the spiritual bottom, the motivating ethos of the Republican Party base is not national defense, or free markets, or "family values". At bottom it is what Cola Hudson knew it was, what Joan Didion, a Goldwater Republican in her youth, partly had in mind when she wrote about "wagon-train morality". In his heart of hearts, the Republican conservative is still a pioneer and a homesteader, someone who takes care of himself, practices thrift, prizes industry, despises waste. I do wonder if the appeal of Sarah Palin had less to do with her opposition to abortion than with her ability to dress a moose. As far as that goes, I wonder if even Republican strategists grasp that hatred of abortion, and the related enthusiasms for guns and school choice, have less to do with opposition to the Democratic Party or to some atavistic "Communist Party" than with opposition to any well-credentialed, all-presuming third party: the physician, the cop, the school superintendent, the politician - alas, the union organizer - who intervenes, imposes, and later sends you the bill. In this connection, I would cite Richard G Mitchell Jr's 2002 study, Dancing at Armageddon, in which he persuasively argues that the driving force behind the survivalist movement is not so much right-wing reaction as the desire to exercise individual creativity and competence on some yet-to-be-subdued acre of "Planet Microsoft". About self-reliance as a creed, several things come immediately to mind. First, the obvious limitations of such a value, the degree to which self-reliance is both precarious and bestial outside of a social contract, the degree to which a patriarchal construction of self-reliance can become a woman's lack of the same. Second, the ease with which self-reliance, laced with a bit of original sin, becomes self-indulgence. Indeed it doesn't take Emerson many paragraphs to go from lauding self-reliance to praising the virtues of "whim", an accolade I would expect to find heavily underlined in Dick Cheney's copy of the text. On the positive side, though, it strikes one how attractive an ethic like self-reliance might prove in a time of environmental catastrophe and economic collapse. In any event, the survival of the Republican Party may depend on its ability to reclaim the values that appear in their most radical form among survivalists. Don't misunderstand me. I want the Republican Party to drop dead. Inasmuch as it differs too little from the competition, I want the Democratic Party to drop dead with it. What interests me is the politics that might emerge from their respective deaths and resurrections, what might happen if each were to glance at the yawning sarcophagus of the other and spot a naked body that it liked. In that contentious stage of boyhood when I first began to shake off the political and religious conservatism of my roots, my worried parents and my much-harried Sunday-school teacher joined in referring me to the Dutch-born minister of the family's Reformed church. Perhaps the learned reverend could calm me down. The trouble of the moment was my discovery of what I took for a glaring contradiction in the writings of Saint Paul. This I could not abide. After hearing me out in his study, and taking a few meditative puffs on his pipe, the minister said that he was inclined to agree with me and that there were actually several other contradictions I might have missed. "For example", he said, "Paul tells the Galatians to bear one another's burdens, and then some verses on, he says that every one shall bear his own burden. Still, I'd say that on the whole it's a pretty good epistle." Then we talked about pipes, as I had recently taken up smoking one myself. The older I get the higher my regard for the old dominie's method of treating with budding skeptics and the lesser my regard for his sense of contradiction. Whatever the apostle's inconsistencies, the dual admonition to bear one another's burdens and to bear one's own burden is not among them. These two imperatives, that of self-reliance and social responsibility, of the Republican heart and the Democratic heart in their purest forms, are the crux of any sustainable community. Neither value makes sense without the other, nor can it be fulfilled without the other. The trick is to get them to kiss. The trick is to create a society in which the privilege of disposable income is not contingent on the existence of disposable people - to say nothing of disposable tigers, ice caps, and arable land. That is the primary task of any mature politics, and it cannot be performed so long as both of our major political parties are held captive by a rumpus-room economic system, with our congressional representatives spending more time talking to CEOs than to philosophers - or even to accountants - and hardly any time talking to the people they supposedly represent. Such a politics must always be puerile. Witness the recent hearings on the bailout; spend an hour lounging with the business-class travelers in an airport bar. (I happen to enjoy that crowd, but then I happen to enjoy the skateboard set as well.) Perhaps the greatest conservative soul who ever lived, Dr Johnson, said, "There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money". He was right insofar as innocence belongs to childhood. Innocents make money; adults make love. Adults hear more possibilities in that last phrase than the reductive eroticism that advertisers use to make money. A grown-up body politic will acknowledge its children, set them strict rules, and let them play with their credit ratings and their hedge funds, their light sabers and their cap pistols, in a well-supervised back yard so that the adults can get down to what adults are meant to get down to: the pleasurable socializing of their resources and the passionate coupling of their best ideas. _____ Garret Keizer is a contributing editor of Harper's Magazine. His essay "Of Mohawks and Mavericks" appeared in the December 2008 issue. http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From suzannedk at gmail.com Tue Apr 7 14:42:50 2009 From: suzannedk at gmail.com (Suzanne de Kuyper) Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 22:42:50 +0200 Subject: [A-List] =?windows-1252?q?Fwd=3A_=5BR-G=5D_Ottawa=92s_democracy_p?= =?windows-1252?q?romoters_target_Venezuela?= In-Reply-To: References: <1980187472.190681239048056767.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> <2076176003.191551239048163684.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Suzanne de Kuyper Date: Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 10:39 PM Subject: Re: [R-G] Ottawa?s democracy promoters target Venezuela To: "Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion." < rad-green at lists.econ.utah.edu> The already beloved queen to be of tiny The Netherlands, the Crown Princess Maxima, is Venezuelan. To Americans and the Canadians who copy their culture, such a fine point means nothing in the vital politics of demonizing socialist movements that criticize the flailing democracy of the world, the elephant center stage, the United States, hosting tent cities for it's newly homeless, breadless and detention centers for all those, enraged, who will demonstrate. They make a miiscalculation, among the many. Suzanne suzannedk at gmail.com On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 10:02 PM, Sid Shniad wrote: > > > > http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/2557 > > > > T he Dominion > > April 3, 2009 > > > > The Revolution Will Not Be Destabilized > > > > Ottawa?s democracy promoters target Venezuela > > > > by A nthony Fenton > > The Dominion - http://www.dominionpaper.ca > > > > > > Documents obtained by The Dominion [ www.dominionpaper.ca/images/2565 ] > show Canada's involvement in democracy promotion in Venezuela. > > > > Canada's foreign policy, as that country which is closer geographically, > economically, and militarily with the US than any other, has long been > circumscribed by the whims of the world's lone Superpower. > > > > Part of the 'hidden wiring' of the US-Canada relationship is premised on > the belief that there is a role for Canada in places where the US carries a > lot of counter-productive baggage. New records obtained by The Dominion show > just how actively intertwined Canada's foreign policy is with the US-led > 'democracy' promotion project in Venezuela. > > > > Successive Canadian governments, beginning with Paul Martin's Liberals and > increasing under Harper's Tory minorities, have pushed full steam ahead with > efforts to expand Canada's democracy promotion efforts globally. Canadian > leadership in the regime change and military occupation of Haiti > (2004-present) gave rise to a renewed emphasis on the region as an emerging > regional power, which carries on under Harper. > > > > Democracy promotion is seldom discussed in the Canadian public sphere, even > while it has been the subject of a multitude of federal level conferences, > reports, and parliamentary hearings over the last five years. Over that same > time, Canada has increasingly been integrating its instruments of democracy > promotion with those of the US. > > > > During his presidential campaign, Barack Obama quietly pledged to increase > funding for the controversial National Endowment for Democracy (NED), > despite scaling back the rhetoric used to describe continuing US aims to > promote global, Western-style democracy. Obama has already fulfilled this > pledge. > > > > His Omnibus Appropriations Act allocates $115 million for NED's operations, > increasing by $35 million the amount requested by Bush for 2009. All told, > the requested 2009 budget for US democracy programs is the highest ever at > $1.72 billion. By contrast, Canada spent upwards of $650 million on > democracy promotion in 2008. > > > > The NED was formed in 1983 as a new tool to advance US foreign policy and > business interests around the world. Nominally independent, NED receives the > majority of its budget from Congress, and each of its grants must be > approved by the US State Department. > > > > ?One of the NED's first major successes...was helping to overthrow the > Sandinista government in Nicaragua,? writes journalist Bart Jones in his > authoritative biography of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. According to > Jones, a couple of decades later ?the NED was rapidly infiltrating > [Venezuelan] society in a way reminiscent of the Nicaragua experience.? > Channelling money and resources to opposition NGOs has been a prime strategy > of the NED in Venezuela. > > > > Following a short-lived coup d'etat against Chavez in April 2002, > Venezuelan-American attorney Eva Golinger and investigative journalist > Jeremy Bigwood obtained a treasure trove of documents through Freedom of > Information Act (FOIA) requests. These documents, released in conjunction > with Golinger's 2004 book, The Chavez Code: Cracking US Intervention in > Venezuela , exposed NED's active role in the attempted subversion of > Venezuela's democracy. > > > > One of several Canadian NGOs whose activities are complementary to those of > the NED is the Canadian Foundation for the Americas (FOCAL). Established by > the Mulroney government in the 1990's, FOCAL is almost entirely dependent on > government funding and is accountable to Parliament. > > > > A 2004 evaluation of FOCAL conducted by Department of Foreign Affairs and > International Trade Canada (DFAIT) and Canadian International Development > Agency (CIDA) wrote: > > > > Stakeholders from every sector and from the academic community in > particular, indicated that FOCAL is already perceived as 'the right arm of > the government,' echoing the perspective and beliefs of its funding bodies, > rather than a truly independent, non-governmental organization. > > > > "The US has been using Canadian and European foundations more frequently in > recent years to filter funding to Venezuelan and other NGOs and political > parties that promote their mutual interests," said Golinger, whose most > recent book is The Imperial Web: Encyclopedia of Interference and > Subversion. "It's a way of covering up US meddling and making the sources of > foreign funding for political objectives more difficult to detect. Canada > has been a major ally of the US in this respect, particularly in the case of > Venezuela." > > > > Negative perceptions of the US indicate the necessity of ?shifting > responsibility for the [democracy] campaign to more local actors or other > Western allies,? wrote Raymond Gastil, one of the theoreticians behind the > US shift to democracy promotion, in 1988. > > > > Although far from the first such instance, Canada began to take on such > ?responsibility? towards Venezuela in January 2005. DFAIT invited the head > of a key opposition group in Venezuela, Sumate's Maria Corina Machado, to > meet Ottawa lawmakers and officials, as well as to give a briefing on > political rights in Venezuela. > > > > Machado openly supported the 2002 coup against Chavez. In 2004, she was > charged with conspiracy to commit treason for allegedly using NED funds to > campaign against Chavez in a recall referendum organized by the opposition. > > > > According to records obtained by The Dominion through Access to Information > request FOCAL's chairman John Graham joined Machado in Washington, D.C. for > a high level meeting in 2005. In attendance were former Secretary of State > Condoleeza Rice and Roger Noriega. ?An exchange of ideas as regards the > relationships between the civil society and the governments for the > strengthening of democracy in the region,? was the stated purpose of the > meeting. > > > > Shortly after Graham?s meeting with Rice and Machado, the NED approved a > $94,516 grant for FOCAL to carry out democracy promotion work in and around > Venezuela. > > > > Using the NED funds, FOCAL was to commission a series of papers and > organize a number of meetings in Ottawa, Venezuela and Ecuador "to discuss > how to better collaborate in promoting an informed civil society that can > strengthen democracy in the region." > > > > But after Stephen Harper's Conservatives took power in early 2006, FOCAL > abruptly cancelled the activities that were supposed to take place in > Venezuela. > > > > "After discussing this project with various people...[we] came to the > conclusion that it was not in anybody's interests to organize such an > activity while being financially associated with the NED,? reads a > heavily-censored memo sent by DFAIT official Flavie Major in July of 2006. > > > > "[S]ince the project was originally drafted the internal context in > Venezuela has shifted, as has the domestic context in Canada, which could > potentially alter the priority and focus of Canada's engagement in > Venezuela," indicates a separate document obtained through a US FOIA > request. > > > > An example of the changing political context in Venezuela is the 2006 draft > Law on International Cooperation, which was to have limited the ability of > local NGOs to receive funding from foreign governments. Although the law has > yet to be enacted, Western-backed NGOs and their donors have launched a > campaign to ?push back? against what they describe as a ?backlash? against > democracy promoters in the region. > > > > By late 2006, the Conservatives proclaimed that democracy promotion was a > ?fundamental part? of Canadian foreign policy objectives, and ?an eminently > worthy and intrinsically Canadian endeavour.? One indication of the > Conservatives? commitment was through the appointment of a former NED board > member as a top advisor to Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay. > > > > In late 2007, the Canadian government gave the NED $198,168 to produce a > major report, titled "Defending Civil Society: A Report of the World > Movement for Democracy." The report attacks Venezuela for its efforts to > limit Western-funded manipulation of its internal politics: > > > > Venezuela?s would-be caudillo Hugo Chavez has a peculiar notion of > democracy. His ?Bolivarian revolution? appears to be based on Chavista [sic] > monopolizing the country?s political institutions, from an absence of > parliamentary opposition to a hand-picked judiciary. In these > circumstances...civil society provides the only countervailing power to the > Chavista state and to Chavez?s Castroite aspirations. > > > > DFAIT seems to have based their own talking points on Venezuela around the > NED?s line. "Hugo Chavez has a history of weakening democratic institutions. > Minister Kent is committed to furthering the Government's Americas strategy > which is dedicated to promoting and enhancing democracy, freedom and the > rule of law,? wrote a spokesperson for Canadian Minister of State for Latin > America, Peter Kent, in an e-mail statement to The Dominion. > > > > "Hugo Chavez has a history of concentrating power in the Executive which > has undermined democratic institutions in Venezuela. Since taking office a > decade ago, we've seen the politicization of the judiciary and harassment by > government officials of the state controlled media and NGOs," wrote Kent?s > spokesperson when asked to substantiate her claim about Chavez? > anti-democratic tendencies. > > > > One of the ways that Canada has tried to avoid drawing attention to its > support for the Venezuelan opposition and collaboration with the NED is by > carrying out activities outside of Venezuela and coordinating them through > embassies. Indeed, such methods have a theoretical basis that Canada helped > design. > > > > In conjunction with the NED-linked Council for a Community of Democracies > and the US State Department, DFAIT contributed $70,000 in financing to the > publication of A Diplomat's Handbook for Democracy Development Support, in > April 2008. > > > > Canada has one of the few foreign services that train its diplomats in > democracy promotion. The US Foreign Service Institute has already ordered at > least 400 copies of the Handbook, which aims to provide diplomats with > ?encouragement, counsel, and a greater capacity to support democrats > everywhere.? > > > > ?We have over many, many years and will continue to work with the United > States in this regard in advancing our common goals, certainly to the > benefit of both countries and to the benefit of the world in general,? > Canada's Consul-General in New York, Dan Sullivan, said during a launch > event for the Handbook in early 2008. > > > > One example of the Handbook in action is Canada?s funding of the Venezuelan > NGO Justice and Development Consortium (Asociaci?n Civil Consorcio > Desarrollo y Justicia). This group, which also receives funding from the > NED, has made a name for itself by working to unite reactionary opposition > movements throughout Latin America. > > > > In November 2007, DFAIT gave the Justice and Development Consortium $94,580 > "to consolidate and expand the democracy network in Latin America and the > Caribbean" at an assembly held in Panama City in the spring of 2008. This > meeting, co-hosted by the Canadian Embassy in Panama and the NED, attracted > prominent members of (often NED funded) opposition movements in Venezuela, > Cuba, Bolivia, and Ecuador. It was convened in response to "the usher[ing] > in [of] a new era of populism and authoritarianism in Latin America." > > > > Flying in the face of the North American read of Venezuelan democracy is > the latest report by the non-partisan Chilean Latinobarometro, which shows > that 79 per cent of Venezuelans polled are satisfied with their democracy. > > > > "Venezuela has a poor image in the rest of the world... but the perception > of Venezuelans is positive,? states the report. ?They say they like their > democracy as it is now or, at least, much more than the citizens of other > countries like their democracies which, by contrast, are not criticized by > the outside world for lack of freedom and harassment of institutions.? > > > > Colombia, Peru, Mexico, and Chile are considered Canada?s strongest allies > in the region, and are also countries where people?s support for their > government tends to be lower than it is in Venezuela. The subversion of > Venezuelan democracy and the laissez faire attitude towards the regimes of > Felipe Cald?ron in Mexico, Alan Garcia in Peru and ?lvaro Uribe in Colombia > demonstrates that building popular democracies is not the sought after end > result of democracy promotion activities. > > > > The governments of Colombia, Peru, Mexico and Chile have already entered > into Free-Trade deals with Canada, and each receives high levels of Canadian > outward foreign direct investment, particularly in the extractive sector. > > > > Canadian trade with Venezuela is second only to trade with Brazil in South > and Central America. Venezuela is the tenth-largest provider of Canada's > considerable foreign oil needs. In 2008, Canada imported $1.36 billion worth > of Venezuelan crude. The North Atlantic Refinery in Newfoundland, home of > Premier Danny ?Chavez? Williams, refines the oil. > > > > Anthony Fenton is an independent researcher and journalist based in British > Columbia, who has traveled to Venezuela several times. Some material in this > article is drawn from a forthcoming book on Canadian foreign policy. He can > be reached at fentona[at]shaw.ca. > _______________________________________________ > Rad-Green mailing list > Rad-Green at lists.econ.utah.edu > To change your options or unsubscribe go to: > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green > -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 16737 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090407/6083a0e1/attachment.txt From barmy_basket at yahoo.es Wed Apr 8 09:55:38 2009 From: barmy_basket at yahoo.es (peripatetic) Date: Wed, 08 Apr 2009 17:55:38 +0200 Subject: [A-List] Funny accounting introduced & other outrages of the day In-Reply-To: <49DA945D.9010605@ashisuto.co.jp> References: <49DA945D.9010605@ashisuto.co.jp> Message-ID: <49DCC8FA.6040708@yahoo.es> No end to scams: Funny accounting introduced "This may sound incredibly arcane, but what the FASB has done is declare that assets held by companies (including banks) on their books will no longer have to be valued at their current market value. Under new guidelines, effective retroactively to March 15, these assets can now be valued at what the corporate managers think (or pretend to think) they will be worth at some time in the future when they might try to sell them." http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/?q=node/292 Bush and Obama Administrations Broke the Law By Refusing to Close Insolvent Banks http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13065 Cities Collapsing throughout the USA http://thecomingdepression.blogspot.com/2009/04/cities-collapsing-throughout-usa.html webabuser.blogspot.com From nmgoro at gmail.com Wed Apr 8 13:09:43 2009 From: nmgoro at gmail.com (Nestor Gorojovsky) Date: Wed, 08 Apr 2009 16:09:43 -0300 Subject: [A-List] Maxima of Holland is NOT Venezuelan In-Reply-To: References: <1980187472.190681239048056767.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> <2076176003.191551239048163684.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <49DCF677.2030208@gmail.com> Suzanne de Kuyper escribi?: > > > > The already beloved queen to be of tiny The Netherlands, the Crown > Princess Maxima, is Venezuelan. To Americans and the Canadians who > copy their culture, such a fine point means nothing in the vital > politics of demonizing socialist movements that criticize the flailing > democracy of the world, the elephant center stage, the United States, > hosting tent cities for it's newly homeless, breadless and detention > centers for all those, enraged, who will demonstrate. They make a > miiscalculation, among the many. She is not Venezuelan. M?xima Zorreguieta is Argentinean, nothing I am quite proud of, and belongs to a family of the financial oligarchy, one of the most outstanding families to be sure. In fact, her father Jorge Zorreguieta staffed the economic team which was the actual leading force during the 1976-1983 regime. This sordid s.o.b. should be convicted for many kinds of crimes, including all kind of financial loot, complicity with torturers, disappeared-makers, and child-kidappers, were it not for his trillions and his good relations with the powers-that-be the world over. From gopalkster at gmail.com Wed Apr 8 15:12:20 2009 From: gopalkster at gmail.com (Gopal Kappiarath) Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 02:42:20 +0530 Subject: [A-List] PhD student looking to restart academic career - need help Message-ID: <4191bd570904081412x7a0938cehe84dbc21e1442c6d@mail.gmail.com> Dear All, I am Gopal Kappiarath and an occasional contributor to these discussion groups. I need some help ! :) I was a doctoral student at the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Virginia Tech when I had to quit my PhD in Fall 2006. The reasons were monetary as well as other unfortunate incidents. I am currently in India and am looking forward to continue my academic career. I have not been very successful getting admits to some schools that I applied to in Canada in for Fall 2009 admission. My position careerwise is a bit desperate ! I need admission in a graduate program to complete my PhD. I have published a co-authored work in the journal Critical Sociology. My basic degree is in Engineering. I completed my Masters in Business Administration (University of Utah/1999). From 2001-2006, I was a PhD student at Virginia Tech in the departments of Sociology and Science and Technology Studies. My primary interest is Political Theory and I have done coursework and reading/research in this area. Political Economy, International Relations, Continental Philosophy, Feminist Theory, Foucault and Marx are my other interests. I follow international events. I am keenly interested in solving social and political problems. I am looking for a PhD (Graduate Program) in Political Science/Interdisciplinary that would accommodate me. I am looking for help from academics/scholars/researchers who would be interested in working with me and who would help me get admission in their graduate programs. (I need Fall 2009 admission. Any funding will be of help!) This note is an appeal from me to fellow academics/scholars/researchers/ to help me renew my academic career !! Thank you so much. Gopal Kappiarath From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Thu Apr 9 03:07:27 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Thu, 09 Apr 2009 18:07:27 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Monetary Proposal Message-ID: <49DDBACF.3040808@ashisuto.co.jp> Return to the Greenback Dollar by Ellen Brown, JD http://webofdebt (March 06 2008) We no longer have a government "of the people, by the people, for the people". We have a government run by and for Big Business, and Big Business has gotten control because its affiliated banks have monopolized the business of issuing the national money supply, a function the Constitution delegated solely to Congress. What hides behind the banner of "free enterprise" today is a system in which giant corporate monopolies have used their affiliated banking trusts to generate unlimited funds to buy up competitors, the media, and the government itself, forcing truly independent private enterprise out. Big private banks are allowed to create money out of nothing, lend it at interest, foreclose on the collateral, and determine who gets credit and who doesn't. They can advance massive loans to their affiliated corporations and hedge funds, which use the money to raid competitors and manipulate markets. If some players have the power to create money and others don't, the playing field is not "level" but allows some favored players to dominate and coerce others. These giant cartels can be brought to heel only by cutting off their source of power - the power to create money - and returning it to its rightful sovereign owners, the people themselves. Two independent monetary systems have competed for dominance in the United States ever since we were a collection of colonies. In provincial America, paper money was issued by local governments. In England at the same time, paper banknotes were issued and lent privately by banks, headed by the Bank of England, the first private central bank. The major flaw in the private banking system was that the banks created the principal but not the interest necessary to pay back their loans, so more money was always owed back than was put into the money supply, requiring more loans to be taken out to cover the interest, spiraling the people into debt.The most effective and efficient of the American colonial systems was in Pennsylvania, where a publicly-owned bank issued paper money and lent it to farmers. The money returned to the government with interest, preventing inflation; and to keep enough money in the system to prevent the debt spiral of the private banking system, the government issued and spent a sum of money on public works as well. The Pennsylvania system worked so well that it completely funded the provincial government without taxes or inflation. Benjamin Franklin and others maintained that the chief reason for the American Revolution was that Parliament forbade the colonies from issuing their own money. Paper money issued by the Revolutionary government got the colonists through the war, but the British heavily counterfeited the Continental currency as a deliberate war tactic, and by the end of the war it had been inflated so much that it was nearly worthless. Fear of inflation led the Continental Congress to completely omit paper money from the Constitution, which does not say who can issue it or under what circumstances. The private banks filled the breach, and by 1913 the US had the same private central banking system that England had. Ever since the dollar went off the gold standard in 1933, all of our money except coins and a few rare US Notes has been created privately by banks (including the private Federal Reserve) and lent to the government and the people. Two centuries after the Revolution was fought, the pyramid scheme of lending ten dollars and requiring eleven back has reached its mathematical limits. We are "all borrowed up" and the banking system is imploding. It is time we tried the system for which our forefathers fought and died: real, debt-free, publicly-issued US money. This tack would not only not add to inflation but could actually reduce or eliminate it. Inflation results from an increase in "demand" (money) over "supply" (goods and services). Today inflation is caused by borrowing to repay debt: the money created into existence by banks goes to pay interest rather than to produce goods and services. If the government were to issue money and use it to pay for real goods and services (roads and bridges, sustainable energy development, health services, and the like), demand and supply would remain in balance and inflation would not result. The "Federal" Reserve is actually a privately-owned corporation that issues money and lends it to the government. A truly federal central bank would issue funds directly to the Treasury as debt-free US Notes, or as "national credit". This was done successfully in Australia and New Zealand during the 1930s and 1940s. A state-owned central bank funded public projects that put people back to work, at a time when most of the rest of the world was struggling with a depression brought on by a global shortage of bank-created money. Today we are facing the same sort of bank-created credit crisis, and it could be resolved in the same way. Steps Congress might take include: 1. Amending the Federal Reserve Act to make the Federal Reserve a truly federal agency, acting under the auspices of Congress in conjunction with the Treasury. 2. Updating the Constitutional provision that "Congress shall have the exclusive power to coin money [and] regulate the value thereof" to read, "Congress shall have the exclusive power to create the national currency in all its forms, including not only coins and paper dollars but the nation's credit issued as commercial loans; and it shall not delegate this power to any private entity". 3. Authorizing new issues of federal legal tender backed by "the full faith and credit of the United States", to be spent on programs that promoted the general welfare. To prevent inflation, this currency would be advanced only for programs that contributed new goods and services to the economy, keeping supply in balance with demand. Issues of the new currency would also be capped by some ceiling - the unused productive capacity of the national work force, or the difference between the Gross Domestic Product and the nation's purchasing power (wages and spendable income). 4. Advancing credit interest-free to state and local governments, for rebuilding infrastructure and other public projects. The emphasis would be on projects that were self-sustaining, such as the development of cheap, effective alternative sources of energy (wind, solar, ocean wave, et cetera) that could be sold to the public for a fee; or the repurchase of homes in default, to be resold or rented as low-income housing. 5. Establishing a network of national banks to serve as local bank branches of the newly-federalized banking system, either by FDIC takeover of currently insolvent banks or by the purchase of viable banks with newly-issued US currency. Besides serving depository banking functions, these national banks would be authorized to service the credit needs of the public by advancing the national credit as loans. Any interest charged on advances of this credit would be returned to the Treasury, to be used in place of taxes. 6. Authorizing the Treasury to buy back and retire the federal government's outstanding debt as it comes due, using newly-issued US Notes or Federal Reserve Notes. In most cases this could be done online, without physical paper transfers. 7. Regulation and control of the exploding derivatives crisis, either by imposing a modest .25 percent Tobin tax on all derivative trades in order to track and regulate them, or by imposing an outright ban on derivatives trading. If the handful of banks responsible for 97 percent of all derivative trades were found after audit to be insolvent, they could be put into receivership and their derivative trades could be unwound by the FDIC as receiver. 8. Initiating a new round of international agreements modeled on the Bretton Woods Accords, addressing the following monetary issues among others: - The pegging of national currency exchange rates to the value either of an agreed-upon standardized price index or an agreed-upon "basket" of commodities; - International regulation of, or elimination of, speculation in derivatives, short sales, and other forms of trading that are used to manipulate markets; - Interest-free loans of a global currency issued Greenback-style by a truly democratic international congress, on the model of the Special Drawing Rights of the IMF; and - The elimination of burdensome and unfair international debts. This could be done by simply writing the debts off the books of the issuing banks, reversing the sleight of hand by which the loan money was created in the first place. Just as we need publicly-operated police, courts and laws to keep individual and corporate predators at bay, so we need a system of truly national banks, in which the power to create the money and advance the credit of the people is retained by the people. We trust government with sweeping powers to declare and conduct wars, provide for the general welfare, and establish and enforce laws. We should trust it to create the national money supply in all its forms. The federal government need not and should not go into debt. A government with a properly designed and monitored system of publicly-issued money could fund itself without taxes, debt or inflation. http://webofdebt.wordpress.com/monetary-proposal/ http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From cb31450 at gmail.com Thu Apr 9 06:10:28 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 05:10:28 -0700 Subject: [A-List] Moldova Message-ID: <5c2e4d230904090510r29f68403u4954682c6dc37b82@mail.gmail.com> Post-independence politics (1991-2009) On January 2, 1992, Moldova introduced a market economy, liberalizing prices, which resulted in huge inflation. From 1992 to 2001, the young country suffered its worst economic crisis, leaving most of the population below the poverty line.[citation needed] In 1993, a national currency, the Moldovan leu, was introduced to replace the Soviet ruble. The end of the planned economy also meant that industrial enterprises would have to buy supplies and sell their goods by themselves, and most of the management was unprepared for such a change.[citation needed] Moldova's industry, especially machine building, became all but defunct, and unemployment skyrocketed.[citation needed] The economic fortunes of Moldova began to change in 2001; since then the country has seen a steady annual growth of between 5% and 10%. The early 2000s also saw a considerable growth of emigration of Moldovans looking for work (mostly illegally) in Italy, Portugal, Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Turkey, and other countries, in addition to work in Russia.[citation needed] Remittances from Moldovans abroad account for almost 38% of Moldova's GDP, the second-highest percentage in the world.[41] Officially, Moldova's annual GDP is on the order of $1,000 per capita; however, a significant part of the economy goes unregistered due to corruption.[citation needed] The pro-nationalist governments of prime-ministers Mircea Druc (May 25, 1990 - May 28, 1991), and Valeriu Muravschi (May 28, 1991 - July 1, 1992), were followed one year after independence by a more moderate government of Andrei Sangheli, which saw the decline of the pro-Romanian nationalist sentiment.[42] After the 1994 elections, Moldovan Parliament adopted measures that distanced Moldova from Romania.[36] The new Moldovan Constitution also provided for autonomy for Transnistria and Gagauzia. On December 23, 1994, the Parliament of Moldova adopted a "Law on the Special Legal Status of Gagauzia", and in 1995 it was constituted. After winning the presidential elections of 1996, on January 15, 1997, Petru Lucinschi, the former First Secretary of the Moldavian Communist Party in 1989-91, became the country's second president. After the legislative elections on March 22, 1998, an Alliance for Democracy and Reform was formed by non-Communist parties. However, the activity of new government of prime-minister Ion Ciubuc (January 24, 1997- February 1, 1999) was marked by chronic political instability, which prevented a coherent reform program.[36] The 1998 financial crisis in Russia, Moldova's main economic partner at the time, produced an economic crisis in the country. The standard of living plunged, with 75% of population living below the poverty line, while the economic disaster caused 600,000 people to eventually leave the country.[36] New governments were formed by Ion Sturza (February 19 - November 9, 1999) and Dumitru Braghi? (December 21, 1999 - April 19, 2001). On July 21, 2000, the Parliament adopted an amendment to the Constitution that transformed Moldova from a presidential to a parliamentary republic, in which the president is elected by 3/5 of the votes in the parliament, and no longer directly by the people.[36] Only 3 of the 31 political parties passed the 6% threshold of the February 25, 2001 early elections. Winning 49.9% of the vote, the Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova gained 71 of the 101 MPs, and on April 4, 2001, elected Vladimir Voronin as the country's third president. A new government was formed on April 19, 2001 by Vasile Tarlev. The country became the first post-Soviet state where a non-reformed Communist Party returned to power.[36] In March-April 2002, in Chi?in?u, several mass protests took place against the plans of the government to fulfill its electoral promise and introduce Russian as the second state language along with its compulsory study in schools.[36] The government mainly renounced these plans.[citation needed] Relationship between Moldova and Russia deteriorated in November 2003 over a Russian proposal for the solution of the Transnistrian conflict, which Moldovan authorities refused to accept due to Western and internal political pressure,[43] since it stipulated a 20-year Russian military presence in Moldova. The federalization plan for Moldova would have also turned Transnistria and Gagauzia into a blocking minority over all major policy matters of Moldova. As of 2006, approximately 1,200 of the 14th army personnel remain stationed in Transnistria, guarding a large ammunitions depot at Colbasna. In the last years, negotiations between the Transnistrian and Moldovan leaders have been going on under the mediation of the OSCE, Russia, and Ukraine; lately observers from the European Union and the United States have become involved, creating a 5+2 format. In the wake of the November 2003 deadlock with Russia, a series of shifts in the external policy of Moldova occurred, targeted at rapprochement with the European Union. In the context of the EU's expansion to the east, Moldova wants to sign a Stability an Association Agreement. It implemented its first three-year Action Plan within the framework of the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) of the EU.[44][45] In the March 2005 elections, the Party of the Communists (PCRM) won 46% of the vote, (56 of the 101 seats in the Parliament), Democratic Moldova Block (BMD) won 28.5% of the vote (34 MPs), and the Christian Democratic People Party (PPCD) won 9.1% (11 MPs). On April 4, 2005, Vladimir Voronin was re-elected as country's president, supported by a part of the opposition, and on April 8, Vasile Tarlev was again charged as head of government.[36] On March 31, 2008, Vasile Tarlev was replaced by Zinaida Grecean?i as head of the government. [edit] 2009 election protests Main article: 2009 Chi?in?u riots Following the general elections on April 5, 2009 the Communist Party won 50% of the votes, followed by the Liberal Party with 13% of the votes and the Liberal Democratic Party with 12%. The opposition leaders have protested against the outcome calling it fraudulent and demanded a repeated election. A report by OSCE said Sunday's vote was "generally free and fair". However, one member of the OSCE observation team questioned that conclusion: Baroness Emma Nicholson said that she and a number of other team members feel that there had been some manipulation, but they were unable to find any proof.[46] Opposition leaders have organized a protest demonstration on April 6 and 7, 2009, with thousands of mainly young protesters in Chi?in?u, accusing the Communist government of electoral fraud. The demonstration has spun out of control and turned into a riot when a crowd of about 10,000 attacked the parliament building and broke into the presidential offices, looting and setting them on fire.[47] The violence on both sides (demonstrators and police) was condemned by the OSCE.[48] Government officials, including the President, Vladimir Voronin have called the rioting a coup d'etat attempt and have accused Romanian nationalists of organizing it.[46] From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Thu Apr 9 16:03:01 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 07:03:01 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Why the World Needs the US to Act Now on Climate Change Message-ID: <49DE7095.9020204@ashisuto.co.jp> by Sophie Ragsdale, The Nation AlterNet (March 17 2009) There are two clocks ticking for the god-fearing climate-conscious among us. The first counts down to Copenhagen, where on December 7 representatives from 192 countries will hammer out a successor to the Kyoto Protocol: a post-2012 global climate deal aimed at curbing greenhouse gases. The second hurtles us toward disaster, a "mankind-threatening juggernaut", the point at which atmospheric carbon dioxide exceeds a concentration of 450 parts per million. To the extent that global warming is contingent on carbon emissions, the tipping point will be determined at the UN Framework Conference for Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Copenhagen, the last stop on the Bali Roadmap toward what UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer has called "the most complex international agreement that history has ever seen". In less than ten months, the Danish capital will host as many as 15,000 ministers and officials whose challenge is to collaborate a shared vision for long-term cooperative climate action. Specifically, they will determine burden-sharing agreements based on "common but differentiated responsibilities", and developed countries must pledge ambitious emissions reduction targets. The alternative business-as-usual approach, which is to do nothing, will shoot carbon dioxide levels up to 900 ppm by 2100, causing worldwide temperatures to increase nearly seven degrees Fahrenheit and sea levels to rise anywhere from three to seven feet, nearly tripling predictions made in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report. In fact, temperatures are accelerating at such a clip that the IPCC's 2007 report, a gathering and distillation of thousands of peer reviews submitted by hundreds of the world's top climate experts, was outdated upon presentation. Since then, scientists have abandoned the language of numbers and data analysis in favor of urgent calls for immediate action. There are, of course, a few odd deniers, such as William Happer, professor of physics at Princeton University, who announced last week at an Environment and Public Works Committee hearing that we are actually in a "carbon dioxide famine" and that increased levels "will be good for mankind". For the most part, however, the consensus is that if temperatures continue to rise as they are, we will not escape hell and high water within the next decade. And where policy is concerned, Obama is considered our last best chance to get it right. "We have only four years left for Obama to set an example to the rest of the world", said James Hansen of the NASA Institute. "America must take the lead". Obama has made it clear that slowing the climate clock is a top priority for his administration. Beginning with his environment and energy cabinet picks, the "Green Dream Team", it's fair to say, as Representative Lloyd Doggett did at a Ways and Means committee hearing, that "this president is committed to changing the White House into a greenhouse". And it's no surprise that after eight years of Bush obstructionism, Obama's willingness to engage on warming and energy matters is being seen as a "sea change" by the international community. But if he really wants to make good on his claim to a new dawn of American leadership, the United States must at least bring the framework of a federal carbon-caps legislation to the Copenhagen table. On the other hand, putting together meaningful legislation will be difficult, especially when the de facto leader of the Republican party, Rush Limbaugh, is encouraging the spread of ideas that climate change is a conspiracy cooked up by the Chinese, the "ChiComs", to destroy the US economy. Remarkably though, Democrats are not backing down. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi emphasized last week that building a new economy around green jobs is the "flagship issue" for the Democratic Congress. "This isn't 'dig a hole, fill a hole'", she said. "It's about doing it in a new, greener way". Also last week, House Energy & Commerce Committee chair Henry Waxman stood by his Memorial Day deadline for climate change legislation and told reporters that his committee has already begun writing a bill, which he expects will set a national standard for renewable energy and a cap-and-trade program. And Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid confirmed that he has been sold on Waxman's far-reaching megabill strategy to combine climate and energy legislation into one package. Finally, the New York Times reports that Senator Barbara Boxer is researching the use of a budget reconciliation process as a way to safeguard the bill from a Republican filibuster. These efforts are reassuring but not enough. The road to Copenhagen must come on two tracks. While Democrats should continue to push hard for a strong domestic climate bill, it's equally important that the United States join forces with its polluting bedfellow, China, to mobilize an effective global response to the unique challenges of the twentieth century. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took a critical first step in this direction by shining a light on the need for bilateral US-China efforts to overhaul our global economy from one that's coal-driven to one that's low-carbon and energy efficient. Clinton's highly publicized trip to Beijing last month meant to signal once and for all that the United States is serious about climate change. But it will take more than signals to keep the ice caps from melting. As the president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, Eileen Claussen, explained, shifting to a climate-friendly economy "is not an issue of just sitting down to work out a position in the global framework. We must consider how the US and China can cooperate, so we can both benefit and really show movement. Because if we show bilateral movement, the rest of the world will follow." In order to guide the process, the Pew Center and the Asia Society Center released a joint project, a "Roadmap for US-China Cooperation on Energy and Climate Change". It is a concrete program for sustained high-level engagement and on-the-ground action focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Because, the truth is, Claussen said, "There's no possibility of addressing the problem if the US and China don't do a lot relatively quickly, which is evident in the numbers alone". Todd Stern eloquently summarized the US position in the lead-up to Copenhagen when he accepted the position of Hillary Clinton's special envoy for climate change: "As the largest historic emitter of greenhouse gases, we can only expect to lead abroad if we are prepared to act decisively at home. Yet we can only meet the climate challenge with a response that is genuinely global." Surely the clocks are ticking louder and faster than ever, but if the United States takes swift and aggressive action on climate change, at home and abroad, we might make it in time. _____ Sophie Ragsdale is a freelance writer. She currently lives in Brooklyn, New York. (c) 2009 The Nation All rights reserved. http://www.alternet.org/story/131858/ http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From tboyle at rosehill.net Thu Apr 9 19:33:46 2009 From: tboyle at rosehill.net (Todd Boyle) Date: Thu, 09 Apr 2009 18:33:46 -0700 Subject: [A-List] =?iso-8859-1?q?Evans_article=3A_What=92s_Local_About_Loc?= =?iso-8859-1?q?al__Currencies=3F?= Message-ID: What's Local About Local Currencies? Michael Evans Department of Sociology University of California, San Diego Last Revised: 11 December 2003 Word Count: 5,101 ---- only 500 of them posted herein. Running Head: WHAT'S LOCAL ABOUT LOCAL CURRENCIES? Keywords: Money, Local Currencies, Community Currency, Exchange Theory, Economic Values, Monetary Technology http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/1/0/8/8/4/p108846_index.html ABSTRACT: Local currencies provide a unique vantage point for analyzing traditional assumptions about money and monetary technologies. I use the phenomenon of local currencies to illustrate the persistent heterogeneity of money in the face of homogenization and national currency domination. I review how local economic values are revealed in the formation of local currencies, and demonstrate the primacy of local values in creating these monetary technologies. I show that local currencies are instances of monetary technologies used to overcome the limitations of a dominant national currency and expand exchange networks by providing an expression of local values in addition to the values expressed by national currency. Finally, I propose a fluid theory of exchange based on shared values wherein exchange networks are expanded, strengthened, and sustained through the deployment of "value buffer" technologies. Direct correspondence to Michael Evans, University of California, San Diego, Department of Sociology, 401 Social Science Building, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093-0533 Introduction Traditional theories of money, drawn mostly from Georg Simmel's groundbreaking work, have focused on money as a store of value, a medium of exchange, and a measurement. In these theories money is fully generalized, having no intrinsic value and uncluttered by outside interests. Many scholars have noted, however, that money is more than just a valueless medium of exchange. Focusing on the broadest levels of social organization, these scholars have written about the rise of finance capital (Lenin 1939), the growth of globalisation and transnational money (Cohen 1998), and the importance of money to national sovereignty (Woodruff 1999, Notar 2002), to illustrate that money itself represents certain values both in its creation and its use. But by choosing national and international financial activity as the area of study, these scholars have assumed a homogeneity of money within their objects, glossing over important distinctions that may belie their assumptions about how money works. Though there is a growing trend toward examining heterogeneity of money, scholars have focused primarily on heterogeneity of individual use within the context of an existing money system, such as a national currency (Zelizer 1997, 1999), which necessarily assumes certain shared properties of the object of study. I propose that the best way to see how and why people use money in particular ways is to examine creation, formation, and participation in money systems. In the words of Bruno Latour, we should study money "in action, and not ready made" (1987, p. 258). Local currencies are monetary systems created and used in a geographically bounded area, typically in response to local demands that are not met in some way by the dominant national currency. They take different forms, sometimes resembling national paper currency, and are used to accomplish From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Fri Apr 10 03:38:13 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 18:38:13 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Bullets from the Drug War Message-ID: <49DF1385.4070405@ashisuto.co.jp> by Dmitry Orlov Club Orlov (March 29 2009) * The US has lost the "War on Drugs" * The losing side is usually not the one to decide when a fight is over or how it ends * Unlike other recent defeats, this lost war is a defeat followed by an invasion * Mexico is the natural staging area for the invasion (inconvenient though it is for the Mexicans) * New franchises are being set up to service the North American drug market (which is the biggest in the world) * The CIA has to eat, and all they know how to do competently is run guns and drugs and control thugs; they get a seat at the table * The narcs have to eat too, and all they are trained to do is deal (with) drugs; they get a seat at the table too * As the federales grow weak in the US and Mexico, the battle lines will advance north of the border, leaving Mexico a quiet and largely intact backwater * This is an inter-US conflict, because Americans are the most avid consumers, sellers, and prosecutors of drugs * Life in the USA gives everyone a pain that is for many people simply not survivable without drugs: either alcohol, pharmaceuticals or illegal drugs * Illegal drugs are far more cost-effective than either pharma or alcohol - government-licensed industries which are either excessively lucrative or taxed heavily * As Americans give up hope, they will need to self-medicate in ever-larger numbers * They will be far more able financially to afford illegal drugs than either pharma or alcohol. * Illegal drugs (and moonshine) are two very large post-collapse enrepreneurial opportunities within the fUSA/???? [Orlov 2005] http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dtxqwqr_20dc52sm * This is no longer a war against drugs; it is now a contest between alternative drug distribution systems * One alternative is a centralized, paramilitary organization run by CIA remnants, former military, and former police * Another alternative is ethnic mafias, which will diversify into many other kinds of trade. * The third, nautrally most cost-effective alternative will be provided by informal, local distribution networks based on barter, which will be all that is left once the dust settles * The downside of all this is that it will be hard to find anyone sober enough to operate a light switch * The upside to that is that the national electrical grid will go away, so there will be little need of that http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2009/03/bullets-from-drug-war.html http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From annewilliamson at msn.com Thu Apr 9 11:50:01 2009 From: annewilliamson at msn.com (Anne Williamson) Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 13:50:01 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Moldova In-Reply-To: <5c2e4d230904090510r29f68403u4954682c6dc37b82@mail.gmail.com> References: <5c2e4d230904090510r29f68403u4954682c6dc37b82@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: April 08, 2009 Moldova's 'Twitter Revolution': Made in America? Posted by Daniel McAdams at April 8, 2009 10:54 PM It makes for a great story-line - the kind the international media embrace with relish: thrusting young Moldovans grab their iPhones, rush to the town square, and Twitter their way to a revolution against a Communist Party that had just stolen an election. The story-line has been written with orange and with roses and tulips and almost with denim, the press reducing the phenomena in each case to a few slogans repeated until they become accepted as reality with little further analysis. Such is the case with recent events in Moldova, where even a casual reading of the vast contradictions between objective reality and the developing story-line - the "Twitter Revolution" - is glaringly obvious. The protests, which intensified Tuesday, were sparked by claims that the Communist Party of President Vladimir Voronin rigged parliamentary elections last Sunday - a vote they were widely expected to win - to gain enough of a margin to amend the constitution and extend Voronin's rule beyond that which is currently permitted. While the press lauds the "spontaneous" mass organization to overthrow Voronin, one does not have to dust the scene of the crime too carefully to see US foreign policy fingerprints all over the place. Let us begin with the Twitterers. According to a New York Times article, one of the leaders of the Twitter Revolution claimed she was able to get 15,000 people into the streets with "six people, 10 minutes for brainstorming and decision-making, several hours of disseminating information through networks, Facebook, blogs, SMSs and e-mails." That is impressive. In the same article we are told, correctly, that Moldova is among the poorest countries in Europe. The average monthly salary is approximately 2532 lei, which equals about US$230. Contrasted with the average US salary of approximately US$4,000 per month, this demonstrates the real poverty of Moldova. Yet according to the website of one of the leading mobile networks operators in Moldova, that Twitter-friendly iPhone would set back a young Moldovan 6,599 lei, or the equivalent of about two and a half times his monthly salary. For an American that would be the equivalent of a US$10,000 iPhone. Not many kids would have one. Even basic high-speed internet access on a lesser instrument would set a young Moldovan back nearly 500 lei per month, or the equivalent of US$800 for an average American. How does this impoverished nation afford such luxuries? Just as many of us cast a skeptical eye on the sudden emergence of massive plasma-screen televisions in also-poor Ukraine during the "Orange Revolution," the idea that thousands of young Moldovans are spending such sums on their Twittering seems equally implausible. So what is fueling this revolution? A brief glance at the website of one of the Moldovan NGOs leading the effort to overthrow the elected Moldovan government, that of the "Hyde Park Organization," reveals an interesting benefactor: at the bottom of the page, next to a seal of the United States, one can read that "This website is hosted free of charge through the Internet Access Training Program (IATP). IATP is a program of the Bureau of Educational & Cultural Affairs (ECA), US Department of State, funded under the Freedom Support Act (FSA)." Digging a bit further, one can see on the website of the US Agency for International Development that the United States government, through cut-out organizations like the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute, is funneling large sums of money to Moldova for programs with such fascinating titles as "Strengthening Democratic Political Activism in Moldova (SPA)." USAID boasts that this program is "cultivating new political activists who can formulate and pursue concrete political objectives." No doubt. Another program, titled the "Internet Access and Training Program" may hold a clue as to where all these Twitterers came from. According to the US government, this program "provides local communities with free access to the Internet and to extensive training in all aspects of information technology." Does the training come with iPhones? The media, with story-line already inked out, mock the Moldovan president's claims that the protests were "well designed, well thought out, coordinated, planned and paid for," but isn't that what the USAID website has already claimed? After all, to what end does the US train and fund NGOs in projects such as the "Moldova Citizen Participation Program," whose goal is to "build. the capacity of citizens to create tangible and positive change in their own communities through civic activity and democratic practices.by providing training, mentoring, and funding for citizen-initiated projects and strengthening the capacity of NGOs and citizen groups to mobilize their community, advocate for change, and hold government accountable"? In the previous color revolutions we have seen the perversion of "democracy" to mean getting enough people getting to the street to overthrow an elected government. Why bother with all this? The same reason the US funded the other color revolutions. The same reason the US announced missile defense facilities in Poland and Czech Republic. The same reason the US has propped up and provided massive military aid to a creepily unstable Mikheil Saakashvili in Georgia. Encircle Russia. Maintain the empire. In 2003 Voronin was our "democrat" when he stuck it to Russia over the breakaway region of Transnistria, refusing to sign on to the Russian settlement plan. When Voronin later mended fences with Russia the long knives came out for him. In the words of one observer of the region, this current revolt is against the communists (Voronin) who were yesterday the democrats against the communists in Transnistria. Dizzying. Demand obedience from foreign rulers or make them face the consequences. It is a project that is not only destined to fail, but is in fact in the process of failing already. And did anyone notice that we have a new president and administration in the US? The above entry can be found at: www.lewrockwell.com/blog > Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 05:10:28 -0700 > From: cb31450 at gmail.com > To: a-list at lists.econ.utah.edu > Subject: [A-List] Moldova > > Post-independence politics (1991-2009) > On January 2, 1992, Moldova introduced a market economy, liberalizing > prices, which resulted in huge inflation. From 1992 to 2001, the young > country suffered its worst economic crisis, leaving most of the > population below the poverty line.[citation needed] In 1993, a > national currency, the Moldovan leu, was introduced to replace the > Soviet ruble. The end of the planned economy also meant that > industrial enterprises would have to buy supplies and sell their goods > by themselves, and most of the management was unprepared for such a > change.[citation needed] Moldova's industry, especially machine > building, became all but defunct, and unemployment > skyrocketed.[citation needed] The economic fortunes of Moldova began > to change in 2001; since then the country has seen a steady annual > growth of between 5% and 10%. The early 2000s also saw a considerable > growth of emigration of Moldovans looking for work (mostly illegally) > in Italy, Portugal, Spain, Greece, Cyprus, > Turkey, and other countries, in addition to work in Russia.[citation > needed] Remittances from Moldovans abroad account for almost 38% of > Moldova's GDP, the second-highest percentage in the world.[41] > Officially, Moldova's annual GDP is on the order of $1,000 per capita; > however, a significant part of the economy goes unregistered due to > corruption.[citation needed] > The pro-nationalist governments of prime-ministers Mircea Druc (May > 25, 1990 - May 28, 1991), and Valeriu Muravschi (May 28, 1991 - July > 1, 1992), were followed one year after independence by a more moderate > government of Andrei Sangheli, which saw the decline of the > pro-Romanian nationalist sentiment.[42] After the 1994 elections, > Moldovan Parliament adopted measures that distanced Moldova from > Romania.[36] The new Moldovan Constitution also provided for autonomy > for Transnistria and Gagauzia. On December 23, 1994, the Parliament of > Moldova adopted a "Law on the Special Legal Status of Gagauzia", and > in 1995 it was constituted. > After winning the presidential elections of 1996, on January 15, 1997, > Petru Lucinschi, the former First Secretary of the Moldavian Communist > Party in 1989-91, became the country's second president. After the > legislative elections on March 22, 1998, an Alliance for Democracy and > Reform was formed by non-Communist parties. However, the activity of > new government of prime-minister Ion Ciubuc (January 24, 1997- > February 1, 1999) was marked by chronic political instability, which > prevented a coherent reform program.[36] The 1998 financial crisis in > Russia, Moldova's main economic partner at the time, produced an > economic crisis in the country. The standard of living plunged, with > 75% of population living below the poverty line, while the economic > disaster caused 600,000 people to eventually leave the country.[36] > New governments were formed by Ion Sturza (February 19 - November 9, > 1999) and Dumitru Braghi? (December 21, 1999 - April 19, 2001). On > July 21, 2000, the Parliament adopted an amendment to the Constitution > that transformed Moldova from a presidential to a parliamentary > republic, in which the president is elected by 3/5 of the votes in the > parliament, and no longer directly by the people.[36] > Only 3 of the 31 political parties passed the 6% threshold of the > February 25, 2001 early elections. Winning 49.9% of the vote, the > Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova gained 71 of the 101 > MPs, and on April 4, 2001, elected Vladimir Voronin as the country's > third president. A new government was formed on April 19, 2001 by > Vasile Tarlev. The country became the first post-Soviet state where a > non-reformed Communist Party returned to power.[36] In March-April > 2002, in Chi?in?u, several mass protests took place against the plans > of the government to fulfill its electoral promise and introduce > Russian as the second state language along with its compulsory study > in schools.[36] The government mainly renounced these plans.[citation > needed] Relationship between Moldova and Russia deteriorated in > November 2003 over a Russian proposal for the solution of the > Transnistrian conflict, which Moldovan authorities refused to accept > due to Western and > internal political pressure,[43] since it stipulated a 20-year > Russian military presence in Moldova. The federalization plan for > Moldova would have also turned Transnistria and Gagauzia into a > blocking minority over all major policy matters of Moldova. As of > 2006, approximately 1,200 of the 14th army personnel remain stationed > in Transnistria, guarding a large ammunitions depot at Colbasna. In > the last years, negotiations between the Transnistrian and Moldovan > leaders have been going on under the mediation of the OSCE, Russia, > and Ukraine; lately observers from the European Union and the United > States have become involved, creating a 5+2 format. > In the wake of the November 2003 deadlock with Russia, a series of > shifts in the external policy of Moldova occurred, targeted at > rapprochement with the European Union. In the context of the EU's > expansion to the east, Moldova wants to sign a Stability an > Association Agreement. It implemented its first three-year Action Plan > within the framework of the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) of the > EU.[44][45] > In the March 2005 elections, the Party of the Communists (PCRM) won > 46% of the vote, (56 of the 101 seats in the Parliament), Democratic > Moldova Block (BMD) won 28.5% of the vote (34 MPs), and the Christian > Democratic People Party (PPCD) won 9.1% (11 MPs). On April 4, 2005, > Vladimir Voronin was re-elected as country's president, supported by a > part of the opposition, and on April 8, Vasile Tarlev was again > charged as head of government.[36] On March 31, 2008, Vasile Tarlev > was replaced by Zinaida Grecean?i as head of the government. > [edit] 2009 election protests > Main article: 2009 Chi?in?u riots > Following the general elections on April 5, 2009 the Communist Party > won 50% of the votes, followed by the Liberal Party with 13% of the > votes and the Liberal Democratic Party with 12%. The opposition > leaders have protested against the outcome calling it fraudulent and > demanded a repeated election. > A report by OSCE said Sunday's vote was "generally free and fair". > However, one member of the OSCE observation team questioned that > conclusion: Baroness Emma Nicholson said that she and a number of > other team members feel that there had been some manipulation, but > they were unable to find any proof.[46] > Opposition leaders have organized a protest demonstration on April 6 > and 7, 2009, with thousands of mainly young protesters in Chi?in?u, > accusing the Communist government of electoral fraud. The > demonstration has spun out of control and turned into a riot when a > crowd of about 10,000 attacked the parliament building and broke into > the presidential offices, looting and setting them on fire.[47] The > violence on both sides (demonstrators and police) was condemned by the > OSCE.[48] Government officials, including the President, Vladimir > Voronin have called the rioting a coup d'etat attempt and have accused > Romanian nationalists of organizing it.[46] > -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 15159 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090409/d78f43a6/attachment.txt From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Fri Apr 10 19:37:48 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2009 10:37:48 +0900 Subject: [A-List] The Big Takeover Message-ID: <49DFF46C.1030009@ashisuto.co.jp> The global economic crisis isn't about money - it's about power. How Wall Street insiders are using the bailout to stage a revolution by Matt Taibbi Rollingstone.com (March 19 2009) It's over - we're officially, royally fucked. No empire can survive being rendered a permanent laughingstock, which is what happened as of a few weeks ago, when the buffoons who have been running things in this country finally went one step too far. It happened when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was forced to admit that he was once again going to have to stuff billions of taxpayer dollars into a dying insurance giant called AIG, itself a profound symbol of our national decline - a corporation that got rich insuring the concrete and steel of American industry in the country's heyday, only to destroy itself chasing phantom fortunes at the Wall Street card tables, like a dissolute nobleman gambling away the family estate in the waning days of the British Empire. _____ The Dirty Dozen: Meet the bankers and brokers responsible for the financial crisis - and the officials who let them get away with it. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26868968/the_dirty_dozen _____ The latest bailout came as AIG admitted to having just posted the largest quarterly loss in American corporate history - some $61.7 billion. In the final three months of last year, the company lost more than $27 million every hour. That's $465,000 a minute, a yearly income for a median American household every six seconds, roughly $7,750 a second. And all this happened at the end of eight straight years that America devoted to frantically chasing the shadow of a terrorist threat to no avail, eight years spent stopping every citizen at every airport to search every purse, bag, crotch and briefcase for juice boxes and explosive tubes of toothpaste. Yet in the end, our government had no mechanism for searching the balance sheets of companies that held life-or-death power over our society and was unable to spot holes in the national economy the size of Libya (whose entire GDP last year was smaller than AIG's 2008 losses). So it's time to admit it: We're fools, protagonists in a kind of gruesome comedy about the marriage of greed and stupidity. And the worst part about it is that we're still in denial - we still think this is some kind of unfortunate accident, not something that was created by the group of psychopaths on Wall Street whom we allowed to gang-rape the American Dream. When Geithner announced the new $30 billion bailout, the party line was that poor AIG was just a victim of a lot of shitty luck - bad year for business, you know, what with the financial crisis and all. Edward Liddy, the company's CEO, actually compared it to catching a cold: "The marketplace is a pretty crummy place to be right now", he said. "When the world catches pneumonia, we get it too". In a pathetic attempt at name-dropping, he even whined that AIG was being "consumed by the same issues that are driving house prices down and 401K statements down and Warren Buffet's investment portfolio down". Liddy made AIG sound like an orphan begging in a soup line, hungry and sick from being left out in someone else's financial weather. He conveniently forgot to mention that AIG had spent more than a decade systematically scheming to evade US and international regulators, or that one of the causes of its "pneumonia" was making colossal, world-sinking $500 billion bets with money it didn't have, in a toxic and completely unregulated derivatives market. Nor did anyone mention that when AIG finally got up from its seat at the Wall Street casino, broke and busted in the afterdawn light, it owed money all over town - and that a huge chunk of your taxpayer dollars in this particular bailout scam will be going to pay off the other high rollers at its table. Or that this was a casino unique among all casinos, one where middle-class taxpayers cover the bets of billionaires. People are pissed off about this financial crisis, and about this bailout, but they're not pissed off enough. The reality is that the worldwide economic meltdown and the bailout that followed were together a kind of revolution, a coup d'etat. They cemented and formalized a political trend that has been snowballing for decades: the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders, who used money to control elections, buy influence and systematically weaken financial regulations. The crisis was the coup de grace: Given virtually free rein over the economy, these same insiders first wrecked the financial world, then cunningly granted themselves nearly unlimited emergency powers to clean up their own mess. And so the gambling-addict leaders of companies like AIG end up not penniless and in jail, but with an Alien-style death grip on the Treasury and the Federal Reserve - "our partners in the government", as Liddy put it with a shockingly casual matter-of-factness after the most recent bailout. The mistake most people make in looking at the financial crisis is thinking of it in terms of money, a habit that might lead you to look at the unfolding mess as a huge bonus-killing downer for the Wall Street class. But if you look at it in purely Machiavellian terms, what you see is a colossal power grab that threatens to turn the federal government into a kind of giant Enron - a huge, impenetrable black box filled with self-dealing insiders whose scheme is the securing of individual profits at the expense of an ocean of unwitting involuntary shareholders, previously known as taxpayers. I. PATIENT ZERO The best way to understand the financial crisis is to understand the meltdown at AIG. AIG is what happens when short, bald managers of otherwise boring financial bureaucracies start seeing Brad Pitt in the mirror. This is a company that built a giant fortune across more than a century by betting on safety-conscious policyholders - people who wear seat belts and build houses on high ground - and then blew it all in a year or two by turning their entire balance sheet over to a guy who acted like making huge bets with other people's money would make his dick bigger. That guy - the Patient Zero of the global economic meltdown - was one Joseph Cassano, the head of a tiny, 400-person unit within the company called AIG Financial Products, or AIGFP. Cassano, a pudgy, balding Brooklyn College grad with beady eyes and way too much forehead, cut his teeth in the Eighties working for Mike Milken, the granddaddy of modern Wall Street debt alchemists. Milken, who pioneered the creative use of junk bonds, relied on messianic genius and a whole array of insider schemes to evade detection while wreaking financial disaster. Cassano, by contrast, was just a greedy little turd with a knack for selective accounting who ran his scam right out in the open, thanks to Washington's deregulation of the Wall Street casino. "It's all about the regulatory environment", says a government source involved with the AIG bailout. "These guys look for holes in the system, for ways they can do trades without government interference. Whatever is unregulated, all the action is going to pile into that." The mess Cassano created had its roots in an investment boom fueled in part by a relatively new type of financial instrument called a collateralized-debt obligation. A CDO is like a box full of diced-up assets. They can be anything: mortgages, corporate loans, aircraft loans, credit-card loans, even other CDOs. So as X mortgage holder pays his bill, and Y corporate debtor pays his bill, and Z credit-card debtor pays his bill, money flows into the box. The key idea behind a CDO is that there will always be at least some money in the box, regardless of how dicey the individual assets inside it are. No matter how you look at a single unemployed ex-con trying to pay the note on a six-bedroom house, he looks like a bad investment. But dump his loan in a box with a smorgasbord of auto loans, credit-card debt, corporate bonds and other crap, and you can be reasonably sure that somebody is going to pay up. Say $100 is supposed to come into the box every month. Even in an apocalypse, when $90 in payments might default, you'll still get $10. What the inventors of the CDO did is divide up the box into groups of investors and put that $10 into its own level, or "tranche". They then convinced ratings agencies like Moody's and S&P to give that top tranche the highest AAA rating - meaning it has close to zero credit risk. Suddenly, thanks to this financial seal of approval, banks had a way to turn their shittiest mortgages and other financial waste into investment-grade paper and sell them to institutional investors like pensions and insurance companies, which were forced by regulators to keep their portfolios as safe as possible. Because CDOs offered higher rates of return than truly safe products like Treasury bills, it was a win-win: Banks made a fortune selling CDOs, and big investors made much more holding them. The problem was, none of this was based on reality. "The banks knew they were selling crap", says a London-based trader from one of the bailed-out companies. To get AAA ratings, the CDOs relied not on their actual underlying assets but on crazy mathematical formulas that the banks cooked up to make the investments look safer than they really were. "They had some back room somewhere where a bunch of Indian guys who'd been doing nothing but math for God knows how many years would come up with some kind of model saying that this or that combination of debtors would only default once every 10,000 years", says one young trader who sold CDOs for a major investment bank. "It was nuts". Now that even the crappiest mortgages could be sold to conservative investors, the CDOs spurred a massive explosion of irresponsible and predatory lending. In fact, there was such a crush to underwrite CDOs that it became hard to find enough subprime mortgages - read: enough unemployed meth dealers willing to buy million-dollar homes for no money down - to fill them all. As banks and investors of all kinds took on more and more in CDOs and similar instruments, they needed some way to hedge their massive bets - some kind of insurance policy, in case the housing bubble burst and all that debt went south at the same time. This was particularly true for investment banks, many of which got stuck holding or "warehousing" CDOs when they wrote more than they could sell. And that's were Joe Cassano came in. Known for his boldness and arrogance, Cassano took over as chief of AIGFP in 2001. He was the favorite of Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, the head of AIG, who admired the younger man's hard-driving ways, even if neither he nor his successors fully understood exactly what it was that Cassano did. According to a source familiar with AIG's internal operations, Cassano basically told senior management, "You know insurance, I know investments, so you do what you do, and I'll do what I do - leave me alone". Given a free hand within the company, Cassano set out from his offices in London to sell a lucrative form of "insurance" to all those investors holding lots of CDOs. His tool of choice was another new financial instrument known as a credit-default swap, or CDS. The CDS was popularized by J P Morgan, in particular by a group of young, creative bankers who would later become known as the "Morgan Mafia", as many of them would go on to assume influential positions in the finance world. In 1994, in between booze and games of tennis at a resort in Boca Raton, Florida, the Morgan gang plotted a way to help boost the bank's returns. One of their goals was to find a way to lend more money, while working around regulations that required them to keep a set amount of cash in reserve to back those loans. What they came up with was an early version of the credit-default swap. In its simplest form, a CDS is just a bet on an outcome. Say Bank A writes a million-dollar mortgage to the Pope for a town house in the West Village. Bank A wants to hedge its mortgage risk in case the Pope can't make his monthly payments, so it buys CDS protection from Bank B, wherein it agrees to pay Bank B a premium of $1,000 a month for five years. In return, Bank B agrees to pay Bank A the full million-dollar value of the Pope's mortgage if he defaults. In theory, Bank A is covered if the Pope goes on a meth binge and loses his job. When Morgan presented their plans for credit swaps to regulators in the late Nineties, they argued that if they bought CDS protection for enough of the investments in their portfolio, they had effectively moved the risk off their books. Therefore, they argued, they should be allowed to lend more, without keeping more cash in reserve. A whole host of regulators - from the Federal Reserve to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency - accepted the argument, and Morgan was allowed to put more money on the street. What Cassano did was to transform the credit swaps that Morgan popularized into the world's largest bet on the housing boom. In theory, at least, there's nothing wrong with buying a CDS to insure your investments. Investors paid a premium to AIGFP, and in return the company promised to pick up the tab if the mortgage-backed CDOs went bust. But as Cassano went on a selling spree, the deals he made differed from traditional insurance in several significant ways. First, the party selling CDS protection didn't have to post any money upfront. When a $100 corporate bond is sold, for example, someone has to show 100 actual dollars. But when you sell a $100 CDS guarantee, you don't have to show a dime. So Cassano could sell investment banks billions in guarantees without having any single asset to back it up. Secondly, Cassano was selling so-called "naked" CDS deals. In a "naked" CDS, neither party actually holds the underlying loan. In other words, Bank B not only sells CDS protection to Bank A for its mortgage on the Pope - it turns around and sells protection to Bank C for the very same mortgage. This could go on ad nauseam: You could have Banks D through Z also betting on Bank A's mortgage. Unlike traditional insurance, Cassano was offering investors an opportunity to bet that someone else's house would burn down, or take out a term life policy on the guy with AIDS down the street. It was no different from gambling, the Wall Street version of a bunch of frat brothers betting on Jay Feely to make a field goal. Cassano was taking book for every bank that bet short on the housing market, but he didn't have the cash to pay off if the kick went wide. In a span of only seven years, Cassano sold some $500 billion worth of CDS protection, with at least $64 billion of that tied to the subprime mortgage market. AIG didn't have even a fraction of that amount of cash on hand to cover its bets, but neither did it expect it would ever need any reserves. So long as defaults on the underlying securities remained a highly unlikely proposition, AIG was essentially collecting huge and steadily climbing premiums by selling insurance for the disaster it thought would never come. Initially, at least, the revenues were enormous: AIGFP's returns went from $737 million in 1999 to $3.2 billion in 2005. Over the past seven years, the subsidiary's 400 employees were paid a total of $3.5 billion; Cassano himself pocketed at least $280 million in compensation. Everyone made their money - and then it all went to shit. II. THE REGULATORS Cassano's outrageous gamble wouldn't have been possible had he not had the good fortune to take over AIGFP just as Senator Phil Gramm - a grinning, laissez-faire ideologue from Texas - had finished engineering the most dramatic deregulation of the financial industry since Emperor Hien Tsung invented paper money in 806 AD. For years, Washington had kept a watchful eye on the nation's banks. Ever since the Great Depression, commercial banks - those that kept money on deposit for individuals and businesses - had not been allowed to double as investment banks, which raise money by issuing and selling securities. The Glass-Steagall Act, passed during the Depression, also prevented banks of any kind from getting into the insurance business. But in the late Nineties, a few years before Cassano took over AIGFP, all that changed. The Democrats, tired of getting slaughtered in the fundraising arena by Republicans, decided to throw off their old reliance on unions and interest groups and become more "business-friendly". Wall Street responded by flooding Washington with money, buying allies in both parties. In the ten-year period beginning in 1998, financial companies spent $1.7 billion on federal campaign contributions and another $3.4 billion on lobbyists. They quickly got what they paid for. In 1999, Gramm co-sponsored a bill that repealed key aspects of the Glass-Steagall Act, smoothing the way for the creation of financial megafirms like Citigroup. The move did away with the built-in protections afforded by smaller banks. In the old days, a local banker knew the people whose loans were on his balance sheet: He wasn't going to give a million-dollar mortgage to a homeless meth addict, since he would have to keep that loan on his books. But a giant merged bank might write that loan and then sell it off to some fool in China, and who cared? The very next year, Gramm compounded the problem by writing a sweeping new law called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act that made it impossible to regulate credit swaps as either gambling or securities. Commercial banks - which, thanks to Gramm, were now competing directly with investment banks for customers - were driven to buy credit swaps to loosen capital in search of higher yields. "By ruling that credit-default swaps were not gaming and not a security, the way was cleared for the growth of the market", said Eric Dinallo, head of the New York State Insurance Department. The blanket exemption meant that Joe Cassano could now sell as many CDS contracts as he wanted, building up as huge a position as he wanted, without anyone in government saying a word. "You have to remember, investment banks aren't in the business of making huge directional bets", says the government source involved in the AIG bailout. When investment banks write CDS deals, they hedge them. But insurance companies don't have to hedge. And that's what AIG did. "They just bet massively long on the housing market", says the source. "Billions and billions". In the biggest joke of all, Cassano's wheeling and dealing was regulated by the Office of Thrift Supervision, an agency that would prove to be defiantly uninterested in keeping watch over his operations. How a behemoth like AIG came to be regulated by the little-known and relatively small OTS is yet another triumph of the deregulatory instinct. Under another law passed in 1999, certain kinds of holding companies could choose the OTS as their regulator, provided they owned one or more thrifts (better known as savings-and-loans). Because the OTS was viewed as more compliant than the Fed or the Securities and Exchange Commission, companies rushed to reclassify themselves as thrifts. In 1999, AIG purchased a thrift in Delaware and managed to get approval for OTS regulation of its entire operation. Making matters even more hilarious, AIGFP - a London-based subsidiary of an American insurance company - ought to have been regulated by one of Europe's more stringent regulators, like Britain's Financial Services Authority. But the OTS managed to convince the Europeans that it had the muscle to regulate these giant companies. By 2007, the EU had conferred legitimacy to OTS supervision of three mammoth firms - GE, AIG and Ameriprise. That same year, as the subprime crisis was exploding, the Government Accountability Office criticized the OTS, noting a "disparity between the size of the agency and the diverse firms it oversees". Among other things, the GAO report noted that the entire OTS had only one insurance specialist on staff - and this despite the fact that it was the primary regulator for the world's largest insurer! "There's this notion that the regulators couldn't do anything to stop AIG", says a government official who was present during the bailout. "That's bullshit. What you have to understand is that these regulators have ultimate power. They can send you a letter and say, 'You don't exist anymore', and that's basically that. They don't even really need due process. The OTS could have said, 'We're going to pull your charter; we're going to pull your license; we're going to sue you'. And getting sued by your primary regulator is the kiss of death." When AIG finally blew up, the OTS regulator ostensibly in charge of overseeing the insurance giant - a guy named C K Lee - basically admitted that he had blown it. His mistake, Lee said, was that he believed all those credit swaps in Cassano's portfolio were "fairly benign products". Why? Because the company told him so. "The judgment the company was making was that there was no big credit risk", he explained. (Lee now works as Midwest region director of the OTS; the agency declined to make him available for an interview.) In early March, after the latest bailout of AIG, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner took what seemed to be a thinly veiled shot at the OTS, calling AIG a "huge, complex global insurance company attached to a very complicated investment bank/hedge fund that was allowed to build up without any adult supervision". But even without that "adult supervision", AIG might have been OK had it not been for a complete lack of internal controls. For six months before its meltdown, according to insiders, the company had been searching for a full-time chief financial officer and a chief risk-assessment officer, but never got around to hiring either. That meant that the eighteenth largest company in the world had no one checking to make sure its balance sheet was safe and no one keeping track of how much cash and assets the firm had on hand. The situation was so bad that when outside consultants were called in a few weeks before the bailout, senior executives were unable to answer even the most basic questions about their company - like, for instance, how much exposure the firm had to the residential-mortgage market. III. THE CRASH Ironically, when reality finally caught up to Cassano, it wasn't because the housing market crapped but because of AIG itself. Before 2005, the company's debt was rated triple-A, meaning he didn't need to post much cash to sell CDS protection: The solid creditworthiness of AIG's name was guarantee enough. But the company's crummy accounting practices eventually caused its credit rating to be downgraded, triggering clauses in the CDS contracts that forced Cassano to post substantially more collateral to back his deals. By the fall of 2007, it was evident that AIGFP's portfolio had turned poisonous, but like every good Wall Street huckster, Cassano schemed to keep his insane, Earth-swallowing gamble hidden from public view. That August, balls bulging, he announced to investors on a conference call that "it is hard for us, without being flippant, to even see a scenario within any kind of realm of reason that would see us losing $1 in any of those transactions". As he spoke, his CDS portfolio was racking up $352 million in losses. When the growing credit crunch prompted senior AIG executives to re-examine its liabilities, a company accountant named Joseph St Denis became "gravely concerned" about the CDS deals and their potential for mass destruction. Cassano responded by personally forcing the poor sap out of the firm, telling him he was "deliberately excluded" from the financial review for fear that he might "pollute the process". The following February, when AIG posted $11.5 billion in annual losses, it announced the resignation of Cassano as head of AIGFP, saying an auditor had found a "material weakness" in the CDS portfolio. But amazingly, the company not only allowed Cassano to keep $34 million in bonuses, it kept him on as a consultant for $1 million a month. In fact, Cassano remained on the payroll and kept collecting his monthly million through the end of September 2008, even after taxpayers had been forced to hand AIG $85 billion to patch up his fuck-ups. When asked in October why the company still retained Cassano at his $1 million-a-month rate despite his role in the probable downfall of Western civilization, CEO Martin Sullivan told Congress with a straight face that AIG wanted to "retain the twenty-year knowledge that Mr Cassano had". (Cassano, who is apparently hiding out in his lavish town house near Harrods in London, could not be reached for comment.) What sank AIG in the end was another credit downgrade. Cassano had written so many CDS deals that when the company was facing another downgrade to its credit rating last September, from AA to A, it needed to post billions in collateral - not only more cash than it had on its balance sheet but more cash than it could raise even if it sold off every single one of its liquid assets. Even so, management dithered for days, not believing the company was in serious trouble. AIG was a dried-up prune, sapped of any real value, and its top executives didn't even know it. On the weekend of September 13th, AIG's senior leaders were summoned to the offices of the New York Federal Reserve. Regulators from Dinallo's insurance office were there, as was Geithner, then chief of the New York Fed. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, who spent most of the weekend preoccupied with the collapse of Lehman Brothers, came in and out. Also present, for reasons that would emerge later, was Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs. The only relevant government office that wasn't represented was the regulator that should have been there all along: the OTS. "We sat down with Paulson, Geithner and Dinallo", says a person present at the negotiations. "I didn't see the OTS even once". On September 14th, according to another person present, Treasury officials presented Blankfein and other bankers in attendance with an absurd proposal: "They basically asked them to spend a day and check to see if they could raise the money privately". The laughably short time span to complete the mammoth task made the answer a foregone conclusion. At the end of the day, the bankers came back and told the government officials, gee, we checked, but we can't raise that much. And the bailout was on. A short time later, it came out that AIG was planning to pay some $90 million in deferred compensation to former executives, and to accelerate the payout of $277 million in bonuses to others - a move the company insisted was necessary to "retain key employees". When Congress balked, AIG canceled the $90 million in payments. Then, in January 2009, the company did it again. After all those years letting Cassano run wild, and after already getting caught paying out insane bonuses while on the public till, AIG decided to pay out another $450 million in bonuses. And to whom? To the 400 or so employees in Cassano's old unit, AIGFP, which is due to go out of business shortly! Yes, that's right, an average of $1.1 million in taxpayer-backed money apiece, to the very people who spent the past decade or so punching a hole in the fabric of the universe! "We, uh, needed to keep these highly expert people in their seats", AIG spokeswoman Christina Pretto says to me in early February. "But didn't these 'highly expert people' basically destroy your company?" I ask. Pretto protests, says this isn't fair. The employees at AIGFP have already taken pay cuts, she says. Not retaining them would dilute the value of the company even further, make it harder to wrap up the unit's operations in an orderly fashion. The bonuses are a nice comic touch highlighting one of the more outrageous tangents of the bailout age, namely the fact that, even with the planet in flames, some members of the Wall Street class can't even get used to the tragedy of having to fly coach. "These people need their trips to Baja, their spa treatments, their hand jobs", says an official involved in the AIG bailout, a serious look on his face, apparently not even half-kidding. "They don't function well without them". IV. THE POWER GRAB So that's the first step in wall street's power grab: making up things like credit-default swaps and collateralized-debt obligations, financial products so complex and inscrutable that ordinary American dumb people - to say nothing of federal regulators and even the CEOs of major corporations like AIG - are too intimidated to even try to understand them. That, combined with wise political investments, enabled the nation's top bankers to effectively scrap any meaningful oversight of the financial industry. In 1997 and 1998, the years leading up to the passage of Phil Gramm's fateful act that gutted Glass-Steagall, the banking, brokerage and insurance industries spent $350 million on political contributions and lobbying. Gramm alone - then the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee - collected $2.6 million in only five years. The law passed 90-8 in the Senate, with the support of 38 Democrats, including some names that might surprise you: Joe Biden, John Kerry, Tom Daschle, Dick Durbin, even John Edwards. The act helped create the too-big-to-fail financial behemoths like Citigroup, AIG and Bank of America - and in turn helped those companies slowly crush their smaller competitors, leaving the major Wall Street firms with even more money and power to lobby for further deregulatory measures. "We're moving to an oligopolistic situation", Kenneth Guenther, a top executive with the Independent Community Bankers of America, lamented after the Gramm measure was passed. The situation worsened in 2004, in an extraordinary move toward deregulation that never even got to a vote. At the time, the European Union was threatening to more strictly regulate the foreign operations of America's big investment banks if the US didn't strengthen its own oversight. So the top five investment banks got together on April 28th of that year and - with the helpful assistance of then-Goldman Sachs chief and future Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson - made a pitch to George Bush's SEC chief at the time, William Donaldson, himself a former investment banker. The banks generously volunteered to submit to new rules restricting them from engaging in excessively risky activity. In exchange, they asked to be released from any lending restrictions. The discussion about the new rules lasted just 55 minutes, and there was not a single representative of a major media outlet there to record the fateful decision. Donaldson OK'd the proposal, and the new rules were enough to get the EU to drop its threat to regulate the five firms. The only catch was, neither Donaldson nor his successor, Christopher Cox, actually did any regulating of the banks. They named a commission of seven people to oversee the five companies, whose combined assets came to total more than $4 trillion. But in the last year and a half of Cox's tenure, the group had no director and did not complete a single inspection. Great deal for the banks, which originally complained about being regulated by both Europe and the SEC, and ended up being regulated by no one. Once the capital requirements were gone, those top five banks went hog-wild, jumping ass-first into the then-raging housing bubble. One of those was Bear Stearns, which used its freedom to drown itself in bad mortgage loans. In the short period between the 2004 change and Bear's collapse, the firm's debt-to-equity ratio soared from 12-1 to an insane 33-1. Another culprit was Goldman Sachs, which also had the good fortune, around then, to see its CEO, a bald-headed Frankensteinian goon named Hank Paulson (who received an estimated $200 million tax deferral by joining the government), ascend to Treasury secretary. Freed from all capital restraints, sitting pretty with its man running the Treasury, Goldman jumped into the housing craze just like everyone else on Wall Street. Although it famously scored an $11 billion coup in 2007 when one of its trading units smartly shorted the housing market, the move didn't tell the whole story. In truth, Goldman still had a huge exposure come that fateful summer of 2008 - to none other than Joe Cassano. Goldman Sachs, it turns out, was Cassano's biggest customer, with $20 billion of exposure in Cassano's CDS book. Which might explain why Goldman chief Lloyd Blankfein was in the room with ex-Goldmanite Hank Paulson that weekend of September 13th, when the federal government was supposedly bailing out AIG. When asked why Blankfein was there, one of the government officials who was in the meeting shrugs. "One might say that it's because Goldman had so much exposure to AIGFP's portfolio", he says. "You'll never prove that, but one might suppose". Market analyst Eric Salzman is more blunt. "If AIG went down", he says, "there was a good chance Goldman would not be able to collect". The AIG bailout, in effect, was Goldman bailing out Goldman. Eventually, Paulson went a step further, elevating another ex-Goldmanite named Edward Liddy to run AIG - a company whose bailout money would be coming, in part, from the newly created TARP program, administered by another Goldman banker named Neel Kashkari. V. REPO MEN There are plenty of people who have noticed, in recent years, that when they lost their homes to foreclosure or were forced into bankruptcy because of crippling credit-card debt, no one in the government was there to rescue them. But when Goldman Sachs - a company whose average employee still made more than $350,000 last year, even in the midst of a depression - was suddenly faced with the possibility of losing money on the unregulated insurance deals it bought for its insane housing bets, the government was there in an instant to patch the hole. That's the essence of the bailout: rich bankers bailing out rich bankers, using the taxpayers' credit card. The people who have spent their lives cloistered in this Wall Street community aren't much for sharing information with the great unwashed. Because all of this shit is complicated, because most of us mortals don't know what the hell LIBOR is or how a REIT works or how to use the word "zero coupon bond" in a sentence without sounding stupid - well, then, the people who do speak this idiotic language cannot under any circumstances be bothered to explain it to us and instead spend a lot of time rolling their eyes and asking us to trust them. That roll of the eyes is a key part of the psychology of Paulsonism. The state is now being asked not just to call off its regulators or give tax breaks or funnel a few contracts to connected companies; it is intervening directly in the economy, for the sole purpose of preserving the influence of the megafirms. In essence, Paulson used the bailout to transform the government into a giant bureaucracy of entitled assholedom, one that would socialize "toxic" risks but keep both the profits and the management of the bailed-out firms in private hands. Moreover, this whole process would be done in secret, away from the prying eyes of NASCAR dads, broke-ass liberals who read translations of French novels, subprime mortgage holders and other such financial losers. Some aspects of the bailout were secretive to the point of absurdity. In fact, if you look closely at just a few lines in the Federal Reserve's weekly public disclosures, you can literally see the moment where a big chunk of your money disappeared for good. The H4 report (called "Factors Affecting Reserve Balances") summarizes the activities of the Fed each week. You can find it online, and it's pretty much the only thing the Fed ever tells the world about what it does. For the week ending February 18th, the number under the heading "Repurchase Agreements" on the table is zero. It's a significant number. Why? In the pre-crisis days, the Fed used to manage the money supply by periodically buying and selling securities on the open market through so-called Repurchase Agreements, or Repos. The Fed would typically dump $25 billion or so in cash onto the market every week, buying up Treasury bills, US securities and even mortgage-backed securities from institutions like Goldman Sachs and J P Morgan, who would then "repurchase" them in a short period of time, usually one to seven days. This was the Fed's primary mechanism for controlling interest rates: Buying up securities gives banks more money to lend, which makes interest rates go down. Selling the securities back to the banks reduces the money available for lending, which makes interest rates go up. If you look at the weekly H4 reports going back to the summer of 2007, you start to notice something alarming. At the start of the credit crunch, around August of that year, you see the Fed buying a few more Repos than usual - $33 billion or so. By November, as private-bank reserves were dwindling to alarmingly low levels, the Fed started injecting even more cash than usual into the economy: $48 billion. By late December, the number was up to $58 billion; by the following March, around the time of the Bear Stearns rescue, the Repo number had jumped to $77 billion. In the week of May 1st, 2008, the number was $115 billion - "out of control now", according to one congressional aide. For the rest of 2008, the numbers remained similarly in the stratosphere, the Fed pumping as much as $125 billion of these short-term loans into the economy - until suddenly, at the start of this year, the number drops to nothing. Zero. The reason the number has dropped to nothing is that the Fed had simply stopped using relatively transparent devices like repurchase agreements to pump its money into the hands of private companies. By early 2009, a whole series of new government operations had been invented to inject cash into the economy, most all of them completely secretive and with names you've never heard of. There is the Term Auction Facility, the Term Securities Lending Facility, the Primary Dealer Credit Facility, the Commercial Paper Funding Facility and a monster called the Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility (boasting the chat-room horror-show acronym ABCPMMMFLF). For good measure, there's also something called a Money Market Investor Funding Facility, plus three facilities called Maiden Lane I, II and III to aid bailout recipients like Bear Stearns and AIG. While the rest of America, and most of Congress, have been bugging out about the $700 billion bailout program called TARP, all of these newly created organisms in the Federal Reserve zoo have quietly been pumping not billions but trillions of dollars into the hands of private companies (at least $3 trillion so far in loans, with as much as $5.7 trillion more in guarantees of private investments). Although this technically isn't taxpayer money, it still affects taxpayers directly, because the activities of the Fed impact the economy as a whole. And this new, secretive activity by the Fed completely eclipses the TARP program in terms of its influence on the economy. No one knows who's getting that money or exactly how much of it is disappearing through these new holes in the hull of America's credit rating. Moreover, no one can really be sure if these new institutions are even temporary at all - or whether they are being set up as permanent, state-aided crutches to Wall Street, designed to systematically suck bad investments off the ledgers of irresponsible lenders. "They're supposed to be temporary", says Paul-Martin Foss, an aide to Representative Ron Paul. "But we keep getting notices every six months or so that they're being renewed. They just sort of quietly announce it." None other than disgraced senator Ted Stevens was the poor sap who made the unpleasant discovery that if Congress didn't like the Fed handing trillions of dollars to banks without any oversight, Congress could apparently go fuck itself - or so said the law. When Stevens asked the GAO about what authority Congress has to monitor the Fed, he got back a letter citing an obscure statute that nobody had ever heard of before: the Accounting and Auditing Act of 1950. The relevant section, 31 USC 714(b), dictated that congressional audits of the Federal Reserve may not include "deliberations, decisions and actions on monetary policy matters". The exemption, as Foss notes, "basically includes everything". According to the law, in other words, the Fed simply cannot be audited by Congress. Or by anyone else, for that matter. VI. WINNERS AND LOSERS Stevens isn't the only person in Congress to be given the finger by the Fed. In January, when Representative Alan Grayson of Florida asked Federal Reserve vice chairman Donald Kohn where all the money went - only $1.2 trillion had vanished by then - Kohn gave Grayson a classic eye roll, saying he would be "very hesitant" to name names because it might discourage banks from taking the money. "Has that ever happened?" Grayson asked. "Have people ever said, 'We will not take your $100 billion because people will find out about it?'" "Well, we said we would not publish the names of the borrowers, so we have no test of that", Kohn answered, visibly annoyed with Grayson's meddling. Grayson pressed on, demanding to know on what terms the Fed was lending the money. Presumably it was buying assets and making loans, but no one knew how it was pricing those assets - in other words, no one knew what kind of deal it was striking on behalf of taxpayers. So when Grayson asked if the purchased assets were "marked to market" - a methodology that assigns a concrete value to assets, based on the market rate on the day they are traded - Kohn answered, mysteriously, "The ones that have market values are marked to market". The implication was that the Fed was purchasing derivatives like credit swaps or other instruments that were basically impossible to value objectively - paying real money for God knows what. "Well, how much of them don't have market values?" asked Grayson. "How much of them are worthless?" "None are worthless", Kohn snapped. "Then why don't you mark them to market?" Grayson demanded. "Well", Kohn sighed, "we are marking the ones to market that have market values". In essence, the Fed was telling Congress to lay off and let the experts handle things. "It's like buying a car in a used-car lot without opening the hood, and saying, 'I think it's fine'", says Dan Fuss, an analyst with the investment firm Loomis Sayles. "The salesman says, 'Don't worry about it. Trust me.' It'll probably get us out of the lot, but how much farther? None of us knows." When one considers the comparatively extensive system of congressional checks and balances that goes into the spending of every dollar in the budget via the normal appropriations process, what's happening in the Fed amounts to something truly revolutionary - a kind of shadow government with a budget many times the size of the normal federal outlay, administered dictatorially by one man, Fed chairman Ben Bernanke. "We spend hours and hours and hours arguing over $10 million amendments on the floor of the Senate, but there has been no discussion about who has been receiving this $3 trillion", says Senator Bernie Sanders. "It is beyond comprehension". Count Sanders among those who don't buy the argument that Wall Street firms shouldn't have to face being outed as recipients of public funds, that making this information public might cause investors to panic and dump their holdings in these firms. "I guess if we made that public, they'd go on strike or something", he muses. And the Fed isn't the only arm of the bailout that has closed ranks. The Treasury, too, has maintained incredible secrecy surrounding its implementation even of the TARP program, which was mandated by Congress. To this date, no one knows exactly what criteria the Treasury Department used to determine which banks received bailout funds and which didn't - particularly the first $350 billion given out under Bush appointee Hank Paulson. The situation with the first TARP payments grew so absurd that when the Congressional Oversight Panel, charged with monitoring the bailout money, sent a query to Paulson asking how he decided whom to give money to, Treasury responded - and this isn't a joke - by directing the panel to a copy of the TARP application form on its website. Elizabeth Warren, the chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel, was struck nearly speechless by the response. "Do you believe that?" she says incredulously. "That's not what we had in mind". Another member of Congress, who asked not to be named, offers his own theory about the TARP process. "I think basically if you knew Hank Paulson, you got the money", he says. This cozy arrangement created yet another opportunity for big banks to devour market share at the expense of smaller regional lenders. While all the bigwigs at Citi and Goldman and Bank of America who had Paulson on speed-dial got bailed out right away - remember that TARP was originally passed because money had to be lent right now, that day, that minute, to stave off emergency - many small banks are still waiting for help. Five months into the TARP program, some not only haven't received any funds, they haven't even gotten a call back about their applications. "There's definitely a feeling among community bankers that no one up there cares much if they make it or not", says Tanya Wheeless, president of the Arizona Bankers Association. Which, of course, is exactly the opposite of what should be happening, since small, regional banks are far less guilty of the kinds of predatory lending that sank the economy. "They're not giving out subprime loans or easy credit", says Wheeless. "At the community level, it's much more bread-and-butter banking". Nonetheless, the lion's share of the bailout money has gone to the larger, so-called "systemically important" banks. "It's like Treasury is picking winners and losers", says one state banking official who asked not to be identified. This itself is a hugely important political development. In essence, the bailout accelerated the decline of regional community lenders by boosting the political power of their giant national competitors. Which, when you think about it, is insane: What had brought us to the brink of collapse in the first place was this relentless instinct for building ever-larger megacompanies, passing deregulatory measures to gradually feed all the little fish in the sea to an ever-shrinking pool of Bigger Fish. To fix this problem, the government should have slowly liquidated these monster, too-big-to-fail firms and broken them down to smaller, more manageable companies. Instead, federal regulators closed ranks and used an almost completely secret bailout process to double down on the same faulty, merger-happy thinking that got us here in the first place, creating a constellation of megafirms under government control that are even bigger, more unwieldy and more crammed to the gills with systemic risk. In essence, Paulson and his cronies turned the federal government into one gigantic, half-opaque holding company, one whose balance sheet includes the world's most appallingly large and risky hedge fund, a controlling stake in a dying insurance giant, huge investments in a group of teetering megabanks, and shares here and there in various auto-finance companies, student loans, and other failing businesses. Like AIG, this new federal holding company is a firm that has no mechanism for auditing itself and is run by leaders who have very little grasp of the daily operations of its disparate subsidiary operations. In other words, it's AIG's rip-roaringly shitty business model writ almost inconceivably massive - to echo Geithner, a huge, complex global company attached to a very complicated investment bank/hedge fund that's been allowed to build up without adult supervision. How much of what kinds of crap is actually on our balance sheet, and what did we pay for it? When exactly will the rent come due, when will the money run out? Does anyone know what the hell is going on? And on the linear spectrum of capitalism to socialism, where exactly are we now? Is there a dictionary word that even describes what we are now? It would be funny, if it weren't such a nightmare. VII. YOU DON'T GET IT The real question from here is whether the Obama administration is going to move to bring the financial system back to a place where sanity is restored and the general public can have a say in things or whether the new financial bureaucracy will remain obscure, secretive and hopelessly complex. It might not bode well that Geithner, Obama's Treasury secretary, is one of the architects of the Paulson bailouts; as chief of the New York Fed, he helped orchestrate the Goldman-friendly AIG bailout and the secretive Maiden Lane facilities used to funnel funds to the dying company. Neither did it look good when Geithner - himself a protege of notorious Goldman alum John Thain, the Merrill Lynch chief who paid out billions in bonuses after the state spent billions bailing out his firm - picked a former Goldman lobbyist named Mark Patterson to be his top aide. In fact, most of Geithner's early moves reek strongly of Paulsonism. He has continually talked about partnering with private investors to create a so-called "bad bank" that would systemically relieve private lenders of bad assets - the kind of massive, opaque, quasi-private bureaucratic nightmare that Paulson specialized in. Geithner even refloated a Paulson proposal to use TALF, one of the Fed's new facilities, to essentially lend cheap money to hedge funds to invest in troubled banks while practically guaranteeing them enormous profits. God knows exactly what this does for the taxpayer, but hedge-fund managers sure love the idea. "This is exactly what the financial system needs", said Andrew Feldstein, CEO of Blue Mountain Capital and one of the Morgan Mafia. Strangely, there aren't many people who don't run hedge funds who have expressed anything like that kind of enthusiasm for Geithner's ideas. As complex as all the finances are, the politics aren't hard to follow. By creating an urgent crisis that can only be solved by those fluent in a language too complex for ordinary people to understand, the Wall Street crowd has turned the vast majority of Americans into non-participants in their own political future. There is a reason it used to be a crime in the Confederate states to teach a slave to read: Literacy is power. In the age of the CDS and CDO, most of us are financial illiterates. By making an already too-complex economy even more complex, Wall Street has used the crisis to effect a historic, revolutionary change in our political system - transforming a democracy into a two-tiered state, one with plugged-in financial bureaucrats above and clueless customers below. The most galling thing about this financial crisis is that so many Wall Street types think they actually deserve not only their huge bonuses and lavish lifestyles but the awesome political power their own mistakes have left them in possession of. When challenged, they talk about how hard they work, the ninety-hour weeks, the stress, the failed marriages, the hemorrhoids and gallstones they all get before they hit forty. "But wait a minute", you say to them. "No one ever asked you to stay up all night eight days a week trying to get filthy rich shorting what's left of the American auto industry or selling $600 billion in toxic, irredeemable mortgages to ex-strippers on work release and Taco Bell clerks. Actually, come to think of it, why are we even giving taxpayer money to you people? Why are we not throwing your ass in jail instead?" But before you even finish saying that, they're rolling their eyes, because You Don't Get It. These people were never about anything except turning money into money, in order to get more money; valueswise they're on par with crack addicts, or obsessive sexual deviants who burgle homes to steal panties. Yet these are the people in whose hands our entire political future now rests. Good luck with that, America. And enjoy tax season. [From Issue 1075 - April 02 2009] http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26793903/the_big_takeover/ http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Sat Apr 11 06:54:05 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2009 21:54:05 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Burning our Bridges to the XXI Century Message-ID: <49E092ED.1020208@ashisuto.co.jp> by Dmitry Orlov Club Orlov (April 06 2009) The future does not resemble the past - or does it? When the lights go out, people burn candles and oil lamps, just like they used to before the electric grid came into existence. No longer accustomed to working with open flame, they tend to set things on fire, and for a while, until they regain this experience or until natural selection whittles away the truly incompetent, the neighborhood is a constant blaze. When we find out that the supermarket is out of food and that the cupboard is bare, we hunt, fish, forage, plant kitchen gardens, and start experimenting with raising poultry and rabbits. Those who are incapable of doing so, or who feel that such lowly pursuits are beneath their dignity, become dependent on the charity of those who are more adaptable, or starve. As modernity runs out of resources (those photons sequestered eons ago in fossil form, now released as carbon dioxide into the atmosphere) patterns of life naturally retreat to their pre-modern forms. If there are no more sneakers from China, we sew moccasins or whittle clogs. If we are resource-poor but resourceful, we can still weave basket-like shoes out of birch bark, stuffed with straw for insulation, called lapti. If we are truly destitute and feckless to boot, then we go barefoot. It seems commonsense to accept this reversion to norm as natural, and to strive to have enough of whatever we are going to need, be it tools for working leather, a stock of paraffin, seeds, fishing tackle, and a myriad of other similar items that comprised the pre-industrial survival kit. The last thing we should want to do is to throw these things away at first sign of economic distress and for trivial reasons. And yet that seems to be the prevailing pattern. For instance, if the expectation is that foreigners will no longer want to trade their dwindling crude oil endowment in exchange for worthless US Dollars, and that the US will lose access to two-thirds of its liquid hydrocarbons, it would make sense to make some provisions for raising food and for moving freight. Since a John Deere won't run on hay, that calls for some horses. Furthermore, now is a perfect time for farms to get "horsed up" because so many horse-owners can no longer afford the luxury of keeping a horse, and it is possible to buy a horse very, very cheaply. Many horse-owners would be perfectly happy to donate their horse and take a tax write-off rather than see their beloved pet turned into glue. Instead, horses are trucked to rending facilities across the border in Mexico, to endure incredible suffering while in transit, and then to be incompetently hacked up with machetes. Before the advent of fossil fuels, freight that could not be moved by horse and wagon moved by sail. It would therefore make perfect sense that we keep all the sailboats we currently have, because they will surely be pressed into use once other transportation options are no longer available. Keeping a sailboat afloat is not particularly expensive; there are protected coves where a boat can be kept anchored free of charge, provided it is tended to once in a while. The smaller, trailerable boats are also useful, and can keep for years on the hard, under a tarp in someone's back yard. And yet what is happening now is that sailboat owners, unable to pay the slip fees and the upkeep of their luxury toy, abandon it, simply letting it float away and eventually sink, with its mast protruding out of the water at low tide, or to wash up on a beach, where the surf pounds it into rubble. Even if the boat itself is unsuited for any practical purpose (and, thanks to the combined detrimental effects of sport and luxury on the sailboat market, there are far too many of these) then at the very least they could be stripped of Dacron sailcloth, stainless steel and bronze fittings, lead ballast, marine-grade stranded copper wiring, aluminum spars, and many other items which are both very useful and unlikely to be manufactured in the future in an economy that runs on wind, hay and firewood. The remaining hollow fiberglass husks could make interesting, long-lasting treehouses. Not that, in general, there is a lack of effort to save things. We are making an effort to save financial institutions, which are the ultimate ephemera of industrial civilization, and are absolutely guaranteed to have no reason to continue into a future in which debt, denominated in future earnings that will be meager at best, and money, which will only hold its value for as long as it guarantees access to sources of pure, concentrated energy, all steadily dwindle to nothing. It is as if the doctors decided to only try to save persistent vegetative quadriplegics with terminal cancer, or if the environmentalists decided that the endangered species list only has room for one animal: the vampire bat. It would make much more sense to try to save small businesses, such as family businesses that serve local communities, because there is a good chance that they will find a use in the future, or at least facilitate the transition. Instead, we are squandering the remaining resources on the various dinosaurs of the industrial age. I believe in providing a hopeful vision of the future as much as I believe in providing a sufficiently horrific vision of the present for it to be, in my opinion, a realistic one. However, I am beginning to feel somewhat thwarted in my efforts by this new compulsion sweeping the land to shoot oneself in the foot while simultaneously setting one's hair on fire. The only hope I can offer you today is that this current trend toward suicidal stupidity is temporary, and that it will run its course long before we completely ruin our chances for an orderly regression. http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2009/04/burning-our-bridges-to-xxi-century.html http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From suzannedk at gmail.com Sat Apr 11 01:08:57 2009 From: suzannedk at gmail.com (Suzanne de Kuyper) Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2009 09:08:57 +0200 Subject: [A-List] Fwd: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] The Big Takeover In-Reply-To: References: <49DFF40E.4060105@ashisuto.co.jp> Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Suzanne de Kuyper Date: Sat, Apr 11, 2009 at 9:08 AM Subject: Re: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] The Big Takeover To: BillTottenWeblog-owner at yahoogroups.com, "Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion." There is a crimes against humanity element to this reporting that is royally missing. Laughingstock? The reality of the mass rage and starvation world-wide this meltdown has and will cause in response is missing. That mass rage is the reason it was done so thoroughly, not the other way around. The U.S. World War Empire then swings into action, by way of millions of new NATO troops and carefully placed human elements and foreign policy legalized agreements and or secret coups...saving the world from itself. Suzanne suzannedk at gmail.com On Sat, Apr 11, 2009 at 3:36 AM, Bill Totten wrote: > > The global economic crisis isn't about money - it's about power. How > Wall Street insiders are using the bailout to stage a revolution > > by Matt Taibbi > > Rollingstone.com (March 19 2009) > > > It's over - we're officially, royally fucked. No empire can survive > being rendered a permanent laughingstock, which is what happened as of a > few weeks ago, when the buffoons who have been running things in this > country finally went one step too far. It happened when Treasury > Secretary Timothy Geithner was forced to admit that he was once again > going to have to stuff billions of taxpayer dollars into a dying > insurance giant called AIG, itself a profound symbol of our national > decline - a corporation that got rich insuring the concrete and steel of > American industry in the country's heyday, only to destroy itself > chasing phantom fortunes at the Wall Street card tables, like a > dissolute nobleman gambling away the family estate in the waning days of > the British Empire. > > _____ > > The Dirty Dozen: Meet the bankers and brokers responsible for the > financial crisis - and the officials who let them get away with it. > http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26868968/the_dirty_dozen > > _____ > > > The latest bailout came as AIG admitted to having just posted the > largest quarterly loss in American corporate history - some $61.7 > billion. In the final three months of last year, the company lost more > than $27 million every hour. That's $465,000 a minute, a yearly income > for a median American household every six seconds, roughly $7,750 a > second. And all this happened at the end of eight straight years that > America devoted to frantically chasing the shadow of a terrorist threat > to no avail, eight years spent stopping every citizen at every airport > to search every purse, bag, crotch and briefcase for juice boxes and > explosive tubes of toothpaste. Yet in the end, our government had no > mechanism for searching the balance sheets of companies that held > life-or-death power over our society and was unable to spot holes in the > national economy the size of Libya (whose entire GDP last year was > smaller than AIG's 2008 losses). > > So it's time to admit it: We're fools, protagonists in a kind of > gruesome comedy about the marriage of greed and stupidity. And the worst > part about it is that we're still in denial - we still think this is > some kind of unfortunate accident, not something that was created by the > group of psychopaths on Wall Street whom we allowed to gang-rape the > American Dream. When Geithner announced the new $30 billion bailout, the > party line was that poor AIG was just a victim of a lot of shitty luck - > bad year for business, you know, what with the financial crisis and all. > Edward Liddy, the company's CEO, actually compared it to catching a > cold: "The marketplace is a pretty crummy place to be right now", he > said. "When the world catches pneumonia, we get it too". In a pathetic > attempt at name-dropping, he even whined that AIG was being "consumed by > the same issues that are driving house prices down and 401K statements > down and Warren Buffet's investment portfolio down". > > Liddy made AIG sound like an orphan begging in a soup line, hungry and > sick from being left out in someone else's financial weather. He > conveniently forgot to mention that AIG had spent more than a decade > systematically scheming to evade US and international regulators, or > that one of the causes of its "pneumonia" was making colossal, > world-sinking $500 billion bets with money it didn't have, in a toxic > and completely unregulated derivatives market. > > Nor did anyone mention that when AIG finally got up from its seat at the > Wall Street casino, broke and busted in the afterdawn light, it owed > money all over town - and that a huge chunk of your taxpayer dollars in > this particular bailout scam will be going to pay off the other high > rollers at its table. Or that this was a casino unique among all > casinos, one where middle-class taxpayers cover the bets of billionaires. > > People are pissed off about this financial crisis, and about this > bailout, but they're not pissed off enough. The reality is that the > worldwide economic meltdown and the bailout that followed were together > a kind of revolution, a coup d'etat. They cemented and formalized a > political trend that has been snowballing for decades: the gradual > takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders, who > used money to control elections, buy influence and systematically weaken > financial regulations. > > The crisis was the coup de grace: Given virtually free rein over the > economy, these same insiders first wrecked the financial world, then > cunningly granted themselves nearly unlimited emergency powers to clean > up their own mess. And so the gambling-addict leaders of companies like > AIG end up not penniless and in jail, but with an Alien-style death grip > on the Treasury and the Federal Reserve - "our partners in the > government", as Liddy put it with a shockingly casual matter-of-factness > after the most recent bailout. > > The mistake most people make in looking at the financial crisis is > thinking of it in terms of money, a habit that might lead you to look at > the unfolding mess as a huge bonus-killing downer for the Wall Street > class. But if you look at it in purely Machiavellian terms, what you see > is a colossal power grab that threatens to turn the federal government > into a kind of giant Enron - a huge, impenetrable black box filled with > self-dealing insiders whose scheme is the securing of individual profits > at the expense of an ocean of unwitting involuntary shareholders, > previously known as taxpayers. > > I. PATIENT ZERO > > The best way to understand the financial crisis is to understand the > meltdown at AIG. AIG is what happens when short, bald managers of > otherwise boring financial bureaucracies start seeing Brad Pitt in the > mirror. This is a company that built a giant fortune across more than a > century by betting on safety-conscious policyholders - people who wear > seat belts and build houses on high ground - and then blew it all in a > year or two by turning their entire balance sheet over to a guy who > acted like making huge bets with other people's money would make his > dick bigger. > > That guy - the Patient Zero of the global economic meltdown - was one > Joseph Cassano, the head of a tiny, 400-person unit within the company > called AIG Financial Products, or AIGFP. Cassano, a pudgy, balding > Brooklyn College grad with beady eyes and way too much forehead, cut his > teeth in the Eighties working for Mike Milken, the granddaddy of modern > Wall Street debt alchemists. Milken, who pioneered the creative use of > junk bonds, relied on messianic genius and a whole array of insider > schemes to evade detection while wreaking financial disaster. Cassano, > by contrast, was just a greedy little turd with a knack for selective > accounting who ran his scam right out in the open, thanks to > Washington's deregulation of the Wall Street casino. "It's all about the > regulatory environment", says a government source involved with the AIG > bailout. "These guys look for holes in the system, for ways they can do > trades without government interference. Whatever is unregulated, all the > action is going to pile into that." > > The mess Cassano created had its roots in an investment boom fueled in > part by a relatively new type of financial instrument called a > collateralized-debt obligation. A CDO is like a box full of diced-up > assets. They can be anything: mortgages, corporate loans, aircraft > loans, credit-card loans, even other CDOs. So as X mortgage holder pays > his bill, and Y corporate debtor pays his bill, and Z credit-card debtor > pays his bill, money flows into the box. > > The key idea behind a CDO is that there will always be at least some > money in the box, regardless of how dicey the individual assets inside > it are. No matter how you look at a single unemployed ex-con trying to > pay the note on a six-bedroom house, he looks like a bad investment. But > dump his loan in a box with a smorgasbord of auto loans, credit-card > debt, corporate bonds and other crap, and you can be reasonably sure > that somebody is going to pay up. Say $100 is supposed to come into the > box every month. Even in an apocalypse, when $90 in payments might > default, you'll still get $10. What the inventors of the CDO did is > divide up the box into groups of investors and put that $10 into its own > level, or "tranche". They then convinced ratings agencies like Moody's > and S&P to give that top tranche the highest AAA rating - meaning it has > close to zero credit risk. > > Suddenly, thanks to this financial seal of approval, banks had a way to > turn their shittiest mortgages and other financial waste into > investment-grade paper and sell them to institutional investors like > pensions and insurance companies, which were forced by regulators to > keep their portfolios as safe as possible. Because CDOs offered higher > rates of return than truly safe products like Treasury bills, it was a > win-win: Banks made a fortune selling CDOs, and big investors made much > more holding them. > > The problem was, none of this was based on reality. "The banks knew they > were selling crap", says a London-based trader from one of the > bailed-out companies. To get AAA ratings, the CDOs relied not on their > actual underlying assets but on crazy mathematical formulas that the > banks cooked up to make the investments look safer than they really > were. "They had some back room somewhere where a bunch of Indian guys > who'd been doing nothing but math for God knows how many years would > come up with some kind of model saying that this or that combination of > debtors would only default once every 10,000 years", says one young > trader who sold CDOs for a major investment bank. "It was nuts". > > Now that even the crappiest mortgages could be sold to conservative > investors, the CDOs spurred a massive explosion of irresponsible and > predatory lending. In fact, there was such a crush to underwrite CDOs > that it became hard to find enough subprime mortgages - read: enough > unemployed meth dealers willing to buy million-dollar homes for no money > down - to fill them all. As banks and investors of all kinds took on > more and more in CDOs and similar instruments, they needed some way to > hedge their massive bets - some kind of insurance policy, in case the > housing bubble burst and all that debt went south at the same time. This > was particularly true for investment banks, many of which got stuck > holding or "warehousing" CDOs when they wrote more than they could sell. > And that's were Joe Cassano came in. > > Known for his boldness and arrogance, Cassano took over as chief of > AIGFP in 2001. He was the favorite of Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, the head > of AIG, who admired the younger man's hard-driving ways, even if neither > he nor his successors fully understood exactly what it was that Cassano > did. According to a source familiar with AIG's internal operations, > Cassano basically told senior management, "You know insurance, I know > investments, so you do what you do, and I'll do what I do - leave me > alone". Given a free hand within the company, Cassano set out from his > offices in London to sell a lucrative form of "insurance" to all those > investors holding lots of CDOs. His tool of choice was another new > financial instrument known as a credit-default swap, or CDS. > > The CDS was popularized by J P Morgan, in particular by a group of > young, creative bankers who would later become known as the "Morgan > Mafia", as many of them would go on to assume influential positions in > the finance world. In 1994, in between booze and games of tennis at a > resort in Boca Raton, Florida, the Morgan gang plotted a way to help > boost the bank's returns. One of their goals was to find a way to lend > more money, while working around regulations that required them to keep > a set amount of cash in reserve to back those loans. What they came up > with was an early version of the credit-default swap. > > In its simplest form, a CDS is just a bet on an outcome. Say Bank A > writes a million-dollar mortgage to the Pope for a town house in the > West Village. Bank A wants to hedge its mortgage risk in case the Pope > can't make his monthly payments, so it buys CDS protection from Bank B, > wherein it agrees to pay Bank B a premium of $1,000 a month for five > years. In return, Bank B agrees to pay Bank A the full million-dollar > value of the Pope's mortgage if he defaults. In theory, Bank A is > covered if the Pope goes on a meth binge and loses his job. > > When Morgan presented their plans for credit swaps to regulators in the > late Nineties, they argued that if they bought CDS protection for enough > of the investments in their portfolio, they had effectively moved the > risk off their books. Therefore, they argued, they should be allowed to > lend more, without keeping more cash in reserve. A whole host of > regulators - from the Federal Reserve to the Office of the Comptroller > of the Currency - accepted the argument, and Morgan was allowed to put > more money on the street. > > What Cassano did was to transform the credit swaps that Morgan > popularized into the world's largest bet on the housing boom. In theory, > at least, there's nothing wrong with buying a CDS to insure your > investments. Investors paid a premium to AIGFP, and in return the > company promised to pick up the tab if the mortgage-backed CDOs went > bust. But as Cassano went on a selling spree, the deals he made differed > from traditional insurance in several significant ways. First, the party > selling CDS protection didn't have to post any money upfront. When a > $100 corporate bond is sold, for example, someone has to show 100 actual > dollars. But when you sell a $100 CDS guarantee, you don't have to show > a dime. So Cassano could sell investment banks billions in guarantees > without having any single asset to back it up. > > Secondly, Cassano was selling so-called "naked" CDS deals. In a "naked" > CDS, neither party actually holds the underlying loan. In other words, > Bank B not only sells CDS protection to Bank A for its mortgage on the > Pope - it turns around and sells protection to Bank C for the very same > mortgage. This could go on ad nauseam: You could have Banks D through Z > also betting on Bank A's mortgage. Unlike traditional insurance, Cassano > was offering investors an opportunity to bet that someone else's house > would burn down, or take out a term life policy on the guy with AIDS > down the street. It was no different from gambling, the Wall Street > version of a bunch of frat brothers betting on Jay Feely to make a field > goal. Cassano was taking book for every bank that bet short on the > housing market, but he didn't have the cash to pay off if the kick went > wide. > > In a span of only seven years, Cassano sold some $500 billion worth of > CDS protection, with at least $64 billion of that tied to the subprime > mortgage market. AIG didn't have even a fraction of that amount of cash > on hand to cover its bets, but neither did it expect it would ever need > any reserves. So long as defaults on the underlying securities remained > a highly unlikely proposition, AIG was essentially collecting huge and > steadily climbing premiums by selling insurance for the disaster it > thought would never come. > > Initially, at least, the revenues were enormous: AIGFP's returns went > from $737 million in 1999 to $3.2 billion in 2005. Over the past seven > years, the subsidiary's 400 employees were paid a total of $3.5 billion; > Cassano himself pocketed at least $280 million in compensation. Everyone > made their money - and then it all went to shit. > > II. THE REGULATORS > > Cassano's outrageous gamble wouldn't have been possible had he not had > the good fortune to take over AIGFP just as Senator Phil Gramm - a > grinning, laissez-faire ideologue from Texas - had finished engineering > the most dramatic deregulation of the financial industry since Emperor > Hien Tsung invented paper money in 806 AD. For years, Washington had > kept a watchful eye on the nation's banks. Ever since the Great > Depression, commercial banks - those that kept money on deposit for > individuals and businesses - had not been allowed to double as > investment banks, which raise money by issuing and selling securities. > The Glass-Steagall Act, passed during the Depression, also prevented > banks of any kind from getting into the insurance business. > > But in the late Nineties, a few years before Cassano took over AIGFP, > all that changed. The Democrats, tired of getting slaughtered in the > fundraising arena by Republicans, decided to throw off their old > reliance on unions and interest groups and become more > "business-friendly". Wall Street responded by flooding Washington with > money, buying allies in both parties. In the ten-year period beginning > in 1998, financial companies spent $1.7 billion on federal campaign > contributions and another $3.4 billion on lobbyists. They quickly got > what they paid for. In 1999, Gramm co-sponsored a bill that repealed key > aspects of the Glass-Steagall Act, smoothing the way for the creation of > financial megafirms like Citigroup. The move did away with the built-in > protections afforded by smaller banks. In the old days, a local banker > knew the people whose loans were on his balance sheet: He wasn't going > to give a million-dollar mortgage to a homeless meth addict, since he > would have to keep that loan on his books. But a giant merged bank might > write that loan and then sell it off to some fool in China, and who cared? > > The very next year, Gramm compounded the problem by writing a sweeping > new law called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act that made it > impossible to regulate credit swaps as either gambling or securities. > Commercial banks - which, thanks to Gramm, were now competing directly > with investment banks for customers - were driven to buy credit swaps to > loosen capital in search of higher yields. "By ruling that > credit-default swaps were not gaming and not a security, the way was > cleared for the growth of the market", said Eric Dinallo, head of the > New York State Insurance Department. > > The blanket exemption meant that Joe Cassano could now sell as many CDS > contracts as he wanted, building up as huge a position as he wanted, > without anyone in government saying a word. "You have to remember, > investment banks aren't in the business of making huge directional > bets", says the government source involved in the AIG bailout. When > investment banks write CDS deals, they hedge them. But insurance > companies don't have to hedge. And that's what AIG did. "They just bet > massively long on the housing market", says the source. "Billions and > billions". > > In the biggest joke of all, Cassano's wheeling and dealing was regulated > by the Office of Thrift Supervision, an agency that would prove to be > defiantly uninterested in keeping watch over his operations. How a > behemoth like AIG came to be regulated by the little-known and > relatively small OTS is yet another triumph of the deregulatory > instinct. Under another law passed in 1999, certain kinds of holding > companies could choose the OTS as their regulator, provided they owned > one or more thrifts (better known as savings-and-loans). Because the OTS > was viewed as more compliant than the Fed or the Securities and Exchange > Commission, companies rushed to reclassify themselves as thrifts. In > 1999, AIG purchased a thrift in Delaware and managed to get approval for > OTS regulation of its entire operation. > > Making matters even more hilarious, AIGFP - a London-based subsidiary of > an American insurance company - ought to have been regulated by one of > Europe's more stringent regulators, like Britain's Financial Services > Authority. But the OTS managed to convince the Europeans that it had the > muscle to regulate these giant companies. By 2007, the EU had conferred > legitimacy to OTS supervision of three mammoth firms - GE, AIG and > Ameriprise. > > That same year, as the subprime crisis was exploding, the Government > Accountability Office criticized the OTS, noting a "disparity between > the size of the agency and the diverse firms it oversees". Among other > things, the GAO report noted that the entire OTS had only one insurance > specialist on staff - and this despite the fact that it was the primary > regulator for the world's largest insurer! > > "There's this notion that the regulators couldn't do anything to stop > AIG", says a government official who was present during the bailout. > "That's bullshit. What you have to understand is that these regulators > have ultimate power. They can send you a letter and say, 'You don't > exist anymore', and that's basically that. They don't even really need > due process. The OTS could have said, 'We're going to pull your charter; > we're going to pull your license; we're going to sue you'. And getting > sued by your primary regulator is the kiss of death." > > When AIG finally blew up, the OTS regulator ostensibly in charge of > overseeing the insurance giant - a guy named C K Lee - basically > admitted that he had blown it. His mistake, Lee said, was that he > believed all those credit swaps in Cassano's portfolio were "fairly > benign products". Why? Because the company told him so. "The judgment > the company was making was that there was no big credit risk", he > explained. (Lee now works as Midwest region director of the OTS; the > agency declined to make him available for an interview.) > > In early March, after the latest bailout of AIG, Treasury Secretary > Timothy Geithner took what seemed to be a thinly veiled shot at the OTS, > calling AIG a "huge, complex global insurance company attached to a very > complicated investment bank/hedge fund that was allowed to build up > without any adult supervision". But even without that "adult > supervision", AIG might have been OK had it not been for a complete lack > of internal controls. For six months before its meltdown, according to > insiders, the company had been searching for a full-time chief financial > officer and a chief risk-assessment officer, but never got around to > hiring either. That meant that the eighteenth largest company in the > world had no one checking to make sure its balance sheet was safe and no > one keeping track of how much cash and assets the firm had on hand. The > situation was so bad that when outside consultants were called in a few > weeks before the bailout, senior executives were unable to answer even > the most basic questions about their company - like, for instance, how > much exposure the firm had to the residential-mortgage market. > > III. THE CRASH > > Ironically, when reality finally caught up to Cassano, it wasn't because > the housing market crapped but because of AIG itself. Before 2005, the > company's debt was rated triple-A, meaning he didn't need to post much > cash to sell CDS protection: The solid creditworthiness of AIG's name > was guarantee enough. But the company's crummy accounting practices > eventually caused its credit rating to be downgraded, triggering clauses > in the CDS contracts that forced Cassano to post substantially more > collateral to back his deals. > > By the fall of 2007, it was evident that AIGFP's portfolio had turned > poisonous, but like every good Wall Street huckster, Cassano schemed to > keep his insane, Earth-swallowing gamble hidden from public view. That > August, balls bulging, he announced to investors on a conference call > that "it is hard for us, without being flippant, to even see a scenario > within any kind of realm of reason that would see us losing $1 in any of > those transactions". As he spoke, his CDS portfolio was racking up $352 > million in losses. When the growing credit crunch prompted senior AIG > executives to re-examine its liabilities, a company accountant named > Joseph St Denis became "gravely concerned" about the CDS deals and their > potential for mass destruction. Cassano responded by personally forcing > the poor sap out of the firm, telling him he was "deliberately excluded" > from the financial review for fear that he might "pollute the process". > > The following February, when AIG posted $11.5 billion in annual losses, > it announced the resignation of Cassano as head of AIGFP, saying an > auditor had found a "material weakness" in the CDS portfolio. But > amazingly, the company not only allowed Cassano to keep $34 million in > bonuses, it kept him on as a consultant for $1 million a month. In fact, > Cassano remained on the payroll and kept collecting his monthly million > through the end of September 2008, even after taxpayers had been forced > to hand AIG $85 billion to patch up his fuck-ups. When asked in October > why the company still retained Cassano at his $1 million-a-month rate > despite his role in the probable downfall of Western civilization, CEO > Martin Sullivan told Congress with a straight face that AIG wanted to > "retain the twenty-year knowledge that Mr Cassano had". (Cassano, who is > apparently hiding out in his lavish town house near Harrods in London, > could not be reached for comment.) > > What sank AIG in the end was another credit downgrade. Cassano had > written so many CDS deals that when the company was facing another > downgrade to its credit rating last September, from AA to A, it needed > to post billions in collateral - not only more cash than it had on its > balance sheet but more cash than it could raise even if it sold off > every single one of its liquid assets. Even so, management dithered for > days, not believing the company was in serious trouble. AIG was a > dried-up prune, sapped of any real value, and its top executives didn't > even know it. > > On the weekend of September 13th, AIG's senior leaders were summoned to > the offices of the New York Federal Reserve. Regulators from Dinallo's > insurance office were there, as was Geithner, then chief of the New York > Fed. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, who spent most of the weekend > preoccupied with the collapse of Lehman Brothers, came in and out. Also > present, for reasons that would emerge later, was Lloyd Blankfein, CEO > of Goldman Sachs. The only relevant government office that wasn't > represented was the regulator that should have been there all along: the > OTS. > > "We sat down with Paulson, Geithner and Dinallo", says a person present > at the negotiations. "I didn't see the OTS even once". > > On September 14th, according to another person present, Treasury > officials presented Blankfein and other bankers in attendance with an > absurd proposal: "They basically asked them to spend a day and check to > see if they could raise the money privately". The laughably short time > span to complete the mammoth task made the answer a foregone conclusion. > At the end of the day, the bankers came back and told the government > officials, gee, we checked, but we can't raise that much. And the > bailout was on. > > A short time later, it came out that AIG was planning to pay some $90 > million in deferred compensation to former executives, and to accelerate > the payout of $277 million in bonuses to others - a move the company > insisted was necessary to "retain key employees". When Congress balked, > AIG canceled the $90 million in payments. > > Then, in January 2009, the company did it again. After all those years > letting Cassano run wild, and after already getting caught paying out > insane bonuses while on the public till, AIG decided to pay out another > $450 million in bonuses. And to whom? To the 400 or so employees in > Cassano's old unit, AIGFP, which is due to go out of business shortly! > Yes, that's right, an average of $1.1 million in taxpayer-backed money > apiece, to the very people who spent the past decade or so punching a > hole in the fabric of the universe! > > "We, uh, needed to keep these highly expert people in their seats", AIG > spokeswoman Christina Pretto says to me in early February. > > "But didn't these 'highly expert people' basically destroy your > company?" I ask. > > Pretto protests, says this isn't fair. The employees at AIGFP have > already taken pay cuts, she says. Not retaining them would dilute the > value of the company even further, make it harder to wrap up the unit's > operations in an orderly fashion. > > The bonuses are a nice comic touch highlighting one of the more > outrageous tangents of the bailout age, namely the fact that, even with > the planet in flames, some members of the Wall Street class can't even > get used to the tragedy of having to fly coach. "These people need their > trips to Baja, their spa treatments, their hand jobs", says an official > involved in the AIG bailout, a serious look on his face, apparently not > even half-kidding. "They don't function well without them". > > IV. THE POWER GRAB > > So that's the first step in wall street's power grab: making up things > like credit-default swaps and collateralized-debt obligations, financial > products so complex and inscrutable that ordinary American dumb people - > to say nothing of federal regulators and even the CEOs of major > corporations like AIG - are too intimidated to even try to understand > them. That, combined with wise political investments, enabled the > nation's top bankers to effectively scrap any meaningful oversight of > the financial industry. In 1997 and 1998, the years leading up to the > passage of Phil Gramm's fateful act that gutted Glass-Steagall, the > banking, brokerage and insurance industries spent $350 million on > political contributions and lobbying. Gramm alone - then the chairman of > the Senate Banking Committee - collected $2.6 million in only five > years. The law passed 90-8 in the Senate, with the support of 38 > Democrats, including some names that might surprise you: Joe Biden, John > Kerry, Tom Daschle, Dick Durbin, even John Edwards. > > The act helped create the too-big-to-fail financial behemoths like > Citigroup, AIG and Bank of America - and in turn helped those companies > slowly crush their smaller competitors, leaving the major Wall Street > firms with even more money and power to lobby for further deregulatory > measures. "We're moving to an oligopolistic situation", Kenneth > Guenther, a top executive with the Independent Community Bankers of > America, lamented after the Gramm measure was passed. > > The situation worsened in 2004, in an extraordinary move toward > deregulation that never even got to a vote. At the time, the European > Union was threatening to more strictly regulate the foreign operations > of America's big investment banks if the US didn't strengthen its own > oversight. So the top five investment banks got together on April 28th > of that year and - with the helpful assistance of then-Goldman Sachs > chief and future Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson - made a pitch to > George Bush's SEC chief at the time, William Donaldson, himself a former > investment banker. The banks generously volunteered to submit to new > rules restricting them from engaging in excessively risky activity. In > exchange, they asked to be released from any lending restrictions. The > discussion about the new rules lasted just 55 minutes, and there was not > a single representative of a major media outlet there to record the > fateful decision. > > Donaldson OK'd the proposal, and the new rules were enough to get the EU > to drop its threat to regulate the five firms. The only catch was, > neither Donaldson nor his successor, Christopher Cox, actually did any > regulating of the banks. They named a commission of seven people to > oversee the five companies, whose combined assets came to total more > than $4 trillion. But in the last year and a half of Cox's tenure, the > group had no director and did not complete a single inspection. Great > deal for the banks, which originally complained about being regulated by > both Europe and the SEC, and ended up being regulated by no one. > > Once the capital requirements were gone, those top five banks went > hog-wild, jumping ass-first into the then-raging housing bubble. One of > those was Bear Stearns, which used its freedom to drown itself in bad > mortgage loans. In the short period between the 2004 change and Bear's > collapse, the firm's debt-to-equity ratio soared from 12-1 to an insane > 33-1. Another culprit was Goldman Sachs, which also had the good > fortune, around then, to see its CEO, a bald-headed Frankensteinian goon > named Hank Paulson (who received an estimated $200 million tax deferral > by joining the government), ascend to Treasury secretary. > > Freed from all capital restraints, sitting pretty with its man running > the Treasury, Goldman jumped into the housing craze just like everyone > else on Wall Street. Although it famously scored an $11 billion coup in > 2007 when one of its trading units smartly shorted the housing market, > the move didn't tell the whole story. In truth, Goldman still had a huge > exposure come that fateful summer of 2008 - to none other than Joe Cassano. > > Goldman Sachs, it turns out, was Cassano's biggest customer, with $20 > billion of exposure in Cassano's CDS book. Which might explain why > Goldman chief Lloyd Blankfein was in the room with ex-Goldmanite Hank > Paulson that weekend of September 13th, when the federal government was > supposedly bailing out AIG. > > When asked why Blankfein was there, one of the government officials who > was in the meeting shrugs. "One might say that it's because Goldman had > so much exposure to AIGFP's portfolio", he says. "You'll never prove > that, but one might suppose". > > Market analyst Eric Salzman is more blunt. "If AIG went down", he says, > "there was a good chance Goldman would not be able to collect". The AIG > bailout, in effect, was Goldman bailing out Goldman. > > Eventually, Paulson went a step further, elevating another ex-Goldmanite > named Edward Liddy to run AIG - a company whose bailout money would be > coming, in part, from the newly created TARP program, administered by > another Goldman banker named Neel Kashkari. > > V. REPO MEN > > There are plenty of people who have noticed, in recent years, that when > they lost their homes to foreclosure or were forced into bankruptcy > because of crippling credit-card debt, no one in the government was > there to rescue them. But when Goldman Sachs - a company whose average > employee still made more than $350,000 last year, even in the midst of a > depression - was suddenly faced with the possibility of losing money on > the unregulated insurance deals it bought for its insane housing bets, > the government was there in an instant to patch the hole. That's the > essence of the bailout: rich bankers bailing out rich bankers, using the > taxpayers' credit card. > > The people who have spent their lives cloistered in this Wall Street > community aren't much for sharing information with the great unwashed. > Because all of this shit is complicated, because most of us mortals > don't know what the hell LIBOR is or how a REIT works or how to use the > word "zero coupon bond" in a sentence without sounding stupid - well, > then, the people who do speak this idiotic language cannot under any > circumstances be bothered to explain it to us and instead spend a lot of > time rolling their eyes and asking us to trust them. > > That roll of the eyes is a key part of the psychology of Paulsonism. The > state is now being asked not just to call off its regulators or give tax > breaks or funnel a few contracts to connected companies; it is > intervening directly in the economy, for the sole purpose of preserving > the influence of the megafirms. In essence, Paulson used the bailout to > transform the government into a giant bureaucracy of entitled > assholedom, one that would socialize "toxic" risks but keep both the > profits and the management of the bailed-out firms in private hands. > Moreover, this whole process would be done in secret, away from the > prying eyes of NASCAR dads, broke-ass liberals who read translations of > French novels, subprime mortgage holders and other such financial losers. > > Some aspects of the bailout were secretive to the point of absurdity. In > fact, if you look closely at just a few lines in the Federal Reserve's > weekly public disclosures, you can literally see the moment where a big > chunk of your money disappeared for good. The H4 report (called "Factors > Affecting Reserve Balances") summarizes the activities of the Fed each > week. You can find it online, and it's pretty much the only thing the > Fed ever tells the world about what it does. For the week ending > February 18th, the number under the heading "Repurchase Agreements" on > the table is zero. It's a significant number. > > Why? In the pre-crisis days, the Fed used to manage the money supply by > periodically buying and selling securities on the open market through > so-called Repurchase Agreements, or Repos. The Fed would typically dump > $25 billion or so in cash onto the market every week, buying up Treasury > bills, US securities and even mortgage-backed securities from > institutions like Goldman Sachs and J P Morgan, who would then > "repurchase" them in a short period of time, usually one to seven days. > This was the Fed's primary mechanism for controlling interest rates: > Buying up securities gives banks more money to lend, which makes > interest rates go down. Selling the securities back to the banks reduces > the money available for lending, which makes interest rates go up. > > If you look at the weekly H4 reports going back to the summer of 2007, > you start to notice something alarming. At the start of the credit > crunch, around August of that year, you see the Fed buying a few more > Repos than usual - $33 billion or so. By November, as private-bank > reserves were dwindling to alarmingly low levels, the Fed started > injecting even more cash than usual into the economy: $48 billion. By > late December, the number was up to $58 billion; by the following March, > around the time of the Bear Stearns rescue, the Repo number had jumped > to $77 billion. In the week of May 1st, 2008, the number was $115 > billion - "out of control now", according to one congressional aide. For > the rest of 2008, the numbers remained similarly in the stratosphere, > the Fed pumping as much as $125 billion of these short-term loans into > the economy - until suddenly, at the start of this year, the number > drops to nothing. Zero. > > The reason the number has dropped to nothing is that the Fed had simply > stopped using relatively transparent devices like repurchase agreements > to pump its money into the hands of private companies. By early 2009, a > whole series of new government operations had been invented to inject > cash into the economy, most all of them completely secretive and with > names you've never heard of. There is the Term Auction Facility, the > Term Securities Lending Facility, the Primary Dealer Credit Facility, > the Commercial Paper Funding Facility and a monster called the > Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity > Facility (boasting the chat-room horror-show acronym ABCPMMMFLF). For > good measure, there's also something called a Money Market Investor > Funding Facility, plus three facilities called Maiden Lane I, II and III > to aid bailout recipients like Bear Stearns and AIG. > > While the rest of America, and most of Congress, have been bugging out > about the $700 billion bailout program called TARP, all of these newly > created organisms in the Federal Reserve zoo have quietly been pumping > not billions but trillions of dollars into the hands of private > companies (at least $3 trillion so far in loans, with as much as $5.7 > trillion more in guarantees of private investments). Although this > technically isn't taxpayer money, it still affects taxpayers directly, > because the activities of the Fed impact the economy as a whole. And > this new, secretive activity by the Fed completely eclipses the TARP > program in terms of its influence on the economy. > > No one knows who's getting that money or exactly how much of it is > disappearing through these new holes in the hull of America's credit > rating. Moreover, no one can really be sure if these new institutions > are even temporary at all - or whether they are being set up as > permanent, state-aided crutches to Wall Street, designed to > systematically suck bad investments off the ledgers of irresponsible > lenders. > > "They're supposed to be temporary", says Paul-Martin Foss, an aide to > Representative Ron Paul. "But we keep getting notices every six months > or so that they're being renewed. They just sort of quietly announce it." > > None other than disgraced senator Ted Stevens was the poor sap who made > the unpleasant discovery that if Congress didn't like the Fed handing > trillions of dollars to banks without any oversight, Congress could > apparently go fuck itself - or so said the law. When Stevens asked the > GAO about what authority Congress has to monitor the Fed, he got back a > letter citing an obscure statute that nobody had ever heard of before: > the Accounting and Auditing Act of 1950. The relevant section, 31 USC > 714(b), dictated that congressional audits of the Federal Reserve may > not include "deliberations, decisions and actions on monetary policy > matters". The exemption, as Foss notes, "basically includes everything". > According to the law, in other words, the Fed simply cannot be audited > by Congress. Or by anyone else, for that matter. > > VI. WINNERS AND LOSERS > > Stevens isn't the only person in Congress to be given the finger by the > Fed. In January, when Representative Alan Grayson of Florida asked > Federal Reserve vice chairman Donald Kohn where all the money went - > only $1.2 trillion had vanished by then - Kohn gave Grayson a classic > eye roll, saying he would be "very hesitant" to name names because it > might discourage banks from taking the money. > > "Has that ever happened?" Grayson asked. "Have people ever said, 'We > will not take your $100 billion because people will find out about it?'" > > "Well, we said we would not publish the names of the borrowers, so we > have no test of that", Kohn answered, visibly annoyed with Grayson's > meddling. > > Grayson pressed on, demanding to know on what terms the Fed was lending > the money. Presumably it was buying assets and making loans, but no one > knew how it was pricing those assets - in other words, no one knew what > kind of deal it was striking on behalf of taxpayers. So when Grayson > asked if the purchased assets were "marked to market" - a methodology > that assigns a concrete value to assets, based on the market rate on the > day they are traded - Kohn answered, mysteriously, "The ones that have > market values are marked to market". The implication was that the Fed > was purchasing derivatives like credit swaps or other instruments that > were basically impossible to value objectively - paying real money for > God knows what. > > "Well, how much of them don't have market values?" asked Grayson. "How > much of them are worthless?" > > "None are worthless", Kohn snapped. > > "Then why don't you mark them to market?" Grayson demanded. > > "Well", Kohn sighed, "we are marking the ones to market that have market > values". > > In essence, the Fed was telling Congress to lay off and let the experts > handle things. "It's like buying a car in a used-car lot without opening > the hood, and saying, 'I think it's fine'", says Dan Fuss, an analyst > with the investment firm Loomis Sayles. "The salesman says, 'Don't worry > about it. Trust me.' It'll probably get us out of the lot, but how much > farther? None of us knows." > > When one considers the comparatively extensive system of congressional > checks and balances that goes into the spending of every dollar in the > budget via the normal appropriations process, what's happening in the > Fed amounts to something truly revolutionary - a kind of shadow > government with a budget many times the size of the normal federal > outlay, administered dictatorially by one man, Fed chairman Ben > Bernanke. "We spend hours and hours and hours arguing over $10 million > amendments on the floor of the Senate, but there has been no discussion > about who has been receiving this $3 trillion", says Senator Bernie > Sanders. "It is beyond comprehension". > > Count Sanders among those who don't buy the argument that Wall Street > firms shouldn't have to face being outed as recipients of public funds, > that making this information public might cause investors to panic and > dump their holdings in these firms. "I guess if we made that public, > they'd go on strike or something", he muses. > > And the Fed isn't the only arm of the bailout that has closed ranks. The > Treasury, too, has maintained incredible secrecy surrounding its > implementation even of the TARP program, which was mandated by Congress. > To this date, no one knows exactly what criteria the Treasury Department > used to determine which banks received bailout funds and which didn't - > particularly the first $350 billion given out under Bush appointee Hank > Paulson. > > The situation with the first TARP payments grew so absurd that when the > Congressional Oversight Panel, charged with monitoring the bailout > money, sent a query to Paulson asking how he decided whom to give money > to, Treasury responded - and this isn't a joke - by directing the panel > to a copy of the TARP application form on its website. Elizabeth Warren, > the chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel, was struck nearly > speechless by the response. > > "Do you believe that?" she says incredulously. "That's not what we had > in mind". > > Another member of Congress, who asked not to be named, offers his own > theory about the TARP process. "I think basically if you knew Hank > Paulson, you got the money", he says. > > This cozy arrangement created yet another opportunity for big banks to > devour market share at the expense of smaller regional lenders. While > all the bigwigs at Citi and Goldman and Bank of America who had Paulson > on speed-dial got bailed out right away - remember that TARP was > originally passed because money had to be lent right now, that day, that > minute, to stave off emergency - many small banks are still waiting for > help. Five months into the TARP program, some not only haven't received > any funds, they haven't even gotten a call back about their applications. > > "There's definitely a feeling among community bankers that no one up > there cares much if they make it or not", says Tanya Wheeless, president > of the Arizona Bankers Association. > > Which, of course, is exactly the opposite of what should be happening, > since small, regional banks are far less guilty of the kinds of > predatory lending that sank the economy. "They're not giving out > subprime loans or easy credit", says Wheeless. "At the community level, > it's much more bread-and-butter banking". > > Nonetheless, the lion's share of the bailout money has gone to the > larger, so-called "systemically important" banks. "It's like Treasury is > picking winners and losers", says one state banking official who asked > not to be identified. > > This itself is a hugely important political development. In essence, the > bailout accelerated the decline of regional community lenders by > boosting the political power of their giant national competitors. > > Which, when you think about it, is insane: What had brought us to the > brink of collapse in the first place was this relentless instinct for > building ever-larger megacompanies, passing deregulatory measures to > gradually feed all the little fish in the sea to an ever-shrinking pool > of Bigger Fish. To fix this problem, the government should have slowly > liquidated these monster, too-big-to-fail firms and broken them down to > smaller, more manageable companies. Instead, federal regulators closed > ranks and used an almost completely secret bailout process to double > down on the same faulty, merger-happy thinking that got us here in the > first place, creating a constellation of megafirms under government > control that are even bigger, more unwieldy and more crammed to the > gills with systemic risk. > > In essence, Paulson and his cronies turned the federal government into > one gigantic, half-opaque holding company, one whose balance sheet > includes the world's most appallingly large and risky hedge fund, a > controlling stake in a dying insurance giant, huge investments in a > group of teetering megabanks, and shares here and there in various > auto-finance companies, student loans, and other failing businesses. > Like AIG, this new federal holding company is a firm that has no > mechanism for auditing itself and is run by leaders who have very little > grasp of the daily operations of its disparate subsidiary operations. > > In other words, it's AIG's rip-roaringly shitty business model writ > almost inconceivably massive - to echo Geithner, a huge, complex global > company attached to a very complicated investment bank/hedge fund that's > been allowed to build up without adult supervision. How much of what > kinds of crap is actually on our balance sheet, and what did we pay for > it? When exactly will the rent come due, when will the money run out? > Does anyone know what the hell is going on? And on the linear spectrum > of capitalism to socialism, where exactly are we now? Is there a > dictionary word that even describes what we are now? It would be funny, > if it weren't such a nightmare. > > VII. YOU DON'T GET IT > > The real question from here is whether the Obama administration is going > to move to bring the financial system back to a place where sanity is > restored and the general public can have a say in things or whether the > new financial bureaucracy will remain obscure, secretive and hopelessly > complex. It might not bode well that Geithner, Obama's Treasury > secretary, is one of the architects of the Paulson bailouts; as chief of > the New York Fed, he helped orchestrate the Goldman-friendly AIG bailout > and the secretive Maiden Lane facilities used to funnel funds to the > dying company. Neither did it look good when Geithner - himself a > protege of notorious Goldman alum John Thain, the Merrill Lynch chief > who paid out billions in bonuses after the state spent billions bailing > out his firm - picked a former Goldman lobbyist named Mark Patterson to > be his top aide. > > In fact, most of Geithner's early moves reek strongly of Paulsonism. He > has continually talked about partnering with private investors to create > a so-called "bad bank" that would systemically relieve private lenders > of bad assets - the kind of massive, opaque, quasi-private bureaucratic > nightmare that Paulson specialized in. Geithner even refloated a Paulson > proposal to use TALF, one of the Fed's new facilities, to essentially > lend cheap money to hedge funds to invest in troubled banks while > practically guaranteeing them enormous profits. > > God knows exactly what this does for the taxpayer, but hedge-fund > managers sure love the idea. "This is exactly what the financial system > needs", said Andrew Feldstein, CEO of Blue Mountain Capital and one of > the Morgan Mafia. Strangely, there aren't many people who don't run > hedge funds who have expressed anything like that kind of enthusiasm for > Geithner's ideas. > > As complex as all the finances are, the politics aren't hard to follow. > By creating an urgent crisis that can only be solved by those fluent in > a language too complex for ordinary people to understand, the Wall > Street crowd has turned the vast majority of Americans into > non-participants in their own political future. There is a reason it > used to be a crime in the Confederate states to teach a slave to read: > Literacy is power. In the age of the CDS and CDO, most of us are > financial illiterates. By making an already too-complex economy even > more complex, Wall Street has used the crisis to effect a historic, > revolutionary change in our political system - transforming a democracy > into a two-tiered state, one with plugged-in financial bureaucrats above > and clueless customers below. > > The most galling thing about this financial crisis is that so many Wall > Street types think they actually deserve not only their huge bonuses and > lavish lifestyles but the awesome political power their own mistakes > have left them in possession of. When challenged, they talk about how > hard they work, the ninety-hour weeks, the stress, the failed marriages, > the hemorrhoids and gallstones they all get before they hit forty. > > "But wait a minute", you say to them. "No one ever asked you to stay up > all night eight days a week trying to get filthy rich shorting what's > left of the American auto industry or selling $600 billion in toxic, > irredeemable mortgages to ex-strippers on work release and Taco Bell > clerks. Actually, come to think of it, why are we even giving taxpayer > money to you people? Why are we not throwing your ass in jail instead?" > > But before you even finish saying that, they're rolling their eyes, > because You Don't Get It. These people were never about anything except > turning money into money, in order to get more money; valueswise they're > on par with crack addicts, or obsessive sexual deviants who burgle homes > to steal panties. Yet these are the people in whose hands our entire > political future now rests. > > Good luck with that, America. And enjoy tax season. > > [From Issue 1075 - April 02 2009] > > http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26793903/the_big_takeover/ > > > TO POST A COMMENT, OR TO READ COMMENTS POSTED BY OTHERS, please click > on the word "comment" highlighted at the end of the version of this > essay posted at http://billtotten.blogspot.com/ > > > _______________________________________________ > Rad-Green mailing list > Rad-Green at lists.econ.utah.edu > To change your options or unsubscribe go to: > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green > -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 60349 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090411/c5cc7c21/attachment.txt From nscchicago at igc.org Sat Apr 11 14:24:20 2009 From: nscchicago at igc.org (NSC WORKERS COOP) Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2009 15:24:20 -0500 Subject: [A-List] MOTION FOR EMERGENCY INJUNCTION AGAINST 2016 CHICAGO OLYMPICS Message-ID: (Here's Haiti looking at you) Tom Baker here forwarding for Pan African Roots to you on my list. For those organizing to challenge the hoopla, this is a tool to include in your think. Media Advisory means send it out. the guarantee made by the Chicago 2016 committee and the City of Chicago in their bid book, that there will be no 1st Amendment-protected protests in Chicago and its vicinity one week before, during and one week after the 2016 Olympic Games is unconstitutional and unenforceable. "There is no 1st Amendment-protected right or compelling state interest to hold an Olympic event in Chicago ," Mr. Brown said. "But we do have a 1st Amendment-protected right to hold protests before, during and after the Games; and we will exercise that right!" MEDIA ADVISORY Please Forward! Tuesday, April 7, 2009 For more information, contact Bob Brown, co-director Pan-African Roots paroots02 at yahoo.com Office: (202) 544-9355 Motion for Emergency Injunction against 2016 Olympic Games in Chicago On Monday, April 6, 2009, Bob Brown, co-director of Pan-African Roots, filed pro se, in the Circuit Court of Cook County , an emergency motion for a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction against Chicago 's bid to host the 2016 Olympic Games. The Chicago 2016 committee; Patrick G. Ryan, its Chairman and CEO; the City of Chicago ; Mayor Richard M. Daley; the City Council of Chicago and Alderman Edward M. Burke are named as Defendants. Copies of the Emergency Motion, Complaint and requested Order were served on Defendants. A complimentary copy was sent to the United States Olympic Committee and the International Olympic Committee's evaluation team which arrived in the Windy City on April 2d, for a site visit. Mr. Brown argues, among other concerns, that the guarantee made by the Chicago 2016 committee and the City of Chicago in their bid book, that there will be no 1st Amendment-protected protests in Chicago and its vicinity one week before, during and one week after the 2016 Olympic Games is unconstitutional and unenforceable. "There is no 1st Amendment-protected right or compelling state interest to hold an Olympic event in Chicago ," Mr. Brown said. "But we do have a 1st Amendment-protected right to hold protests before, during and after the Games; and we will exercise that right!" Mr. Brown also argues that the Chicago 2016 committee and all of its stakeholders are in knowing, willful and deceitful violation of the Chicago Slavery Era Disclosure Ordinance. They have failed to file, and/or committed perjury on, their Economic Disclosure Statement, which includes a Certificate of Slavery Era Business. There are 205 National Olympic Committees in the International Olympic Committee. All of them except the United States Olympic Committee are owned, controlled and financed by their respective governments. All of them must file search and disclose their slavery era recrods if they are to receive any benefits, financial or material from the City of Chicago. At least 6 countries in Europe, dozens of countries in Africa, and every country in the Western Hemisphere were involved, in one way or another, in the Transatlantic slave trade and slavery. "The Chicago Slavery Era Records Disclosure Ordinance is crystal clear," Mr. Brown said, "failure to file an Economic Disclosure Statement and to certify that you have searched and disclosed any and all of your and your predecessor entities' slavery era records, or lying that you did, is a crime in the City of Chicago ." "No slavery era records, no Olympic Games in Chicago ," he declared! "We are honored to file this lawsuit on the eve of the Durban Review Conference which will convene in Geneva, Switzerland from April 20-24, 2009," he continued. President Obama, and the United States government, might boycott the meeting, unfortunately, but Bob Brown will be there." Mr. Brown is asking the Court for declaratory judgment and injunctive relief. For more information and/or a copy of the filings, contact us at paroots02 at yahoo.com. The hearing was continued until 9:15 am, today, April 7, 2009 in Room 2301 of the Daley Center, 50 Wst Washington Street, Chicago, IL. We invite all who in the area to stop by the courtroom, and observe "justice," Chicago-style! - 30 - -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 7416 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090411/061f13ed/attachment.txt -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 3714 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090411/061f13ed/attachment.jpeg From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Sun Apr 12 05:51:29 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Sun, 12 Apr 2009 20:51:29 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Obama's Top Economic Adviser is Greedy and Highly Compromised Message-ID: <49E1D5C1.3090009@ashisuto.co.jp> by Matt Taibbi, True/Slant AlterNet (April 10 2009) "But Summers, a leading architect of the administration's economic policies and response to the global recession, appears to have collected the most income. Financial institutions including JP Morgan, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch paid Summers for speaking appearances in 2008. Fees ranged from $45,000 for a November 12 Merrill Lynch appearance to $135,000 for an April 16 visit to Goldman Sachs, according to his disclosure form." - Washingtonpost.com So I guess that $45,000 speaking fee from Merrill Lynch wasn't technically a bribe because Summers wasn't named to Obama's economic transition team until November 24 - a full twelve days later. I'm sure Larry Summers had absolutely no inkling whatsoever that he was going to be one of the key advisers to the new administration on November 12. It likewise makes perfect sense that Merrill Lynch, a company just months removed from having to be rescued from bankruptcy by an eleventh-hour, pseudo-state-subsidized buyout by Bank of America, would decide to spend $45,000 on a speaking appearance by Summers because, well, they really valued his economic expertise and his proven ability to rally the troops with his stirring rhetoric. It certainly had nothing to do with the fact that (a) it was eight days after a Democrat was elected to the presidency; (b) Summers had a long history of being one of the key policymakers in Democratic Party politics; and (c) Merrill was absolutely not going to survive more than a few more months unless taxpayers forked over another twenty billion or so to cover the giant hole in Merrill's balance sheet that was, at that time, still being hidden from Bank of America and its shareholders. And how about that $135,000 appearance for Goldman Sachs in April, when Summers was already involved with Democratic Party politics again? That wasn't a surreptitious campaign contribution at all! But you have to give Goldman credit: it sure is thorough. It literally leaves no stone unturned. One has to love the sequence of events here. Back in 2004, Goldman chief Hank Paulson goes to SEC chief William Donaldson and petitions to have lending restrictions relaxed for the top five investment banks. Donaldson rolls over, the restrictions are relaxed, and it's a disaster, as the top five banks immediately overleverage themselves - two of the five, Bear Stearns and Lehman, would actually collapse, at least partially as a result of being insanely overleveraged. In the midst of this disaster, Paulson is named Treasury secretary. He does nothing about the worsening financial crisis until it is far too late, then allows one of Goldman's biggest competitors, Lehman, to fail while at the same time intervening on a huge scale to save AIG, which just happens to owe Goldman a ton of money. When AIG is bailed out, its government regulator is not in the room, but the new chief of Goldman, Lloyd Blankfein, is. In fact, Goldman Sachs ultimately receives about $13 billion of the money paid to AIG by the government in the bailout, reportedly getting paid 100 cents on the dollar for its AIG exposure, despite the fact that the bank claimed it wasn't going to suffer severe losses if AIG collapsed. Later, another former Goldman executive, Ed Liddy, is installed as head of AIG - which just happens to get bailed out twice more, the last time to the tune of $30 billion. The last two bailouts of AIG take place after a former Goldman chief, Robert Rubin (who, incidentally, helped start this mess by ramming through a series of i-banker wet-dream deregulatory moves as Treasury secretary for Clinton in the 1990s), is named to the Obama transition team, joining Summers (who had already taken $135,000 from Goldman that year) and Timothy Geithner (a protege of another Goldman alum, John Thain, former president and chief operating officer and notorious scumbag). When it comes time for new Treasury Secretary Geithner to name a chief of staff, he chooses Mark Patterson, who is less than a year removed from working as a lobbyist for ? Goldman Sachs. Patterson's great contribution to society as a Goldman lobbyist was opposing a 2007 measure introduced in the Senate by presidential candidate Barack Obama to rein in executive compensation. I remember watching Obama the presidential candidate give a speech in Mason City, Iowa, in 2007. Obama had made a big show of not having registered lobbyists working for his campaign, and he promised that lobbyists "won't work in my White House". The line was a hit and became part of Obama's stump speech. I must have heard it two dozen times. A little over a year later, he put a registered lobbyist of a bailed-out investment bank into a job whose primary responsibility is administering bailout money. It gets worse. According to a Glenn Greenwald piece I just read, even Gary Gensler is a former Goldman employee. That absolutely blows my mind. Genlser is Obama's choice to head the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, whose purview is the derivatives market. The CFTC was the battleground where ages ago Rubin, Summers, and then-Rubin aide Gensler teamed up to whack CFTC chief Brooksley Born, who had serious concerns about the burgeoning derivatives market, in particular the credit-default swap market. Rubin overturned Born's recommendations, and derivatives were freed from most regulation. That economic Alamo led almost directly to the AIG disaster. Think about this for a moment. A former Goldman chief, Rubin, presses the CFTC to deregulate a type of derivative contract whose chief benefit to an investment bank like Goldman is that it allows it to lend more - the CDS being most useful as a tool to move investment risk off a bank's balance sheet. Then another Goldman chief, Paulson, pushes for further relaxation of lending limits. Then Goldman jumps head first into the housing bubble, buying tens of billions in CDS protection to hedge its crazy investments. This massive explosion in lending by banks like Goldman, fueled in part by the use of derivatives like CDS and fueled still more by the 2004 change in rules, puts an enormous strain on the economy, leading to giant holes blown in its hull by the end of 2007 and on through 2008. It follows that when Goldman's chief partner in those CDS deals, AIG, collapses as part of this wave of crashes, Paulson - now Treasury secretary - rushes to the rescue, pumping billions in taxpayer money into AIG that is quickly funneled to Goldman. Then a Goldman alum is put in charge of AIG, while another bunch of Goldman alums funnels still more bailout money to AIG, and yet another Goldman alum is put in charge of regulating the derivatives market that is the focus of most of the bailout efforts. In the midst of all of this, something amazing happens. Goldman Sachs, along with Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and a host of other "troubled" banks, reports a profit for its first quarter in 2009! How and why that happened is another fascinating story, for another time. For now, the only thing to remember is that all the ones who got us into this mess - Rubin, Summers, Goldman in general - are now being put in charge of the cleanup by a president who spent most of eighteen months on the campaign trail pledging to end the influence of money in politics. Add this to the obscene giveaway that is the toxic assets program Geithner has just devised (Goldman Sachs "expressed interest in participating in the plan as an investor", according to the Wall Street Journal), and you have an amazing situation. Between the Bush and Obama administrations, you have a bailout program that has now figured three ways to funnel money to Goldman Sachs: via AIG, via TARP and now via this trillion-dollar "public-private investment program", which basically lends huge amounts of money to investors and provides guarantees against heavy losses. It's free money, state-subsidized profiteering at its most naked. I hear all the time from people who complain that it's naive to wonder why we put Wall Street executives in charge of policing Wall Street - that this is actually quite a sensible policy, because we need people with experience in that world making these decisions. The reason people say this has nothing to do with reality and everything to do with the fact that the financial markets are intimidatingly complex. When Enron buys a seat at the table to conduct energy policy under the Bush administration, everyone knows what that is. When Reagan hires notorious union busters to run the National Labor Relations Board, everyone knows what that is. And when we hire investment bankers to run banking policy, and put investment bankers in charge of handing out bailout money to investment banks, we ought to know what that is. But for some reason we don't seem to see it the same way, not as clearly. In my mind this officially ends the Obama honeymoon. I can maybe see one or two of these creeps in key positions. But this many - it's an undeniable pattern. He put William Lynn, a former Raytheon lobbyist, in the Pentagon as deputy defense secretary. A lot of people squawked about Obama's early lean toward John Brennan as CIA director because of his role in establishing the "enhanced interrogation" policies, but to me more significant was the fact that Brennan was the former chairman of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, which is sort of like the chamber of commerce of intelligence contractors. Most importantly, I'm sensing in these economic appointments a kind of drearily cynical parsing of the approval-ratings situation - Obama knows he's still flying high with the "Yes We Can!" T-shirt crowd and knows that most people simply are not going to give a shit if he packs his Treasury Department with Goldman alums and lobbyists, despite the fact that he explicitly promised to do otherwise. _____ Matt Taibbi is a writer for Rolling Stone. (c) 2009 True/Slant All rights reserved. http://www.alternet.org/story/136008/ http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From ioriwase at mail.mohawknationnews.com Sun Apr 12 12:36:44 2009 From: ioriwase at mail.mohawknationnews.com (Mohawk Nation News) Date: Sun, 12 Apr 2009 14:36:44 -0400 Subject: [A-List] MNN Like Tamil Tigers Iroquois existence threatened Message-ID: <012f62e4$39915$0d546088476736@xnote> LIKE TAMIL TIGERS, IROQUOIS EXISTENCE THREATENED ? COLONIAL POWERS TRYING TO EXERCISE SURROGATE AUTHORITY OVER ARCTIC MNN. Apr. 11, 2009. The self-obscured power brokers of the world have designated certain people for extinction. Their skills are being honed for use on other targets. The Tamil Tigers were brought from India to Sri Lanka by the British to be slave labor on their plantations. In 1948 the British, Dutch and Portuguese colonist were kicked out. The majority Sinhalese passed anti-Tamil laws. The U.S., supported by the United Nations, declared the Tamils as a ?terrorist organization?. No one in the world is allowed to help them with food, medical aid, housing, funds and any human rights they are entitled to according to international law. Supporters can be criminalized. Their money and assets can be confiscated. The Tamils have been bombed and murdered. Approximately 64,000 have been killed and 1 million displaced as of May 2006. If they are not killed off, they will be starved to death. [http://www.bbc.co.uk] The Mohawk Rotiskenekete have been listed as ?insurgents? in the training manual of the Canada Department of Defense [2007]. The Mohawk Warriors are listed as ?a terrorist threat to the U.S.? [www.globalsecurity.org]. We are being propagandized in the media day after day as dangerous criminals by the misnamed ?Center for Public Integrity? of Washington DC. Soon anyone associated with us may be targeted, charged and have their assets seized. We are targeted because the true authority on Great Turtle Island is the inherent system of the Indigenous peoples. To exercise true power, foreigners must eliminate the legitimate authority. Otherwise, they can never put their roots into our land and legally take our possessions. In 1995 international scientists of the U.S. Human Genome Organization HUGO stealthily collected DNA from over 700 Indigenous groups all over the world [www.nativeweb.org/pages/legal/gene]. The power gangsters had to know who are the true Indigenous authorities over various areas of the world that they covet. We have been categorized and now we are being isolated for genocide. Our trade and commerce are being destroyed. Our youth are being targeted, arrested, jailed and given criminal records and huge fines with no hope of ever paying them in two lifetimes. Toxic waste is being dropped near our communities. We are being forced to live in 3rd world conditions to cut down our birthrate and longevity. Our children are being ?disappeared?. In June 2008 the subversive Bilderberg group met in Ottawa. The attendees slithered into town. It included 130 European royalty, national leaders, banksters, political, military and economic power brokers and heads of multi national corporations. Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama slinked in through the garage door. [http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060608.wbilder0608/BNStory/National/home] Decisions were made. Obama became the president of the United States. Extinction of Indigenous peoples has been expedited. It looks like the UN has been rigged to help with this process. A new global government is in the works, giving themselves legislative powers to supersede the sovereign nations of the world. Obama warned us in his inaugural speech that, ?..the lines of tribes shall be dissolved?. His plans are very clear to us! They will never get rid of us. We Rotinoshonnionwe are deemed dangerous to them because we constantly raise the indigenous sovereignty issue. They can?t legally murder us outright like they did in the past. We are being systematically demonized by international propagandists to set us up for the kill. Laws are passed to make it look legal to throw us in jail, torture us, kill us, starve us, attack us and do whatever is necessary to take us out. Hard as they?ve tried, they couldn?t kill us all off. We are the legitimate people of the land! There is a protection over us. We keep resisting their laws. They are foreigners who have no right to make laws here. Russia is trying to illegally claim northern Great Turtle Island by exercising false surrogate powers. They want the oil, resources and the new shipping channels. They say this is not part of the colony of Canada. They have been flying MIGs and sending ships to the Arctic to intimidate Canada. In fact, only the Inuit are the legitimate sovereigns of this territory. Colonial powers such as Canada, Russia, U.S. and Denmark cannot claim it even though they are fighting over our land amongst themselves. Canada knows the power of our authority. Canada is squatting on our land. Prime Minister Harper erroneously claims that the Russians are violating ?Canadian sovereignty?. They know they have to display the Inuit as the Indigenous people of the area by parading them around as the legal occupants. Harper claims, ?The Inuit are Canadian citizens who have lived there for thousands of years!!!? How?s that? The colony of Canada was formed in 1867!! Canada fears asking the U.S. for help as they think they would just take it over. At the same time, Canada has slated those of us who are in the way of their greed to be extinguished. In 1954 Canada and U.S. built the Distant Early Warning [DEW] radar stations in the far north to detect Soviet attacks. It became the NORAD air defense. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distant_Early_Warning_Line]. To maintain the presence of the Inuit in the area, Canada created subsidized communities so they will stay there. The Inuit could not live there because of the destruction of the land, flora, fauna and animals. Many Inuit perished. Harper is presently inviting his international cohorts to invest in our unsurrendered territories and resources. He is putting up our possessions as collateral to raise money from the ignorant global public. This corruption is a massive fraud. Indigenous people worldwide are resisting this genocidal usurpation that has been going on for centuries. So that it will no longer be theft, politicians and business people must now legally and fairly recognize they have no choice but to deal with Indigenous people everywhere in the world. We must be respected, not terminated. We are being demonized to cut us off from any economic means of survival. They are trying to destroy any defense we might have from the scourge of those colonists whose greed knows no bounds. Over ten articles denouncing us have been published in the local rag known as the Montreal Gazette, instigated by the Center for Public Integrity. We hear the Gazette is going out of business soon. Yeah!! The Center serves Big Tobacco, which is headquartered in London England, who don?t want any competition from Indigenous people. The Center pretends to be against smoking while it attacks us. It is supported by foundations such as Carnegie, Ford, JEHT, John D. and Catharine T. MacArthur, Park, Rockefeller and PIERS . We will always exercise our right to remain as the caretakers of Great Turtle Island and for the right to survive. Our responsibilities cannot be ignored. Putting us on the ?hit list? will not stop us from carrying out our duties. Moreover, we are considered threatening because we developed the true democracy where everyone is equal and has a voice [Kaianereh?ko:wa, Great Law of Peace]. This gets in the way of those dictators who are setting up global totalitarianism. Are these fascists trying to kill off the originators of true freedom, democracy, environmentalism and human rights? There is no doubt they will be foiled again! Kahentinetha & Karakwine, MNN Mohawk Nation News www.mohawknationnews.com kahentinetha2 at yahoo.com katenies20 at yahoo.com Note: At this time your financial help is urgently needed and appreciated for the lawsuit against the Canadian government for assault of Indigenous women at the Cornwall border. Please send your donations to PayPal at www.mohawknationnews.com, or by check or money order to ?MNN Mohawk Nation News?, Box 991, Kahnawake [Quebec, Canada] J0L 1B0. Nia:wen thank you very much. Go to MNN ?General? category for more stories on this; New MNN Books Available now! Purchase t-shirts, mugs and more at our CafePressStore http://www.cafepress.com/mohawknews; Subscribe to MNN for breaking news updates http://.mohawknationnews.com/news/subscription.php; Sign Women Title Holders petition! http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/Iroquois GLUTTONOUS SNOUTS IN THE TROUGH WHOSE GREED KNOWS NO BOUNDS: Prime Min. Stephen ?Who?s-got-a-hernia-from-juggling-too-many-balls? Harper pm at pm.ca; BIG TOBACCO MONOPOLY: RJ. Reynolds America www.rjrt.com, Salem NC; Rothman UK Holding Ltd. www.fundinguniverse.com 15 Hill St., London W1X 7FB 071-491-4366; Imperial Tobacco Group PLC www.imperial-tobacco.com P.O. Box 244, Upton Rd., Bristol BS99 7UJ +44-0-177-963-6636; See Rothmans UK Holdings Limited London (071) 491-4366 Fax (071) 493-8404; JOSEPH GOEBBELS SCHOOL OF DIARRHEA JOURNALISM: Center for Public Integrity www.publicintegrity.org; William ?Imodium? Marsden wmarsden at thegazette.canwest.com; Philip ?Ka-ka? Authier kdougherty at thegazette.canwest.com; Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health www.jhsph.edu; Carnegie Foundation www.carnegie.org; Ford Foundation fordfound.org; JHET Foundation www.jehtfoundation.org; John D. & Catharine T. MacArthur Foundation www.found.org; Park Foundation info at parkfoundation.org; Rockefeller Foundation rockfound.org; PIERS info at piers.com. Note: Mohawk School of Upper Cut Journalism still looking for suitable candidates with integrity. From suzannedk at gmail.com Sun Apr 12 20:33:52 2009 From: suzannedk at gmail.com (Suzanne de Kuyper) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 04:33:52 +0200 Subject: [A-List] Fwd: In Foreign Policy, Clout Counts Saturday, Sunday, April 11-12, 2009 by Michael Beschloss In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Suzanne de Kuyper Date: Sun, Apr 12, 2009 at 9:31 PM Subject: In Foreign Policy, Clout Counts Saturday, Sunday, April 11-12, 2009 by Michael Beschloss To: iht at letters.com U.S. foreign policy and power have taken quite a few hits since the Gaza bombings and deaths as well as since the election of Benjamin of war-like inclination. Obama states that there must be a two state solution to Palestine and Israel. In response Benjamin states that Israel is not the 51st United States state and will do as it will. Meaning it will also consider the ways of bombing Iran. The comment of Secretay of State, Cyrus Vance, in reference to Mr. Gelb's desire Cyrus give a speech that the Carter administration had a foreign policy, "Policy is balony!" may have been a real expression of a power vacuum that has been fully commandeered by Israel. For quite some years. Israel wanted Iraq invaded, it was. Israel wanted Lebanon invaded, it was. Israel wants to take all Palestinian lands, it does so. The expert on Israel and Palestine criticises Israel in a book crowning his career and losses his twenty year professorship. For instance, Tony Blair, Ex-President Bush's compadre, was brutally detained by Israeli soldiers the 7th of April on his way to a meeting with an important Palestinian about peace. Mr. Gelb's book is surely vital history. But the U.S. alone at the top of world power now? Change is in the air perhaps. Suzanne de Kuyper van Oldenbarneveltplein 17 1052 Amsterdam 011 31 0641 593486 T suzannedk at gmail.com E 0641 59 3486 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 1977 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090413/87a788c8/attachment.txt From suzannedk at gmail.com Sun Apr 12 21:10:43 2009 From: suzannedk at gmail.com (Suzanne de Kuyper) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 05:10:43 +0200 Subject: [A-List] Crimes that Need Punishment comment on previous article from Sid Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Suzanne de Kuyper Date: Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 5:02 AM Subject: [R-G] (no subject) To: Suzanne de Kuyper In 2006 one of the presidential signings was about using medical and sociology graduates to implement United States war policies of detaining, rendering and torturing any suspects, indiscriminately. The first chosen were primarily from born again type Christian colleges which have religious beliefs and obsessions about winning over the infidel nations. The war on terror of course featured and still does feature the total demonization of Islamic, non-Christian nations. This now beaurocratic process by which to enable war propaganda to flourish as if reality is still very much in place under President Obama. Suzanne suzannedk at gmail.com _______________________________________________ Rad-Green mailing list Rad-Green at lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 1513 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090413/5bc82329/attachment.txt From suzannedk at gmail.com Mon Apr 13 06:17:21 2009 From: suzannedk at gmail.com (Suzanne de Kuyper) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 14:17:21 +0200 Subject: [A-List] Google Search Engine is Now an Arm of the Israeli Lobby Message-ID: Well, they might have changed their collective mind, Google that is, since I last looked......but, Professor Finklestein of great fame of both intellect and integrity, had been totally removed. He is an expert, world-wide and U.S. wide, on the Holoacast and on Israel and Palestine. Dershowitz, the Israeli Lobby attack team leader, using his Harvard credentials as usual, objected to the book the Professor wrote to cap his 20 year plus academic career at De Paul University, being acclaimed as being overwhelmingly approved by his peers for tenure within months or weeks. Within weeks of the Professor and his peers ignoring the smear attacks, Dershowtiz went to the University donors explaining that should they not remove the Professor, funds for De Paul would mysteriously dry up. The expert left. Students and faculty openly protested. The Lobby was allowed to operate like this, as they have for so many years before, completly illegally under U.S. Constitutional Law and signed international law agreements of the 20th century. Finkelstein did not stop speaking the truths he had become world expert in after many many years of study. What to do! Cannot eliminate him actually, then do it virtually. There are other search engines the world over. Pity, depending if one is Zionist or not. It Is funny but human nature being what it is, the fame of the professor from De Paul will grow, the the use of university credentials to de-fame will destroy Dershowitz just as his actions de-fame Judaism, Harvard, the United States, Israel and, his legal profession as lawyer and as teacher. Suzanne suzannedk at gmail.com -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 1744 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090413/47a0d4ae/attachment.txt From critical.montages at gmail.com Mon Apr 13 09:56:33 2009 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 11:56:33 -0400 Subject: [A-List] TRANSPORT-CUBA: Nearly There Message-ID: TRANSPORT-CUBA: Nearly There By Dalia Acosta HAVANA, Mar 17 (IPS) - Cuba's transport crisis finally appears to be coming to an end, after three years of substantial investments and reforms, although future economic growth could pose new challenges. "A few months ago, I used to have to leave two hours ahead of time in order to make sure I would be punctual. Now I know that I will never have to wait more than 30 minutes for a bus," Mara Flores, who lives in a neighbourhood on the outskirts of Havana, 45 minutes by car from the city centre, told IPS. Like many people in the Cuban capital, Flores uses the government-subsidised public transport system to get to work. Last year the number of routes connecting outlying neighbourhoods to the areas where economic activity is concentrated were doubled, after Chinese and Russian buses arrived on the streets. Today there are 16 bus routes plying between the centre and the suburbs, and one which connects the outlying areas. In addition there are minor routes between these major arteries. The optimum frequency would be one bus every 10 to 12 minutes on the routes between the outskirts and the centre. The problem here is no longer the number of vehicles available, but logistics and getting buses to run on schedule. According to the National Statistics Office (ONE), passenger transport expanded by 16.5 percent and freight carriage by 12.3 percent in 2008. The use of other means of transport, ranging from bicycles to private vehicles, grew by 2.9 percent. In contrast, ONE statistics indicate that passenger transport fell by 58 percent over the 1990-2005 period, a cutback that hit big cities like Havana or Santiago de Cuba the worst, as well as the highway network connecting the country's provinces. In order to tackle the problem, the government invested millions of dollars to buy new or second-hand vehicles, especially from Russia and China. About 2,700 of these buses were already in service on the island by the end of 2008, according to official sources. "If the annual growth rate of passenger transport remains at the level attained between 1998 and 2007 (14 percent a year), it will take five more years to reestablish the level of service existing in 1989," said an expert source quoted in Economics Press Service, a publication of the IPS bureau in Cuba. But deploying an adequate transport fleet is not the only problem. The authorities have tried to improve working conditions for bus drivers and other transport workers by increasing wages and providing uniforms and training in modern technology. However, the Havana city government has had to resort to bringing in drivers from other provinces to cover the shortfall. "The low level of training of transportation personnel is one of the main causes of the staff shortage that is limiting the effectiveness of the programme," the expert source, who recommended that the education sector should "begin to emphasise the expansion of this type of education," was quoted as saying. The collapse of the Cuban economy after the demise of the Soviet Union and its East European socialist allies in the early 1990s severely affected the island's capability to move goods around the country. Railway freight alone declined from 13 million tonnes to five million tonnes at its lowest point, while one-half of all haulage trucks were decommissioned. The transport recovery programme, worth two billion dollars, got under way in 2005 and is due to end in 2010. According to declarations in the Cuban press from Transportation Minister Jorge Luis Sierra, the rehabilitation plan includes a major restructuring as well as the purchase of vehicles and equipment. Expert sources say that in 2005 the armed forces directed a special operation known as Operaci?n Emergente which reorganised transport of goods from the ports to their final destination, with the aim of avoiding idle freight capacity in trucks and other vehicles, reducing wear and tear and cutting down on fuel consumption. Global positioning system (GPS) devices were introduced in trucks in an effort to discourage private use of the vehicles, a practice common in this country where making unauthorised use of state resources tends to be seen as a short cut to solving personal problems, rather than as a crime. Cuba has devoted 500 million dollars to revitalising the railway system. The funds were used to buy 550 freight wagons and 200 carriages from Iran and 100 engines from China, as well as purchasing materials and setting up local factories to carry out repairs on the railway lines. The government has also earmarked some 400 million dollars to repair bridges and highways, among them the Autopista Nacional (National Freeway), which was only half-finished when the Havana-Moscow alliance broke up in the early 1990s. Another 300 million dollars are to be invested in the port terminals. During the worst years of the so-called "special period" ? the euphemistic name given to the crisis - early last decade, it could take 80 days to unload a cargo ship, while the number of harbour tugs and lighters supplying food and water to the ships fell drastically. The economic crisis also devastated the national merchant fleet, which had been one of the largest in Latin America until the late 1980s. This forced the island to depend on foreign ships, which under the provisions of the U.S. Helms-Burton Act are forbidden to enter U.S. ports for six months after docking in Cuba. The Act, named for the legislators who introduced it to Congress, Jesse Helms and Dan Burton, entered into force in 1996. It provides for retaliatory action against any non-U.S. company that trades with Cuba, tightening the embargo imposed by Washington on Havana in the 1960s. Such restrictions create delays in the arrival of new equipment to Cuban shores. For instance, the Iranian railway stock may have to wait up to five months for embarkation until a ship can be found that is willing to take on the risks of the long crossing and of being blacklisted by Washington. "One of the most important challenges to the transport rehabilitation programme (for freight as well as for passengers) is the fact that certain kinds of demand are likely to grow in the medium term," the Economics Press Service article predicts. The government hopes for a six percent growth rate in GDP this year, compared to 4.3 percent in 2008. Transportation services, while still recovering from their huge setback, must cope with the expected economic surge, "particularly the higher agricultural, livestock and industrial production," the expert source said. (END/2009) From the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com Mon Apr 13 11:28:13 2009 From: the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com (Leighm) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 10:28:13 -0700 Subject: [A-List] The Somali 'coast guard'... Is another USS Cole incident brewing? Message-ID: <49E3762D.1080902@gmail.com> I did a write up on the Somali 'pirate' situation this morning as part of my daily posting: In The News: Big Drama On The High Seas - The skipper of the Maersk Alabama has been rescued after he leapt into the water allowing Navy SEAL snipers to shoot three of the pirates at 50 yards from the deck of the Navy ship attempting to negotiate his release, and capture one. The extended family of the pirates will seek 'revenge' and some nations are calling for a conference of 'International Maritime Powers'(The colonizers of the 17/1800s re-unite!). Da' Buffalo recalls with some trepidation the U.S.S. Cole incident, al Qaeda's attempt to strike at the US naval military presence in THEIR region.... . . . "Pentagon Seeks Alternative Fuel: Defense department launches initiatives to find new energy sources in bid to save money, lives." It sort of begs the question "Who's money?", "Who's lives?", and "Who's got the Uranium and Hydrocarbons?" A map that amply illustrates the answer to that question, and more... Archive.org: http://www.archive.org/details/tth_090413 My Site: http://leighm.net/wp/2009/04/13/tth_090413/ Also see: [April 10 2009] Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: If You Feed The Folks Onshore They Won?t Come Out And Steal Your Yachts http://leighm.net/wp/2009/04/10/tth_090410/ and: [April 08 2009] Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: Is It Suspicious Or Just Auspicious? Somali Pirates Seize A US Flagged And Crewed Ship? (There must be ONE of those on the high seas... Perhaps two.) http://leighm.net/wp/2009/04/08/tth_090408/ From tboyle at rosehill.net Mon Apr 13 11:18:00 2009 From: tboyle at rosehill.net (Todd Boyle) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 10:18:00 -0700 Subject: [A-List] Google Search Engine is Now an Arm of the Israeli Lobby In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I absolutely agree, there is a real problem with Google, they seem to have a problem indexing content about Israel. As one example, we have a very well known Palestinian activist, a college professor in Seattle area, Nada Elia. She has spoken for many years, at events all over the world. I recorded one of her talks and put it on Google video. Amazingly, after a few weeks they blocked the video (as they do for copyright violations). I have uploaded 100 videos to Google and the only time, previously they blocked me, was a Bob Avakian clip. When I contact them they always ignore the messages. I sent them several messages about Nada Elia. And without responding, the video popped up, as visible again. But it still was not visible in the Google Video Search. I was amazed. She is still not visible in the video search, although there are *many* videos of her. http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=%22nada+elia%22 So, I started testing the Google Video Search-- it is *HIGHLY* incomplete, and the content they're dropping from the index includes many important antiwar, leftist, anti-imperialist etc. material. Do your own test. It is a systematic, corporate bias. Incidentally at that time, I searched the main search engine and there was almost *nothing* for Nada Elia! Today I notice it has some hits-- but how do we know it is either complete, or unbiased? http://www.google.com/search?q=%22nada+elia%22 So, I think it's possible that Google has either got some employees with powerful access passwords, whose loyalty to Israel exceeds their loyalty to Google. Or. Israeli agents have penetrated and hacked the Google search computers. Another huge complaint is-- Google Video will not allow producers to build an empire. Youtube allows producers to maintain their whole index on a home page. On google video,you cannot even search for the uploader's videos by name. (They decide which ones of your videos to list in their "Other Videos by this User" panel. ) I deleted my 70 videos from Google's video hosting service last month. I now regard Google Video as more harm than good. There are too many better options-- I put Nada's speech on WaTiR.org if you're interested. http://watir.org/gerbil17/ The independent hosting services prices are like $5/ month for unlimited Gigabytes of transfers, per month. So. Who needs "Google Video"? You can upload *all* your videos on your own site, like Ed Mays does. Go here and watch Keith McHenry http://edmaysproductions.net/ Todd At 05:17 AM 4/13/2009, Suzanne de Kuyper wrote: >Well, they might have changed their collective mind, Google that is, >since I last looked......but, Professor Finklestein of great fame of >both intellect and integrity, had been totally removed. He is an >expert, world-wide and U.S. wide, on the Holoacast and on Israel and >Palestine. Dershowitz, the Israeli Lobby attack team leader, using >his Harvard credentials as usual, objected to the book the Professor >wrote to cap his 20 year plus academic career at De Paul >University, being acclaimed as being overwhelmingly approved by his >peers for tenure within months or weeks. > >Within weeks of the Professor and his peers ignoring the smear >attacks, Dershowtiz went to the University donors explaining that >should they not remove the Professor, funds for De Paul would >mysteriously dry up. The expert left. Students and faculty openly protested. > >The Lobby was allowed to operate like this, as they have for so many >years before, completly illegally under U.S. Constitutional Law and >signed international law agreements of the 20th >century. Finkelstein did not stop speaking the truths he had become >world expert in after many many years of study. > >What to do! Cannot eliminate him actually, then do it >virtually. There are other search engines the world over. Pity, >depending if one is Zionist or not. > >It Is funny but human nature being what it is, the fame of the >professor from De Paul will grow, the the use of university >credentials to de-fame will destroy Dershowitz just as his actions >de-fame Judaism, Harvard, the United States, Israel and, his legal >profession as lawyer and as teacher. > >Suzanne >suzannedk at gmail.com -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 5200 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090413/b93d8f56/attachment.txt From noreply at coha.org Mon Apr 13 12:00:17 2009 From: noreply at coha.org (Council on Hemispheric Affairs) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 14:00:17 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Summit of the Americas; Expanding the Panama Canal Message-ID: <20090413175917.982253E43EE@mx-out.daemonmail.net> A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 6172 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090413/71297f86/attachment.txt From tal1 at cogeco.ca Mon Apr 13 17:04:11 2009 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 19:04:11 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Brasscheck TV: The Obama Deception Message-ID: <0202E14226734CB7B228D6E299017FA1@TonyPC> > ...Long..i.e. 1 hr, 50 min....but worth it....Basically, an expose of the > machinations of the shadow world government that includes the Bilderberg > Group, the Tri-Lateral Commission and the US Council On Foreign > Relations...and how Obama is as thick-as-thieves with this secretive > global ruling cabal. > > T. > > >> "The Obama Deception" a new film by Alex Jones. >> >> It's starting to look like a government by Wall Street, of >> Wall Street and for Wall Street. >> >> The whole story here: >> >> http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/593.html >> >> >> - Brasscheck >> >> P.S. Please share Brasscheck TV e-mails and >> videos with friends and colleagues. >> >> That's how we grow. Thanks. >> >> ============================== >> >> >> >> Brasscheck TV >> 2380 California St. >> San Francisco, CA 94115 >> >> To unsubscribe or change subscriber options visit: >> http://www.aweber.com/z/r/?zAxs7OwctMwcLIysjIzMtEa0LGyMLKxsbA== >> >> > From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Mon Apr 13 20:00:52 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 11:00:52 +0900 Subject: [A-List] An Open Letter to President Obama Message-ID: <49E3EE54.6000702@ashisuto.co.jp> Revive Lincoln's Monetary Policy by Ellen Brown webofdebt.com (April 08 2009) Dear President Obama: The world was transfixed on that remarkable day in January when, to poetry, song, and dance, you gazed upon Abraham Lincoln's likeness at the Lincoln Memorial and searched for wisdom to navigate these difficult times. Indeed, you have so many things in common with that venerable President that one might imagine you were his reincarnation in different dress. You are both thin and wiry, brilliant speakers, appearing on the national stage at pivotal times. Fertile imaginations could envision you coming back dressed in that African heritage you freed, to help heal the great scar of slavery and prove once and for all the proposition that all men are created equal and can achieve great things if given a fighting chance. As Wordsworth said, however, our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; and if that is true, you may have forgotten a more subtle form of slavery from which Lincoln tried less successfully to free his countrymen. You may have forgotten it because it has been omitted from our popular history books, leaving Americans ill-equipped to interpret the lessons of our own past. This letter is therefore meant to remind you. President Obama, we are now met on another battlefield of that same economic war that visited Lincoln and the Founding Fathers before him. For you to finish the work Lincoln started would be a poetic triumph no American could miss. The fate of our economy and the nation itself may depend on how well you understand Lincoln's monetary breakthrough, the most far-reaching "economic stimulus plan" ever implemented by a US President. You can solve our economic crisis quickly and permanently, by implementing the same economic solution that allowed Lincoln to win the Civil War and thus save the Union from foreign economic masters. Lincoln's Monetary Breakthrough The bankers had Lincoln's government over a barrel, just as Wall Street has Congress in its vice-like grip today. The North needed money to fund a war, and the bankers were willing to lend it only under circumstances that amounted to extortion, involving staggering interest rates of 24 to 36 percent. Lincoln saw that this would bankrupt the North and asked a trusted colleague to research the matter and find a solution. In what may be the best piece of advice ever given to a sitting President, Colonel Dick Taylor of Illinois reported back that the Union had the power under the Constitution to solve its financing problem by printing its money as a sovereign government. Taylor said: "Just get Congress to pass a bill authorizing the printing of full legal tender treasury notes ... and pay your soldiers with them and go ahead and win your war with them also. If you make them full legal tender ... they will have the full sanction of the government and be just as good as any money; as Congress is given that express right by the Constitution". The Greenbacks actually were just as good as the bankers' banknotes. Both were created on a printing press, but the banknotes had the veneer of legitimacy because they were "backed" by gold. The catch was that this backing was based on "fractional reserves", meaning the bankers held only a small fraction of the gold necessary to support all the loans represented by their banknotes. The "fractional reserve" ruse is still used today to create the impression that bankers are lending something other than mere debt created with accounting entries on their books. {1} Lincoln took Colonel Taylor's advice and funded the war by printing paper notes backed by the credit of the government. These legal-tender US Notes or "Greenbacks" represented receipts for labor and goods delivered to the United States. They were paid to soldiers and suppliers and were tradeable for goods and services of a value equivalent to their service to the community. The Greenbacks aided the Union not only in winning the war but in funding a period of unprecedented economic expansion. Lincoln's government created the greatest industrial giant the world had yet seen. The steel industry was launched, a continental railroad system was created, a new era of farm machinery and cheap tools was promoted, free higher education was established, government support was provided to all branches of science, the Bureau of Mines was organized, and labor productivity was increased by fifty to 75 percent. The Greenback was not the only currency used to fund these achievements; but they could not have been accomplished without it, and they could not have been accomplished on money borrowed at the usurious rates the bankers were attempting to extort from the North. Lincoln succeeded in restoring the government's power to issue the national currency, but his revolutionary monetary policy was opposed by powerful forces. The threat to established interests was captured in an editorial of unknown authorship, said to have been published in The London Times in 1865: "If that mischievous financial policy which had its origin in the North American Republic during the late war in that country, should become indurated down to a fixture, then that Government will furnish its own money without cost. It will pay off its debts and be without debt. It will become prosperous beyond precedent in the history of the civilized governments of the world. The brains and wealth of all countries will go to North America. That government must be destroyed or it will destroy every monarchy on the globe." Lincoln was assassinated in 1865. According to historian W Cleon Skousen: "Right after the Civil War there was considerable talk about reviving Lincoln's brief experiment with the Constitutional monetary system. Had not the European money-trust intervened, it would have no doubt become an established institution." The institution that became established instead was the Federal Reserve, a privately-owned central bank given the power in 1913 to print Federal Reserve Notes (or dollar bills) and lend them to the government. The government was submerged in a debt that has grown exponentially since, until it is now an unrepayable $11 trillion. For nearly a century, Lincoln's statue at the Lincoln Memorial has gazed out pensively across the reflecting pool toward the Federal Reserve building, as if pondering what the bankers had wrought since his death and how to remedy it. Building on a Successful Tradition Lincoln did not invent government-issued paper money. Rather, he restored a brilliant innovation of the American colonists. According to Benjamin Franklin, it was the colonists' home-grown paper "scrip" that was responsible for the remarkable abundance in the colonies at a time when England was suffering from the ravages of the Industrial Revolution. Like with Lincoln's Greenbacks, this prosperity posed a threat to the control of the British Crown and the emerging network of private British banks, prompting the King to ban the colonists' paper money and require the payment of taxes in gold. According to Franklin and several other historians of the period, it was these onerous demands by the Crown, and the corresponding collapse of the colonists' paper money supply, that actually sparked the Revolutionary War. {2} The colonists won the war but ultimately lost the money power to a private banking cartel, one that issued another form of paper money called "banknotes". Today the bankers' debt-based money has come to dominate most of the economies of the world; but there are a number of historical examples of the successful funding of economic development in other countries simply with government-issued credit. In Australia and New Zealand in the 1930s, the Depression conditions suffered elsewhere were avoided by drawing on a national credit card issued by publicly-owned central banks. The governments of the island states of Guernsey and Jersey created thriving economies that carried no federal debt, just by issuing their own debt-free public currencies. China has also funded impressive internal development through a system of state-owned banks. Here in the United States, the state of North Dakota has a wholly state-owned bank that creates credit on its books just as private banks do. This credit is used to serve the needs of the community, and the interest on loans is returned to the government. Not coincidentally, North Dakota has a $1.2 billion budget surplus at a time when 46 of fifty states are insolvent, an impressive achievement for a state of isolated farmers battling challenging weather. {3} The North Dakota prototype could be copied not only in every US state but at the federal level. The Perennial Inflation Question The objection invariably raised to government-issued currency or credit is that it would create dangerous hyperinflation. However, in none of these models has that proven to be true. Price inflation results either when the supply of money goes up but the supply of goods doesn't, or when speculators devalue currencies by massive short selling, as in those cases of Latin American hyperinflation when printing-press money was used to pay off foreign debt. When new money is used to produce new goods and services, price inflation does not result because supply and demand rise together. Prices did increase during the American Civil War, but this was attributed to the scarcity of goods common in wartime rather than to the Greenback itself. War produces weapons rather than consumer goods. Today, with trillions of dollars being committed for bailouts and stimulus plans, another objection to Lincoln's solution is likely to be, "The US government is already printing its own money - and lots of it". This, however, is a misconception. What the government prints are bonds - its IOUs or debt. If the government did print dollars, instead of borrowing them from a privately-owned central bank that prints them, Uncle Sam would not have an eleven trillion dollar millstone hanging around his neck. As Thomas Edison astutely observed: "If our nation can issue a dollar bond, it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good, makes the bill good, also. The difference between the bond and the bill is that the bond lets money brokers collect twice the amount of the bond and an additional twenty percent, whereas the currency pays nobody but those who contribute directly in some useful way. "It is absurd to say that our country can issue $30 million in bonds and not $30 million in currency. Both are promises to pay, but one promise fattens the usurers and the other helps the people." A Wake-up Call Henry Ford observed at about the same time: "It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning". Today we the people are starting to understand our banking and monetary system, and we are shocked, dismayed, and furious at what we are discovering. The wizard behind the curtain turns out to be a small group of men pulling levers and dials, creating an illusory money scheme that, behind all the talk and bravado, is mere smoke and mirrors. These levers are controlled by a privately-owned, unaccountable central bank called the Federal Reserve, which has recently dispensed billions if not trillions in funds to its banker cronies, without revealing where these monies are going even under Congressional inquiry or in response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. As Chris Powell pointed out recently in conjunction with an FOIA request brought by Bloomberg News, which the Fed declined to comply with: "Any government that can disburse $2 trillion secretly, without any accountability, is not a democratic government. It is government of, by, and, for the bankers." {4] There was a time when private central bankers were the heavyweights in control, able to run their ultra-secret agenda with impunity; but that era is coming to an end. The bankers are scrambling, trying to patch up their crumbling creations with schemes, bailouts and sleight of hand. That effort, however, must ultimately prove futile. As investment adviser Rolfe Winkler said in a recent article: "The great Ponzi scheme that is the Western World's economy has grown so big there's simply no fixing' it. Flushing more debt through the system would be like giving Madoff a few billion to tide him over. Or like adding another floor to the Tower of Babel. To what end? The collapse is already here. The question is: How much do we want it to hurt? Using the public's purse to finance 'confidence' in a system that is already kaput may delay the Day of Reckoning, sure, but at the cost of multiplying our losses. Perhaps fantastically." {5} The bankers are on the run, feverishly trying to use the collapse of the current system to steer us toward an "Amero"-style North American currency, or a one-world private banking system and privately-issued global currency that they and only they control. We the people will not accept those solutions, however, no matter how bad things get. We demand real solutions that empower us, not further enslave us. Abraham Lincoln had such a solution. President Obama, you can finally bring his monetary solution to fruition. Manifest the vision of Lincoln, Jefferson, Madison and Franklin, and we the people will make sure you are placed in the pantheon of our greatest leaders and are revered for all time. America's greatest days can still be ahead of us; but for this to happen, we need to expose and root out the deceptive banking scheme that would enslave us to a future of debt and increasing homelessness in this great country our forefathers founded. The time has come for democracy to rise superior to a private banking cartel and take back the power to create money once again. Such a transformation would represent the most epochal and empowering shift that humanity has ever seen. As you recently said: "This country has never responded to a crisis by sitting on the sidelines and hoping for the best. Throughout our history we have met every great challenge with bold action and big ideas." Your words are a timely reminder of our long legacy of action and bold solutions in the face of adversity. Can we do this? Yes we can. Originally posted on Yes! Magazine Online (April 07 2008) _____ For more information, see the writings of a variety of money reformers including David Korten, Richard Cook, Stephen Zarlenga, Michael Hudson and this author; articles collected at www.webofdebt.com/articles and www.GlobalResearch.ca; the documentary videos "The Money Masters" and "Money as Debt"; and proposed legislation by Congressman Dennis Kucinich to nationalize the Fed, and by Congressman Ron Paul to audit it (HR 1027). Ellen Brown developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt, her latest book, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and "the money trust". She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her earlier books focused on the pharmaceutical cartel that gets its power from "the money trust". Her eleven books include Forbidden Medicine, Nature's Pharmacy (co-authored with Dr Lynne Walker), and The Key to Ultimate Health (co-authored with Dr Richard Hansen). Her websites are www.webofdebt.com and www.ellenbrown.com. Notes: 1. See Ellen Brown, "Borrowing from Peter to Pay Paul: The Wall Street Ponzi Scheme Called Fractional Reserve Banking", www.webofdebt.com/articles (December 29 2008). 2. Congressman Charles Binderup in a 1941 speech, "How America Created Its Own Money in 1750: How Benjamin Franklin Made New England Prosperous". Binderup quotes historian John Twells on this point. 3. E Brown, "Turning the Tables on Wall Street: North Dakota Shows Cash-starved States How They Can Create Their Own Credit", www.webofdebt.com/articles (March 11 2009). 4. Chris Powell, "Fed Refuses to Disclose Recipients of $2 Trillion", GATA (December 12 2008). 5. Rolfe Winkler, "More Debt Won't Rescue the Great American Ponzi", Option Armageddon (March 09 2009). _____ Special thanks to CC for his invaluable help with this article. (c) Copyright 2007 Ellen Brown. All Rights Reserved. http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/lincoln_obama.php http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From tal1 at cogeco.ca Mon Apr 13 21:45:51 2009 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 23:45:51 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Brasscheck TV: The Obama Deception In-Reply-To: <0202E14226734CB7B228D6E299017FA1@TonyPC> References: <0202E14226734CB7B228D6E299017FA1@TonyPC> Message-ID: <7E8D39EE1FAE4AD1A50D8A0AC162CDED@TonyPC> ...Just a quick privso w.r.t. "The Obama Deception" I forwarded the piece before I'd finished watching the last 30 minutes or so. That was a mistake....It gets a little reactionary (i.e. 'global warming is a total fraud' etc, inaccurate (i.e. '40 million killed by Stalin' etc), and overly conspiratorial at various points (though the central theme - of global domination - is, all in all, not far off)....Take from it what you will... Tony ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tony B." To: "A-List" Sent: Monday, April 13, 2009 7:04 PM Subject: [A-List] Brasscheck TV: The Obama Deception > > > >> ...Long..i.e. 1 hr, 50 min....but worth it....Basically, an expose of the >> machinations of the shadow world government that includes the Bilderberg >> Group, the Tri-Lateral Commission and the US Council On Foreign >> Relations...and how Obama is as thick-as-thieves with this secretive >> global ruling cabal. >> >> T. >> >> >>> "The Obama Deception" a new film by Alex Jones. >>> >>> It's starting to look like a government by Wall Street, of >>> Wall Street and for Wall Street. >>> >>> The whole story here: >>> >>> http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/593.html >>> >>> >>> - Brasscheck >>> >>> P.S. Please share Brasscheck TV e-mails and >>> videos with friends and colleagues. >>> >>> That's how we grow. Thanks. >>> >>> ============================== >>> >>> >>> >>> Brasscheck TV >>> 2380 California St. >>> San Francisco, CA 94115 >>> >>> To unsubscribe or change subscriber options visit: >>> http://www.aweber.com/z/r/?zAxs7OwctMwcLIysjIzMtEa0LGyMLKxsbA== >>> >>> >> > > > > From critical.montages at gmail.com Mon Apr 13 22:53:53 2009 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 00:53:53 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Iran: Moussavi Rules Out Enrichment Suspension Message-ID: FT Interview: Mir-Hossein Moussavi Published: April 13 2009 14:53 | Last updated: April 13 2009 14:53 Mir-Hossein Moussavi, Iran?s leftist prime minister between 1981 and 1989, is a leading candidate to unseat president Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad in the presidential election on June 12. The FT?s Tehran correspondent Najmeh Bozorgmehr interviewed him on April 12 in his office at the Art Centre, in central Tehran. The 18-minute interview was in Farsi. The edited transcript, translated by Monavar Khalaj, follows: Financial Times: You recently said you would pursue d?tente with the west if you were elected. How are you going to have that approach with the US while not compromising on the nuclear programme? Mir-Hossein Moussavi: I consider d?tente the principle to build confidence between Iran and other countries. I think the recent discourse, which differentiates between nuclear technology and nuclear weapons is a good one. The more this differentiation is emphasised, the greater the possibility of d?tente. FT: Would Iran agree to suspend uranium enrichment if you were president? Moussavi: No one in Iran would accept suspension. FT: And you would not accept it, either? Moussavi: No. The problem is that we had a bad experience with suspension. It was first done [2003-2005] to discuss issues and remove suspicion but it turned into a tool to deprive Iran of having access to nuclear technology. There is a bad memory in this regard. FT: How would you remove tensions then? Moussavi: Progress in nuclear technology and its peaceful use is the right of all countries and nations. This is what we have painfully achieved with our own efforts. No one will retreat. But we have to see what solutions or in other words what guarantees can be found to verify the non-diversion of the programme into nuclear weapons. FT: What kind of solutions? Moussavi: They can be reached in technical negotiations. FT: How influential can the president be in nuclear decisions while the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has the last say in this issue? Moussavi: Decisions on nuclear technology definitely need to be based on a thorough consensus at the national level. Obviously, the role of the supreme leader is very determining. FT: So far, however, no solution has been found. How would your presidency help? Moussavi: The issue doesn?t only depend on us. It will also depend on the discourse the Americans use and the issues they pursue. The more realistic they become and recognise Iran in this issue, naturally the better the ground will be prepared to find solutions. FT: Your relations with Ayatollah Khamenei [Iran?s supreme leader] were tense in the past. Do you think this will continue if you get elected? And could you also tell us about your meeting with him last week? Moussavi: The tensions when I was in office as prime minister [1981-1989] were because of [power] structure problems which were removed in the revision of the constitution in 1989. Now, the management of the supreme leader as the valy-e-faqih [supreme jurisprudent] in our country and his relations with other organisations and institutions, including government-owned bodies, are totally clear. Naturally, the prospect for cooperation for the country?s progress is very good. FT: How was your meeting with him last week? Moussavi: It was very positive. FT: Did he have any problems with your candidacy? Moussavi: He had no problems. He has an impartial position in the upcoming election. He mentioned this in his speech in Mashhad [late March] and repeated it to me. As we have had relatively extensive contacts discussing issues, the recent meeting was also very good and positive. FT: Did Ayatollah Khamenei have any specific recommendation? Moussavi: No. We only discussed the country?s problems. FT: Do you have fundamental differences with him in any specific field? Moussavi: No. FT: Were your differences with him in the past the reason why you largely abandoned the political scene in the last 20 years? Moussavi: No. I believed the Islamic republic was in a stable position and that different politicians can come and go. I had no concerns about who might take office. And I was interested in culture, which is why I shifted to cultural activities. Of course, during this period I was advisor to the top authorities. I have also been a member of the High Council for Cultural Revolution and the Expediency Council. The positions necessitated that I follow political and executive issues. But it had nothing to do with the problems [I faced] during the [Iran-Iraq] war [1980-1988]. [Former president Akbar Hashemi] Rafsanjani was a very strong and powerful candidate. Then came Mr [Mohammad] Khatami. But I thought I had better run this time. FT: Do you consider Mr Ahmadi-Nejad a risk for Iran and the Islamic republic?s political system? Moussavi: Mr Ahmadi-Nejad is the president and for this reason I respect him. There are criticisms about his opinions and behaviour. This is natural in countries like ours in which there is freedom. I don?t see Mr Ahmadi-Nejad himself as a danger. FT: Where do you see the risk then? Moussavi: I think the country can be run better and that more effective financial, economic, cultural and foreign policies can be adopted. In foreign policy, we can have better relations with the world which is surely very significant to help our country?s development. FT: Many critics of Mr Ahmadi-Nejad believe the country will face a crisis if the president is re-elected. Do you agree? Moussavi: I don?t want to say this and don?t like to use harsh terms. FT: Do you think you?ll be also supported by Ayatollah Khamenei if you are elected? Moussavi: It?s absolutely natural for the supreme leader to support any government that sweeps to power with the backing of people?s votes. This support can increase if the government policies are close to those of the supreme leader. FT: Will you try to make your policies close to the views of the supreme leader? Moussavi: Yes. The more the country moves toward consensus in fundamental policies, the better it will be run. But you should also note that one of the most important responsibilities of the leader is to approve and announce macro policies which are first discussed at the Expediency Council and then are sealed by him, then notified to other organisations. The government?s commitment to these general policies can create the best relations between the government and the leader. FT: Given that you have been out of the political scene for a while and that young people in Iran many not know you, why would they vote for you? Moussavi: The youth are obviously free to vote for anyone they like. I will elaborate on my policies until election day [on June 12] on issues like culture and address their concerns including housing, employment and marriage. If young people think policies correspond to their needs, they will naturally vote and if not, they won?t. FT: But do you have any specific approach to convince Iran?s youth that you are their candidate? Moussavi: I think young people should be trusted. I don?t have the pessimism of some [politicians] toward them. Some minor changes in the appearance of young people should not make us think they have taken anti-national identity. I don?t believe that they have changed their appearance so much that we cannot recognise them any more. I think our young people are very good, creative and really decent human beings who are proud of their past and their rich culture. FT: How are you going to attract their votes? Moussavi: I will try to discuss these issues in the remaining one month and think they will receive the signals I am sending them positively. FT: The business community still remembers that you decided to bulldoze the chamber of commerce building to accommodate war refugees back in the 1980s. And this leaves people concerned about your economic policies. Moussavi: I don?t remember the building you are referring to. Of course, we didn?t have good relations with the chamber of commerce which was related to the election process in the chamber and war-related policies, but we didn?t destroy their building. Naturally, with the end of the [Iran-Iraq] war, the grounds for such confrontations were removed. I do believe in the strong presence of the private sector, in particular in the production field, and also making the best use of Iran?s relative advantages in trade. I think all those who care about the country and the economy including the chamber of commerce will welcome this approach and establish good relations with the government. FT: So you don?t expect tensions with the business community? Moussavi: No. We need the private sector to help resolve unemployment. There is no bright prospect to deal with such problems through government investments. FT: What is your economic programme? Moussavi: I believe there are various opportunities in the country. The government?s role can be that of guidance to have a robust national economy. We have gone too far in opening up to imports. This has to be revised. We have to take bigger steps to support our national economy. FT: Are going to restrict imports? Moussavi: I don?t think there can be a unified prescription. I have to see which sections should be restricted and over what period of time. We have to gradually make those sections in which we have relative advantages active. FT: Could you give us one example? There are many factories which are 50 to 60 years old which are very capable and have done well. But they are unable to compete with foreign goods because these goods get into the country in different ways. They are becoming importers themselves. We have to stop this. You can see this in different sectors. FT: What are you going to do with subsidies? Moussavi: Subsidies should be targeted. The principle of giving subsidies is acceptable to a certain extent. But they should be targeted and it should become clear why we are giving these subsidies. They should serve a strong national economy, help safeguard resources and support the lower classes. Targeting subsidies should be done gradually. Any abrupt halt can exert a shock because of the economic structure and the huge subsidies we give for various commodities. FT: Over what period of time do you are you thinking of targeting subsidies when you say ?gradually?? Ten years for instance? Moussavi: Probably we can achieve this in two [five-year] plans to completely implement it. The most important one is the energy subsidy and we have to gradually work on it. FT: How are you going to prioritise your economic policies? Give us your top three ones? Moussavi: We have to constantly work on inflation, unemployment and the improvement of business. FT: How are you going to improve the business environment? Moussavi: By facilitating the issuing of permits for new businesses. Such procedures are currently very slow in our country. We have lots of problems in this sense compared to other countries. FT: And how are you going to curb inflation? Moussavi: Through monetary policies, imports, making the private sector active and increasing production. And more important than anything else is having stability in economic decisions. Moussavi hopes to build more modern Iran By Najmeh Bozorgmehr in Tehran Published: April 13 2009 19:26 | Last updated: April 13 2009 19:26 Iranian presidential hopeful Mir-Hossein Moussavi has ruled out suspension of the country?s controversial uranium enrichment but insisted that he would work to provide ?guarantees? that Tehran would not divert its nuclear programme to weapons use. In his first interview with the international media, one of the leading rivals to Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, the fundamentalist president, in the June election, told the Financial Times that Iran had a ?bad experience? with suspension. It had agreed to a suspension between 2003 and 2005 in the hope that it would build confidence in the peaceful nature of its programme, he said. But the move ?turned into a tool to deprive Iran of having access to nuclear technology,? he argued, referring to European powers? insistence at the time that Iran should suspend indefinitely its experiments. A self-effacing architect and painter, Mr Moussavi served as prime minister in the 1980s, during the Iran-Iraq war, but has dedicated much of his time in the past two decades to the arts. The 69-year-old?s candidacy has attracted international attention, partly because he is backed by Mohammad Khatami, the former reformist president. Mr Khatami withdrew his own candidacy to try to unite reformist ranks behind Mr Moussavi. Cleric Mehdi Karroubi remains in the race and could yet split reformist votes. But Mr Moussavi?s challenge is attracting the support of young Iranians, who make up the majority of the population. The comments of Mr Moussavi suggest that Iran?s nuclear ambitions and its dispute over them could be little affected by the June poll. Iran has long insisted that it is ready to provide assurances about the peaceful nature of its nuclear programme yet has not co-operated fully with the investigations of the UN?s nuclear watchdog. Foreign policy, moreover, is in the hands of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader. Mr Moussavi?s aides say that he does not envision radical changes but is hoping to temper the radicalism of the regime under Mr Ahmadi-Nejad. Analysts and diplomats, however, argue that a less confrontational figure at the presidency would facilitate nuclear talks, particularly at a time when the US is shifting Iran policy and moving towards engagement. The Obama administration last week said it would from now on participate in nuclear discussions that have been held in the past between Iran and other world powers, and Iran has welcomed the move. Sitting in a conference room at the Art Centre in Tehran, Mr Moussavi acknowledged that ?the role of the supreme leader is very determining?. But he said ?decisions on nuclear technology definitely need to be based on thorough consensus at the national level?. Mr Moussavi has sought to appeal to reformists and conservatives. Some reformists, however, say he will not go far enough in pressing their agenda and are backing Mr Karroubi. On the other hand, some conservatives alienated by Mr Ahmadi-Nejad are said to be ready to support Mr Moussavi. One of the conservatives? concerns is the attitude of the supreme leader, who clashed with Mr Moussavi while serving as president of the Islamic Republic during the 1980s. In an apparent effort to allay the concerns, Mr Moussavi said he met with Mr Khamenei last week in what he described as ?very good and positive? talks. If he were elected president in June, he added, he would try to make his policies closer to the views of the supreme leader. Another constituency that needs reassurance is the business community, which accuses Mr Ahmadi-Nejad of undermining a private sector reeling from the impact of international sanctions. Mr Moussavi is remembered as the leftist politician who ordered the destruction of the chamber of commerce building in the 1980s after businessmen refused to accommodate war refugees. But Mr Moussavi said he did not recall the incident, and stressed that he believed the country?s problems could not be resolved without the private sector. Biography ? Mir-Hossein Moussavi: born in 1941 in Khameneh village, north-west Iran ? Graduated in architecture from Tehran and Shahid Beheshti universities ? Ran a state-owned newspaper and was briefly foreign minister then prime minister from 1981-89 ? He is now an inactive member of the expediency council and the high cultural revolution council ? Since 1999 his main official job has been head of the state-owned Art Centre ? He is a painter himself with 180 works over 40 years and 11 exhibitions Iran candidate rules out enrichment suspension: report Tue Apr 14, 2009 2:47am BST LONDON (Reuters) - Iranian presidential candidate Mirhossein Mousavi has ruled out suspending uranium enrichment but would work to verify Iran was not diverting its nuclear programme for weapons, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday. Prime minister during Iran's 1980-88 war with Iraq, Mousavi, 67, is seriously considered by many moderates and even some conservatives as their main presidential candidate and a strong rival to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in June's election. "No one in Iran would accept suspension," he was quoted as telling the paper on its website. Iran, the world's fourth-largest oil producer, says its nuclear programme is aimed at generating electricity and not covertly building nuclear weapons, as the West suspects. It has repeatedly ruled out halting its enrichment programme. However, chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili was quoted as saying on Monday that Iran would welcome constructive dialogue with six world powers, including the United States. The Obama administration has offered a "new beginning" of diplomatic engagement if Iran "unclenches its fist." Mousavi told the FT a solution to the nuclear dispute did not only depend on Tehran. "It will also depend on the discourse the Americans use and the issues they pursue. The more realistic they become and recognize Iran in this issue, naturally the better the ground will be prepared to find solutions. "No one will retreat. But we have to see what solutions or in other words what guarantees can be found to verify the non-diversion of the programme into nuclear weapons," the paper's website quoted him as saying. A solution could be reached by "technical negotiations." ECONOMIC PRIORITIES When he was prime minister, Mousavi, who has stayed away from politics and the public eye in the past 20 years, defended a state-controlled economy, although he told a news conference this month Iran needed privatization, the creation of jobs and foreign investment. He told the FT he believed in the "strong presence of the private sector," adding his economic priorities were "inflation, unemployment and the improvement of business." Ahmadinejad is criticized by reformists and even some of his conservative backers for his economic policies, blamed for fuelling inflation, which reached a peak of nearly 30 percent last year, and wasting petro-dollars. Inflation would be curbed "through monetary policies, imports, making the private sector active and increasing production," the paper quoted Mousavi as saying. He said subsidies should be targeted. "The most important one is the energy subsidy and we have to gradually work on it," he said, saying it could probably be achieved in 10 years. He also said he would consider restricting imports. "I have to see which sections should be restricted and over what period of time," he was quoted as saying. "We have gone too far in opening up to imports. This has to be revised. We have to take bigger steps to support our national economy." (Writing by Alison Williams; Editing by Jeremy Laurence) From critical.montages at gmail.com Tue Apr 14 01:06:15 2009 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 03:06:15 -0400 Subject: [A-List] U.S. May Drop Key Condition for Talks With Iran Message-ID: April 14, 2009 U.S. May Drop Key Condition for Talks With Iran By DAVID E. SANGER WASHINGTON ? The Obama administration and its European allies are preparing proposals that would shift strategy toward Iran by dropping a longstanding American insistence that Tehran rapidly shut down nuclear facilities during the early phases of negotiations over its atomic program, according to officials involved in the discussions. The proposals, exchanged in confidential strategy sessions with European allies, would press Tehran to open up its nuclear program gradually to wide-ranging inspection. But the proposals would also allow Iran to continue enriching uranium for some period during the talks. That would be a sharp break from the approach taken by the Bush administration, which had demanded that Iran halt its enrichment activities, at least briefly to initiate negotiations. The proposals under consideration would go somewhat beyond President Obama?s promise, during the presidential campaign, to open negotiations with Iran ?without preconditions.? Officials involved in the discussion said they were being fashioned to draw Iran into nuclear talks that it had so far shunned. A review of Iran policy that Mr. Obama ordered after taking office is still under way, and aides say it is not clear how long he would be willing to allow Iran to continue its fuel production, and at what pace. But European officials said there was general agreement that Iran would not accept the kind of immediate shutdown of its facilities that the Bush administration had demanded. ?We have all agreed that is simply not going to work ? experience tells us the Iranians are not going to buy it,? said a senior European official involved in the strategy sessions with the Obama administration. ?So we are going to start with some interim steps, to build a little trust.? Administration officials declined to discuss details of their confidential deliberations, but said that any new American policy would ultimately require Iran to cease enrichment, as demanded by several United Nations Security Council resolutions. ?Our goal remains exactly what it has been in the U.N. resolutions: suspension,? one senior administration official said. Another official cautioned that ?we are still at the brainstorming level? and said the terms of an opening proposal to Iran were still being debated. If the United States and its allies allow Iran to continue enriching uranium for a number of months, or longer, the approach is bound to meet objections, from both conservatives in the United States and from the new Israeli government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. If Mr. Obama signed off on the new negotiating approach, the United States and its European allies would use new negotiating sessions with Iran to press for interim steps toward suspension of its nuclear activities, starting with allowing international inspectors into sites from which they have been barred for several years. First among them is a large manufacturing site in downtown Tehran, a former clock factory, where Iran is producing many of the next-generation centrifuges that it is installing in the underground plant at Natanz. ?The facility is very large,? one United Nations inspector said last week, ?and we have not been inside since last summer.? Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the United Nations? International Atomic Energy Agency, whose inspectors would be a critical part of the strategy, said in an interview in his office in Vienna last week that the Obama administration had not consulted him on the details of a new strategy. But he was blistering about the approach that the Bush administration had taken. ?It was a ridiculous approach,? he insisted. ?They thought that if you threatened enough and pounded the table and sent Cheney off to act like Darth Vader the Iranians would just stop,? Dr. ElBaradei said, shaking his head. ?If the goal was to make sure that Iran would not have the knowledge and the capability to manufacture nuclear fuel, we had a policy that was a total failure.? Now, he contended, Mr. Obama has little choice but to accept the reality that Iran has ?built 5,500 centrifuges,? nearly enough to make two weapons? worth of uranium each year. ?You have to design an approach that is sensitive to Iran?s pride,? said Dr. ElBaradei, who has long argued in favor of allowing Iran to continue with a small, face-saving capacity to enrich nuclear fuel, under strict inspection. By contrast, in warning against a more flexible American approach, a senior Israeli with access to the intelligence on Iran said during a recent visit to Washington that Mr. Obama had only until the fall or the end of the year to ?completely end? the production of uranium in Iran. The official made it clear that after that point, Israel might revive its efforts to take out the Natanz plant by force. A year ago, Israeli officials secretly came to the Bush administration seeking the bunker-destroying bombs, refueling capability and overflight rights over Iraq that it would need to execute such an attack. President George W. Bush deflected the proposal. An Obama administration official said ?they have not been back with that request,? but added that ?we don?t think their threats are just huffing and puffing.? Israeli officials and some American intelligence officials say they suspect that Iran has other hidden facilities that could be used to enrich uranium, a suspicion explored in a 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. But while that classified estimate referred to 10 or 15 suspect sites, officials say no solid evidence has emerged of hidden activity. ?Frankly,? said one administration official, ?what?s most valuable to us now is having real freedom for the inspectors to pursue their suspicions around the country. ?We know what?s happening at Natanz,? said the official, noting that every few weeks inspectors are in and out of the plant. ?It?s the rest of the country we?re most worried about.? Matthew Bunn, a nuclear expert at the Belfer Center at Harvard University, said in a interview on Monday that the Obama administration had some latitude in defining what constitutes ?suspension? of nuclear work. One possibility, he said, was ?what you call warm shutdown,? in which the centrifuges keep spinning, but not producing new enriched uranium, akin to leaving a car running, but in park. That would allow both sides to claim victory: the Iranians could claim they had resisted American efforts to shut down the program, while the Americans and Europeans could declare that they had halted the stockpiling of material that could be used to produce weapons. ?The hard part of these negotiations is how to convince everyone that there are no covert sites,? Mr. Bunn said. From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Tue Apr 14 03:14:52 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 18:14:52 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Myths About Madoff's 'Ponzi Scheme' Message-ID: <49E4540C.2050601@ashisuto.co.jp> Bernie's Game Wasn't What They Told You by Leveymg, Daily Kos (March 18 2009) Bernie Madoff's colossal investment fraud is almost everywhere described as a "Ponzi scheme". That echoes the very words Madoff, himself, used to describe it to the FBI agents who arrested him on December 11. I've been running "basically, a giant Ponzi scheme", he told investigators. But, that was quite misleading. Madoff gives the impression that his scam was a classic, self-contained Ponzi, wherein the first investors see the payouts and later investors are the ones whose capital provides the payouts. In that scheme, Ponzi pockets the proceeds. But, it didn't really work that way. Madoff Securities was not designed to rip-off its own customers. Instead, it sustained itself over four decades by an infusion of money from "feeder fund" franchizes, the proceeds of which were methodically diverted into hidden accounts. It was part multi-level marketing, part money-laundering scheme, and part bleed-out fraud designed to provide a cover for conversion of funds that would be used by banks a continent or two away from Madoff's Manhattan headquarters. And, it really wasn't an ethnocentric raid designed to impoverish any particular national or religious group - that would be killing the Golden Goose, but it may have had that effect. Madoff's biggest clients were powerful banks and politically well-connected, philanthropic men who owned them. Their customers will get some of their money back through deposit guarantee insurance, law suits and other institutional safeguards. Madoff's own customers get first crack at funds eventually recovered - there is no way that Madoff spent $65 billion on caviar and vintage wine. An accounting of Madoff's real estate and personal property, including that placed in the name of his wife, Ruth, amounted to no more than $67 million - not a lot by Wall Street standards. Bernie was smart, emotionally controlled, and personally frugal. His refusal to take the deal reportedly offered by the feds - trade what he knows for allowing Ruth to keep most of their joint assets - is telling. No, Bernie didn't squander it all away. Most of the money his fund piled up over the years is still out there. This was a giant money-laundering scheme. Madoff was convicted of two counts of money-laundering, along with other charges. He refused to admit to the involvement of others, which is what the prosecution wanted him to do, so the offered plea deal was withdrawn. A Ponzi involves a single hub that draws in cash to the center - Madoff's network was a money pyramid that involved multiple players moving money upward, each taking a share. That is a distinction with a real difference - this is not a completed prosecution. That still leaves the question of who the US Attorney thought Madoff was working with. Here's an obvious place to start: The answer to where that money is goes back to where it came from. The Feeder Funds - Swiss Bankers, Aristocrats and Vultures Wrapped up in TARP As for the feeder funds, seventeen of the twenty largest investors in Madoff Securities were banks or insurance companies. The others were huge "funds of funds", unregulated hedge funds and private equity funds. It was the comparative small-fry who got scalded. The bankruptcy courts will have to come to the rescue of many of the 4500 individual investors and those who were attracted through smaller feeder funds. Most of the biggest losses were sustained by large Swiss, Euro and Asian banks - but, they will survive, and their customers will eventually receive some sort of substantial recovery or part of a government bail-out. Like so many scandals of the era, this too will pass, and public attention will wane. But, take a good look, anyway. Tremont Group Holdings, Inc - Robert Schulman The third largest institutional investor in Madoff's scheme is Tremont Group Holdings Inc, a fund of funds owned by Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. Tremont is attached to an institution so big that its customers are also likely to regain the $3.3 billion in reported losses as the result of investor law suits. A 2007 Hoover's profile characterized the firm as follows: "Tremont Group Holdings wants to make you a tremendous amount of money - and to make a tremendous amount for itself, as well ..." {1} Prior to his well-timed resignation as Chairman in July 2008 after the Mass Mutual takeover, Tremont had been run by its founder Robert Schulman. Tremont was one of Madoff's "early customers". Schulman now runs a charity with his wife, and invests in real estate. He is named as a co-defendant in an investors' suit along with Tremont, Mass Mutual and the company's auditing firm, KPMG (Bearing Point), which recently announced its own bankruptcy. Deja vu? {1}, {2} The Independent Funds There were only three independent funds among the top feeders: Fairfield Greenwich Group, Walter Noel's hedge-fund, ($7.5 billion in losses); Ascot Partners, headed by former GMAC Chairman Ezra Merkin ($1.8 billion); and Access International Advisors ($1.2 billion), a European investment fund. AIA - Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet In 2007, AIA took over management of the Rothschilds family bank portfolio previously managed by UBS. AIA founder, Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet, committed suicide in his Manhattan office days after the Madoff scandal became public. Villehuchet had carved a lucrative franchize for himself peddling access to the exclusive Madoff connection among Europe's richest glitterati, including Bettencourt family heirs to the L'Oreal cosmetics family. * * * Most of these private hedge funds were not only rich, they had close ties to government officials and political figures, access to public money, and knew how to benefit from bailouts. Ezra Merkin was chair of two large American industrial corporations, GM and Chrysler, which have already received more than ten billion dollars in TARP bail-outs, and are currently seeking more. Ascot Partners - J Ezra Merkin J Ezra Merkin is also owner of a large stake in Bank Leumi, the privatized national bank of Israel, which he acquired with partner Stephen Feinberg, founder of Cerberus Capital Management, which grew (along with others) during the Sharon - Olmert era from a bank holding company into a large global hedge fund. Accusations abound that Noel and Merkin failed to perform due diligence, and in some cases, allegedly deceived their own customers that they were placing client funds with Madoff. For well over a decade, Madoff had a reputation on The Street not only for phenomenally steady returns but also the whiff of illegitimate methods. The only thing that nobody could quite figure out was how he did it. Suspicions were quietly voiced that he was using insider knowledge gained from his proprietary trading platform that was adopted by the NASDAQ exchange Madoff headed. But, if the preliminary findings are indeed correct, Madoff hasn't been trading listed stocks in customer accounts for at least thirteen years. But, Bernie nonetheless managed to consistently pay out tens of billions in dividends during that period. At the eight to seventeen percent annual returns his investors were reportedly receiving, that would have depleted the fund's capital in half that time. It is arithmetically not possible that Madoff was simply paying his older investors out of the funds gained from newer, and only from those funds. As one long-term investor who got out a couple years ago remarked, Bernie "never missed a quarter". If he wasn't trading, Bernie had to have another source of funds, someone who was. A feeder relationship can operate in both directions, if regulators aren't looking very closely at both ends. And, in fact, as we are learning, regulatory authorities in several countries in the last decade have been legally blind. Among the Madoff feeder-funds, closest attention has focused on Ascot Partners. But, J Ezra Merkin also operates a hedge firm, Gabriel Capital, which partnered with Cerberus in the takeover of the distressed US auto industry and made a big move into the defense sector during the Bush years. The partnership left companies in both sectors worse off for their attentions, but made these hedge funds owners hundreds of millions richer. Money lost in operating failing companies have been made up by lucrative government contracts and bailouts, a not entirely unexpected bonus. The new TARP loans now being sought are in addition to the $13.4 billion the US Treasury lent earlier to Merkin's GM, and Fineberg's Chrysler. In 2006, GM sold 51 percent of Merkin's GMAC to Feinberg's private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management LP (which also owns Chrysler). In May 2004, Feinberg's private equity group, Cerberus Capital Management, LP (Cerebrus is the three-headed dog that guards Hades), became majority owner of IAP Worldwide Services, Inc, one of the US Army's largest contractors in Iraq. IAP was at the center of the Walter Reed Army medical center privatization scandal. (For the sordid details of this fetid corner of pirate capitalism, see note {4} below.) Other key parts of the business model pursued by Madoff's private feeder funds has been political influence-peddling and its financial partner, money-laundering, facilitated by bank secrecy. Merkin and Feinberg are major campaign contributors to GOP candidates and backers of the Likud Party and other right-leaning parties in Israel. Merkin is involved in the same fundraising network for Israeli charities as Morris Talansky, a secretive financier and philanthropist. Talansky's illegal campaign contributions to Israeli PM Ehud Olmert led to the Israeli Prime Minister's resignation. Haaretz reports, "Olmert's close associates called Talansky 'the banker' or 'the launderer'". {5} Cerberus-Gabriel has earned a global reputation as a politically-connected "vulture capital" firm. As a hedge fund, it plays the downside, and swoops in on distressed firms considered essential to the national interest. Characteristically, it breaks companies up and sells off their assets when it cannot successfully green-mail governments, extracting huge concessions and cash incentives in several countries. "Crash and burn", in the parlance. Fairfield Greenwich Group - Walter Noel Walter Noel, like Merkin, is well connected, both financially and politically. According to the WSJ, his fund was part of the fund of funds of the Swiss private bank Union Bancaire Privee (UBP), "one of the world's largest managers of funds of funds. As of June, it managed some $124.5 billion." {6} UBP pioneered the use of hedge funds in private equity, and is currently the world's second largest hedge fund manager. Because of Swiss resistance to international efforts to stem money-laundering, the Madoff scandal has offered the first opportunity to peek inside some of the inner workings of this most secretive of major global financial operators. Noel was also an active contributor to conservative political parties in the United States and Israel. Noel and his wife have contributed to the presidential campaign funds of John McCain, George W Bush, Dan Quayle and George H W Bush. * * * Look Closely, and You'll See a Snake Swallowing Its Own Tail Recall that Madoff's Securities was actually a network of banks connected to hedge funds connected by "funds of funds", drawing from a half-dozen major large feeder funds and about thirty smaller brokers. Many of them escaped official scrutiny, and were virtually self-regulating. Their auditing was either non-existent, or unreliable. The scam went on for at least fourteen years, yet no one in a position to notice blew the whistle, and the feeders kept depositing funds in Bernie's accounts. See Table below. These funds accounts were deposited at a number of US and foreign banks. At that point, a curtain has been drawn down on what happened to the $64.8 billion principal and reported earnings in the fund. The strange secrecy about Madoff's foreign bank accounts has been imposed by the court - in itself, this is a red-flag that this was no conventional Ponzi scheme. Table 1: "Madoff's Victims: A List of Reported Victims and Their Exposure", in Wall Street Journal (December 17 2008), page A14. (Victims For Whom No Exposure Amount Is Available Are Not Shown.) Fairfield Greenwich Advisors (investment management firm): $7500 million. Tremont Capital Management (fund of funds run by Tremont Group Holdings): $3300 million. Banco Santander SA (Spanish bank): $2870 million. Ascot Partners (hedge fund founded by GMAC chief J Ezra Merkin): $1800 million. Access International Advisors (New York investment firm): $1400 million. Fortis Bank Nederland NV (Dutch bank): $1350 million. Union Bancaire Privee (Swiss bank): $1000 million. HSBC Holdings PLC (British-Chinese bank): $1000 million. Natixis SA (French investment bank): $560 million. * Carl Shapiro (former chairman Kay Windsor Inc): $550 million. Royal Bank of Scotland (British Bank): $492.76 million. BNP Paribas (French Bank): $431.17 million. BBVA (Spanish bank): $369.57 million. Man Group PLC (British hedge fund): $360 million. Reichmuth & Co (Swiss private bank): $327 million. Nomura Holdings Ltd (Japanese brokerage house): $303 million. Maxam Capital Management Inc (fund of funds based in Dairen, Connecticut): $280 million. EIM SA (European investment manager with $11 billion in assets): $230 million. Aozora Bank Ltd (Japan bank in which Cerebus Capital owns majority stake): $137 million. AXA (French insurer): $123 million. UniCredit SA (Italian bank): $92.39 million. Nordea Bank AB (Swedish bank): $59.13 million. Hyposwiss (Swiss private bank owned by St Galler Kantonalbank): $50 million. Banque Bendict Hoetsch & Cie SA (Swiss private bank): $48.8 million. City of Fairfield-Connecticut (town pension fund): $42 million. Bramdean Alternatives (asset manager): $31.2 million. Haredi Insurance Investments & Financial Services Ltd. (Israeli insurer): $14.2 million. Societe Generale (French bank): $12.32 million. Groupama SA (French insurer): $12.32 million. Credit Agricola SA (French bank): $12.32 million. Richard Spring (individual investor): $11 million. RAB Capital (hedge fund): $10 million. Banco Populare (Italian bank): $9.86 million. Korea Teachers Pension (Korean pension fund): $9.1 million. Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles: $6.4 million. Neue Privat Bank (Swiss bank): $5 million. Clal Insurance Enterprise Holdings Ltd (Israeli financial services): $3.1 million. Mediobanca SpA (via its unit Compagnie Monegasque de Banque): $671000. Now, squint, and it becomes a snake swallowing its own tail. UPDATE: I've stated my theory of the case, and it just so happens to parallel the one the prosecution based their case on: Madoff couldn't pull this off alone. He was working with other parties. There is a whole pile of money out there - it isn't all gone. We can debate the size of the actual residuals all day. I can accept the proposition being put forward by NPR and others that the true value of the fund was closer to $20 billion than $65 billion. I assume that "churn" (trading assets back and forth to increase their notional value) is part of how Bernie operated with others in his circle. But, that doesn't change the essential part that there's still a big pile of loot out there, and someone's holding it and obtaining use value from it. Is it in a foreign bank or banks? The court imposed secrecy on that part, so we should probably assume that some of it is being held by foreign banks. Was some of it rebated to one or more feeder funds? Why haven't these questions been answered? Obviously, there are some problems with this prosecution - but, that's just my opinion. Bernie refused to reveal what he knows about the disposition of the missing funds, so the US Attorney withdrew the proffered plea agreement. Bernie goes to jail for life - his wife won't keep the $72 million in goodies. The case might end there, but I'm trying to answer the questions Madoff (and the prosecution) won't. My biggest issue with the term "Ponzi Scheme" is that it implies what forensic investigators call a "hub and spoke" scam with money feeding from victims to a single spider at the center. The fact is, however, that Bernie's fund actually was structured as a multi-level Pyramid Scheme, with money moving up levels, each layer taking a cut. That's a distinction with a major difference - others were involved in the conspiracy - and, that implies the prosecution is not yet complete. I am not the one who made the original assumption of a conspiracy - the FBI and US Attorney did. I am not the one who assumed that the Madoff fund was a "fund of funds". That's how its described in the court record, a characterization that even finds its way into paragraph 24 of the reputable reporting. So, when I say, it is really not a Ponzi scheme and the first place to look for the remaining loot is the major feeders and the banks, that is hardly a leap. It is, at least to me, the most obvious. What I find to be absurd is the assumption that someone is willing to go to jail for life leaving his wife destitute for no good reason. Why wouldn't Bernie give the feds the details of where those funds went? Madoff doesn't claim they never existed or they were all spent. The government found in its Forfeiture Demand that $177 billion went through Madoff's fund over the course of thirteen years. According to SEC filings and multiple sources in sworn statements to federal investigators, Madoff's fund declined perhaps $10 billion during 2008 before it went belly up last December. That leaves a lot of money made in previous years that simply disappeared. The money is real. Someone has it. Anyone who states otherwise is making an extraordinary assertion that requires extraordinary proof. Why is this so hard for some to grasp? Goes to show the power of a media-created meme of a one-man "Ponzi scheme" that's really an international money laundering ring. More on this in a following installment. NOTES: {1} Tremont Group Holdings, Inc. (Rye, New York) in Hoover's Inc. http://www.hoovers.com/tremont/ - ID__101157 - /free-co-factsheet.xhtml {2} Tremont Group Funds Invested $3.3 Billion With Madoff by Katherine Burton, Bloomberg (December 15 2008) http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aCT_aoIRYqRg&refer=home {3} Pomerantz Law Firm Sues KPMG and Tremont Group in Madoff Related Derivative Action On Behalf of Rye Select Broad Market XL Fund (Globe Newswire, New York (February 04 2009) http://newsblaze.com/story/2009020415373300001.pz/topstory.html {4} Larger CIA and DoD Privatization Scandal Emerging from Walter Reed Story, US Attorneys Firing [Rumsfeld, Top GOP Figures Profited from Privatization of VA Hospital, CIA Contractors] by Leveymg, Daily Kos (March 10 2007) http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/3/10/21556/5045 {5} Olmert financier prefers to avoid the limelight by Uri Blau, S Shamir and G Leshem, Ha'aretz (October 6 2008) http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/981755.html {6} UBP Scrambles to Explain Madoff Ties by Cassell Bryan-Low et al, Wall Street Journal (December 30 2008) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123058674048040525.html http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/3/18/709990/-MYTHS-ABOUT-MADOFFS-PONZI-SCHEMEBernies-Game-Wasnt-What-They-Told-You http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From tal1 at cogeco.ca Tue Apr 14 17:10:50 2009 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 19:10:50 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Plan Colombia Ten Years Later: US To Install Military Base Message-ID: <4F4CA42B6206484080641705AC3E8EF6@TonyPC> ----- Original Message ----- From: rwrozoff at yahoo.com To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, April 14, 2009 9:04 AM Subject: [stopnato] Plan Colombia Ten Years Later: US To Install Military Base http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-04/14/content_11182734.htm Xinhua News Agency April 14, 2009 Installation of U.S. military base in Colombia part of cooperation: U.S. ambassador BOGOTA - U.S. ambassador to Colombia said on Monday that moving the U.S. military base in Ecuador to Colombia will be part of the bi-national cooperation for fighting against drugs and terrorism. .... "Colombia and U.S. are collaborating on the efforts against the illegal drugs, in the efforts against the international delinquency. Part of this collaboration, without doubts, requires the access to facilities between both countries," [Ambassador William] Brownfield told the press. Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa has decided not to renew thepermission for Washington to continue using the air base of Manta,located at Manta Bay in western Ecuador. So U.S. is expected to set up an alternative base in Ecuador's neighbor Colombia, main political ally of the U.S. in the region. Brownfield said that it is important for Bogota and Washington to work jointly to guarantee security. He said that both governments have discussed the issue but the transfer of the military base has not been done. Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said early last month, that his country was ready to "widen the eases in some aerial bases." =========================== Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato To subscribe, send an e-mail to: stopnato-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Daily digest option available. Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages ============================== __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Database | Polls 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 11New Members Visit Your Group Give Back Yahoo! for Good Get inspired by a good cause. Y! Toolbar Get it Free! easy 1-click access to your groups. Yahoo! Groups Start a group in 3 easy steps. Connect with others.. __,_._,___ From tboyle at rosehill.net Tue Apr 14 09:54:01 2009 From: tboyle at rosehill.net (Todd Boyle) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 08:54:01 -0700 Subject: [A-List] Indymedia Seattle does not rely on Google Video-- see list Message-ID: As we have been discussing, Google blocks a lot of political content and cannot be depended on when the chips are down. Pepperspray is a successor to Indy Media of WTO fame in 1999, and distributes video thru dozens of outlets. See the list. follow their tail lights thru the fog--- todd >Cc: vfp92speak at lists.riseup.net >From: Randy Rowland >To: pepperspray at lists.riseup.net > > >- - - - - - - >Indymedia Presents #347 first airs on Seattle's SCAN TV on Thursday, >March 26, 2009 at 8:30pm >This show airs on the Manhattan Neighborhood Network's Channel 34 on >Sunday, April 26, 2009 at 10:30pm >All other locations, check local listings > >For more info visit our website: >www.peppersprayproductions.org > >- - - - - - - - - - - - - - >"Indymedia Presents" is a 28 minute weekly cable public access >program produced on behalf of the Seattle Independent Media Center >(IMC) by PepperSpray Productions. "Indymedia Presents" airs in >Seattle on Thursdays at 8:30 pm. In addition to SCAN Channel 77 in >Seattle, "Indymedia Presents" also airs on channels in greater King >County (Channel 23), Bainbridge Island (Channel 12), Port Townsend, >WA (Channel 97 & 98), Olympia, WA (Channel 22), Tucson, AZ (Channel >73), St Paul, MN (Channel 15), Minneapolis, MN (Channel 17), Fort >Wayne, IN (Channel 57), Philadelphia, PA (Channels 54 & 62), >Brooklyn, NY (Channels 34 & 67), and on New York City's Manhattan >Neighborhood Network, (Channel 34). Our newest channel is in >Phippsburg, Maine. This station is downloading the show for free >through a new service for PEG stations, available at PEGMedia.org. > >"Indymedia Presents" is also available on the internet: >Google Video-- >http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=+%22indymedia+presents%22&so=1&num=10 >Truveo-- >http://www.truveo.com/search.php?query=Indymedia%20presents&results=15&page=1&view=basic >Blip TV-- http://indymediapresents.blip.tv >Ourmedia-- >http://www.ourmedia.org/user/126720 >You Tube-- >http://youtube.com/profile?user=IndymediaPresents >Archive.org--http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=%22indymedia%20presents%22 >Zencast--http://www.zencast.com/channels/showchannel.asp?mc=20&cid=10721 >VlogMap--http://community.vlogmap.org/node/1699 >Veoh--http://www.veoh.com/channels/IndymediaPresents >Mefeedia--http://www.mefeedia.com/feeds/22908/ >Flickr--http://www.flickr.com/photos/7590322 at N06/ >Blinkx--http://www.blinkx.com/videos/Indymedia%2520Presents >Yahoo >Video--http://video.yahoo.com/video/search?p=%22Indymedia+Presents%22&x=41&y=6 >MeeVee--http://video.yahoo.com/video/search?p=%22Indymedia+Presents%22&x=41&y=6 > >or download/subscribe to the free Indymedia Presents podcast via the >iTunes Store. > >All these links are accessible from our website, >www.peppersprayproductions.org > >Public Access producers, community screeners, and IMCs are >encouraged to screen or air "Indymedia Presents." To obtain the show >on a regular basis, contact >pepperspray at riseup.net, or visit our >web site at >www.peppersprayproductions.org. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 6460 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090414/43feb350/attachment.txt From noreply at coha.org Tue Apr 14 12:24:13 2009 From: noreply at coha.org (Council on Hemispheric Affairs) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 14:24:13 -0400 Subject: Castro Reforms in Cuba; Unsung Hero José Francisco Peña Gómez Message-ID: <20090414182404.5B4213E4251@mx-out2.daemonmail.net> A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 5737 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090414/24943485/attachment.txt From tal1 at cogeco.ca Tue Apr 14 17:43:27 2009 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 19:43:27 -0400 Subject: [A-List] An Open Letter to President Obama In-Reply-To: <49E3EE54.6000702@ashisuto.co.jp> References: <49E3EE54.6000702@ashisuto.co.jp> Message-ID: <1EB94C867A084AAFB39BFBB8874679AF@TonyPC> ....a fine letter...and to which there is absolutely zero chance that Obama will respond. So the letter should really read, 'An Open Letter to the American People'. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bill Totten" To: "a-list" Sent: Monday, April 13, 2009 10:00 PM Subject: [A-List] An Open Letter to President Obama > > Revive Lincoln's Monetary Policy > > by Ellen Brown > > webofdebt.com (April 08 2009) > > > Dear President Obama: > > The world was transfixed on that remarkable day in January when, to > poetry, song, and dance, you gazed upon Abraham Lincoln's likeness at > the Lincoln Memorial and searched for wisdom to navigate these difficult > times. Indeed, you have so many things in common with that venerable > President that one might imagine you were his reincarnation in different > dress. You are both thin and wiry, brilliant speakers, appearing on the > national stage at pivotal times. Fertile imaginations could envision you > coming back dressed in that African heritage you freed, to help heal the > great scar of slavery and prove once and for all the proposition that > all men are created equal and can achieve great things if given a > fighting chance. > > As Wordsworth said, however, our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; > and if that is true, you may have forgotten a more subtle form of > slavery from which Lincoln tried less successfully to free his > countrymen. You may have forgotten it because it has been omitted from > our popular history books, leaving Americans ill-equipped to interpret > the lessons of our own past. This letter is therefore meant to remind > you. > > President Obama, we are now met on another battlefield of that same > economic war that visited Lincoln and the Founding Fathers before him. > For you to finish the work Lincoln started would be a poetic triumph no > American could miss. The fate of our economy and the nation itself may > depend on how well you understand Lincoln's monetary breakthrough, the > most far-reaching "economic stimulus plan" ever implemented by a US > President. You can solve our economic crisis quickly and permanently, > by implementing the same economic solution that allowed Lincoln to win > the Civil War and thus save the Union from foreign economic masters. > > > Lincoln's Monetary Breakthrough > > The bankers had Lincoln's government over a barrel, just as Wall Street > has Congress in its vice-like grip today. The North needed money to fund > a war, and the bankers were willing to lend it only under circumstances > that amounted to extortion, involving staggering interest rates of 24 to > 36 percent. Lincoln saw that this would bankrupt the North and asked a > trusted colleague to research the matter and find a solution. In what > may be the best piece of advice ever given to a sitting President, > Colonel Dick Taylor of Illinois reported back that the Union had the > power under the Constitution to solve its financing problem by printing > its money as a sovereign government. Taylor said: > > "Just get Congress to pass a bill authorizing the printing of full legal > tender treasury notes ... and pay your soldiers with them and go ahead > and win your war with them also. If you make them full legal tender ... > they will have the full sanction of the government and be just as good > as any money; as Congress is given that express right by the > Constitution". > > The Greenbacks actually were just as good as the bankers' banknotes. > Both were created on a printing press, but the banknotes had the veneer > of legitimacy because they were "backed" by gold. The catch was that > this backing was based on "fractional reserves", meaning the bankers > held only a small fraction of the gold necessary to support all the > loans represented by their banknotes. The "fractional reserve" ruse is > still used today to create the impression that bankers are lending > something other than mere debt created with accounting entries on their > books. {1} > > Lincoln took Colonel Taylor's advice and funded the war by printing > paper notes backed by the credit of the government. These legal-tender > US Notes or "Greenbacks" represented receipts for labor and goods > delivered to the United States. They were paid to soldiers and suppliers > and were tradeable for goods and services of a value equivalent to their > service to the community. The Greenbacks aided the Union not only in > winning the war but in funding a period of unprecedented economic > expansion. Lincoln's government created the greatest industrial giant > the world had yet seen. The steel industry was launched, a continental > railroad system was created, a new era of farm machinery and cheap tools > was promoted, free higher education was established, government support > was provided to all branches of science, the Bureau of Mines was > organized, and labor productivity was increased by fifty to 75 percent. > The Greenback was not the only currency used to fund these achievements; > but they could not have been accomplished without it, and they could not > have been accomplished on money borrowed at the usurious rates the > bankers were attempting to extort from the North. > > Lincoln succeeded in restoring the government's power to issue the > national currency, but his revolutionary monetary policy was opposed by > powerful forces. The threat to established interests was captured in an > editorial of unknown authorship, said to have been published in The > London Times in 1865: > > "If that mischievous financial policy which had its origin in the North > American Republic during the late war in that country, should become > indurated down to a fixture, then that Government will furnish its own > money without cost. It will pay off its debts and be without debt. It > will become prosperous beyond precedent in the history of the civilized > governments of the world. The brains and wealth of all countries will go > to North America. That government must be destroyed or it will destroy > every monarchy on the globe." > > Lincoln was assassinated in 1865. According to historian W Cleon Skousen: > > "Right after the Civil War there was considerable talk about reviving > Lincoln's brief experiment with the Constitutional monetary system. Had > not the European money-trust intervened, it would have no doubt become > an established institution." > > The institution that became established instead was the Federal Reserve, > a privately-owned central bank given the power in 1913 to print Federal > Reserve Notes (or dollar bills) and lend them to the government. The > government was submerged in a debt that has grown exponentially since, > until it is now an unrepayable $11 trillion. For nearly a century, > Lincoln's statue at the Lincoln Memorial has gazed out pensively across > the reflecting pool toward the Federal Reserve building, as if pondering > what the bankers had wrought since his death and how to remedy it. > > > Building on a Successful Tradition > > Lincoln did not invent government-issued paper money. Rather, he > restored a brilliant innovation of the American colonists. According to > Benjamin Franklin, it was the colonists' home-grown paper "scrip" that > was responsible for the remarkable abundance in the colonies at a time > when England was suffering from the ravages of the Industrial > Revolution. Like with Lincoln's Greenbacks, this prosperity posed a > threat to the control of the British Crown and the emerging network of > private British banks, prompting the King to ban the colonists' paper > money and require the payment of taxes in gold. According to Franklin > and several other historians of the period, it was these onerous demands > by the Crown, and the corresponding collapse of the colonists' paper > money supply, that actually sparked the Revolutionary War. {2} > > The colonists won the war but ultimately lost the money power to a > private banking cartel, one that issued another form of paper money > called "banknotes". Today the bankers' debt-based money has come to > dominate most of the economies of the world; but there are a number of > historical examples of the successful funding of economic development in > other countries simply with government-issued credit. In Australia and > New Zealand in the 1930s, the Depression conditions suffered elsewhere > were avoided by drawing on a national credit card issued by > publicly-owned central banks. The governments of the island states of > Guernsey and Jersey created thriving economies that carried no federal > debt, just by issuing their own debt-free public currencies. China has > also funded impressive internal development through a system of > state-owned banks. > > Here in the United States, the state of North Dakota has a wholly > state-owned bank that creates credit on its books just as private banks > do. This credit is used to serve the needs of the community, and the > interest on loans is returned to the government. Not coincidentally, > North Dakota has a $1.2 billion budget surplus at a time when 46 of > fifty states are insolvent, an impressive achievement for a state of > isolated farmers battling challenging weather. {3} The North Dakota > prototype could be copied not only in every US state but at the federal > level. > > > The Perennial Inflation Question > > The objection invariably raised to government-issued currency or credit > is that it would create dangerous hyperinflation. However, in none of > these models has that proven to be true. Price inflation results either > when the supply of money goes up but the supply of goods doesn't, or > when speculators devalue currencies by massive short selling, as in > those cases of Latin American hyperinflation when printing-press money > was used to pay off foreign debt. When new money is used to produce new > goods and services, price inflation does not result because supply and > demand rise together. Prices did increase during the American Civil War, > but this was attributed to the scarcity of goods common in wartime > rather than to the Greenback itself. War produces weapons rather than > consumer goods. > > Today, with trillions of dollars being committed for bailouts and > stimulus plans, another objection to Lincoln's solution is likely to be, > "The US government is already printing its own money - and lots of it". > This, however, is a misconception. What the government prints are bonds > - its IOUs or debt. If the government did print dollars, instead of > borrowing them from a privately-owned central bank that prints them, > Uncle Sam would not have an eleven trillion dollar millstone hanging > around his neck. As Thomas Edison astutely observed: > > "If our nation can issue a dollar bond, it can issue a dollar bill. The > element that makes the bond good, makes the bill good, also. The > difference between the bond and the bill is that the bond lets money > brokers collect twice the amount of the bond and an additional twenty > percent, whereas the currency pays nobody but those who contribute > directly in some useful way. > > "It is absurd to say that our country can issue $30 million in bonds and > not $30 million in currency. Both are promises to pay, but one promise > fattens the usurers and the other helps the people." > > > A Wake-up Call > > Henry Ford observed at about the same time: > > "It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our > banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a > revolution before tomorrow morning". > > Today we the people are starting to understand our banking and monetary > system, and we are shocked, dismayed, and furious at what we are > discovering. The wizard behind the curtain turns out to be a small group > of men pulling levers and dials, creating an illusory money scheme that, > behind all the talk and bravado, is mere smoke and mirrors. These levers > are controlled by a privately-owned, unaccountable central bank called > the Federal Reserve, which has recently dispensed billions if not > trillions in funds to its banker cronies, without revealing where these > monies are going even under Congressional inquiry or in response to > Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. As Chris Powell pointed out > recently in conjunction with an FOIA request brought by Bloomberg News, > which the Fed declined to comply with: > > "Any government that can disburse $2 trillion secretly, without any > accountability, is not a democratic government. It is government of, by, > and, for the bankers." {4] > > There was a time when private central bankers were the heavyweights in > control, able to run their ultra-secret agenda with impunity; but that > era is coming to an end. The bankers are scrambling, trying to patch up > their crumbling creations with schemes, bailouts and sleight of hand. > That effort, however, must ultimately prove futile. As investment > adviser Rolfe Winkler said in a recent article: > > "The great Ponzi scheme that is the Western World's economy has grown so > big there's simply no fixing' it. Flushing more debt through the system > would be like giving Madoff a few billion to tide him over. Or like > adding another floor to the Tower of Babel. To what end? The collapse is > already here. The question is: How much do we want it to hurt? Using the > public's purse to finance 'confidence' in a system that is already kaput > may delay the Day of Reckoning, sure, but at the cost of multiplying our > losses. Perhaps fantastically." {5} > > The bankers are on the run, feverishly trying to use the collapse of the > current system to steer us toward an "Amero"-style North American > currency, or a one-world private banking system and privately-issued > global currency that they and only they control. We the people will not > accept those solutions, however, no matter how bad things get. We demand > real solutions that empower us, not further enslave us. > > Abraham Lincoln had such a solution. President Obama, you can finally > bring his monetary solution to fruition. Manifest the vision of Lincoln, > Jefferson, Madison and Franklin, and we the people will make sure you > are placed in the pantheon of our greatest leaders and are revered for > all time. America's greatest days can still be ahead of us; but for this > to happen, we need to expose and root out the deceptive banking scheme > that would enslave us to a future of debt and increasing homelessness in > this great country our forefathers founded. The time has come for > democracy to rise superior to a private banking cartel and take back the > power to create money once again. Such a transformation would represent > the most epochal and empowering shift that humanity has ever seen. As > you recently said: > > "This country has never responded to a crisis by sitting on the > sidelines and hoping for the best. Throughout our history we have met > every great challenge with bold action and big ideas." > > Your words are a timely reminder of our long legacy of action and bold > solutions in the face of adversity. Can we do this? Yes we can. > > Originally posted on Yes! Magazine Online (April 07 2008) > > _____ > > For more information, see the writings of a variety of money reformers > including David Korten, Richard Cook, Stephen Zarlenga, Michael Hudson > and this author; articles collected at www.webofdebt.com/articles and > www.GlobalResearch.ca; the documentary videos "The Money Masters" and > "Money as Debt"; and proposed legislation by Congressman Dennis Kucinich > to nationalize the Fed, and by Congressman Ron Paul to audit it (HR 1027). > > Ellen Brown developed her research skills as an attorney practicing > civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt, her latest book, she > turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and "the money > trust". She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to > create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get > it back. Her earlier books focused on the pharmaceutical cartel that > gets its power from "the money trust". Her eleven books include > Forbidden Medicine, Nature's Pharmacy (co-authored with Dr Lynne > Walker), and The Key to Ultimate Health (co-authored with Dr Richard > Hansen). Her websites are www.webofdebt.com and www.ellenbrown.com. > > Notes: > > 1. See Ellen Brown, "Borrowing from Peter to Pay Paul: The Wall Street > Ponzi Scheme Called Fractional Reserve Banking", > www.webofdebt.com/articles (December 29 2008). > > 2. Congressman Charles Binderup in a 1941 speech, "How America Created > Its Own Money in 1750: How Benjamin Franklin Made New England > Prosperous". Binderup quotes historian John Twells on this point. > > 3. E Brown, "Turning the Tables on Wall Street: North Dakota Shows > Cash-starved States How They Can Create Their Own Credit", > www.webofdebt.com/articles (March 11 2009). > > 4. Chris Powell, "Fed Refuses to Disclose Recipients of $2 Trillion", > GATA (December 12 2008). > > 5. Rolfe Winkler, "More Debt Won't Rescue the Great American Ponzi", > Option Armageddon (March 09 2009). > > _____ > > Special thanks to CC for his invaluable help with this article. > > (c) Copyright 2007 Ellen Brown. All Rights Reserved. > > http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/lincoln_obama.php > > > http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com > http://www.ashisuto.co.jp > > > > From tal1 at cogeco.ca Tue Apr 14 17:45:40 2009 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 19:45:40 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Signatories: Stop Sweden's Clandestine Accession To NATO Message-ID: <7E076FB6AA5B420A93AC359D019478CD@TonyPC> ----- Original Message ----- From: Rick Rozoff To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, April 14, 2009 5:09 PM Subject: [stopnato] Signatories: Stop Sweden's Clandestine Accession To NATO http://www.natosmyg.se/historik/upprop.htm Stop the Sneaky Accession to NATO! Establish a citizen's commission to chart and elucidate the ?tyranny of small steps? In a letter to the editor of a Swedish newspaper published in February of 2006, Roland Forsgren of Karslkoga raised an exceedingly urgent issue: ?Some day, we the people of Sweden, are going to wake up and discover that we have joined NATO, the European Monetary Union and the United States of Europe. I hope that someone can then explain how that happened....How we - in the name of democracy - lost our independence.? Since then, the issue has become even more urgent, not least with regard to NATO. For, Sweden has been dragged deeper and deeper into NATO, which is dominated by the United States and, in accordance with the superpower's doctrine, asserts the right of first use of nuclear weapons. This deepening involvement has occurred in direct contradiction of Swedish public opinion. According to the latest (2007) survey by the SOM Institute at G?teborg University, 44 per cent were opposed to and 19 per cent were in favour of NATO membership. With small variations, that has been a consistent pattern since the Institute began its annual opinion surveys in 1994. But behind the people's back, there has been a stealthy process of accession to NATO. It has now gone so far that NATO enthusiasts can, with good reason, argue that in point of fact Sweden is already an informal member of NATO to the extent of ca. 90 per cent. It is necessary to acknowledge that fact, it is argued, and take the next small step to formal membership with all the advantages that it is stated to provide -- to ?join up and exert influence?. (See for example ?We should join NATO even formally?, 7 Nov. 2007 and ?Sweden is already in NATO?, 8 Feb. 2008, both in the op-ed section of the national daily, Svenska Dagbladet.) It is unfortunately true that Sweden's co-operation with NATO has been very extensive, and without debate. This obscure process deserves to be thoroughly elucidated. The issue concerns not only our national security policy. It is very much an issue of democracy, as well. The question that ought to be self-evident is this: Given the large and consistent public opinion against NATO membership, plus the fact that only one of the seven parliamentary parties openly advocates full membership, how has it been made possible that Sweden now finds itself so deeply intertwined with NATO? ? What are the small-- and perhaps even large -- steps that have thus far been taken? ? Who has taken those steps, with what means and motives, and with what legitimacy? ? Which elected representatives have allowed that to happen, and for what reasons? The steady approach to NATO membership seems to proceed on the assumption that most citizens already know what NATO is, what that military alliance has previously done, what its future plans are, what role Sweden would play after joining, and who decides according to what decision-making process. But do we know whether or not the Swedish people are willing to accept that our soldiers will die or be permanently injured in wars, including wars of aggression, in which an independent Sweden would never become military involved? What are the implications for our capacity to support future U.N. operations? And not least: What is our position with regard to NATO's nuclear weapons? Other potentially relevant questions: Are there any connections between various events relating to Swedish national security -- for example, the incidents involving suspected encroachments by foreign submarines in the Stockholm archipelago -- and the growing significance of NATO? In what ways can NATO be said to exert influence, both direct and indirect, on Sweden's defence forces and society in general? What is the relationship between NATO and the European Union, and between NATO and the United Nations (crucial because both the EU and the UN are of central importance for Sweden)? Will the current economic problems of the Swedish military increase or diminish the strength of arguments for NATO membership? Chart the sneaky-accession process With few exceptions, Swedish media and elected representatives have allowed the sneaky accession to proceed without any significant resistance or attempt to elucidate it. The critical function of journalism has been remarkable for its absence. That has made it easier for a determined minority to create the impression that all resistance is meaningless. But education, debate and resistance are never meaningless. We therefore propose a citizens' inquiry with the task of charting the sneaky-accession and its consequences for our national security and democracy. The first step is to call attention to the issue and shine a spotlight on the entire process -- among other things, by means of this website to which all interested parties are welcome to contribute with viewpoints and suggestions, keep informed about the project's development, etc. Eventually, of course, we must also address the issue of how Sweden shall maintain its national security by other means than membership in NATO. Obviously, the point of departure for that discussion should be that Sweden, in accordance with the U.N. Charter, must first and foremost concentrate on conflict management and dialogue rather than on military power and alliances. We encourage all citizens who wish to preserve the nation's democracy and independence to participate in this crucially important debate for the sake of Sweden's future. Signed by: Sixten Andr?asson, head teacher ?rjan Appelqvist, economic historian Kerstin Blomberg, information officer Al Burke, editor Curt Carlsson, journalist Drude Dahlerup, political scientist H?kan Danielsson, educator Stefan de Vylder, economist Krister Eduards, business economist Erni Friholt, public debater Ola Friholt, public debater Per Gahrton, MEP (Green Party, ret.) Elisabeth Gerle, Lecturer in Ethics Kerstin Greb?ck, Chair of WILPF Sweden Lars H. Gustafsson, paediatrician Jan Hagberg, actuary Bo ?:son Hall, Licentiate of Engineering Birgitta Hambraeus, MP Sweden (Centre Party, ret.) Sven Hamrell, editor Bengt Harling, troubadour Rebwar Hassan, municipal councillor (Green Party) Tom Heyman, MP Sweden (Conservative Party, ret.) ?sa Hjalmers, peace activist Ingvar Hj?rtsj?, chair of Men for Gender Equality Erik H?gg, physician Kerstin H?gg, lead teacher Dan Israel, book publisher J?rgen Johansen, peace researcher Annika Johansson, sociologist Kjell-Arne Johansson, editor Jacek Jurkowski, teacher Lena Kleven?s, MP Sweden (ret.) Karl Erik Lagerl?f, writer Ingela Kumar Lidvall, teacher David Liljequist, union ombudsman Anita Lillburn, teacher Martin Linde, historian Lennart Lindgren, writer Jonas Ljungberg, economic historian Sylvia Ljungdahl, chair of solidarity organization TUFF Ulla Lyttkens, theatre director Eva Moberg, writer Andreas Murray, pscyhoanalyst Ingela M?rtensson, MP Sweden (Liberal Party, ret.) Vilhelm Olsson, municipal councillor (Green Party) G?ran Palm, media analyst/researcher Lennart Palm, historian Giuliano Pontara, philosopher H?kan Rudehill, writer Jan Olof R?nn, head teacher ?ke Sandin, teacher Monica Schelin, social worker Kerstin Schultz, social worker Gudrun Schyman, freelance feminist Bengt Silfverstrand, MP Sweden (SDP) Ingrid Sj?strand, writer Martin Smedjeback, non-violence trainer S?ren Sommelius, writer Christina Sp?nnar, sociologist Bibbi Steinertz, editor Stefan Svallfors, sociologist T?res Theorell, professor of medicine Maj Britt Theorin, disarmament ambassador (ret.) Gudrun Tiberg, information officer Gunnar Westberg, physician H?kan Wiberg, peace researcher Erik Wijk, writer Stellan Vinthagen, lecturer Ellis Wohlner, actuary Jan ?berg, peace researcher =========================== Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato To subscribe, send an e-mail to: Rick Rozoff at rwrozoff at yahoo.com or stopnato-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Daily digest option available. Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages ============================== __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Database | Polls MARKETPLACE I'm happy I lost my Job. Now I make $12,000/mo online! See how I do it: WealthResource.org. Moms return to online schools. Get an online degree in as fast as 24 months. See Degrees Now at ClassesUSA. I'm happy I lost my Job. Now I make $12,000/mo online! See how I do it: WealthResource.org. 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 11New Members Visit Your Group Support Group Lose lbs together Share your weight- loss successes. Dog Groups on Yahoo! Groups discuss everything related to dogs. Yahoo! Groups Mom Power Community just for Moms Join the discussion. __,_._,___ From tal1 at cogeco.ca Tue Apr 14 18:00:52 2009 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 20:00:52 -0400 Subject: [A-List] President: 'Color' Coup Model Used In Moldova Message-ID: <6DAC4B8ADAB14D67B2F316434F476C54@TonyPC> ----- Original Message ----- From: rwrozoff at yahoo.com To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, April 14, 2009 9:06 AM Subject: [stopnato] President: 'Color' Coup Model Used In Moldova http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=13791469&PageNum=0 Itar-Tass April 14, 2009 Operation like ?colour revolution? was tried in Moldova - opinion -?They wished to use the moment to stage an operation like a ?colour revolution?. The events in Belgrade, Tbilisi, Bishkek and Kiev took place according to such a scenario.? MADRID - An attempt to stage an operation patterned on ?colour revolutions? was made in Moldova, Vladimir Voronin, the Moldovan president, said in an interview with the Spanish newspaper El Pais. He said citizens of Serbia and Romania had masterminded pogroms in Chisinau. Voronin said the arrival of nine persons from Serbia, as well as of agents of the Romanian secret services had been registered in Chisinau. ?They wished to use the moment to stage an operation like a ?colour revolution?. The events in Belgrade, Tbilisi, Bishkek and Kiev took place according to such a scenario,? Voronin stressed. ?The events have been filmed, so we can identify the offenders who attacked policemen. We are going to arrest and prosecute them,? the Moldovan president said. ---------------------------------------------------------- http://news-en.trend.az/important/opinion/1455433.html Trend News Agency April 14, 2009 Attempt for ?color revolution? in Moldova: Moldavian president There was an attempt to realize "color revolution" in Moldova, Moldavian President Vladimir Voronin said in his interview with the Spanish Pais newspaper. Voronin said citizens of Serbia and Romanian led pogroms in Kishinev, Vesti TV channel reported. "We revealed that 9 people from Serbia and agents of the Romanian special service arrived in Kishinev on April 7," Voronin said. "They wanted to use a milestone and organize one of operations which is called "color revolution". The developments in Belgrade, Tbilisi, Bishkek and Kiev took place inline with the same scenario." "We photographed everybody and can identify people breaking laws and attacking the police. We will arrest and sue them at law," ITAR TASS quoted Voronin. =========================== Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato To subscribe, send an e-mail to: stopnato-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Daily digest option available. Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages ============================== __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Database | Polls 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 11New Members Visit Your Group Give Back Yahoo! for Good Get inspired by a good cause. Y! Toolbar Get it Free! easy 1-click access to your groups. Yahoo! Groups Start a group in 3 easy steps. Connect with others.. __,_._,___ From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Tue Apr 14 20:50:39 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2009 11:50:39 +0900 Subject: [A-List] The Coming Siege of Austerity Message-ID: <49E54B7F.5090904@ashisuto.co.jp> Clusterfuck Nation by Jim Kunstler Comment on current events by the author of The Long Emergency (2005) www.kunstler.com (April 13 2009) It's a curious symptom of the consensus trance zombifying the American public and its auditors in the media that something like a "recovery" is now deemed to be underway. And, as events compel me to repeat in this space, it begs the question: recovery to what? To Wall Street booking stupendous profits by laundering "risk" out of bad loans with new issues of tranche-o-matic securitized paper? This I doubt, since there isn't a pension fund left from San Jose to Bratislava that would touch this stuff with a stick, even if it could be turned out in collector's editions of boxed sets. Does it mean that American "consumers" (so-called) are awaited momentarily in the flat-screen TV sales parlors with their credit cards fanned-out like poker hands, ready for "action?" Not too likely with massive non-performance out in cardholder-land, and half the nation's electronics inventory wending its way onto Craig's List. Are we expecting more asteroid belts of new suburbs carved in the loamy outlands of Dallas and Minneapolis, complete with new highway strips of Big Box shopping and Chuck E Cheeses? Go to banking's intensive care unit and inquire (if you can) among the flat-lining production home-builders and the real estate investment trusts on life support when they expect to rev up the heavy equipment. The idea that we're about to resume the insane behavior that induced the current epochal malaise of economy is so absurd it will only be heard in the faculty dining halls of the Ivy League. And if America is not picking up where it left off eighteen months ago - the orgy of spending future claims on wealth unlikely to accrue - then what is our destiny? Based on what's out there in the organs of public thinking, it seems that we don't want to think about it. So many forces are arrayed against a return to the previous "normal" that we will be lucky, in another eighteen months, to still find ourselves speaking English and celebrating Christmas. What's "out there" is a panorama of mutually reinforcing critical problems pertaining to how we live on this continent. Like the obesity, heart disease, and diabetes that plague the public, these problems are disorders of lifestyle habits and the only possible "cure" is a comprehensive revision of lifestyle. With the onset of spring weather and the cheez doodles and monster truck rallies and Nascar tailgate barbeques and the drive-in beer emporiums all beckoning, can the public public shift its attention from these infantile preoccupations to saving its own ass? So far, the most striking piece of the economic fiasco is the absence of any galvanizing spirit among the millions getting crushed in the tragic unwind of our relations with money. It will be interesting to see, for instance, if there is any uproar over the evolving story of Goldman Sachs's latest raid on the US Treasury, after booking billions in taxpayer-funded payouts funneled through AIG, based on double-hedged credit default swaps. Such magic tricks are understandably hard to follow, but a dozen-or-so federal attorneys with a middling background in differential calculus might suss out the trail that leads from Ben Bernanke's work station to Lloyd Blankfein's cappuccino machine. Something similar may be said in regard to revelations last week of White House economic advisor Larry Summers' connection with a number of hedge funds shoveling millions into his deep pockets for showing up once a week to cheerlead their "innovations" - not to mention his shadowy visits to the Goldman Sachs gravy train even after he signed onto the Obama campaign. As long as the stock markets seem to rally - no matter what else is really going on in America - nobody will pay much attention to these disgusting irregularities. Since it is that time of year, and I am haunting the gardening shop, one can't fail to notice the many styles of pitchforks for sale. My guess is that the current mood of public paralysis will dissolve in a blur of blood and spittle sometime between Memorial Day and July Fourth, even with Nascar in full swing, and the mushrooming ranks of the unemployed lost in raptures of engine noise and fried cornmeal. It doesn't take too many determined, pissed-off people to create a lot of mischief in a complex society. On the agenda in the second quarter of 2009 are ominous rumblings in the oil and food sectors. Half a year of cratered oil prices have decimated the oil industry and we're driving at 100-miles-an-hour straight off a cliff into a new kind of supply crisis - even if industrial production and global exports remain moribund. So many drilling rigs are being decommissioned that the oil industry itself looks like it's preparing for its own death, investment in exploration and discovery has withered with the credit markets, and the world may never recover from the year long hiccup in oil industry activity - translation: peak oil is biting back now with a vengeance. Its peakness will look peakier and the yawning arc of depletion beyond will look steeper and pose a threat to every globalized and continental-scale enterprise in the known world. So many dire elements are ranging around our food production system (that is, farming), from widespread drought and water table depletion to "input" shortages (especially fertilizers) to sickness in credit availability, that we're all one bad harvest away from something that will make Pieter Bruegel-the-elder's "Triumph of Death" look like Vanity Fair's annual Oscar Party in comparison. Barack Obama, charming as he is, had better drop his pretensions about kick-starting the old consumer economy, fire the Wall Street clowns and parasites who are running that futile exercise, and start preparing a US Lifeboat Economy aimed at reducing the scale and scope of our outlays so we can survive the coming siege of austerity. Meanwhile, I'm glad that he finally got a dog for the White House, because the President knows full-well where to turn in Washington if you want some genuine love and affection. Pieter Bruegel the Elder - The Triumph of Death http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/.a/6a00d834515e6b69e201156f20fe61970c-pi (Click image to enlarge) _____ My new novel of the post-oil future, World Made By Hand, is available at all booksellers. http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/2009/04/the-coming-siege-of-austerity.html http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From glparramatta at greenleft.org.au Tue Apr 14 19:23:49 2009 From: glparramatta at greenleft.org.au (glparramatta) Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2009 11:23:49 +1000 Subject: [A-List] What's new at Links: Thailand, factory occupations, Cuba's energy revolution, Capitalism and climate change, Luis Bilbao, Pakistan, Bolivia Message-ID: <49E53725.6070806@greenleft.org.au> What's new at Links: Thailand, factory occupations, Cuba's energy revolution, Capitalism and climate change, Luis Bilbao, Pakistan, Bolivia * * * Subscribe free to Links - International Journal of Socialist Renewal - at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373 You can also follow Links on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LinksSocialism 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/. * * * Thailand: Red Shirt democratic movement faces armed might of the ruling elites By Giles Ji Ungpakorn, Turn Left Thailand April 13, 2009 -- For the fourth time in forty years, troops have opened fire on pro-democracy demonstrators in Bangkok. Each time, the aim has been the same: to protect the interests of the conservative elites who have run Thailand for the past 70 years. For those watching, it may be tempting just to assume that the present chaos is merely about different coloured T-shirts and supporters of different political parties, as though they were mirror images of each other. This is not the case. * Read more (Updated April 14) Ireland & Britain: Car workers occupy plants over jobs -- Support Visteon workers! April 9, 2009 -- Visteon workers in Enfield, having been threatened with mass arrest by a court order, agree to leave peacefully under the recommendation of the union on April 9, 2009. Some workers feel that ending the occupation is a mistake, despite an agreement by the Visteon management to enter into negotiations. * Watch and read more La revolucion energetica: Cuba's energy revolution By Laurie Guevara-Stone, photos by Mario Alberto Arrastia Avila April 2, 2009 -- A new revolution is sweeping the island of Cuba, which is making massive progress on energy efficiency and renewable generation. Indeed, such is the success of the two-year old program on this small island of 11 million people, that many other countries could learn from its efforts to be energy independent and curb climate change. * Read more Audio: Capitalism and Climate Change -- Ian Angus Ian Angus is the editor of climateandcapitalism.com and a founder of the Eco-socialist International Network. He is also associate editor of Canada's Socialist Voice and the director of the Socialist History Project. Ian toured Australia (Perth poster, left) in the run up to the World at a Crossroads conference held in Sydney on April 10-12, 2009, which was organised by the Democratic Socialist Perspective . * Listen Luis Bilbao: The grand duel -- At the Fifth Summit of the Americas, a crucial battle is to be waged By Luis Bilbao, translated by Gonzalo Villanueva for Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal. It was first published in America XXI. April 9, 2009 -- The time has arrived: to align with the North to engage in the futile business of saving capitalism, or define positions and accelerate towards South American unity, the complementary solidarity of the region's economies and authentic sovereignty towards the good life for all. That is the option for which there is no possible postponement. * Read more Fourth International: Draft report on climate change By Daniel Tanuro Below is a reworked version of the report on climate change and climate campaigns, drafted by Daniel Tanuro and presented at February 2009 meeting of the International Committee (IC) of the Fourth International. This report has been adopted as the basis of a resolution to be written for the coming Fourth International world congress. * Read more Beards, Cuban and Pakistani By Farooq Sulehria March 30, 2009 -- Fidel Castro finds beards a practical advantage: "You don't have to shave every day. If you multiply the fifteen minutes you spend shaving every day by the number of days in a year, you'll see that you devote almost 5500 minutes to shaving. An eight-hour workday consists of 480 minutes, so if you don't shave you gain about ten days a year that you can devote to work, to reading, to sports or to whatever you like." * Read more Bolivia's 'communitarian socialism' By Federico Fuentes April 1, 2009 -- The historic enactment of Bolivia's new constitution that grants unprecedented rights to the country's indigenous majority, approved by over 61% of the vote on January 25, represented the beginning of "communitarian socialism", according to President Evo Morales. * 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 Follow Links on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LinksSocialism _______________________________________________ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 10370 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090415/75c42cb6/attachment.txt From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Wed Apr 15 08:38:27 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2009 23:38:27 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Peak Oil Advice from German Poets Message-ID: <49E5F163.9030804@ashisuto.co.jp> by John Michael Greer The Archdruid Report (April 08 2009) Druid perspectives on nature, culture, and the future of industrial society Fairly often, during the three years or so since these essays first started trying to map out the topography of the deindustrial future ahead of us, people have responded with a straightforward question: what do you think we should do about it? Even when it's posed rhetorically, as it so often is, this question strikes me as a good sign. It's one thing, after all, to treat the twilight of the industrial age as an abstract possibility, or a dumping ground for Utopian or apocalyptic fantasies, as so often happens these days. It's quite another to grapple with it as a reality that can be expected to shape the rest of our lives. Those who make the subtle transition from one to the other tolerably often find themselves confronted with some form of the same message the German poet Rainier Maria Rilke received from the statue of Apollo: Du musst dein Leben aendern, "you must change your life". Still, figuring out exactly what sort of change is needed is a more complex matter. As often as not the people who ask for my suggestions are at that second stage of the process, sure that they have to take action but far from sure what they ought to do. Last week's Archdruid Report fielded a question from a reader who has reached that point in his confrontation with the future looming up before us. To judge by the recent contents of my inbox, it's a fairly common place to be just now, and this week's essay will try to respond to it, not just for the people who asked it directly, but also for others who may be facing the same issues just now. It's probably necessary to make a few points to begin with. These will be familiar to longtime readers of this blog, but they remain effectively absent from our collective conversation around the future, outside a narrow slice of the peak oil movement, and thus bear repeating. First, it's crucial to remember that our predicament is anything but unique. The fantasy that today's industrial societies are destiny's darlings, and therefore exempt from the common fate of civilizations, needs to be set aside; so does the equally misleading fantasy that today's industrial societies is the worst of all possible worlds and are getting the cataclysmic fate they deserve. The societies of the industrial world are human cultures, no better or worse than most; for a variety of reasons, they happened to stumble onto the reserves of stored carbon hidden in the Earth, and used most of them in three centuries of reckless exploitation; now, having overshot their resource base like so many other societies, they're following the familiar trajectory of decline and fall. Letting go of the delusion of our own uniqueness enables us to learn from the past, and also makes it easier to set aside some of the unproductive cultural narratives that hamstring so many attempts to respond to our predicament. Second, one of the lessons the past offers is that the fall of civilizations is a slow, uneven process. None of us are going to wake up one morning a few weeks, or months, or years from now and find ourselves living in the Dark Ages, much less the Stone Age. Thus trying to leap in a single bound to some imagined future is unlikely to work very well; rather, the most effective strategy will be a matter of muddling through, trying to deal with each stage of the descent as it comes into sight, and being prepared to make plenty of midcourse corrections. Flexibility will be more useful than ideology, and making do will be an essential survival skill. Third, another of the lessons offered by the past is that the long road down is not going to be easy. Like every human society in every age, the future ahead of us will have opportunities for happiness and achievement, of course, and there will doubtless be significant gains to set in the balance against the inevitable losses, especially for those who long for simpler lives at a slower pace. Still, the losses will be terrible; it's crucial not to sugar-coat them, despite the very real temptation to do so, or to ignore the immense human tragedy that is an inevitable part of the slow death of any civilization. Fourth, the harsh dimensions of the future can be mitigated, and the positive aspects fostered, by preparations and actions that are well within the reach of individuals, families, and communities. Not all declines and falls are created equal; in many failed civilizations of the past, a relatively small number of people willing to commit themselves to constructive action have made a huge difference in the outcome, and not only in the short term. The same option is wide open today; the one question is whether there will be those willing to take up the challenge. Fifth, we can only guess at many of the details of the future ahead of us. Drawing up detailed plans for the future may be a source of comfort in the face of a relentlessly unpredictable future, but that same unpredictability makes any plan, no matter how clever or popular, a dubious source of guidance at best. Nor is consensus a useful guide; one further lesson of history is that in every age, the consensus view of the future is consistently wrong. Instead, the deliberate cultivation of diverse and even conflicting approaches by groups and individuals maximizes the likelihood that the broadest possible toolkit will reach the waiting hands of the future. These points, and especially the last, make it a waste of time to offer some fixed list of steps that those who want to change their lives ought to do. (In fact, making or following such a list is one thing that those who want to change their lives may well find it better not to do.) What's needed is not a list but a template for taking those first basic steps. Any template will do, but the one suggested here is likely as good as any. It's simple enough, really: learn one thing, give up one thing, save one thing. Learn one thing. One of the greatest challenges we face collectively just now is that the skills relevant to the abstract global economy of paper wealth that has dominated the last few decades, which are also the skills that most of us have accordingly learned, will rapidly become useless in the far less abstract economy of the fairly near future. Our capacity to farm out the production of necessary goods and services to sweatshop laborers on distant continents is in the beginning stages of a drastic decline, while many of the job categories that have kept people in the industrial world employed are in the process of going away. This does not mean that each of us will have to provide all of life's necessities for ourselves on an individual basis. It does mean that each of us who can provide one of life's necessities for ourselves, our family, our neighbors, and our community will have a highly marketable skill in the local economies of the deindustrializing future. Getting some such skill is thus the first critical step in your personal transition to that future. It probably has to be said that this doesn't mean reading a few books on such a skill; it means providing yourself with tools and materials and getting to work here and now, growing vegetables, making soap, raising chickens, brewing beer, or doing whatever else it is that you decide to learn how to do, until you can do it well enough, and reliably enough, that your neighbors are willing to barter whatever it is that they know how to do for a share of your produce. Whatever you learn, learn it inside and out; in ten years you may be depending on your knowledge for survival. Give up one thing. Unless you're a rare bird indeed, many of the things that make up your lifestyle right now are only there because a baroquely complex industrial system fueled with unimaginable amounts of nonrenewable energy makes them available to you. Unless you can come up with alternative sources that lack that dependence, all of them will go away at some point in the future. Choose one of those things, get rid of it now, and make the necessary changes in the rest of your life so that you can function gracefully without it. It can certainly be something big - I know a growing number of people who have gotten rid of their cars, for example - but it doesn't have to be. Whatever the scale, though, choose something that will take some effort and planning to give up, but also something with an immediate payback - if you give up your car, for example, you'll have to make other arrangements for transportation, but you'll also find yourself with hundreds of unspent dollars each month from the payments you don't have to make, the gas you don't have to buy, and so on. Choose it, give it up, and don't look back; every dependence on the industrial system you can abandon is a vulnerability you won't have as that system comes apart at the seams. Save one thing. One of the common consequences of the fall of civilizations is that cultures get shredded, and many things of value that aren't needed for immediate survival get lost. Arts, crafts, music, literature, sciences, technologies, religious and philosophical traditions - none of them are invulnerable. When they make it through the dark age that follows the breakdown of a civilization, nearly always it's because someone cared enough to keep them going as living traditions. Between the immense cultural legacies of our present civilization, and the extreme vulnerability of most of those legacies to the effects of decline and fall, such people will be desperately needed in the years to come. Choosing what you will save is easier than it might seem. Sort through the cultural legacies that matter to you, then, until you can find something that satisfies two criteria: first, the idea that people in the future might have to do without it forever should be intolerable to you; second, you should be willing and able to do something significant to keep that from happening. What you do will depend on what you're trying to save; the steps you'll need to take to help keep amateur radio going will not be the same as those you'll need to help preserve the Appalachian dulcimer and its distinctive music for the long term, and vice versa. Make your choice, and be ready to share what you're doing with others who share your passion. These are first steps, of course, and for some people they will doubtless be baby steps, though it's by no means a given that they will always be. Any one of them done thoroughly will give you a significant advantage in facing the difficult future ahead of us. Other changes will follow in their own time, chosen willingly or imposed by events; the sooner you begin to deal with the need to embrace the necessary, to change your life, the less overwhelming the changes further on are likely to be. As another German poet, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, said: "Whatever you can do, or believe you can, begin it. Boldness has genius and power and magic in it. Begin it now." _____ ?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 (2006) and The Long Descent: A User's Guide to the End of the Industrial Age" (2008). He lives in Ashland, Oregon. http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2009/04/peak-oil-advice-from-german-poets.html http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com Wed Apr 15 12:22:01 2009 From: the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com (Leigh Meyers) Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2009 11:22:01 -0700 Subject: [A-List] Project Censored discovers their school is 'the whitest of the white' in California Message-ID: Twittered thusly: Racism In The New Millenium: "vanilla suburbs and chocolate cities" http://tinyurl.com/d2naqb (most severe segregation, schools in the West) In the process of researching the story, they discover that THEIR SCHOOL "...has recently achieved the status of having the whitest student population of any public university in the State of California." ___________________________________________________________ Sent by ePrompter, the premier email notification software. Free download at http://www.ePrompter.com. From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Wed Apr 15 19:59:53 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 10:59:53 +0900 Subject: [A-List] The Beginning of the End of Capitalism, 2008 Message-ID: <49E69119.80302@ashisuto.co.jp> by Jan Lundberg Culture Change Letter #244 (March 25 2009) Barack Obama is saying, "Rally around me, we can grow again - let's just borrow some more and spend anew with less greed". It won't work. He knows no other way, ostensibly. But what's that White House food garden about? Not a help to the GDP, which is such a flawed measurement of what should count. Until the new local self-sufficiency paradigm takes hold, we seem hell bent on allowing remaining wealth and resources from the old paradigm to be squandered and handed to the super rich. Speaking of which, the "Defense" budget is still sacrosanct. Obama can't change that, but he wants to spread around the money more nicely and be "greener" as the system crashes. If we can see the pointlessness of propping up an inequitable system that depends on exploitation, devastation, overconsumption and endless growth, we can fondly look forward to the end of capitalism. It seems like it could be on its last legs right now, as never before. 2008 was peak money, peak cars, peak petroleum cost, and peak unaccountability. Ending capitalism has to come from serious feelings that go beyond daydreaming of a sweeter world. One feeling can be anger over being told your choice is to either work meaninglessly your whole life or to starve. Or tasting the advantages of cooperative living and seeing, in stark contrast, a greedy manipulator trying to exploit others. Or sensing that our ecological fate, common to all of us, is of no concern to materialistic fools who act like they're not from this planet. How can capitalism be questioned so easily today? Obviously, the fat cats fucked up. This total mess is where things were heading for many years, but we were too kowtowed to question the national and global system. The biggest feeling of all will be from hunger in the belly. When people feel the urgent motivation to take care of their stomachs and to assure the survival of their families, when patience and faith run out, that's when defense in the form of an insurgency takes place. However, such a revolution - even if successful - may not address the problem of opportunism by a new elite that may or may not be capitalist. Although some of us are most interested in culture change for meaningful change toward sustainability, it is today's astronomical debt and wealth of capitalism - and the capitalist governments' budgets - that are at issue in the public's mind. To try to figure out just how huge the bubble is that's now popping is to play a numbers game. It's easier to do that than to act like a revolutionary and start living without capitalism. For now, it's still necessary to show people that the system is out of control and crashing. President Obama is a great change from Bush and the over two hundred years of white men occupying the White House. But the phenomenon is a distraction from the greater story of collapse. Numerically we can see that there's not enough real money to rescue the inflated financial sector. The fact that the debt that's out there, connected to toxic assets, is several times larger than the amount of capital available is ignored in the hope that future growth will remove the red ink and deficit. Before that can happen and economic growth could resume, there would have to be a number of impossibilities. Cheap and abundant energy, particularly liquid fuels, would have to be found as never before in order to create and distribute the endless amount of goods for consumption. Easy credit would have to return, meaning that the risk of lending would have to be deemed low once again. The stimulus budget would have to work wonders, but the kind of economic activity it would have to create is more of the same: expansion of the infrastructure for more urban sprawl, and turnover of endless manufactured gadgets and appliances (by green consumers, it is hoped). Today's system of capitalism running completely amok, typified by trillions of dollars never going to the workers supporting the whole house of cards, is failing fast. As the attempt to put band-aids on a metastasized cancer finally shows itself to be an illusion created by those trying to desperately prop up and then pull out their wealth, that's when the final, accelerated collapse will be completed. Due to interdependence of markets, other nations' economies will be brought down along with their regimes. The grand Ponzi scheme ends - wherever growth schemes were perpetrated. The US government will attempt to retain order at home via martial law and suspension of rights and environmental protection. Overseas military adventures will be unaffordable. This is the real Plan B when the sham of the growth stimulus becomes obvious. This Depression will make the 1930s Great Depression seem like a walk in the park. At the end of the tunnel, however, will not be the growth of the post-war economy but rather, when the chaotic desperation dies down, the getting back to basics that the back-to-the-landers and city collectivists have been practicing since the 1960s counterculture. Plan B is when the bottom really drops out and the population freaks out in a national Katrina fiasco - despite the kinder, gentler Obama flavor. For more people than ever will have begun to suffer from hunger due to job loss and lack of access to good land and fisheries. And especially in the event of massive droughts or petrocollapse they will march on the rich and try to take whatever they can. When order cannot be restored within a few days, police and military personnel will head for their own homes to protect their families and meager food supplies. Meanwhile, some people will have already started organizing local systems for food production and distribution, as well as other services and roles to replace the global supermarket that has by then utterly failed and disappeared. The suffering and confusion will be so great that in the aftermath of reorganizing there will be strong resistance to any attempts to repeat the discredited ways that brought so much pain. As the dust settles and die-off plays out, stability will return, albeit in a new world. Climate destruction and loss of cheap, abundant energy will mean that almost everyone will be lucky to have a subsistence lifestyle. However, there will come an almost unprecedented level of equality and sharing in order to maximize efficiency. Kropotkin made clear over one hundred years ago conclusively that mutual aid is more productive, easy, and natural compared to competition. So the days of being lucky to have a job, to work for someone else's gain - when that someone else is not even visible or accountable - is on the way out. President Obama is still defending the old system. He probably knows better. But those who have the greatest stake in the existing set-up are his whole team of advisers, if not his bosses or hidden masters. Regardless, Obama's "job one" is to avoid mass panic and thereby steer the masses toward constructive patience via confidence building. That's working to some degree now, but the momentum of job loss and factory production cuts are too powerful a force to turn around with smoke and mirrors - resource depletion and overpopulation are everything, and not just topics for debate like abortion or stem-cell research are. Obama was just what the establishment needed at the right time. He makes us believe change is possible. But his own hope as presently defined is too narrow to fit the times or the challenge. Where we are headed is a question that the flag-waving blow-hards don't have a clue on. Obama should convene a series of public Alternative Futures discussions such as on the town-hall level. Unfortunately, the many unimaginative citizens of US entitlement and exceptionalism will continue to dominate the debate, and this plays into the hands of the corporate media. Yet, ideas will come out, if only for a resumption of Victory Gardens that the White House is, indeed, reviving at a meaningful time. _____ Activists are a threatened species, but there's safety in numbers. If you can't be active, please $upport your local Earth activist. http://culturechange.org/go.html?366 http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Wed Apr 15 20:00:13 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 11:00:13 +0900 Subject: [A-List] The Beginning of the End of Capitalism, 2008 Message-ID: <49E6912D.9030508@ashisuto.co.jp> by Jan Lundberg Culture Change Letter #244 (March 25 2009) Barack Obama is saying, "Rally around me, we can grow again - let's just borrow some more and spend anew with less greed". It won't work. He knows no other way, ostensibly. But what's that White House food garden about? Not a help to the GDP, which is such a flawed measurement of what should count. Until the new local self-sufficiency paradigm takes hold, we seem hell bent on allowing remaining wealth and resources from the old paradigm to be squandered and handed to the super rich. Speaking of which, the "Defense" budget is still sacrosanct. Obama can't change that, but he wants to spread around the money more nicely and be "greener" as the system crashes. If we can see the pointlessness of propping up an inequitable system that depends on exploitation, devastation, overconsumption and endless growth, we can fondly look forward to the end of capitalism. It seems like it could be on its last legs right now, as never before. 2008 was peak money, peak cars, peak petroleum cost, and peak unaccountability. Ending capitalism has to come from serious feelings that go beyond daydreaming of a sweeter world. One feeling can be anger over being told your choice is to either work meaninglessly your whole life or to starve. Or tasting the advantages of cooperative living and seeing, in stark contrast, a greedy manipulator trying to exploit others. Or sensing that our ecological fate, common to all of us, is of no concern to materialistic fools who act like they're not from this planet. How can capitalism be questioned so easily today? Obviously, the fat cats fucked up. This total mess is where things were heading for many years, but we were too kowtowed to question the national and global system. The biggest feeling of all will be from hunger in the belly. When people feel the urgent motivation to take care of their stomachs and to assure the survival of their families, when patience and faith run out, that's when defense in the form of an insurgency takes place. However, such a revolution - even if successful - may not address the problem of opportunism by a new elite that may or may not be capitalist. Although some of us are most interested in culture change for meaningful change toward sustainability, it is today's astronomical debt and wealth of capitalism - and the capitalist governments' budgets - that are at issue in the public's mind. To try to figure out just how huge the bubble is that's now popping is to play a numbers game. It's easier to do that than to act like a revolutionary and start living without capitalism. For now, it's still necessary to show people that the system is out of control and crashing. President Obama is a great change from Bush and the over two hundred years of white men occupying the White House. But the phenomenon is a distraction from the greater story of collapse. Numerically we can see that there's not enough real money to rescue the inflated financial sector. The fact that the debt that's out there, connected to toxic assets, is several times larger than the amount of capital available is ignored in the hope that future growth will remove the red ink and deficit. Before that can happen and economic growth could resume, there would have to be a number of impossibilities. Cheap and abundant energy, particularly liquid fuels, would have to be found as never before in order to create and distribute the endless amount of goods for consumption. Easy credit would have to return, meaning that the risk of lending would have to be deemed low once again. The stimulus budget would have to work wonders, but the kind of economic activity it would have to create is more of the same: expansion of the infrastructure for more urban sprawl, and turnover of endless manufactured gadgets and appliances (by green consumers, it is hoped). Today's system of capitalism running completely amok, typified by trillions of dollars never going to the workers supporting the whole house of cards, is failing fast. As the attempt to put band-aids on a metastasized cancer finally shows itself to be an illusion created by those trying to desperately prop up and then pull out their wealth, that's when the final, accelerated collapse will be completed. Due to interdependence of markets, other nations' economies will be brought down along with their regimes. The grand Ponzi scheme ends - wherever growth schemes were perpetrated. The US government will attempt to retain order at home via martial law and suspension of rights and environmental protection. Overseas military adventures will be unaffordable. This is the real Plan B when the sham of the growth stimulus becomes obvious. This Depression will make the 1930s Great Depression seem like a walk in the park. At the end of the tunnel, however, will not be the growth of the post-war economy but rather, when the chaotic desperation dies down, the getting back to basics that the back-to-the-landers and city collectivists have been practicing since the 1960s counterculture. Plan B is when the bottom really drops out and the population freaks out in a national Katrina fiasco - despite the kinder, gentler Obama flavor. For more people than ever will have begun to suffer from hunger due to job loss and lack of access to good land and fisheries. And especially in the event of massive droughts or petrocollapse they will march on the rich and try to take whatever they can. When order cannot be restored within a few days, police and military personnel will head for their own homes to protect their families and meager food supplies. Meanwhile, some people will have already started organizing local systems for food production and distribution, as well as other services and roles to replace the global supermarket that has by then utterly failed and disappeared. The suffering and confusion will be so great that in the aftermath of reorganizing there will be strong resistance to any attempts to repeat the discredited ways that brought so much pain. As the dust settles and die-off plays out, stability will return, albeit in a new world. Climate destruction and loss of cheap, abundant energy will mean that almost everyone will be lucky to have a subsistence lifestyle. However, there will come an almost unprecedented level of equality and sharing in order to maximize efficiency. Kropotkin made clear over one hundred years ago conclusively that mutual aid is more productive, easy, and natural compared to competition. So the days of being lucky to have a job, to work for someone else's gain - when that someone else is not even visible or accountable - is on the way out. President Obama is still defending the old system. He probably knows better. But those who have the greatest stake in the existing set-up are his whole team of advisers, if not his bosses or hidden masters. Regardless, Obama's "job one" is to avoid mass panic and thereby steer the masses toward constructive patience via confidence building. That's working to some degree now, but the momentum of job loss and factory production cuts are too powerful a force to turn around with smoke and mirrors - resource depletion and overpopulation are everything, and not just topics for debate like abortion or stem-cell research are. Obama was just what the establishment needed at the right time. He makes us believe change is possible. But his own hope as presently defined is too narrow to fit the times or the challenge. Where we are headed is a question that the flag-waving blow-hards don't have a clue on. Obama should convene a series of public Alternative Futures discussions such as on the town-hall level. Unfortunately, the many unimaginative citizens of US entitlement and exceptionalism will continue to dominate the debate, and this plays into the hands of the corporate media. Yet, ideas will come out, if only for a resumption of Victory Gardens that the White House is, indeed, reviving at a meaningful time. _____ Activists are a threatened species, but there's safety in numbers. If you can't be active, please $upport your local Earth activist. http://culturechange.org/go.html?366 http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From tal1 at cogeco.ca Wed Apr 15 21:46:03 2009 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2009 23:46:03 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Putting Today's 'Pirate' Attack in Context by Jeremy Scahill Message-ID: <4F9755CD109F4CECBC3CC63FF905D5F6@TonyPC> Putting Today's 'Pirate' Attack in Context A US ship, owned by a Pentagon contractor with ?Top Security? clearance, was seized off the Somali coast. Reports say the US crew has retaken the ship. But the question remains: Why are the pirates attacking? By Jeremy Scahill The Somali pirates who took control of the 17,000-ton ?Maersk Alabama? cargo-ship in the early hours of Wednesday morning probably were unaware that the ship they were boarding belonged to a US Department of Defense contractor with ?top security clearance,? which does a half-billion dollars in annual business with the Pentagon, primarily the Navy. The ship was being operated by an ?all-American? crew?there were 20 US nationals onboard. ?Every indication is that this is the first time a U.S.-flagged ship has been successfully seized by pirates,? said Lt. Nathan Christensen, a spokesperson for for the U.S. Navy?s Bahrain-based 5th Fleet. The last documented pirate attack of a US vessel by African pirates was reported in 1804, off Libya, according to The Los Angeles Times. The company, A.P. Moller-Maersk, is a Denmark-based company with a large US subsidiary, Maersk Line, Ltd, that serves US government agencies and contractors. The company, which is based in Norfolk, Virginia, runs the world?s largest fleet of US-flag vessels. The ?Alabama? was about 300 miles off the coast of the Puntland region of northern Somalia when it was taken. The US military says the Alabama was not operating on a DoD contract at the time and was said to be delivering food aid. The closest US warship to the ?Alabama? at the time of the seizure was 300 miles away. At the time of the seizure, the US Navy did not say how or if it would respond, but seemed not to rule out intervention. ?It?s fair to say we are closely monitoring the situation, but we will not discuss nor speculate on current and future military operations,? said Navy Cmdr. Jane Campbell. The seizure of the ship seemed to have been short-lived. At the time of this writing, the Pentagon was reporting that the US crew retook the ship and was holding one of the pirates in custody. At this point, it is unclear if the crew acted alone or had assistance from the military or another security force. Over the past year, there has been a dramatic uptick in media coverage of the ?pirates,? particularly in the Gulf of Aden. Pirates reportedly took in upwards of $150 million in ransoms last year alone. In fact, at the moment the Alabama?s seizure, pirates were already holding 14 other vessels with about 200 crew members, according to the International Maritime Bureau. There have been seven hijackings in the past month alone. Often, the reporting on pirates centers around the gangsterism of the pirates and the seemingly huge ransoms they demand. Indeed, piracy can be a very profitable business, as the following report from Reuters suggests: A rough back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that the operation to hijack the Saudi tanker, the Sirius Star, cost no more than $25,000, assuming that the pirates bought new equipment and weapons ($450 apiece for an AK-47 Kalashnikov, $5,000 for an RPG-7 grenade launcher, $15,000 for a speedboat). That contrasts with an initial ransom demand to the tanker?s owner, Saudi Aramco, of $25 million. ?Piracy is an excellent business model if you operate from an impoverished, lawless place like Somalia,? says Patrick Cullen, a security expert at the London School of Economics who has been researching piracy. ?The risk-reward ratio is just huge.? But this type of coverage of the pirates is similar to the false narrative about ?tribalism? being the cause of all of Africa?s problems. Of course, there are straight-up gangsters and criminals engaged in these hijackings. Perhaps the pirates who hijacked the Alabama on Wednesday fall into that category. We do not yet know. But that is hardly the whole ?pirate? story. Consider what one pirate told The New York Times after he and his men seized a Ukrainian freighter ?loaded with tanks, artillery, grenade launchers and ammunition? last year. ?We don?t consider ourselves sea bandits,? said Sugule Ali:. ?We consider sea bandits those who illegally fish in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas. We are simply patrolling our seas. Think of us like a coast guard.? Now, that ?coast guard? analogy is a stretch, but his point is an important and widely omitted part of this story. Indeed the Times article was titled, ?Somali Pirates Tell Their Side: They Want Only Money.? Yet, The New York Times acknowledged, ?the piracy industry started about 10 to 15 years ago? as a response to illegal fishing.? Take this fact: Over $300 million worth of tuna, shrimp, and lobster are ?being stolen every year by illegal trawlers? off Somalia?s coast, forcing the fishing industry there into a state of virtual non-existence. But it isn?t just the theft of seafood. Nuclear dumping has polluted the environment. ?In 1991, the government of Somalia collapsed,? wrote Johann Hari in The Independent. ?Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since ? and the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country?s food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.? According to Hari: As soon as the [Somali] government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died. ? This is the context in which the ?pirates? have emerged. Somalian fishermen took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least levy a ?tax? on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia ? and ordinary Somalis agree. The independent Somalian news site WardheerNews found 70 per cent ?strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defence.? As the media coverage of the pirates has increased, private security companies like Xe/Blackwater have stepped in, seeing profits. A few months ago, Blackwater executives flew to London to meet with shipping company executives about protecting their ships from pirate attacks. In October, the company deployed the MacArthur, its ?private sector warship equipped with helicopters? to the Gulf of Aden. ?We have been contacted by shipowners who say they need our help in making sure goods get to their destination,? said the company?s executive vice-president, Bill Matthews. ?The McArthur can help us accomplish that.? According to an engineer aboard the MacArthur, the ship, whose crew includes former Navy SEALS, was at one point stationed in an area several hundred miles off the coast of Yemen. ?Security teams will escort ships around both horns of Africa, Somalia and Yemen as they head to the Suez Canal? The McArthur will serve as a staging point for the SEALs and their smaller boats.? All of this is important to keep in context any time you see a short blurb pop up about pirates attacking ships. ?Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our toxic waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome?? Hari asked. ?We won?t act on those crimes ? the only sane solution to this problem ? but when some of the fishermen responded by disrupting the transit-corridor for 20 percent of the world?s oil supply, we swiftly send in the gunboats.? http://rebelreports.com/post/94198014/putting-todays-pirate-attack-in-context __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Database | Polls MARKETPLACE I'm happy I lost my Job. Now I make $12,000/mo online! See how I do it: WealthResource.org. Obama Increases Financial Aid for Higher Education - Think You Qualify for Increased Benefits? I make $350/day online. That's over $10,000/mo! Check out how I do it: WealthResource.org. 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 10New Members Visit Your Group Get in Shape on Yahoo! Groups Find a buddy and lose weight. Y! Groups blog The place to go to stay informed on Groups news! Group Charity Hands On Network Volunteering has never been so easy. __,_._,___ From suzannedk at gmail.com Wed Apr 15 22:28:06 2009 From: suzannedk at gmail.com (Suzanne de Kuyper) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 06:28:06 +0200 Subject: [A-List] Fwd: Pirate Opportunities Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Suzanne de Kuyper Date: Apr 16, 2009 6:26 AM Subject: Pirates To: sniad at sfu.ca The other part of being lied to about the pirates is that they have become handy propaganda tools for the U.S. war machine ramping up so handily as the economic crisis slowly begins to destroy the european landscape. Chaos is such an irrepressively good time to cement control over millions of the frightened, terrorised. Hilary is so comfortiing as she announces how the U.S will save the world from Somali young men who seek to feed their families. A wonderful reason to add twenty billion to the U.S. war budgets. Suzanne suzannedk at gmail.com From suzannedk at gmail.com Wed Apr 15 22:29:52 2009 From: suzannedk at gmail.com (Suzanne de Kuyper) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 06:29:52 +0200 Subject: [A-List] Fwd: Pirate Opportunity Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Suzanne de Kuyper Date: Apr 16, 2009 6:26 AM Subject: Pirates To: sniad at sfu.ca The other part of being lied to about the pirates is that they have become handy propaganda tools for the U.S. war machine ramping up so handily as the economic crisis slowly begins to destroy the european landscape. Chaos is such an irrepressively good time to cement control over millions of the frightened, terrorised. Hilary is so comfortiing as she announces how the U.S will save the world from Somali young men who seek to feed their families. A wonderful reason to add twenty billion to the U.S. war budgets. Suzanne suzannedk at gmail.com From noreply at coha.org Wed Apr 15 11:46:08 2009 From: noreply at coha.org (Council on Hemispheric Affairs) Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2009 13:46:08 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Summit Diplomacy in Trinidad; OPEC in Latin America Message-ID: <20090415174551.96F7C3E4279@mx-out.daemonmail.net> A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 6149 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090415/7b640f7e/attachment.txt From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Thu Apr 16 03:37:55 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 18:37:55 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Thinking Positively Message-ID: <49E6FC73.9000500@ashisuto.co.jp> How "Quantitative Easing" may be Harnessed for the Public Good by Ellen Brown www.webofdebt.com (March 30 2009) Nervous pundits are predicting the end of American life as we know it, after Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke announced on March 18 that he would be dropping yet another trillion dollars in helicopter money - up to $300 billion to buy long-term government bonds and an additional $750 billion to buy private debt, with the Term Asset-backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF) to be opened up for the sake of consumers and small businesses. The dollar immediately experienced its worst drop in 25 years, amid worries that the Fed's intervention would spur hyperinflation. Typical of the concerned commentators expressing these sentiments was Mark Larson, who wrote in "Money and Markets" on March 20: "This is Banana Republic-type stuff! And I'm not talking about the clothing store. Printing money out of thin air at the central bank, only to turn around and buy debt securities issued by your Treasury, is the kind of practice you typically see in emerging market regimes. We're essentially monetizing our country's debt and deliberately devaluing our country's currency." Tim Wood wrote in "Financial Sense" on March 21: "I'm now beginning to wonder if the powers that be are really in their minds trying to 'fix' things or if they are actually trying to destroy the dollar, the free markets and perhaps even the nation. To be honest, the latter is starting to make more sense to me because surely there is enough intelligence in Washington to understand the potential consequences of these actions." Commentators on the Financial Sense Newshour suggested that the Fed's move toward "quantitative easing" would be looked back upon as the watershed event in the beginning of the end of the United States dollar. As explained in Wikipedia: "The term quantitative easing refers to the creation of a pre-determined quantity of new money ... In very simple layman's terms, the central bank creates new money out of thin air. It then uses this money to buy what is essentially an IOU [that is, to make a loan] ... Today the new money is generally created electronically rather than physically printed". The Federal Reserve remains a privately-owned "bankers' bank," and it has not asked Congress's permission before engaging in its new policy of massive "quantitative easing". The Fed has the capacity to create money on its books and lend it to whomever it will. There is thus a danger that we may just see more money being funneled to those same Wall Street banks that got us into this crisis in the first place. But while the Fed's new "quantitative easing" tool is fraught with risk, it also has some interesting potential. This funding mechanism could be extended not only to replace the loans that banks have been unwilling or unable to make but to fund Obama's stimulus package - at little or no cost to the American taxpayer. What we are faced with today is not inflation but deflation. Lending has dried up not only from banks but from the "shadow banking system" - all those pension funds, hedge funds, and foreign investors who used to snatch up mortgage-backed securities - and that means the velocity of money has slowed. Money is sitting in bank accounts rather than being lent into the economy for consumer and homeowner use. The government's stimulus plan is meant to pick up the slack, but who is going to fund it? The Chinese and other foreign investors are balking at buying more of our debt, and the taxpayers are tapped out. That just leaves the central bank itself. Thinking positively, in fact, we may look back upon this as the watershed moment when the Federal Reserve finally adjusted its focus and started to act more like a government central bank, one that advances "the full faith and credit of the United States" for the benefit of the United States and its citizenry, rather than just for the bankers who have held the government and its central bank hostage for so long. President Obama suggested a move in that direction when he said on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno on March 19: "[W]e're taking a lot of steps to ...open up separate credit lines outside of banks for small businesses so that they can get credit - because there are a lot of small businesses out here who are just barely hanging on. Their credit lines are starting to be cut. We're trying to set up a securitized market for student loans and auto loans outside of the banking system. So there are other ways of getting credit flowing again." [Emphasis added.] The Fed now appears to be taking on the role of lender of last resort not just for its member banks but for consumers, businesses, and the government itself. Provisos and cautions aside, its new "quantitative easing" policy at least has the potential to be harnessed to serve the government and the people it represents; and that is a promising development. Harnessing the Federal Reserve for Federal Purposes The key to this potential is something that is little known or appreciated: the Fed now rebates all of its profits to the government after deducting its costs. {1} That means that it is actually the government that gets the benefit of the interest on the Fed's loans; and that is how it should be, since the US dollar today is backed by nothing but "the full faith and credit of the United States". The dollar is the government's credit - its promise to repay value for value, nothing more. If the government is taking the risk that credit will not be repaid, the government should get the interest on the loans. The Federal Reserve was originally set up in 1913 by a powerful Wall Street group to serve the private banking system, and it agreed to return its profits to the government only under duress. This happened after Congressman Wright Patman, head of the House Banking and Currency Committee in the 1960s, peered closely at its operations and pressed for its nationalization. The developments were chronicled by Congressman Jerry Voorhis, who wrote in 1973: "As a direct result of logical and relentless agitation by members of Congress, led by Congressman Wright Patman as well as by other competent monetary experts, the Federal Reserve began to pay to the US Treasury a considerable part of its earnings from interest on government securities. This was done without public notice and few people, even today, know that it is being done. It was done, quite obviously, as acknowledgment that the Federal Reserve Banks were acting on the one hand as a national bank of issue, creating the nation's money, but on the other hand charging the nation interest on its own credit - which no true national bank of issue could conceivably, or with any show of justice, dare to do." {2} The potential for the Fed to act as a truly "federal" central bank that issues loans to the public and returns the profits to the government has been there since the 1960s; but until now, the Fed and the Administration have not made much use of it. The Fed has used its dollar-issuing power only to the extent necessary to provide the reserves to backstop bank runs. The vast majority of the money supply has continued to be created privately by banks in the form of loans; and as Congressman Voorhis observed, "where the commercial banks are concerned, there is no such repayment of the people's money" as there is with the Federal Reserve. Commercial banks do not rebate the interest they receive, although they also "'buy' the bonds with newly created demand deposit entries on their books - nothing more". This, Voorhis maintained, was a violation of the Constitutional provision that "Congress shall have the power to coin money [and] regulate the value thereof". Bernanke's Greenback Solution The Federal Reserve under Alan Greenspan continued to operate in its traditional role of serving the interests of its banker owners, but Ben Bernanke seemed to have other things in mind as far back as 2002, when he made his notorious "helicopter money" speech. The speech was made before the National Economists Club in Washington, DC on November 21 2002 and was titled "Deflation: Making Sure 'It' Doesn't Happen Here". Dr Bernanke stated that the Fed would not be "out of ammunition" to counteract deflation just because the federal funds rate had fallen to zero percent and could not be brought down lower. Lowering interest rates was not the only way to get new money into the economy. He said, "the US government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many US dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost". Note that he said the government (not the central bank) has a printing press, and that the government could print money at essentially no cost. The implication was that the government could create money without paying interest and without having to pay it back to the Fed or the banks. That fairly well characterizes the money created by "quantitative easing" today. The Fed rebates the interest only after deducting its costs, which are no doubt quite generous; but in 2008, it reported that it rebated 85% of the interest it received to the Treasury. {3} Since interest on long-term bonds is now under three percent, that means the interest paid by the government is less than half of one percent - clearly the best deal in town, particularly since the Chinese and other foreigners are now balking at buying more US debt. This is comparable to what Australia did in the 1930s, when it avoided the serious depression conditions suffered in other countries by funding public projects with credit advanced by its government-owned central bank at a fraction of one percent interest. {4} Not only are the Fed's loans nearly interest-free, but they are never paid back. The federal debt has not been paid off since 1838, when Andrew Jackson shut down the Second US Bank. "Balancing the budget" just involves "servicing" the debt with interest. Money that comes from an interest-free loan that is rolled over indefinitely is essentially debt-free legal tender. The infamous helicopter line in Bernanke's 2002 speech came in when he was discussing how the government's money-creating power could be used to cut taxes. He said, "A money-financed tax cut is essentially equivalent to Milton Friedman's famous 'helicopter drop' of money". Dropping money from helicopters was Professor Friedman's hypothetical cure for deflation. The "money-financed tax cut" discussed by Dr Bernanke was one in which taxes would be replaced with money that was simply printed up by the government and spent into the economy. He added, "[I]n lieu of tax cuts, the government could increase spending on current goods and services or even acquire existing real or financial assets". The government could reverse deflation by printing money and buying hard assets with it - assets such as real estate or corporate stock. And that, for a Federal Reserve official next in line to become its Chairman, was a pretty radical suggestion. It was basically a Greenback proposal, the sort of government self-funding used by Abraham Lincoln to finance the Civil War. It was also the sort of money system endorsed by Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and William Jennings Bryan, the system used by the American colonists and demonstrated to be particularly successful in colonial Pennsylvania. Reviving the Banking Model of Benjamin Franklin's Day In Pennsylvania in the first half of the 18th century, the provincial government not only printed its own money but owned its own bank. Colonial scrip was printed and lent to farmers at five percent interest, and this money recycled back to the government as it was repaid. The money went out and came back in a circular flow, preventing inflation. This was quite different from what happened in those Banana Republics that used the power to print money simply to pay off foreign debts owed in dollars. The invariable result was to invite speculators to jack up the price of the dollars relative to the local currency, causing the currency's rapid devaluation. The Bank of Pennsylvania, by contrast, issued its fiat currency as loans for domestic use, loans on which not only the principal but the interest came back to the government. Since the provincial government had the power to issue the local scrip, it could issue some extra to meet its expenses; and this money filtered through the economy to provide the additional sums needed to cover the interest on the loans. During the time this provincial system was in place, the Pennsylvania colonists paid no taxes, there was no government debt, and price inflation did not result. What the Fed is doing today could be considered comparable: it is generating the equivalent of debt-free government-issued colonial scrip with its "quantitative easing" tool, and it is advancing credit for private use, with the interest on the loans returning to the government. The Case for Nationalizing the Fed One major difference between the Federal Reserve and the bank of colonial Pennsylvania is that the Fed remains a private bank owned by other banks. There is the fear that the powerful tool of "quantitative easing" could turn into a dangerous weapon in the wrong hands. A private central bank can be driven by a small financial elite in secret boardroom meetings beyond congressional control. The power to create money is a double-edged sword even for a government, but at least a government must answer to the people in the public forum of a democracy. That is true in theory, but we the people don't have much more control over Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, a government official, than we have over Ben Bernanke. The Treasury's Troubled Asset Relief Program (or TARP) has been heavily criticized for moving "toxic" assets off the books of the culpable Wall Street derivative banks and onto the backs of the taxpayers. The problem is that government officials and Federal Reserve officials alike believe that the only way the nation can have a functioning credit system is to maintain business as usual on Wall Street. This is not true. A public banking system headed by a truly federal central bank could provide all the credit we need. To prevent corruption and abuse, this system of money and credit would need to be made subject to the sort of public monitoring and control provided by the checks and balances built into the Constitution. Stephen Zarlenga, president of the American Monetary Institute, suggests that the money system should be organized as a fourth branch of government alongside the executive, judicial and congressional branches. The Fed is acting like a fourth branch now, but without the public oversight of a true government agency. Congressman Ron Paul has brought a bill (HR1027) to audit the Federal Reserve, and Congressman Dennis Kucinich told Congress earlier this month that he would soon be bringing a bill to nationalize the Fed. He said: "Banking is not a proper function of the government, but oversight is. The Treasury Department should not be outsourcing to the Fed its oversight responsibilities. The Fed, which failed miserably to oversee the banks, should be put under Treasury instead. It's time for the government to operate in the public interest, not in the interest of private banks. It's time to stop bailing out banks and begin building up America." Note, however, that if the Fed is nationalized and it continues to issue credit for the benefit of consumers, small businesses, and the government itself, it will actually be in the banking business; and that, arguably, is how it should be. Our money system today is nothing more than a series of legal agreements between parties. "Credit" is merely an agreement to repay over time. While private parties and private banks should be free to lend their own money or their investors' money, we also need the sort of "credit" that is created on a computer screen; and that sort of credit, as money reformer Richard Cook observes, is properly administered as a public utility. The dollar is backed by nothing but "the full faith and credit of the United States" and should be dispensed and monitored by the United States. As William Jennings Bryan declared in his winning presidential nomination speech at the Democratic Convention in 1896: "[W]e believe that the right to coin money and issue money is a function of government ... Those who are opposed to this proposition tell us that the issue of paper money is a function of the bank and that the government ought to go out of the banking business. I stand with Jefferson ... and tell them, as he did, that the issue of money is a function of the government and that the banks should go out of the governing business ... [W]hen we have restored the money of the Constitution, all other necessary reforms will be possible, and ... until that is done there is no reform that can be accomplished." The loans the Fed creates by "quantitative easing" are no more inflationary than the credit created daily on a computer screen by private banks. {5} At least, loans used to be created daily by private banks, until their ability to lend was frozen for accounting reasons. The Fed's credit facility has the advantages over private banks' that (a) it is not subject to the lending freeze, and (b) its profits are rebated to the government, which ultimately serves the taxpayers' interest. Nationalizing the Federal Reserve is the ideal solution; but while we are waiting for that development, the government can do the next best thing and tap into the very cheap, readily available credit provided by its own central bank. ______ Ellen Brown developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt, her latest book, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and "the money trust". She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her earlier books focused on the pharmaceutical cartel that gets its power from "the money trust". Her eleven books include Forbidden Medicine, Nature's Pharmacy (co-authored with Dr Lynne Walker), and The Key to Ultimate Health (co-authored with Dr Richard Hansen). Her websites are www.webofdebt.com and www.ellenbrown.com. Notes: 1. "FAQs: Federal Reserve System", federalreserve.gov. 2. J Voorhis, The Strange Case of Richard Milhous Nixon (1973), excerpted at http://www.sonic.net/~doretk/ArchiveARCHIVE/ECONOMICSPOLITICS/FEDERAL%20RESERVE/Jerry%20VoorhisFedReserve.html. 3. See Benjamin Gisin, Michael Krajovic, "Rescuing the Physical Economy," Conscious Economics (January 2009); Ellen Brown, "Monetize this!", webofdebt.com/articles (February 22 2009). 4. David Kidd, "How Money is Created in Australia", www.http://dkd.net/davekidd/politics/money.html (2001). 5. See Ellen Brown, "The Wall Street Ponzi Scheme Called Fractional Reserve Banking", webofdebt.com/articles (December 29 2008). (c) Copyright 2007 Ellen Brown. All Rights Reserved. http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/bernanke.php http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From ioriwase at mail.mohawknationnews.com Thu Apr 16 06:29:52 2009 From: ioriwase at mail.mohawknationnews.com (Mohawk Nation News) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 08:29:52 -0400 Subject: [A-List] MNN Obama said "Lines of tribe shall soon dissolve" Message-ID: <012409ff$39919$0d1f3540692477@xnote> OBAMA SAID, ?THE LINES OF TRIBE SHALL SOON DISSOLVE?. A DECLARATION OF WAR? MNN. Apr. 15, 2009. Rahnatakias, ?the village destroyer?, as the U.S. Presidency is called, in his inaugural speech said, ?the lines of tribe shall SOON dissolve?. He is referring to the extensive covenants between indigenous nations on Great Turtle Island . The bankster thugs want to get the rightful custodians out of their way. Our powerful ancient covenants make us of one blood and inseparable. Each party has to look out for the interests of the others. These are enduring compacts between friends, family and nation. We symbolically intermingle our blood witnessed by Kasatstensera kowa sa oiera, the great natural power. The tie cannot be dissolved. The original plan was to unite all indigenous nations. Over 200 nations joined this covenant. Obama, an African, understands covenant relationships between ?tribes?. He is going to try to shatter the ties that bind our people on Great Turtle Island. Nobody has been able to do that for 400 years. Several approaches are being used. One is the PBS series of five so-called history films called ?We shall remain? that started on April 12, 2009 [www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/weshallremain/]. We are portrayed as losers. To advertise the series the symbol of defeat is a falling tipi with the stars and stripes flag falling over it. Another strategy is to wipe out Indigenous people altogether to be replaced by surrogate ?Indians? who will work more closely to help the foreign invaders fulfill their goals. Obama is also using gangster style extortion from tobacco farmers to stop us from trading and sustaining our families and communities. According to his new law, he wants his cut first. Most of these covenants were made with the exchange and burning of tobacco, which were signaled to all parts of Great Turtle Island. The colonists desecrated the use of tobacco by turning it into a habit-forming commercial product. In the ?It?s No Use? series, the Wampanoags, are the ?people of the first light?. Massassoit knew when he made agreements with the invaders that he represented the interests of all Indigenous. In film two Tecumseh tries to invoke the covenant relationships with other nations to defend Great Turtle Island. The third is about the Trail of Tears. The fourth is about the great Apache Warrior, Geronimo, who was caught by the U.S. army when his family was held hostage. Wounded Knee is about the American Indian Movement?s stand at Wounded Knee. They are all downers! The son of Massassoit organized resistance and started to attack the villages of the foreigners. They say the Mohawk showed up as friends of the British and attacked the Narragansetts. We are allies, not puppets of the colonists. At the time the confederacy controlled all the waterways. The Mohawks were the brokers. The Europeans could not profit as before. We are portrayed as double crossers of our own people. These deceptive messages are sponsored by multinational corporations like George S. & Delores Eccles Foundation, gseg at gseccles.org; Lawrence & Janet T. Dee Foundation www.kued.org; Utah State Office of Education www. Utah.edu; and WGBH www.wgbh.org 801-581-7777. The dishonest message is that we have nothing left and that foreigners defeated us despite our covenants. While foreigners were making covenants with us they were planning to kill us off. There is a curse upon those who break such solemn promises. Foreigners appointed submissive members of our people to sign illegal agreements with them. We never and cannot ever surrender our territories. Now colonists are creating surrogates into covenant people who will be docile domesticated Indians. No one can create us except an Indigenous woman. The foreigners killed off 115 million of us in the biggest holocaust in all humanity. Now they?ve come up with a new trick. Obama and his backers want to create surrogate Indigenous people who resemble Iroquois, Algonquin, Lakota, Navajo and so on. They may look like us, learn to act like us but they can never think like us. It?s about going red to get the greenbacks! Canada created Algonquins by signing up non-natives in a program headed by [Mother] Joan Holmes and the Department of Indian Affairs. These ?No?gonquins? are set up to fraudulently sign away vast areas of Haudenosaunee, Iroquois, territory. Their backers and lobbyists promise these ?No?hawks? casinos and a few dollars. In another swindle the Congress of Aboriginal People CAP Patrick Brazeau is signing up enough settlers to become ?Metis? to outnumber the real Indigenous. Some native people are being roped into this confidence game. In a recent Kanehsatake Mohawk election, Mother Joan signed up hundreds of secret non-Indians who voted by proxy to put in the colonial nominee as chief. Prime Minister Stephen Harper appointed Brazeau to ?sleep it off? in the Senate as a reward for setting up this CAP scam. Everything comes down to bloodlines. When Hitler was going to kill off the Jews, he listed those with as little as one/thirty-second Jewish blood for annihilation. Then the Kazars of Eastern Europe who were Zionists helped set up the state of Israel in the Middle East. According to the Great Law of Peace the lineal descent of the people shall run in the female line. The clan mothers are the keepers of the authorized names [not the colonial governmental entities] and holders of the land. The soil of the earth from one end to the other is that of the people who inhabit it since time immemorial. We Ongwehonwe are the caretakers of the soil. As Louis Karonhiaktajeh Hall said, ?The so-called ?conquest of America? is a bare-faced robbery of Indigenous territory?. No race of foreign people has a right to invade and kill other races. They cannot try to control, interfere with or injure the people or disregard the Great Peace. They have not broken our spirit. In the beginning the Europeans joined us. Those who came across the great salt water could never become Indigenous. They could remain on their ship with their ways. Obama passed a law unto himself that before tobacco is shipped from the plantations in the Carolinas to Indigenous communities, he must be paid up front. It?s like the 1940s and 1950s when everyone was on the take. Businesses had to pay protection money to keep off strong arm enforcers. If they did not, their premises could get damaged or they or their relatives might get hurt or even killed. During prohibition everyone had to grease their palms. Then the people had enough and rebelled. Capitalism is falsely called a ?free market? system. Actually it is a monopoly of big business and government with control from England. Big Tobacco has to pay billions in fines to Canada for their former smuggling operations. None went to jail. They want no competition from us. Yes, the reptiles are slithering in the grass! Kahentinetha & Karakwine, MNN Mohawk Nation News www.mohawknationnews.com kahentinetha2 at yahoo.com katenies20 at yahoo.com Note: At this time your financial help is urgently needed and appreciated for the lawsuit against the Canadian government for assault of Indigenous women at the Cornwall border. Please send your donations to PayPal at www.mohawknationnews.com, or by check or money order to ?MNN Mohawk Nation News?, Box 991, Kahnawake [Quebec, Canada] J0L 1B0. Nia:wen thank you very much. Go to MNN ?General? category for more stories on this; New MNN Books Available now! Purchase t-shirts, mugs and more at our CafePressStore http://www.cafepress.com/mohawknews; Subscribe to MNN for breaking news updates http://.mohawknationnews.com/news/subscription.php; Sign Women Title Holders petition! http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/Iroquois Joan Holmes and Associates research at joanholmes.ca GLUTTONOUS SNOUTS IN THE TROUGH AND SLITHERING REPTILES: Prime Min. Stephen ?Who?s-got-a-hernia-from-juggling-too-many-balls? Harper pm at pm.ca; BIG TOBACCO MONOPOLY: RJ. Reynolds America www.rjrt.com, Salem NC; Rothman UK Holding Ltd. www.fundinguniverse.com 15 Hill St., London W1X 7FB 071-491-4366; Imperial Tobacco Group PLC www.imperial-tobacco.com P.O. Box 244, Upton Rd., Bristol BS99 7UJ +44-0-177-963-6636; See Rothmans UK Holdings Limited London (071) 491-4366 Fax (071) 493-8404; GOVERNMENT OPERATIVES AND DOUCHE BAGS: Center for Public Integrity www.publicintegrity.org; William ?Imodium? Marsden wmarsden at thegazette.canwest.com; Philip ?Ka-ka? Authier kdougherty at thegazette.canwest.com; Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health www.jhsph.edu; Carnegie Foundation www.carnegie.org; Ford Foundation fordfound.org; JHET Foundation www.jehtfoundation.org; John D. & Catharine T. MacArthur Foundation www.found.org; Park Foundation info at parkfoundation.org; Rockefeller Foundation rockfound.org; PIERS info at piers.com. From noreply at coha.org Thu Apr 16 12:16:13 2009 From: noreply at coha.org (Council on Hemispheric Affairs) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 14:16:13 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Ecuador's Correa Prepares for Summit Ahead of Election Message-ID: <20090416181547.5EFC43E482C@mx-out2.daemonmail.net> A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 4650 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090416/be20e553/attachment.txt From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Thu Apr 16 17:37:05 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 08:37:05 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Is the Bail Out Breeding a Bigger Crisis? Message-ID: <49E7C121.4070700@ashisuto.co.jp> A Future of Inflation, High Interest Rates and a Hollow Dollar? by Paul Craig Roberts CounterPunch (March 26 2009) At his March 24 press conference President Obama demonstrated that he is capable of understanding issues as presented to him by his advisers and able to pass on the explanations to the press. The question is whether Obama's advisers understand the issues. Obama's advisers are focused on rescuing banks and the insurance company, AIG. They perceive the problems as solvency and paralyzing uncertainly or fear. Financial institutions, unsure of their own and other institutions solvency, hoard cash and refuse to lend. Credit is needed to get the economy moving, and the Federal Reserve and Treasury are doing their best to inject liquidity and to remove troubled assets from the banks' books. This perception of the problem and the "remedies" being applied, might be causing a greater problem for which there is no solution. Obama's approach, and that of the previous administration, requires massive monetization of debt by the Federal Reserve and massive new debt issues by the Treasury. The unaddressed question remains: Is the US dollar's status as world reserve currency threatened by the debt monetization and multi-year, multi-trillion dollar issuance of new Treasuries? The United States has become an import-dependent country. The US is dependent on imports for energy, manufactured goods including clothes and shoes, and advanced technology products. If the US dollar loses its reserve currency status, the US will not be able to pay for its imports. The ensuing crisis would dwarf the current one. Obama's advisers believe that the US can monetize debt and issue new debt endlessly, because America's capital markets are the deepest and most liquid. The dollar is strong, Obama said at his press conference. But already cracks and strains are appearing. The day after Obama's press conference, an auction of UK bonds, known as gilts, failed when bids fell short of the supply offered and interest rates rose. This is a bad sign for Prime Minister Gordon Brown's plan to market an unprecedented amount of new debt during the current fiscal year. It is also a bad sign for Obama's similar plan. In the US, interest rates on US Treasuries have risen in anticipation of unprecedented new Treasury issues despite the Federal Reserve's recent announcement that it intends to purchase $300 billion of existing Treasuries held by the banking system. Normally, Fed purchases raise bond prices, thereby lowering interest rates. However, the inflation and interest rate implications of the unprecedented supply of new Treasuries necessary to finance the multi-year, multi-trillion dollar budget deficits are beginning to be recognized in bond and currency markets. Everyone knows that the Federal Reserve will monetize the new debt issues rather than allow a Treasury auction to fail. Recently, America's largest creditor, China, expressed concern that the value of its massive holdings of US dollar investments is in danger of being inflated away. The Fed cannot monetize new Treasury issues without the word getting out. If and when this happens, the US dollar's exchange value is likely to drop while interest rates and inflation rise. To avoid a crisis of this magnitude, the US needs to focus on saving the dollar as reserve currency. As I previously emphasized, this requires reducing US budget and trade deficits. Despite the near-term budget costs of ending the occupation of Iraq and the war in Afghanistan, terminating these pointless military adventures would produce immediate large out-year budget savings. Closing many foreign military bases and cutting a gratuitously large military budget would produce more out-year savings. The Obama administration's belief that it can continue with Bush's wars of aggression while it engages in a massive economic bailout indicates a lack of seriousness about America's predicament. Rome eventually understood that its imperial frontiers exceeded its resources and pulled back. This realization has yet to dawn on Washington. More budget savings could come from a different approach to the financial crisis. The entire question of bailing out private financial institutions needs rethinking. The probability is that the bailouts are not over. The commercial real estate defaults are yet to present themselves. Would it be cheaper for government to buy the shares of the banks and AIG at the current low prices than to pour trillions of taxpayers' dollars into them in an effort to drive up private share prices with public money? The Bush/Paulson bailout plan of approximately $800 billion has been followed a few months later by the Obama/Geithner stimulus-bailout plan of another approximately $800 billion. Together it adds to $1.6 trillion in new Treasury debt, much of which might have to be monetized. Could this huge debt issue be avoided if the government took over the banks and netted out the losses between the constituent parts? A staid socialized financial sector run by civil servants is preferable to the gambling casino of greed-driven, innovative, unregulated capitalism operated by banksters who have caused crisis throughout the world. Perhaps the Federal Reserve should be socialized as well. The notion of an independent, privately-owned Federal Reserve system was never more than a ruse to get a national bank into place. Once the central bank is part of the state-owned banking system, the government can create money without having to accumulate a public debt that saddles taxpayers and future budgets with hundreds of billions of dollars in annual interest payments. Free market ideologues will say the government would inflate. However, the government has been inflating for generations and is now set on a course for hyperinflation. Monetization of troubled financial instruments by the Federal Reserve is just beginning. In addition, there are the multi-trillion dollar budget deficits which probably cannot be financed other than by monetization of new debt issues. The US money supply as measured by cash in circulation and demand deposits (checking accounts) is currently about $1.4 trillion. If this year's budget deficit is monetized, the money supply doubles. If next year's budget deficit is monetized, the money supply would have tripled in two years. Inflation would explode. The combination of high unemployment and high inflation would be devastating. In contrast, protecting depositors is not inflationary. It merely prevents monetary contraction. If the Obama administration can think about socializing health care as a single-payer system, it should be able to think about socializing the banking system. Currently, Medicare is paid for by taxpayers, Medicare beneficiaries, healthy retirees, and doctors. Beneficiaries have to pay substantial premiums for supplemental coverage whether ill or healthy, and doctors are paid a pittance from the schedule of fixed prices. The insurers are the ones who make money, not the medical service providers. The single-payer system would shrink costs by the amount of the health insurance industry's profits and the enormous paperwork and enforcement compliance costs. The trade deficit is even more difficult to address. The American economy lost much of its manufacturing leg to offshoring. It has now lost its real estate and financial sector legs. Real incomes for the average family have not increased. The consumer-demand-driven economy became dependent on the accumulation of consumer debt, which has reached its limit. When the production of goods and services for the domestic market is moved offshore, Americans lose income and the economy loses GDP. When the goods and services produced offshore return to be sold to Americans, they constitute imports that widen the trade deficit. The US finances its trade deficit by turning over to foreigners ownership of existing US assets and their future income streams, which, of course, increases the flow of income away from Americans. The claim that low prices in Wal-Mart compensate for all these costs is ridiculous. Nevertheless, the Obama administration, corporation executives, and the economics profession remain committed to offshoring. The claim, expressed by Obama at his press conference, that retraining programs are the solution to manufacturing and IT unemployment caused by offshoring is also ridiculous. For a decade the only source of American job growth has been domestic services that cannot be offshored, such as hospital orderlies, barbers, waitresses and bartenders. Retraining is simply a government subsidy to educational institutions, a subsidy that insures their continued support for offshoring. The enormous trade deficit that has been created by the pursuit of short-term corporate profits can only be closed in two ways. One is to stop the offshoring and to bring home the offshored production. Possibly, this could be done by replacing the corporate income tax with a tax based on whether value added to a company's output occurs domestically or abroad. The other way the trade deficit can be closed is by the inability of Americans to pay for imports. If debt monetization wrecks the dollar and drives up import prices, Americans will have to learn to live with less imported energy and manufactured goods. American annual consumption would shrink by the amount of the trade deficit. The Bush/Obama approach to the crisis in the financial sector is to monetize existing debt and to accumulate enormous new debt that will likely also require monetization. The monetization threatens inflation, high interest rates, and depreciation of the US dollar and loss of its reserve currency role. The accumulation of new public debt implies larger annual interest payments that could make future deficit reduction problematic. Clearly, the Obama administration needs to broaden its perception of the predicament to which financial deregulation and offshoring have brought the US economy. _____ Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions (2000). He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts at yahoo.com http://www.counterpunch.com/roberts03262009.html http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From tal1 at cogeco.ca Thu Apr 16 20:30:52 2009 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 22:30:52 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Fwd: Pirate Opportunity In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <8B069AFDF50441A4961988A46619D013@TonyPC> ...Too true. Let us also not forget that the crusade against 'pirates' also happens to further cast into the memory hole [if this is the right term for a crime that has been completely elided from Western corporate media reporting] the US-backed Ethiopian invasion of Somalia..and the resulting chaos and humanitarian crisis there. T. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Suzanne de Kuyper" To: "The A-List" Sent: Thursday, April 16, 2009 12:29 AM Subject: [A-List] Fwd: Pirate Opportunity > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: Suzanne de Kuyper > Date: Apr 16, 2009 6:26 AM > Subject: Pirates > To: sniad at sfu.ca > > > The other part of being lied to about the pirates is that they have > become handy propaganda tools for the U.S. war machine ramping up so > handily as the economic crisis slowly begins to destroy the european > landscape. Chaos is such an irrepressively good time to cement > control over millions of the frightened, terrorised. > > Hilary is so comfortiing as she announces how the U.S will save the > world from Somali young men who seek to feed their families. A > wonderful reason to add twenty billion to the U.S. war budgets. > > Suzanne suzannedk at gmail.com > > From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Fri Apr 17 03:08:53 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 18:08:53 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Drastic Energy Contraction Ahead Message-ID: <49E84725.6090903@ashisuto.co.jp> by Paul Smith Culture Change (April 15 2009) Editor's Introduction: The author notes that a more cheerful title might be "On the Way to a Sustainable Future". I could go for that substitution. Unfortunately, we are not "on the way" until overpopulation is checked somehow. In this article the uncomfortable realities of the effects of immigration on US population growth are quantified. Yet, there are two problems with focusing on them too much. Before identifying them, consider the fact that up to three quarters of population growth going on in the US is from immigrants and their higher fertility rate. But this should not imply that the US (or the world) will be able to solve its problems by somehow cutting way back on immigration. Additionally, focusing on immigrants' population growth is a good way to mislead ourselves: (1) Crash is happening anyway; government policies cannot stop petrocollapse and climate distortion, both of which will cut population size drastically. (2) Focusing on immigration or even overpopulation at this time can distract us from urgent preparations for local self-reliance, which is our only future. While the motives of the Heritage Foundation may be usually suspect, there can come a time soon when some of us find more and more commonality in the future now taking shape. So while Paul Smith's article cites the Heritage Foundation and touches on controversial ground, it is essential that we deal with the issues he presents. He reminds us that energy consumption itself is not on the table, and that switching energy technologies to maintain consumption is a false hope. - JL The message has gone forth loud and clear in the halls of Congress, in the White House, in the media, and in the reports of reputable scientific commissions. Our nation and the nations of the world must take drastic measures to reduce the atmospheric pollution resulting from the burning of fossil fuels. Otherwise the planet and all of its inhabitants will suffer the dire consequences of harmful climate change. Our nation is now in the throes of an energy contraction, but the energy contraction following the current contraction will be much more profound in its consequences than anything that we are now experiencing. Political leaders in the United States, both at the national level and the state level have responded to the threat by advocating that renewable energy sources be developed as a means of reducing our dependence on the pollution-generating fossil fuels. The leaders haven't proposed that the overall use of energy be reduced, but rather that the renewable energy merely substitutes for the energy derived from fossil fuels. The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) has reported that the total energy consumption in the United States in 2007 was 101.605 quadrillion British thermal units (BTUs). About 85% of US energy consumption was due to the burning of fossil fuels, primarily coal, natural gas, and petroleum. Nuclear power provided 8.28% of the total, and renewable energy (Biofuels, waste, wood derived fuel, geothermal, hydroelectric, and solar/PV, and wind power) provided 6.72% of the total. Solar/PV and wind power combined contributed less than one percent of the total energy used in the US in 2007. Solar and wind power energy could be doubled and then doubled again and the amount of energy in relation to total US energy need would still be relatively inconsequential. You wouldn't know that if you listened to our esteemed leaders in Washington DC. Energy from those two sources is certainly valuable and in time the amount of it might possibly be increased to more than five percent, especially if the total energy use is reduced. In the meantime, the amount of petroleum being used is now topping Hubbert's Peak with no where to go but down the other side. Our reliance on fossil fuels for such a large amount of our energy is fouling the atmosphere and causing very harmful changes in the climate. Coal is no panacea. The coal that has recently been presented by the coal industry as "Clean Coal", will very likely never be commercially viable. Given the circumstances described above, a reasonable energy program might include a 25% reduction of the 86.25 quadrillion BTUs of fossil fuel now used in the US annually. That would reduce the current US total energy consumption of 101.605 quadrillion BTUs per year to about eighty quadrillion BTUs. Further reduction would probably be necessary at a later time in order to bring the fossil fuel consumption in the US to a sustainable level. How could such a drastic reduction in the use of fossil fuels be achieved? Some sources have advocated a substantial increase in the development of nuclear power. But that is very controversial and for good reasons, including the nuclear waste disposal problem and the long time needed to rev up to full operation. The political and economic leaders and general citizenry would need to acquire a very complete understanding of the necessity for the endeavor and a very determined commitment to carry it out. Implementing the energy reduction would require significant changes in transportation methods, residential locations, production and manufacturing functions, and in construction and remodeling of buildings. Even more importantly, it would require substantial progress in stabilizing the population. Without population stabilization or progress in that direction, most other efforts to achieve a sustainable economy would be largely in vain. The Obama administration and the Democratic majority in Congress appear to be dedicated to implementing so-called "comprehensive immigration reform", which is code for granting amnesty to the estimated twelve to fifteen million illegal aliens now in the country. Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, in an article dated May 15 2006, estimated that granting amnesty to the illegal aliens currently in the country would result in the addition of 66 million people to the US population within twenty years. Those new citizens and permanent residents after receiving amnesty would, in turn, be able to sponsor minor children, spouses, and parents residing in their home countries to enter and attain legal residency in the US Rector's estimate did not include the aliens that would enter the country illegally following the amnesty. It is probable that those illegal aliens, along with the aliens that were granted amnesty, would increase the US population by over 100 million people within twenty years. As already noted, our nation will experience a drastic energy contraction some time after the current contraction. Although the sequence and timing of events leading to the contraction is uncertain, the contraction itself is unavoidable. What is optional is how it comes about - how it develops. Our political, economic, and industrial leaders need to instigate actions to reduce the use of energy, especially fossil fuel energy, to a sustainable level. That might enable our descendants living on the future side of Hubbert's Peak [global maximum of oil extraction] to actually enjoy living conditions that are better than the ones that presently exist. Further reading: "Overcrowding in Our Less and Less Natural Environment" by Jan Lundberg (March 27 2009) http://www.culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=368&Itemid=1 "Population growth must be addressed with insight" by Michael Poremba and Jan Lundberg (March 20 2009) http://www.culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=362&Itemid=1 "Overpopulation is a Cultural Challenge" by Chuck Burr (April 04 2009) http://www.culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=376&Itemid=1%22 "President Obama - Headed For the Wrong Goal Posts" by Paul Smith (April 03 2009) http://culturechange.org/go.html?375 http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=389&Itemid=1 http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From critical.montages at gmail.com Fri Apr 17 03:59:27 2009 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 05:59:27 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Taliban Exploit Class Rifts to Gain Ground in Pakistan Message-ID: April 17, 2009 Taliban Exploit Class Rifts to Gain Ground in Pakistan By JANE PERLEZ and PIR ZUBAIR SHAH PESHAWAR, Pakistan ? The Taliban have advanced deeper into Pakistan by engineering a class revolt that exploits profound fissures between a small group of wealthy landlords and their landless tenants, according to government officials and analysts here. The strategy cleared a path to power for the Taliban in the Swat Valley, where the government allowed Islamic law to be imposed this week, and it carries broad dangers for the rest of Pakistan, particularly the militants? main goal, the populous heartland of Punjab Province. In Swat, accounts from those who have fled now make clear that the Taliban seized control by pushing out about four dozen landlords who held the most power. To do so, the militants organized peasants into armed gangs that became their shock troops, the residents, government officials and analysts said. The approach allowed the Taliban to offer economic spoils to people frustrated with lax and corrupt government even as the militants imposed a strict form of Islam through terror and intimidation. ?This was a bloody revolution in Swat,? said a senior Pakistani official who oversees Swat, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation by the Taliban. ?I wouldn?t be surprised if it sweeps the established order of Pakistan.? The Taliban?s ability to exploit class divisions adds a new dimension to the insurgency and is raising alarm about the risks to Pakistan, which remains largely feudal. Unlike India after independence in 1947, Pakistan maintained a narrow landed upper class that kept its vast holdings while its workers remained subservient, the officials and analysts said. Successive Pakistani governments have since failed to provide land reform and even the most basic forms of education and health care. Avenues to advancement for the vast majority of rural poor do not exist. Analysts and other government officials warn that the strategy executed in Swat is easily transferable to Punjab, saying that the province, where militant groups are already showing strength, is ripe for the same social upheavals that have convulsed Swat and the tribal areas. Mahboob Mahmood, a Pakistani-American lawyer and former classmate of President Obama?s, said, ?The people of Pakistan are psychologically ready for a revolution.? Sunni militancy is taking advantage of deep class divisions that have long festered in Pakistan, he said. ?The militants, for their part, are promising more than just proscriptions on music and schooling,? he said. ?They are also promising Islamic justice, effective government and economic redistribution.? The Taliban strategy in Swat, an area of 1.3 million people with fertile orchards, vast plots of timber and valuable emerald mines, unfolded in stages over five years, analysts said. The momentum of the insurgency built in the past two years, when the Taliban, reinforced by seasoned fighters from the tribal areas with links to Al Qaeda, fought the Pakistani Army to a standstill, said a Pakistani intelligence agent who works in the Swat region. The insurgents struck at any competing point of power: landlords and elected leaders ? who were usually the same people ? and an underpaid and unmotivated police force, said Khadim Hussain, a linguistics and communications professor at Bahria University in Islamabad, the capital. At the same time, the Taliban exploited the resentments of the landless tenants, particularly the fact that they had many unresolved cases against their bosses in a slow-moving and corrupt justice system, Mr. Hussain and residents who fled the area said. Their grievances were stoked by a young militant, Maulana Fazlullah, who set up an FM radio station in 2004 to appeal to the disenfranchised. The broadcasts featured easy-to-understand examples using goats, cows, milk and grass. By 2006, Mr. Fazlullah had formed a ragtag force of landless peasants armed by the Taliban, said Mr. Hussain and former residents of Swat. At first, the pressure on the landlords was subtle. One landowner was pressed to take his son out of an English-speaking school offensive to the Taliban. Others were forced to make donations to the Taliban. Then, in late 2007, Shujaat Ali Khan, the richest of the landowners, his brothers and his son, Jamal Nasir, the mayor of Swat, became targets. After Shujaat Ali Khan, a senior politician in the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, narrowly missed being killed by a roadside bomb, he fled to London. A brother, Fateh Ali Mohammed, a former senator, left, too, and now lives in Islamabad. Mr. Nasir also fled. Later, the Taliban published a ?most wanted? list of 43 prominent names, said Muhammad Sher Khan, a landlord who is a politician with the Pakistan Peoples Party, and whose name was on the list. All those named were ordered to present themselves to the Taliban courts or risk being killed, he said. ?When you know that they will hang and kill you, how will you dare go back there?? Mr. Khan, hiding in Punjab, said in a telephone interview. ?Being on the list meant ?Don?t come back to Swat.? ? One of the main enforcers of the new order was Ibn-e-Amin, a Taliban commander from the same area as the landowners, called Matta. The fact that Mr. Amin came from Matta, and knew who was who there, put even more pressure on the landowners, Mr. Hussain said. According to Pakistani news reports, Mr. Amin was arrested in August 2004 on suspicion of having links to Al Qaeda and was released in November 2006. Another Pakistani intelligence agent said Mr. Amin often visited a madrasa in North Waziristan, the stronghold of Al Qaeda in the tribal areas, where he apparently received guidance. Each time the landlords fled, their tenants were rewarded. They were encouraged to cut down the orchard trees and sell the wood for their own profit, the former residents said. Or they were told to pay the rent to the Taliban instead of their now absentee bosses. Two dormant emerald mines have reopened under Taliban control. The militants have announced that they will receive one-third of the revenues. Since the Taliban fought the military to a truce in Swat in February, the militants have deepened their approach and made clear who is in charge. When provincial bureaucrats visit Mingora, Swat?s capital, they must now follow the Taliban?s orders and sit on the floor, surrounded by Taliban bearing weapons, and in some cases wearing suicide bomber vests, the senior provincial official said. In many areas of Swat the Taliban have demanded that each family give up one son for training as a Taliban fighter, said Mohammad Amad, executive director of a nongovernmental group, the Initiative for Development and Empowerment Axis. A landlord who fled with his family last year said he received a chilling message last week. His tenants called him in Peshawar, the capital of North-West Frontier Province, which includes Swat, to tell him his huge house was being demolished, he said in an interview here. The most crushing news was about his finances. He had sold his fruit crop in advance, though at a quarter of last year?s price. But even that smaller yield would not be his, his tenants said, relaying the Taliban message. The buyer had been ordered to give the money to the Taliban instead. From tboyle at rosehill.net Thu Apr 16 22:50:12 2009 From: tboyle at rosehill.net (Todd Boyle) Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 21:50:12 -0700 Subject: [A-List] Is the Bail Out Breeding a Bigger Crisis? In-Reply-To: <49E7C121.4070700@ashisuto.co.jp> References: <49E7C121.4070700@ashisuto.co.jp> Message-ID: Paul Craig Roberts' analysis just seems like typical economic gobbledy gook, to me. >The Bush/Obama approach to the crisis in the financial sector is to >monetize existing debt and to accumulate enormous new debt that will >likely also require monetization. The monetization threatens inflation, >high interest rates, and depreciation of the US dollar and loss of its >reserve currency role. The accumulation of new public debt implies >larger annual interest payments that could make future deficit reduction >problematic. Since teh 1980s or before, money has been printed in vast amounts, flowed rapidly thru the U.S. economy a few times, then out of the country. The U.S. has been shipping bales of paper overseas. When we stop, we bleed to death in months. We have to keep printing it. The planet seems to want to hoard it. The planet is insecure and is like Snoopy, and needs dollars for a security blanket. It was working pretty well until oil hit $150 a barrel. The rate of money flowing out of the U.S. economy exceeded the ability to create new paper that was at all plausible. This is almost tautology. The price of oil, metals, etc. jumped because the paper assets were just simply implausible, not credible. So, the world's refusal to accept them, meant that there was no point in floating them in the first place. Comes PCR to tell us, there will be a tsunami of new paper money and inflation. Meanwhile aren't we actually in a deflation, since property prices have collapsed? and the employment prospects continue to dwindle? and people are willing to work for minimum wage? There are so many people unemployed and who have long ago quit looking for work! The human race will be here in 1000 years. We will be enjoying decades and centuries of stagnation and quiet. We will have plenty of time to think and brood during the economic stagnation. It's about peak oil, and environmental limits. We'll have less oil and energy, and less material excess. We will have less food. Why not beat the rush, and quit working now? And right alongside the 90% of us, living in poverty, and becoming more like the rest of the human population, those 10% will be enjoying their wealth-- in their walled cities. So what. That's how it's always been-- because we will always have these problematic, sociopathic people who are never satisfied. It it easier to let them run amok, stealing resources and being a PITA than to argue with them. Especially since the stuff is worthless anyway-- I mean, how important is a Cadillac Escalade anyway? or a boat? This is why we will always have our despised and hated wealthy. It is more practical to let them have their walled compounds and their things. I've heard there's a big upsurge in gun buying. It will be interesting to see who these gun buyers are thinking about killing. The rich? or the poor? Todd -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 3428 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090416/c936e83b/attachment.txt From tboyle at rosehill.net Fri Apr 17 11:53:26 2009 From: tboyle at rosehill.net (Todd Boyle) Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 10:53:26 -0700 Subject: [A-List] =?iso-8859-1?q?_Stiglitz=3A_Obama=27s_people_either_in_t?= =?iso-8859-1?q?he_pocket_of_the_banks_or_they=92re_incompetent?= Message-ID: Stiglitz Says Ties to Wall Street Doom Bank Rescue (Update1) http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601068&sid=afYsmJyngAXQ&refer=economy# By Michael McKee and Matthew Benjamin April 17 (Bloomberg) -- The Obama administration's bank- rescue efforts will probably fail because the programs have been designed to help Wall Street rather than create a viable financial system, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said. "All the ingredients they have so far are weak, and there are several missing ingredients," Stiglitz said in an interview yesterday. The people who designed the plans are "either in the pocket of the banks or they're incompetent." The Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, isn't large enough to recapitalize the banking system, and the administration hasn't been direct in addressing that shortfall, he said. Stiglitz said there are conflicts of interest at the White House because some of Obama's advisers have close ties to Wall Street. "We don't have enough money, they don't want to go back to Congress, and they don't want to do it in an open way and they don't want to get control" of the banks, a set of constraints that will guarantee failure, Stiglitz said. The return to taxpayers from the TARP is as low as 25 cents on the dollar, he said. "The bank restructuring has been an absolute mess." Rather than continually buying small stakes in banks, the government should put weaker banks through a receivership where the shareholders of the banks are wiped out and the bondholders become the shareholders, using taxpayer money to keep the institutions functioning, he said. Nobel Prize Stiglitz, 66, won the Nobel in 2001 for showing that markets are inefficient when all parties in a transaction don't have equal access to critical information, which is most of the time. His work is cited in more economic papers than that of any of his peers, according to a February ranking by Research Papers in Economics, an international database. Financial shares have rallied in the past month as Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc. all reported better-than-expected earnings in the first quarter. The Standard & Poor's 500 Financials Index has soared 91 percent from its low of 78.45 on March 6. The Public-Private Investment Program, PPIP, designed to buy bad assets from banks, "is a really bad program," Stiglitz said. It won't accomplish the administration's goal of establishing a price for illiquid assets clogging banks' balance sheets, and instead will enrich investors while sticking taxpayers with huge losses, he said. Bailing Out Investors "You're really bailing out the shareholders and the bondholders," he said. "Some of the people likely to be involved in this, like Pimco, are big bondholders," he said, referring to Pacific Investment Management Co., a bond investment firm in Newport Beach, California. Stiglitz said taxpayer losses are likely to be much larger than bank profits from the PPIP program even though Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair has said the agency expects no losses. "The statement from Sheila Bair that there's no risk is absurd," he said, because losses from the PPIP will be borne by the FDIC, which is funded by member banks. Andrew Gray, an FDIC spokesman, said Bair never said there would be no risk, only that the agency had "zero expected cost" from the program. Redistribution "We're going to be asking all the banks, including presumably some healthy banks, to pay for the losses of the bad banks," Stiglitz said. "It's a real redistribution and a tax on all American savers." Stiglitz was also concerned about the links between White House advisers and Wall Street. Hedge fund D.E. Shaw & Co. paid National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers, a managing director of the firm, more than $5 million in salary and other compensation in the 16 months before he joined the administration. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank. "America has had a revolving door. People go from Wall Street to Treasury and back to Wall Street," he said. "Even if there is no quid pro quo, that is not the issue. The issue is the mindset." Stiglitz was head of the White House's Council of Economic Advisers under President Bill Clinton before serving from 1997 to 2000 as chief economist at the World Bank. He resigned from that post in 2000 after repeatedly clashing with the White House over economic policies it supported at the International Monetary Fund. He is now a professor at Columbia University. Critical of Stimulus Stiglitz was also critical of Obama's other economic rescue programs. He called the $787 billion stimulus program necessary but "flawed" because too much spending comes after 2009, and because it devotes too much of the money to tax cuts "which aren't likely to work very effectively." "It's really a peculiar policy, I think," he said. The $75 billion mortgage relief program, meanwhile, doesn't do enough to help Americans who can't afford to make their monthly payments, he said. It doesn't reduce principal, doesn't make changes in bankruptcy law that would help people work out debts, and doesn't change the incentive to simply stop making payments once a mortgage is greater than the value of a house. Stiglitz said the Fed, while it's done almost all it can to bring the country back from the worst recession since 1982, can't revive the economy on its own. Relying on low interest rates to help put a floor under housing prices is a variation on the policies that created the housing bubble in the first place, Stiglitz said. Recreating Bubble "This is a strategy trying to recreate that bubble," he said. "That's not likely to provide a long-run solution. It's a solution that says let's kick the can down the road a little bit." While the strategy might put a floor under housing prices, it won't do anything to speed the recovery, he said. "It's a recipe for Japanese-style malaise." Even with rates low, banks may not lend because they remain wary of market or borrower risk, and in the current environment "there's still a lot of risk." That's why even with all of the programs the Fed and the administration have opened, lending is still very limited, Stiglitz said. "They haven't thought enough about the determinants of the flow of credit and lending." To contact the reporter on this story: Michael McKee in New York at mmckee at bloomberg.net; Matthew Benjamin in Washington at Mbenjamin2 at bloomberg.net Last Updated: April 17, 2009 12:11 EDT From rasherrs at eircom.net Fri Apr 17 13:35:42 2009 From: rasherrs at eircom.net (Paddy Hackett) Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 20:35:42 +0100 Subject: [A-List] Is the budget deficit a problem for the Irish economy? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <000d01c9bf93$b28f6710$17ae3530$@net> The Irish budget deficit has rapidly grown to an enormous size. The growing budget deficit is a symptom of the deepening global economic crisis. It is not the cause of it. The crisis can only be solved by eliminating its cause. But a budget deficit, in itself, is not necessarily a problem for a particular capitalist economy. It largely depends on the economic circumstances embedding it. It is not unthinkable for a relatively strong and vibrant economy to have a budget deficit. There is no absolute prescription engraved in stone dictating that the state must, as promptly as is possible, eliminate its economy's deficit on the shoulders of the working class. There have been two policies advanced as to how to deal with the growing Irish deficit. Both policies are advocated as ways to solve the problems of capitalism. Ultimately both policies serve the class interests of the bourgeoisie. The first policy seeks to rapidly balance the budget through a mixture of severe tax increases and spending cuts. The other argues that the best policy is to reduce taxes and spend more. It suggests that the deficit can be compensated for by increased borrowing. This policy suggests that the outstanding national debt can be largely cleaned up when recovery gets under way. The first policy is being pursued by the Fianna Fail dominated government. In the short term it will inflict considerable pain on the working class and may even lead to an even bigger hole in the state finances. It may even lead to increased civil conflict. Demand may fall as a result of increased taxation and spending cuts. This reduced demand may lead to greater unemployment. This in turn may increase the size of the deficit. Therefore the policy of balancing the budget does not necessarily solve problems. The growing Irish budget deficit is a manifestation of an acute global profitability crisis. It is only when this crisis is solved can budget deficits such as the Irish one be eliminated (not that this necessarily needs to be done). To think that the Irish budget deficit can be solved by balancing the budget is to promote a forced separation between the world depression and specific problems of the Irish economy. Specific economic problems are a product of contradictions within the world capitalist economic system. Generally speaking they are not a product of subjective factors such as what the government did or did not do. The budget deficit and many other economic problems are not independent of each other. The deficit in the Irish finances will only be "solved" as a result of ongoing world economic recovery. This is because it is inseparably connected with the current world wide depression. The present strategy of the Fianna Fail led government is inflicting great pain on the Irish working class. It is a strategy not intended to eliminate the deficit. The deficit is the pretext for reducing the living standards of the working class and generally worsening its conditions of work. This, it is hoped, will make for a leaner and meaner capital that is more profitable. If Mr Cowan succeeds in achieving this he will have been a very successful Taoiseach (prime minister). The second policy is advocated by elements within the Irish Left. It suggests that reducing taxes may tend to increase demand thereby partly compensating for the falling demand due to depression itself. It calls for increased spending, public works, as a means of providing a stimulus to the economy in a time of contraction. It claims that the resulting deficit can be made up for by borrowing from, say, the European Union. It also claims that in the period of recovery the deficit will tend to shrink and can more easily be paid out of state revenues. Despite its plausible nature this policy is no more a solution than the previous one. In the short term it will tend to lessen the intensity of suffering inflicted on the working class. However it may tend to prolong the pain by lengthening the time over which the deficit is to be, supposedly, paid for by the working class. But there is a limit to borrowing. If this were not the case there would never be any need to be concerned over deficits. They could grow at any rate and to any size because borrowing can adequately compensate for both rate and size. The same understanding can apply to spending. Under these conditions there need never be depressions because money or credit can be flushed into economies to prevent the crisis from occurring. Such an economic ideology fetishises money and credit. It falsely suggests that the quantity of money or credit is the panacea for economic evils. Money then is presented as the determinant of economic expansion. Production is mistakenly presented as the derivative of money -not the reverse. This is to mistake the appearance of capital for its essence. The valorisation process, the production of surplus value, is the source of economic expansion --not money and credit. This policy represents a more disguised way of increasing the oppression of the working class since borrowing and the interest on it is a form of future taxation. This means that the working class will be forced to yield more revenue in the form of taxation than straightforward taxation that is, say, independent of borrowing. There are only two solutions to the economic crisis: The capitalist solution which is at the expense of the working class or the communist one which is at the expense of the capitalist class. There is no in between solution just as there is no such woman as a half-pregnant woman. The abolition of capital through social revolution is the only way in which the present economic depression can be solved that is not at the expense of the working class. Such revolution cannot be realised if confined to Ireland. It must have an international dimension. Paddy Hackett http://paddy-hackett.blogspot.com From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Fri Apr 17 17:19:00 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 08:19:00 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Wasting a Good Crisis Message-ID: <49E90E64.2010302@ashisuto.co.jp> Result: $200 Oil by Jim Quinn TheBurningPlatform.com (April 08 2009) Rohm Emanuel's famous quote regarding the current financial crisis, "Never let a serious crisis go to waste ... it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before". was ignored last summer when oil prices reached $147 a barrel. The Obama administration has taken advantage of the financial crisis to ram through their socialist agenda which will add trillions to the National Debt. It will stimulate unions, bureaucrats, government employees, and defense contractors. It will do nothing to address the looming energy crisis which will sweep over the country shortly. Again, politicians and pundits will be shocked and astonished when oil soars. They will vilify oil companies, OPEC, and the dreaded speculators. They ignore the old fashioned supply and demand equation that even a dimwitted Congressman should be able to comprehend. Instead of addressing the crucial issues that have led to the US being dependent on foreign oil to the tune of $500 billion per year, Congress decided to spend your tax dollars on the following vital items (compliments of Casey Research): * $200,000 for tattoo removal for gang members in California. * $98 million for a Coast Guard ice breaker closing an ice-breaking gap. (What about global warming?) * $950,000 for a bikeway in Kentucky. * $2 million for astronomy awareness in Hawaii. * $190,000 for a Buffalo Bill Historical Center. * $650 million for the digital to analog converter box program. * $1.8 million to study the effect of swine odor on the environment. (Rumor has it the study will be conducted in the halls of Congress) When oil prices collapsed from $147 a barrel in the summer of 2008 to $35 a barrel in January, American drivers, Congress, government bureaucrats, and the mainstream media refocused on other more pressing issues like executive bonuses, Michele Obama's wardrobe, and the tax law knowledge of Obama's cabinet. The attention span of the average American is shorter than a gnat's. As they text and twitter through life, the energy infrastructure continues to rust away, decades old wells are closer to depletion, and alternative energy projects have been scrapped by the thousands. Peak oil likely occurred between 2005 and 2009. The production of oil will now embark on a long slow decline. The world is not prepared. The history of energy in the United States is really only 160 years old, with coal being utilized starting in 1850 and oil only becoming a viable fuel beginning in 1900. Essentially, the world has found lakes of oil under the crust of the earth. If you pump 82 million barrels of oil from a lake per day, the lake will eventually go empty. New lakes are found every year, but the easy to get to lakes have all been found. The new lakes are deep under the sea or in tar sands and shale deposits. These sources take as long as a decade to reach and billions of infrastructure investment. With petroleum in permanent decline, the US needed to have a plan twenty years ago. Figure 1. Energy Consumption by Source, 1635-2000 {1} Source: Department of Energy Matt Simmons, the brilliant energy analyst and author of Twilight in the Desert (2005), recently told Reuters, "We are three, six, maybe nine months away from a price shock. We are not talking about three to five years away - it will be much sooner. These prices now are dangerously low. The lower prices fall, the less oil will be produced and the greater the chance of an oil spike." In this scenario, low oil prices will continue to take oil fields out of production and reduce exploration. Once prices recover, companies will have trouble gearing back up due to the credit crunch, resulting in production increase delays. Simmons describes what will happen. "Unless oil demand falls by ten or fifteen percent per annum, which it is not going to do, then we don't need to wait for oil demand to come back before we have a supply crunch". This is on no one's radar. Peak Oil When pundits on CNBC speak authoritatively about peak oil being a fallacy, their misleading blather is believed by supposedly intelligent people. They expound that we are not running out of oil. There are billions of barrels left inside the earth. Peak oil does not mean that we are in imminent danger of running out of oil. Peak oil is the point in time when the maximum rate of global petroleum extraction was reached, after which the rate of production enters terminal decline. The aggregate production rate from an oil field over time usually grows exponentially until the rate peaks and then declines - sometimes rapidly - until the field is depleted. This concept is derived from the Hubbert curve, and has been shown to be applicable to the sum of a nation's domestic production rate, and is similarly applied to the global rate of petroleum production. M. King Hubbert created and first used the models behind peak oil in 1956 to accurately predict that United States oil production would peak between 1965 and 1970. Figure 13. Oil Well Productivity {1} Source: Department of Energy The depletion of existing sources is more rapid than any new sources that can be brought online. Production in the United States is in relentless decline. The view of Alaskan oil production from 1975 until today clearly shows how rapidly oil fields can decline. What has happened in the United States is now happening on a worldwide basis. The US Department of Energy published a report from some of the top energy minds in the world in 2005. The lead author Robert Hirsch produced a comprehensive report on the peak oil issue called, Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, and Risk Management. The conclusions were frightening. What has the U.S, government done in response? NOTHING The overwhelming majority of industry petroleum geologists, scientists, and economists who worked on the report projected global peak production being reached between 2005 and 2010. The report's disturbing conclusions are as follows: * World oil peaking is going to happen, and will likely be abrupt. * Oil peaking will adversely affect global economies, particularly those most dependent on oil. * Oil peaking presents a unique challenge ("it will be abrupt and revolutionary"). * The problem is liquid fuels (growth in demand mainly from transportation sector). * Mitigation efforts will require substantial time. ..... Twenty years is required to transition without substantial impacts ..... A ten year rush transition with moderate impacts is possible with extraordinary efforts from governments, industry, and consumers ..... Late initiation of mitigation may result in severe consequences. * Both supply and demand will require attention. * It is a matter of risk management (mitigating action must come before the peak). * Government intervention will be required. * Economic upheaval is not inevitable ("given enough lead-time, the problems are soluble with existing technologies".) File: Hubbert peak oil plot.svg {1} Source: Hirsch Report Considering that global oil production peaked or is peaking between 2005 and 2010, we are destined for the third scenario of severe consequences. Economic upheaval is now inevitable. It is the American way to not do anything until it is too late. The Hirsch Report urges a crash program of new technologies and changes in manners and attitudes in the US and as well implying more research and development. The urging has gone unheeded. The worldwide global recession is the only reason you are not paying five dollars a gallon for gasoline today. Supply did not increase, demand leveled off. World demand "plummeted" from 87 million barrels per in early 2008 to 84 million barrels per day in early 2009, a full 3.5% decline. If the world economy levels off and resumes growth, demand will immediately surpass previous levels. The problem is that production has peaked and will likely drop below eighty million barrels in 2010. When demand is rising and supply is declining, only one thing can happen - higher prices. The peaking of hydrocarbon supply is vital not just to our country's future, it is enormously critical to our global economic conduct. Optimists argue that oil has not peaked, and will not peak for decades. They base this on widely held beliefs, including the extent of the world's energy resource endowment, the ability of technology to recover larger amounts of oil once left behind, the lag time between high oil prices and the ramped-up drilling they kindle, the remarkable amount of unconventional oil that has become commercially feasible because of high prices, and undetermined technology advancements. Those who ridicule peak oil, think the term means "running out of oil" instead of the true definition: "oil production can no longer grow". The optimists dismissed the fact that oil prices reaching $147 a barrel had anything to do with constricting market fundamentals. Instead, they argued that lofty crude prices were merely a by-product of a weak dollar, hedge fund speculation, geopolitical trepidation, downstream log jams, the Iraq war, Nigerian political turmoil and the craving for high prices within OPEC, which kept enormous spare capacity shut in. When prices skyrocket again, these optimists will produce new excuses. Facts are facts. Easily found cheap sources of energy are in terminal decline. Matt Simmons explains the long and winding road to our current predicament: * Between 1970 and 1979, world oil demand grew from 47 million barrels per day to 65 million barrels per day, a jump in ten years of an astonishing eighteen million barrels per day. This is how we ate up the world's spare capacity and at the same time caused US supply to peak. Thus, the price of oil skyrocketed. * From 1979 through 1983, demand fell four straight years, retreating back to 59 million barrels per day. Most of this change came as oil ended its role as a prime feedstock for power generation. This probably would have happened even if oil prices had not gone so high, as the world was finally rolling out nuclear fuel. * Once demand hit bottom in 1983, it quietly began to grow again, though the growth was masked by the beginning of a prolonged collapse of oil use throughout the USSR. Nevertheless, total world demand grew from the 59 million base in 1983 to 69 million in 1994, an increase of ten million barrels per day. This increase, interestingly, came at a time when most of the oil pundits were wringing their hands, declaring that oil demand was so stagnant that low oil prices were the new world order. * In 1995, global oil demand finally edged over seventy million barrels per day for the first time in history. Between 1994 (the last time it was under seventy million barrels per day) and the end of 2008, demand grew to 86 million barrels per day - a jump of sixteen million barrels per day in thirteen years. This explains why we used up every last pocket of spare productive capacity and ran out of drilling rigs. Saudi Arabia is Lying Saudi Arabia has been claiming that they are capable of ramping up oil production from its many oil fields. The chart below tells a different story. The largest Saudi fields have entered permanent decline. The largest field in the world, Ghawar, was discovered in 1948 and peaked at 5.6 million barrels per day in 1980. It now produces five million barrels per day. The third largest field in the world, Safaniyah, was discovered in 1951 and peaked at 2.1 million barrels in 1998. It now produces 1.3 million barrels per day. One third of global oil supply comes from twenty large fields discovered prior to 1970. They have all peaked. 94% of global supply comes from 1,500 wells. If Saudi Arabia had the ability to ramp up production, they most certainly would have in 2008 when prices rose over $100 a barrel. They did not, because they could not. Saudi_oil_production_2 {1} Source: Oil Drum "World reserves are confused and in fact inflated. Many of the so-called reserves are in fact resources. They're not delineated, they're not accessible, and they're not available for production." --- Sadad I Al Husseini, former VP of Aramco, October 2007. Worldwide reserves peaked in 1980, when production first surpassed new discoveries. Total worldwide reserves are reported to be 1,200 billion barrels. Much of the increases in reserves since 1980 are lies. Al Husseini argues that 25% of the proven reserves in the world are speculative and not accessible. The following chart tells a fascinating story. Amazingly, each of these OPEC countries had dramatic leaps in their proven reserves, with Saudi Arabia having a fifty percent increase in one year with no major new discoveries. These self reported figures are not audited or verified in any way. Since production quotas are based on total reserves, the higher your reserves, the bigger your piece of the pie. Since 1988, Saudi Arabia has pumped at least 44 billion barrels of oil, but still has proven reserves of 264 billion with no major new discoveries. If you believe that, I have a package of 1,000 subprime mortgages that is rated AAA I'd like to sell you. Declared reserves of major OPEC Producers (billion of barrels) {1} BP Statistical Review - June 2008 Dr Ali Samsam Bakhtiari a former senior expert of the National Iranian oil Company, has estimated that Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have overstated reserves by a combined 320 to 390 billion barrels, and "As for Iran, the usually accepted official 132 billion barrels is almost one hundred billion over any realistic estimate". Petroleum Intelligence Weekly reported that official confidential Kuwaiti documents estimate reserves of Kuwait were only 48 billion barrels, half as much as their reported 101 billion barrels. Essentially, the amount of oil reserves in the world is much lower than people think. The good news is that OPEC may have less clout in the future than they have had for the last forty years. File: World Oil Reserves by Region.PNG {1} Mexican Hat Dance I'm sure that not many people in the US realize that we get more oil from Mexico than Saudi Arabia. We are dependent on Mexico to supply us with 600 million barrels of oil per year. Without this supply, there would be shortages and much higher prices. Tijuana, we have a problem. Within five years, we will be getting ZERO barrels of oil per day from our neighbor to the south. Mexico has the distinguished honor of having a government more inept and short-sighted than our own. Hard to do. Top 15 Oil Exporting Nations to US - 2006 {1} Source: Perotcharts.com Virtually all of the oil supplied from Mexico comes from the second largest oil field in the world, Cantarell. It was discovered in the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico in 1977. It is run by the state owned oil company, Pemex. It held seventeen billion barrels of oil. The Mexican government took the oil revenues and funded their wish list of programs in the country. Pemex has provided forty percent of all revenues for the state. The state became so dependent they had Pemex build a nitrogen injection project on top of the well to push the oil out faster. It worked. In 2004, the well was providing 2.5 million barrels per day. It is now in irreversible decline at a rate of fifteen percent per year. By 2012, it will only be producing 500,000 barrels per day. File: Mexican Petroleum Production.PNG {1} Mexico has ridden this pony hard. They have not done any serious exploration in the Gulf of Mexico in thirty years. A newly discovered deep water well takes ten years years and billions of investment to bring on line. There is no doubt that Mexico's oil output will collapse in the next five years. They will not be capable of exporting any oil to the US. With the rest of the world having no spare capacity and demand higher than 2008, prices for gasoline in the US will soar. In the meantime, we will ponder higher gas mileage requirements, not allow offshore drilling, and make no effort to convert our transportation fleet to natural gas. Congressmen will be outraged and indignant at the oil companies, when the writing was on the wall for a decade. Crisis Part II The flowchart below gives an extremely clear picture of what happened in the last year and what will happen in the next few years. The financial crisis and the energy crisis were intertwined and will continue to feed upon each other. Worldwide oil production peaked between 2005 and 2009. This, along with refinery shutdowns, hurricane related issues, and hedge fund speculation led to oil reaching $147 a barrel. This was the straw that broke the camel's back and helped accelerate a downward spiral for consumers. The combination of plunging home values, retirement savings being cut in half and gas prices doubling led to the worst recession since the 1930s. The dramatic worldwide slowing caused by American consumers not going to Malls reduced demand enough to make the speculators go running for the hills. Oil prices plummeted 76% in a couple months to $35 a barrel. Now we are about to enter phase two of this comedy of errors. Again, the clueless leaders of our country will be taken by surprise. They've learned nothing. It may sound like sacrilege, but prices below $50 a barrel are dangerously low. The crash in gasoline prices to below two dollars a gallon has led to demand in the US rising six percent above the demand in September 2008. Our American twitter society has already forgotten the four dollars a gallon prices. Hybrids are rotting on car dealership lots. Everything that has happened since the price collapse will contribute to Crisis Part 2: * OPEC cut supply by 4.2 million barrels per day from levels in September * Projects that were viable at $80 a barrel have been scrapped. Ethanol and Tar Sands are only profitable above this level. Natural gas wells are being capped as prices plunged from $13 to $4. * Worldwide rig counts have plunged from 3,500 to 2,700 in a matter of months. Rotary Rig Count - World {1} * Existing wells throughout the world continue to decline at ever increasing rates. * The Obama administration will restrict the expansion of coal powered plants, construction of new refineries and new drilling in the US * The enormous stimulus being rolled out throughout the world will generate increased energy demand as supply remains restricted. * The banking crisis has resulted in no financing for energy projects that could relieve the long-term supply issues. * Energy companies have been laying off skilled workers as their business has plummeted. When demand resumes, these workers won't be there. Most people do not understand that all prices are set at the margin. There are 75 million houses in America. Only four to five million homes are sold per year. Therefore, five to six percent of the homes in the US set the price for the other seventy million homes. This same concept applies to the last barrel of oil. When worldwide demand exceeded worldwide supply in late 2007 and early 2008, those last barrels of oil set the price. This explains why those last barrels of oil set the price above $100 a barrel. It wasn't greedy speculators and evil oil companies. World Oil Supply (million barrels per day) {1} Source: International Energy Agency It is clear that supply has stayed in the range of 86 million barrels per day while demand has dropped to the range of 84 to 85 million barrels per day. If oil demand rises by three percent, demand will outstrip supply again. World Oil Demand (million barrels per day) {1} Source: International Energy Agency $200 Oil Will Arrive When I was ten years old my parents told me to never touch our stainless steel sink and the electric light switch above the sink at the same time. I couldn't resist. I tried it and got knocked on my ass. I never did it again. Americans are a different lot. Last year we got knocked on our ass by four-dollar gasoline. Instead of learning, we have sauntered back to the kitchen sink and we're reaching up for the electric light switch. I wonder what is going to happen this time. Americans are used to making tough choices. They have made choices between the Hummer H3 (13 mpg) and the Hummer H2 (8 mpg). They've made choices between a BMW 650i (16 mpg) and a Mercedes S600 (13 mpg). The coming energy crisis will lead to choices between food or fuel for many people. The coming crisis is as clear as the housing bubble. Anyone with half a brain could see that home prices would need to fall thirty to fifty percent to get back to equilibrium. Therefore, no one in Congress, Wall Street, or CNBC saw it coming. Total world oil supply is in a permanent decline. Oil demand will continue to rise. Only a half wit would argue that prices will not rise dramatically in the coming years. Turn on CNBC to get the half wit view of oil prices. United States Annual Oil Supply (1946 - 2007) {1} Now the bad news for Americans; we make up 4.3% of the world's population and consume 26% of the world's oil. Europe makes up 6.8% of the world's population and consumes eleven percent of the world's oil. After the oil shock of the 1970's Europe decided to dramatically increase taxes on gasoline. The high cost of gasoline forced people to buy smaller fuel efficient cars. Today in Germany, their cars average 44 miles per gallon, while in the US our cars average 22 mpg. Whether Europe spent the taxes wisely is another question, but they did change behavior. No crude oil refineries have been built in the United States since 1976. During that time, hundreds of ethanol refineries have been built. It requires more energy to produce ethanol than ethanol produces. The United States has between 250 and 300 years of a coal supply. That is more than the amount of recoverable oil contained in the entire world. We will not utilize this resource because environmentalists say it is bad. Congressman Gary Miller describes the US response to the 1970's oil shock. In 1973, America imported thirty percent of its crude oil needs. Today, that number has doubled to more than seventy percent. Gas prices are as high as they are now in part because we've had no comprehensive national energy policy for the past few decades. Top 15 Oil Consuming Nations - 2006 {1} The peak oil shock that is coming will affect the United States more dramatically than any other country. Are you prepared for five dollars a gallon gasoline? We are twenty years too late to stop this from happening. The American way of kicking all tough issues down the road is about to kick us in the ass, and no one is preparing Americans for the result. Happy talk and confidence building exercises will not solve the problem. We are not in control of our destiny. Our supply is drying up. More drilling will not work. Higher fuel efficiency standards will not work. Congressmen and TV pundits will posture, expound, skewer oil executives on TV, and get red in the face, but they have failed the American public again. The social upheaval that could occur from fuel shortages and outrageous prices will be ugly. Most Americans live in suburbs far from work. Our food supply requires trucks to deliver to our stores. The US military consumes 400,000 barrels of oil per day and spends $13 billion of your tax dollars per year to keep their machines functioning. War for oil becomes more likely in that environment. Is that a farfetched scenario? World Population Growth Graph {1} The population of the world will continue to rise. The United States has no control over that fact. Developing countries will grow more prosperous. People utilize more fossil fuels as they become more prosperous. $2,500 cars are now becoming available in China and India and the rest of Asia. In a Chinese car ownership survey, 96% of respondents said they paid cash for their cars. How un-American like. Imagine if GMAC could gain a foothold in China. More than 20,000 new cars per day are being sold to Chinese citizens who have never owned an automobile before. This is massive new demand being created for gasoline. China now has a middle class estimated at nearly 300 million people. 37% of people driving in China today did not know how to drive three years ago. Oil will continue to be discovered, just not enough to keep up with demand. The pie chart below paints a disturbing picture. Only thirty percent of total oil reserves are light sweet crude. The other seventy percent is difficult and costly to bring to market. Few US refineries can convert heavy crude into gasoline. Oil sands require massive amounts of water and natural gas to convert it into usable oil. The oil remaining to be discovered will be in deepwater wells. It takes at least ten years to bring a deepwater well online. We are losing the race with time. World Oil Reserves {1} Source: Wikipedia The only two people sounding the alarm have been Matt Simmons and T Boone Pickens. Mr Simmons warns that the best energy geologists and engineers are now retiring, with no one to take their place. The global oil and gas system infrastructure is rusting away and falling apart. The cost to rebuild our global energy infrastructure would be close to $100 trillion and would require ten to twenty million workers. This would not be wasted money. Mr Pickens argues that by investing $1 trillion to build wind facilities in the corridor from Texas to North Dakota we could produce twenty percent of the nation's electricity by 2020. This would free up our vast natural gas resources to be used as fuel for truck fleets and ultimately automobiles. The ideas of both men would create jobs in America and make us less dependent on Middle East oil. None of these ideas will avert $5 gasoline in our near future. They may avert $10 gasoline and potentially a resource instigated World War Three. The choice is ours. Note {1}: All figures, charts, tables, and graphs are at http://theburningplatform.com/economy/wasting-a-good-crisis-result---200-oil http://theburningplatform.com/economy/wasting-a-good-crisis-result---200-oil http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From tal1 at cogeco.ca Fri Apr 17 23:29:20 2009 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 01:29:20 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Report: Evidence Of KLA Death House Destroyed In Hague Message-ID: <9DD2D103239D439F80933F28273785A3@TonyPC> ----- Original Message ----- From: Rick Rozoff To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, April 16, 2009 11:57 AM Subject: [stopnato] Report: Evidence Of KLA Death House Destroyed In Hague http://glassrbije.org/E/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6900&Itemid=26 Radio Serbia April 15, 2009 Montgomery: evidence of ?yellow house? destroyed in The Hague The evidence that was gathered by the UNMIK team during the investigation of accusations of transfers of kidnapped people from Kosmet [Kosovo-Metohij] to Albania to the so-called ?yellow house?, had been later passed to the Hague Tribunal for analysis, but it seems that the evidence has been destroyed in that court, reports the special correspondent of the Researching Journalism Center Michael Montgomery. In an interview to the Balkan Insight network, as the author of a film about KLA crimes in Kosmet Montgomery said that gradually he has been coming into possession of increasing evidence that this para-military formation had been imprisoning and torturing people in private houses in several locations in the province and Albania. Several unnamed sources have confirmed the allegations of murders not only of the Serbs but also of Albanians, as well as regarding the sales of the victims? organs after the killings in northern Albania, stated Montgomery. He also pointed out that he had delivered this information to UNMIK in 2003, after which a team of UN investigators found incredible discoveries and turned the evidence over to the Tribunal. Montgomery adds that the disappearance of the evidence in the Hague Court has been confirmed not only by Serbian War Crime Prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic, but also by the former Head of UNMIK Bureau of Missing Persons Jose Pablo Baraybar. =========================== Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato To subscribe, send an e-mail to: Rick Rozoff at rwrozoff at yahoo.com or stopnato-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Daily digest option available. Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages ============================== __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Database | Polls 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 10New Members Visit Your Group Give Back Yahoo! for Good Get inspired by a good cause. Y! Toolbar Get it Free! easy 1-click access to your groups. Yahoo! Groups Start a group in 3 easy steps. Connect with others.. __,_._,___ From tal1 at cogeco.ca Fri Apr 17 23:32:13 2009 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 01:32:13 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Russian Senator: Proposed New US Nuclear Plan Could Kill Millions Message-ID: ----- Original Message ----- From: Rick Rozoff To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, April 16, 2009 11:14 AM Subject: [stopnato] Russian Senator: Proposed New US Nuclear Plan Could Kill Millions http://en.rian.ru/world/20090416/121163705.html Russian Information Agency Novosti April 16, 2009 Senior Russian senator hits out at U.S. nuclear deterrence report -Vasily Likhachyov, deputy chairman of the Russian Federation Council's foreign affairs committee, said he was concerned by the nature of the report, calling its proposals "an infringement of the fundamental principles of international law." He pointed out that under an existing agreement, the U.S. and Russia did not target nuclear missiles at each other, something he said that Moscow "strictly adheres to." -The authors of the study claim that nuclear attacks with 300 kiloton warheads on the targets specified in the report, mainly located in Siberia and the Urals, would kill 659,031 people. However, Likhachyov questioned these figures, saying that "anyone who knows what a nuclear weapon is also understands that the effect of an atomic explosion spreads over tens and even hundreds of kilometers." MOSCOW - A senior Russian politician has expressed "surprise" and "indignation" at the contents of a report by an influential U.S. think tank that calls for "minimal nuclear deterrence." The study by the Federation of American Scientists and Natural Resources Defense Council recommends a nuclear policy that would see Washington target nuclear missiles at major industrial objects rather than population centers. This, the authors said, would be the first step toward U.S. President Barack Obama's recently-stated goal of "a world without nuclear weapons." Vasily Likhachyov, deputy chairman of the Russian Federation Council's foreign affairs committee, said he was concerned by the nature of the report, calling its proposals "an infringement of the fundamental principles of international law." He pointed out that under an existing agreement, the U.S. and Russia did not target nuclear missiles at each other, something he said that Moscow "strictly adheres to." The U.S. report says that once the policy has been formulated, Obama should publicly announce the changed role for nuclear weapons and the new types of targets. The senator also said that the naming in the report of 12 potential targets - three oil refineries, three iron and steel works, two aluminum plants, one nickel plant, and three thermal electric power plants - demonstrated "disrespect for the sovereignty of the Russian Federation." The plants and factories named are operated by companies including Russia's Gazprom, Rosneft and RusAl, as well as Germany's E.On and Italy's Enel. The authors of the study claim that nuclear attacks with 300 kiloton warheads on the targets specified in the report, mainly located in Siberia and the Urals, would kill 659,031 people. However, Likhachyov questioned these figures, saying that "anyone who knows what a nuclear weapon is also understands that the effect of an atomic explosion spreads over tens and even hundreds of kilometers." He also said that the report failed to take into account nuclear weapons held by other countries, and that its proposals were potentially harmful for Russia-U.S. cooperation, as well as international efforts in the field of non-proliferation. The senator also stated that any major cuts by Russia and the U.S. in their respective nuclear arsenals would give Washington an advantage due to its greater missile defense capabilities. The Russian Foreign Ministry has yet to react to the report, although Likhachyov said that an announcement of a "minimal nature" was imminent. The Federation of American Scientists was formed in 1945 by scientists from the Manhattan Project, the group that developed the world's first atomic weapon. =========================== Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato To subscribe, send an e-mail to: Rick Rozoff at rwrozoff at yahoo.com or stopnato-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Daily digest option available. Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages ============================== __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Database | Polls 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 10New Members Visit Your Group Give Back Yahoo! for Good Get inspired by a good cause. Y! Toolbar Get it Free! easy 1-click access to your groups. Yahoo! Groups Start a group in 3 easy steps. Connect with others.. __,_._,___ From tal1 at cogeco.ca Sat Apr 18 00:03:47 2009 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 02:03:47 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Canada: In Service To Pentagon And NATO At Home And Abroad Message-ID: <1AA037E6D1734FBFBCDFB37444B2B6E0@TonyPC> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/message/38745 Stop NATO April 16, 2009 Canada: In Service To The Pentagon And NATO At Home And Abroad Rick Rozoff Canada is the only nation in the world whose mainland borders three of the world's five oceans: The Arctic, The Atlantic and the Pacific. The United States only secured access to the Arctic Ocean with the acquisition of non-contiguous Alaska from Russia in 1867 and Russia can only access the Atlantic through the Barents and Norwegian Seas. The three oceans in question are exactly those in and over which Russia has recently resumed strategic air patrols and naval and submarine deployments starting in late 2007 after a hiatus of almost twenty years. Should East-West tensions parallel - or exceed - those of the Cold War era Canada will be on several frontlines and is now being actively prepared for just such an eventuality. The campaign to employ Canada as a spearhead against Russia in the Arctic and generally in furtherance of NATO's plans for the Northwest Hemisphere will have little to do with the word that has become a shibboleth for Canadian Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Liberal opposite numbers alike, sovereignty, and still less with defense. Instead the nation's role, given its unique geographical location, will be as the West's advance guard in a geostrategic showdown in the northern latitudes. Not that Canada's service to the United States and NATO collectively is limited to its own coasts and the oceans they abut. Despite rhetoric to the contrary by two of the country's last three prime ministers, Liberal Jean Chretien and Tory Stephen Harper, aimed at domestic audiences and for votes in parliamentary elections, about the nation's supposed proud tradition of independence, if there has ever been a nation that never truly possessed a foreign policy of its own - particularly in respect to military conflicts - that country is Canada. From bogus@does.not.exist.com Thu Apr 2 09:08:15 2009 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Thu, 02 Apr 2009 15:08:15 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: =20 amount of troops in both world wars to following the lead of Britain and = the=20 United States in wars from Korea in 1950 to Yugoslavia in 1999 to=20 Afghanistan at present, Canada has rarely balked at demands for political= =20 acquiescence and military complicity from its Anglo-Saxon big brothers an= d=20 the NATO alliance of which it is a founding member. If in early 2003 Ottawa refused to supply troops for the invasion of Iraq= it=20 aided that effort in other ways beforehand, including supporting NATO's=20 deployment of Patriot missiles to Turkey on the eve of the war, and=20 afterward by assigning personnel to the NATO Training Mission - Iraq. Many suspect that then prime minister Jean Chretien's government avoided=20 potential fallout on the home front by reaching a quid pro quo with=20 Washington whereby Canada would avoid the Iraqi quagmire by stepping into= =20 the Afghan crevice. It took over the International Security Assistance Fo= rce=20 (which had been officially turned over to NATO) mission in the capital of= =20 Kabul in 2003 and two years later deployed over 2,000 troops to the south= ern=20 province of Kandahar, Afghanistan's main battlefield from that time onwar= d.=20 The initial 1,950 troops Canada assigned to ISAF was the largest single=20 contingent at the time. Canada signed both a Faustian pact and a fool's bargain. Most all=20 non-American troops have been pulled out of Iraq or will be soon, with th= e=20 majority of the contributing nations focused on increasing deployments to= =20 Afghanistan for an expanding South Asian war, while Canadian forces have=20 been bogged down in Afghanistan for almost seven and a half years and=20 notwithstanding claims by Ottawa officials to have them withdrawn by 2011= =20 may well be there indefinitely. 117 Canadian soldiers have been killed in the Afghan war, about 10 per ce= nt=20 of total Western military deaths, the number and ratio out of proportion = to=20 Canada's population of a little over 33 million. The death toll is the highest the country has experienced since the Korea= n=20 War (when 516 soldiers were killed) and the first combat fatalities in ov= er=20 half a century. The Korean War was the prototype for almost sixty years o= f=20 US and NATO military campaigns fought far from North America and Europe b= y=20 self-defined coalitions of the willing. Direct Western military involveme= nt=20 began in July of 1950, fifteen months after the formation of NATO, and Ko= rea=20 was the testing ground for the new alliance with, in addition to US force= s,=20 troops from NATO allies Canada, Belgium, Britain, France, Luxembourg and = the=20 Netherlands participating. All seven nations lost troops, as did Greece a= nd=20 Turkey, themselves having just been first subjected to the sanguinary=20 effects of the Truman Doctrine and for whom participation in the Korean W= ar=20 was the precondition for their induction into NATO in 1952. The model was replicated in the post-Cold War period with the two wars=20 against Iraq in 1991 and 2003, the 78-day air war against Yugoslavia in 1= 999=20 and the endless war in Afghanistan that commenced in October of 2001. Canada contributed 4,500 troops to the first Persian Gulf War, including=20 2,700 stationed in the area, and ran its own national complement to the=20 US-led Operation Desert Storm, Operation Friction. In 1999 Ottawa, without a parliamentary resolution or declaration of war,= =20 provided eighteen warplanes for the merciless terror bombing of Yugoslavi= a=20 and stationed 800 troops in neighboring Macedonia for a possible land=20 invasion. (It joined most of its NATO allies in recognizing Kosovo's secession from= =20 Serbia in February of last year, a detestable act of duplicity given the=20 Canadian federal government's ruthless use of all means fair and foul to=20 stifle the independence drive in its province of Quebec.) With the expanding war in Afghanistan, though, Canada has returned to com= bat=20 in Asia, ground operations and casualties for the first time since Korea. Late last year it deployed six Mi-8 helicopter gunships, its first combat= =20 wing deployment, the significance of which was described by Brig.-Gen. De= nis=20 Thompson, commander of Task Force Kandahar: "Now we're not talking about = an=20 individual unit which would be the army equivalent of a battalion. This i= s=20 the equivalent of committing a brigade to overseas operations. I don't th= ink=20 this has occurred since the Korean time (war)." (1) At the beginning of this year with the addition of "six Chinooks, newly=20 retrofitted with heavy machine guns...eight hefty, even more heavily-arme= d,=20 Griffons to act as backup" the escalation was "Canada's biggest air force= =20 presence in a combat zone since the end of the Second World War." (2) Attack helicopters weren't the only addition to the deadly arsenal. In th= e=20 summer of 2007 Canada leased 20 Leopard tanks from Germany for the erstwh= ile=20 ISAF "peacekeeping mission" in Afghanistan and signed a deal with the=20 Netherlands to purchase 100 more. In March of this year Canada started flying Israeli-made Heron drones=20 capable of carrying weapons, bombs and guided missiles. The head of the=20 Canadian Air Force, Lt.-Gen. Angus Watt, said on the occasion: "Armed UAV= s=20 [Unmanned Aerial Vehicles] with air to ground weapons are a valuable=20 capability and it's a good option to have." (3) Drones have been used expensively by the United States over the past year= =20 not only in Afghanistan but in Northwest Pakistan, resulting in the death= s=20 of over 500 suspected militants and Pakistani civilians. The estimated 2,= 800=20 Canadian troops in Afghanistan are stationed in Kandahar Province which=20 borders Pakistan's Baluchistan Province. Threats of US missile attacks in= =20 Baluchistan have been sounded over the past several weeks and the prospec= t=20 of Canada following up on them is more likely than not. Military hubris has its limits: Pakistan has a population more than five=20 times that of Canada and nuclear weapons into the bargain. Not that dangers of that magnitude are likely to deter a government whose= =20 recently retired but then just appointed Chief of the Defence Staff Gener= al=20 Rick Hillier, who a year earlier was in command of NATO's ISAF, referred = to=20 his intended targets in Afghanistan as =E2=80=9Cdetestable murderers and = scumbags=E2=80=9D=20 and who said of the Canadian armed forces he was in charge of: =E2=80=9CW= e=E2=80=99re not=20 the public service of Canada. We=E2=80=99re not just another department. = We are the=20 Canadian Forces, and our job is to be able to kill people.=E2=80=9D Afghanistan - South and Central Asia in general - is Canada's largest=20 current military operation but hardly its only one. In fact it has forces= =20 deployed throughout what Western government officials and their policy th= ink=20 tanks for years have dubbed the Broader Middle East and the arc of=20 instability - from Mauritania on the Atlantic Ocean to Kazakhstan on=20 Russia's and China's borders - and beyond. Far beyond. Canadian military forces are among those scheduled to be evicted from the= =20 Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan shortly along with armed forces from the Uni= ted=20 States, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Denmark, Spain, France, Australia,=20 South Korea, Italy, Turkey and Norway. Last autumn Minister of National Defence Peter MacKay, in a news dispatch= =20 with a title containing an optimistic preposition, "After Afghanistan,=20 Canada will still have military obligations: MacKay," was quoted as follo= ws: "I hope that we have elevated in the hearts and minds of people in our ow= n=20 country just how important having a robust military is. That includes=20 peacekeeping but it also includes to do the business when called upon, whether it's been in Afghanistan, or as it has been in past conflicts in=20 Korea or Yugoslavia or in places around the world like Haiti." (4) As with its American mentor, for the Canadian political establishment one= =20 war is never enough. This February the Canadian frigate HMCS Winnipeg the joined the Standing=20 NATO Maritime Group 1 (SNMG1) in the Alliance's first penetration of=20 Southeast Asia "through areas such as the Strait of Malacca, Java and the= =20 South China sea, an area of the world that is not frequented by NATO=20 fleets." (5) "[T]he SNMG1, a squadron primarily of destroyers and frigates from Allian= ce=20 nations, [will enter] the Indian Ocean. "The warships provide rapid intervention capability for a broad spectrum = of=20 NATO operations. However, on this mission they=E2=80=99ll operate outside= their=20 usual theatre of operation, which is the Mediterranean Sea and east Atlan= tic=20 Ocean. The flotilla included destroyers and frigates from Canada, Portugal,=20 Germany, the United States, Spain and the Netherlands and its commander,=20 Portuguese Rear Admiral Jose Domingos Pereira da Cunha, said of the missi= on=20 that =E2=80=9CWe will be operating from the Red Sea to the coast of Austr= alia.=E2=80=9D (6) In addition to NATO's maiden voyage through the strategic Strait of Malac= ca,=20 the HMCS Winnipeg's itinerary includes a "six-month deployment to the=20 Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean." (7) NATO spokesman James Appathurai announced in March that "NATO governments= -=20 ambassadors - have approved the operational plan for the deployment of th= e=20 Standing NATO Maritime Group 1 (SNMG1) to conduct counter-piracy operatio= ns=20 off the coast of Somalia." (8) In early April the HMCS Winnipeg had wended its way to the Somali coast w= ith=20 the Standing NATO Maritime Group 1 where it "ward[ed] off suspected pirat= es"=20 and "dispatched its Sea King helicopter to check out several skiffs." "Being able to perform a variety of functions for NATO in the Gulf [of Ad= en]=20 is satisfying," Commander Craig Baines summarized. (9) The Canadian military action prefigured and preceded by three days the=20 American commando attack on a vessel off the Somali coast which resulted = in=20 the deaths of three men holding an American hostage. Last year the HMCS Ville de Quebec deployed on Operation SEXTANT, Canada'= s=20 maritime contribution to the Standing NATO Maritime Group 1, "to particip= ate=20 with the NATO fleet in a series of naval exercises to maintain a high deg= ree=20 of readiness capability should SNMG1 be tasked to engage in directed=20 operations" and completed "a very successful mission in the Mediterranean= =20 Sea with Standing NATO Maritime Group 1 (SNMG1) and an anti-piracy escort= =20 mission in the Indian Ocean...." (10) A year before that the Canadian HMCS Toronto joined the Standing NATO=20 Maritime Group 1 - "an integral part of the NATO Response Force (NRF), a=20 highly ready and technologically advanced force made up of land, air, sea= =20 and Special Forces components that can be deployed quickly" - in a=20 five-month deployment to "conduct operations in the Mediterranean and=20 conduct an historic 12,500 nautical mile circumnavigation of Africa." "It is historic in the sense that it=E2=80=99s the first time the task gr= oup is=20 going to circumnavigate Africa," said Cmdr. Stephen Virgin, Toronto=E2=80= =99s=20 captain. (11) When the HMCS Toronto reached Africa's southern tip it and its fellow NAT= O=20 warships engaged in exercises with the South African navy. "I don=E2=80=99= t think it=E2=80=99s=20 been done before, certainly not a combined NATO-South African exercise,"=20 Cmdr. Virgin said. At the same time then Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor announced that the Canadian frigate HMCS Toronto and six CF-18 aircraft would be made availa= ble=20 to the NATO Response Force until January of 2008. Earlier in the year Canadian Commodore Denis Rouleau, prefacing his comme= nts=20 with "I speak as a NATO officer," stated, "Canada is at the top of the he= ap=20 when it comes to contributions to this NATO [maritime] force." (12) Alleged defense of Canadian sovereignty over the past two years, then, ha= s=20 included dispatching warships to the Mediterranean Sea with NATO's six an= d a=20 half year long Operation Active Endeavor interdiction efforts, and on oth= er=20 NATO missions to the Indian Ocean, the South China Sea, the Arabian Sea, = the=20 Horn of Africa, the Gulf of Aden, the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, the Str= ait=20 of Malacca, the Indonesia archipelago, the coast of Australia and along t= he=20 entire perimeter of Africa. Patrolling the world's seas and oceans, and note that none of the=20 deployments listed above were in the Western Hemisphere, with military=20 vessels provided with artillery and combat helicopters for live engagemen= ts=20 in pursuit of commercial and geopolitical objectives is the furthest thin= g=20 in the world from protecting one's borders and sovereign rights. Policies and terminology, rationales and contrived crises can be adopted,= =20 adjusted and applied as required by imperial powers bent on intruding=20 themselves into and gaining domination over vast tracts of the world.=20 Canada's integral involvement in naval operations in several seas and all= =20 five oceans may be attributed to the supposed exigency of the day, but it= is=20 a practice going back centuries and has little to do with whatever offici= als=20 in Washington, Ottawa and Brussels proclaim it to be. The US rescue operation in the Gulf of Aden this last Sunday, where Navy=20 snipers killed three abductors of the captain of an American-Danish=20 commercial vessel, is being celebrated in the American press and that of = the=20 West in general as a purgative, expiatory and redemptive milestone in=20 undoing the blight of a US military helicopter shot down in the capital o= f=20 Somalia sixteen years ago and a demonstration of American resolve - even = the=20 first blood rite of the new administration (though Pakistan was the locat= ion=20 of its initial bloodletting in a zone outside of those charted by its=20 predecessor) - is nothing unprecedented. "There is but one language which can be held to these people, and this is= =20 terror." The above is not a threat by al-Qaeda or any other targeted group. It was= =20 issued by American General William Eaton in 1799 in reference to the=20 so-called Barbary pirates of North Africa, described in a US journal four= =20 years ago as "arguably the first international terrorists the United Stat= es=20 ever faced." (13) In 1785, only nine years after the founding of the American republic, an=20 American commercial vessel was seized in the Mediterranean Sea by what=20 Washington labeled as pirates, in the words of the same source cited abov= e,=20 "initiating events that would lead to America's first war on terrorism -t= he=20 Tripolitan War of 1801." The same General Eaton quoted above, at the time US consul in Tripoli,=20 recruited an armed mercenary force of "several hundred Arabs, 24 Greeks, = 8=20 U.S. marines, and a former Army officer (who led the campaign). The force= =20 crossed 600 miles of desert to the 'shores of Tripoli,' as recited in the= =20 Marine Corps hymn, and captured Derna, Tripoli's second-largest city." (1= 4) If the above sounds eerily similar to current demands by US elected=20 officials to expand anti-piracy operations in the Horn of Africa and the=20 Gulf of Aden into amphibious and helicopter assaults on the Somalia=20 mainland, it should. The model is the same. There is nothing new in warships from North America conducting operations= in=20 off the coast of northeast Africa or in the Mediterranean. What is novel = is=20 their current scope. On October 4, 2001 NATO for the only time in its six= ty=20 year history activated its Article 5 mutual military assistance provision= =20 and one of eight measures implemented - support for the invasion and=20 occupation of Afghanistan being another - was the establishment of Operat= ion=20 Active Endeavor, a comprehensive naval surveillance and interdiction prog= ram=20 continuing to this day and one that will never end until NATO itself does= . The bloc's warships police the entire sea and control access to and from = the=20 Mediterranean at all its main choke points: The Strait of Gibraltar, the=20 Suez Canal and the Dardanelles Strait leading into the Atlantic Ocean, th= e=20 Red Sea and the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea, respectively. NATO ships have monitored over 100,000 ships and boarded over a hundred. = As=20 part of Operation Active Endeavor and related operations Canadian and US=20 military vessels are active in the Mediterranean. In February of this year Canada participated in NATO's two week Noble Man= ta=20 '09 exercise in the Ionian Sea, the purpose of which was to "demonstrate=20 NATO's determination to maintain proficiency and improve interoperability= in=20 coordinated anti-submarine, anti-surface and coastal surveillance operati= ons=20 using a multinational force of ships, submarines and aircraft. The exerci= se=20 also provided operational training in potential NATO Response Force (NRF)= =20 tasks/roles and missions, exercising the procedures for possible NRF=20 operations...." (15) Canada also contributes to the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon=20 (UNIFIL) operation, which after Israel's sustained military assault on=20 Lebanon in the summer of 2006 was expanded to include increased NATO stat= es=20 infantry, armor and naval deployments to secure the country's border with= =20 Israel for the protection of the latter, patrol the border with Syria and= =20 enforce a select naval blockade of the nation's Mediterranean coast. A Canadian was among four soldiers killed by an Israeli air strike on a U= N=20 observation post in July of 2006. The US has provided over $400 million in military aid in the interim and=20 Canada, Britain, Germany and Belgium are also instrumental in rebuilding = the=20 Lebanese armed forces as a Western proxy institution in the nation and th= e=20 region. The European Maritime Force (EUROMARFOR) that effects the blockade of=20 Lebanon's coast has approached more than 22,000 ships and referred 240 to= =20 Lebanese authorities. In February of this year the Danish foreign ministry announced that a=20 two-day meeting had been held with representatives from the US, Canada,=20 Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and Norway "on ho= w=20 to prevent arms smuggling to Gaza." (16) In March a British diplomat stated that nine NATO members, "The United=20 States, Canada and seven European states" had agreed in a London meeting = "to=20 stop alleged weapons smuggling to the Gaza Strip by campaigns of informat= ion=20 sharing, diplomatic pressure and interception at sea." (17) That is, a replication of the naval blockade of Lebanon is being planned = for=20 the Gaza Strip's Mediterranean coastline, one which may be presented as a= =20 European initiative but, as noted above, as it will include Canadian and = US=20 participation will be a NATO operation in all but name. In the middle of Israel's 22-day onslaught against Gaza early this Januar= y=20 new Canadian Liberal Party leader and prospective future prime minister=20 Michael Ignatieff, a "humanitarian bomber" when it came to the Balkans,=20 stated: "Canada has to support the right of a democratic country to defen= d=20 itself." Canadian warships have also participated in US-led patrols of the Persian= =20 Gulf near Iranian waterways. The frigate HMCS Charlottetown last year=20 deployed with a 50-ship USS Harry Truman aircraft carrier strike group fo= r a=20 seven month Gulf deployment. In addition, in March it was announced that "The Canadian navy is deployi= ng=20 three war ships to the Persian Gulf, one of the largest single naval=20 contributions to the war against terrorism since the attacks of Sept. 11,= =20 2001." The three warships - the HMCS Calgary, HMCS Protecteur and HMCS Iroquois = -=20 met up with counterparts from US, Britain, France, Germany, Pakistan and = the=20 Netherlands in Task Force 150, To "run missions in the Arabian Sea, the R= ed=20 Sea and the Indian Ocean. The Canadians plan to take a Sea King helicopte= r=20 detachment with them." (18) Days after Georgia launched an armed assault against South Ossetia last=20 August 7-8, triggering a five-day war with Russia, former New Democrat an= d=20 current Liberal Party Foreign Affairs critic Bob Rae urged the Conservati= ve=20 minority government of Stephen Harper to open a Canadian embassy in Georg= ia=20 for the first time, stating: =E2=80=9CRussia's invasion of Georgia clearly demonstrates the strategic = importance=20 of the region. We need to make it clear, both to the countries of the reg= ion=20 and to Russia, that we take their sovereignty and independence seriously,= =20 and that we deeply support their quest for international respect.=E2=80=9D= (19) The very next day the Russian General Staff revealed that a Canadian wars= hip=20 was entering the Black Sea (with US and Polish ships) for a two-week NATO= =20 deployment, as act Russia viewed as a dangerous provocation as it has=20 deployed its own warships off the Black Sea coast of Abkhazia, north of=20 Georgia. Prime Minister Harper, whose government had pushed Georgia's and Ukraine'= s=20 full NATO membership at the Alliance's summit in Romania earlier in the=20 year, was in accordance with Rae: "I think if we had taken a stronger position on the membership of (Georgi= a=20 and the Ukraine), we would not have had the Russian aggression. I think t= hat=20 showing weakness or hesitation encourages this type of behaviour on the p= art=20 of Russia." (20) Slightly afterward Foreign Affairs Minister David Emerson said "the=20 government views the recent actions of Russia in Georgia and in the Far=20 North 'with great concern,' and this is helping drive the Conservatives'=20 Arctic strategy." (21) In October of last year Canadian military personnel participated in the=20 annual NATO Cooperative Longbow/Lancer-2008 South Caucasus exercises, hel= d=20 in Armenia in 2008. The yearly exercises aim at building up NATO presence in the Caucasus and= =20 integrating the militaries of former Warsaw Pact, Soviet and Yugoslav=20 nations as well as Persian Gulf state and Gulf Cooperation Council/Istanb= ul=20 Cooperation Initiative member the United Arab Emirates. In addition to=20 Canada, nations involved were the US, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Greece,= =20 Macedonia, the Czech Republic, Austria, Albania, the United Arab Emirates= ,=20 Switzerland, Moldova, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Bosnia. On May 6 of this year the Cooperative Longbow 09/Cooperative Lancer 09=20 exercises will be held in Georgia, will again include Canadian forces and= =20 will last for almost four weeks. Today the Russian foreign minister and=20 other officials condemned the exercises as a provocation and urged they b= e=20 cancelled. In a press report of early October of last year titled "NATO chief seeks=20 defence plan for allies near Russia," NATO Supreme Allied Commander US=20 General John Craddock, speaking after what was characterized as "Russia's= =20 invasion of Georgia," affirmed "The foundation of the NATO alliance is a=20 collective defence promise known as Article 5, stating an attack on one i= s=20 an attack on all. The Article 5 discussion is very much front and centre.= "=20 In the same report it was noted that "U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates= ,=20 with Canada and Britain, will try this week in Budapest to mediate among=20 European allies while supporting defence planning that reaffirms the Arti= cle=20 5 pledge." (22) Article 5 is not only a mutual defense but a potential war clause. In November the Canadian military attache to Georgia, Colonel S. R.=20 Lescoutre, "visited the Ministry of Defence and the Joint Staff of Georgia" and "expressed the readiness of the Canadian side for further cl= ose=20 collaboration in providing military training for Georgian military servicemen." (23) Employing the Caucasus conflict of late last summer as pretext, the Penta= gon=20 and NATO brandished its Article 5 - a dangerous remnant of the Cold War's= =20 prospect of armed conflict in and the possible nuclear destruction of=20 Europe - to accelerate already existing plans in the Northwest Hemisphere= . Following up on last September's 2008 Northern Viking NATO exercise in=20 Iceland staged to "reinforce the resolve of the U.S. and its NATO partner= s=20 in assisting in the defense of Iceland" (24) - although Iceland is=20 geographically isolated in the North Atlantic and not threatened by any=20 nation - with US, Canadian, Danish and Norwegian air and naval forces, it= =20 was announced this February that "NATO members Denmark, Spain and the US=20 will be deploying fighter planes to Iceland. Germany and the US have=20 confirmed that they will deploy aircraft in 2010. Other countries that ha= ve=20 shown an interest in taking part in air patrols include Canada, Italy and= =20 Poland." (25) During the January 23, 2006 Canadian federal elections since Conservative= =20 Party leader and new Prime Minister Stephen Harper made repeated demagogi= c=20 vows to defend Canada's Arctic claims and in particular to maintain=20 exclusive control of the Northwest Passage which connects the Atlantic an= d=20 Pacific Oceans through the Canadian Arctic region. The unavoidable implication - on the surface - is that Harper was pledgin= g=20 to prevent the transformation of the Northwest Passage into a recognized=20 international territory, the US position. As the American ambassador to=20 Canada in 2006, David Wilkins, stated, "the U.S. position has not changed= =20 and the passage is international territory as far as the Bush administrat= ion=20 is concerned." (26) The image that Harper was projecting - or rather the pose he was adopting= -=20 was, much like Jean Chretien in 2003, demonstrating that he was no neuter= ed=20 foreign policy poodle like Britain's Tony Blair but a virile husky able t= o=20 pull its own weight and mark its territory. In fact he was already planni= ng=20 to prove himself a docile lapdog loyal unto death to his masters: The Uni= ted=20 Kingdom residually, the United States primarily and NATO for a sixth deca= de. The above-quoted statement by the US ambassador, reflective as it was of = the=20 greatest threat to Canadian territorial claims and integrity since the=20 pre-independence invasion of its land by the US in 1812, didn't appear to= =20 have fazed Harper overly much. Harper's wasn't, and isn't, concerned about Canada's territorial claims;=20 he's been enlisted to challenge Russia's. He didn't waste any time in fulfilling his true pledge, the expansion of=20 Canada's military into its northern frontier and into contested waters. In his second year in office Harper "announced plans to build a new army=20 training centre in the Far North at Resolute Bay and to outfit a deep-wat= er=20 port for both military and civilian use at the northern tip of Baffin=20 Island. His trip to the Arctic earlier this month was accompanied by the biggest=20 military exercise in the region in years, with 600 soldiers, sailors and = air=20 crew participating.=E2=80=9D (27) By this time anyone who had gained the impression that Harper's jingoisti= c=20 fulminations were in any manner directed at his neighbor to the south sho= uld=20 have been disabused of that illusion. The Financial Times reported that "a past land dispute over 12,000 sq km = of=20 seabed elsewhere in the Beaufort Sea is being put aside in the name of=20 defending against Russia=E2=80=99s Arctic claims, which clash with those = of the US,=20 Canada, Denmark and Norway.=E2=80=9D (28) Shortly after the Caucasus war had ended, while a Canadian warship was on= ly=20 miles away from Abkhazia's and Russia's Black Sea borders, Ottawa conduct= ed=20 a week-long military "sovereignty exercise" in the Arctic, a full spectru= m=20 affair including "In addition to the army, navy and air force, several=20 federal agencies and departments are participating, including the Coast=20 Guard, RCMP, CSIS, Canada Border Services Agency, Transport Canada and=20 Health Canada. "Military officials say this year's exercise involves the most number of=20 departments and agencies ever." Invoking recent events in Georgia - half the world away - Defence Ministe= r=20 Peter MacKay "made it clear that asserting Canada's Arctic sovereignty, a= nd=20 sending a message to circumpolar neighbours such as Russia, is also a key= =20 objective of the exercise." Harper a week before "accused Russia of reverting to a 'Soviet-era=20 mentality'...." (29) Later the same month, August of last year, both Harper and MacKay visited= =20 the Northwest Territories to inspect "four CF18 Canadian military jets se= nt=20 to Inuvik in response to what officials said was an unidentified aircraft= =20 that had neared Canadian air space." (30) Two weeks later defense chief MacKay outdid himself with swagger and=20 braggadocio in stating, "When we see a Russian Bear [Tupolev Tu-95]=20 approaching Canadian air space, we meet them with an F-18." (31) The F-18 is an American multirole fighter jet. He would never dared to issue such a blunt statement unless, to employ th= e=20 street vernacular (or underworld argot) appropriate to the circumstances,= he=20 could count upon a bully with enough muscle to back him up. In a further indication of who Canada was not "defending its sovereignty"= =20 against, days after MacKay's comment his ministry launched "Operation NAN= OOK=20 2008, a sovereignty operation in Canada's eastern Arctic. Not only that, = but=20 Harper also voiced support for plans to build a military port and a milit= ary=20 base beyond the Polar Circle." The same reports adds, "The United States has joined the race, too, teami= ng=20 up with Canada to map the unexplored Arctic sea floor." (32) Never relenting, on September 19 Stephen Harper is paraphrased in a news=20 report with the title "Canada boosts frontier troops as Russia eyes Arcti= c"=20 as saying "Canada is stepping up its military alertness along its norther= n=20 frontier in response to Russia's 'testing' of its boundaries and recent=20 Arctic grab." Harper in his own words: "We are concerned about not just Russia's claims through the internationa= l=20 process, but Russia's testing of Canadian airspace and other=20 indications...(of) some desire to work outside of the international=20 framework. That is obviously why we are taking a range of measures,=20 including military measures, to strengthen our sovereignty in the North."= =20 (33) In a December story with the headline "Tory bid to bolster Arctic presenc= e=20 must get 'back on track': MacKay," Canada's Minister of National Defence=20 "singled out possible naval encroachments from Russia and China, saying, = 'We=20 have to be diligent.'" (34) On January 12, 2009 the outgoing Bush White House issued National Securit= y=20 Presidential Directive 66, the first section of which reads: "The United States has broad and fundamental national security interests = in=20 the Arctic region and is prepared to operate either independently or in=20 conjunction with other states to safeguard these interests. These interes= ts=20 include such matters as missile defense and early warning; deployment of = sea=20 and air systems for strategic sealift, strategic deterrence, maritime=20 presence, and maritime security operations; and ensuring freedom of=20 navigation and overflight." The fifth point is just as stark and unequivocal: "Freedom of the seas is a top national priority. The Northwest Passage is= a=20 strait used for international navigation, and the Northern Sea Route=20 includes straits used for international navigation; the regime of transit= =20 passage applies to passage through those straits. Preserving the rights a= nd=20 duties relating to navigation and overflight in the Arctic region support= s=20 our ability to exercise these rights throughout the world, including thro= ugh=20 strategic straits." Ottawa was, predictably enough, mum. On January 28-29 NATO held a euphemistically named Seminar on Security=20 Prospects in the High North in the capital of Iceland, attended by "the=20 Secretary General of NATO, its two top military commanders and the Chairm= an=20 of the Military Committee 'as well as many other decision-makers and expe= rts=20 from Allied countries.'" (35) NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer's address included the reminder that "At= =20 our Summit in Bucharest last year, we agreed a number of guiding principl= es=20 for NATO=E2=80=99s role in energy security....NATO provides a forum where= four of=20 the Arctic coastal states can inform, discuss, and share, any concerns th= at=20 they may have. And this leads me directly onto the next issue, which is=20 military activity in the region. =E2=80=9CClearly, the High North is a region that is of strategic interes= t to the=20 Alliance." (36) The four states Scheffer alluded to are Canada, the United States, Denmar= k=20 and Norway, frequently described at being in competition regarding Arctic= =20 claims but all subsumed under the NATO banner. The four countries are partners in any number of projects from the NATO=20 global SeaSparrow naval missile system to the war in Afghanistan. The four also share air surveillance and defense facilities in the North=20 Atlantic, Denmark through its Greenland island possession, and Norway is=20 already tied into the US European missile shield project and according to= =20 Air Force Gen. Victor Renuart Jr., head of both the North American Aerosp= ace=20 Defense Command and the U.S. Northern Command "We are in discussions with= =20 the MDA [Missile Defense Agency] on alternatives if the discussions in=20 Europe do not continue,=E2=80=9D and the FTG-05 - Ground-based Midcourse = [Missile]=20 Defense-05 - "involve[s] both operational commands, Norad and NorthCom, a= nd=20 'operationally sound execution,'" he added. (37) NORTHCOM is the United States Northern Command and NORAD is the North=20 American Aerospace Defense Command, run jointly by the US and Canada sinc= e=20 1958. This march, months after Washington proclaimed its right to use the Arcti= c=20 region for missile defense and strategic sea and air systems and after NA= TO=20 rallied its members in pursuit of strategic military objectives there,=20 Russia announced plans to prepare a military force by 2020 to defend its=20 Arctic claims. The turn for saber rattling passed from Canadian Defense Affairs Minister= =20 MacKay to Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon, who said "Let's be=20 perfectly clear here: Canada will not be bullied.=E2=80=9D (38) To quote the Canadian military at some length on this April's Operation=20 Nunalivut 2009, the first of three "sovereignty operations" scheduled in = the=20 Arctic this year: "'In keeping with the Canada First Defence Strategy, we are placing great= er=20 emphasis on our northern operations, including in the High Arctic. This=20 operation underscores the value of the Canadian Rangers, our eyes and ear= s=20 in the North, which at the direction of the Government are growing to 5,0= 00=20 in strength.' "In addition to air and ground patrols, this operation calls on a range o= f supporting military capabilities-communications, intelligence, mapping, a= nd=20 satellite imaging. "[T]his year's operation will involve an exchange visit with the Commande= r=20 of Greenland Command, Danish Rear-Admiral Henrik Kudsk, to discuss milita= ry=20 collaboration in the North. "The North represents 40 per cent of Canada's land mass and is Canada=20 Command's single biggest region," said Vice-Admiral Dean McFadden, Comman= der=20 of Canada Command. "'This operation is a golden opportunity to expand our capabilities to=20 operate in Canada's Arctic,' said Brigadier-General David Millar, the=20 Commander of Joint Task Force North." (39) As Operation Nunalivut 2009 was underway, US Secretary of State Hillary=20 Clinton hosted a joint Arctic-Antarctic summit in Washington while Canadi= an=20 Foreign Affairs Minister Cannon was also in Washington "giving a speech=20 about Canada's Arctic strategy amid rising tensions with Russia over its=20 northern military ambitions. "A Canadian research aircraft is expected to fly over 90 North this month= as=20 part of a joint Canada-Denmark mission to strengthen the countries' claim= s=20 over the potentially oil-rich Lomonosov Ridge." (40) The Lomonosov Ridge is named after the 18th century Russian scientist=20 Mikhail Lomonosov, which should provide some indication even to US and=20 Canadian government officials as to who first charted and claimed it. A few days ago Canadian Colonel Greg MacCallum, commander of 37 Brigade=20 Group, in claiming that "should an incident occur in the Arctic...soldier= s=20 would be available to respond," was quoted as saying: "Over the course of the next five years, this capability is going to buil= d=20 right across the country....You do that, at least in part, by being able = to=20 project military forces into that region to show a presence and to show a= =20 capability and intent to exercise ownership of it. "[W]ith Afghanistan deployments and the Arctic announcement, reservists a= re=20 being given chances to apply their talents....'That gives the local unit=20 that extra exciting reason to exist. Basically, before you were at the ba= se=20 training for a war in northwest Europe and kind of going through the=20 motions. But this is something useful, something you can reach out and=20 grasp.'" (41) A sentiment echoed by Canada's opposition party: "Liberals meeting in=20 Vancouver this month will debate a tough Arctic policy that calls on the=20 government to 'actively and aggressively' enforce Canada's sovereignty in= =20 the North, including expanding its military role." (42) .... In the months before the US-led invasion of Iraq in March of 2003 the cru= der=20 type of American war hawk and chauvinist reviled and condemned Canada for= =20 its perceived lack of loyalty. These critics were rank ingrates. The US - and NATO - have never had more= =20 blindly, stubbornly obedient allies than Canada's ruling and governing=20 elites. (1) Canadian Press, December 7, 2008 (2) Canadian Television, January 10, 2009 (3) Canwest News Service, March 5, 2009 (4) Canwest News Service, November 23, 2008 (5) Victoria News, January 30, 2009 (6) Victoria Lookout, February 2, 2009 (7) Victoria News, January 30, 2009 (8) Xinhua News Agency, March 11, 2009 (9) Canadian Press, April 6, 2009 (10) NATO International, December 12, 2008 (11) Chronicle Herald, July 21, 2007 (12) The Chronicle Herald, January 27, 2007 (13) Military Review, November-December, 2005 (14) Ibid (15) United States European Command, March 2, 2009 (16) Deutsche Presse-Agentur, February 5, 2009 (17) Ma'an News Agency (Palestine), Agencies, March 14, 2009 (18) Canwest News Service, March 1, 2008 (19) Liberal, August 18, 2008 (20) Chronicle Herald, September 22, 2008 (21) Canadian Television, August 24, 2008 (22) Reuters, October 6, 2008 (23) Georgia Ministry of Defence, November 3, 2008 (24) United States Air Forces in Europe, September 4, 2008 (25) EUobserver, February 9, 2009 (26) Canadian Press, November 1, 2006 (27) Canadian Press, August 19, 2007 (28) Financial Times, August 18, 2008 (29) Canwest News Service, August 19, 2008 (30) Reuters, August 28, 2008 (31) Canwest News Service, September 12, 2008 (32) RosBusinessConsulting, September 18, 2008 (33) Agence France-Presse, September 19, 2008 (34) Canwest News Service, December 15, 2008 (35) NATO International, January 29, 2009 (36) Ibid (37) Aviation Week, December 17, 2008 (38) Globe and Mail, March 27, 2009 (39) Department of National Defence, Canada Command, April 2, 2009 (40) Canwest News Service, April 5, 2009 (41) Daily Gleaner, April 11, 2009 (42) Edmonton Sun, April 13, 2009 =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato To subscribe, send an e-mail to: Rick Rozoff at rwrozoff at yahoo.com or stopnato-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Daily digest option available. 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Groups Join the challenge and lose weight.. __,_._,___=20 From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Sat Apr 18 05:58:15 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 20:58:15 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Cross Your Fingers and Carry On Message-ID: <49E9C057.1050607@ashisuto.co.jp> Why does the government refuse to make contingency plans for peak oil? by George Monbiot The Guardian (April 14 2009) Here's how the British government describes the risk of a smallpox outbreak. "We are currently at alert level 0. Smallpox remains eradicated. No credible threat of a smallpox release." {1} So, in response to this non-existent threat, it has published 122 pages of central plans{2, 3}. Each of the nine English regions maintains a Smallpox Diagnosis and Response Group, which in turn supports five Smallpox Management and Response Teams, one of which is on duty at all times. There are smallpox centres all over the country, and lists of doctors, nurses and support staff prepared to run them, laboratories ready to multiply vaccines and planning committees involving scores of different agencies. The plans, in other words, must have cost millions. They use thousands of hours of specialist time every year. But step forward the man or woman who believes the government should abandon them. The chances that this extinct disease might break out here are extremely remote - one in a million perhaps - but they cannot be dismissed while the US and Russia disgracefully refuse to destroy their stockpiles. Stealing, weaponising and distributing the virus would require capabilities beyond those of any known terrorist group. The government's plans are almost certainly a waste of time and money. But they are a waste of time and money that makes sense. This is what government is for: to prepare for the worst, however unlikely it may be. The UK, like all rich nations, maintains an elaborate network of agencies to defend us from unlikely events: the Ministerial Committee on Protective Security and Resilience, the Civil Contingencies Secretariat, the Domestic Horizon Scanning Committee, the National Risk Register, the Capabilities Programme Board, the National Recovery Working Group, the Regional Resilience and Emergency Response Division, the Centre for Emergency Preparedness and Response and endless departmental and regional bodies. But this great state safety net is full of holes. The government has a strangely unbalanced approach to risk, over-emphasising some contingencies - terrorism, anarchy, attacks by rogue states - while underplaying, even promoting, others. It was Gordon Brown, for example, who told the bankers of the City of London in his Mansion House speech of 2004 that "in budget after budget I want us to do even more to encourage the risk takers" {4}. There is one respect in which the government's approach seems utterly bonkers: a threat with a high likelihood of occurrence, for which it refuses to make any plans at all. I've been banging on about this for a while, with my usual absence of results. But now I've received a letter which makes its dismissive response look like outright lunacy. There is nothing certain about the hypothesis that global supplies of conventional petroleum might soon stop growing and then go into decline. There is a large body of expert opinion, marshalling impressive statistics, which is convinced that peak oil is imminent. There is also a large body of expert opinion, marshalling impressive statistics, which insists that it's a long way off. I don't know whom to believe. The key data - the true extent of reserves in the OPEC nations - are state secrets. Anyone who tells you that oil supplies will definitely peak by a certain date or definitely won't peak ever is a fraud: the information required to make these assessments does not exist. In February 2008 I sent a freedom of information request to the Department for Business, asking what contingency plans the government has made for the eventuality that global supplies of crude oil might peak between now and 2020. The answer I received astonished me. "The Government does not feel the need to hold contingency plans specifically for the eventuality of crude oil supplies peaking between now and 2020".{5} As it revealed in a parliamentary answer, the government relies primarily on the International Energy Agency for its assessment {6}. When I made my first request, its cavalier attitude chimed with the IEA's. But at the end of last year the agency suddenly changed tack. Its World Energy Outlook report upgraded the annual rate of decline in output from the world's existing oilfields from 3.7% to 6.7% {7}. Previously it had relied on guesswork. This time it had conducted the world's first comprehensive study of decline rates, covering the 800 largest fields. The report also contained a word the agency had hitherto avoided: peak. It proposed that "although global oil production in total is not expected to peak before 2030, production of conventional oil ? is projected to level off towards the end of the projection period". {8} When I interviewed the IEA's chief economist for the Guardian, he tightened this up: "in terms of non-OPEC, we are expecting that in three, four years' time the production of conventional oil will come to a plateau, and start to decline ? In terms of the global picture, assuming that OPEC will invest in a timely manner, global conventional oil can still continue, but we still expect that it will come around 2020 to a plateau as well ? I think time is not on our side here".{9} He told me that we would need a "global energy revolution" to avert this prospect. Nothing of the kind is happening. So I sent the British government a new request: in the light of what the IEA has revealed, what contingency plans has the government made? The response has now arrived. "With sufficient investment, the Government does not believe that global oil production will peak between now and 2020 and consequently we do not have any contingency plans specific to a peak in oil production". {10} I just don't get it. Let's assume that there is only a ten per cent chance that the International Energy Agency and everybody else predicting that global oil supplies will soon peak or plateau are right. That still makes peak oil about 100,000 times more likely than a smallpox outbreak in the United Kingdom. As the report by Robert L Hirsch, commissioned by the US Department of Energy, shows, the consequences of peak oil taking governments by surprise are at least as devastating as a smallpox epidemic. "Without timely mitigation, the economic, social and political costs will be unprecedented". {11} Hirsch estimated that to avoid global economic collapse, we would need to begin "a mitigation crash program twenty years before peaking". If he's right and the IEA's right, we're already ten years too late. But my conversations with government officials suggest to me that they wear the absence of plans almost as a badge of honour, like the Viking beserkers who went into battle without armour to show how mad they were. The only explanation I can suggest is that the concept of insufficient oil cannot be accommodated within the government's worldview. Its response to a smallpox epidemic accords with its messianic tendencies: government as superman, defending us from nutters carrying vampire pathogens. The idea that we might be undone by an issue as mundane and unresponsive as resource depletion just doesn't fit. But at least we know where we stand: we'll have to make our own contingency plans. Does anyone have a spare AK47? www.monbiot.com References: 1. http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Publications/PublicationsPolicyAndGuidance/DH_4070830 2. Department of Health, 15th December 2003. Guidelines for smallpox response and management in the post-eradication era, Version 2. Downloadable at http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Publications/PublicationsPolicyAndGuidance/DH_4070830 3. Department of Health, 15th December 2003. Appendices. Downloadable at http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Publications/PublicationsPolicyAndGuidance/DH_4070830 4. Gordon Brown, 16th June 2004. Speech to Mansion House. http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/speech_chex_160604.htm 5. BERR, 8th April 2008. Response to FoI request, Ref 08/0091. 6. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmhansrd/cm080402/text/80402w0045.htm 7. International Energy Agency, 2008. World Energy Outlook 2008, page 43. IEA, Paris. 8. ibid, page 103. 9. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/video/2008/dec/15/fatih-birol-george-monbiot 10. DECC, 23rd March 2009. Response to Freedom of Information request, Ref 09/0277. 11. Robert L. Hirsch, Roger Bezdek and Robert Wendling, February 2005. Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, & Risk Management. US Department of Energy, page 4. http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/others/pdf/Oil_Peaking_NETL.pdf Copyright (c) 2006 Monbiot.com http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/04/14/cross-your-fingers-and-carry-on/ http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From glparramatta at greenleft.org.au Sat Apr 18 00:50:46 2009 From: glparramatta at greenleft.org.au (glparramatta) Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 16:50:46 +1000 Subject: [A-List] Left activists discuss solutions at World at a Crossroads international socialism conference | Links Message-ID: <49E97846.8020800@greenleft.org.au> By *Simon Butler* Sydney -- April 18, 2009 -- Several participants at the World at a Crossroads conference, held in Sydney on April 10-12, remarked that the conference could not have been better named. As the world economy lurches into a deep recession, and the looming climate emergency reaches a crisis point, the world truly is at a crossroads. The future will be decided in the conflict between the greedy capitalist elites and those around the world fighting for a far better world ? a world free of racism, war and environmental plunder. From six continents, 440 socialists, progressive activists and Marxist thinkers gathered to discuss, debate and learn from various struggles for human freedom, dignity and justice. More than 70 activists addressed 42 workshops during the conference. The conference was about creating real solutions to the urgent problems of climate change, economic meltdown and imperialist war. Mere reform of the existing capitalist system will not reverse grinding poverty or halt unpredictable climate change. The path to human liberation requires a radical democracy based on people?s needs instead of corporate profit. The goal must be to fight for a socialism of the 21st century, in Australia and around the world. Full article and slideshow at http://links.org.au/node/999 Subscribe free to Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373 You can also follow Links on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LinksSocialism From noreply at coha.org Fri Apr 17 11:24:00 2009 From: noreply at coha.org (Council on Hemispheric Affairs) Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 13:24:00 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Forthcoming From COHA; Panama's Upcoming Elections Message-ID: <20090417172326.7089B3E4180@mx-out2.daemonmail.net> A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 5696 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090417/e5e0d166/attachment.txt From nscchicago at igc.org Fri Apr 17 20:30:53 2009 From: nscchicago at igc.org (NSC WORKERS COOP) Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 21:30:53 -0500 Subject: [A-List] HAITI PUERTO RICO MOHAWK NATION Message-ID: Tom Baker here with a good load. HAITI. The imperialist powers cannot let a liberated people be free. Canada, US France with "UN" occupying forces are denying these poorest of people any voice. PUERTO RICO. A representative of the people a delegate to the Trinidad Tobago Summit of the Americas, Alberto de Jesus but known as Tito Kayak, was Police State turned back, denied his credentialed access to the Summit. Cops came on to the airliner. MOHAWK NATION. Listen to how First Nation People make the Imperialist Language dance. Throw the fire right back. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 1601 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090417/e9eb8bd8/attachment.txt -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... 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From: "Mohawk Nation News" Subject: [21stcenturysocialism] MNN Obama said "Lines of tribe shall soon dissolve" Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 08:29:21 -0400 Size: 13133 Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090417/e9eb8bd8/attachment-0005.eml From the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com Sat Apr 18 13:09:09 2009 From: the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com (Leighm) Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 12:09:09 -0700 Subject: [A-List] The Ecosphere WILL kill us, while we, as "civilized" peoples, point fingers Message-ID: <49EA2555.7090001@gmail.com> Key role of forests 'may be lost' By Mark Kinver Science and environment reporter, BBC News Forests' role as massive carbon sinks is "at risk of being lost entirely", top forestry scientists have warned. The International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) says forests are under increasing degrees of stress as a result of climate change. Forests could release vast amounts of carbon if temperatures rise 2.5C (4.5F) above pre-industrial levels, it adds. In full: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8004517.stm OUR CARS & the energy sources that power the industrialized nations so-called 'life' styles are a major part our collective death wish for ourselves and others: EPA 'proposed finding': 'Greenhouse gases' endanger public health/welfare. Cars/ Most powerplants=Health Hazard http://tinyurl.com/djh5pu (Jurist: EPA announces proposed findings for regulation of greenhouse gases ) Meanwhile, we, as "civilized" peoples, point fingers elsewhere... "Third-World Stove Soot Is Target in Climate Fight" Because it "...would be a relatively cheap way to significantly rein in global warming ? especially in the short term,...", and that's how the industrialized nations of the world plans for our collective 'future'... "...in the short term...". It sells appliances too! "Replacing primitive cooking stoves with modern versions..." (Which is a good thing for Whirlpool and Maytag's bottom lines... now that 1 in 9 US homes are unoccupied and the number of homeless in the US rises dramatically.) "...that emit far less soot could provide a much-needed stopgap (colloquially known as YOU go first), while nations struggle with the more difficult task of enacting programs and developing technologies to curb carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels." (Without increasing the retail price of our Plasma TeeVees and iPods or causing our petroleum based agriculture complex to crash/burn) Meanwhile, in that Indian village destined to receive those Amana Radar Ranges or Coleman propane stoves, depending on which Western company needs the C.A.R.E. tax write-off: "There are no cars ? the village chief?s ancient white Jeep sits highly polished but unused in front of his house, a museum piece. There is no running water and only intermittent electricity, which powers a few light bulbs. The 1,500 residents here grow wheat, mustard and potatoes and work as day laborers in Agra, home of the Taj Majal, about two hours away by bus. They earn about $2 a day and, for the most part, have not heard about climate change." http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/science/earth/16degrees.html?ref=world From the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com Sat Apr 18 13:32:39 2009 From: the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com (Leighm) Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 12:32:39 -0700 Subject: [A-List] Al Qaeda In Latin America? NOT! But The Mercenaries DO Come Home To Roost Message-ID: <49EA2AD7.5050400@gmail.com> Interesting sidebar: The two (foreign) men arrested were named as Mario Francisco Tasik Astorga, 58, another veteran of the Croatian war, and Elot Toazo, a Hungarian computer expert." (???) They were ostensibly trying to assassinate Evo Morales AND the opposition leader (although that may be disinformation to dissuade people from believing it was a coup plot) Bolivia gang 'fought in Balkans' Two members of a mercenary gang said to have plotted to kill Bolivian President Evo Morales were veterans of the Balkan wars of the 1990s, reports say. Three died and two were arrested in the eastern city of Santa Cruz after police fought a gunbattle with the group. Bolivian police officials said two of the five fought for Croatian independence. The three others are said to be Irish, Romanian and Hungarian. They were said to be planning attacks on government and opposition figures. Chief among the suspected targets was Bolivian President Evo Morales, but Vice-President Alvaro Garcia Linera and Santa Cruz Governor Ruben Costas, a bitter opponent of Mr Morales, were also targeted, police said. There has been no immediate explanation of why the alleged plotters would target government and opposition targets alike. Mr Costas has questioned the government's information, accusing it of "mounting a show" aimed at discrediting the opposition. 'Paramilitary links' Revealing details of the alleged mercenary gang, police chief Victor Hugo Escobar said prosecutors were now seeking "clear and concrete information". The group, suspected by authorities of being behind a dynamite attack on the home of a Catholic cardinal earlier in the week, was tracked down on Thursday to a hotel in Santa Cruz, some 900km (620 miles) east of the capital, La Paz. The resulting shootout killed Magyarosi Arpak, a Romanian, and Irishman Michael Martin Dwyer, officials say. The police chief named Eduardo Rosa Flores, 49, a Bolivian-Hungarian man also killed in the gunbattle, as the ringleader of the group. He fought in the war for Croatian independence in the 1990s where he commanded a paramilitary organisation, reports said. The two men arrested were named as Mario Francisco Tasik Astorga, 58, another veteran of the Croatian war, and Elot Toazo, a Hungarian computer expert. Multiple targets Mr Morales revealed the existence of the alleged plot as he travelled to Venezuela and Trinidad for regional summits. He said intelligence reports had warned of an assassination plot by a group comprising foreign attackers intending to "riddle us with bullets". Early reports from Bolivia's leftist government suggested the plotters were linked in some way to opposition movements in the country's lowlands supported by Mr Costas. But news that Mr Costas was himself thought to be a target brought a clarification from government officials. "The terrorist group has a strategy... not only against the president or vice-president, but other authorities as well," Deputy Interior Minister Marcos Farfan told Bolivian radio. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8005592.stm From tal1 at cogeco.ca Sat Apr 18 16:08:59 2009 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 18:08:59 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Pentagon 'Foresees' Disintegration Of Pakistan Message-ID: <073504F6B5334E85B880575E77827A06@TonyPC> ----- Original Message ----- From: Rick Rozoff To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Sent: Saturday, April 18, 2009 11:25 AM Subject: [stopnato] Pentagon 'Foresees' Disintegration Of Pakistan http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2009\04\18\story_18-4-2009_pg1_12 Daily Times April 18, 2009 US experts see Pakistan disintegrating * Claim Pakistan?s fragmentation will threaten nuclear arsenal, Afghanistan, India, Persian Gulf, Central Asia and US * Say views are realistic expectation based on militants? gains -?The place is beyond redemption,? said a Pentagon adviser. LAHORE - A growing number of US officials and experts now believe that it may be impossible to prevent Pakistan from disintegrating. The Americans fear that warlords and terrorists will eventually control a large part of the territory, posing a greater threat to the US than Afghanistan did before 9/11, a report in the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer claimed. ?It?s a disaster in the making on the scale of the Iranian revolution,? said an intelligence official on condition of anonymity. Major threat Pakistan?s fragmentation would threaten the security of its nuclear arsenal, Afghanistan, India, the oil-rich Persian Gulf, Central Asia, the US and its allies. ?Pakistan has 173 million people, 100 nuclear weapons, an army bigger than the American army, and the headquarters of Al Qaeda sitting in ... [the area] the government does not control,? said David Kilcullen, a counterinsurgency consultant to the Obama administration. ?Pakistan isn?t Afghanistan, a backward, isolated, landlocked place that outsiders get interested in about once a century,? agreed the US intelligence official. ?It?s a developed state ... (with) a major Indian Ocean port and ties to the outside world, especially the (Persian) Gulf, that Afghanistan and the Taliban never had.? Realistic expectation The experts said these views are not a worst-case scenario but a realistic expectation based on the militants? gains and the Pakistani leadership?s response to it. ?The place is beyond redemption,? said a Pentagon adviser. ?If you look out 10 years, I think the government will be overrun by Islamic militants.? That pessimistic view of Pakistan?s future has been bolstered by the Malakand deal with the Taliban and a growing militant infiltration of Karachi ? in part to evade US drone strikes in the Tribal Areas.. The Taliban ?have now become a self-sustaining force?, Ahmed Rashid told a conference in Washington on Wednesday. ?They have an agenda for Pakistan, and that agenda is no less than to topple the government of Pakistan and ?Talibanising? the entire country,? he added. ?The Punjabi elite has already lost control of Pakistan, but neither they nor the Obama administration realise that,? a US intelligence official said. Several US officials say that the Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy of President Barack Obama is being overtaken by the expanding insurgency in Pakistan.... =========================== Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato To subscribe, send an e-mail to: Rick Rozoff at rwrozoff at yahoo.com or stopnato-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Daily digest option available. Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages ============================== __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Database | Polls 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 Give Back Yahoo! for Good Get inspired by a good cause. Y! Toolbar Get it Free! easy 1-click access to your groups. Yahoo! Groups Start a group in 3 easy steps. Connect with others.. __,_._,___ From tal1 at cogeco.ca Sat Apr 18 16:11:13 2009 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 18:11:13 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Ukraine: Anti-'Orange' Candidate's Rating Double That Of Others Message-ID: <1C561CF144EE48E3BD1EB3CE5734689F@TonyPC> ----- Original Message ----- From: Rick Rozoff To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Sent: Saturday, April 18, 2009 10:54 AM Subject: [stopnato] Ukraine: Anti-'Orange' Candidate's Rating Double That Of Others http://en.rian.ru/world/20090418/121195530.html Russian Information Agency Novosti Aril 18, 2009 Yanukovych's rating almost twice as high as rivals' - poll KIEV - The leader of Ukraine's pro-Russian opposition Party of Regions is the most popular potential presidential candidate, according to a poll conducted by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology whose results are published in the Zerkalo Nedeli weekly on Saturday. Ukraine will elect its president on October 25. Viktor Yanukovych leads the ratings with 25.6%, which is almost twice as high as Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko (14.4%) and ex-speaker Arseniy Yatsenyuk (13.6%). Tymoshenko's rating is falling and Yatsenyuk's rating is rising. Other potential runners for president are far behind, with figures below 3%. On April 1, Ukraine's parliament voted overwhelmingly in favor of presidential elections to be held on October 25, three months ahead of the date President Viktor Yushchenko had pushed for. Yushchenko's popularity ratings have fallen to single figures amid political instability and a shrinking economy. The current president's former "Orange Revolution" ally, Tymoshenko, now an arch-rival, is likely to run against him at the election. The poll was conducted March 26-April 17 in all Ukrainian regions. A total of 1,984 people were polled. =========================== Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato To subscribe, send an e-mail to: Rick Rozoff at rwrozoff at yahoo.com or stopnato-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Daily digest option available. Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages ============================== __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Database | Polls 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 Give Back Yahoo! for Good Get inspired by a good cause. Y! Toolbar Get it Free! easy 1-click access to your groups. Yahoo! Groups Start a group in 3 easy steps. Connect with others.. __,_._,___ From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Sat Apr 18 20:12:22 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 11:12:22 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Minsky's moment Message-ID: <49EA8886.3090806@ashisuto.co.jp> A new appraisal of an economist's theories challenges the blind faith in free markets by Buttonwood Economist.com (April 02 2009) STABLE economies sow the seeds of their own destruction. That sounds like Karl Marx but it is the basic insight of Hyman Minsky, an economist of the mid-20th century whose reputation is being revived. Minsky argued that the financial system played a big role in exaggerating the economic cycle, one that was understated by conventional theory. Investors, banks, companies and consumers all tend to be guilty of the sin of extrapolation; they assume the future will be like the recent past. After several years of steadily growing output and low inflation, people develop a misguided confidence that such benign conditions will continue. They are thus happy to borrow, and lend, more. As they do, the riskiness of the system steadily increases. Minsky divided the process into three phases. In the first, investors take on little enough debt that they have no trouble meeting their capital and interest payments. In the second, they stretch their finances so they can only afford the interest. In the third, or Ponzi, phase they take on debt levels that require rising prices to be safely financed; the homebuyers who took on 125% mortgages at the peak of the property boom were a classic example. When markets reach this fantasy land, a small change in the fundamentals or in investor attitudes can be enough to cause the system to unravel. Once prices start to drop, borrowers start to default on their loans, or seek to sell their assets, causing prices to fall further. The cost of capitalism, to use the title of a new book {1} that draws heavily on Minsky's work, is first, that financial bubbles are created and second, that governments are forced to rescue the sector when those bubbles pop. Those who believe blindly in free markets are thus mistaken, in the view of Bob Barbera, a Wall Street economist and the book's author. Government action is inevitable. In conventional industries, the demise of companies leads to "creative destruction" with capital being reallocated to more productive areas. But in banking and finance, a crisis leads to "deflationary destruction" as capital is eliminated. Businesses, investors and consumers lose confidence; borrowers are unable to repay their lenders, who suffer as well. But by stepping in to rescue markets when they wobble, central bankers create asymmetric risk. Hence Mr Barbera rejects the idea, popular in the era of Alan Greenspan, that central banks should do nothing to burst asset bubbles. Instead, he suggests that central banks should build the level of corporate-bond spreads into their models. When spreads are low, risk appetites are high, as they were in 2005-06. That should lead central banks to tighten monetary policy. When spreads are high, they should ease. Whether that would have stopped the housing bubble is open to question. The Federal Reserve did indeed raise rates in 2005-06, albeit in a steady and unthreatening manner. Nevertheless, the current crisis suggests that monetary and fiscal policy cannot be driven exclusively by economic fundamentals such as inflation and unemployment. When interest rates are low, consumers and businesses do not just borrow money; they borrow money to buy assets, setting up a feedback loop that can eventually lead to a bubble. When such a bubble is inflating, government revenues (in the form of taxes on capital gains, bonuses, corporate profits and property sales) tend to be strong. As governments are now discovering, such revenues collapse very quickly when the bubble bursts. But it is easy to get carried away during a boom; the strength of financial markets tends to be seen as a signal that the economy is soundly based. Those who work in the financial system are assumed to be the best and the brightest. Even the government seems to be in their thrall. In a recent article, Simon Johnson, a former chief economist of the IMF, points out the parallels between emerging markets, where governments are dominated by the economic elite, and America, where officials glide easily between Wall Street and the Treasury. What is good for Goldman Sachs might turn out to be good for America, but it might be best if the government could make an independent judgment. If we accept Minsky's idea that financial markets are not always right, then we might be willing occasionally to act against Wall Street's interests, however loudly bankers would complain. Note {1} The Cost of Capitalism: Understanding Market Mayhem and Stabilising Our Economic Future, by Robert Barbera. Published by McGraw-Hill. Buttonwood now writes a blog, which is open for comment at Economist.com/blogs/buttonwood Copyright (c) 2009 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved. http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13415233 _____ G20: Bin Laden's lament If I were Osama bin Laden, I'd be thinking 'If only I'd known that capitalism would fall down of its own accord!' by William Leith guardian.co.uk (April 03 2009) As the world casts its eyes to London, where people have gathered to talk about the collapse of capitalism, it struck me that Osama bin Laden must be watching, wherever he is. At first, I imagined him sitting there, feeling rather smug. But the more I thought about it, the more I realised that this probably isn't how he feels at all. In fact, if I were bin Laden, I'd be gutted. If I were bin Laden, I'd be thinking: damn! I've blown it. I'd be thinking that I did exactly the wrong thing. My thoughts would be: I wanted to smash capitalism, so I became a man of violence. I gambled, and I lost. If only I'd known that capitalism would fall down of its own accord! If only I'd actually believed that capitalism was flawed, I could have invested my time as the leader of a prospective Islamic caliphate much more wisely. As it is, I'm the most unpopular person in the world. And for what? The more you think about it, the worse it gets for bin Laden. He, above all people, was supposed to understand that capitalism didn't work. But what he did - hurling death and destruction at it - was, in reality, actually a sort of endorsement of capitalism. Bin Laden was showing the world how powerful he believed capitalism to be. He threw everything away, every scrap of credibility that he might be a decent human being, in an effort to land a blow on his enemy. And it turned out that the enemy's only real threat was itself. Capitalism, as it turns out, has made suckers of us all; bin Laden must feel like the biggest sucker of all. All those years of dreary, not to say nasty, work! All that careful planning, arranging for pilots to be trained, the secret bank accounts, the bribed officials, the dodgy passports, the scanning of bus and train timetables, the endless talk of X-ray technology, all those hours spent with people coming to him with an idea for a shoe bomb, or a toothpaste bomb, or a deodorant bomb. Well, he'll be thinking, I needn't have bothered. He must be seething. He'll be thinking: I could have been Gandhi! I could have chosen the route of non-violent protest - and then, when capitalism fell, I would have been home free. I could have said, "Yes, I told you so, it was always flawed. It was just a matter of time." He'll be thinking: "I could have said, 'You only need to study the Austrian business cycle, as discussed in the works of economists such as Ludwig von Mises, to see that capitalism is flawed. Once lending gets out of hand, bad investments must follow, asset prices must fall, and the whole system will crash. In fact, it's all there in the work of the economist Hyman P Minsky. You can get it on the internet. Just a couple of clicks - that's all it takes. Capitalism is always about boom and bust, and the bigger the boom, the bigger the bust.'" He'll be thinking: "Damn!" He'll be thinking: "I so blew it". He'll be thinking: "I could have been Gandhi. Could have been admired and respected, instead of universally loathed. Could have been a beacon for peaceful protest. Could have been picking up the phone, right now. Could have been saying: 'Sir Ben Kingsley? Yes - I'd be honoured'." guardian.co.uk (c) Guardian News and Media Limited 2009 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/02/g20-osama-bin-laden http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From critical.montages at gmail.com Sun Apr 19 07:03:52 2009 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 09:03:52 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Secure Enough to Sin, Baghdad Is Back to Old Ways Message-ID: The New York Times is proud that the USG has restored prostitution as well as gambling and consumption of drugs and alcohol in Baghdad to a Saddam-era level of prosperity. It's so proud of it that it put it on the front page (burying an objection raised by an Iraqi human rights group in page six)! -- Yoshie April 19, 2009 Secure Enough to Sin, Baghdad Is Back to Old Ways By ROD NORDLAND BAGHDAD ? Vice is making a comeback in this city once famous for 1,001 varieties of it. Gone, for the most part, are nighttime curfews, religious extremists and prowling kidnappers. So, inevitably, some people are turning to illicit pleasures, or at least slightly dubious ones. Nightclubs have reopened, and in many of them, prostitutes troll for clients. Liquor stores, once shut down by fundamentalist militiamen, have proliferated; on one block of busy Saddoun Street, there are more than 10 of them. Abu Nawas Park, previously deserted for fear of suicide bombers seeking vulnerable crowds, has now become a place for assignations between young people so inclined. It is not that there are hiding places in the park, where trees are pretty sparse; the couples just pretend they cannot be seen, and passers-by go along with the pretense. It is a long way from Sodom and Gomorrah, but perhaps part way back to the old Baghdad. The Baathists who ruled here from the 1960s until the American invasion in 2003 were secular, and more than a little sinful. Baghdad under Saddam Hussein was a pretty lively place, with street cafes open until 2 or 3 a.m., and prostitutes plying their trade even in the bowling alley of Al Rashid Hotel. ?Everything is going back to its natural way,? said Ahmed Assadee, a screenwriter who works on a soap opera. Men gather in cafes to smoke a hookah and gamble on dice and domino games. On weekends, the Mustansiriya Coffee Shop?s back room is crammed with low bleachers set up around a clandestine cockfighting ring. On one recent day, the 100 or so spectators were raucous while watching the bloody spectacle, but they placed their bets discreetly. Gambling, after all, is illegal. Walid Brahim, 25, a bomb disposal expert with the Iraqi Army, and his brother Farat, 20, an electrician, recently sat side by side at a table in the Nights of Abu Musa bar, on an alley off Saddoun Street, working their way through a bucket of ice and a bottle of Mr. Chavez Whiskey, an Iraqi-made hooch. ?This is great,? Walid Brahim said. ?We used to buy alcohol and just drink secretly in our house.? The bar is men-only, as pretty much all respectable taverns are, but the brothers look forward to an even brighter future. ?If this security continues,? Farat Brahim said, ?within a year all the waiters will be girls.? The local police, weary of years of dodging assassins and cleaning up after car bombings, are blas? about a little vice. ?Today we are dealing with more normal things. All the world is facing such problems,? said Col. Abdel Jaber Qassim Sadir, assistant police chief in Karada, a central Baghdad neighborhood. ?Prostitution, this kind of behavior cannot be stopped,? Colonel Sadir said. ?It?s very hard to find it in public; it goes on in secret, isolated places.? Actually, not so secret. There are a half-dozen night spots in Karada now where the entry fee is $50. With $150 a week considered a good wage, customers would not pay that much merely for the privilege of drinking. At the Ahalan Wasahalan Club on Al Nidhal Street one recent night, the owner, Tiba Jamal, was holding court, as she usually does, on the dais at the front of a room with a mostly empty dance floor and lots of tables. Ms. Jamal calls herself the Sheikha, or a female sheik, an honorific title she has apparently adopted. She dresses in a head-to-toe, skin-tight black chador, and she is adorned with several pounds of solid gold bracelets, pendants, necklaces, earrings and rings, her response to the financial crisis. The female workers in the nightclub wore rather less clothing, but nothing that would be considered risqu? on a street in Europe ? in August. At one point in the evening they outnumbered the men, as they sat in a big group until being summoned to one of the men?s tables. ?It?s nice to see people having fun again,? Ms. Jamal said. One regular customer said, ?You can have any of those girls to spend the night with you later, only $100.? First, though, patrons are expected to spend a few hours buying $20 beers or even more costly whiskey. A young woman who said she was 28 but looked 18 sat smoking, and downing soft drinks while her ?date? drank Scotch. A university student, she would give her name only as Baida, but she was frank about her nighttime profession. Had something happened to force her into this? ?No,? she said. ?I go out with men so I can get money.? To support her family? She seemed stunned by the question. ?No, for myself.? One police detective said he would not dream of enforcing the law against prostitutes. ?They?re the best sources we have,? said the detective, whose name is being withheld for his safety. ?They know everything about JAM and Al Qaeda members,? he said, using the acronym for Jaish al-Mahdi or Mahdi Army, a Shiite militia. The detective added that the only problem his men had was that neighbors got the wrong idea when detectives visited the houses where prostitutes were known to live. They really do just want to talk, he said. ?If I had my way, I?d destroy all the mosques and spread the whores around a little more,? the detective said. ?At least they?re not sectarian.? Others are uncomfortable with the prostitutes? presence. ?It is terrible to see prostitution increased like this,? said Hanaa Edwar, secretary general of the Iraqi human rights group Al-Amal. ?These are women from displaced families, poor people, people who have to sell themselves to get money for their families and children.? She was incensed after she raised the subject before the Iraqi Parliament. ?They were shocked and didn?t agree to open discussion on this issue,? she said. The shock, she said, was that she dared to mention the problem. Al Amal commissioned a report last year that surveyed prostitutes working on the streets in Baghdad. One was a 15-year-old girl who had been thrown out of school for dressing inappropriately, then took to prostitution, the report said. Another was an 18-year-old forced to become the second wife of an older man; she ran away and had no other way to support herself. One girl was 12. Certainly, vice often has an ugly side. During a recent undercover operation in Karada aimed at a human trafficking ring, a pimp offered a plainclothes officer an opportunity to buy a young woman to take to Syria, according to a detective, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the sting. Drug abuse, at least, is one problem that has not shown up much, or has stayed well underground, the police say. ?The only problems we see are some illegal pills occasionally,? Colonel Sadir said. Not surprisingly, the Baghdadis? drug of choice is Valium, the colonel said. Most people have had enough excitement these past six years just staying home. Riyadh Mohammed, Suadad al-Salhy and Muhammed al-Obaidi contributed reporting. From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Sun Apr 19 07:57:38 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 22:57:38 +0900 Subject: [A-List] A brave man who stood alone Message-ID: <49EB2DD2.2030603@ashisuto.co.jp> If only the world had listened to him I wish I had met Tom Hurndall, a remarkable man of remarkable principle by Robert Fisk The Independent (March 28 2009) I don't know if I met Tom Hurndall. He was one of a bunch of "human shields" who turned up in Baghdad just before the Anglo-American invasion in 2003, the kind of folk we professional reporters make fun of. Tree huggers, that kind of thing. Now I wish I had met him because - looking back over the history of that terrible war - Hurndall's journals (soon to be published) show a remarkable man of remarkable principle. "I may not be a human shield", he wrote at 10.26 on 17 March from his Amman hotel. "And I may not adhere to the beliefs of those I have travelled with, but the way Britain and America plan to take Iraq is unnecessary and puts soldiers' lives above those of civilians. For that I hope that Bush and Blair stand trial for war crimes." Hurndall got it about right, didn't he? It wasn't so simple as war/no war, black and white, he wrote. "Things I've heard and seen over the last few weeks proves what I already knew; neither the Iraqi regime, nor the American or British, are clean. Maybe Saddam needs to go but ... the air war that's proposed is largely unnecessary and doesn't discriminate between civilians and armed soldiers. Tens of thousands will die, maybe hundreds of thousands, just to save thousands of American soldiers having to fight honestly, hand to hand. It is wrong." Oh, how many of my professional colleagues wrote like this on the eve of war? Not many. We pooh-poohed the Hurndalls and their friends as groupies even when they did briefly enter the South Baghdad electricity station and met one engineer, Attiah Bakir, who had been horrifyingly wounded eleven years earlier when an American bomb blew a fragment of metal into his brain. "You can see now where it struck", Hurndall wrote in an email from Baghdad, "caving in the central third of his forehead and removing the bone totally. Above the bridge of his broken nose, there is only a cavity with scarred skin covering the prominent gap ..." A picture of Attiah Bakir stares out of the book, a distinguished, brave man who refused to leave his place of work as the next war approached. He was silenced only when one of Hurndall's friends made the mistake of asking what he thought of Saddam's government. I cringed for the poor man. "Minders" were everywhere in those early days. Talking to any civilian was almost criminally foolish. Iraqis were forbidden from talking to foreigners. Hence all those bloody "minders" (many of whom, of course, ended up working for Baghdad journalists after Saddam's overthrow). Hurndall had a dispassionate eye. "Nowhere in the world have I ever seen so many stars as now in the western deserts of Iraq", he wrote on 22 February. "How can somewhere so beautiful be so wrought with terror and war as it is soon to be?" In answer to the questions asked of them by the BBC, ITV, WBO, CNN, al-Jazeera and others, Hurndall had no single reply. "I don't think there could be one, two or 100 responses", he wrote. "To each of us our own, but not one of us wants to die". Prophetic words for Tom to have written. You can see him smiling selflessly in several snapshots. He went to cover the refugee complex at Al-Rowaishid and moved inexorably towards Gaza where he was confronted by the massive tragedy of the Palestinians. "I woke up at about eight in my bed in Jerusalem and lay in until 9:30", he wrote. "We left at 10:00 ... Since then, I have been shot at, gassed, chased by soldiers, had sound grenades thrown within metres of me, been hit by falling debris ..." Hurndall was trying to save Palestinian homes and infrastructure but frequently came under Israeli fire and seemed to have lost his fear of death. "While approaching the area, they (the Israelis) continually fired one- to two-second bursts from what I could see was a Bradley fighting vehicle ... It was strange that as we approached and the guns were firing, it sent shivers down my spine, but nothing more than that. We walked down the middle of the street, wearing bright orange, and one of us shouted through a loudspeaker, 'We are International volunteers. Don't shoot!' That was followed by another volley of fire, though I can't be sure where from ..." Tom Hurndall had stayed in Rafah. He was only 21 where - in his mother's words - he lost his life through a single, selfless, human act. "Tom was shot in the head as he carried a single Palestinian child out of the range of an Israeli army sniper". Mrs Hurndall asked me to write a preface to Tom's book and this article is his preface, for a brave man who stood alone and showed more courage than most if us dreamed of. Forget tree huggers. Hurndall was one good man and true. [iCopyright] (c) 2009 Independent News and Media. Permission granted for up to five copies. All rights reserved. You may forward this article or get additional permissions by typing http://license.icopyright.net/3.7463?icx_id=opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fiskrsquos-world-a-brave-man-who-stood-alone-if-only-the-world-had-listened-to-him-1656067.html?service=PrintICopyright into any web browser. Independent News and Media Limited and The Independent logos are registered trademarks of Independent News and Media Limited . The iCopyright logo is a registered trademark of iCopyright, Inc. http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fiskrsquos-world-a-brave-man-who-stood-alone-if-only-the-world-had-listened-to-him-1656067.html http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From nscchicago at igc.org Sat Apr 18 22:09:14 2009 From: nscchicago at igc.org (NSC WORKERS COOP) Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 23:09:14 -0500 Subject: [A-List] SUMMIT OF WHOSE AMERICA Message-ID: Tom Baker here friends CUBA VIVE -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 542 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090418/e3897012/attachment.txt -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... 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From: laborexchange at aol.com Subject: =?utf-8?Q?Speech_by_Ra=C3=BAl_Castro_in_the_ALBA_Summit?= Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 17:11:39 -0400 Size: 14255 Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090418/e3897012/attachment-0006.eml -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: laborexchange at aol.com Subject: Moral Authority of Cuba Highlighted at Port of Spain Civil Forum Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 07:21:22 -0400 Size: 27802 Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090418/e3897012/attachment-0007.eml From nscchicago at igc.org Sat Apr 18 21:32:16 2009 From: nscchicago at igc.org (NSC WORKERS COOP) Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 22:32:16 -0500 Subject: [A-List] [AmeriConscience] US threatens to invade Eritrea for supporting Al-Shabaab References: <145E93C2DEE742D7A1232BFF9F795534@CharlesPC> Message-ID: Tom Baker here and lets do some thinking. US to invade Eritrea Militarism. Friends, this is how Imperialist Society operates This is Imperialist Society. I'd say it's frantic and hell bent. Morality will not itself conquer the conquerer, the State. It is hell bent. Targeting Obama won't get us there, either. The State would burn him first chance. What Obama means, I am seeing the System operate it's like, we gotcha. You is inside our tank. I've related the Obama family to Jean Bertrand Aristide, the time he spent in Washington, the first kidnap. We must be incorporating the Obama Phenomena into what it really means, and it is a People Thing. The Barak family puts a face on it. We the People is the energy, and it's our World, our Mama. Bashing Obama don't help, but talking with others will. This is not the same fight. ----- Original Message ----- From: Charles Mercieca Subject: [AmeriConscience] US threatens to invade Eritrea for supporting Al-Shabaab April 18, 2009 Dear Friends: The moment President Obama uses the military to "solve" the problem of "terrorism," he would take his first step towards his political downfall. So far President Obama has proven to be a statesman, one who talks interest in the universal welfare of all people without exception. This has generated confidence in him and respect from around the world. The military should never be an option for the solution of any world problem. When Pope John Paul II warned President Bush not to attack Iraq, he said: "Terrorism is solved by going to the source of it and finding out what motivated terrorism an then produce a remedy. The military would make things worse and would develop the region into a quagmire with tens of innocent people left homeless, maimed and dead." The Pope proved to be 100% prophetic and this would apply to Obama as well. The U.S. habit of waging wars does not benefit the American people. It only benefits those who are in the business of making money through the manufacture and sales of weapons and the waging of wars. In the long range wars do not amount to anything except of making things worse as was with the case of Vietnam and Iraq, among others. This is not just my own opinion but the firm belief of many who wrote on this topic. Charles ==================================================== ----- Original Message ----- From: Anisa Abd el Fattah Subject: [AmeriConscience] US threatens to invade Eritrea for supporting Al-Shabaab "President Obama Cannot Afford to Look Weak on Terrorism" by Jason Ditz, April 17, 2009 Email This | Print This | Share This The United States has reportedly threatened to invade Eritrea and subject it to ?the same fate as Taliban-controlled Afghanistan in the wake of the September 11 attacks? for providing support to the al-Shabaab resistance movement in Somalia, which the US has since attempted to link with al-Qaeda. The Daily Telegraph quotes one source as saying ?There are consequences for working with al-Shabaab when President Obama cannot afford to look weak on terrorism.? Situated along the Red Sea, the State of Eritrea is a nation of under 5 million people with a long history of foreign occupation. Bought by an Italian shipping company in 1869, the region remained under Italian rule until 1941, when Britain took control of them. British control was formalized under UN auspices in 1947, and the United Nations ceded the region to Ethiopia. What followed was a particularly bloodly 30-year long battle of secession between Ethiopia and an Eritrean rebel faction (the Eritrean Liberation Front), which ended in 1993 when Ethiopia finally gave in to demands for an independence referrendum, which passed with 99.79% of the votes in favor. Eritrea has remained on poor terms with Ethiopia since, fighting a border war which ended with the installation of a UN commission to establish the still tenuous border between the two. In 2006, Ethiopia invaded Somalia with American support, vowing to crush the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) movement and prop up the self-proclaimed Transitional National Government (TNG) of Somalia, which had recently been chased from a Kenya hotel for failing to pay their bills and was attempting to assert control over the stateless region. Eritrea backed the ICU, and later the al-Shabaab movement ostensibly to repay Somali support for their own independence bid. Though the TNG remained on the verge of collapse, Ethiopia declared ?mission accomplished? in December of 2008, withdrawing its troops and claiming it had foiled a ?plan orchestrated by Eritrea.? The Bush Administration attempted to have Eritrea declared a ?state-sponsor of terrorism? numerous times for backing forces in opposition to the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia. Eritrea publicly denounced ?foreign intervention? in Somalia and said the Ethiopian pullout had vindicated their position that military occupation would not stabilize the nation. Eritrean President Isaias Afewerki remains defiant, saying he will continue to oppose the Western-backed TNG?s attempt to assert control over the nation. ?There is no government, there is not even a naiton of Somalia existing,? the president insisted, calling for a peace conference in which all parties, including those branded by the US and Ethiopia as ?extremists? would have a voice. ?Peace is not guaranteed without a government agreed by all Somalis.? . __._,_.___ 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: 14155 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090418/1ddf0579/attachment.txt -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 4008 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090418/1ddf0579/attachment.jpeg From cb31450 at gmail.com Sun Apr 19 11:39:11 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 10:39:11 -0700 Subject: [A-List] Communist party surges as Japan's economy withers Message-ID: <5c2e4d230904191039m15943573wf7663e728f47c96a@mail.gmail.com> Communist party surges as Japan's economy withers By ERIC TALMADGE, AP TOKYO -Under a big red flag, the headquarters of the Communist Party of Japan are the center of the most vibrant grass-roots movement in the country. The party's ranks are swelling, it has 24,000 branch offices and more than a million people read its newspaper. Only one party ? the one that runs the country ? beats it at fundraising. As Japan's economy withers, communism is coming to life. Dormant in the boom years and marginalized even as Japan more recently clawed its way out of recession, the party's litany of capitalist evils is now resonating deeply with many Japanese ? especially the young ? who are feeling the pain of an economic downturn that some say has reached depression dimensions. While the Communist Party ? which is the fourth-largest party in parliament, but has only 16 of the total 722 seats ? is not likely to take over anytime soon, it is making itself felt. On college campuses, in particular, Karl Marx is popular again. "I have never voted before, but I intend to vote communist in the next elections," said Suguru Yagi, a Tokyo college student. Yagi, 22, said he had considered joining the party because he agrees with many of its policies and sees it as the defender of the working class. As a student about to graduate, he is concerned about the shrinking work force, and the difficulties he may find in getting a good job. Leading Japan's communist renaissance is Kazuo Shii, the round-faced party chief, who has become one of Japan's most recognizable politicians and something of a media star, grilling the country's conservative leaders from his perch in parliament and unfailingly appearing before the cameras with what boils down to: "I told you so." Financial meltdowns worldwide. Banks and manufacturers going belly up, or begging for bailouts. Unemployment and unrest on the rise. Capitalism, Shii concludes, is doomed. "It is inevitable," he said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. "When the persimmon is ripe, it will fall from the tree." Shii, and the party, believe that time is fast approaching. And, in Asia's most dedicated bastion of capitalism, more people are beginning to agree. According to the party, about 1,000 new members are joining its ranks every month ? a sharp contrast to the massive exodus that has plagued the ruling Liberal Democrats, who have dropped from about 5 million members in their heyday to about 1 million members now. The Japan Communist Party was founded as an illegal movement in 1922, but legalized after Japan's World War II defeat in 1945. It then struggled through polarizing splits with the Soviets and Communist Chinese in an effort to maintain its independence. It also has distanced itself from the radical left, which gained popularity in the 1960s and '70s, but has since died down. Shii attributed the renewed interest in the party to voter disillusionment with future prospects in an increasingly difficult job market. People who have lost their jobs or their pensions are turning to the party. There is increasing distrust of the centrist Liberal Democrats and their main rivals, the Democratic Party of Japan, who are also conservative and are, in fact, led by a former Liberal Democrat. The communist revival has also been spurred on by the pop media. Marx's Das Kapital is now available in cartoon form, and a surprise best-seller of the year has been a revival version of "Kanikosen," a 1929 novel about exploited workers on a crab boat. That novel, too, is out in manga form, and is being made into a movie. In Japan, the Communist Party has swelled to about 415,000 members at latest count and boasts a newspaper, Red Flag, with a readership of 1.6 million. It has also started a channel on YouTube featuring video of Shii addressing parliament and other tidbits for those who want to keep up with party goings-on. Shii said his party is willing to work within Japan's system ? he said it does not advocate immediate or violent revolution. "We want to fix social inequities within the framework of capitalism," Shii said. "It will take time for people to make adjustments and be ready. We aren't advocating a sudden change to communism." Political analysts are split on where the communists are headed. Tomoaki Iwai, a Nihon University political science professor, said the party's recent popularity could be a fad. "I don't see a bright future for the communist party, despite the current expansion," he said. "They are not going to gain decision-making status in Japanese politics." But Koichi Nakano, a political science professor at Sophia University in Tokyo, said the party serves as an important check-and-balance. "They are a perennial opposition party, but that is a significant role," he said. "Their ideological stance stands out in a political scene dominated by the conservatives, and it's good to have diversity. Despite their marginal presence in parliament, the communists' views are often considered commonsense among the public." Outside of parliament is where the Communist Party has been making its biggest strides. Though weak at the national level, the communists boast more elected officials than any other party because of their strong presence in local and prefectural assemblies, where they have more than 3,000 seats. Party members are free to devote as much, or little, of their time as they choose ? from simply voting communist when elections come around to helping run social activities and youth programs. Because of the devotion of its members, the party's campaign machine is formidable. And, while not expected to win big, the communists are looking at modest gains when the next parliamentary elections are held ? sometime before October ? because of the growing unpopularity of Prime Minister Taro Aso and his ruling Liberal Democratic Party, which is widely seen as being in disarray and unable to lead Japan out of its deepening economic recession. The Democrats are dogged by scandals of their own. But Shii complained that the focus of the media on the potential emergence of a two-party system has created an even darker shadow from which his party must emerge. Even so, with younger voters, the communists are doing well. "The communists offer hope," said Yagi, the college student. "I don't know if I would want them to take over power, but I think they should be big enough to influence what the ruling party can do." He said he stopped short of actually joining up because the name of the party put him off. "I like what the party is doing," he said. "But 'communism' still carries with it a stigma, like 'radical' or 'terrorist.' I don't want that kind of communism. I'm not a radical." Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. 2009-04-19 01:56:32 From cb31450 at gmail.com Sun Apr 19 11:42:20 2009 From: cb31450 at gmail.com (c b) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 10:42:20 -0700 Subject: [A-List] Alchemy ? Message-ID: <5c2e4d230904191042n31e34be0y6319efb6f6fc16d5@mail.gmail.com> http://www.transgreenenergy.com/ This is the process the occurs in the TGE PlasmaPower? Facility to produce GreenEnergy? Feedstocks (waste products of various types: tires, expired prescriptions, plastics, industrial waste, non-recycled municipal solid waste, agricultural waste, etc.) are fed into the system. About 1/3 of the total energy content of the feedstock is used to power the plasma arc vessel. The other 2/3 of the energy is available as power and fuel for useful applications. Plasma energy, at about 5,500 degree centigrade, in an oxygen starved environment, transforms the feedstocks into hydrogen-rich syngas and liquid melt that cools into solid products. These are GreenEnergy?, GreenGlass?, GreenSteel?. GreenEnergy? can be sold as a supplement to natural gas, electrical power or ultra-clean liquid fuels. GreenGlass? is a building material used as quality insulation and fire proofing. One of the many applications of GreenGlass? is "rock wool". To the right is rock wool pipe covering being applied to a steel pipe for a fire test resulting in a 2 hour fire-resistance rating/certification listing for a firestop system. GreenSteel? is like any other steel, with all the same qualities of steel, except this steel is recovered from waste and recycled for use instead of being discarded in a landfill. Impurities in the sygas are recovered or recycled. Some go back through the plasma arc vessel, while others such as sulfur are captured and sold to industry. You can see the great value of sulfur here in this article by Chris Mayer, editor, Capital & Crisis May 29, 2008: ?In short, demand is swamping supply. Sulfuric acid prices in March 2008 hit a record high of $329 per ton, according to Purchasingdata.com, after trading at $90 per ton as recently as October 2007. Synthesis gas fuel production in the GreenEnergy? syngas generator minimizes emissions and can be permitted as a minor emissions source. ?One technology which potentially can use various types of waste, produce electricity and hydrogen without emitting dioxin, furan and mercury, is plasma arc technology. Municipalities can install a plasma arc facility which will eliminate land filling?? - US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) From ioriwase at mail.mohawknationnews.com Sun Apr 19 16:17:07 2009 From: ioriwase at mail.mohawknationnews.com (Mohawk Nation News) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 18:17:07 -0400 Subject: [A-List] MNN Top Beasts Push Cybersecurity Message-ID: <021114aa$39922$0b5a7618856481@xnote> TOP BEASTS COME OUT OF LAIR TO PUSH CYBERSECURITY ACT 2009 ? Full Court Press time! MNN. Apr. 18, 2009. The Europeans and their U.S. cohorts want to set up a European style overly inbred ruling aristocracy on Great Turtle Island. This will never happen. It doesn?t fit into our natural mind set or that of the average person. What?s happening? When a basketball team wants to win a game, a full defense is put into play. The opposing team puts full pressure on every opposing player in man-to-man play. They intimidate, shadow, block and keep their opponent preoccupied so they can?t pass the ball. It is tiring and aggressive, meant to get control, confuse, to get the ball and then try to score. The colonists? think tanks have decided to use a full court press tactic to put pressure on the Kanion?ke:haka, Mohawk. They concluded in effect that, ?They?re in our way. They have laws and rights. They won?t give up anything. Let?s [illegally] legislate them out of existence, silence their spokespeople and tear down their economy. We can?t let them stir up the blood covenants between them which are sealed by burning tobacco. Let?s get rid of the tobacco. We can?t let their smoke signals permeate Great Turtle Island or the rest of the world?. The public sees these strange attacks on us. Like us, they want to live in a democracy where everyone is equal and has a voice. The corporatists try to reduce people and other living organisms to the deadness of the dollar. Genuine people do not want to live in a totalitarian system where corporatists try to take over the internet, our lives, our economy and our future. They get high thinking they have the right to decide whether we live or die. The process of genocide and enslavement is not going fast enough for these thugs. They are going after anyone they think is telling the truth to the world on the internet. Obama was handpicked by the corporatists known as the Atlantic Conglomerate. The corporate propaganda rags are falling like dominoes. Inventing unsubstantiated fear, Obama is trying to pass a cybersecurity bill to, ?protect our critical infra structure at all costs, from our water to our electricity, banks, traffic, electronic health records, the list goes on?. It?s a dictatorship to protect commerce and control people. The president declares the emergency. Privacy laws will be violated so they can get all our information without cause or warrants. The White House is appointing a Cyber Czar to put their fingers over our eyes to create ignorant masses. It will be run mostly by ?Fusion Centers? made up of military, FBI and CIA. Anybody who criticizes the government is called a right wing extremist. Our only source of information will be their corporate media. The YouTube has already been censored. Why the hurry? The Iraq veterans are returning, asking questions and need jobs. For the ?Order out of chaos? program, chaos is needed to bring in their ?order?. Bills 773 and 778 were introduced by Senator John D. Rockefeller IV. The Rockefellers made their first fortune through Standard Oil of New Jersey by stealing our natural resources. Then they set up the Chase Manhattan Bank. A conglomerate of all banks in the world was formed to create money out of thin air. In collusion with the European bankers, the private Federal Reserve System was set up to print money. With nothing to back it up, the debt system is collapsing on itself. Property values are falling to almost nothing. The money barons are buying up all the real estate. When the recession is over, they hope to become the great slum landlords. The great natural power made us Indigenous of Great Turtle Island of one blood and of the same soil. Only different tongues constitute different nations with different hunting grounds and territories. Each nation has its own Council Fires, which have never been quenched. We agreed to govern our affairs by the Great Peace. We Rotinoshonnionwe, Iroquois, have the duty to be ever on the alert to dangers in the eastern half of Great Turtle Island. We stood strong during the original onslaught of the Europeans that was promoted by their brutal feudal slave masters. We remain vigilant today as we climb to the top of the buildings and bridges built with help of our men. They look over the horizon for any dangers that are coming. We have the duty to call all our people together beneath the Tree of the Great Peace and say: ?A calamity threatens your happiness?. The people shall convene and discuss the impending evil. We must spread the Great Peace by using reason. Should any try to destroy the Great Peace, we will be forced to call them the enemies of the people and of the Great Peace. The Ahserakowa and his men shall warn them that they must live according to the Great Peace or leave. The Mohawks were the first to accept the Great Law. We helped the founder, Deganawida, gather the other nations together. The invaders had to stop the spread of the Great Law of Peace in order to take over Great Turtle Island. They were unsuccessful. We settled in strategic areas of our territory, throughout the north and south of the St. Lawrence and Great Lakes waterways and along the eastern seaboard. We were some of the first negotiators to face the invaders. We told them this territory is ours and cannot ever be given up. Many campaigns were launched to annihilate us. We continue to be the caretakers of Great Turtle Island. Haudenosaunee territory is one of the biggest power bases in the world. Wall Street is the world financial center, the Pentagon is the military center, West Point on the Hudson River trains war mongers and the UN is the international department of Indian Affairs. The UN is in a Rockefeller owned building and their bank handles their account. The ?liberal eastern establishment? and their designated world leaders go to ivy league universities like Harvard, Yale and Princeton. Their secret organizations like the ?skull and bones? pledge to rule the world. The Kanionkehaka, Mohawks, continue to be the ?keepers of the eastern door?. We are ?the people of the flint? because we have a flint-like resistance. We have the duty to go to the top of the Tree of Peace and yell out to the world that there is danger coming to the entire earth perpetrated by colonial institutions located on our territory. We built bridges and tall buildings as a barrier to those wanting to take over Great Turtle Island. The guns of the multi national banksters are aimed at us. They will never destroy us. They will never drive us from taking care of Great Turtle Island. This is the reason for our existence. Kahentinetha & Karakwine, MNN Mohawk Nation News www.mohawknationnews.com kahentinetha2 at yahoo.com katenies20 at yahoo.com Note: At this time your financial help is urgently needed and appreciated for the lawsuit against the Canadian government for assault of Indigenous women at the Cornwall border. Please send your donations to PayPal at www.mohawknationnews.com, or by check or money order to ?MNN Mohawk Nation News?, Box 991, Kahnawake [Quebec, Canada] J0L 1B0. Nia:wen thank you very much. Go to MNN ?General? category for more stories on this; New MNN Books Available now! Purchase t-shirts, mugs and more at our CafePressStore http://www.cafepress.com/mohawknews; Subscribe to MNN for breaking news updates http://.mohawknationnews.com/news/subscription.php; Sign Women Title Holders petition! http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/Iroquois Joan ?Wombster? Holmes and Associates research at joanholmes.ca Gayanerekowa, the Constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy, MNN; http://cdt.org/security/cypersec4.pdg, Senate bills 773 and 778. Senator John D. Rockefeller IV DWV. From critical.montages at gmail.com Sun Apr 19 20:00:34 2009 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 22:00:34 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Ahmadinejad Intervenes on Behalf of Roxana Saberi and Hossein Derakhshan Message-ID: Iran leader urges reporter rights Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said an Iranian-American journalist jailed for spying must have her legal right to defend herself. The request came in a letter from his office to Tehran's prosecutor, state media reported, a day after Roxana Saberi was jailed for eight years. Our Tehran correspondent says it is an unusual intervention by Mr Ahmadinejad. US President Barack Obama has expressed concern at the 31-year-old's sentencing after a secret one-day trial in Tehran. Mr Obama urged Tehran to free Ms Saberi, saying he was "deeply concerned" for her safety, and adding that the US would contact Iran about the case through Swiss intermediaries. "I have complete confidence that she was not engaging in any sort of espionage," he told reporters in Trinidad where he attended a regional summit. Roxana Saberi, who was arrested in January and went on trial this week, denies the charge and plans to go on hunger strike, her father Reza has said. Her lawyer has said he will lodge an appeal. Ms Saberi's mother Akiko expressed concern for her daughter's health, saying she was "very, very frail." She said it was hard to believe how a country could treat a human being like this. President's letter Mr Ahmadinejad said the rights of Ms Saberi and jailed Iranian-Canadian blogger Hossein Derakhshan, who has been behind bars since November, must not be violated in any way. "Please take the necessary measures to ensure that the process of examining the charges against the aforementioned individuals are being carried out carefully and fairness, justice and regulations are observed," he wrote in the letter to prosecutors. "Please, personally observe the process to ensure that the defendants are allowed all legal rights and freedom in defending themselves and that their rights are not violated even by one iota," reported Iranian official government news agency Irna. The verdict came despite calls by the Obama administration for Ms Saberi's release and diplomatic overtures to Iran after three decades of severed ties. Hardliners hijack? It raises suspicions over whether the case has been hijacked by hardliners within the Iranian government, eager to sabotage any reconciliation, the BBC's Jon Leyne reports from Tehran. He says it is not clear if the Iranian president is suggesting due legal process has not been followed, or if he is generally emphasising the importance of fairness in such sensitive cases. Senators from Ms Saberi's home state of North Dakota described the court ruling as a shocking miscarriage of justice that would damage Iran's international credibility. She has reported for a number of foreign news organisations including the BBC, NPR and Fox News. The journalist originally faced the less serious accusation of buying alcohol, and later of working as a journalist without a valid press card. Then, in a period of less than two weeks, the charge of spying was introduced, and she was tried by the Revolutionary Court and sentenced. A US-Iranian national, Ms Saberi has spent six years in Iran studying and writing a book. From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Sun Apr 19 20:43:15 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 11:43:15 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Overcrowding in Our Less and Less Natural Environment Message-ID: <49EBE143.7040700@ashisuto.co.jp> by Jan Lundberg Culture Change Letter #245 (March 27 2009) It is vital to intuitively grasp the conditions of our species in our increasingly artificial environment. As I've cultivated this approach to perception, I've come back around to overpopulation. Besides eye-popping charts with exponential growth with a curve like an L on its long side, my belief that we're overpopulated is based on decades analyzing society's dependence on petroleum. Culture Change has been publishing articles on overpopulation before and since 2001 when we changed our publication name from Auto-Free Times magazine, flagship of the Alliance for a Paving Moratorium. "Overpopulation via Petroleum Dependence" appeared in the Auto-Free Times #16, September 1999. Some of us have seen the population growth problem as one of overcrowding, as in "rats in a cage". This is not to dehumanize people or take a heartless, clinical approach, but rather to see what we can learn from biological principles that have implications for societies (animal and human, captive and free). In our Late Fall 2001 issue of Culture Change, John Omaha, PhD wrote, "Anthropologists and population biologists studied all the wars in history for which adequate data were available. They learned that war breaks out when the percentage of the population consisting of single males in the age range 16-26 exceeds a certain fraction of the total population ? whatever name is given is not correct; the correct name is overpopulation." He concluded with this unsurpassed analysis: "The terrorists are the vanguard of the real problem: the surplus billions of people on this spherical Petri dish. Only when the true problem is identified and addressed will we escape the inevitable fate of our species - a mass die off that will sometimes look like terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, at other times look like AIDS, and at other times like 'ethnic cleansing' in Serbia. "Control of our species' reproductive drive is the central survival issue our species must solve if Homo sapiens is to be a successful evolutionary experiment. Solving the issue will require the cooperation of all human beings. We are not doing very well." According to the Strategy Theory - that says a species tries to reproduce more when its existence is threatened - we have been already breeding like rabbits for over a century as a result of terroristic wars, the lock down of resources and resource-depletion by the owning elite, and more. Up against those threats, humans have bred more, although through petroleum they had the means to do it as never before. I don't know how things'll play out for us hapless humans, but the other theory of producing fewer kids when resources and times are tougher is also borne out by a recent AP article on record births for the US in 2007 before the economic downturn. Also, Dr Virginia Abernethy's Population Politics (1993) showed that populations increase births when economic outlooks look expansive and comfortable. Concern over population growth and overcrowding are suppressed and discussion is banned by corporate, government and fellow-citizen pressure, as we're all expected to enjoy being crowded in and buy the story of progress. It's time to tell it like it is, with heart and final rage perhaps, and encourage every honest person to join in. My latest unease over population and overcrowding came as I watched a poignant movie from Spain made in 2001, "Mondays In The Sun", about working class dilemmas in the globalizing economy. As I saw the tenement buildings and lived the story of unemployed, struggling workers, three thoughts come to my mind, born of compassion and revulsion. First, we're packed in like rats. Second, our material surroundings - the decay of what we've built that depends on more energy and technology - tells me that in nature is the only way for us to last or be happy. The natural world has come to be considered alien and difficult for those who "took the deal right off the shelf". My third thought is that the collapse that so many have glimpsed really happened quite a while ago: the collapse of the human spirit. The human spirit lives on, but it's safe to say that humanity collapsed some time back, what with the many disasters and tragedies that were allowed to be set into motion (and that continue, accelerating). What does overpopulation study say of this, and about overcrowding? I asked two academics and writers who have contributed to Culture Change, Peter Crabb and Virginia Abernethy. Virginia said, "One finds much more egalitarian societies where population density is low". Peter responded, "I agree that packing us in leads to all sorts of deviant, destructive, and anti-social behavior. It also tends to exaggerate hierarchical social structures because of huge competition to control scarce resources ? We can expect more authoritarian police state kinds of social control as density increases. We are seeing that right now with 'Homeland Security', et cetera. "Years ago a social psychologist named Stanley Milgram (the guy who did the notorious obedience studies at Yale in the 1960s) observed that as we are packed more tightly together in constructed environments like cities, we suffer from stimulus overload. Our brains do some kind of defensive shutdown that may be akin to what you call 'collapse of the spirit'. When I have occasion to visit Manhattan, where Milgram was teaching at the time, I see how disconnected everyone is from each other and presumably from the higher functioning parts of themselves. "About nature being 'the way': "I escaped the metro Philadelphia area ten years ago to intentionally heal myself by living in a low-density community surrounded by forests and streams with a view of a mountain ridge. It works. You are probably familiar with Roger Ulrich's work on biophilia and landscapes. Natural surroundings are healing and nourishing. Rectilinear hardscapes and technocrap like cell phone towers are jarring to our senses and physiologies." US policy = corporate agenda Obviously in US public policy there is no sense of urgency, or even the admission of the fact that overpopulation is something to deal with. Instead, growth is like the national religion. This is not some innocent byproduct of American exuberance left over from the pioneers, as we shall see below. The bias for growth is shared by many other pro-economic-growth governments. Sometimes this is for the same reason that religions are pro-growth - growth for their own believers, to outnumber their opposing religions (or ethnic neighbors). Governments, however, are not really supreme when the global market is maximized. (An exception is China perhaps, which still has the one-child policy.) With corporate dominance extending also to the news media and entertainment, we cannot expect the self-serving corporations to advocate anything that would tend toward fewer consumers. Corporations control the US Congress, so population is increased with maximum legal immigration. The purpose is two-fold, for maximizing the number of consumers and to hurt collective bargaining which raises wages. So we see labor unions and minorities such as the Blacks in worse shape today than they were economically decades ago. If legal immigration were cut way back, the illegal immigration that happens - thanks in large part to humanitarian crises often caused by US foreign policy and US corporate agendas (for example, Walmart) - would not be such an issue or strain on US society. Many who are concerned about US population growth or immigration would not agree with me, but perhaps we can all agree that the Congressional/Corporate agenda is not what the average US or Mexican citizen is necessarily benefiting from. We are therefore on our own. Some of us have learned that putting human life at the highest level of concern no longer means maximizing our numbers. In fact, we must reduce our size so that the other species have some room too. Putting the Earth first makes the most sense, for it is in humanity's interest as well. Government, religions, corporations, academia and mainstream culture do not admit these truths, and until collapse or a popular uprising removes them, these institutions are on balance a threat to our future and our immediate survival. The Depavers eco-rock band recorded a tune referring to overpopulation, "On Our Way", in 2001. Listen at culturechange.org/Songs/11_On_Our_Way.mp3 On our way through the smoke and the haze Many types here we're rats in a cage --- Mandolin: Ayr; Drums: Tofu; Written, sung and strummed: Jan Further reading: "Overpopulation & terrorism: rats in a cage" by John Omaha, Culture Change magazine issue #19, September 2001 http://culturechange.org/issue19/overpop_terrorism.htm Milgram, S (1970). The experience of living in cities. Science, 167, 1461-1468. Ulrich, R S (1993). Biophilia, biophobia, and natural landscapes. In S R Kellert and E O Wilson (Editors), The biophilia hypothesis (pages. 73-137). Washington, DC: Island Press. Population Politics: The Choices That Shape Our Future by Virginia D Abernethy (Insight Books, 1993) Activists are a threatened species, but there's safety in numbers. If you can't be active, please $upport your local Earth activist. http://culturechange.org/go.html?368 http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Mon Apr 20 03:35:56 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 18:35:56 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Some Advice for Distributists Message-ID: <49EC41FC.2000006@ashisuto.co.jp> by John Michael Greer The Archdruid Report (April 15 2009) Druid perspectives on nature, culture, and the future of industrial society One of the pitfalls that lies in the path of those who try to gauge the outlines of the future in advance, and swallows no small number of them, is the assumption that today's popular beliefs and assumptions are a good guide to tomorrow's. Sometimes, to be sure, this turns out to be the case, and some widespread opinion or other remains glued in place for decades or centuries - though this usually happens to opinions that most sensible people think will soon be abandoned. More often, though, there's no belief less popular at any given time than the most firmly held convictions of the recent past. A reminder of this landed in my inbox a few days back, in an article about a recent survey of American opinion. According to the article, only 53% of the people who responded to the survey agreed that capitalism was better than socialism; twenty percent thought that socialism was better, while 27% weren't sure which way to call it. The article caused a brief flutter in the dovecotes of the Left, and a somewhat larger one in the hawk-cotes of the Right, but I'm not at all sure that either side caught the wider implications of the shift this survey documented. Some history needs to be surveyed to make sense of those implications. Ever since the rubble stopped bouncing in 1945, what used to be called political economy - that is, the way that human societies organize and direct their economic activities - has been defined by a choice between two unpromising alternatives. Calling them simply "capitalism" and "socialism", popular as this habit is, misstates the matter, because they were much more specific than that. The first might better be called corporate capitalism, as it recycled older forms of capitalism in the service of the weird social fiction of the corporation, a "legal person" that has more rights and fewer responsibilities than the rest of us, and serves today's well-to-do in roughly the same role that the image of Oz the Great and Powerful did for the little man behind the curtain. The second might with equal justice be called bureaucratic socialism, as it translated the grand promises and stirring rhetoric of generations of radicals into dour totalitarian states that guaranteed every citizen an equal share of deprivation and repression. In retrospect, it might seem obvious that there are many other ways to run a free market economy than relying on an arrangement that Adam Smith himself considered the worst possible way to run a business. (I wonder how many of today's cheerleaders for corporatist capitalism have read Smith's scathing comments about joint-stock companies, the proto-corporations of his own time.) It might seem equally obvious that there are plenty of ways to manage an economy of collective ownership that do not require vast sclerotic bureaucracies governed by dogmatic ideologies. Nor are some form of free market or some form of collective ownership the only ways to manage a society's production and distribution of goods and services. The fact remains, though, that since 1945 nearly everyone in the industrial world, and most of the nonindustrial world as well, has behaved as though corporate capitalism, bureaucratic socialism, or some awkward hybrid such as social democracy composed of spare parts from both, were the only possible forms of political economy. This is problematic now, because both corporate capitalism and bureaucratic socialism have not only failed abjectly to make good on their promises, but have turned out to be catastrophically failure-prone into the bargain. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and its client states, the massed failures of bureaucratic socialism are hard to miss. Still, corporate capitalism has demonstrated not once but twice that its results are just as bad. From 1896 to 1929, and then again from 1980 to 2008, corporate capitalism was allowed to take the bit in its teeth and run, and in each case the result was an accelerating cycle of disastrous booms and busts and the emergence of a culture of corporate kleptocracy that, between them, ended up devastating the global economy. Meanwhile the faith that a rising tide would lift all boats turned out, in both cases, to be completely misplaced; the benefits that were supposed to trickle down trickled up instead, beggaring the working classes and driving much of the middle class into relative poverty while funneling most of society's wealth into the unproductive hands of speculators and financiers. Neither system, in other words, works worth a tinker's expletive at the basic job of keeping an economy productive and functioning, and both thus might reasonably be chucked into history's recycle bin. The one difficulty is that very few people nowadays realize that there are other alternatives - and this, in turn, is a function of our collective blindness to our own history. Until the Second World War, in point of fact, corporate capitalism and bureaucratic socialism were only the most successful of a dizzying range of systems of political economy that had a substantial public presence. Distributism, syndicalism, synarchism, guild socialism, and many others were discussed in a lively literature of books and periodicals, and each had its enthusiastic followers. Nor were these simply slight variations on the two systems left standing; some tended toward the free market end of the spectrum, others toward the collective ownership end, and some occupied positions in the middle, assigning some fields of economic activity to the free market while putting others in the public sphere, but each offered a distinctive system for managing the realities of human economic life. What squeezed these alternative systems out of collective consciousness was the long era of the Cold War, when both sides turned their respective systems of political economy into ideological battle flags in the struggle over which of two empires - American or Russian - would dominate the world in the wake of the British Empire's long retreat. (Yes, I know it's unpopular these days to suggest that America is an empire, but given that we station troops in 140 countries just now, backing up a state of affairs in which the five percent of humanity that lives in the United States uses around a third of the world's resources and industrial output, the term is hard to avoid.) The United States won that struggle, only to find - as every other empire in history has found - that getting to the top of the heap simply makes you target number one for an endless series of fresh challengers, one of whom will eventually win. The disastrous narrowing of vision that was driven by the bitter rivalries of the Cold War years remains fixed in place, though, not only in the United States but - in large part due to America's current role as the main manufacturer and exporter of the global culture industry - throughout most of the world. The problem with this state of affairs is not limited to the massive failures that afflict both corporate capitalism and bureaucratic socialism; neither system has shown the least trace of an ability to deal with the challenge of making human economics work within the fragile ecology and finite resource base of our planet, for example. Still, at a time when the world's industrial societies are facing severe problems due to the steady depletion of fossil fuel reserves, relying on systems of political economy that have a proven track record of catastrophic dysfunction anyway is not exactly a good idea. What the survey mentioned at the beginning of this post shows, in turn, is that a growing number of Americans have become aware of this last point. That opens up options that have been closed for the last two generations or so. Thus I'd like to offer a bit of advice to distributists - yes, there are still some out there - and proponents of any other alternative systems of political economy that may still be around after all these years: now's your chance. If, as the survey suggests, 27% of Americans have already reached the point where neither capitalism nor socialism has any particular appeal, there's a large audience waiting to hear what you have to say, if you make an effort to get the word out to them. Now of course there's also a place for newly minted alternatives, provided that those don't start from the assumption that people can consume more goods and services than they produce, or that the Earth's remaining resource base can support - two little difficulties that have been all too common in recent schemes of this sort. Even the most determined prophet of some new system, though, might benefit from taking a good close look at what has been done in the past; if you're going to reinvent the wheel, it might be useful to make sure that your version is actually better than the last century or two of attempts at the same thing. Anything that can pop our collective imaginations out of the current and hopelessly sterile fixation on the relative merits of two abjectly failed systems is likely to be a good thing. Will it be enough of a good thing to stave off the decline and fall this blog has been discussing for the last three years? At this stage of the game, with petroleum production already sliding and so many opportunities gone by the boards, that seems hopelessly unlikely. Still, the adoption of some less wildly inefficient and failure-prone approach to political economy would be a very sensible move as we begin to deal with the challenges of the long era of contraction and readjustment that is taking shape around us right now. Utopian schemes remain as useless as they have ever been, but efforts at thoughtful, constructive, and realistic change are quite another matter, and in the wake of corporate capitalism's latest round of failure, there might just be an opportunity to accomplish a bit of the latter. _____ 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 (2006) and The Long Descent: A User's Guide to the End of the Industrial Age" (2008). He lives in Ashland, Oregon. http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2009/04/some-advice-for-distributists.html http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From tboyle at rosehill.net Sun Apr 19 15:39:10 2009 From: tboyle at rosehill.net (Todd Boyle) Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 14:39:10 -0700 Subject: [A-List] Communist party surges as Japan's economy withers In-Reply-To: <5c2e4d230904191039m15943573wf7663e728f47c96a@mail.gmail.co m> References: <5c2e4d230904191039m15943573wf7663e728f47c96a@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: ERIC TALMADGE, AP TOKYO wrote: >Though weak at the national level, the communists boast more elected >officials than any other party because of their strong presence in >local and prefectural assemblies, where they have more than 3,000 >seats. How odd. In the U.S., the rural areas are the most reactionary. Perhaps this resulted from WW2. By 1945 everybody in Japan understood that the rightwing fascists in Tokyo had destroyed Japan. The suspicion of big business persists in Japan-- and there was already regional rivalry with Tokyo --Osaka vs Tokyo, for example. But I wonder if the business elites in Japan focused their propaganda and political manipulations on urban populations, more than the countryside. Clearly, the business elites in the U.S. have had more success with rural population of the U.S. Perhaps, for the same historical reasons, the rural, agricultural, etc. populations of the U.S. have assumed, since WW2 that America could do no wrong. Rural populations in the U.S. are most dependent on corporate news and less alternative media. One result-- rural America provides more of their kids to fight foreign wars, and they support whatever business agenda they read in the dumb local press, or TV, Even when the small farms go belly up, large corporations buy them, giving even MORE power and money to the business elites. We are all surplus populations, whether urban or rural, TOdd -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 1736 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090419/42d41070/attachment.txt From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Mon Apr 20 20:48:37 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 11:48:37 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Note: Hope = Truth Message-ID: <49ED3405.4040008@ashisuto.co.jp> Clusterfuck Nation by Jim Kunstler Comment on current events by the author of The Long Emergency (2005) www.kunstler.com (April 20 2009) People of good intentions and progressive predilection are scratching their heads wondering just how President Barack Obama managed to turn himself into George W Bush Lite with sugar-on-top just twelve weeks after that fateful walk down the US Capitol's east stairway to the waiting helicopter. I'm hardly the first observer to note that Mr Obama's actions in the face of an epochal finance fiasco and economic collapse are a mere extension of the pre-January-20 policies, carried out by much the same cast of characters. The assumption up until now was something about the reassuring value of continuity - if we could just prop up an ailing set of banks for a little while, the US public could resume a revolving credit way-of-life within an economy dedicated to building more suburban houses and selling all the needed accessories from supersized "family" cars to cappuccino machines. This would keep everyone employed at the jobs they were qualified for - finish carpenters, realtors, pool installers, mortgage brokers, advertising account executives, Williams-Sonoma product demonstrators, showroom sales agents, doctors of liposuction, and so on. This was a dumb strategy for such a supposedly bright group of people surrounding Mr Obama. That old economy was dead on arrival January 20th. Even the kindest physicians don't put corpses on life support. This particular corpse has been placed in the world's cushiest intensive care unit, with transfusions running about a trillion dollars a month - not to mention hefty bonuses for the attending nurses. Instead, a fast and furious wake might have been held, with the corpse of the old economy laid out on a granite countertop for all to toast and bid farewell. President Obama might have led this exercise with some aplomb - even while directing his new justice department warriors to round up a host of suspects in the old economy's suspicious death. What it comes down to, apparently, is a leadership elite across all sectors - politics, business, academia, media - that is incapable of processing the truth, and then conveying it to the broad American public. Alas, this also appears to be a common theme in history, with a commonly tragic outcome, which is that elites get ruthlessly dumped and replaced by new elites, often composed of zealots, maniacs, nincompoops, and others generally ill-disposed to the able management of complex affairs. It's called the "circulation of elites", and in times of crisis it tends to take on a kind of downward spiraling flavor, with each gang of discredited leaders tossed out for a progressively worse one until a kind of exhaustion is reached - whereupon the archetypal man-on-a-white-horse arrives on the scene. Mr Obama looked to be the man-on-a-white-horse - on the exhaustion of Reagan-Bush Jesus-Republicanism - but he's coming off more like Philippe Egalite (Louis Philippe Joseph d'Orleans, duc d'Orleans) in 1793, with perhaps Newt Gingrich waiting offstage to become Robespierre in 2012 - and some obscure US Army captain now toiling in Kirkuk slated to become the American Napoleon of 2015. As you've surely heard a thousand times now, history doesn't repeat itself but it rhymes. The enormities of Wall Street today are a little like those of the French Ancien Regime at Versailles. If America encounters the sort of disruptions of food and energy supplies that are brewing on the horizon, and unemployment keeps arcing up its current trajectory, civil uproars could easily follow. Readers think I joke about the Hamptons going up in flames. But the antics of the bankers, hedge funders, the CEOs, the Madoffs, and even the P Diddy's of our time, are liable to attract murderous attention as the public mood moves from sour to wrathful. So, what people of good intention and progressive predilection want to know is how come Mr Obama doesn't just lay out the truth, undertake the hard job of cutting the nation's losses, and get on with setting this society on a new course. The truth is that we're comprehensively bankrupt, and no amount of shuffling certificates around will avail to alter that. The bad debt has to be "worked out" - that is, written off, subjected to liquidation of remaining assets and collateral, reorganized under the bankruptcy statutes, and put behind us. We have to work very hard to reconfigure the physical arrangement of life in the USA, moving away from the losses of our suburbs, reactivating our towns, downscaling our biggest cities, re-scaling our farms and food production, switching out our Happy Motoring system for public transit and walkable neighborhoods, rebuilding local networks of commerce, and figuring out a way to make a few things of value again. What's happened instead is what I most feared: that our politicians would mount a massive campaign to sustain the unsustainable. That's what all the TARP and TARF and PPIT and bailouts are about. It will all amount to an exercise in futility and could easily end up wrecking the USA in every sense of the term. If Mr Obama doesn't get with a better program, then we are going to face a Long Emergency as grueling as the French Revolution. One very plain and straightforward example at hand is the announcement last week of a plan to build a high speed rail network. To be blunt about it, this is perfectly fucking stupid. It will require a whole new track network, because high speed trains can't run on the old rights of way with their less forgiving curve ratios and grades. We would be so much better off simply fixing up and reactivating the normal-speed track system that is sitting out there rusting in the rain - and save our more grandiose visions for a later time. I don't like to be misunderstood. With the airlines in a business death spiral, and mass motoring doomed, we need a national passenger rail system desperately. But we already have one that used to be the envy of the world before we abandoned it. And we don't have either the time or the resources to build a new parallel network. But grandiosity is just another way that we lie to ourselves about where we're at and what is really possible. Surely Mr Obama knows that hope fades where the light of truth doesn't shine. He is a charming fellow. I don't especially want to see Newt Gingrich chop his head off. _____ My new novel of the post-oil future, World Made By Hand, is available at all booksellers. http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/2009/04/note-hope-truth.html http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From tal1 at cogeco.ca Mon Apr 20 21:10:16 2009 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 23:10:16 -0400 Subject: [A-List] The Tower of Basel Message-ID: <506D55A890AA426F8529C1B488B37B22@TonyPC> The Tower of Basel: Secretive Plans for the Issuing of a Global Currency Do we really want the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) issuing our global currency By Ellen Brown April 18, 2009 "Global Research" April 18, 2009 -- In an April 7 article in The London Telegraph titled "The G20 Moves the World a Step Closer to a Global Currency," Ambrose Evans-Pritchard wrote: "A single clause in Point 19 of the communiqu? issued by the G20 leaders amounts to revolution in the global financial order. "'We have agreed to support a general SDR allocation which will inject $250bn (?170bn) into the world economy and increase global liquidity,' it said. SDRs are Special Drawing Rights, a synthetic paper currency issued by the International Monetary Fund that has lain dormant for half a century. "In effect, the G20 leaders have activated the IMF's power to create money and begin global 'quantitative easing'. In doing so, they are putting a de facto world currency into play. It is outside the control of any sovereign body. Conspiracy theorists will love it." Indeed they will. The article is subtitled, "The world is a step closer to a global currency, backed by a global central bank, running monetary policy for all humanity." Which naturally raises the question, who or what will serve as this global central bank, cloaked with the power to issue the global currency and police monetary policy for all humanity? When the world's central bankers met in Washington last September, they discussed what body might be in a position to serve in that awesome and fearful role. A former governor of the Bank of England stated: "[T]he answer might already be staring us in the face, in the form of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). . . . The IMF tends to couch its warnings about economic problems in very diplomatic language, but the BIS is more independent and much better placed to deal with this if it is given the power to do so."1 And if the vision of a global currency outside government control does not set off conspiracy theorists, putting the BIS in charge of it surely will. The BIS has been scandal-ridden ever since it was branded with pro-Nazi leanings in the 1930s. Founded in Basel, Switzerland, in 1930, the BIS has been called "the most exclusive, secretive, and powerful supranational club in the world." Charles Higham wrote in his book Trading with the Enemy that by the late 1930s, the BIS had assumed an openly pro-Nazi bias, a theme that was expanded on in a BBC Timewatch film titled "Banking with Hitler" broadcast in 1998.2 In 1944, the American government backed a resolution at the Bretton-Woods Conference calling for the liquidation of the BIS, following Czech accusations that it was laundering gold stolen by the Nazis from occupied Europe; but the central bankers succeeded in quietly snuffing out the American resolution.3 Modest beginnings, BIS Office, Hotel Savoy-Univers, Basel First Annual General Meeting, 1931 In Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time (1966), Dr. Carroll Quigley revealed the key role played in global finance by the BIS behind the scenes. Dr. Quigley was Professor of History at Georgetown University, where he was President Bill Clinton's mentor. He was also an insider, groomed by the powerful clique he called "the international bankers." His credibility is heightened by the fact that he actually espoused their goals. He wrote: "I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960's, to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of its instruments. . . . [I]n general my chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown, and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known." Quigley wrote of this international banking network: "[T]he powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations." The key to their success, said Quigley, was that the international bankers would control and manipulate the money system of a nation while letting it appear to be controlled by the government. The statement echoed one made in the eighteenth century by the patriarch of what would become the most powerful banking dynasty in the world. Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild famously said in 1791: "Allow me to issue and control a nation's currency, and I care not who makes its laws." Mayer's five sons were sent to the major capitals of Europe - London, Paris, Vienna, Berlin and Naples - with the mission of establishing a banking system that would be outside government control. The economic and political systems of nations would be controlled not by citizens but by bankers, for the benefit of bankers. Eventually, a privately-owned "central bank" was established in nearly every country; and this central banking system has now gained control over the economies of the world. Central banks have the authority to print money in their respective countries, and it is from these banks that governments must borrow money to pay their debts and fund their operations. The result is a global economy in which not only industry but government itself runs on "credit" (or debt) created by a banking monopoly headed by a network of private central banks; and at the top of this network is the BIS, the "central bank of central banks" in Basel. Behind the Curtain For many years the BIS kept a very low profile, operating behind the scenes in an abandoned hotel. It was here that decisions were reached to devalue or defend currencies, fix the price of gold, regulate offshore banking, and raise or lower short-term interest rates. In 1977, however, the BIS gave up its anonymity in exchange for more efficient headquarters. The new building has been described as "an eighteen story-high circular skyscraper that rises above the medieval city like some misplaced nuclear reactor." It quickly became known as the "Tower of Basel." Today the BIS has governmental immunity, pays no taxes, and has its own private police force.4 It is, as Mayer Rothschild envisioned, above the law. The BIS is now composed of 55 member nations, but the club that meets regularly in Basel is a much smaller group; and even within it, there is a hierarchy. In a 1983 article in Harper's Magazine called "Ruling the World of Money," Edward Jay Epstein wrote that where the real business gets done is in "a sort of inner club made up of the half dozen or so powerful central bankers who find themselves more or less in the same monetary boat" - those from Germany, the United States, Switzerland, Italy, Japan and England. Epstein said: "The prime value, which also seems to demarcate the inner club from the rest of the BIS members, is the firm belief that central banks should act independently of their home governments. . . . A second and closely related belief of the inner club is that politicians should not be trusted to decide the fate of the international monetary system." In 1974, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision was created by the central bank Governors of the Group of Ten nations (now expanded to twenty). The BIS provides the twelve-member Secretariat for the Committee. The Committee, in turn, sets the rules for banking globally, including capital requirements and reserve controls. In a 2003 article titled "The Bank for International Settlements Calls for Global Currency," Joan Veon wrote: "The BIS is where all of the world's central banks meet to analyze the global economy and determine what course of action they will take next to put more money in their pockets, since they control the amount of money in circulation and how much interest they are going to charge governments and banks for borrowing from them. . . . "When you understand that the BIS pulls the strings of the world's monetary system, you then understand that they have the ability to create a financial boom or bust in a country. If that country is not doing what the money lenders want, then all they have to do is sell its currency."5 The Controversial Basel Accords The power of the BIS to make or break economies was demonstrated in 1988, when it issued a Basel Accord raising bank capital requirements from 6% to 8%. By then, Japan had emerged as the world's largest creditor; but Japan's banks were less well capitalized than other major international banks. Raising the capital requirement forced them to cut back on lending, creating a recession in Japan like that suffered in the U.S. today. Property prices fell and loans went into default as the security for them shriveled up. A downward spiral followed, ending with the total bankruptcy of the banks. The banks had to be nationalized, although that word was not used in order to avoid criticism.6 Among other collateral damage produced by the Basel Accords was a spate of suicides among Indian farmers unable to get loans. The BIS capital adequacy standards required loans to private borrowers to be "risk-weighted," with the degree of risk determined by private rating agencies; and farmers and small business owners could not afford the agencies' fees. Banks therefore assigned 100 percent risk to the loans, and then resisted extending credit to these "high-risk" borrowers because more capital was required to cover the loans. When the conscience of the nation was aroused by the Indian suicides, the government, lamenting the neglect of farmers by commercial banks, established a policy of ending the "financial exclusion" of the weak; but this step had little real effect on lending practices, due largely to the strictures imposed by the BIS from abroad.7 Similar complaints have come from Korea. An article in the December 12, 2008 Korea Times titled "BIS Calls Trigger Vicious Cycle" described how Korean entrepreneurs with good collateral cannot get operational loans from Korean banks, at a time when the economic downturn requires increased investment and easier credit: "'The Bank of Korea has provided more than 35 trillion won to banks since September when the global financial crisis went full throttle,' said a Seoul analyst, who declined to be named. 'But the effect is not seen at all with the banks keeping the liquidity in their safes. They simply don't lend and one of the biggest reasons is to keep the BIS ratio high enough to survive,' he said. . . . "Chang Ha-joon, an economics professor at Cambridge University, concurs with the analyst. 'What banks do for their own interests, or to improve the BIS ratio, is against the interests of the whole society. This is a bad idea,' Chang said in a recent telephone interview with Korea Times." In a May 2002 article in The Asia Times titled "Global Economy: The BIS vs. National Banks," economist Henry C K Liu observed that the Basel Accords have forced national banking systems "to march to the same tune, designed to serve the needs of highly sophisticated global financial markets, regardless of the developmental needs of their national economies." He wrote: "[N]ational banking systems are suddenly thrown into the rigid arms of the Basel Capital Accord sponsored by the Bank of International Settlement (BIS), or to face the penalty of usurious risk premium in securing international interbank loans. . . . National policies suddenly are subjected to profit incentives of private financial institutions, all members of a hierarchical system controlled and directed from the money center banks in New York. The result is to force national banking systems to privatize . . . . "BIS regulations serve only the single purpose of strengthening the international private banking system, even at the peril of national economies. . . . The IMF and the international banks regulated by the BIS are a team: the international banks lend recklessly to borrowers in emerging economies to create a foreign currency debt crisis, the IMF arrives as a carrier of monetary virus in the name of sound monetary policy, then the international banks come as vulture investors in the name of financial rescue to acquire national banks deemed capital inadequate and insolvent by the BIS." Ironically, noted Liu, developing countries with their own natural resources did not actually need the foreign investment that trapped them in debt to outsiders: "Applying the State Theory of Money [which assumes that a sovereign nation has the power to issue its own money], any government can fund with its own currency all its domestic developmental needs to maintain full employment without inflation." When governments fall into the trap of accepting loans in foreign currencies, however, they become "debtor nations" subject to IMF and BIS regulation. They are forced to divert their production to exports, just to earn the foreign currency necessary to pay the interest on their loans. National banks deemed "capital inadequate" have to deal with strictures comparable to the "conditionalities" imposed by the IMF on debtor nations: "escalating capital requirement, loan writeoffs and liquidation, and restructuring through selloffs, layoffs, downsizing, cost-cutting and freeze on capital spending." Liu wrote: "Reversing the logic that a sound banking system should lead to full employment and developmental growth, BIS regulations demand high unemployment and developmental degradation in national economies as the fair price for a sound global private banking system." The Last Domino to Fall While banks in developing nations were being penalized for falling short of the BIS capital requirements, large international banks managed to escape the rules, although they actually carried enormous risk because of their derivative exposure. The mega-banks succeeded in avoiding the Basel rules by separating the "risk" of default out from the loans and selling it off to investors, using a form of derivative known as "credit default swaps." However, it was not in the game plan that U.S. banks should escape the BIS net. When they managed to sidestep the first Basel Accord, a second set of rules was imposed known as Basel II. The new rules were established in 2004, but they were not levied on U.S. banks until November 2007, the month after the Dow passed 14,000 to reach its all-time high. It has been all downhill from there. Basel II had the same effect on U.S. banks that Basel I had on Japanese banks: they have been struggling ever since to survive.8 Basel II requires banks to adjust the value of their marketable securities to the "market price" of the security, a rule called "mark to market."9 The rule has theoretical merit, but the problem is timing: it was imposed ex post facto, after the banks already had the hard-to-market assets on their books. Lenders that had been considered sufficiently well capitalized to make new loans suddenly found they were insolvent. At least, they would have been insolvent if they had tried to sell their assets, an assumption required by the new rule. Financial analyst John Berlau complained: "The crisis is often called a 'market failure,' and the term 'mark-to-market' seems to reinforce that. But the mark-to-market rules are profoundly anti-market and hinder the free-market function of price discovery. . . . In this case, the accounting rules fail to allow the market players to hold on to an asset if they don't like what the market is currently fetching, an important market action that affects price discovery in areas from agriculture to antiques."10 Imposing the mark-to-market rule on U.S. banks caused an instant credit freeze, which proceeded to take down the economies not only of the U.S. but of countries worldwide. In early April 2009, the mark-to-market rule was finally softened by the U.S. Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB); but critics said the modification did not go far enough, and it was done in response to pressure from politicians and bankers, not out of any fundamental change of heart or policies by the BIS. And that is where the conspiracy theorists come in. Why did the BIS not retract or at least modify Basel II after seeing the devastation it had caused? Why did it sit idly by as the global economy came crashing down? Was the goal to create so much economic havoc that the world would rush with relief into the waiting arms of the BIS with its privately-created global currency? The plot thickens . . . Ellen Brown developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt, her latest book, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and "the money trust." She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her earlier books focused on the pharmaceutical cartel that gets its power from "the money trust." Her eleven books include Forbidden Medicine, Nature's Pharmacy (co-authored with Dr. Lynne Walker), and The Key to Ultimate Health (co-authored with Dr. Richard Hansen). Her websites are www.webofdebt.com and www.ellenbrown.com . NOTES 1. Andrew Marshall, "The Financial New World Order: Towards a Global Currency and World Government," Global Research (April 6, 2009). 2 Alfred Mendez, "The Network," The World Central Bank: The Bank for International Settlements, http://copy_bilderberg.tripod.com/bis.htm. 3 "BIS - Bank of International Settlement: The Mother of All Central Banks," hubpages.com (2009). 4 Ibid. 5 Joan Veon, "The Bank for International Settlements Calls for Global Currency," News with Views (August 26, 2003). 6 Peter Myers, "The 1988 Basle Accord - Destroyer of Japan's Finance System," http://www.mailstar.net/basle.html (updated September 9, 2008). 7 Nirmal Chandra, "Is Inclusive Growth Feasible in Neoliberal India?", www.networkideas.org (September 2008). 8 Bruce Wiseman, "The Financial Crisis: A look Behind the Wizard's Curtain," Canada Free Press (March 19, 2009). 9 See Ellen Brown, "Credit Where Credit Is Due," www.webofdebt.com/articles/creditcrunch.php (January 11, 2009). 10 John Berlau, "The International Mark-to-market Contagion," OpenMarket.org (October 10, 2008). ? Copyright Ellen Brown, Global Research, 2009 From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Tue Apr 21 02:56:42 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 17:56:42 +0900 Subject: [A-List] How to Survive Social Collapse Message-ID: <49ED8A4A.3030806@ashisuto.co.jp> by Joshua Holland AlterNet (March 12 2009) I know people who think that the economic meltdown is leading us towards some Road Warrior-esque dystopia where we'll have to hole up in the nearest shopping mall and fend off the flesh-eating zombies (yes, I mixed two cheesy movie references into that single sentence). While no Pollyanna, I'm not convinced that it's going to get quite that bad. But the creaky old economic system was never sustainable and there's a lot of space in which to land between a less-than-cataclysmic recession and zombies roaming the streets. Which brings us to this talk by Dimitry Orlov that long-time AlterNet reader and commenter OregonCharles sent my way (thanks, Charles!). Orlov, who says he's "not an expert or a scholar or an activist", but merely someone who witnessed the fall of the Soviet Union up close and learned something from the experience, is the author of Reinventing Collapse (2008). It's a pretty interesting read. A few excerpts from Orlov's set-up ... "You are here to listen to me talk about social collapse and the various ways we can avoid screwing that up along with everything else that's gone wrong. I know it's a lot to ask of you, because why wouldn't you instead want to go and eat, drink, and be merry? Well, perhaps there will still be time left for that after my talk. "It seems that I am enjoying my moment in the limelight, because I am one of the very few people who several years ago unequivocally predicted the demise of the United States as a global superpower. The idea that the USA will go the way of the USSR seemed preposterous at the time. It doesn't seem so preposterous any more. I take it some of you are still hedging your bets. How is that hedge fund doing, by the way? "I think I prefer remaining just a tourist, because I have learned from experience - luckily, from other people's experience - that being a superpower collapse predictor is not a good career choice. I learned that by observing what happened to the people who successfully predicted the collapse of the USSR. Do you know who Andrei Amalrik is? See, my point exactly. He successfully predicted the collapse of the USSR. He was off by just half a decade. That was another valuable lesson for me, which is why I will not give you an exact date when USA will turn into FUSA ("F" is for "Former"). But even if someone could choreograph the whole event, it still wouldn't make for much of a career, because once it all starts falling apart, people have far more important things to attend to than marveling at the wonderful predictive abilities of some Cassandra-like person." Read the whole thing here. {1} If you have a short attention span, here's a slide show {2} laying out Orlov's argument that the USSR was better prepared for social collapse twenty years ago than the US is today. Also, a somewhat lighter take on the theme: here's Scott Thill's AlterNet piece from last summer, "Massive Economic Disaster Seems Possible - Will Survivalists Get the Last Laugh?" {3} Notes: {1} "Social Collapse Best Practices" by Dmitry Orlov, Culture Change (February 14 2009) http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=325&Itemid=1 {2} "Closing the 'Collapse Gap': the USSR was better prepared for collapse than the US" by Dmitry Orlov, EnergyBulletin.net (December 04 2006) http://www.energybulletin.net/node/23259 {3} "Massive Economic Disaster Seems Possible - Will Survivalists Get the Last Laugh?" by Scott Thill, AlterNet (July 26 2008) http://www.alternet.org/story/92706/ http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/www.alternet.org/131167/ http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From pwright at prisonlegalnews.org Mon Apr 20 22:48:18 2009 From: pwright at prisonlegalnews.org (Paul Wright) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 00:48:18 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Communist party surges as Japan's economy withers In-Reply-To: <7o7ghn$46neku@ipo4smtp.cc.utah.edu> References: <5c2e4d230904191039m15943573wf7663e728f47c96a@mail.gmail.com> <7o7ghn$46neku@ipo4smtp.cc.utah.edu> Message-ID: <152d01c9c23c$649e92f0$0900a8c0@PRISONLEGALNEWS.local> Of course the Japanese CP themselves admit they are not wont to actually seize power and change anything. They seem more like social democrats. Paul Wright, Editor Prison Legal News P.O. Box 2420 West Brattleboro, VT 05303 802 257-1342 pwright at prisonlegalnews.org www.prisonlegalnews.org Seattle Office 2400 NW 80th St. Suite 148 Seattle, WA 98117 206-246-1022 _____ From: a-list-bounces at lists.econ.utah.edu [mailto:a-list-bounces at lists.econ.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Todd Boyle Sent: Sunday, April 19, 2009 5:39 PM To: The A-List Subject: Re: [A-List] Communist party surges as Japan's economy withers ERIC TALMADGE, AP TOKYO wrote: Though weak at the national level, the communists boast more elected officials than any other party because of their strong presence in local and prefectural assemblies, where they have more than 3,000 seats. How odd. In the U.S., the rural areas are the most reactionary. Perhaps this resulted from WW2. By 1945 everybody in Japan understood that the rightwing fascists in Tokyo had destroyed Japan. The suspicion of big business persists in Japan-- and there was already regional rivalry with Tokyo --Osaka vs Tokyo, for example. But I wonder if the business elites in Japan focused their propaganda and political manipulations on urban populations, more than the countryside. Clearly, the business elites in the U.S. have had more success with rural population of the U.S. Perhaps, for the same historical reasons, the rural, agricultural, etc. populations of the U.S. have assumed, since WW2 that America could do no wrong. Rural populations in the U.S. are most dependent on corporate news and less alternative media. One result-- rural America provides more of their kids to fight foreign wars, and they support whatever business agenda they read in the dumb local press, or TV, Even when the small farms go belly up, large corporations buy them, giving even MORE power and money to the business elites. We are all surplus populations, whether urban or rural, TOdd -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 10746 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090421/807e46a6/attachment.txt From nscchicago at igc.org Mon Apr 20 23:12:50 2009 From: nscchicago at igc.org (NSC WORKERS COOP) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 00:12:50 -0500 Subject: [A-List] Fw: [LASolidarity] The Real News Network - Past is present in LatinAmerica Message-ID: <67642FB3E7084E78A1370B473F9485AD@NSCCHICAGO> Tom Baker here and this has a 13 minute well done video report on the EL SALVADOR presidential elections in context of recent SUMMIT OF THE AMERICAS. Obispo Romero Vive! ----- Original Message ----- From: Dave Davis Subject: [LASolidarity] The Real News Network - Past is present in LatinAmerica http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=3587&updaterx=2009-04-20+09:22:08 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ 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: 2481 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090421/e838322e/attachment.txt -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 4008 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090421/e838322e/attachment.jpeg From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Wed Apr 22 04:08:01 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 19:08:01 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Massive Economic Disaster Seems Possible Message-ID: <49EEEC81.5060503@ashisuto.co.jp> Will Survivalists Get the Last Laugh? by Scott Thill AlterNet (July 26 2008) They used to be paranoid preparation nuts who built bomb shelters for a place to duck and cover during nuclear dustups with communist heathens, but their tangled roots go back to the Great Depression for a reason. If you want to get sociological about it, survivalism started out as a response to economic catastrophe. And now, with a cratering stock market, a housing meltdown that has devalued everything in sight, and skyrocketing prices for food, gas and pretty much everything else, survivalists are preparing for - and are prepared for - the rerun. In fact, they may be the only people in America feeling good about the prospects of a major crash. And the interesting thing about the once-fringe movement at this moment in history is that survivalism has now gone green - at least in theory. >From peak oil and food crises all the way to catastrophic payback from that bitch Mother Earth, there are more reasons to hide than ever. Conventional society as we know it is already undergoing some disastrous transformations. Ask anyone ducking fires in California, floods in the Midwest or bullets in Baghdad. Maybe it didn't make sense to run for the hills, stockpile water and food, grow your own vegetables and drugs, or unplug from consumerism back when America's budget surplus still existed, its armies weren't burning up all the nation's revenue and its infrastructure wasn't being outsourced to a globalized work force. But those days are gone, daddy, gone. What's coming up is weirder. Author, social critic and overall hilarious dude James Kunstler tackled that weirdness, otherwise known as an incoming post-oil dystopia, in his recent novel, World Made by Hand (2008), which has since become one of a handful of survivalist classics. And as Kunstler sees it, whether you are talking about gun nuts or green pioneers, at least you are talking. "At least they're aware that we've entered the early innings of what could easily become a very disruptive period of our history", the Clusterfuck Nation columnist explains. "Most of them are responding constructively rather than just defensively. They're much more interested in gardening and animal husbandry than firearms." Not that the gun nuts have gone away. Their ranks have just diversified. "The gun nuts have been on the scene longer than the peak oil argument has been in play", he adds. "They were initially preoccupied with Big Government and its accompanying narrative fantasy of fascist oppression, which is why they adopted a fascist tone themselves. But peak-oil survivalists are different from the Ruby Ridge generation. They don't think that a bolt-hole in the woods is a very promising strategy. We have no idea at this point what the level of social cohesion or disorder may be, but if the rural areas, especially the agricultural centers, become too lawless for farming, then we'll be in pretty severe trouble because there will be nothing for us to eat." That's not on the to-do list of author and SurvivalBlog owner James Rawles, who has been getting asked more and more questions by a mainstream press finally waking to the consequences of disaster capitalism, climate crisis and the hyperreal dream of bottomless consumption. He has fielded questions from the New York Times, and he has taken an online beating from conscientious pubs like Grist, but he hasn't gone Hollywood. The times, which are a-changin', have caught up to him. "There is greater interest in preparedness these days because the fragility of our economy, lengthening chains of supply and the complexity of the technological infrastructure have become apparent to a broader cross section of the populace", Rawles wrote to me via e-mail (but only after asking how many unique monthly visitors AlterNet commanded). "All parties concerned may not realize it, but the left-of-center greens calling for local economies and encouraging farmers markets have a tremendous amount in common with John Birchers decrying globalist bankers and gun owners complaining about their constitutional rights. At the core, for all of them, is the recognition that big, entrenched, centralized power structures are not the answer. They are, in fact, the problem." Fair enough. But that broad brush fails to recognize the complexities of the very community it is purporting to try to establish. Indeed, difference is what survivalists seem to be running from, whether it is historically the difference between blacks and whites, secularists and true believers, or simply the haves and have-nots. It is that latter crowd that the survivalists seem most worried about. Their separation from society at large is arguably a retreat from community rather than a striving toward it. "I'd say that survivalism is indeed a celebration of community", Rawles asserts. "It is the embodiment of America's traditional can-do spirit of self-reliance that settled the frontier". But that's also a generalization, especially when one considers that the word "settled" is a coded reduction for a "near-genocidal wipeout of the frontier's native populations", most if not all of whom were perfecting a survivalist ethic by maximizing their skill sets and living in symbiosis with the land that provided them what they needed in food, tools and medicine. In fact, those settlements would have been hard-pressed to exist without what Rawles earlier described as a "centralized power structure", known as the expansionist United States government and its military, paving the road forward. Each self-reliant mythology carries within it grains of complicity in the community at large, which is a fancy way of saying there's nowhere to run, baby, nowhere to hide. This is especially true today in our hyperreal, hyperconsuming 21st century, where survivalism has become more of a gadget fantasy than an earnest grasp for community. "It seems a natural human impulse that we are hard-wired to follow as circumstances require", Kunstler says, "although it is constrained by social and cultural conditioning. To some degree, in our consumer culture, survivalism is related to the gear fetishism you see in popular magazines that purport to be about sporting adventures, but are really about acquiring snazzy equipment. America in 2008 has become a cartoon culture of Hollywood violence that promotes grandiose power fantasies of hyper-individualism and vigilante justice. Add guns and economic hardship, and spice it up with ethnic grievances, and the recipe is not very appetizing." This future cultural, environmental and geopolitical miasma is where the survivalist and the mainstream converge in agreement. Both camps, pardon the pun, are convinced that we're screwed down the road. "The next Great Depression will be a tremendous leveler", Rawles prophesies. "If anything, life in the 22nd century will more closely resemble the 19th century than the 20th century. Sadly, the 21st century will probably be remembered as the time of the Great Die-Off." "I don't consider it a total wipeout", Kunstler counters. "It's a very big change, but people are resilient and resourceful. Look, imagine if you were a person who had survived the Second World War in Europe, and you were walking around Berlin in the spring of 1946, a year after the end of the war. A once-magnificent city has been reduced to rubble. Your culture is lying in ashes. Yet, people pick up and rebuild." That is, if they're sticking together. If they're scattered and fending for themselves, and taking armed retreat defense tips from SurvivalBlog, that makes rebuilding a bit more complicated. Which, in the end, is where survivalism is most ambiguous. Is it a growing population of forward-looking realists who are smartly preparing for the die-off brought on by climate crisis and economic collapse, so they can pick up themselves and their people, and rebuild with that "can-do" spirit, as Rawles calls it? Or are they simply gadget-fascinated fundamentalists afraid of change and challenge, so afraid that they'd rather hide and hoard than join the fight? The jury is still out. But, according to Rawles, it will soon have its diversity mirrored by survivalism's changing demographic. "I think that in the next couple of decades", he explains, "we will witness the formation of some remarkable intentional communities that will feature some unlikely bedfellows: anarchists and Ayn Rand readers, Mennonites and gun enthusiasts, Luddites and techno-geeks, fundamentalist Christians and Gaia worshippers, tree huggers and horse wranglers. We welcome them all. Because the threats are clearly manifold: peak oil, derivatives meltdowns, pandemics, food shortages, market collapses, terrorism, state-sponsored global war and more. In a situation this precarious, I believe that it is remarkably naive to think that mere geographical isolation will be sufficient to shelter communities from the predation of evildoers." _____ Scott Thill runs the online mag Morphizm.com. His writing has appeared on Salon, XLR8R, All Music Guide, Wired and others. (c) 2009 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved. http://www.alternet.org/story/92706/ http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From suzannedk at gmail.com Tue Apr 21 13:40:02 2009 From: suzannedk at gmail.com (Suzanne de Kuyper) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 21:40:02 +0200 Subject: [A-List] [R-G] Obama's Gitmo In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Comment on Obama's Gitmo The policy of destroying the use of Habeous Corpus world wide, and do not think for a moment that such a policy does not exist, is proceeding apace almost every single day. The speech of the President of Iran expressing clear honest pain at watching the Israelis with the United States complete support, destroy country after Middle Eastern country, specifically, most visibly now, Palestine, was reacted to by the walkout of 23 European countries whose whole reason for being is enshrined in International Human Rights Law! The trashing of Habeous Corpus that the Bush administration carefully set up is being enabled by the very governments that have most to lose by it's absence. The Iranian President was correct. The horrors of WW11 Nazi exterminations is being consciously and carefully used to force the watchinig world to approve anything and everything that either the U S and/or Israel want, genocide or not. Calling a spade a spade is to be repulsed by Nazi means! The Nazi defectives are now the Muslim countries that object to being invaded and destroyed utterly. Or the defectives are the countries, individuals or groups, audible to others, who object to United States world domination. Strangely, this domination is becoming very quickly worse than Hitler's domination. The destructive quality of this domination will be thousands of times worse that Nazi domination. The long term sucess of the U S World War Empire is still in question as the peoples who are set up to be dominated and impoverished beyond impoverishment are a total of over three billion souls. Probably more. One of the basic precepts of the Islamic faith is to speak truth to power. Such truths are like water or information, they seep everywhere...and meet and give drink and hope to those who will die wthout them. One thinks of the handprinted pamphlets that the American patriots hundreds of years ago passed from hand to hand. Such freedom of expression is now gone under U S Patriot Acts one and two, under The U S Military Commissions Act of 2006, under the precedents of the government promoted torture which is still U S law, still done. What the United States has become few openly speak of. Those that do speak of a reality that each and everyday is not challenged, destroys a cultures and civilations and millions of children, our shared future. Suzanne suzannedk at gmail.com On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 8:02 PM, Anthony Fenton wrote: > http://online.wsj.com/a > rticle/SB124027091370936935.html > > * OPINION: MAIN STREET > * APRIL 21, 2009, 8:40 A.M. ET > > Obama's Gitmo > > * > By WILLIAM MCGURN > * > > Helen Thomas: Why is the president blocking habeas corpus from > prisoners at Bagram? I thought he taught constitutional law. And these > prisoners have been there . . . > > Robert Gibbs: You're incorrect that he taught on constitutional law. > > You know we live in interesting times when Helen Thomas is going after > Barack Obama. Miss Thomas was asking the White House press secretary > last week why detainees at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan should not > have the same right to challenge their detention in federal court that > last year's Supreme Court ruling in Boumediene v. Bush gave to > Guantanamo's detainees. All Mr. Gibbs could do was interrupt and > correct the doyenne of the White House press corps about Mr. Obama's > class as a law professor. > > The precipitate cause of Miss Thomas's question was a ruling earlier > this month by federal district Judge John Bates. Judge Bates says that > last year's Supreme Court ruling on Gitmo does apply to Bagram. The > administration has appealed, saying that giving detainees such rights > could lead to protracted litigation, disclosure of intelligence > secrets and harm to American security. The wonderful irony is that, at > least on the logic, everyone is right. > > Start with Judge Bates. The judge is surely correct when he says the > detainees brought in to Bagram from outside the country are "virtually > identical" to those held at Guantanamo. He's also correct in asserting > that the Supreme Court ruled the way it did out of concern "that the > Executive could move detainees physically beyond the reach of the > Constitution and detain an individual" at Bagram. > > But President Obama's appeal is also right. Though most headlines from > the past few days have focused on the release of Justice Department > memos on CIA interrogation, the president's embrace of the Bush > position on Bagram is far more striking. Mr. Gibbs became tongue-tied > while trying to explain that stand. But the Justice Department brief > is absolutely correct in asserting that "there are many legitimate > reasons, having nothing to do with the intent to evade judicial > review, why the military might detain an individual in Bagram." > > Finally, critics like Miss Thomas also have it right. In a long and > thorough post called "Obama and habeas corpus -- then and now," Glenn > Greenwald, a former constitutional law litigator who blogs at > Salon.com, exposes the gaping contradiction between past Obama > rhetoric on the inviolability of the right to habeas corpus and the > new Obama reality. He also quotes Mr. Obama's reaction to Boumediene > as a "rejection of the Bush administration's attempt to create a legal > black hole at Guantanamo." > > Manifestly, Mr. Greenwald believes that "black hole" is simply moving > to Bagram. "I wish I could be writing paeans celebrating the > restoration of the Constitution and the rule of law," he writes. "But > these actions -- these contradictions between what he said and what he > is doing, the embrace of the very powers that caused so much anger > towards Bush/Cheney -- are so blatant, so transparent, so extreme, > that the only way to avoid noticing them is to purposely shut your > eyes as tightly as possible and resolve that you don't want to see it, > or that you're so convinced of his intrinsic Goodness that you'll just > believe that even when it seems like he's doing bad things, he must > really be doing them for the Good." > > How can all these people be right? The answer is that each is > responding to a different contradiction raised by the president's > Guantanamo policy. In an impassioned 2006 speech on the Senate floor > on the right to habeas corpus, Mr. Obama declared, "I do not want to > hear that this is a new world and we face a new kind of enemy." During > the campaign, his language implied that all we needed to settle the > detainee issue once and for all was to shut down Gitmo. > > As president, he is finding out that this very much is a new world, > that we do face a new enemy, and that the problems posed by Guantanamo > have less to do with the place than the people we detain there. > > Put simply, the U.S. needs the ability to detain people we know to be > dangerous without the evidence that might stand up in a federal > criminal court. Because we can't say when this war will end, moreover, > we also need to be able to detain them indefinitely. This is what > makes the war on terror different, and why our policies will never fit > neatly into a legal approach that is either purely criminal or purely > military. > > The good news is that Mr. Obama is smart enough to know that the > relative obscurity of Bagram, not to mention the approval he has > received on Guantanamo, enables him to do the right thing here > without, as Mr. Greenwald notes, worrying too much that he will be > called to account for a substantive about-face. > > The bad news is that we seem to have reached the point where our best > hope for sensible war policy now depends largely on presidential > cynicism. > > Write to MainStreet at wsj.com > > _______________________________________________ > Rad-Green mailing list > Rad-Green at lists.econ.utah.edu > To change your options or unsubscribe go to: > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green > -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 9305 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090421/61c5bd8e/attachment.txt From tboyle at rosehill.net Tue Apr 21 21:46:30 2009 From: tboyle at rosehill.net (Todd Boyle) Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 20:46:30 -0700 Subject: [A-List] Arithmetic, Population & Energy Dr Albert A Bartlett Lecture Message-ID: Good vid! >Economic growth means increased consumption. > >Anyone who is advocating ANY change should have a firm grasp of the >fundamentals (lest they actually compound the problem!). And here's >a KEY piece of information that one must digest: > >http://www.guba.com/watch/3000053112 > > >-Mark Nagel -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 582 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090421/cd4b64ac/attachment.txt From the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com Wed Apr 22 16:52:22 2009 From: the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com (Leigh Meyers) Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 15:52:22 -0700 Subject: [A-List] "Deficit attention disorder" (Change You Can Suspend Disbelief In -Club Orlov) Message-ID: Whatta kidder! Might work though, if "...You Can Suspend Disbelief..." Wednesday, April 22, 2009 Change You Can Suspend Disbelief In This is a guest post by Publius III. I am happy to see that guest posts are becoming a venerable institution here at ClubOrlov. Long live Samizdat! Comprehensive tax relief is America's surest route to effective economic stimulus and genuine recovery. Elimination of all US income taxes would offer irresistible incentives to every American to go out and shop, swiftly restoring hope, confidence, and economic stability. For the US government, this policy shift would produce greater benefits at lower cost than any rescue package that has been tried or even considered. How I learned to stop worrying and love the deficit Over the last thirty years, the world has learned that deficits are a boon to any economy that is wise enough to use them appropriately. Indeed, perennial deficits have become a useful predictor of a nation's economic health and growth. It is government deficit spending that has created the jobs that have kept our little home planet glowing so brightly in the darkness of interstellar vacuum. The value of economic growth stimulated by each year's deficit invariably exceeds the nominal cost of the deficit itself. Budget deficits are also desirable on their own merits, because government borrowing provides a risk-free financial safe haven where the world's economic winners can place their winnings. These facts compel us to recognize that a perpetually growing total debt is highly desirable. The Obama administration certainly recognizes this key fact, and has been doing all it can to push public finances into the red as far and as fast as possible. It has also been working hard to "get the banks lending again," in order to promote rapid debt expansion in the private sector as well. Although most of this new debt would never be repaid, the massive wave of defaults will present a perfect opportunity for more government bailouts of insolvent financial institutions, further enhancing the deficit. American redux In 1835, the debt of the adolescent American republic was an unimpressive $34,000. But decade after decade the federal debt continued to expand, along with American power and influence. By the middle of April 2009, America's federal debt stood at $11.2 trillion. Current projections suggest that the total is on track to make $13 trillion before the end of the 2009 fiscal year. Coincidentally, this figure is close to the one Bloomberg gave toward the end of March for the costs of the US government's various rescues, backstops, and guarantees in the current crisis. Bloomberg's tally so far shows the American public with $12.8 trillion in such spending and promises. Realistically, the odd war here and there will add another $3 trillion to America's deficit spending in the relatively short term. Neil Barofsky, the Treasury Department's Special Inspector for oversight of the first $700 billion allocated by Congress to help ease the pain on Wall Street, asserts that an additional $2.3 trillion will be needed for that purpose, taking the visible banking tranche to about $3 trillion, for now. Meanwhile, a different branch of the US Treasury -- the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency -- catalogs $170 trillion in derivative exposure among five large US banks. A commonly accepted estimate of the failure rate of these derivative instruments is 20%. If the government is to continue to bail out the country's major financial institutions, the American public should expect this exposure to yield least $34 trillion in new obligations. America's federal housing lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will no doubt want to pitch in as well, contributing another $5 trillion of their own exposure. Finally, estimates of the present value of the unfunded entitlements of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid involve much guesswork but generally tend to fall in the range of $50 trillion to $150 trillion. For the sake of this analysis, let us accept the mean value of $100 trillion as gospel. And so, in round numbers, we are looking at somewhere around $180 trillion in total American public debt. No other single parameter could better indicate America's full spectrum dominance in world affairs. Now, contrast this majestic sum with America's net income-tax receipts in 2008: a mere $1 trillion. The idea that such a paltry sum can defray the nation's public debt is simply laughable, and yet the economic damage it inflicts is no laughing matter at all. Its continued existence is nothing less than an insult to America's hard-working men and women. Although the notion that income taxes could be eliminated altogether might seem shocking at first glance, the logic for doing so is deeply reassuring. Our $1 trillion in tax receipts is trivial. It would never be missed by the American government. Yet it remains a drag on consumer behavior. While the tax represents less than 0.6% of America's debt being amassed as you read these words, it represents 217 times America's disposable income. That is, the abolition of the federal income tax has a benefit-to-cost ratio of more than 36,000 to 1. A negligible increase of existing debt would translate promptly into a massive and continuing stimulus as taxable earnings are transformed into disposable income. Deficit attention disorder In an environment where $12.8 trillion can be conjured and deployed in a matter of weeks, and where expressions of dollar-denominated public obligations require fifteen digits, America's income-tax revenue is a mere rounding error in terms of government finance. Furthermore, as Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke revealed in his recent 60 Minutes interview on CBS television, the money being spent to rescue the American economy costs taxpayers nothing, because it's much more akin to printing money than it is to borrowing. And so Bernanke should find no problem with printing an extra trillion each year to make up for the loss of federal income tax receipts. Although it may superficially seem like an increase in government obligations, rest assured that it will not cost taxpayers a thing. Banish the thought of eventual repayment! We know full well that deficits just make America stronger! History now demands bold, decisive action from all of us! Don't take it to the bank No other program could produce an equivalent psychological or economic impact. For every individual US taxpayer, the abrupt and overwhelming relief of tax absolution would trigger an avalanche of consumer spending dwarfing all previous exuberances, irrational and otherwise. The benefits would extend to every wage earner and to all who are self-employed. Even those who pay no taxes today would indirectly benefit from the inevitable tsunami of prosperity. Stop thinking of it as debt; think of it as free money. Repeat after Chairman Bernanke: "it's much more akin to printing money." And if that money is printed in sufficiently large denominations, then printing a lot of money at once becomes very economical. Let's roll! http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2009/04/change-you-can-suspend-disbelief-in.html ___________________________________________________________ Sent by ePrompter, the premier email notification software. Free download at http://www.ePrompter.com. From the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com Wed Apr 22 17:49:25 2009 From: the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com (Leigh Meyers) Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 16:49:25 -0700 Subject: [A-List] Gerald Celente, on (the potential for) American Fascism Message-ID: On Obama's 'recession garden': They're eating organic food while offering the rest of the world GMO crops Video courtesy of: The Gates of Hell and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. http://www.the-gates-of-hell.com/video-gerald-celente-on-american-fascism/ ___________________________________________________________ Sent by ePrompter, the premier email notification software. Free download at http://www.ePrompter.com. From tal1 at cogeco.ca Wed Apr 22 18:29:06 2009 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 20:29:06 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Roots of the S & L scandal Message-ID: ...two parts, approx. 8 - 9 minutes each...Some of you may already be apprised of this stuff, but it was new to me (i.e. the connections between the S&L scandal and CIA black ops)...worth a gander Tony > http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/411.html > > > > > ============================== > > > > Brasscheck TV > 2380 California St. > San Francisco, CA 94115 > > To unsubscribe or change subscriber options visit: > http://www.aweber.com/z/r/?zAxs7OwctMwcLIysjIzMtEa0LGzszMxMDA== > > From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Thu Apr 23 03:31:11 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2009 18:31:11 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Infinite Debt Message-ID: <49F0355F.7040908@ashisuto.co.jp> How unlimited interest rates destroyed the economy by Thomas Geoghegan Harper's Magazine Essay (April 2009) As I walk through the Loop in Chicago, I wonder how many people I pass are caught up in lawsuits. In a Whitman mood, I try to guess from each face who's being hauled into court to pay off a debt. According to a front-page story in the Chicago Tribune last June, the number of collection cases before the circuit court of Cook County came to over 130,000. That's double the number of cases in 2000, and well before the meltdown: obviously the number is even higher now. At the Daley Center, across the street from my office, I can watch hundreds of these cases go to judgment in half an hour: in go the debtors, out go the lawyers to garnish people's wages. And then there are the home foreclosures, some 44,000 of them in 2008. The number of collection and foreclosure cases in this one county - 174,000 - is equal to the total number of people in three entire Chicago wards: every man, woman, and child. I stress "child" in particular, since the banks give out credit cards like candy. Yes, 174,000 cases - and that was before the economy tanked. These are not old-fashioned collection cases either. Typically, the banks are enforcing arbitration awards handed down by "private arbitrators" who more or less work full time for the banks. So the banks can sue anyone anywhere in any court in America without having to provide a witness or prove a case. The pain of all this may get much worse. If deflation comes (even in a mild form), it means each dollar of debt will be harder to repay. That's why populists in the 1890s took up their pitchforks: deflation made it increasingly difficult to pay off the principal on their loans. But at least in the time of William Jennings Bryan, they were only paying back at five percent. While we deflate, creditcard holders will be paying off at rates of twenty percent to 35 percent, and 1890s-type deflation would make the rate feel more like 35 percent to fifty percent. What's the worse of all the legal changes that fill up collection courts? There are so many, but I'd pick the legalization of usury. It's the form of deregulation that not only drove us into debt but also sped up the loss of the manufacturing jobs that created our middle class - that, in short, brought about our current Time of Troubles. That's what I tried to tell the people at the Catholic Worker Movement. It was last September, and around the block from our little soup kitchen, Wall Street was about to collapse. I was supposed to give the Friday night reflection right under the little room where Dorothy Day used to live. It's a puzzle about the Catholic left in New York, or at least they baffle the Catholic left in Chicago. In New York, it's all gentle and anarchist; and in Chicago, even on the Catholic left, it's all about, well, organization - our little door-to-door canvassing. In imperial New York, this Chicago-type organizing seems a little ridiculous. Most of the anarchists here were elderly, over seventy, like the average age of nuns. It was odd to see a few young blonde girls. Someone said they were from Germany. In fact, even some of the older people spoke German. The German girls, gorgeous, looked like they had stepped off the tennis court. They were here on some kind of fellowship. Their experience of America would be serving up soup in SoHo. So on this holy night when Wall Street was on fire, I told this little story: One day in late 2000, I got a call from Monsignor John Egan, a labor priest and civil rights activist who had marched with Saul Alinsky. When he hit old age with his bad heart, he'd try to get people to join committees by saying, "Oh, Sue" - or Bill or Jean or Tom - "it's probably the last thing I'll ever ask of you". He made these requests for years. But in what was really the last time, he wanted me to help him fight a new kind of loan - payday loans at rates of 100 percent or 500 percent or 700 percent, which were increasingly on offer in Illinois. I was astonished. For a guy like Jack Egan, who had marched with Walter Reuther and Martin Luther King Jr, this seemed like such a minor issue. Who'd even take out a payday loan? Now, years later, when there are well over a thousand of these loan agencies in Illinois, and Jack Egan has long since died, I wish I could say: "O Monsignor, you were right". He could see, years before the rest of us: this fight against the banks was like the fight to unionize, it was like the civil rights movement. He knew, as the rest of us did not, where an Alinsky, a Reuther, a King would be - they'd be marching on the banks. Some people still think our financial collapse was the result of a technical glitch - a failure, say, to regulate derivatives or hedge funds. All we need is a better chairman of the SEC, like brass-knuckled Joe Kennedy, FDR's first pick. It's personnel - it's Senator Gramm's fault. Or it's Robert Rubin's fault. In fact, no amount of New Deal regulation or SEC-watching could have stopped what happened. Hedge funds in themselves did not cause Wall Street to collapse. Some New Deal-type regulation was actually introduced in recent years, but it failed to do much: think of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which made CEOs swear an oath that their financial statements were not fraudulent. No, the deregulation that led to our Time of Troubles was of a deeper, darker kind. The problem was not that we "deregulated the New Deal" but that we deregulated a much older, even ancient, set of laws. First, we removed the possibility of creating real, binding contracts by allowing employers to bust the unions that had been entering into these agreements for millions of people. Second, we allowed those same employers to cancel existing contracts, virtually at will, by transferring liability from one corporate shell to another, or letting a subsidiary go into Chapter Eleven and then moving to "cancel" the contract rights, including lifetime health benefits and pensions. As one company after another "reorganized" in Chapter Eleven to shed contract rights, working people learned that it was not rational to count on those rights and guarantees, or even to think in these future-oriented ways. No wonder people in our country began to live for the moment and take out loans and start running up debts. And then we dismantled the most ancient of human laws, the law against usury, which had existed in some form in every civilization from the time of the Babylonian Empire to the end of Jimmy Carter's term, and which had been so taken for granted that no one ever even mentioned it to us in law school. That's when we found out what happens when an advanced industrial economy tries to function with no cap at all on interest rates. Here's what happens: the financial sector bloats up. With no law capping interest, the evil is not only that banks prey on the poor (they have always done so) but that capital gushes out of manufacturing and into banking. When banks get 25 percent to thirty percent on credit cards, and 500 or more percent on payday loans, capital flees from honest pursuits, like auto manufacturing. Sure, GM is awful. Sure, it doesn't innovate. But the people who could have saved GM and Ford went off to work at AIG, or Merrill Lynch, or even Goldman Sachs. All of this used to be so obvious as not to merit comment. What is history, really, but a turf war between manufacturing, labor, and the banks? In the United States, we shrank manufacturing. We got rid of labor. Now it's just the banks. Which is why the middle class is shrinking. Basically, we're all waiters now; we're bowing and scraping and working for the banks. Look closely at any American, and it's even odds that he or she, directly or indirectly, is somehow employed by the "financial services sector", which covers insurance and real estate and financial instruments of any kind. As brokers, lawyers, loan collectors, loan consolidators, secretaries at big investment firms, chauffeurs of private limousines, or even the high-tech types who exist solely to service banks - all of us, millions of us, are part of it, living off it in some way, as three generations ago we lived off manufacturing. Yes, we should have more regulators, many more; but as long as capital gushes into the financial sector, the speculators, the gamblers, will continue to outnumber the regulators who can watch them. In 2002 and 2003, financial firms took more than forty percent of the profits that accrued to US corporations - that's according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Anyway, the point is that forty percent is more than double the share the financial industry was taking - about eighteen percent - when Ronald Reagan left office and interest rates were just beginning to really climb. And the Bureau of Economic Analysis may be understating how much of the economy is now based on finance. Think of the growth of the health-insurance industry, for example. Or think of GM, which, like GE, really makes its money by running a bank on the side. "After a while", said a friend from Detroit, "the only reason they were making cars was so they could make loans". Everything followed from this. The bloating of the financial sector helped create the growing US trade deficits, which brought in a flood of cheap money for borrowing - which helped further bloat the financial sector. Look at the timing. The big trade deficits came at about the time the caps on interest rates came off, in the late 1970s. Capital flowed out of manufacturing, with its "low" profits, and into the financial sector, where profits were much higher. We became less competitive in manufacturing because we could not accept the lower rate of profit - not vis-a-vis our competitors in Mexico, but vis-a-vis our competitors in New York City. Who helped the financial sector make too much? We did. In a sense, we use our credit cards to help liquidate our own jobs, the kind we used to have in Michigan and Ohio. By little teaspoons, the people who go into debt for kitty litter pull a bit more capital out of one sector and pour it into another, Who's to blame? Let's start with the lawyers. Yes, once again, as with everything, lawyers are to blame. I blame the lawyers because the financial sector would not have been able to crowd out manufacturing without three major changes in the law. First, and worst of all (as I always have to say, being a labor lawyer), we lost the right to organize. That's a long story, but over the years employers found out they could just ignore the Wagner Act and fire pro-union workers right before so-called secret-ballot elections: they found out there was no real limit on what they could use as threat. And the result is that people in this country can't get a wage increase. They can't get a wage increase despite all our gains in productivity. That's not supposed to happen. But that's what did happen. The Economic Policy Institute reports that, since 1972, the median hourly wage for men has remained basically flat, and has actually declined for the bottom fifth of workers. (Women saw more of an improvement, but that's only because women were grossly underpaid in 1972.) What is more astonishing is that in this very same period, when workers were losing financial ground, their productivity - their output per hour - nearly doubled. They were doing twice as much work for the same wage or less. I hope Ayn Rand, if she were still alive, would be at least a little shocked. At any rate, the wage stagnation that resulted from the inability to organize goes a long way toward explaining the current situation. People took their "cut" of productivity by going into debt. You may object: "Why did people have to go into debt? After all, family income went up." That's true, but only because more family members were working - and working longer hours. The income "gain" was illusory. The more hours people worked, the more they had to pay out in day care, in transportation, in eating at fast-food restaurants; that is, in outsourcing their private lives to vendors. I could go on about this: how we need more cars to get more family members to work, and so on. Let's just say that the longer we're away from, home, the less we really take home at the end of the day. This growing gap between how much we produced and how much we earned led to a bizarre paradox: as the economy grew, individual people were actually becoming worse off. Even people who were making more money were living in a way that put them deeper in debt. I think many of these people, strung out, began making wild consumer purchases as objective correlatives for the fact that they had no time to consume. It seems that the less time there is to consume, the more consumers spend. I have briefly mentioned the second big legal change: over the past forty years, employers have found ways to cancel any earned right, of any kind, at any time. I'd say that with a competent lawyer any employer can cancel any promise to any worker. As a result, people learned it was not rational to save. In particular, right around the time Reagan took office, companies began to figure out that they could go in and out of Chapter Eleven in order to dump their obligations not just to workers but also to retirees. As a labor lawyer, I saw firsthand in bankruptcy court the shocking way in which companies could cancel retirees' health, severance, and pension rights, though some were federally insured. Although we now think of the middle class as a debtor class, people came into these Chapter Eleven cases not as debtors but as creditors - yes, creditors, because big wealthy companies owed them pensions. By the time the "reorganizations" were over, the creditors had managed to hang on to five cents on the dollar, maybe ten. Often the companies weren't "bankrupt". The parent firm was simply shutting down the subsidiary and taking all the loot. The shock of all these lost property rights turned into anti-wisdom that the old steelworkers passed down to their children and grandchildren: "Why save? There isn't any point." Sure people stopped saving. Planning for the future no longer made much sense. At this moment - the late 1970s - as people lost their right to organize, as they lost their rights as creditors in court, they were just in time to trade in their union cards for credit cards. That's the third big change, which came along with the other two: the legalization of usury. That process of legalization was complex, and happened over the course of several years at both the state and federal levels, but I'd say the breakthrough, the case that made it all possible, was Marquette National Bank vs First of Omaha Service Corporation, a 1978 Supreme Court opinion. Alas for us who love him, the decision was written by Justice William J Brennan, who seems in this case to have taken a little nap. Minnesota was trying to impose its law against usury on an out-of-state bank. The Court held that Minnesota could not cap the credit card of a Nebraska bank, because both banks were subject to the National Banking Act of 1864, which allows national banks to charge interest at the rate set by the state "where the bank is located", regardless of the laws in the state where the bank is actually lending money. So it became the law of the land: the old, state-mandated top rates of nine percent or so were gone; now, thanks to the Supreme Court and the National Banking Act of 1864, there were no effective caps on what the big national banks could charge credit-card holders. Now we're all shoveling billions into the banks, and there's no way working people who can't get a raise will ever climb out of debt. And that leads to an unhappy thought: Who turned the United States into a debtors' prison? Maybe it was Lincoln, who first enforced the act. Yes, it is tempting to blame a Republican. The change in credit-card caps also had a bad effect on the moral character of the nation. Because interest rates were so high, the banks no longer wanted borrowers with good moral character. Look at the way lending has changed just since the time I was in law school in the early 1970s. Even then, the mantra of my teachers in contracts and commercial paper was: "The loan must be repaid!" I have a friend, a professor, who still quotes that refrain. But it's put of date. At interest rates of 25 percent, or fifty percent, or 500 percent, lenders don't really want the loan to be repaid - they want us to be irresponsible, or at least to have a certain amount of bad character. I like to tell people that to find out what deregulation of usury did to us, they should check out the next Christmas showing of It's a Wonderful Life. Remember, Mr Potter the bad banker would not make loans, while the tender-hearted George Bailey always would. Mr Potter wanted references. He wanted character. Mr Potter was the bad guy because the loan must be repaid! But Mr Potter was lending at an interest rate of something like two percent. At those rates, he wanted to be repaid. But now Mr Potter would have more choices. If he could charge 35 percent, he might not necessarily think, "The loan must be repaid" - at least not right away. And if he can charge 200 percent, he actually may not want the loan ever to be repaid. I had a retired schoolteacher in my office the other day whose husband is deep into Alzheimer's. The two had taken a loan for $1,700, somehow managed to pay back $3,000, and still they had not even begun to pay off the principal. That's not uncommon in our post-Mr Potter world. But that's just interest. Along with the collapse of anti-usury laws, we have also seen the deregulation of virtually everything else bankers do. Now banking is a fee-based business, too. First, people run up huge interest debt, and then they start making overdrafts and bouncing checks, and then come the hidden fees. There are overdraft fees, fraud-detection fees, and fees the banks just make up for no reason at all. I have a client with twenty-seven payday loans. I told her to stop paying any of them. "You paid enough. Close your bank account." But she couldn't. Her bank had decided that she had no right to close her account. And sure enough, as each of the twenty-seven checks came in and bounced, the bank charged her a whopping fee. These are the same banks that begged her as a taxpayer to give them bailout money. It may be hard to grasp how the dismantling of usury laws might lead to the loss of our industrial base. But it's true: it led to the loss of our best middle-class jobs. Here's a little primer on how it happened. First, thanks to the uncapping of interest rates, we shifted capital into the financial sector, with its relatively high returns. Second, as we shifted capital out of globally competitive manufacturing, we ran bigger trade deficits. Third, as we ran bigger trade deficits, we required bigger inflows of foreign capital. We had "cheap money" flooding in from China, Saudi Arabia, and even the Fourth World. May God forgive us - we even had capital coming in from Honduras. Fourth, the banks got even more money, and they didn't even consider putting it back into manufacturing. They stuffed it into derivatives and other forms of gambling, because that's the kind of thing that got the "normal" big return; that is, not five percent but 35 percent or even more. Go back to the top and repeat the sequence. It was what scientists call an autocatalytic reaction. It just kept going. All of that cheap money would have been a good thing if it had gone into manufacturing. But it didn't. The capital inflows from the big trade deficits couldn't go into manufacturing because the returns in banking were just too high. And because this autocatalytic reaction kept going - as long as there was the imbalance between finance and industry - the system could not readjust or stabilize. The bigger the deficit, the bigger the capital inflow; and the bigger the capital inflow, the bigger the financial sector became; and the bigger the financial sector became (relative to manufacturing), the bigger the trade deficit became. And meanwhile, we lost more and more skill-based jobs. Oh, we had jobs, and even jobs that required college and postgraduate educations. But we stopped being skill-based workers. We became "knowledge workers", dependent on the financial sector. And knowledge workers, unlike skill-based workers, don't have the bargaining power to get higher wages out of rising productivity. What can they withhold? They can't withhold knowledge. And since they have nothing to withhold, it's much trickier for knowledge-based workers to get a higher wage. And if there are fewer skill-based workers, it becomes harder to raise wages in general. And if it's harder to raise wages, then more of us go into debt. Joseph Schumpeter, the great economist, long ago criticized the theory of what he called "the vanishing investment opportunity", which attempted to explain why the global economy had come to a halt in the 1930s. The theory was that capitalism required a constant stream of new products to invest in, and once that stream ran out, capitalism would collapse. But Schumpeter was certain that the supply of new things to bet on would never run out, because technology, and capitalism's inherent creative dynamics, would always provide anther investment opportunity. Of course, Schumpeter was writing about the manufacturing sector. In Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (1942), his most famous work, he barely mentions banking, which has come to dominate our system. And with no cap, with no limit on the bloat, the financial sector faces the same problem as manufacturing - especially now that it has managed to extract all of the value from manufacturing. That is, the financial sector constantly needs new "products". So we came up with more derivatives. We had always had futures, but now we had futures about futures. We have long had futures on the weather; for example, there is a weather index. But now we have futures on the weather futures. These are the "products", not widgets, et cetera, that our form of financial capitalism makes. This is what our country makes now; new products on which to place our bets. After the dot-com bust, we lost even our taste for investing in high tech. But we missed those dot-com profits, and so we turned our powers of invention to the bubbles themselves. We invented bigger and better pumps, in the form of new financial products. The good news was that these new financial products would continue to give the kinds of returns that the financial sector had, in a post-usury-law world, come to expect. But there are at least two paradoxes here. Paradox one: "You say interest rates were too high, but in fact, the Fed rate, which sets most other interest rates, has rarely been lower than it was over the course of the past decade". I admit it's paradoxical. But as we now know, with low-interest mortgages - even the subprimes - the interest rates really were high, because they were variable. People took these loans in the same way they got credit cards, and paid no interest for the first three months. They were teasers or loss leaders. And even if those rates did not rise "variably", a mortgage with very little down is a guarantee that the new "owner" is so house poor that he or she will need other kinds of debt to get by - credit-card debt at 35 percent. Paradox two: "You say the banks were awash with money, but in fact it now seems the banks were all broke". After all, the Treasury is now trying to bail out the banks themselves by injecting them with hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars. It's trying to fix the books. But if the banks had such high returns - if they were making such a killing on interest - how is it that now they have no assets? It's easy for the banks to go broke, fast, or to let their assets run down, if they can lend at rates of twenty percent to 35 percent. Why keep anything in reserve? That's what bankers did when there were caps on the returns! But not now: remember CitiBank's famous ad, "Put Your Money to Work". Well, it's so cynical for a bank to say that, I thought. It's a euphemism for saying: "Hey, you're not in enough debt - you need to be in more debt". But it seems CitiBank believed its own ads. That's why it collapsed. "Put your money to work". Now Robert