From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Wed Jul 1 03:53:50 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill) Date: Wed, 1 Jul 2009 18:53:50 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Let Them Eat Cash Message-ID: <20090701185350.1c57e105.shimogamo@ashisuto.co.jp> Can Bill Gates turn hunger into profit? by Frederick Kaufman Harper's Magazine Report (June 2009) The latter-day emperors arrived in Rome. Presidents, prime ministers, plutocrats, puppets, dictators, and thugs left their limousines across the street from the Circus Maximus and paraded into the High-Level Conference on World Food Security and the Challenges of Climate Change and Bioenergy. That was quite a bit to consider in one conference, but as the number of starving people on earth rose toward one billion, famine pushed aside all other concerns. On the first day, Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, echoed the wisdom of Thorstein Veblen as he blamed world hunger on "conspicuous consumptions", which have "put all nations in the world on the verge of destruction". Such practices, declared Ahmadinejad, were satanic. Mahmoud al Habash, the Palestinian minister of agriculture, articulated a different perspective. "The main reason for the world food problem is political", he said, "The rich countries want to control the world". The way to end world hunger, explained al Habash, was to end the occupation of the West Bank. The Pope sent an envoy with blessings from the Almighty, and a few words of advice. "Feed the hungry", said His Eminence Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone. During the three days of the hunger summit, more than a thousand reporters filed stories they culled from more than a hundred hunger speeches and hunger news conferences, a vast testament to the involuntary urge of non-hungry people to say something in the face of hunger, to explicate starvation, to offer a solution. The conference in Rome may have inspired the greatest mass recital of famine narratives in human history, and as I downed my espressos in the mornings before the assembly I'd read the latest installments. The stories varied in focus and emphasis but employed the same basic plot points: biofuel production, caterpillar plagues, commodity speculation, crop disease, drought, dwindling stockpiles, fear, flood, hoarding, war, and an increasing world appetite for meat and dairy had bubbled into a nasty poison. Every day, another 25,000 people starved to death or died from hunger-related disease: every four seconds, another corpse. Rising prices for corn, cooking oil, rice, soybeans, and wheat had sparked riots in Bangladesh, Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, Egypt, Ethiopia, Haiti, Indonesia, and nineteen other countries. Not to mention Milwaukee, where a food voucher line of nearly 3,000 people descended into chaos. ("They just went crazy down there", said one witness. "Just totally crazy".) Oddly enough, almost none of the food riots had emerged from a lack of food. There was plenty of food. The riots had been generated by the lack of money to buy food, and therein lay what may have distinguished today's hunger from the hunger of years past. Therein lay the substance of the Rome conference. In 1798, Thomas Malthus predicted that population growth would ineluctably outpace food production, a prediction yet to be proven correct. For much of the past century, global crop production has actually outpaced global population growth. Even so, people continue to starve to death. In 1971, when starving children from Bangladesh to Biafra became the topic of dinner-table conversation across America, 961 million people in the developing world went hungry. That year, the Rockefeller and Ford foundations had joined forces with the United Nations, the World Bank, and other organizations to fund research in high-yield varieties of rice and wheat; this research, along with expanded use of fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and irrigation, and subsequent changes in agricultural methodology - collectively dubbed the Green Revolution - more than doubled cereal production in Asia over the next quarter century. Today, there is enough production capacity to feed the planet - enough, in fact, to feed a planet with double the population. The world population has, of course, already nearly doubled since 1971, and the proportion of people who are hungry has fallen considerably. Despite the undeniable magnitude of this achievement, the Green Revolution is far from complete. In fact, just two decades after they launched it, the agrocrats were blindsided by an astonishing reversal: the real number of hungry people in the developing world began to climb again, from 823 million in the early 1990s to 907 million in 2008. And since 2003, the overall proportion of hungry people is also on the rise. Which leads to the inevitable conclusion: Malthus was correct to predict that as time went on, more people would starve to death. He just got the mechanism wrong. Lack of money, not lack of food - that was the new answer, and at the Rome hunger summit, money solutions abounded. Rent support, social security, and subsidized electricity had become part of the debate. One group of delegates advocated price-fixing and tariffs; another argued for free markets and the abolition of tariffs. Decrease exports, demanded some; increase exports, pleaded others. Subsidize the rice trade; tax the rice trade. Purchase more grain from abroad; purchase less grain from abroad. Despite such an abundance of divergent tactics, the general understanding at the summit was that the old model of hunger management no longer worked; that the age of shipping surplus rice and wheat across the oceans was over; that handing out candy bars and sacks of flour was not a long-term solution; that direct food assistance was dead; that now was the time for a new conceptualization of the old problem. Everyone could agree that when the price of your daily bread topped your daily salary, all the agricultural methodology in the world would not make a difference. Money, on the other hand, could help. But how much money? And what, precisely, should we do with it? In his opening address, the director general of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations made it simple. Dressed in flowing blue robes, Jacques Diouf assured the assembly that his organization could take care of the problem for $30 billion a year. At which point Diouf requested donations. Later that afternoon, the president of Senegal put the problem more bluntly. "This concept of assistance is now out of date", declared Abdoulaye Wade. "Don't tell us what to do", he continued. "We know what to do. You will see. We will change everything." Which was how Wade requested $800 million for his own country's use, no questions asked. "Modern agriculture requires capital and technology", noted Uganda's minister for water and the environment. "And for these inputs we need both local and foreign investors". Perhaps the latter-day emperors were right. Nothing improved the human condition like cash. Which meant that the only way to understand world hunger would be to follow the money. Although food and coin made a nice pair, there was a certain irony to the betrothal, considering that years before the debut of shekels and bullion, there were plenty of bananas and coconuts. Indeed, many anthropologists who study pre-industrial societies have asserted that instead of slogging through a short, brutish life of paleolithic poverty, so-called savage hunter-gatherers ate better than we eat, worked less than we work, slept a lot more than we sleep, and spent a great deal of their time hanging out, doing nothing. "The amount of hunger", Marshall Sahlins wrote three decades ago in his book Stone Age Economics (1972), "increases relatively and absolutely with the evolution of culture". Indigent or not, peckish primitives found ready supplies of mollusks, moths, and caterpillars. "Hunters", concluded Sahlins, "keep banker's hours". Perhaps there really was a golden age of plenty, a time and place removed from everything we know of the world, a time without money, a time without hunger: the ever fruiting plains of Avalon and Eden, the big rock-candy mountain, and Cockaigne, where fish and fowl begged to be eaten and the rivers flowed with wine. Explorers who have sought such lands of primal satiation have more often than not found themselves floating around the South Pacific. Here they discovered Tikopia, an island where the natives feast all visitors with roi, upupu, and oka, rich and fragrant dishes concocted from great piles of almonds, cassava, breadfruit, sago, taro, and yams - all pounded together and slow-cooked over hot rocks until the ingredients have coagulated into a thick, sweet pudding. There's plenty for everybody. Tikopia was living, breathing, ethnological proof of prelapsarian satiation. Then, half a century ago, the island hit a spot of bad luck. Back-to-back cyclones laid waste to huts, trees, and tubers. The almonds, cassava, sago, taro, and yams disappeared into the sea, along with every last betelnut and breadfruit. The big rock-candy mountain transformed into a wasteland, and the emaciated natives, once renowned for their generosity and kindness, turned kinsman against kinsman, tribesman against chief. "Nearly everyone was stealing", reported the anthropologist James Spillius, "and nearly everyone was robbed". Indeed, even the most bucolic of the loinclothed set don't always like to share, particularly around dinnertime. "Broil your rat with its fur on", goes the Maori proverb, "lest you be disturbed by someone". And the Bemba have a special name for the person who sits in your house and says: "I expect you are going to cook soon. What a fine lot of meat you have today!" That person is called a witch. Of course, as Stone Age economies progress toward cash economies, warlocks and devils become poor people - which may be a step in the right direction. Perhaps the radical anthropologists of the 1960s had let politics slip into their fieldwork, and had been wrong to vilify modern markets. Perhaps the Congolese Pygmies, the Komu-Konda, and the Wugukani worked harder than we do, for much less. Not to mention the various and sundry other savages of Africa and Melanesia, whose famished gullets drove them to sorcery, senilicide, and cannibalism. But what about all those other golden ages, particularly the ones that featured money? When classical Athens descended into one of its periodic food shortages, long-forgotten celebrities like Xenokles and Archestratos would bestow hundreds of thousands of medimnoi of grain upon the suffering city-state and make things right. Like their modern equivalents, the ancient celebrities were rewarded with prime-time bronze statues, names carved in marble, and front-row seats at the games. Of course, there was plenty of grain hoarding and price gouging, too. A couple thousand years ago, a Greek shipping merchant named Dionysodorus was hauled into court for promising to deliver grain to Athens but instead selling it to Rhodes, where buyers had offered more drachmas. In 323 BC the penalty for breaking grain contracts during a hunger crisis was death, but Dionysodorus, like many an ancient merchant, almost certainly managed to evade his mug of hemlock. The standard reaction of the Roman plebeian in times of food shortage was to rush the Palatine and threaten to burn the grain-rich senators alive. "It is most unjust that the hunger of one's own fellow-citizens should be a source of profiteering for anyone", lamented the Roman consul Antistius Rusticus - but nobody listened to him. When severe food shortages struck during the Middle Ages, merchants set up stalls in the open market and purveyed chops and steaks of human meat. During Eastern Europe's great hunger of 1032, parents sold their children. On the third morning of the Rome hunger summit I sat in the back row of the Iran Room, where the United Nations held its press conferences, and listened to the remarks of Josette Sheeran, executive director of the World Food Program. The WFP is the largest humanitarian organization in the world, part of the elite club of NGOs that have spent billions trying to end world hunger. Sheeran had just completed her first year as executive director of the WFP, and already rumor had it she might be next in line for president of the United Nations. "High food prices and increasing demand present a huge, historic opportunity", said Sheeran. The World Food Program had been recycling agricultural surpluses and sending them across the world since 1962. Now, Sheeran declared, the program was facing the biggest challenge in its history, and if her organization and the famine-relief industry in general did not take immediate action, the number of hungry people in the world would soon double. "The bottom billion will become the bottom two billion", said Sheeran. It was the 1970s all over again. By percentages, as bad as it got. By real numbers, beyond the beyond. The press scribbled in their notebooks and tapped their laptops. And Josette Sheeran smiled. An ex-journalist, she had learned the subtleties of media relations at the Washington Times, the conservative daily broadsheet founded and bankrolled by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church. Sheeran joined the church in 1975 and could boast a classic 1970s de-programming story wherein her father - the former mayor of West Orange, New Jersey - stormed a church-run school and tried to rescue his daughter. The attempt failed, and Sheeran remained a member of the church for more than two decades, even as her spiritual leader declared, "I will conquer and subjugate the world" and, "I am your brain". She reached a pinnacle of sorts as the managing editor of the Times. Then, having exhausted the social, political, and professional possibilities of Moon's church, Sheeran left the paper, converted to Episcopalianism, took a job as an undersecretary of state for the George W Bush Administration - and, finally, decided to feed the hungry. Sheeran was now directing the World Food Program's $6 billion budget. She commanded their vast fleets of barges, camels, donkeys, planes, trains, trucks, and elephants. When Sheeran finished her remarks I followed her out of the Iran Room and asked if she could explain what she had meant when she said, "High food prices and increasing demand present a huge, historic opportunity". Where was room for opportunity in high food prices and increasing demand? Were not high food prices driving riots and famine across the globe? Were not there more hungry people than ever before? "There was a time when we did not know how to produce enough food in the world", Sheeran said, and gave me a dazzling smile. "Now we do". Of course, every hungercrat at the Rome conference understood there was enough food for everyone, even if the fact of food paled before the privilege of purchasing it. As Sheeran began the narrative of how the World Food Program would eradicate world hunger, we were joined by her second in command, Nancy Roman, the WFP's director of communications, who observed Sheeran the way campaign managers monitor their candidate. "This is not your grandmother's food aid", Sheeran quipped as Roman kept watch. In the beginning, most of the contributions to the World Food Program came in the form of food, but as the years went by a growing proportion of the contributions came in the form of cash. Originally, the organization had focused on delivering its rice and beans directly to those who had the bad luck to inhabit the most cursed spots on earth. But as grain surpluses went down and the price of shipping went up, the WFP took the logical step of purchasing food supplies from sources closer to the famine, in many cases even from within the borders of the affected country. Thus did the WFP purchase 18,000 metric tons of corn and beans from Rwanda last year, for $6.3 million, and 210,000 metric tons of food from Uganda, for $55 million. Which made these countries' respective presidents, Paul Kagame and Yoweri Museveni, happy to cooperate with the WFP's designs for the future. In fact, World Food Program plans called for the presidents of Rwanda and Uganda to travel to New York just a few months after the Rome hunger summit. There, at United Nations world headquarters, presidents Kagame and Museveni would welcome the WFP's newest program. And on that morning, Josette Sheeran revealed, the African presidents would be joined by none other than Bill Gates. Gates, Sheeran explained, was going to help the WFP expand its program of local purchasing to small farmers and grain traders in the farther reaches of their client nations. Such purchases, as logistically difficult as they might be, would increase and support the agricultural efforts of these so-called smallholders. "This is the next wave of the story", said Sheeran. Grain purchases from small farmers and traders would put cash into the hands of hundreds of thousands of people and encourage farmers to plant and harvest more and more food. In addition, the WFP would put these farmers in contact with other groups, who would in turn help them acquire better seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides, more advanced irrigation systems, larger warehouse facilities, and improved access to roads. Thus could a poverty-stricken peasant move from being a recipient of food aid one year, to creating a bit of surplus the next, to making a profitable business out of it a few years down the line - and supplying food for others. In order to realize these plans, the World Food Program would guarantee a market where none might now exist. They would do so, in part, by "forward contracting", whereby the WFP would promise to purchase a certain amount of a farmer's output, at a certain price, either one, two, or three years down the line. Such guarantees would give small farmers the incentive to plant more crops, since they could count on an eventual market for their goods. A WFP contract might even help farmers get credit from the local bank, or perhaps a bit of crop insurance. Josette Sheeran told me the acronym for her pilot program: P4P, which stands for Purchase for Progress. The $76 million program would be funded by the Howard G Buffet Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the government of Belgium. In its first year of forward contracting, P4P would commit the World Food Program to purchasing 40,000 tons of food from 350,000 small farmers. "We are studying a proposal with Bill Gates on a way to do the contract", Sheeran said. P4P was designed to mimic sophisticated global markets. Along with its purchase guarantees, P4P included plans to support countrywide commodity exchanges, which the WFP hoped would develop along the lines of the Chicago Board of Trade. (In Ethiopia and Uganda, exchanges have already opened.) In the new paradigm, the smallest farmer can benefit from the biggest market. In some cases, P4P would not purchase a farmer's grain immediately but instead would encourage him to warehouse his product and receive a receipt. More mysterious than rice or millet, this slip of paper presented a number of intriguing possibilities. First of all, the receipt allowed the farmer to register with his countrywide exchange, a place in the capital city where all the grain from all the country's farmers could be bought and sold. Henceforth, the rural farmer could follow fluctuating prices with the technology of his mobile phone. The once indigent peasant could become a commodity trader and peg his sale to any time of the year. In this way, he could forecast, model, and leverage more financing. No matter that commodity speculation and grain hoarding had helped trigger the world food crisis. No matter that the recent Agribusiness Accountability Initiative declared that massive and unregulated commodity-market speculation "has pushed the prices of wheat, maize, rice and other basic foods out of the reach of hundreds of millions of people around the world". Of course, the WFP would take no responsibility for market peaks, valleys, doldrums, and crashes. The happy news was that the solution to world hunger would no longer have to be about the food. It could be about the money. And I imagined the sowers and reapers of Africa, Asia, and South America transformed into a massive cartel of grain dealers - leveraging, diversifying, and cornering markets, driving the price of rice arid beans as high as the market could bear. The peasant-turned-trader could wait as long as he liked to go to market and, while he waited, place bets on which way the market would move. He could hoard in the great tradition of grain dealers, hedge in the great tradition of bankers, and eventually pull in enough profit to render obsolete every guarantee and support of the World Food Program, quit farming, and go into insurance and banking for himself. Thus the new paradigm. Thus the end of world hunger. And thus the end of my conversation with Josette Sheeran, who had to run to her next meeting. Nancy Roman stayed behind, so I asked her about rising food costs and all those riots. Higher wheat and rice prices could conceivably help farmers, higher grocery bills might benefit agribusiness, and speculation in commodity markets might be a boon for investors of all shapes and sizes - but how did such financial fluctuations affect the urban underclass of Nigeria and the rural poor of Guatemala? "Listen", said Nancy Roman, "speculation always drives up the cost of everything. Housing, telecommunications, shoes .." Before she joined the WFP, Roman had been president of the G7 Group. She had made her living explaining Washington policy to hedge-fund managers, and as a result she could situate virtually any political or social phenomenon within easily comprehensible financial constructs, and she could explain why, in the midst of the world food crisis, the Ospraie Special Opportunity Fund and the BlackRock Agricultural Fund had gone on their latest buying sprees, snapping up grain silos, grain elevators, fertilizer-distribution centers, and huge tracts of land. Indeed, as the world's best and brightest focused on food security, the solution to the age-old problem of hunger appeared increasingly to coincide with the age-old techniques that the best and the brightest themselves employed to ensure their own security. The solution to world hunger was more investment all the way up and all the way down the line, and all investments were speculative. "What people are uncomfortable about is when you speculate about food", continued Roman, "something so fundamental to life. When you're speculating on something that is the essence of life, when you're speculating in that space ..." and here she stopped. She gazed across the pressroom and she frowned. "People don't like that", she said. In good times and in bad, it's hard to say no to money - which can foster dependency like nothing else. Of course, the purpose of transforming the international food-aid business into an international-business business is to foster entrepreneurial independence, not subservience. So in order to be truly transformative, the money gift cannot simply be a gift and nothing but a gift. If that money is not to create a perpetual state of subordination, the money gift must create business. As in P4P, the cash might impel small farmers to purchase more loans, more pesticides, more seeds, more land; to buy low and sell high. Of course, when money has been deployed as a spur to action, the deployment becomes entangled in ideology. The money may eventually spark the widest variety of political and economic reactions. For example, Maori warriors believe that all gifts ultimately accrue to the giver, so that if you give a hungry man a fish he may rightfully gut and cook and eat the fish, but the spirit of the fish, its hau, will eventually become restless and return to the giver of the fish. And if the gift happens to be the guaranteed-grain-purchase formulae of the World Food Program, the hau will journey through the spirit land of giftdom until it returns to its nativity, the warm, rich, capitalist womb of Bill Gates. Along the same lines, Claude Levi-Strauss noted that the Nambikwara chieftains of the Brazilian Amazon proved their chieftainship through generosity. By distributing food and other goods, the big man retained and increased his power. Thomas Hobbes made "gratitude" his fourth Law of Nature: "No man giveth, but with intention of good to himself". And the Eskimo have a proverb: "Gifts make slaves as whips make dogs". In Niger, following a spate of local purchases like those promised through P4P, millet prices rose by thirteen percent in local markets, followed by a seven percent uptick in the national average. Guaranteed sales had increased consumer prices, which would eventually send more people into poverty and starvation. The money gift triggered all manner of unforeseen consequences. It may be best not to know the ultimate effect of your gift. Such knowledge might compromise the ideological romance that made the gift possible in the first place. Thus did a frenzy of cash pledges mark the end of the hunger summit in Rome, although no one at the conference really understood what would be done with their money. Ed Schafer, the United States secretary of agriculture, led the flurry with an announcement that the United States Department of Agriculture would donate $5 billion over the next two years. French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced that his country would donate one billion euros. "Dying people are not happy people", noted Sarkozy. After Sarkozy, the International Fund for Agricultural Development announced a gift of $200 million. The World Food Program mobilized $750 million, and Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank, pledged $1.2 billion. The African Development bank pledged $1 billion; Spain pledged $773 million; the United Kingdom, $590 million; Japan, $150 million; Kuwait, $100 million; Venezuela, $100 million; the Netherlands, $75 million; and New Zealand, $7.5 million. On the last day of the hunger summit, the Islamic Development Bank chipped in $1.5 billion. "For what?" asked one hungercrat I met in the hallway. "It is unclear". As the New York P4P press conference approached, I began to consider a question for Bill Gates. Why, despite our spending more money than had ever been spent to solve the problem of world hunger, and why, despite everybody's best efforts to reconceptualize the problem - why were more and more people going hungry? Perhaps Gates would consider the paradox that our efforts might be exacerbating the problem, that all we were doing was wrong. Obviously, this was not the kind of thing I could vet beforehand with a publicist, or send over to media at gatesfoundation.org expecting a response. The nature of the question seemed to defy reason. Which was why I went to visit Amartya Sen. As a nine-year-old boy, Sen witnessed the Bengal famine of 1943, the last Indian famine, which occurred only four years before the end of the Raj. Between two million and three million people died, and Sen watched them drop in the streets. This was the famine that occasioned Winston Churchill's remark that the famine was of no great account because the Indians would simply "breed like rabbits". When Sen grew up he became a professor of economics and philosophy. His specialties included the economics of poverty and famine, and many of his 26 books and 375 articles deal with these subjects. For much of his career, Sen focused on the fact that during the worst period of the Irish famine of the 1840s, "ship after ship sailed down the Shannon, bound for England, laden with wheat, oats, cattle, hogs, eggs, and butter". Similarly, during the Ethiopian famine of 1973, food moved out of the hardest-hit Wollo province and headed toward more affluent purchasers in Addis Ababa. Such uncanny food "counter-movements" led Sen to the insight that if governments were to intervene in such situations, famines would not be so very difficult to prevent, "The rulers", he wrote, "never starve". Sen had crunched the hunger numbers as no one else had done before, not just for Bengal in 1943 and Ireland in the 1840s but also for Ukraine in the 1930s, China in the 1950s and 1960s, Ethiopia in the 1970s, Bangladesh in 1974, Somalia and Sudan several times over. In 1982 he published a book called Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation that transformed the field. Other books followed, including Inequality Reexamined and Rationality and Freedom. In 1998, Sen was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics. He lives in one of those quaint shingle-style houses a few blocks from Harvard Square, and on the rainy day I came to visit I found him dressed in an Oxford button-down, a gray sweater vest, a pair of khakis, and baby-blue socks. First we ate, then we talked. His daughter served baked fish in mustard seeds, and after lunch, since Sen was recovering from surgery, we retired to his living room and he reclined on the pink couch, a yellow coverlet tucked under his chin, his head and his knee propped up on an elaborate arrangement of seven pillows. Next to him sat a pitcher of ice water, a bottle of Evian, a box of Kleenex, a pair of crutches, two phones, and two assistants. "When people think they believe in this or that", said Sen, "I'm not sure". He paused for an enormous period of time. He moved the pillows, straightened the coverlet, and glanced at the two watercolors that hung above the fireplace, portraits of Willard Quine and John Rawls. Old friends of his. And it occurred to me that Sen was not an economist so much as a philosopher, and that the solution he had found to world hunger had been the outcome of a purely rational analysis, the same approach Descartes employed to cast a cold eye on the nature of his own existence, and that Socrates used to face death without flinching. "I believe in reason", said Sen. "There are those who want to repress reason. Christian, Muslim, and Hindu fundamentalists, and those who pick a totem market economy, the liberal economic state. These are all anti-reason. He paused again and closed his eyes. I knew that Sen had written the introduction to a book on AIDS in India that had been funded by the Gates Foundation, and I wondered if the affiliation would cloud his perspective, but after a few minutes he began to expound upon the relationship of market-based movements of food to demand and purchasing power, and to explain that none of these forces necessarily have anything to do with who gets enough to eat and who doesn't. In fact, there was no fixed relation of any sort between food and famine. Some famines, like Bangladesh in 1974, occur in years of peak food availability. In the midst of a severe hunger crisis, agricultural subsidies do not make much of a difference. And in the face of famine, a reliance on market economies is as ineffective as a reliance on loaves and fishes or manna from Heaven. Even so, said Sen, famines are not terribly difficult to avoid. Prevention requires the speedy implementation of emergency income-creation and employment programs, in combination with the broader social infrastructure of representative democracy and a free press, which happens to be the best early-warning system. Famine happens when rulers are alienated from those they rule, he explained, and a functioning democracy is a simple way to remove such alienation. Famine happens when there is no free press, because rulers tend to feel embarrassed when photographs of starving children appear on the front page. New formulations of the hunger problem were not necessary. Sen had discovered the solution and he had gone over it many times, in abstruse tables for Econometrica, in articles for the Handbook of Mathematical Economics, and in features for Granta. He had explained the solution in his hundreds of essays and dozens of books in thousands of seminars and public addresses, yet his endlessly rehearsed points had not been enough. The world remained irrational, and people starved. Of course, no other hunger narrative had ever succeeded either. Nor had any institution in the world been able to end world hunger. "No one organization alone can do it", Sen said. "None of the organizations alone can". I asked if the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization was up to the job. "No", he said, and closed his eyes. "That I profoundly doubt". What about Bill Gates and the World Food Program? "It can do a lot of good", he said. "But it's not the way of solving the problem". "Nothing but money is sweeter than honey", Benjamin Franklin famously remarked. The portliest founder understood that market dynamics reflect appetites, and were thus driven more by the irrational gut than the rational mind. Unreason may not seem so unreasonable when you are dying of hunger, but full stomachs also make their demands and possess their involuntary ideologies. Even the most well-intentioned, well-fed capitalist may fail to recognize that his own actions are causing the very problems he most sincerely wants to solve. After all, it is rational to invest in a commodity when its price rises, even if corn costs do happen to push up feed prices. Chickens eat chicken feed made from that corn, so the price of a dozen organic eggs hits $6.39. "All indications are that soaring feed costs are going to force livestock and poultry producers to raise prices", said Joel Brandenberger, president of the National Turkey Federation, "or risk going out of business". Bill Roenigk, chief economist of the National Chicken Council, predicted that "food inflation is poised to begin and continue for many, many months". All of which impelled Iowa Senator Charles Grassley to wax rabid and liken the American grocery lobby to the Nazi Party. "They have to have an excuse for increasing the price of their food", said Grassley. "It's another Adolf Hitler lie". As food prices rise, profit margins recede, and Sara Lee Corporation makes the front page of the Wall Street Journal with a $695 million quarterly loss. Meanwhile, in El Salvador, the government suggests that hungry people simply tighten their belts. Was anyone or anything immune from hunger's plague of unreason? Were academics like Amartya Sen the only ones with the proper analytical tools to withstand the onslaught of hysteria? Was there any evidence, in all of human history, that those who lived the life of the mind might rise above their intestines? From suzannedk at yahoo.com Wed Jul 1 12:38:33 2009 From: suzannedk at yahoo.com (Suzanne de Kuyper) Date: Wed, 1 Jul 2009 11:38:33 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Addtition Message-ID: <555542.34754.qm@web30904.mail.mud.yahoo.com> To ask what the reasoning is behind plots to do truly mad things such as controling the world population by some kind of exterminations, a favorite of Hitler and more millions of other people than the world has ever been able to accept, does not lend itself to rationality. Of any kind. Remembering that can be both comforting and redirect the thrust of your analysis to one that may clarify better. suzannedk at gmail.com P S : The US is selling cloned meats to it's own population and to the world's countries as if it is regular meats. No warnings on any of it. Few know. I watched the sucessful debates about this in the House in 2007 or early 2008. From shniad at sfu.ca Wed Jul 1 14:50:16 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 1 Jul 2009 13:50:16 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Showdown in Honduras In-Reply-To: <1878196766.1119061246481189842.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1097228319.1119431246481416408.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.truthout.org/063009S?n t r u t h o u t June 30, 2009 Showdown in Honduras: The Rise and Uncertain Future of the Coup "While many major news outlets in the US, including the Miami Herald, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, said an impetus for the coup was specifically Zelaya's plans for a vote to allow him to extend his term in office, the actual ballot question was to be: "Do you agree that, during the general elections of November 2009 there should be a fourth ballot to decide whether to hold a Constituent National Assembly that will approve a new political constitution?" by Benjamin Dangl Worldwide condemnation has followed the coup that unseated President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras on Sunday, June 28. Nationwide mobilizations and a general strike demanding that Zelaya be returned to power are growing in spite of increased military repression. One protester outside the government palace in Honduras told reporters that if Roberto Micheletti, the leader installed by the coup, wants to enter the palace, "he had better do so by air" because if he goes by land "we will stop him." Early Sunday morning, approximately 100 soldiers entered the home of the left-leaning Zelaya, forcefully removed him and, while he was still in his pajamas, ushered him onto a plane to Costa Rica. The tension that led to the coup involved a struggle for power between left and right political factions in the country. Besides the brutal challenges facing the Honduran people, this political crisis is a test for regional solidarity and Washington-Latin American relations. Manuel Zelaya Takes a Left Turn When Manuel Zelaya was elected president on November 27, 2005, in a close victory, he became president of one of the poorest nations in the region, with approximately 70 percent of its population of 7.5 million living under the poverty line. Though siding himself with the region's left in recent years as a new member of the leftist trade bloc, Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), Zelaya did sign the Central American Free Trade Agreement in 2004. However, Zelaya has been criticizing and taking on the sweatshop and corporate media industry in his country, and he increased the minimum wage by 60 percent. He said the increase, which angered the country's elite but expanded his support among unions, would "force the business oligarchy to start paying what is fair." At a meeting of regional anti-drug officials, Zelaya spoke of an unconventional way to combat the drug trafficking and related violence that has been plaguing his country: "Instead of pursuing drug traffickers, societies should invest resources in educating drug addicts and curbing their demand." After his election, Zelaya's left-leaning policies began generating "resistance and anger among Liberal [party] leaders and lawmakers on the one hand, and attracting support from the opposition, civil society organizations and popular movements on the other," IPS reported. The social organization Via Campesina stated, "The government of President Zelaya has been characterized by its defense of workers and campesinos, it is a defender of the Bolivarian Alternative of the Americas (ALBA), and during his administration it has promoted actions that benefit Honduran campesinos." As his popularity rose over the years among these sectors of society, the right wing and elite of Honduras worked to undermine the leader, eventually resulting in the recent coup. Leading up to the Coup The key question leading up to the coup was whether or not to hold a referendum on Sunday, June 28 - as Zelaya wanted - on organizing an assembly to rewrite the country's constitution. As one media analyst pointed out, while many major news outlets in the US, including the Miami Herald, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, said an impetus for the coup was specifically Zelaya's plans for a vote to allow him to extend his term in office, the actual ballot question was to be: "Do you agree that, during the general elections of November 2009 there should be a fourth ballot to decide whether to hold a Constituent National Assembly that will approve a new political constitution?" Nations across Latin America, including Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, have recently rewritten their constitutions. In many aspects, the changes to these documents enshrined new rights for marginalized people and protected the nations' economies from the destabilizing effects of free trade and corporate looting. Leading up to the coup, on June 10, members of teacher, student, indigenous and union groups marched to demand that Congress back the referendum on the constitution, chanting, "The people, aware, defend the Constituent [Assembly]." The Honduran Front of Teachers Organizations [FOM], with some 48,000 members, also supported the referendum. FOM leader Eulogio Ch?vez asked teachers to organize the expected referendum this past Sunday in schools, according to the Weekly News Update on the Americas. The Supreme Court ruled that the referendum violated the constitution as it was taking place during an election year. When Honduran military Gen. Romeo Vasquez refused to distribute ballots to citizens and participate in the preparations for the Sunday referendum, Zelaya fired him on June 24. The Court called for the reinstatement of Vasquez, but Zelaya refused to recognize the reinstatement, and proceeded with the referendum, distributing the ballots and planning for the Sunday vote. Crackdown in Honduras Vasquez, a former student at the infamous School of the Americas, now known as Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), went on to be a key leader in the June 28 coup. After Zelaya had been taken to Costa Rica, a falsified resignation letter from Zelaya was presented to Congress, and former Parliament leader Roberto Micheletti was sworn in by Congress as the new president of the country. Micheletti immediately declared a curfew as protests and mobilizations continued nationwide. Since the coup took place, military planes and helicopters have been circling the city, the electricity and internet have been cut off, and only music is being played on the few radio stations that are still operating, according to IPS News. Telesur journalists, who have been reporting consistently throughout the conflict, were detained by the de facto government in Honduras. They were then released, thanks to international pressure. The ambassadors to Honduras from Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua were arrested. Patricia Rodas, the foreign minister of Honduras under Zelaya has also been arrested. Rodas recently presided over an OAS meeting in which Cuba was finally admitted into the organization. The military-installed government has issued arrest warrants for Honduran social leaders for the Popular Bloc Coordinating Committee, Via Campesina and the Civic Council of Grassroots and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras, according to the Weekly News Update on the Americas. Human rights activist Dr. Juan Almendares, reporting from Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, told Democracy Now! that due to government crackdowns and the electrical blackout, there is "not really access to information, no freedom of the press." He said, "We have also a curfew, because after 9:00 you can be shot if you are on the streets. So we have a curfew from 9:00 to 6:00 a.m." In a statement on the coup, Via Campesina said, "We believe that these deeds are the desperate acts of the national oligarchy and the hardcore right to preserve the interests of capital, and in particular, of the large transnational corporations." Mobilizations and Strikes in Support of Zelaya Members of social, indigenous and labor organizations from around the country have concentrated in the city's capital, organizing barricades around the presidential palace, demanding Zelaya's return to power. "Thousands of Hondurans gathered outside the presidential palace singing the national hymn," Telesur reported. "While the battalions mobilized against protesters at the Presidential House, the TV channels did not report on the tense events." Bertha C?ceres, the leader of the Consejo C?vico de Organizaciones Populares y Ind?genas, said that the ethnic communities of the country are ready for resistance and do not recognize the Micheletti government. Dr. Almendares reported that in spite of massive repression on the part of the military leaders, "We have almost a national strike for workers, people, students and intellectuals, and they are organized in a popular resistance-run pacific movement against this violation of the democracy.... There are many sectors involved in this movement trying to restitute the constitutional rights, the human rights." Rafael Alegr?a, a leader of Via Campesina in Honduras, told Telesur, "The resistance of the people continues and is growing, already in the western part of the country campesinos are taking over highways, and the military troops are impeding bus travel, which is why many people have decided to travel to Tegucigalpa on foot. The resistance continues in spite of the hostility of the military patrols." A general strike was also organized by various social and labor sectors in the country. Regarding the strike, Alegr?a said it is happening across state institutions and "progressively in the private sector." The 4th Army Battalion from the Atl?ntida Department in Honduras, has declared that it will not respect orders from the Micheletti government, and the major highways of the country are blocked by protesters, according to a radio interview with Alegr?a. The Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), condemned the coup, media crackdowns and repression, saying in a statement: "[T]he Honduran people are carrying out large demonstrations, actions in their communities, in the municipalities; there are occupations of bridges, and a protest in front of the presidential residence, among others. From the lands of Lempira, Moraz?n and Visitaci'n Padilla, we call on the Honduran people in general to demonstrate in defense of their rights and of real and direct democracy for the people, to the fascists we say that they will NOT silence us, that this cowardly act will turn back on them, with great force." Washington Responds On Sunday, Obama spoke of the events in Honduras: "I am deeply concerned by reports coming out of Honduras regarding the detention and expulsion of President Mel Zelaya. As the Organization of American States did on Friday, I call on all political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms, the rule of law and the tenets of the Inter-American Democratic Charter. Any existing tensions and disputes must be resolved peacefully through dialogue free from any outside interference." But the US hasn't actually called what's happened in Honduras a coup. Hillary Clinton said, "We are withholding any formal legal determination." And regarding whether or not the US is calling for Zelaya's return, Clinton said, "We haven't laid out any demands that we're insisting on, because we're working with others on behalf of our ultimate objectives." If the White House declares that what's happening in Honduras is a coup, they would have to block aid to the rogue Honduran government. A provision of US law regarding funds directed by the US Congress says that, "None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available ... shall be obligated or expended to finance directly any assistance to the government of any country whose duly elected head of government is deposed by military coup or decree." "The State Department has requested $68.2 million in aid for fiscal year 2010 [for Honduras], which begins on October 1, up from $43.2 million in the current fiscal year and $40.5 million a year earlier," according to Reuters. The US military has a base in Soto Cano, Honduras, which, according to investigative journalist Eva Golinger, is home to approximately 500 troops and a number of air force planes and helicopters. Regarding US relations with the Honduran military, Latin American History professor and journalist Greg Grandin said on Democracy Now!: "The Honduran military is effectively a subsidiary of the United States government. Honduras, as a whole, if any Latin American country is fully owned by the United States, it's Honduras. Its economy is wholly based on trade, foreign aid and remittances. So if the US is opposed to this coup going forward, it won't go forward. Zelaya will return ..." The Regional Response The Organization of American States and the United Nations have condemned the coup. Condemnation of the coup has come in from major leaders across the globe, and all over Latin America, as reported by Reuters: the presidents of Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and Cuba have been outspoken in their protests against the coup. The French Foreign Ministry said, "France firmly condemns the coup that has just taken place in Honduras." Argentine President Cristina Fernandez said, "I'm deeply worried about the situation in Honduras ... it reminds us of the worst years in Latin America's history." Even Augusto Ram?rez Ocampo, a former foreign minister of Colombia told the NY Times, "It is a legal obligation to defend democracy in Honduras." Only time will tell what the international and national support for Zelaya means for Honduras. Regional support for Bolivian President Evo Morales during an attempted coup in 2008 empowered his fight against right-wing destabilizing forces. Popular support in the streets proved vital during the attempted coup against Venezuelan President Chavez in 2002. Meanwhile, Zelaya supporters continue to convene at the government palace, yelling at the armed soldiers while tanks roam the streets. "We're defending our president," protester Umberto Guebara told a New York Times reporter. "I'm not afraid. I'd give my life for my country." From shniad at sfu.ca Wed Jul 1 14:58:09 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 1 Jul 2009 13:58:09 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] 150 Years (Madoff's sentence) In-Reply-To: <770880704.947311246398293640.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1910809140.1120191246481889327.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Links and forum to comment on this and other columns at: June 30, 2009 150 Years Twenty-five years ago, poisonous gas escaped from a factory run by the chemical company Union Carbide in Bhopal, India. Many thousands died, many more were debilitated or badly injured, and the plant site remains polluted. Despite charges of culpable homicide, executives from Union Carbide (now merged into Dow Chemical) were never tried or sent to jail. By Robert Weissman One hundred and fifty years jail time for Bernard Madoff is a good thing. To listen to the victims of his swindle, or read their words, is to appreciate the very far-reaching ways in which Madoff's quiet crime has wreaked havoc on the lives of thousands of families. Federal District Judge Denny Chin was absolutely right in denouncing Madoff's crimes as "extraordinarily evil," and giving him the maximum sentence. Punishment is no substitute for prevention, but the sentence provides a modicum of justice to the victims and will exert some modest deterrent effect against future potential swindlers. The 150-year sentence is headline grabbing, but what should surprise us is not that Madoff got such a long sentence, but that other corporate criminals escape with light sentences or no criminal prosecution at all. In August 2006, U.S. Federal District Court Judge Judith Kessler adjudged the leading tobacco companies to have engaged in a 50-year long conspiracy to deceive the public about the health risks of smoking and to addict children to tobacco. Millions in the United States -- and many more around the world -- have died as a result of this conspiracy. But you won't find any tobacco executives in jail for this "extraordinary evil." Twenty-five years ago, poisonous gas escaped from a factory run by the chemical company Union Carbide in Bhopal, India. Many thousands died, many more were debilitated or badly injured, and the plant site remains polluted. Despite charges of culpable homicide, executives from Union Carbide (now merged into Dow Chemical) were never tried or sent to jail. In 1989, the Exxon Valdez hit a reef in Prince William Sound Alaska. Eleven million gallons of crude oil spilled onto 1,500 miles of Alaskan shoreline, killing birds and fish. The spill ruined the livelihoods of thousands of Native Americans, fishermen and others. The captain was convicted of a misdemeanor and sentenced to community service. Exxon pled guilty to misdemeanor violations of federal environmental laws. No executives went to jail. Victims of horrendous human rights abuses and environmental destruction caused and abetted by oil companies operating in Burma (Unocal/Chevron), Nigeria (Shell and Chevron), Ecuador (Texaco/Chevron) and Indonesia (Exxon), among other places, have -- with lawyers and international solidarity campaigns -- waged heroic and increasingly successful efforts to obtain monetary compensation for the wrongs they have suffered. But there's no prospect of CEO and executive perpetrators of those wrongs being criminally prosecuted. For two decades, the multinational oil companies and the giant coal producers have engaged -- and continue to engage -- in a prolonged campaign to deny and discredit climate change science. In doing so, they have imperiled the planet and its people. Paul Krugman, properly, calls this treason against the planet. But while execution is the highest penalty for treason against country, treason against the planet won't even get you the equivalent of a parking ticket. What to make of the disparity between the appropriate sentencing for Bernard Madoff and the get-out-of-jail free approach for other leading corporate criminals and malefactors? There are a few lessons and conclusions. First, the Madoff case differs from many of these other examples of corporate wrongdoing in that the individual perpetrator is so closely related to the victims. Although he was handling billions of dollars, Madoff had a skeleton staff, and he had personal connections with many of those he swindled. As a result, the victims and the public's anger is visceral and very targeted -- not directed at an amorphous giant corporation. Second, Madoff's victims have power. They have the ability to hire lawyers, and to organize for redress and retribution. Corporate crime victims in poor communities, or in poor countries, generally do not have this kind of power. Nor do those who will fall victim in the future to consequences of actions carried out today. Third, and relatedly, the penalties for financial crimes are generally much stiffer than for other corporate crimes. The New York Times has an interesting feature comparing Madoff's sentence to other white-collar, financial criminals, many of them convicted of Enron-era crimes; Madoff's sentence is much longer, but the others received stiff penalties as well. By contrast, it is very rare to see a felony prosecution for corporate killings. Finally, and most important, one of the signal powers of corporations is their ability to influence the law and culture so that their most heinous acts are not considered criminal. Knowingly addict millions of children to a deadly habit? Not a crime. Collaborate with military regimes and destroy lives and livelihoods in poor countries? Not a crime. Endanger the planet with greenhouse gas pollution -- and then mobilize politically to block emergency efforts to save the earth? Not a crime. The world is a little bit more just today, after the sentencing of Bernie Madoff. When other corporate culprits are sentenced comparably, the world will be a lot more just. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor, and director of Essential Action . (c) Robert Weissman This article is posted at: . _______________________________________________ Focus on the Corporation is a regular column by Robert Weissman. Please feel free to forward the column to friends, repost it on other lists or non-commercial, non-profit websites, or publish it in non-profit print outlets. (For-profit outlets, please contact rob at essential.org). Focus on the Corporation is distributed to individuals on the listserve corp-focus at lists.essential.org. To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your address to corp-focus, go to: or send an e-mail message to corp-focus-admin at lists.essential.org with your request. Focus on the Corporation columns are posted at: and . Postings on corp-focus are limited to the columns. If you would like to comment on a columns, go to: or send a message to rob at essential.org. From shniad at sfu.ca Wed Jul 1 14:57:52 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 1 Jul 2009 13:57:52 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Afghan group slams Karzai's 'warlord' vote ticket In-Reply-To: <131326646.994011246403868906.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1987374886.1120111246481872445.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5irrF6XAU8AAL6U-Fy3xjjncGr1_g Agence France Presse June 30, 2009 Afghan group slams Karzai's 'warlord' vote ticket Kabul ? An Afghan rights watchdog on Tuesday slammed President Hamid Karzai's choice of two "notorious warlords" for his August re-election bid and accused him of promising ministries to supporters. In a report, the independent Afghanistan Rights Monitor (ARM) called on the United States and United Nations, which are bankrolling the landmark election, to intervene in defence of democracy. Karzai has successfully squashed challenges to his two vice president running mates, Mohammed Qasim Fahim and Karim Khalili, ARM said. Both are believed to have links with illegal militia and criminal groups, it said, adding Karzai "has chosen two notorious warlords as his election mates in a bid to win votes from former mujahideen militias." Human Rights Watch and Western diplomats have complained in particular over Fahim, a former anti-Soviet and anti-Taliban military commander alleged to be involved in past and present crimes. In its report "The Winning Warlords," ARM said challenges were registered to bar Fahim and Khalili from standing on August 20 over alleged war crimes and crime but a "corrupt procedure" allowed them into the vote. The poll is the second presidential election in Afghan history but ARM said pre-election deals to sew up the result had dashed hopes it would allow Afghans to exercise new-found democracy. "Undemocratic forces that have constantly gained power and wealth over the past several years seem to be hijacking the election process to ensure their future interests and legitimise their grip on political and public institutions. "These forces which include former and current warlords, militia commanders and human rights abusers have money, power and influence across the country which make them incomparably stronger than the ordinary voters," it said. The report claimed that criminal charges pending against infamous Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum and his suspension from a senior army post were dropped in exchange for the votes he would bring from his party. "Those close to President Karzai and Dostum say the warlord has been promised at least three ministries in Karzai?s future government," it said. Another "ruthless warlord" Mohammad Muhaqiq came out in public support for Karzai because he was promised two provinces and at least three ministries in government, ARM said. It called for election authorities to investigate "suspicious deals and trade-offs" and for the United Nations to intervene in defence of democracy. "It is not enough for the US and other major donors to only bankroll the electoral operations with funds -- they must do every effort to ensure the meaningfulness and fairness of the process," it said. From shniad at sfu.ca Wed Jul 1 15:01:28 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 1 Jul 2009 14:01:28 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Herbert: No Recovery in Sight In-Reply-To: <1261446425.943821246397758580.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1501890803.1120551246482088647.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/27/opinion/27herbert.html?th&emc=th New York Times June 26, 2009 Op-Ed No Recovery in Sight By BOB HERBERT How do you put together a consumer economy that works when the consumers are out of work? One of the great stories you'll be hearing over the next couple of years will be about the large number of Americans who were forced out of work in this recession and remained unable to find gainful employment after the recession ended. We're basically in denial about this. There are now more than five unemployed workers for every job opening in the United States. The ranks of the poor are growing, welfare rolls are rising and young American men on a broad front are falling into an abyss of joblessness. Some months ago, the Obama administration and various mainstream economists forecast a peak unemployment rate of roughly 8 percent this year. It has already reached 9.4 percent, and most analysts now expect it to hit 10 percent or higher. Economists are currently spreading the word that the recession may end sometime this year, but the unemployment rate will continue to climb. That's not a recovery. That's mumbo jumbo. Why this rampant joblessness is not viewed as a crisis and approached with the sense of urgency and commitment that a crisis warrants, is beyond me. The Obama administration has committed a great deal of money to keep the economy from collapsing entirely, but that is not enough to cope with the scope of the jobless crisis. There were roughly seven million people officially counted as unemployed in November 2007, a month before the recession began. Now there are about 14 million. If you add to these unemployed individuals those who are working part time but would like to work full time, and those who want jobs but have become discouraged and stopped looking, you get an underutilization rate that is truly alarming. "By May 2009," according to the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston, "the total number of underutilized workers had increased dramatically from 15.63 million to 29.37 million - a rise of 13.7 million, or 88 percent. Nearly 30 million working-age individuals were underutilized in May 2009, the largest number in our nation's history. The overall labor underutilization rate in May 2009 had risen to 18.2 percent, its highest value in 26 years." If it were true that the recession is approaching its end and that these startlingly high numbers were about to begin a steady and substantial decline, there would be much less reason for alarm. But while there is evidence the recession is easing, hardly anyone believes a big-time employment turnaround is in the offing. Three-quarters of the workers let go over the past year were permanently displaced, as opposed to temporarily laid off. They won't be going back to their jobs when economic conditions improve. And many of those who were permanently displaced were in fields like construction and manufacturing in which the odds of finding work, even after a recovery takes hold, are not good. Another startling aspect of this economic downturn is the toll it has taken on men, especially young men. Men accounted for nearly 80 percent of the loss in employment in this recession. As the labor market center reported, "The unemployment rate for males in April 2009 was 10 percent, versus only 7.2 percent for women, the largest absolute and relative gender gap in unemployment rates in the post-World War II period." Workers under 30 have sustained nearly half the net job losses since November 2007. This is not a recipe for a strong economic recovery once the recession officially ends, or for a healthy society. Young males, especially, are being clobbered at an age when, typically, they would be thinking about getting married, setting up new households and starting families. Moreover, work habits and experience developed in one's 20s often establish the foundation for decades of employment and earnings. We've seen what happens when you rely on debt and inflated assets to keep the economy afloat. The economy can't be re-established on a sound basis without aggressive efforts to put people back to work in jobs with decent wages. We also need to consider the suffering that is being endured by these high levels of joblessness, including the profound negative effect on the families of the unemployed. Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, warned about the consequences for children. "What does it mean," he asked, "when kids are under stress because there is no money in the household, or people have to move more, or are combining households, or lose their health insurance? I believe this is going to leave a permanent scar on a generation of kids." The first step in dealing with a crisis is to recognize that it exists. This is not a problem that will evaporate when the gross domestic product finally begins to creep into positive territory. From shniad at sfu.ca Wed Jul 1 15:02:33 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 1 Jul 2009 14:02:33 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Mariela Castro's Hopes for Cuba In-Reply-To: <808167720.570591246304675705.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1393232372.1120701246482153802.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=10543 Havana Times June 24, 2009 Mariela Castro's Hopes for Cuba Posted By the editor By Dalia Acosta HAVANA TIMES, June 24 (IPS) - Recognized for her work in defense of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transvestites and transsexuals, Mariela Castro Esp?n advocates a form of socialism that is more just, dialectical, inclusive, and especially, participative. Castro Esp?n, 46, is the director of the National Center for Sexual Education (CENESEX) and the principal initiator of a resolution approved in mid-2008 for performing sex change operations within the Cuban state health care system. ?Participation could be the key of socialism in the 21st century,? says Mariela, who is the daughter of Cuban President Raul Castro, and the late Vilma Espin (who died in 2007), a fighter for the rights of the women and sexual minorities who was one of the historic leaders of the Cuban Revolution. In a conversation with IPS, Mariela talked about moments that have led her to where she is today, as well as the topic of socialist participation and the hopes of Cuba if the US blockade is lifted. IPS: In 2004 you met with a group of transvestites and transsexuals who were seeking assistance. Today you are recognized as the initiator of a set of reforms in support of the right to sexual diversity in Cuba. Were you always understanding of differences? MARIELA CASTRO ESPIN: It was part of a process of becoming conscious as a Cuban citizen who looked at reality, listened and questioned. Life in this country has taught me not to be a simple interpreter of reality, but to be part of it, to participate, to even try to change what I don?t like or what I believe should just be changed. IPS: Tell us of some important moment in becoming the person you are today? MCE: There are many. When I was a first-year student at the university I experienced the process of forging a revolutionary consciousness within the ranks of the Young Communist League (UJC), a process that I didn?t like and that I confronted the best I could; I believed in something better. What greatly bothered me was the extremism, the prejudices. I hated the phrase ?ideological diversionism? because I saw it as an instrument of the opportunists. What also marked me was the massive exodus from the port of Mariel in 1980. For me it was a tremendous awakening to see how many of those extremists went running to Mariel, and, still today, many of those who were punished are still here participating in the Revolution. I was also marked by the ?Special Period? (the economic crisis that began in the early 1990s). It made me re-think about what kind of socialism I wanted. It?s very interesting to see all that has been achieved in the 50 years of Revolution, with complete sovereignty and the search for social justice, but we still have a long way to go and in very broad terms. IPS: How should socialism be for it to continue being a valid option, both presently as well as in the nation?s future? MCE: I continue betting on socialism, but one based on a dialectical focus in which we are required to address all the contradictions that continue to arise and to identify the changes needed for development. IPS: How do you respond to today?s young generation, which is said to not feel a commitment to anything or anyone? MCE: Through mechanisms of participation. For me, participatory socialist democracy is fundamental, not only at a llevel of political statements or at the theoretical level, but in the creation of those mechanisms in day to day life.. That is the salvation of socialism as the historic option and the only way that youth will feel like they are a part of this effort, because they would be participating in it and because they could contribute their opinions, concerns and criticism. It?s necessary to create settings and opportunities in which youth can become a part of a reality that is being invented and created, one that they can experience and commit to because it?s part of their reality, one that they too are constructing. IPS: Have you applied that principle to the current campaign of CENESEX in support of sexual diversity? MCE: That?s exactly what we?re doing. CENESEX creates opportunities because we can?t do our work alone, nor should we. What we are doing is opening spaces and developing projects jointly. There is nothing more fascinating than participation, because we all assume responsibilities. If participatory mechanisms are developed and improved in Cuban society, they will greatly enrich our process as well as those of socialism, since this has been its weak point throughout all of its history. Cuba ? this country so authentic, original, delicious and so contradictory ? can also contribute to socialism as a system of Creole socialism in the Caribbean, which is what we are. Otherwise you?re just trying to put on a suit on that doesn?t fit, one that has nothing to do with you. IPS: With Barack Obama assuming the presidency of the United States, people have spoken a great deal about the possibility of that country easing its sanctions against Cuba. How do you imagine the island without the blockade? MCE: A Cuba without blockade is a Cuba that will prosper. This is what I requested of St. Peter when I went to the Vatican, prosperity for Cuba. First I planned to ask for the end of the blockade, but I told myself that this would only be a part of the solution. We need prosperity, with or without the blockade. The day they lift the blockade they will remove a very great weight from us so that we can survive in connection with the world. But along with that it will be fundamental to improve the mechanisms of socialist democracy, because the lifting of the blockade in itself won?t impel prosperity. We have to improve our social system. IPS: What do you think of the theory that the Cuban socialist system cannot withstand the impact of the lifting of the blockade? MCE: To be alive is to be in danger, and the Cuban Revolution has always been in danger. Is it possible to have been subjected to more danger than what we?ve already been through? ? I don?t think so. I believe it will be an opportunity, a dangerous one, but an opportunity, and we have to take maximum advantage of it. It will be fundamental for Cuba, as it would be for any country. What country can survive a blockade? Cuba survived, but at a high cost ? in many senses. IPS: Do you share the opinion that we live in a country in which everything is seen through the perspective of its relations with the United States? MCE: Everything is related to it. We have developed a culture of the blockade and we?ll have to learn the lessons of life without the blockade of Cuba, which wants to survive with a socialist system. In my opinion, it must be a system that is more prone to development, more inclusive and more dialectical. Socialism cannot lose its dialectical focus of interpretation and development if we?re to withstand the impact of lifting the blockade. Everything that we do will have to be as a function of guaranteeing our sovereignty, without neglecting the internal mechanisms that mustn?t be as narrow as they have been. I still have the energy, hope and strength to continue fighting for this socialism. I know that the Revolution has developed many defense mechanisms in the face of the constant hostility from the US imperialism and all its vast resources. And that?s not just some trite phrase; it?s an expansive, intensive, very cruel imperial system, and it?s necessary to continue fighting, to not back down in the face of violence, in the face of the pressures that we will continue to confront. When there is conviction on a road, you don?t yield. What?s most important is that we take this journey along the most intelligent route possible. IPS: ?that you don?t veer against the Cuban people themselves? MCE: Exactly, that we don?t veer against ourselves. For that reason the development of participatory mechanisms is the key. How do we want Cuban socialism to be? How do we want to build it? How will we do it? And what are the principles that we cannot give up? Of course, we must retain our national dignity, sovereignty, and social justice, so that in the search for development we don?t fall for mechanisms of exploitation, but there are indeed other mechanisms ? perhaps ones of cooperation in the economic plane ? that can allow us to prosper, to satisfy the population?s growing needs, perhaps through the fiscal policy, the possibilities of the state? IPS: What do you expect from Obama? MCE: In my personal opinion, he doesn?t have very good advisers on Cuba or on Latin America. I hope that we can have dialogue, a rapprochement. From his personal biography I find him to be a wonderful person, but now that he has assumed the role of president he has to wear another suit, and that?s difficult. I imagine that he wanted to do many things that he now can?t. IPS: Do you think that, although Obama may not achieve substantial changes during his office, the single fact of his having been elected is an important symptom of change? MCE: Yes, but the world needs a response from Obama. The world needs changes in the United States, a country that demands so many changes on the world in the interests of small circles of power. The world is demanding the United States make deep changes to survive. We cannot hope that the United States will cease being an empire, for the time being, and much less simply because of Obama, but at least the fact that Americans have chosen him is a symptom that they too want change. As they say in Santer?a (an Afro-Cuban religion) when you want to wish someone luck, you always say Ach?. So I say Ach? Obama; so that he accomplishes all he can, all that?s possible. Havana Times translation of the original article published in Spanish by IPS. From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Wed Jul 1 19:49:28 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Thu, 2 Jul 2009 10:49:28 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Like Boiling a Frog Message-ID: <20090702104928.45b55ca1.shimogamo@ashisuto.co.jp> The Wikipedia Revolution by Andrew Lih (2009) by David Runciman London Review of Books (May 28 2009) The best one-volume encyclopedia in the world used to be the Columbia Encyclopedia, first published by Columbia University Press in 1935. In our house we have the fifth edition, from 1993, and we still get it out occasionally to look up kings and queens and old-fashioned stuff like that. It's a lovely book, fat but portable and full of nuggety little entries on most things you can think of. It also has quite a poignant preface, in which the editors talk about the difficulties of updating an encyclopedia in such a fast-changing world: they note how much history, politics, even geography they have had to revise since the collapse of the Soviet Empire just a couple of years earlier. They are clearly proud of their efforts to keep up to speed, but some things inevitably slip through the net. There are for example no entries for 'email', the 'World Wide Web' or the 'internet', all of which were just beginning to attract attention in 1993. The editors think the pace of change at the end of the 20th century means that traditional works of reference are going to have a hard time keeping up. Really they have no idea. 1993 wasn't so long ago; Bill Clinton was president, a fact that the Columbia editors boast about having been able to include at the last moment (the last moment here meaning the weeks or months between the book's being set and its arriving in the shops or in the hands of door-to-door salesmen). Yet in encyclopedia publishing, 1993 is now prehistory. Even 2000, when a sixth - one has to presume final - edition of the Columbia appeared, belongs to another age. Two years later, a one-time market analyst called Jimmy Wales started up an experimental online project called Wikipedia, which allowed volunteers to create their own encyclopedia entries that could then be revised or even entirely rewritten by anyone else who happened to be logged on. Wales, like everyone else involved in the project, didn't know if it would work, but since the technology was available it seemed worth a try. In its first year, Wikipedia generated 20,000 articles, and had acquired 200 regular volunteers working to add more (this compares with the 55,000 articles in the Columbia, all subject to rigorous standards of editing and fact-checking, though this in itself was a small-scale enterprise compared to the behemoths of the industry like the Encyclopaedia Britannica, whose 1989 edition covered 400,000 different topics). By the end of 2002, the number of entries on Wikipedia had more than doubled. But it was only in 2003, once it became apparent that there was nothing to stop it continuing to double in size (which is what it did), that Wikipedia started to attract attention outside the small tech-community that had noticed its launch. In early 2004, there were 188,000 articles; by 2006, 895,000. In 2007 there were signs that the pace of growth might start to level off, and only in 2008 did it begin to look like the numbers might be stabilising. The English-language version of Wikipedia currently has more than 2,870,000 entries, a number that has increased by 500,000 over the last twelve months. However, the English-language version is only one of more than 250 different versions in other languages. German, French, Italian, Polish, Dutch and Japanese Wikipedia all have more than half a million entries each, with plenty of room to add. Xhosa Wikipedia currently has 110. Meanwhile, the Encyclopaedia Britannica had managed to increase the number of its entries from 400,000 in 1989 to 700,000 by 2007. Part of the reason the astonishing growth of Wikipedia took even its founders by surprise was that this wasn't their first attempt to set up an online encyclopedia. Wikipedia was an offshoot of something called Nupedia, which Wales had established in 2000 with the aim of using online volunteers to produce a new work of reference that would be free to use. The mistake Wales and his Nupedia collaborators made was to assume that any encyclopedia has to go through a formal editing process if it's going to be reliable. Editors were appointed whose job was to decide on appropriate topics, open them up to online editing and then approve final versions once an agreed standard had been met. The editing process had seven stages from 'assignment' to 'mark-up', and was a slow, frustrating and ultimately fruitless business. By the end of the first year about two dozen articles had been completed, while the drafts of a few hundred more were still being fretted over. It looked like the vast additional resources and manpower that the internet had made available for checking reference books was going to overwhelm the capacities of anyone trying to process the information. Hence the Wikipedia solution, stumbled on more by chance than by design: don't try to process the information. It is generally assumed that what is distinctive about Wikipedia is that it is open to anyone to contribute, but that was true of Nupedia too. Wikipedia is different in that it doesn't try to frame the creation of new entries with commissioned beginnings and fixed endpoints. It is open to anyone to initiate an entry on Wikipedia, and no entry is ever formally closed, since it is also open to anyone to keep editing and altering whatever is already there. Wikipedia still uses a large volunteer army of editors and 'janitors' to oversee the whole process, looking out for flagrant abuses and sounding the alarm when disputes get out of hand. But it is not the job of any editor to decide what counts as an entry. If there is any doubt about whether something is too trivial to take up space even in so limitless a space as Wikipedia it is put to the vote of others users (and any vote can always be overturned by another vote further down the line); otherwise, if you don't like an entry it is up to you to change it. The editors are there to try to ensure this is done in as non-abusive a way as possible. But it is not up to anyone to call time on anything. That's how it works. The puzzle is why it works, given that this way of compiling an encyclopedia seems to have a flaw so obvious it is hardly worth stating: if no entry is ever nailed down, how do you know when you are reading an entry that someone hasn't just interfered with it, making it thoroughly unreliable? The early years of Wikipedia were dogged by this suspicion, and many people - including a lot of schoolteachers and university lecturers who could remember the distant days before 2002 when books were books and editors actually edited - were openly derisive of a work of reference that appeared to make no effort to discriminate between good information and bad. It is easy to assume that some version of Gresham's Law, which states that bad money will always drive out good, must apply to the circulation of facts as well. Why would anyone with good information want to put it in a place where bad information could contaminate it at the touch of a button? Wouldn't they choose to keep it to themselves, or at the very least give it to someone who could recognise its true value, leaving open-access encyclopedias to the mercies of all the flakes and grudge-bearers who want to use its veneer of objectivity to force their craziness down other people's throats? Well, the answer is apparently not. One of the remarkable achievements of Wikipedia is to show that on the internet Gresham's Law can work in reverse: Wikipedia has turned into a relatively reliable source of information on the widest possible range of subjects because, on the whole, the good drives out the bad. When someone sabotages or messes with an otherwise sound entry, there are plenty of people out there who see it as their job to undo the damage, often within seconds of its happening. It turns out that the people who believe in truth and objectivity are at least as numerous as all the crazies, pranksters and time-wasters, and they are often considerably more tenacious, ruthless and monomaniacal. On Wikipedia, it's the good guys who will hunt you down. Wales thinks this tells us something surprising and reassuring about human nature. 'Generally we find most people out there on the internet are good', he says. 'It's one of the wonderful humanitarian discoveries in Wikipedia that most people only want to help us and build this free, non-profit, charitable resource'. But in truth it's a bit more complicated than that. Wikipedia works because it is highly distinctive in the way it pulls knowledge together from many different sources. Most internet-based techniques for gathering information are aggregative, in that they try to pool as much information as possible, allowing all the prejudices and random bits of disinformation that attach to individual opinions to cancel each other out. This is true of the many different kinds of polling that take place on the internet, which use the wisdom of crowds to produce answers far more accurate than any individual can give. It's also pretty much what happens at Google, where everybody else's searches are monitored to help filter the information that you might find useful. Aggregative methods minimise personal responsibility for what is produced and place all the emphasis on collective outcomes - after all, who knows, or cares, what their own Google searches are adding to the sum of knowledge (or subtracting from it)? However, Wikipedia's approach to knowledge gathering is not aggregative but cumulative. It builds up information bit by bit, edit by edit, and it never stops. It also leaves a virtual paper trail for every entry, so that it is possible to trace the various steps by which an article has reached its current form. When knowledge is generated by crowds, no single individual has much personal responsibility for what is produced, but nor does any one person have a realistic prospect of shaping the outcome. With Wikipedia, the opposite is true. The fact that there is no final version means that anyone can change anything, but it also means that every given change can be attributed to a particular individual. Though it is possible, and common, to make edits on Wikipedia anonymously (by hiding behind a nickname), it is still true that someone is always responsible for everything that happens, and that someone always knows who they are. So the fact that there are no authoritative versions on Wikipedia is what makes it possible to generate a sense of personal accountability for particular entries, since any entry at any given time is the responsibility of the last person to edit it. This seems to be enough to make most people want to get it right. But it also means that those who don't want to get it right can have their mistakes corrected. The secret to Wikipedia's success lies in the fact that personal responsibility for particular mistakes can't be erased, but the mistakes themselves can be. Still, it takes a lot of policing. Wikipedia has a 'Recent Changes Patrol' whose job is to surf the site picking up on all the endless obscenities and absurdities that are inserted by people who can't believe a website would allow anyone to change any page on it (when they discover that they can, but that changes quickly get corrected, the fun wears off). More serious tinkering requires more concerted oversight. From its outset Wikipedia has aimed to operate according to a code of conduct (of which the centrepiece is the proposition that 'Wikipedia has a neutral point of view'), but to dispense with firm rules. However, in 2004, the three revert rule ('3RR') was introduced in order to prevent tit-for-tat battles, whereby corrections are corrected back to their original form (known as 'reverts'), then corrected back again, and so on, because two contributors cannot agree on a single point of view. The classic case concerned the entry for Gdansk. The name of the town was changed by a German contributor to Danzig, then by a Polish contributor back to Gdansk, then back to Danzig, with no sign of this stopping until the administrators intervened. The 3RR states: 'An editor must not perform more than three reverts, in whole or in part, on a single page within a 24-hour period'. Just three changes per 24 hours in a work of reference might seem absurdly fluid by traditional standards, but for Wikipedia this was a draconian measure, adopted with deep reluctance by some. Even so, the Gdansk/Danzig wars were only finally settled when the matter was put to a vote of the wider Wikipedia community, and it was agreed that the town could be referred to as Danzig in relation to the period between 1308 and 1945, and in the biographies of 'clearly German persons'; otherwise it was to be Gdansk. It took two years of back and forth to reach this point: a traditional encyclopedia editor could have settled it in ten minutes. Nevertheless, the consensus position on the name appears to have stuck, which given the history of Gdansk/Danzig is no small achievement. That Wikipedia represents a finely calibrated balance between licence and surveillance, and between anonymity and responsibility, is something often missed by those who want to translate its achievements elsewhere. It is not an easy model to replicate. One notorious failure came in 2005, when the editorial page of the Los Angeles Times decided to experiment with a 'wikitorial', which would allow anyone to contribute to the writing of an editorial column using the same techniques as a Wikipedia entry. The aim was to let readers shape the views expressed by the newspaper; the result was a complete mess, as the entire process was hijacked by vandals determined either to skew the political slant of the piece, or to overwhelm the Times editorial page with the sort of shock images in which the internet abounds, and the project was quickly abandoned. The newspaper had made two mistakes. First, its editors seemed to imagine that a wikitorial would edit itself, so they left it alone while they devoted themselves to other things (like editing 'real' columns). But as Wikipedia shows, freedom requires constant vigilance, and a column will write itself only if someone is on hand to fight off all the people who will try to wreck it. Second, a newspaper editorial is actually a much less open-ended form of writing than an encyclopedia entry. Newspaper writing has a shelf-life: it appears and is read at a particular time, often on a particular day. As a result, contributors have an incentive to try to skew the whole process at the moment of maximum impact. The Wikipedia principle that all mistakes can be corrected (so that it is hardly worth trying to introduce them) has much less force in the case of newspapers, because by the time any corrections have been made most readers will have moved on. This is why encyclopedias have been made better by the advent of the internet, but newspapers have been made worse: the cumulative impact of the readers' comments that can now be appended online to almost any article tends to diminish most forms of human understanding. Bias is not cancelled out on the readers' pages of newspaper websites, as might happen if opinion were being aggregated, but nor is it eliminated over time, as in the case of Wikipedia. Instead, each contribution just sits there, glowering back at you, demanding your attention. I recently read through the hundreds of comments that Guardian readers had attached to an article about Julie Myerson, the novelist who wrote about her drug-addicted son and sparked a wave of middle-class outrage and voyeuristic delight. What was striking was not just the anger of all those who wanted to see the Myersons suffer horribly for their crimes, but the equivalent anger of all those who were disgusted by such vindictiveness, and the anger of the people who were appalled by the prissiness of that response, and the anger of the people who couldn't believe anyone would waste their time caring about this rubbish, and on, and on. Everyone was furious with everyone else, and determined not to be shouted down. No one with a reasonable point of view would bother wasting it on a site like this. When tempers are frayed, and time horizons are short, the bad drives out the good. One of the ironic consequences of the open-endedness of the Wikipedia editorial process is that many of its articles are preoccupied with the immediate past. The desire to update the facts about any given subject often means that the facts that remain are the most up-to-date ones. Biographical entries on living individuals tend to concentrate on the most recent things they have done, particularly if these have generated a lot of newsprint that can be used as source material. For an encyclopedia, Wikipedia devotes far too much space to the latest scandals and controversies, whose significance, if any, is impossible to gauge. But this is not a reflection of some desire on the part of the founders of Wikipedia to stir up interest by courting topicality and trivia. Far from it: it reflects an almost touching reverence for properly grounded evidence that underlies the entire Wikipedia project. Although anyone can edit anything in Wikipedia, everything that appears there is supposed to carry a reference to some published source so that it can be checked by other readers. The Wikipedia policy on this is as follows: The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth - that is, whether readers are able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether we think it is true. Editors should provide a reliable source for quotations and for any material that is challenged or likely to be challenged, or the material may be removed. The proliferation of newspaper sources on the internet means that this is often the best place to look for new, verifiable source material (particularly if you are not too bothered about truth). Most of the information out there is recent information, and so therefore is most of what winds up on Wikipedia. The insistence that everything in Wikipedia can be referred to something outside itself stems from an anxiety that the encyclopedia might otherwise become its own source material, and start to generate free-floating facts out of nothing. One of the many fascinating details to emerge from Andrew Lih's The Wikipedia Revolution is that both Jimmy Wales and one of his first collaborators, Larry Sanger, are self-confessed and totally earnest 'objectivists', meaning followers of the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Sanger wrote his doctoral thesis at Ohio State University under the title 'Epistemic Circularity: An Essay on the Problem of Meta-Justification'. He and Wales first encountered each other on an internet forum Wales had established in 1992, which offered a 'Moderated Discussion of Objectivist Philosophy' and described itself as 'the most scholarly of all Objectivist discussions available on the networks'. Other early contributors to Wikipedia learned about its existence through the community of online objectivists, and it was this bond as much as anything that drove the project forward in its initial stages. What is objectivism? Frankly, I have no idea. I have never read a word by Ayn Rand, and though I know she is an object of veneration in some surprising places (Alan Greenspan, for instance, is a fan), the little bits I have picked up always sounded a bit bonkers to me. {1} So this seemed a good test of Wikipedia's much vaunted NPOV (neutral point of view): I would look her up on Wales and Sanger's encyclopedia to find out what she's all about. Well, it's hard to express in mere words just how dispiriting an experience it is trying to find out about objectivism on Wikipedia. This isn't because the entries seem biased or uncritical. It is just that they are so introverted, boring and just long. The entry on Ayn Rand herself is more than 8000 words long and covers her views on everything from economics to homosexuality in technical and mind-numbing detail. There are separate lengthy entries on objectivist metaphysics, objectivist epistemology, objectivist politics, objectivist ethics, plus entries on all Rand's various books, including the novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and entries on all the characters in these novels, and entries that offer plot summaries of these novels, and even entries on individual chapters. All of it reads as though it has been worked over far too much, and like any form of writing that is overcooked it alienates the reader by appearing to be closed off in its own private world of obsession and anxiety. Compare this with the entry on Rand in the 1993 Columbia Encyclopedia: 1905-82, American writer, born St Petersburg, Russia. She came to the United States in 1926 and worked for many years as a screenwriter. Her novels are romantic and dramatic, and they espouse a philosophy of rational self-interest that opposes the collective of the modern welfare state. Her best-known novels include The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957). In The New Intellectual (1961) she summarised her philosophy, which she called 'objectivism'. That's it (with a couple of references appended), and seems admirably clear in seventy words. Also, by allocating her seventy words, the Columbia editors give some indication of what they think she's worth: on the same page she gets more space than the French architect Joseph Jacques Ram?e (1764-1842) and the Swiss novelist Charles Ferdinand Ramuz (1878-1947), but fewer words than the French historian and politician Alfred Nicolas Rambaud (1842-1905), the Spanish histologist Santiago Ramon y Cajal (1852-1934) and the Scottish chemist Sir William Ramsay (1852-1916). That also seems pretty clear. Wikipedia still has its advantages, however. Despairing of discovering anything about Rand that I could make sense of, I looked up the article on Jimmy Wales, to see if that shed any light on his personal philosophy. This article is also long, but more reasonably so, given that Wales is responsible for one of the most significant inventions of the 21st century. It is also admirably even-handed, managing to convey that Wales is both something of a visionary and also something of a creep. The section on his personal life includes this detail, which neither he nor anyone else has seen fit to edit: 'His first wife, Pam, was quoted in a September 2008 W magazine article as saying that Wales, because he believed altruism was evil, discouraged her from pursuing a nursing degree when they were married'. The entry also details the break-up of Wales's second marriage and the claims of a subsequent girlfriend, the Canadian conservative columnist Rachel Marsden, that she only discovered he was ending his relationship with her by reading about it on Wikipedia. I guess that's 'objectivism' for you. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Wales has long since fallen out with Sanger, re-editing his Wikipedia entry to remove any reference to him as a co-founder of the project, even though both men were there from the beginning. But it may be Sanger's PhD title that gives the clearest indication of some of the difficulties that lie ahead. 'Epistemic circularity' is a fancy way of saying that Wikipedia could prove too successful for its own good. This is not because entries on the site are likely to start cannibalising each other and end up reducing the whole thing to a relativistic soup: Wikipedia is still very good at distinguishing cross-references within the site from source material outside it. Instead, the problem may come as the source material itself starts to ape the wiki-model. Already, academic publishers are grappling with the problem of open access, which makes increasing numbers of academic articles freely available on the web ('free' here meaning not only free to use but also free to dice, slice and reproduce in another format). Some of the pressure for this move is coming from the people who fund academic research and who want to see it disseminated as widely as possible. But a number of funding bodies (particularly in the sciences) are also questioning whether it makes sense to wait until research is 'completed' before publishing it. Why not put earlier draft versions out there, or even just the initial raw data, and let others see what they can make of it? This opens up the possibility of collaborative editing online: authors might 'publish' draft versions of their books and readers could tinker with them to produce something they are happy with. Of course, the idea of the permanently updatable book raises the prospect of nightmarish copyright issues (or more likely the end of copyright altogether), and it is hardly attractive for academic publishers, since it cuts off their most obvious revenue stream, which has always been to charge for the finished product, properly edited in-house. It also raises difficulties for the idea of verifiability. Wikipedia needs its source material to be relatively stable, so that its entries can have fixed reference points. But if the reference points are themselves subject to endless change, then it becomes much harder to know what counts as verification. Meanwhile, as conventional publishing starts to open up to the Wikipedia way of doing things, the encyclopedia is toying with a revert back to more conventional methods. German Wikipedia has started experimenting with 'flagged' articles, which means articles that have been certified as reliable and free from vandalism, to meet a demand for certainty from German users. (Incidentally, this is not the only international variation in Wikipedia practice that seems to conform to national stereotypes: on Japanese Wikipedia, editors are much more reluctant than their Western counterparts to alter existing pages and prefer to conduct their exchanges on adjoining discussion sites rather than blithely interfering with what someone else has written.) The German experiment has now led to a demand for approved articles to be published separately on a static website protected from editing, in order to give readers the option of something that has been pre-verified. The question of 'flagging' is one of the issues discussed in the afterword of Lih's book, which addresses the most pressing challenges Wikipedia is likely to face in the future. Other concerns include the creation of a fully-paid executive staff, something that may cause serious divisions in an organisation that relies so heavily on voluntary labour; the risk of a major lawsuit by someone who has been libelled in a Wikipedia entry (the fact that anyone can remove the offending information doesn't prevent them from trying to sue, though it isn't clear who would be liable - the person who introduced the libel or the last person to edit the page on which it appears?); and the increasing complexity of the editing software, which is putting off many new contributors. More interesting than any of this, though, is the fact that the afterword was written as a wiki: that is, as a collaborative exercise using software similar to that of the encyclopedia itself, and made available to be freely copied and distributed. It is good of Lih to include it, since it is somewhat better written than the rest of the book, having a tighter style and a sharper focus. The single-authored chapters are full of interest but rather indulgent, containing too much incidental detail about people Lih wants to please. The afterword has none of that - it just gets to the point, and doesn't worry about offending anybody. It helps that this is a book, so space is limited, and this particular wiki can't indulge in the commonest vice of entries on Wikipedia, which is not knowing when to stop. Yet even a piece of writing that has been edited by so many people can't resist the occasional cliche. The multiple authors of the afterword write: 'The Wikipedia community might be like the frog slowly boiling to death - unaware of the building crisis, because it is not aware how much its environment has slowly changed'. When I read this, I thought: is it really true that frogs can be slowly boiled to death without realising what's happening to them? So I looked it up on Wikipedia, confident that there would be an entry. There is: type in 'boiling frog' and you go straight to a page that tells you everything you need to know. It gives you examples of the use of the term, its history and a discussion of the veracity of the central idea, including a description of the late 19th-century experiment in which it was first demonstrated and the more recent experiments that have cast doubt on it. Links at the bottom of the page take you to accounts of these later experiments in scientific journals, which suggest that the whole thing is a myth. So there it is: you won't find any of this in the Columbia, or Encyclopaedia Britannica, or anywhere else for that matter. There is no other way I could have found out about boiling frogs - truly, for all its flaws, Wikipedia is a wonderful thing. Note {1}: Jenny Turner wrote about Ayn Rand in the LRB of 1 December 2005. _____ David Runciman teaches politics at Cambridge. He is the author of Pluralism and the Personality of the State (2005), The Politics of Good Intentions (2006) and Political Hypocrisy (2008). Other articles by this contributor: This Way to the Ruin ? the British Constitution Cricket's Superpowers ? Beyond the Ashes Oh, the curse! ? David Runciman hits a home run The Garden, the Park and the Meadow ? After the Nation State Tax Breaks for Rich Murderers ? Bush and the 'Death Tax' The Precautionary Principle ? Taking a Chance on War The Cattle-Prod Election ? The Point of the Polls Invented Communities ? post-nationalism ISSN 0260-9592 Copyright (c) LRB Ltd., 1997-2009 http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n10/runc01_.html 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/ From shniad at sfu.ca Thu Jul 2 00:14:29 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 1 Jul 2009 23:14:29 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] The Yes Men withdraw their film from Jerusalem Film Festival in solidarity with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign Message-ID: <1308329570.1172391246515269430.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.tikkun.org/article.php/20090701080625471 July 1, 2009 Protesting Israeli policies, The Yes Men have withdrawn their highly acclaimed new film from the Jerusalem Film Festival where it was scheduled to be shown. "For Once, the Yes Men Say No" Dear Friends at the Jerusalem Film Festival, We regret to say that we have taken the hard decision to withdraw our film, "The Yes Men Fix the World," from the Jerusalem Film Festival in solidarity with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign (http://www.bdsmovement.net/). This decision does not come easily, as we realize that the festival opposes the policies of the State of Israel, and we have no wish to punish progressives who deplore the state-sponsored violence committed in their name. This decision does not come easily, as we feel a strong affinity with many people in Israel, sharing with them our Jewish roots, as well as the trauma of the Holocaust, in which both our grandfathers died. Andy lived in Jerusalem for a year long ago, can still get by in Hebrew, and counts several friends there. And Mike has always wanted to connect with the roots of his culture. But despite all our feelings, we cannot abandon our mission as activists. In the 1980s, there was a call from the people of South Africa to artists and others to boycott that regime, and it helped end apartheid there. Today, there is a clear call for a boycott from Palestinian civil society. Obeying it is our only hope, as filmmakers and activists, of helping put pressure on the Israeli government to comply with international law. It is painful to do this. But it is even more painful to hear Israeli policies described as "fascist" - not just from the ill-informed and the clueless, not just from the usual anti-semitic morons, but from well-informed Jewish activists within Israel. They know what they're talking about, and it's painful to think that they could be right. As we're sure you know and deplore, the Israeli government has recently authorized the construction of new units in an illegal West Bank outpost - one that is illegal even according to Israeli law. On Monday, nine Palestinians were injured as Israeli authorities demolished their East Jerusalem home. Tuesday, the Israeli navy stopped a ship from delivering medicine, toys, and other humanitarian relief to Gaza, and detained over twenty foreign peace activists, including a Nobel Peace laureate. Meanwhile, a UN commission was in Gaza investigating much worse abuses committed early this year. Whatever words are applied to such actions, our film mustn't help lend an aura of normalcy to a state that makes these decisions. For us, that's the bottom line. There is certainly another way to do things in Israel/Palestine, and that is what we must fight for, however feeble our means. As for our film, there is another way for it to be seen in Israel... and in Palestine, so that the people most in need of comic relief, who would never have been able to see it at the Jerusalem Film Festival anyhow, will be able to see it too. Within the next few months, we will make this happen. To those who want to see our film, savlanut and sabir (patience)! And for all the rest of us, a little LESS patience, please. L'shanah haba'ah beyerushalayim, Andy and Mike The Yes Men www.theyesmen.org From brandelune at gmail.com Thu Jul 2 00:37:08 2009 From: brandelune at gmail.com (JC Helary) Date: Thu, 2 Jul 2009 15:37:08 +0900 Subject: [R-G] The Yes Men withdraw their film from Jerusalem Film Festival in solidarity with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign In-Reply-To: <1308329570.1172391246515269430.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> References: <1308329570.1172391246515269430.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <52154667-19BE-4B0D-9208-D0FEF8DAB6A4@gmail.com> On jeudi 02 juil. 09, at 15:14, Sid Shniad wrote: > It is painful to do this. But it is even more painful to hear > Israeli policies described as "fascist" - not just from the ill- > informed and the clueless, not just from the usual anti-semitic > morons, but from well-informed Jewish activists within Israel. They > know what they're talking about, and it's painful to think that they > could be right. So, according to the Yes Men, anyone who is not a "well-informed Jewish activist within Israel" is an ill-informed, clueless and / or anti-semitic moron... ? Jean-Christophe Helary From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Thu Jul 2 03:43:19 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Thu, 2 Jul 2009 18:43:19 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] California's Empty Wallet Message-ID: <20090702184319.ec1be85c.shimogamo@ashisuto.co.jp> Turning Crisis into Opportunity by Ellen Brown webofdebt.com (June 30 2009) "Our wallet is empty, our bank is closed and our credit is dried up". -- Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (June 02 2009) California State Controller John Chiang has warned that without a balanced budget in place by July 1, he will begin using IOUs to pay most of the state's bills. On June 25, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger rejected a plan that would save the state $3 billion by cutting school spending, saying he would rather see the state issue IOUs than delay the funding problem with a piecemeal approach. The state's total budget deficit is $24.3 billion. Meanwhile, other funding doors are slamming closed. The Obama administration has said it will not use federal stimulus money to prop up California; and Fitch Ratings, a bond rating agency, announced that it was downgrading the credit rating of the state, which already has the lowest in the nation. Once downgraded, California's rating is likely to fall below the minimum level legally required for most money market funds, forcing the funds to sell their California bonds. The result could be a cost of millions of additional dollars in higher interest rates for the state. What to do? Perhaps California could take a lesson from the island state of Guernsey, located in the English Channel off the French Coast, which faced similar funding problems in the 19th century. Toby Birch, an asset manager who hails from there, tells the story in Gold News {1}: "As weary troops returned from a protracted foreign war [the Napoleonic Wars ending in 1815], they encountered a land racked with debt, high prices and a crumbling infrastructure, whose flood defenses were about to be overwhelmed ... While 1815 brought an end to the conflict on the battlefront ... severe austerity ensued on the home front. The application of the Gold Standard meant that loans issued over many years were then recalled to balance the ratio of money to precious metals. This led to economic gridlock as labor and materials were abundant, but much-needed projects could not be funded for want of cash. "This led to a period of so-called 'poverty amongst plenty' ... The situation seemed insoluble; existing borrowing costs were consuming eighty percent of the island's revenues. What was already an unsustainable debt burden would need to be doubled to fund the two most essential infrastructure projects. This was when a committee of States members was formed ... The committee realized that if the Guernsey States issued their own notes to fund the project, rather than borrowing from an English bank, there would be no interest to pay. This would lead to substantial savings. Because as anyone with a mortgage should understand, the debtor ends up paying at least double the amount borrowed over the long-term." To prevent an unwanted inflation of the money supply, the Guernsey States issued the notes with a date due, and on that date the bearer was paid in gold. The money came from rents on the finished infrastructure, supplemented with a tax on liquor. Birch goes on: "The end result of the Guernsey Experiment was spectacular - new roads, sea defenses and public buildings were established, fostering widespread trade and prosperity. Full employment was achieved, no deficits resulted and prices were stable, all without a penny paid in interest. What started as a trial led to a string of construction projects, which still stand and function to this day. Money was used in its purest form: as a convenient mechanism for oiling the wheels of commerce and development." Like Guernsey, California is facing "poverty amidst plenty". The state has the eighth largest economy in the world, larger than Russia's, Brazil's, Canada's and India's. It has the resources, labor, and technical expertise to make just about anything its citizens put their minds to. The only thing lacking is the money to do it. But money is merely a medium of exchange, a means of getting suppliers, laborers and customers together so that they can produce and exchange products. As has been explained elsewhere, today money is simply credit. All of our money except coins is created by banks when they make loans. The current crisis stems from a credit freeze that began on Wall Street in the fall of 2007, when banks were required to revalue their assets due to a change in accounting rules, from "mark to fantasy" to "mark to market". Banks that were previously considered in good shape, with plenty of capital for making loans, suddenly came up short. Lending fell off, and so did the available money supply. Just understanding the problem is enough to see the solution. If a private bank can create credit on its books, so can the mighty state of California. It merely needs to form its own bank. Under the "fractional reserve" lending system, banks are allowed to extend credit - or create money as loans - in a sum equal to many times their deposit base. Congressman Jerry Voorhis, writing in 1973, explained it like this: "[F]or every $1 or $1.50 which people - or the government - deposit in a bank, the banking system can create out of thin air and by the stroke of a pen some $10 of checkbook money or demand deposits. It can lend all that $10 into circulation at interest just so long as it has the $1 or a little more in reserve to back it up." {2} The ten percent reserve requirement is now largely obsolete, in part because banks have figured out how to get around it. What chiefly limits bank lending today is the eight percent capital requirement {3} imposed by the Bank for International Settlements, the head of the private global central banking system in Basel, Switzerland. With an eight percent capital requirement, a state with its own bank could fan its revenues into 12.5 times their face value in loans (100 / 8 = 12.5). And since the state would actually own the bank, it would not have to worry about shareholders or profits. It could lend to creditworthy borrowers at very low interest, perhaps limited only to a service charge covering its costs; and on loans the bank made to the state, the state would ultimately get the interest, making the loans essentially interest-free. Precedent for this approach is to be found in North Dakota, one of only three states currently able to meet its budget. North Dakota is not only solvent but now boasts the largest surplus it has ever had. The Bank of North Dakota, the only state-owned bank in the nation, was established by the legislature in 1919 to free farmers and small businessmen from the clutches of out-of-state bankers and railroad men. By law, the state must deposit all its funds in the bank, and the state guarantees its deposits. The bank's surplus profits are returned to the state's coffers. The bank operates as a bankers' bank, partnering with private banks to loan money to farmers, real estate developers, schools and small businesses. It makes 1% loans to startup farms, has a thriving student loan business, and purchases municipal bonds from public institutions. Looking at California's budget figures, projected state revenues for 2009 are $128 billion {4}. At a reserve requirement of ten percent, if California deposited all $128 billion in its own state-owned bank, it could issue $1.28 trillion in loans, far more than it would need to cover its $23 billion budget shortfall. To lend itself the money to cover the shortfall, it would need only $2.3 billion in deposits and about $2 billion in capital (assuming an eight percent capital requirement). What Sheldon Emry wrote of nations is equally true of states: "It is as ridiculous for a nation to say to its citizens, 'You must consume less because we are short of money', as it would be for an airline to say, 'Our planes are flying, but we cannot take you because we are short of tickets'". As a card-carrying member of the banking elite, California could create all the credit it needs to fund its operations, with money to spare. Links: {1}: http://goldnews.bullionvault.com/guersney_experiment_credit_creation_gold_standard_051920083 {2} http://www.sonic.net/~doretk/ArchiveARCHIVE/ECONOMICSPOLITICS/FEDERAL%20RESERVE/Jerry%20VoorhisFedReserve.html {3} http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/creditcrunch.php {4} http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/BudgetSummary/BSS/BSS.html _____ Ellen Brown developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt (2007), 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 (1998), Nature's Pharmacy (1998), co-authored with Dr Lynne Walker, and The Key to Ultimate Health (2000), co-authored with Dr Richard Hansen. Her websites are www.webofdebt.com and www.ellenbrown.com. (c) Copyright 2007 Ellen Brown. All Rights Reserved. http://www./articles/california_wallet.php 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/ From shniad at sfu.ca Thu Jul 2 12:13:14 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Thu, 2 Jul 2009 11:13:14 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Action Alert: Protests in front of Israeli embassies tomorrow In-Reply-To: <1196021062.1266991246557852831.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <759962666.1270931246558394829.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Press Release Thursday 2nd July 2009 Action Alert: Protests in front of Israeli embassies tomorrow London, 2 July, (ECESG) - The European campaign to end the siege on Gaza (ECESG) called today for international human rights organizations and lobbying groups to organize large protests in front of Israeli embassies across Europe in solidarity with activists of Freegaza Movement. Activists onboard of the humanitarian boat were kidnapped by Israeli naval forces while they were sailing in a peaceful mission to end the siege. The call aims at creating factual movements on the ground to release "the spirit of humanity" activists. Additionally, head of ECESG, Dr. Arafat Madi contacted EU officials and MPs to urge on moving to release the activists immediately. British Baroness, Jenny Tonge, expressed her deep anger and concerns towards the Israeli doing. She said that, ?I shall take up the matter with the Foreign office.? Sinn F?in Justice Spokesperson Aengus ? Snodaigh TD has described the Israeli government?s decision to board and hijack a peace boat on route to Gaza carrying medical aid as contemptible, adding; ?The piracy of the Israeli Navy in boarding the boat in international waters and towing it towards Israel this is yet another astounding example of just how beyond reproach this administration believes it is.? The boat was boarded by highly-profiled people like Mairead Maguire, winner of a Noble Peace Prize and a former U.S. congressperson, Cynthia McKinney. The vessel was forcibly taken to one of the Israeli seaports under direct threats from naval boats. Maguire, winner of a Noble Peace Prize was taken against her will and isolated from the rest of the team. The Israeli army cared about neither her old age nor her position. Two activists were released only while the rest are in Israeli detention of Ramallah. The exemplary punishment against the activists is a small glimpse of what's happening to 12 thousand Palestinians in Israeli jails. ECESG is organizing a number of protests in various European countries to call on releasing the kidnapped peace activists. Actions? Timetable Israeli Embassy in Roma, Italy Location: Via Michele Mercati, 14 In front of the Israeli embassy 3rd of July 2009 12:30 pm Embassy of Israel in Copenhagen, Denmark Lundevangsvej 4 2900 Hellerup 12:30 pm Israel Embassy, Sweden Torstenssonsgatan 4 Stockholm Sweden 12:30 pm Embassy of Israel Chancellery Alpenstrasse 32 P.O.Box 3006 Bern 12:30 pm Israeli Embassy in The Hague, Netherlands Embassy of Israel in The Hague, Netherlands Ambassade van Israel Buitenhof 47 2513 AH Den Haag 12:30 pm From shniad at sfu.ca Thu Jul 2 12:13:29 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Thu, 2 Jul 2009 11:13:29 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Amnesty Accuses Israel Of War Crimes In Gaza In-Reply-To: <2134488591.1269941246558293576.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1875979059.1271061246558409723.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Sky News UK July 2, 2009 Amnesty Accuses Israel Of War Crimes In Gaza Israel has been accused of killing hundreds of unarmed Palestinian civilians and destroying thousands of houses in their recent offensive along the Gaza strip. A Palestinian man prays on the tomb of a relative killed during Israel's 22-day military operation over Gaza Amnesty found 300 children and hundreds of unarmed civilians died in the conflict The first in-depth human rights report on the three-week conflict in Gaza said Israel's attacks amounted to war crimes. Amnesty International first accused Israel of breaching the laws of war shortly after the fighting ended on January 18. And it said "disturbing questions" remain about why high-precision weapons "killed so many children and other civilians". The group called on Israel to publicly pledge not to use artillery, white phosphorus and other imprecise weapons in densely populated areas. And it urged Gaza's militant Hamas rulers to stop rocket fire against Israeli civilians. In addition, Amnesty accused Israeli forces of using Palestinians as "human shields", and regularly denying civilians from getting medical care and humanitarian aid. The pattern of attacks and the high number of civilian casualties "showed elements of reckless conduct, disregard for civilian lives and property and a consistent failure to distinguish between military targets and civilians and civilian objects", the 117-page report read More than 1,400 Palestinians, including more than 900 civilians, were killed during the offensive, according to Gaza health officials and human rights groups. Israel said the death toll closer to 1,100 and says the vast majority of the dead were militants, though it has refused requests to provide a list of the dead. Amnesty found some 300 children and hundreds of other unarmed civilians were among the dead. Amnesty International's report was based on physical evidence and testimony gathered from dozens of attack sites in Gaza and southern Israel during and after the war. From shniad at sfu.ca Thu Jul 2 12:15:40 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Thu, 2 Jul 2009 11:15:40 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Labor's last stand In-Reply-To: <740284556.1122491246483502654.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <973297465.1271871246558540241.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Harpers Magazine July 2009 Labor's last stand: The corporate campaign to kill the Employee Free Choice Act By Ken Silverstein On a Monday morning this past April, a few dozen Arkansans from that state?s Chamber of Commerce could be found holing up in a Marriott hotel in Crystal City, Virginia, less than a mile from Washington?s Ronald Reagan National Airport. They assembled in the hotel?s Jefferson Ballroom, on one wall of which hangs a portrait of the third president standing before a giant Declaration of Independence. Despite the early hour, the visitors were cheerful, sipping from big Starbucks cups as they gathered up political literature and hard candies and waited for their program to begin. These men and women had come to town as part of a lobbying ?fly-in? coordinated with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Their mission: to battle the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), a bill that would make it easier for workers to organize unions, which now represent only 12 percent of the American labor force (compared with nearly a third in Canada and more than a quarter in the United Kingdom). That morning the group was to be briefed by Glenn Spencer, a deputy chief of staff at the Labor Department during the George W. Bush years who is now coordinating the Chamber of Com merce?s campaign against EFCA. Another squad of fly-ins from Arkansas was meeting at the Chamber?s downtown Washington headquarters, and the two forces would soon join to fan out across Capitol Hill for meetings with members of the state?s congressional delegation. That night, the Arkansans would reconvene at the hotel for a reception and dinner at the Sky View Lounge, an event to help business leaders ?maintain close and productive contact? with the state?s two senators and four representatives. Among the sponsors of the dinner were some of Arkansas?s most powerful corporations, including Tyson Foods, the steel company Nucor, and, of course, Walmart. The true purpose of all this effort and expense was to persuade the state?s two senators?Mark Pryor and Blanche Lincoln, both Democrats?to support a Republican bid to stop EFCA from coming to a vote. After eight years in the Bush wilderness, the labor movement has achieved some early victories under Barack Obama. He has issued an executive order supporting the use of union labor on government construction projects, for example, and another barring federal contractors from seeking reimbursement for anti-union expenditures; also, he signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which extends the deadline for filing pay-discrimination claims. But for business, EFCA is seen as a sort of Armageddon. Currently, when workers wish to unionize, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) will oversee an election after 30 percent of the employees in a given workplace sign union authorization cards. Under EFCA, if half of the company?s employees sign such cards, no election would be required, a practice that is standard in much of the industrialized world. Another provision of EFCA, and one fiercely opposed by business, calls for binding arbitration after 120 days if a company and a new union are unable to come to terms on a contract. EFCA?s opponents deride the bill as ?card check? and say it would strip workers of their ?sacred right? to hold a secret-ballot election. ?This is the demise of a civilization,? Bernie Marcus, the former CEO of The Home Depot, said of EFCA during a business conference call last fall. Sheldon Adelson, the hotel magnate and funder of right-wing causes, calls EFCA ?one of the two fundamental threats to society,? the other being radical Islam. Randy Zook, head of the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce, spoke in similarly dire terms when I met him at the Marriott. ?For small-business and plant managers to have a chance to survive, they have to be incredibly flexible and incredibly ruthless in terms of efficiency and cost-cutting measures,? said Zook, who before joining the Chamber spent three decades with the Atlantic Envelope Company. ?It?s not just about wages but [union] work rules, which are very rigid. We have companies in Arkansas selling 25 to 30 percent of their total output abroad. We are in a global environment, and to succeed you have to be better, faster, and cheaper than your competitors. The business community is unanimous on EFCA, and I mean so unanimous that it?s crazy.? EFCA enjoys overwhelming support in the House, and there has never been any doubt that the bill will pass there. It also commands a majority in the Senate, but supporters need sixty votes for ?cloture,? that is, to stop a promised filibuster by the bill?s G.O.P. opponents. In March, exactly two weeks after the U.S. Chamber sponsored a fly-in from Pennsylvania, Senator Arlen Specter announced that he would oppose cloture on the bill?a potentially fatal blow, because Specter, who himself co-sponsored the bill in 2003 and 2005, was thought to be the Republican most likely to vote for cloture. When he announced in April that he was switching parties, Specter went out of his way to reiterate his opposition to EFCA and cloture. Two weeks before the Marriott event, Senator Lincoln, always carefully attuned to the desires of Walmart, announced her intention to oppose cloture. This announcement no doubt helped to explain the upbeat mood of the Arkansan delegation, which occupied three rows of folding chairs before a black-draped table at the head of the room. ?When you see [Lincoln] later today,? Glenn Spencer told the audience, ?it?s important that you thank her and let her know she did the right thing. We really need to get Senator Pryor to follow her lead. We haven?t gotten him quite there yet, but I know you guys will keep working him and we will get him across the goal line. The forest has gotten a little thinner, but we?re still not out of the woods. It?s still too early to pull out the champagne.? ?What about a beer?? retorted Zook, to general amusement. Spencer said that the strategy now was to win over a few more Democrats ?and fully bury this.? From the crowd, a voice asked which Demo crats might be persuaded to vote with business. Spencer counted out about a dozen on his fingers, including Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Jim Webb of Virginia (who the same day expressed reservations about EFCA), Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Tom Carper of Delaware (?He?s a co-sponsor, but I was on a conference call with him and he said he thought this was a terrible bill?), and Dianne Feinstein of California (?believe it or not?). ?I?m not a seasoned lobbyist like some of those in the room, but as I see it we?re in a pretty good position not to compromise,? said a man in the audience. ?Yeah,? replied Spencer. ?We are. But the unions have not given up on this bill. At some point they will have to make a strategic decision: do they try to get a compromise bill now and come back for more later, or do they go down fighting on this bill and then see if they can pick up a few seats in the 2010 elections? This shouldn?t be a partisan issue, but unfortunately it largely breaks down along the lines of Rs and Ds. We?ve got to keep fighting to make sure that a bad compromise bill doesn?t come to the floor, and keep fighting right through 2010.? Before dispatching the Arkansans to their lobbying mission on the Hill, Zook made a forceful declaration: ?It is critical that we take the view that our beef is not with organized labor but with a terrible piece of legislation.? This is a central talking point?cooked up by Navigators Global, the chief public-relations firm for the anti-EFCA coalition?but it is not convincing on even a cursory examination of the coalition?s leadership and its prehistory. Indeed, the campaign to defeat EFCA is best seen as the latest onslaught in a business crusade to destroy the labor movement, one that began in the early twentieth century but has been waged with increasing intensity only since the mid-1970s. During 1974 and 1975, with the specter of stagflation looming?and amid the twin political crises of Vietnam and Watergate?top corporate officials held a series of meetings under the auspices of The Conference Board. The climate was dark. Feeling pressured by the unions, as well as by the demands of an ungrateful citizenry, the assembled CEOs feared a popular revolt might be imminent. ?We have been hoist with our own petard,? one executive said. ?We have raised expectations that we can?t deliver on.? Another executive complained, ?One man, one vote has undermined the power of business in all capitalist countries since World War II.? With profits down and debt up, business determined that the rules of the game had to be changed in its favor. ?[I]t will be a hard pill for many Americans to swallow?the idea of doing with less so that big business can have more,? Business Week stated bluntly in 1974. ?Nothing that this nation, or any other nation, has done in modern economic history compares in difficulty with the selling job that must now be done to make people accept the new reality.? A key part of the sales job was an ideological attack on unions. In order to target universities, intellectuals, and the media, corporations shoveled cash into conservative think tanks. They also vastly increased their lobbying efforts?as Kim Phillips-Fein recounts in her new book, Invisible Hands, most Fortune 500 firms didn?t have Washington public-affairs offices in 1970, but 80 percent did by 1980?and poured money into the political system as well. Justin Dart, chairman of California?s Dart Industries and a major financial backer of Ronald Reagan, was an early champion of corporate political-action committees. ?I don?t advocate that business buy a legislator,? he said in 1978. ?Rhetoric is a very fine thing; a little money to go with the rhetoric is better. They listen better.? Around the same time, unions sought to push through a labor-law reform bill that shared many features with EFCA. The legislation would have made it easier for workers to organize, by streamlining the process of holding elections under the oversight of the National Labor Relations Board and imposing stiff fines on companies that fired activists. The Business Roundtable, the traditional political leader of major corporations, had generally hesitated to take anti-union positions in public, and some members initially declined to oppose the bill. The group ultimately joined the fight, however, as did a number of major trade associations and the newly revitalized U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which represented smaller businesses and took a much harder line toward labor. As with EFCA today, the business interests in the late 1970s mounted a multimillion-dollar campaign that included a massive lobbying effort by CEOs from around the country to pressure Congress, as well as the formation of ?grass-roots? coalitions and the purchase, from friendly economists, of research concluding that the bill would all but destroy the U.S. economy. As with EFCA, the Dem ocrats controlled both houses of Congress and the White House, and the legislation had overwhelming support in the House of Representatives. Yet the unions couldn?t get it through; in the end, it was filibustered to death by Senators Orrin Hatch and Richard Lugar. ?For the first time in twenty years, the business community had vanquished organized labor in a fight over a ?gut? issue for labor,? the New York Times observed at the time. No significant revision of union-organizing laws has taken place since then, as labor?s ranks, and influence, have steadily dwindled. In 1954, there were 17 million union members, which then meant 35 percent of the workforce. This was the high point of unionism in the country and also was, not coincidentally, when the American middle class was created. The decline of the union movement since then has been accompanied by growing social inequality, slashed salaries, and, for the first time in American history, a de-linking of rising productivity from rising wages. Labor has had almost no voice in any administration since 1980, including that of Bill Clinton, whose White House political director, Rahm Emanuel (now Obama?s chief of staff), was a chief operative in passing NAFTA over the strenuous objections of labor; moreover, Clinton?s chief of staff, John Podesta (who led Obama?s transition team), spearheaded the campaign to pass Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China, which further decimated union jobs. Under George W. Bush, all the key agencies were stacked with anti-union appointees. Bush?s labor secretary, Elaine Chao?the wife of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and now a ?distinguished fellow? at the Heritage Foundation?worked openly against EFCA, saying in 2007, ?A worker?s right to a secret-ballot election is an intrinsic right in our democracy that should not be legislated away at the behest of special-interest groups.? The attorney Robert Battista, whom Bush appointed chairman of the NLRB, had during the 1990s counseled Detroit?s newspapers on union-breaking and now works for a law firm that advises companies on how to keep unions out. Although the business lobby has framed its opposition to EFCA around the issues of the ?secret ballot? and labor ?coercion,? the current rules give management a chokehold over union elections. Employers can require that workers attend ?captive audience? meetings, that is, anti-union presentations during the workday at which union supporters are forbidden to speak. Firing of union activists and intimidation of employees during organizing drives are routine practices and have been encouraged by lax enforcement of the law: according to the NLRB?s most recent annual report, it took an average of about eighteen months for administrative-law judges to rule on charges of unfair labor practices. In the uncommon cases where an employer is found guilty of illegally firing or demoting a worker, the firm typically needs only to reinstate the worker and pay back wages, minus any income the worker may have earned in the interim. With delays so long and penalties so minor, as the group Human Rights Watch noted in a recent report, companies often regard fines as ?a cost of doing business?a small price to pay for defeating worker organizing efforts.? Leading the fight against EFCA has been an organization called Coalition for a Democratic Workplace (CDW), an ad-hoc group formed in cooperation with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Buoyed by funding from hundreds of companies and trade associations, CDW and its allies have spent tens of millions of dollars on TV and radio advertisements, worked the right-wing talk-radio circuit, and paid for ?independent? studies to be trotted out in congressional hearings. Technically, CDW was created in 2007, but its true origins date to several years earlier; and its effective birthplace, as with so many conservative efforts in Washington, was the offices of Grover Norquist?s Americans for Tax Reform. As early as the fall of 2005, Norquist?s group began discussing the danger EFCA posed during the monthly meetings of its First Friday Labor Reform Working Group. On November 16, 2006, eight lobbyists?all representing organizations that had taken part in the First Friday meetings and that would become key actors in CDW?signed an anti-EFCA letter on U.S. Chamber of Commerce letterhead and sent it to Congress. The lobbyists included Bruce Josten of the Chamber, John Gay of the National Restaurant Association, and Robert Green of the National Retail Federation Association. Other early advocates of the anti-EFCA campaign included the Retail Industry Leaders Association, the International Council of Shopping Centers, and the Food Marketing Institute?in all of which associations Walmart looms large as a donor and political force. On an institutional level, the prime movers against EFCA have been CDW and dozens of other nonprofit advocacy groups. Norquist?s group opposes EFCA through its Alliance for Worker Freedom, a special project that opposes ?overregulation of the marketplace? and other ?atrocities.? Another key group, SOS BALLOT, which seeks to stop card-check at the state level by amending state constitutions, is headquartered at a Las Vegas mail drop; its sole officer is one Charles Hurth, a frequent cat?s-paw for right-wing corporate efforts.11. In 2004, Hurth helped set up Choices for America, a secretive G.O.P. effort to get Ralph Nader on the presidential ballot in key states so that Republicans would have an electoral advantage. More infamously, Hurth was also successfully sued by, and in 1990 forced to pay $27,500 in damages to, a woman whose buttocks he bit in a St. Louis bar. Yet another group is the Employee Freedom Action Committee, created by Richard Berman, a prominent lobbyist for the food and restaurant industry. In terms of personnel, the fighters in the anti-EFCA crusade are approximately two dozen lobbyists and consultants, most of them Republicans, some of whom are married to each other, many of whom have shared the same jobs in government and at the trade associations. A number are former G.O.P. staffers from Capitol Hill, such as Doug Loon, regional director of the U.S. Chamber in the Midwest and a onetime aide to Specter, and Breana Teubner, who once worked for Congressman Jeff Flake and now lobbies for Walmart. Next come those who are politically connected through blood and the campaign trail, such as Katherine Lugar22. Her husband, David Lugar, lobbies for the Chamber of Congress and Tyson Foods; her father-in-law is Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana. of the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA) and Todd Harris, a former Jeb Bush and John McCain aide who crafted CDW?s lobbying and media strategy at the public-relations firm Navigators Global. A number of central figures are veterans of Elaine Chao?s Labor Department: besides Glenn Spencer, these include Marlene Colucci, of the American Hotel and Lodging Association (AH&LA), and Geoffrey Burr, a lobbyist for Associated Builders and Contractors. (Burr?s wife, Danielle, works for Senate Republican Whip Jon Kyl, a strident EFCA opponent.) But with Republicans now a diminished presence in government, the anti-EFCA lobby desperately needs Democrats to block the bill. ?Coalition members are also thinking ahead,? Colucci wrote last December about a CDW Steering Committee meeting. ?We have scheduled meetings with some of the more conservative Democrats who recognize the threat card check poses to the health of the American economy.? To win over the majority party, anti-EFCA advocates have spent heavily to buy Democratic lobbying power. Key acquisitions include Jonathan Hoganson, Rahm Emanuel?s former legislative director, who represents RILA and Walmart for the firm of Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti; Tony Podesta, brother to John, whose firm represents Walmart and whose lobbyists include a former top aide to Senator Pryor; Tony Podesta?s wife, Heather, whose firm represents The Home Depot; and The Alpine Group, which also represents The Home Depot, using a team that includes a former legislative aide to Senator Lincoln. The amount of money being spent by this coalition is anyone?s guess. Public records show that during the last quarter of 2008, there were at least 126 registered lobbyists working against EFCA on behalf of companies and trade groups. And countless more nonprofit groups, which aren?t required to register, are also lobbying against the bill. For example, Employee Freedom Action Committee?the group run by Richard Berman, the food and restaurant lobbyist?shares office space and staff with the Center for Union Facts, which in addition to its own advocacy against EFCA also gathers ?information about the size, scope, political activities, and criminal activity of the labor movement.? Berman and Company, a for-profit management firm of which Berman is sole owner and president, runs both groups, as well as at least another ten interlocking corporate front groups. Berman himself holds no fewer than thirteen positions within these various entities. Berman is required to publicly disclose virtually no financial information about his company and very little specific data about his nonprofits. The Center?s 2007 IRS tax return, the last currently available, shows that it took in $2.5 million that year, almost entirely from unnamed donors, including one who put up $1.2 million. About half of the group?s money was spent on an anti-union print and online ad campaign, and $840,000 went to Berman and Company for ?management? services. (The Center rails against highly paid union officials, listing on its website the annual salaries of top officials at the AFL-CIO. But as of 2006, the last year listed, the federation?s three highest-paid employees made about $680,000 combined, well less than what Berman?s company takes to manage only the Center for Union Facts.) In addition to all this money for Washington lobbying and consulting, prodigious sums are also being spent on advertising and other, more shadowy activities. The website of the AH&LA says it is seeking to raise ?a minimum of $30 million? for the CDW?s coffers to pay ?for a ?surround sound? campaign targeting swing voters in key states.? The Alliance to Save Main Street Jobs, a CDW spin-off, has the specific purpose of providing academic ?research? to counter EFCA; it funded a March 2009 study titled ?An Empirical Assessment of the Employee Free Choice Act: The Economic Implications,? which was written by Anne Layne-Farrar, an economist at a corporate consulting firm, and predicted dire consequences if the bill was passed. (A Fox News Special Report highlighted Layne-Farrar?s Senate appearance?as did a number of other outlets, none of which mentioned the source of her funding?quoting her as saying that passage ?would result in an increase in the unemployment rate of around 11/2 to 3 percentage points.?) Let?s stand up to the business lobby,? Barack Obama declared in April 2008 at a union event in Pennsylvania, during a presidential campaign in which he pledged to make passage of EFCA a top priority; and in fact, during his term in the Senate, Obama had co-sponsored an earlier version of the bill. Unions spent tens of millions of dollars to support Obama against John McCain, dispatching thousands of volunteers to swing states to bolster the young nominee?s ground operation. Overwhelming union support for Obama in Michigan made it the first swing state the G.O.P. gave up on, and labor backing was vital to Obama?s eventual triumphs in Ohio and Pennsylvania. So one can hardly blame the unions for imagining that Obama would aggressively promote their interests, EFCA in particular, after he assumed office. But the unions? few legislative victories notwithstanding?as well as the appointment as labor secretary of former Representative Hilda Solis, who by all accounts is very sympathetic to unions?Obama has failed to embrace their agenda. Privately, union officials clearly feel let down by the new president. ?It?s been disappointing,? one told me. ?We would like a higher decibel level. We haven?t had the bully pulpit. Strengthening unions is one of the most important things he can do to rebuild the middle class, but he hardly mentions EFCA when he talks about that goal.? The day after we spoke, the _New York Times _published a lengthy interview with Obama in which he said that better schools, financial reform, and more affordable health care were the pillars of the future economy. Asked specifically what he saw as ?today?s ticket to the middle class,? the president replied: ?I think it would be too rigid to say everybody needs a four-year college degree. I think everybody needs enough post-high-school training that they are competent in fields that require technical expertise, because it?s very hard to imagine getting a job that pays a living wage without that?or it?s very hard at least to envision a steady job in the absence of that.? Missing was any mention of unions or EFCA. The best assessment of Obama?s mind-set I?ve heard so far was offered by Glenn Spencer at the Chamber of Commerce. ?The administration is working on a lot of serious issues, the kind of things that make a legacy?health care, the economy, immigration reform,? he said. ?This is just a distraction. It will split the Senate right down the middle, and you still may not win. [Obama?s] not going to ignore the unions. But will he sink a lot of political capital into a radioactive issue like this? I don?t think so. Congress has noted the lack of engagement. They know what his priorities are.? The Democratic-led Congress also has been a letdown to unions. Back in August of 2008, when it was already clear that the G.O.P. would be routed in the fall election, the Retail Industry Leaders Association gathered for a retreat in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. One of the group?s top flacks, Brian Dodge, flipped through a PowerPoint presentation that warned of ?Harsh Realities? regarding EFCA?s favorable chances. Consideration of the bill, one slide advised, would be ?likely in the first 100 days of the next Congress,? which would be more amenable to the bill than the last Congress. But the intense business lobbying of recent months has clearly had an impact on wavering legislators, especially moderate Democrats from states like Arkansas, where union voters are few. Ironically, Obama?s election might also have helped to flip some senators? votes (for example, Specter and Lincoln) or prompted others to delay in announcing their position (as Landrieu and Pryor have). When the bill came up for a vote in 2007, noted Gene Barr, head of government affairs for the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry, ?you had a president who was adamantly opposed and sure to veto it. So it was a free vote. You could tell labor you were with them but there was no chance it was going to pass. This time it?s a different climate.? In April I traveled to Pittsburgh to meet with the pro-EFCA activists from the United Steelworkers (USW). The city has rebounded from the collapse of the steel industry in the 1970s and is often hailed today as a model of urban post-industrialism. Most of the new jobs there have been in health care and higher education, and these jobs typically pay much less than what workers at the steel mills made. Moreover, the city?s demographics have become bizarrely skewed, as college graduates and middle-aged people have fled?leaving large ranks of the elderly, who scrape by on union health-care benefits and pensions. Overall, Pittsburgh is one of the only major cities in the country to have lost population for the past three decades. Since the collapse of the steel industry, the USW has had to diversify, with more than 80 percent of its membership now working in non-steel industries, including automobile parts, aluminum, mining, plastics, and rubber, as well as forestry and even undertaking. Steffi Domike, an outreach coordinator for the union, drove me out to the old site of Andrew Carnegie?s Homestead Works mill, where in 1892 strikers fought with hundreds of Pinkerton detectives brought in by the company. The mill shut down in 1986 and was demolished and replaced fifteen years later by The Waterfront, the biggest shopping complex in the region. All that remains of the mill is a dozen old brick smokestacks and the pump house, where the strikers fought Carnegie?s thugs. It was a cool, sunny day, and a breeze carried the overwhelming smell from a P. F. Chang?s. ?This was all mill and now it?s all mall,? said Domike, who wore a blue USW jacket. ?We?ve gone from production to consumption. They?ve created an Industrial Stonehenge with these relics dropped down in the middle of a consumption paradise. It?s like those suburban neighborhoods called Foxhall Manor, where they killed all the foxes to build it.? The following day, at the USW?s thirteen-story headquarters in downtown Pittsburgh, I met Tim Waters, head of the union?s Rapid Response network on EFCA. Along with Bob McAuliffe, a regional coordinator on Waters?s team, we drove to Beaver, an aging industrial town an hour north of the city. ?I?ve been an organizer in this union and I can tell you this,? Waters said over his shoulder, looking me in the eye in the back of the car. ?If the boss really doesn?t want the union and is willing to spend what?s needed, you can?t win. They hire union-busting firms that charge $600 to $1,000 an hour, and they?re good at what they do. At the end of the day, they just fire, threaten, and harass the leaders. Even if you get past that and the workers vote for a union, you still need a contract; if you don?t have one in a year they can begin the process of decertifying the union, so the company will just stall it out. By then, the workers are disillusioned, they?ve taken abuse, some have been fired, and they start peeling off.? USW Local 8183 is located in a brick building on a side street in Beaver, a block off the Beaver River. Waters headed straight for the office of Phil Lucci, the union president, and eyed the jars of peanut-butter pretzels, caramels, and red gummy bears on his desk. It wasn?t long before the conversation turned to the bitter topic of Arlen Specter. Early this year, before Specter left the Republican Party, the AFL-CIO thought it had a deal with him: labor would back him for re-election against a Democratic opponent in 2010 in exchange for his continued support of EFCA. Waters acknowledged his frustration with Specter but said it was important for union activists to keep their heads. ?I?ve never been madder at any legislator than I am with him right now,? he said. ?But our challenge becomes what do we do about it. We?ve asked our members to take action [on EFCA] fourteen times already, but now we have to go back and tell them, ?I know we told you he said he was with us, but you have to do more.? We have to assume that he changed his position before and there?s no reason to think he can?t do it again.? (In fact, of this writing, Specter had softened his opposition and was trying to broker a compromise with pro-labor Democrats in the Senate.) The unions have fought too long and spent too much money to walk away from the EFCA fight with nothing. Can they push Obama and the Democrats to approve a compromise bill that genuinely makes it easier for workers to organize unions? Or will any bill end up being merely a face-saving gesture? Given the shakiness of support for EFCA, unions will probably have to drop the two key provisions on organizing: majority sign-up and binding arbitration. Labor will now likely focus on heightening the penalties for companies that violate labor law, and on narrowing the window during which union elections are held (which would give employers less time to exert pressure on workers). Meanwhile, business will be doing its best to prevent the passage of any bill at all. ?From the union perspective, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,? Glenn Spencer told me at the Crystal City Marriott. ?They have the White House and a near filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. They?d be foolish to waste the opportunity. For business, we see this as a killer.? He added: ?And if it passes, when is the next time we?ll have a filibuster-proof majority to repeal it?? Ken Silverstein is the Washington editor of Harper?s Magazine. From shniad at sfu.ca Thu Jul 2 12:14:52 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Thu, 2 Jul 2009 11:14:52 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Amos Elon's obituary, by Tony Judt in the New York Review of Books In-Reply-To: <193818564.941091246397378451.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1166621373.1271481246558492640.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22770 New York Review of Books Volume 56, Number 11 ? July 2, 2009 Amos Elon (1926?2009) What had once been the nationalist ideology of a stateless people has undergone a tragic transition. It has, for a growing number of Israelis, been corrupted into an uncompromising ethno-religious real estate pact with a partisan God, a pact that justifies any and all actions against real or imagined threats, critics, and enemies. ? Tony Judt paraphasing Amos Alon on the subject of Zionism By Tony Judt I first met Amos Elon in Germany in the 1990s. We were participants in one of a series of meetings generously hosted by the Bertelsmann Foundation, where Germans, Israelis, and Jews gathered to exchange platitudes. Most of those present sought either to proselytize and grandstand (in the case of Israelis and Jews) or else to avoid giving offense (in the case of the Germans). Amos, uniquely, did neither. There, as on every occasion when I heard him speak, he succeeded in being both outspoken and yet somehow effortlessly sensible?he dominated conversation by force of reason. He had a mordant wit and a dismissive eye; he was contemptuous of fools and pedants; he smiled only rarely but when he did so it was real. He made a lasting impression upon me. The German setting was altogether fitting. Amos, who was born in Vienna and was the author of an influential biography of Theodor Herzl, never lost his attachment to German culture and history, a subject on which he wrote frequently and with empathetic insight. The Pity of It All , his 2002 study of the Jewish presence in Germany from the Enlightenment to Hitler, displayed a fine sensitivity to the tragedy of Germany's Jews. For good and ill they remained profoundly attached to their cultural homeland, long after they were forced to leave it for Israel or America or elsewhere: more than the Jews of any other European land, they would feel their loss. [1] But it is for his writings on Zionism and Israel, and his lifelong engagement with the country and its dilemmas, that Amos Elon will be best remembered. In The Israelis: Founders and Sons (1971) he offered a critical history of Zionism, its practitioners, and its heirs; an account that directly confronts the shortcomings of the Zionist project and its outcome. Today such critical accounts are common currency in debates in Israel; in those days they were rare indeed. Amos Elon's commitment to Israel, the country where he lived and worked for most of his life, was never in question. But for just this reason his awkward stance, relentlessly engaging with the country's failings, set him apart. His courageous refusal to endorse the clich?s with which Israel's defenders parry every criticism contrasts not only with the defensiveness of contemporary left-wing Israeli commentators but also and especially with the pusillanimous apologetics of Israel's American claque. Thus Amos, unlike so many of the land-fixated commentators among his fellow countrymen, was one of the first to recognize that the settlements in the territories Israel has occupied since 1967 were a self-imposed catastrophe: "The settlements...have tied Israel's hands in any negotiation to achieve lasting peace.... [They] have only made it less secure." [2] That a country with the strongest military in its region, and with an unbroken string of armed victories behind it, should be so obsessed with the security risks of relinquishing a few square miles of land may seem odd indeed. But it speaks to the changes that have overtaken Elon's homeland in recent decades. As he foresaw in 2003, Israeli insistence upon ruling over an Arab population that will eventually become a majority within the country's borders can only lead to a single authoritarian state encompassing two mutually hostile nations: one dominant, the other subservient. With what outcome? "If Israel persists in its current settlement policy,...the end result is more likely to resemble Zimbabwe than post-apartheid South Africa." [3] Many have since come to this depressing conclusion; I believe Amos was the first to make the point. Amos wrote more in sorrow than anger. Many years ago, when few nonspecialists were even paying attention, he wrote despairingly of "the human energies wasted for more than a generation on short-sighted settlement programs.... Think of what might have been achieved had the billions poured into the shifting sands of Sinai, the Golan Heights, and the West Bank, been spent on more useful causes." [4] Such misplaced efforts he attributed to what he called "the astonishing mediocrity of Israeli politicians." That was written in 2002. The incompetence and political cowardice of a generation of Israeli Labor statesmen, from the sainted Golda Meir to the egregious Shimon Peres, were already manifest. But there was worse to come: Amos Elon would live to see the resurrection of Benjamin Netanyahu and the obscene elevation to foreign minister of Avigdor Lieberman, sad confirmation of his assessment. Amos was perfectly well aware that the present Middle Eastern imbroglio was the achievement of all sides. His sympathy for the "stateless, dispossessed, and dispersed Palestinians" did not blind him to the ineptness of their leaders. [5] He had met enough Arab and Palestinian politicians to know just how inadequate they were to the tragedy of their peoples and the tasks facing them. In all his writings, notably an influential 1996 New York Review essay entitled "Israel and the End of Zionism," he was distinctly evenhanded in acknowledging the errors of both sides. But the historic mistakes of the Palestinians had come primarily before 1948, whereas Israel was overwhelmingly responsible for the disastrous missteps that followed its great victory in 1967. Zionism, as Amos came to realize, had outlived its usefulness. "As a measure of...'affirmative action,' Zionism was useful during the formative years. Today it has become redundant." [6] What had once been the nationalist ideology of a stateless people has undergone a tragic transition. It has, for a growing number of Israelis, been corrupted into an uncompromising ethno-religious real estate pact with a partisan God, a pact that justifies any and all actions against real or imagined threats, critics, and enemies. The Zionist project, a doctrine dating to the state-building nationalisms of the late nineteenth century, has long since lost its way. It can mean little?though it can do much harm?in an established democratic state with aspirations to normality. In any case it has been hijacked by ultras. Herzl's dream of a "normal" Jewish country has become an exclusivist sectarian nightmare, a development that Amos illustrated by slightly misquoting Keats: "Fanatics have a dream by which they weave a paradise for a sect." [7] For much of his working life Amos Elon was a journalist, employed by the liberal daily Haaretz . During the 1950s and 1960s he worked frequently as a foreign correspondent ranging from Communist Eastern Europe to Washington, D.C. He seems to have interviewed just about everyone, from John F. Kennedy (with whom he attended wild parties at the height of the Camelot years) to Yasser Arafat. He used to tell a revealing story. In an interview he conducted in the early 1960s in Washington, with a senior Israeli diplomat who was about to leave his post and return home, he questioned his fellow Israeli closely. "What do you think you achieved during your posting here in the US?" Elon asked him. "Oh, that's easy," the diplomat replied. "I believe I have succeeded in convincing Americans that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism." Back in those years, Amos told me, he found the diplomat's assertion simply bizarre; he could hardly then have imagined that this cynical political equation would become received opinion among his countrymen and their supporters. This growing inability?in America above all, but in Israel too?to distinguish between Jews and Israel, Israel and Zionism, Zionism and fanatical theological exclusivism, helps explain why an Israeli like Amos Elon would in his later years find himself living in Tuscany (where he died on May 25). Many Israelis, especially younger and better-educated men and women, today live outside their country, attracted by the cosmopolitan cities of Europe and the US. A few of them have chosen exile rather than serve in an army of occupation. But for a man of Elon's generation, already adult when his country came into being and utterly committed to the necessity and success of Zionism, the decision to sell his home in Jerusalem and settle permanently abroad was far more wrenching and carries profound implications. A moral exile in his own land, Amos?the consummate Israeli in so many ways?was once again rootless; or at any rate rooted only in his defiant cosmopolitanism. A regrettable consequence of this self-exile of one of their country's greatest journalists is that many Israelis today are unfamiliar with his writings. To be sure, his books are available in Hebrew. And his frequent essays in The New York Review and elsewhere were read with close attention by his admirers. But the audience in Israel for Elon's sort of writing has steadily declined over the decades. This in no way diminishes the significance of his passing. Quite the contrary. The fact that most Israelis today will not be mourning him merely illustrates and compounds their loss?and ours. Notes [1] The Pity of It All: A History of the Jews in Germany, 1743?1933 (Metropolitan, 2002). Amos Elon's other books include The Israelis: Founders and Sons (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971); Herzl (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975); Journey Through a Haunted Land: The New Germany (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967); and A Blood-Dimmed Tide: Dispatches from the Middle East (Columbia University Press, 1997). [2] Amos Elon, "No Exit," The New York Review , May 23, 2002. [3] Omer Bartov, Amos Elon, and others, "An Alternative Future: An Exchange," The New York Review , December 4, 2003. [4] Amos Elon, "Israel and the End of Zionism," The New York Review , December 19, 1996. [5] Amos Elon, "'Exile's Return': A Response to Justus Reid Wiener," The New York Review , Febuary 24, 2000. [6] Elon, "Israel and the End of Zionism." [7] Elon, "'Exile's Return': A Response to Justus Reid Wiener." The original excerpt from Keats's poem The Fall of Hyperion reads "Fanatics have their dreams, wherewith they weave/A paradise for a sect." From shniad at sfu.ca Thu Jul 2 12:16:06 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Thu, 2 Jul 2009 11:16:06 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] The Real News Network - Chavez, why? In-Reply-To: <1053234862.1121651246483040561.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <707180671.1272051246558566714.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> The Real News July 1, 2009 Chavez, why? Keivan Shamami: Why does Chavez, who opposes neo-liberalism at home, support Ahmadinejad in Iran? http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=3935 From shniad at sfu.ca Thu Jul 2 12:19:19 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Thu, 2 Jul 2009 11:19:19 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Honduran Coup Shines Spotlight on Controversial U.S. Military Training School In-Reply-To: <70256465.1172941246515590887.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1820389028.1278131246558759914.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/07/01-7 Common Dreams Published on Wednesday, July 1, 2009 by Facing South Honduran Coup Shines Spotlight on Controversial U.S. Military Training School "U.S. Army intelligence manuals used to train Latin American military officers at an Army school from 1982 to 1991 advocated executions, torture, blackmail and other forms of coercion against insurgents, Pentagon documents released yesterday show." -- Dana Priest, Washington Post , 1996 by Chris Kromm Before the torture debates about Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, there was the School of Americas -- a U.S. military training school in Fort Benning, Georgia, which has trained some of the worst human rights abusers in Latin America. [A soldier stands guard in a desolated street in the surroundings of the presidential palace in Tegucigalpa. An increasingly isolated Honduras braced for more protests with authorities threatening to immediately arrest ousted President Manuel Zelaya if he dares to return. (AFP/Jose Cabezas)]As Facing South reported yesterday, two of the leaders of the Honduran coup -- General Romeo Vasquez Velasquez, leader of the armed forces, and Gen. Luis Javier Prince Suazo, head of the Air Force which transported the president to Costa Rica -- were trained at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly known as the School of the Americas. The Honduran coup leaders are just two of over 60,000 Latin American graduates of the school, which since 1984 has been headquartered at Fort Benning, Georgia. The SOA Watch database lists 3,566 graduates of the school from Honduras alone. As watchdog groups like School of Americas Watch have documented, many of the school's trainees have been directly linked to death squads, killings of clergy and other aid workers, kidnappings and other gross violations of human rights. The School of Americas/WHISC has also been linked to torture. In 1996, Dana Priest of The Washington Post broke the story about use of training manuals at the school that taught students many controversial techniques: U.S. Army intelligence manuals used to train Latin American military officers at an Army school from 1982 to 1991 advocated executions, torture, blackmail and other forms of coercion against insurgents, Pentagon documents released yesterday show. Used in courses at the U.S. Army's School of the Americas, the manual says that to recruit and control informants, counterintelligence agents could use "fear, payment of bounties for enemy dead, beatings, false imprisonment, executions and the use of truth serum," according to a secret Defense Department summary of the manuals compiled during a 1992 investigation of the instructional material and also released yesterday. General Romeo Vasquez Velasquez, widely credited with spearheading this week's military coup, appears to have been trained at SOA when torture was part of the curriculum. Torture techniques were introduced at SOA after Vietnam, when the U.S. used lessons from the counterinsurgency experience in that war to create course materials for the school. The practice was halted under the Carter administration in 1976 due to human rights concerns -- the same year that General Vasquez first attended SOA. The second time General Vasquez was trained at SOA in 1986, the torture techniques had been re-introduced into the school's lesson plans and training manuals under the Reagan administration. An in internal investigation, the DoD later concluded that the inclusion of torture techniques in violation of international law was a mistake. An internal memo dated March 10, 1992 stated [1] [pdf]: It is incredible that the use of the lesson plans since 1982, and the manuals since 1987, evade the system of doctrinal controls. And who was Secretary of Defense when these warning signs about U.S. involvement in torture practices in Latin America came to a head? Dick Cheney, whose leadership in national security policy as Vice President would bring torture back into the media spotlight. We're not aware of any evidence that General Vasquez was directly involved in torture, and the Obama administration has strongly condemned the military coup. But such history is an important backdrop to current events, which are vividly remembered in Honduras. Copyright 2008 by the Institute for Southern Studies From shniad at sfu.ca Thu Jul 2 12:26:24 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Thu, 2 Jul 2009 11:26:24 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Free Palestine ( Song for Gaza ) - NMETV Latest Music Videos and Clips In-Reply-To: <676FD463-1144-4484-BBA3-44893F71605C@shaw.ca> Message-ID: <1629184006.1296311246559184859.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Free Palestine ( Song for Gaza ) - NMETV Latest Music Videos and Clips http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:P2huOEvvI0YJ:www.nme.com/video/id/oYs9AyVkHF0/search/gaza+beastie+boys+stand+on+palestine&cd=7&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYs9AyVkHF0&eurl=http%3A%2F%2F74.125.155.132%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dcache%3AP2huOEvvI0YJ%3Awww.nme.com%2Fvideo%2Fid%2FoYs9AyVkHF0%2Fsearch%2Fgaza%2Bbeastie%2Bboys%2Bstand%2Bon%2Bpalestine%26c&feature=player_embedded From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Thu Jul 2 16:39:25 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Fri, 3 Jul 2009 07:39:25 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] The Guernsey Experiment Message-ID: <20090703073925.fbcc30e5.shimogamo@ashisuto.co.jp> A long-forgotten alternative to unfettered credit creation. by Toby Birch goldnews.bullionvault.com (May 19 2008) As weary troops returned from a protracted foreign war, they encountered a land racked with debt, high prices and a crumbling infrastructure, whose flood defenses were about to be overwhelmed. Not some nightmarish news story from New Orleans in the years ahead, but the stark reality faced by the island of Guernsey, just off the French coast in the English Channel, after the Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815. To fund Britain's fight against the French, credit creation had become rife in the early nineteenth century. Once Bonaparte was beaten, deficits and inflation in Britain were likewise kept in check by containing the money supply, through the introduction of the Gold Standard. In theory, the holder of a paper note could demand an equivalent sum of Gold from their bank so money could only be created in proportion to the available bullion. The small annual increase in precious metal supplies helped restrict the growth of money, and price stability became the rule rather than the exception for the balance of the nineteenth century. While 1815 brought an end to the conflict on the battlefront, however, severe austerity ensued on the home front. The application of the Gold Standard meant that loans issued over many years were then recalled to balance the ratio of money to precious metals. This led to economic gridlock as labor and materials were abundant, but much-needed projects could not be funded for want of cash. This led to a period of so-called "poverty amongst plenty". And the independent States of Guernsey (or rather, their government), endured similar problems to England, since the Pound Sterling was also the currency of the Bailiwick. The disintegrating sea defenses were symptomatic of Guernsey's financial woes as the island faced being swamped with hefty debts and interest payments. The situation seemed insoluble; existing borrowing costs were consuming eighty per cent of the island?s revenues. What was already an unsustainable debt burden would need to be doubled to fund the two most essential infrastructure projects. This was when a committee of States members was formed by the then-Bailiff, Daniel DeLisle Brock, in what proved to be the defining moment for the island?s finances. He is still commemorated on Guernsey One Pound notes, as is the Town Market which was one of the first beneficiaries of the Experiment. Like all great ideas, the principles were straightforward. The committee realized that if the Guernsey States issued their own notes to fund the project, rather than borrowing from an English bank, there would be no interest to pay. This would lead to substantial savings. Because as anyone with a mortgage should understand, the debtor ends up paying at least double the amount borrowed over the long-term. While some of the committee were merchants, they were not necessarily financial wizards. They did, however, appreciate the risk of previous schemes involving government debt which led to concurrent crises a century earlier - the Mississippi Bubble in France and then the South Sea Bubble in London. The irresponsible creation of credit is a dangerous game that temporarily benefits the current generation but steals from the next; a lesson that has been forgotten yet again in modernity. To bring balance to the equation, therefore, the people of Guernsey had to find a way to neutralize such deficits while neither contracting nor expanding the money supply. On a purely practical level, this was achieved by adding a sell-by date to the notes in issue, rather like a maturity date on a bond. For example, on a note issued 21 November 1827, it "Promises to pay the bearer One Pound on the first of October 1830". This begs the question as to how the future obligation was to be honored, but again, a simple mechanism was implemented whereby rent from the resulting infrastructure and tax revenues on liquor was set aside into a sinking fund to pay off the interest-free borrowing. The end result of the Guernsey Experiment was spectacular - new roads, sea defenses and public buildings were established, fostering widespread trade and prosperity. Full employment was achieved, no deficits resulted and prices were stable, all without a penny paid in interest. What started as a trial led to a string of construction projects, which still stand and function to this day. Money was used in its purest form: as a convenient mechanism for oiling the wheels of commerce and development. One would have thought that everyone would be happy with such a success story but this was not the case. When you open a closed shop to competition, those with vested interests become highly protective. In those days it was the private banks who were threatened, because they were cut out of the equation. No loans meant no interest and no profit margin. So they may well have been the source of a mysterious complaint made to England?s Privy Counsel which put a ceiling on the issuance of Guernsey notes for the next century. Why is this story relevant today? Whenever stimulus packages, tax rebates or bank bail-outs are paraded as solutions to the credit crisis they are actually part and parcel of its very cause. It all stems from the quick-fix approach of producing money out of thin air and leaving it for the next generation to pay-off. This has been on-going in the United States since the Vietnam War, when the last vestige of monetary restraint was cast aside; in abandoning Gold as a check on the money supply, the US freed the world from financial discipline. The dissolution of the Dollar has been evident ever since. Credit creation is possible, and even beneficial today, but only if the money is later retired in a measured manner. This requires restraint and stewardship; qualities that are all-too-rare for those with misplaced incentives. Like swords to ploughshares, the banking industry does not have to be eradicated in the process of reform. Banks still have a role to play in providing liquidity by matching investors with borrowers. But they can no longer be trusted with unfettered credit creation. The Guernsey Experiment - as it was termed in a booklet compiled in 1960 by Olive and Jan Grubiak for Omni Publications, USA - shows that simple ideas can work wonders. They simply require an unselfish philosophy and a desire to do the right thing for future generations, much like America?s Founding Fathers. One of their number, Thomas Jefferson - who was US President during the Napoleonic era - had uncanny foresight when he said "If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." As the blame game begins once more today, the very people who fostered conditions for the credit crisis will no doubt be implementing knee-jerk legislation. This is not the time for new laws, but for new leaders to match the calibre and insight of our ancestors. _____ Toby Birch is managing director of Birch Assets Limited in Guernsey. Educated at the City University in London and a Fellow of the Securities and Investment Institute, he also holds the Securities Institute Islamic Finance Qualification and is author of The Final Crash: Addictive Debt & the Deformation of the World Economy (Pendula Press, 2007), written under the pen-name Hugo Bouleau. Please Note: All articles published here are to inform your thinking, not lead it. Only you can decide the best place for your money, and any decision you make will put your money at risk. Information or data included here may have already been overtaken by events - and must be verified elsewhere - should you choose to act on it. Please review our Terms & Conditions for accessing Gold News. http://goldnews.bullionvault.com/guersney_experiment_credit_creation_gold_standard_051920083 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/ From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Fri Jul 3 03:35:58 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Fri, 3 Jul 2009 18:35:58 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] The Federal Reserve Message-ID: <20090703183558.427a0305.shimogamo@ashisuto.co.jp> by Jerry Voorhis {1} The Constitution of the United States says: "Congress shall have power to coin money and regulate the value thereof". Congress does no such thing, which is the heart of our trouble. Private banks coin our money and regulate its value. In doing so they take from the government and people of the United States a large chunk of their sovereignty, a large chunk of the taxing power, and the key to a prosperous economy without inflation. For example, in testimony before the Banking and Currency Committee of the House of Representatives in 1935, Marriner Eccles, then Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board itself, said: "In purchasing offerings of Government bonds, the banking system as a whole creates new money, or bank deposits. When the banks buy a billion dollars of Government bonds as they are offered - and you have to consider the banking system as a whole as a unit - the banks credit the deposit account of the Treasury with a billion dollars. They debit their Government bond account a billion dollars; or they actually create, by a bookkeeping entry, a billion dollars." Mr Eccles' statement is exactly as true today as when he made it. Here is how it works: The private banking system of our country creates our money in the form of demand deposits on the banks' books. The reason it is able to do this is because no bank is required to have in its vault anything like the amount of money which its depositors think they have in the banks. Banks are only required by the Federal Reserve System, which the banks are sure they own, to have in their vaults anywhere from $1 to $1.50 for every $10 of demand deposits on their books. Thus for every $1 or $1.50 which people - or the government - deposit in a bank, the banking system can create out of thin air and by the stroke of a pen some $10 of checkbook money or demand deposits. It can lend all that $10 into circulation at interest just so long as it has the $1 or a little more in reserve to back it up. This is, of course, the "fractional reserve system" of banking. It is more or less controlled by the Federal Reserve System, whose only stock is held by the private banks of the Federal Reserve System. Not a single share of such stock is held by the government or people of the United States, although if "national sovereignty" means anything at all, these banks of issue should be the property of the nation. But what actually happens when our government engages in deficit financing? The obvious way the government can get more buying power into the people's hands is by itself putting more money into the stream of commerce than it takes out in taxes. The tragedy of the situation is that, up to date, the only way our government has enabled itself to spend more money than it takes in has been by forcing this sovereign nation to borrow its own credit from private sources. This has been true, despite the fact that if deficit financing accomplishes its purpose at all it will increase production and trade, enhance tax revenues, and broaden the base of government credit. To the extent that government bonds are sold for cash to individuals or to institutional purchasers other than banks the government is taking out of circulation approximately as many dollars as it will put back in when it spends the money. To accomplish its purpose, deficit financing must result in the creation of new money, and the use of it to increase mass buying power. Only if this happens will there be any stimulation of idle plants to go back into production, or more employment. Under these circumstances what ought to happen is that the credit of this great nation should be drawn upon directly by the government - not that it should go more deeply into debt. For the credit of this or any nation is squarely based upon and derived from the production of wealth by the nation plus the power of the government to tax. A nation like the United States thus possesses an almost unlimited amount of credit. Otherwise it could not possibly have persuaded investors to buy $480 billion of government securities. By whatever percentage it can be anticipated that production and hence potential tax revenues will increase as a result of deficit spending, by that same amount the credit of the nation and its government will be increased. This same percentage of the volume of money previously in circulation should appear on the books of the Treasury as a credit entry to be drawn upon just like tax revenues. To do that would be nothing more than rational and proper bookkeeping. It would also be morally right bookkeeping. And it would make some sense of Mr Nixon's "full employment budget" idea. But this is not what happens at all. Instead the sovereign government of the United States goes hat in hand to the private banking system and asks it to create the new money that the economy needs. The government gives - the word is used advisedly - it gives to the banking system, including the Federal Reserve banks, government bonds, the debt of all the people. Interest-bearing bonds, that is, bonds bearing as high an interest rate under today's regime as the banks decide to demand. Else they won't buy the bonds. The banks "buy" the bonds with newly created demand deposit entries on their books - nothing more. It is fountain-pen money and considerably more inflationary than would be the same amount of dollar bills created by the government. The deposits the banks create with which to own the people's debt are backed by nothing except the bonds themselves! In other words, they are backed by the credit of the American people. What the government has "borrowed" from the banks, what the people must for years pay interest on, is nothing more nor less than the credit of the nation, which obviously the nation possessed in the first place or the bonds themselves would be no good! At long last, a few years ago the Federal Reserve made tacit acknowledgment of these facts. 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 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. But this is only part of the story. And the less discouraging part, at that. For where the commercial banks are concerned, there is no such repayment of the people's money. When the commercial banks create money, as they do when they acquire government bonds, they levy a tax on every person in the United States. This is so because every new dollar that is created makes every dollar previously in existence worth somewhat less than it was worth before. This is the very heart of inflation. It is also taxation without representation with a vengeance. Until this system is changed, our debt will continue to skyrocket without limit and the fixing of debt limits by the Congress will continue to be an exercise in utter futility. What ought to be done? Banks should lend existing money. But, as the Constitution clearly requires, the money (or credit) of the nation should never be created by any private agency, but by an agency of the nation itself. It is the duty of Congress to provide for this by a carefully drawn statute. The stock in Federal Reserve Banks should be purchased by the government from their present private bank owners. The Federal Reserve should then become our national bank of issue. It should create reserve Bank Credit as it does now. But that credit should be credited to the United States Treasury, not charged against it and the people as debt. As much such new credit should be created each year as is needed to keep our economy running at or near capacity - and no more than that. A stable price level could result. Then and only then can we expect to overcome recessions, to put our people to work, and do this without the danger of inflation and the ever-increasing debt which are inescapable under the present monetary system. - Jerry Voorhis, The Strange Case of Richard Milhous Nixon (1973) How to Nationalize Credit Congress [could] provide for governmental purchase of the capital stock of the twelve central Federal Reserve Banks from the member banks which now own it. This would cost $144,000,000 in round figures, and would correct the present anomalous situation of a privately owned bank of issue. The Federal Reserve Banks could then create money in the form of "Federal Reserve Bank credit" entries on their books just as they do now. A "National Credit Account" (in contrast to present national debt) could be established on the central banks' books in favor of the United States Treasury. To such an account would be credited each year such amounts of newly created "Reserve Bank credit" as would provide the increased purchasing power needed to maintain economic balance and a stable price level. The Treasury would draw checks against their account and pay them out to those to whom the government owed money, thus getting it into the purchasing power stream. In this way the whole nation would derive the benefit from the creation of the additional supply of money which its own growth had made necessary. No interest bearing debt would be incurred, but only a bookkeeping transaction between two public agencies. Should inflation threaten so that it was desirable to reduce the volume of money in circulation, the process could be reversed and the Treasury could transfer a portion of its tax revenues to the central banks for cancellation and retirement of the requisite amount of money to restore stability. - Jerry Voorhis, Beyond Victory (1944) Link {1}: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Voorhis http://www.sonic.net/~doretk/ArchiveARCHIVE/ECONOMICSPOLITICS/FEDERAL%20RESERVE/Jerry%20VoorhisFedReserve.html 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/ From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Fri Jul 3 20:49:54 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Sat, 4 Jul 2009 11:49:54 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Central banks rewarded for failure with new powers Message-ID: <20090704114954.698a8516.shimogamo@ashisuto.co.jp> by Richard A Werner Special to The Daily Yomiuri (July 03 2009) As Obama's campaign promise of finally introducing universal provision of basic health care in the United States (and thereby finally catching up with 19th-century Germany) is being quietly shelved, the transfer of power to the banking community is coming close to completion. The former head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York - for all practical means and purposes the true central bank of the United States - in his current role as US treasury secretary has proposed to give more powers to the privately owned US central bank. The ostensible excuse is that it should be given the allegedly new brief of ensuring the health and stability of the overall financial system - as the "systemic risk regulator". Apparently the Federal Reserve Board needs more staff, more resources and greater legal powers to do this. But this brief was precisely why the Fed was founded in the first place in 1914, against much resistance from Congress. It was argued at the time that only by having a privately owned cartel of bankers' interests, which is given the government's prerogative to create and allocate money, can the bankers ensure that their speculative excesses won't create massive recessions, bankruptcies and large-scale unemployment. It was hardly a convincing argument - just as it has hardly been a convincing case that bankers need to be given billions and trillions of taxpayers' money in the past half year or so as soon as some of their big bets went sour, after they had made billions and trillions of profits from their speculative gambling. Then, just as now, the bankers got their way nevertheless. They are a persuasive lot. Their powers of persuasion may have to do with the fact that already at the time (just as today) they were the creators of the majority of the money supply. If money speaks volumes, money creators have a monopoly on the library. The Bank of England is now also asking for more powers. A similar proposal to give more unaccountable power to the European Central Bank has been signed off in Europe: The ECB will be given new scope to influence the European economy and government policies in an additional role as pan-European "systemic risk supervisor", as if it not already wielded the greatest power concentration in banking history. Central bankers like the ECB, the Bank of England and the Fed talk about little else but "stability" and how they are always concerned with it. The problem is that this is not what they have delivered. Has that been because they just did not have enough power? The political and legal powers of central banks worldwide have increased dramatically in the past thirty years. While deregulation, liberalization and privatization have consistently eaten away the former powers of governments and elected representatives of the public, unelected central bankers have managed to amass increasing powers and influence over the economy and people's lives. The ECB is the world's most powerful, unregulated, unaccountable and untransparent central bank since the Reichsbank (which could not be reined in by laws made in the German parliament and was only accountable to external interests, namely the J P Morgan-controlled Reparations Committee - today known as the BIS). Central banks have long had enough power to prevent asset bubbles and banking crises - if only they had put their minds to it. But do they have any incentive to do so? The powers of former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan to influence the economy were virtually boundless. He was able to block any regulation of the credit derivatives market and interfered in attempts by other public sector entities to rein in the exploding speculative activities of bankers, loan sharks ("subprime lenders") and second-hand debt dealers. The main constituency of the Fed are its banking shareholders. It has little to gain from restricting the bankers' profiteering. And it has much to gain from erring on the side of laissez-faire. The fact is that central banks chose to ignore warnings by critics who had argued consistently since the early 1990s that central banks needed to intervene in the inefficient and rationed credit markets to restrict bank credit extension for purely speculative purposes and encourage bank credit for productive investment. This can be achieved by simply imposing a rule that banks are only allowed to create credit for transactions that are classified as contributing to gross domestic product. Financial transactions don't. This proposal does not directly restrict financial speculation: let there be a free market for speculators to speculate as much as they wish to do so. However, let them not lay claim to newly created money for their activities and let them raise their funds in the supposedly efficient and deep capital markets or from other nonbank financial institutions that in turn must not receive credit from banks. This simple rule will prevent asset bubbles and banking crises. Central banks not only ignored this advice (detailed in many of my publications since the early 1990s, as well as in my 2005 book), but took policies that encouraged bank credit creation for speculative purposes. Predictably, this led to asset inflation and - with mathematical precision - banking crises. Central banks thus were responsible for the biggest resource misallocation in peacetime history. The central banks lobbied to fight the ensuing pandemonium with vast new money injections, for the benefit of the financial sector, and most of which was put on the taxpayer's tab again. Taxpayers now have to face multiyear belt-tightening programs that will continue the agenda of rolling back useful government activities and exposing ever increasing parts of society to predatory raids by profiteers. How were central banks called to account for their massive mistakes? Have there been any serious inquiries into the responsibility of central banks? Have any disciplinary or legal measures been imposed or proposed against the responsible central bankers? Instead of punishment, central bankers are about to be rewarded with new and greater powers. This is at least historically consistent: whenever bankers and central banks mess up on a large scale, they are not punished, but usually rewarded with greater influence and powers. Thus it happened after the Reichsbank's hyperinflation, the coordinated aggressive money printing policies of central banks in the early 1970s which created the high inflation of the first half of the 1970s, the Bank of England's policy to encourage speculative credit expansion since the early 1980s; the Bank of Thailand's catastrophic creation of what grew into the Asian crisis, the Bank of Japan's active propagation of the bubble economy and subsequent unprecedented slump with record deflation. Even the Fed's shocking policy of bankrupting tens of thousands of banks, causing the Great Depression and bringing starvation upon a previously healthy farming sector did not lead to any serious restriction on central bank powers or stricter accountability for central bank failures. By contrast, the few central banks that had remained prudent and failed to create bubbles and busts were not rewarded with greater powers: the Bundesbank had dared to be the odd one out among central banks and through its refusal to create an asset bubble in Germany was becoming increasingly isolated. It started to make other central banks look bad. It got its just reward: it was stripped of all its powers with the introduction of the ECB. Rewarding the Fed for its massive failure by giving it yet more powers and control levers will increase regulatory moral hazard. It will not reduce systemic risk, but is the surest way to increase it: When those who mess up don't have to pay up, but instead are being bailed out or rewarded, they have little incentive to change their behavior. To the contrary, the reward is likely to encourage them to take risks and mess up again. As I have warned for the past decade: By increasing central banks' powers, the risk that central banks will do more of what they do best - create massive cycles - is likely to rise; hence since 2001 I have warned of the risk of ever bigger boom/bust cycles and banking crises (what I call "central bank risk"). The plan to give more powers to the Fed, right after it has been responsible for the global financial crisis, is sending a clear message to central bankers across the globe: Messing up on a grand scale is highly advantageous. Little failures such as some consumer price inflation here or a minor recession there will draw public criticism. But catastrophic blowups have unimaginable potential to further increase the unaccountable powers of central bankers. _____ Werner is professor of international banking at the School of Management, University of Southampton and author of Princes of the Yen (2003) and New Paradigm in Macroeconomics (2005). http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/columns/commentary/20090703dy02.htm 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/ From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Sat Jul 4 08:30:52 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Sat, 4 Jul 2009 23:30:52 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Michael Hudson's Super Imperialism Message-ID: <20090704233052.8ce3f0de.shimogamo@ashisuto.co.jp> The Economic Strategy of Imperial America by Stephen Lendman sjlendman.blogspot.com (July 01 2009) First written in 1972, it was updated in a 2003 edition that's every bit as relevant now - thus this review focusing on Hudson's new preface, introduction, and detailed account of the book's theme. He revisited it in his 2008-09 Project Censored award-winning article titled: "Economic Meltdown - The 'Dollar Glut' is What Finances America's Global Military Build-up" in which he explains the following - the "inter-related dynamics" of: - "surplus (US) dollars pouring into the rest of the world for yet further financial speculation and corporate takeovers"; - global central banks "recyl(ing) these dollar inflows (into) US Treasury bonds to finance the federal US budget deficit; and most important (but most suppressed in the US media);" - "the military character of the US payments deficit and the domestic federal budget deficit". In other words, the global "dollar glut" finances US corporate takeovers, speculative excesses creating bubbles and global economic crises, America's reckless spending, foreign wars, hundreds of bases worldwide, "military build-up", and culture of militarism and belligerence overall at the expense of democratic freedoms, beneficial social change, and human and civil rights. In softer form, it's what former US diplomat, advisor, father of Soviet containment, and dove compared to others at that time George Kennan believed should be America's post-World War Two foreign policy. In his February 1948 Memo PPS23, he stated: "...we have fifty per cent of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population. (It makes us) the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships (to let us) maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national society. To do so we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and daydreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world benefaction ... "We should dispense with the aspiration to 'be liked' or to be regarded as the repository of a high-minded international altruism ... We should (stop talking about) unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are hampered by idealistic slogans (ideas and practices), the better". Yet Kennan advocated diplomacy over force in contrast to Paul Nitze, Dean Atcheson and other Truman and succeeding administration officials favoring hardline militarism, future wars, and National Security Council Report 68 (NSC-68) policies to contain the Soviet Union. In 1962, nuclear disaster nearly resulted. The threat remains, more menacingly than ever by "forc (ing) foreign central banks to bear the costs of America's expanding military empire" through recycling their dollars into US Treasuries - something the mass media call "showing their faith in US economic strength". Hudson refers to a "sinister dynamic", not involving consumers or private investors, but central banks putting "their money" in US Treasuries, but "it is not 'their money' at all. They are sending back the dollars that foreign exporters and other recipients turn over to their central banks for domestic currency". "When the US payment deficit pumps dollars into foreign economies, these banks (have) little option except to buy US Treasury bills and bonds which the Treasury spends on financing an enormous, hostile military build-up to encircle (today's) major dollar-recyclers China, Japan and Arab OPEC oil producers" - essentially a process by which they finance their own endangerment. Up to now it's continued, but, given the reckless dollar glut in recent months, with less enthusiasm by bigger buyers and hints of a possible end game or at least less buying than previously - mostly among BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) and OPEC countries but other emerging economies as well getting more interdependent on themselves than on America. In his 2002 preface, Hudson noted that "the US Treasury (pursued the same balance-of-payment) 'benign neglect' (strategy as) it did thirty years" earlier. In 1971, it "caused a global crisis when its $10 billion (level) led to a ten per cent dollar devaluation". Now it's hundreds of billions annually and still high during the current economic crisis when exports and imports are lower. Earlier and especially now, if Europe and Asia let the dollar deflate, their exporters will be disadvantaged at a time they can least afford it. So they're forced to "support the dollar's exchange rate by recycling their surplus dollars back to the United States" by buying US Treasuries. Sooner or later, it's a losing proposition, especially in today's climate with the Federal Reserve sacrificing dollar strength to bail out Wall Street and trying to keep long rates low to contain borrowing costs. Yet the greater the dollar erosion, the more losses foreign investors will incur and less likely they'll tolerate more by buying bad assets. So far, however, they're still recycling their dollar inflows to fund America's budget deficit and global militarism - something Hudson calls a "Free Lunch in the form of compulsory foreign loans to finance US Government policy". Even so, they have no say over US policies, yet America and international lending agencies, like the IMF and World Bank, "use their dollar claims" on indebted nations to enforce Washington Consensus diktats. Independent-minded states face sanctions, isolation, coups or wars if they refuse. Until Nixon closed the gold window in August 1971, America couldn't run unlimited balance-of-payments deficits. However without gold convertibility, it's continued for nearly forty years along with protectionist policies through generous subsidies to US exporters - most notably to agribusiness. As a result, Hudson sees international tensions growing for the next generation, perhaps even greater now given America's reckless monetarism and perpetual wars. His book "provid(es) the background for US - European and US - Asian financial relations by explaining how (post-1971) the US Treasury-bill standard came to provide America with a Free Lunch". Also how the IMF promoted debtor nations' capital flight and the World Bank supported "foreign trade dependency on US farm exports ..." The early 1970s dollar crisis and balance-of-payments deficits seem small compared to today. Yet the "Treasury-bill standard (frees) the US economy from (doing) what American diplomats (force on) other debtor nations (with) payments deficits: impose austerity to restore balance in its international payments. The United States alone has been free to pursue domestic expansion and foreign diplomacy with hardly a worry about the balance-of-payment consequences". No other nation has that luxury. Post-World War Two, Washington made other countries dependent on America, something it eschewed after World War One, staying isolationist instead to pursue internal development. In the 1970s, emerging nations proposed a New International Economic Order (NIEO) through the UN Conference on Trade and Development to promote their own trade and other concerns. It "originated as a response to America's aggressive world economic diplomacy, and how US strategy has provided other nations with a learning curve that they may follow in pressing their own national and regional interests". The more reckless and belligerent America becomes, the more incentive they have to try - and in greater alliance, with BRIC country partners, may have a greater chance for success. Introduction Post-World War Two, on the pretext of national security, America pursued "world power ... and economic advantage as perceived by American strategists quite apart from the profit motive of private investors". After World War One, it achieved world creditor status from its "unprecedented terms (in extending) armaments and reconstruction loans to its wartime allies". In 1917, it entered the war late when it felt staying out would "entail at least an interim economic collapse (the result of) American bankers and exporters (getting) stuck with uncollectible loans to Britain and allies". So it joined the Triple Entente as an associate, not a full partner, to protect its $12 billion investment. Post-war, America was the world's major creditor - but one "to foreign governments with which it felt little brotherhood" and no obligation to stabilize world finance and trade. Unlike its post-World War Two policy, it didn't extend loans to foreign countries so they could finance their US-owed debt. Nor did it open its markets to foreign imports. It wanted Europe's empires dissolved, their military spending cut, their wealth "to flow out and their prices to fall" - the idea being in this way to re-establish world payments equilibrium, a very unrealistic notion, but many leading Europeans embraced it. It didn't work and made repayment of foreign debts impossible. The "world economy emerged from World War One shackled with debts far beyond its ability to pay", except by "borrow(ing) funds from private lenders in the creditor nation to pay the creditor-nation government". A more enlightened policy would have turned "other countries into (US) economic satellites". But America eschewed European imports, and US investors preferred its own outperforming stock market. On trade and finance, US policies "impelled European countries to withdraw from the world economy and turn within". America's isolationism prevented it from collecting its foreign debts. "Its status as world creditor proved ultimately worthless as the world broke into nationalist units", and sought independence from foreign trade and payments. Washington pursued isolationism, thus prompting other nations to seek self-sufficiency. A bankrupt Britain convened the 1932 Ottawa Conference "to establish a system of Commonwealth tariff preferences". By the mid-1930s, Germany began preparing for war. At the same time, the Depression affected one country after another as private capital dried up while at the same time Britain and other nations had mounting debt problems. It begs the question as to why they let them get so onerous in the first place. American Plans for a Post-World War Two "Free-Trade Imperialism" Early in the war, US officials and economists knew America would prevail and emerge as the world's dominant power. However, transitioning from war to peace needed large export volumes to stimulate economic growth and full employment. "This in turn required that foreign countries be able to earn or borrow dollars to pay" for what they got. So America supplied them through government loans and private investment. In return, it "name(d) the terms on which" they were provided and structured the IMF and World Bank so countries could "pursue laissez faire policies by insuring adequate resources to finance the international payments imbalances", the result of opening their markets to US imports. It was thought that free trade and investment would result in "balanced international trade and payments ... under US leadership". Post-war, America was the only dominant nation intact, so it alone had enough foreign exchange to invest substantially abroad. Its commercial strength turned other economies into US satellites and assured America achieved maximum world power by: - having European nations let US investors buy extractive industries in their former colonies, especially Middle East oil; - less developed nations would supply America with raw materials rather than develop their own competitive manufacturing infrastructure; - they'd also buy US products and services; and - the resulting trade surplus would provide enough foreign exchange for US investors to buy the world's most productive resources and make America even stronger. The goal was short-lived as: - America had tariffs on commodities that other nations could produce more cheaply; - the International Trade Organization, in place to subject all economies to the same rules, was scuttled; and - private US investment abroad was never enough to finance sufficient foreign purchases of US exports; IMF and World Bank loans also fell short. America accumulated a payments surplus. It, in turn, weakened its export potential. The lesson learned was that "Beyond a point, a creditor and payment-surplus status can be decidedly uncomfortable". At first, the enlightened solution wasn't taken - extended foreign aid for rebalancing as Congress put internal interests ahead of foreign policy. The Cold War Pushes America's Balance-of-Payments into Deficit Cold War strategy gave Congress an anti-communist reason to "bribe foreign governments" to fight the red menace as well as open their markets to US exporters. It got the Marshall Plan and other aid agreed on to "keep its fellow capitalist countries solvent" and not tempted to turn left. The possibility continued foreign aid for several decades. At the same time, America's balance-of-payments reached never before attained levels and needed rebalancing "to promote foreign export markets and world currency stability". To buy US products and services, other countries needed resources to pay for them, something only Washington could arrange at a time when they weren't creditworthy. However, what worked early on became destabilizing as America began "sink (ing) into the mire that had bankrupted every European power that experimented with colonialism". Unlike foreign investors that cut their losses when necessary, national security interests (and industries profiting from them) trump other considerations even when counterproductive. Once begun, military spending takes on a life of its own - something very apparent given its current out-of-control level and growing. New Characteristics of America's Financial Imperialism A growing US balance-of-payments surplus was "incompatible with continued growth in world liquidity and trade". So America had to buy more foreign products, services and capital assets than it supplied to foreign buyers. At the same time, it shifted more dollars abroad through a payments deficit, easily handled in the 1950s and 1960s as long as Washington could redeem them with gold. But that game had a limited life span as "Attempts by governments to repay their debts beyond a point extinguish(es) their monetary base". .."..international money (is also) a debt of the key-currency nation". Providing other countries with assets involves going into debt, and repaying it "extinguish(es) an international monetary asset". By the early 1960s, America approached "the point at which its debts to foreign central banks soon would exceed the value of the Treasury's gold stock". It happened in 1964 the result of Vietnam War spending at an early stage in the conflict. Just as two world wars bankrupted Europe, Vietnam threatened the same fate for America, but it didn't curtail spending and still doesn't. Earlier, the result was a run on gold with foreign central banks "cash (ing) in their dollar surpluses for American gold almost on a monthly basis". By March 1968, the US Treasury suspended its sales, and informally world central banks agreed to stop converting dollars into the metal. The result - the dollar gold price link was broken, and in August 1971, Nixon closed its window with an official embargo. Henceforth, in place of gold, the US Treasury-bill (dollar-debt) standard began. No longer able to buy US gold, substituting Treasuries became the only option and "to a much lesser extent, US corporate stocks and bonds". From tchilds at resist.ca Sat Jul 4 17:17:09 2009 From: tchilds at resist.ca (tchilds at resist.ca) Date: Sat, 4 Jul 2009 16:17:09 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Author Naomi Klein calls for boycott of Israel Message-ID: http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2009/06/author-naomi-klein-calls-boycott-israel Author Naomi Klein calls for boycott of Israel By AFP - June 26th, 2009 BILIN , West Bank (AFP) ? Bestselling author Naomi Klein on Friday took her call for a boycott of Israel to the occupied West Bank village of Bilin, where she witnessed Israeli forces clashing with protesters. "It's a boycott of Israeli institutions, it's a boycott of the Israeli economy," the Canadian writer told journalists as she joined a weekly demonstration against Israel's controversial separation wall. "Boycott is a tactic ... we're trying to create a dynamic which was the dynamic that ultimately ended apartheid in South Africa," said Klein, the author of "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism." "It's an extraordinarily important part of Israel's identity to be able to have the illusion of Western normalcy," the Canadian writer and activist said. "When that is threatened, when the rock concerts don't come, when the symphonies don't come, when a film you really want to see doesn't play at the Jerusalem film festival... then it starts to threaten the very idea of what the Israeli state is." She briefly joined about 200 villagers and foreign activists protesting the barrier which Israel says it needs to prevent attacks, but which Palestinians say aims at grabbing their land and undermining the viability of their promised state. She then watched from a safe distance as the protesters reached the fence, where Israeli forces fired teargas and some youths responded by throwing stones at the army. "This apartheid, this is absolutely a system of segregation," Klein said adding that Israeli troops would never crack down as violently against Jewish protesters. She pointed out that her visit coincided with court hearings in Quebec in a case where the villagers of Bilin are suing two Canadian companies, accusing them of illegally building and selling homes to Israelis on land that belongs to the village. The plaintiffs claim that by building in the Jewish settlement of Modiin Illit, near Bilin, Green Park International and Green Mount International are in violation of international laws that prohibit an occupying power from transferring some of its population to the lands it occupies. "I'm hoping and praying that Canadian courts will bring some justice to the people of Bilin," Klein said. Her visit was also part of a promotional tour in Israel and the West Bank for "The Shock Doctrine" which has recently been translated into Hebrew and Arabic. Klein said she would get no royalties from sales of the Hebrew version and that the proceeds would go instead to an activist group. From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Sat Jul 4 19:42:38 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Sun, 5 Jul 2009 10:42:38 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Running on Empty Message-ID: <20090705104238.acb31b12.shimogamo@ashisuto.co.jp> Why the Economy Has Yet to Hit Bottom by Mike Whitney CounterPunch (July 3-5 2009) There's a big difference between an inventory-driven recession and a credit-driven recession. An inventory recession is caused by a mismatch between supply and demand. It's the result of overcapacity and under-utilization which can only work itself out over time as inventories are pared back and demand builds. Credit-driven recessions are a different story altogether. They typically last twice as long as and can precipitate financial crises. The current recession is a severe credit bust of Depression-era magnitude. The financial system has effectively melted down. The wholesale credit system (securitization) is frozen, the banking system is dysfunctional and insolvent, and consumer spending has tanked. The Fed's multi-trillion dollar lending facilities and monetary stimulus have kept the financial system from grinding to a halt, but the problems have not been resolved. Fed chairman Ben Bernanke has chosen to avoid the hard decisions and keep the price of toxic assets artificially high with the help of $12.8 trillion liquidity backstop. That's why stocks have rallied for the last four months while conditions in the real economy have continued to deteriorate. Bernanke is using all the tools at the Fed's disposal to keep the market from clearing and to prevent the mountain of debt that has built up from decades of credit expansion to be purged from the system. The surging stock market has made it harder to see that the economy is resetting at a lower rate of economic activity. Deflation is setting in across all sectors. Housing prices are leading the retreat, falling 18.1 percent year-over-year according to the new Case-Schiller report. Vanishing home equity is forcing households to slash spending which is weakening demand and triggering more layoffs. It's a vicious circle which ends in slower growth. Also, the banking system is still broken. The $700 billion TARP program was not used to purchase toxic assets, but to buy equity stakes in the banks and bailout insurance giant AIG. Bernanke knows that a hobbled banking system will be a constant drain on public resources, but he refuses to nationalize the banks or restructure their debt. Instead, he's expanded the Fed's balance sheet by $1.2 trillion and ignited a rally in the stock market. Bernanke's bear market rally has lifted the financials from the doldrums and generated the capital the banks need to survive the downgrading of their bad assets. Former Fed-chief Alan Greenspan (unintentionally) clarified this point in an editorial in the Financial Times : "The rise in global stock prices from early March to mid-June is arguably the primary cause of the surprising positive turn in the economic environment. The $12,000 billion of newly created corporate equity value has added significantly to the capital buffer that supports the debt issued by financial and non-financial companies ... Previously capital-strapped companies have been able to raise considerable debt and equity in recent months. Market fears of bank insolvency, particularly, have been assuaged. "Global stock markets have rallied so far and so fast this year that it is difficult to imagine they can proceed further at anywhere near their recent pace. But what if, after a correction, they proceeded inexorably higher? That would bolster global balance sheets with large amounts of new equity value and supply banks with the new capital that would allow them to step up lending." {1} Clearly, Bernanke was thinking along the same lines as Greenspan when he decided to push traders back into the market with his generous liquidity programs and quantitative easing (QE). He probably realized that political support for more bailouts had waned and that "large amounts of new equity" (in Greenspan's words) would be needed to keep the banks from defaulting. Whatever his motives may have been, Bernanke's stimulus has turbo-charged equities while the real economy continues to stagger. Jordan Irving, who helps manage more than $110 billion at Delaware Investments in Philadelphia told Bloomberg News, "This has been a government-induced rally. We need to see some real positives coming from internal demand, as opposed to government-related demand, and it's just not there". Still, the Fed's intervention in the markets hasn't removed the threat posed by toxic assets; a problem which only gets worse over time. That's why The Bank of International Settlements (BIS) issued a report last week warning of the "perils" of not tackling the issue head-on. Here's an excerpt from the report, as described in The Guardian: "... Despite months of co-ordinated action around the globe to stabilize the banking system, hidden perils still lurk in the world's financial institutions according to the Basel-based Bank of International Settlements. "'Overall, governments may not have acted quickly enough to remove problem assets from the balance sheets of key banks', the BIS says in its annual report. 'At the same time, government guarantees and asset insurance have exposed taxpayers to potentially large losses'. "As one of the few bodies consistently sounding the alarm about the build-up of risky financial assets and under-capitalized banks in the run-up to the credit crisis, the BIS's assessment will carry weight with governments. It says: 'The lack of progress threatens to prolong the crisis and delay the recovery because a dysfunctional financial system reduces the ability of monetary and fiscal actions to stimulate the economy'." The toxic assets problem is further compounded by an estimated $2 trillion of additional losses from defaulting residential mortgages, commercial real-estate loans, credit card loans, and auto loans. It's is the double-whammy; a fetid portfolio of non-performing loans and garbage mortgage-backed derivatives. At the same time, personal consumption has dropped off a cliff and the signs of economic contraction are visible everywhere, from bulging homeless shelters, to long lines at the unemployment offices, empty state coffers, half-filled shopping carts at the grocery store. Unemployment is rising at 600,000 per month, consumer confidence is at record lows, retail sales have fallen sharply, and housing continues its plunge. The data are clear; there are no green shoots or silver linings. The best snapshot of the economy appeared in the Fed's Beige Book, which was released two weeks ago, but was barely covered in the financial media. The report gives a candid assessment of an economy that is in deep distress. Here's an excerpt: "Reports from the twelve Federal Reserve District Banks indicate that economic conditions remained weak or deteriorated further during the period from mid-April through May ... Manufacturing activity declined or remained at a low level across most Districts ... Demand for nonfinancial services contracted across Districts reporting on this segment. Retail spending remained soft as consumers focused on purchasing less expensive necessities and shied away from buying luxury goods. New car purchases remained depressed, with several Districts indicating that tight credit conditions were hampering auto sales. Travel and tourism activity also declined ... Vacancy rates for commercial properties were rising in many parts of the country ... Credit conditions remained stringent or tightened further. Energy activity continued to weaken across most Districts, and demand for natural resources remained depressed ... Labor market conditions continued to be weak across the country, with wages generally remaining flat or falling ... Districts reporting on nonfinancial services indicated that for the most part activity continued to decline ... Activity continued to weaken or remain soft for providers of professional services such as accounting, architecture, business consulting, and legal services ... Consumer spending remained soft as households focused on purchasing less expensive necessities ... Travel and tourism activity declined, and vacationers are tending to spend less ... "Commercial real estate markets continued to weaken across all Districts ... With few exceptions, the District Banks reported that prices at all stages of production were generally flat or falling ... Reports from a number of Districts indicated that pricing at retail remains very soft ..." {2} It's all bad. The financial meltdown has left homeowners with the worst debt-to-income ratio in history. Working people have been forced to cut discretionary spending and begin to save. The household savings rate zoomed to 6.9 percent in May, a fifteen-year high. The rate in April 2008 was zero. The downside of the rising savings rate, is that it will deepen and prolong the recession. The negligible increase in retail spending can be attributed to fiscal stimulus. Without the government checkbook, the economy will continue to struggle. There's been a sudden shift from debt-fueled consumption to thriftiness. The trauma of losing one's job, health care or home; or simply living one paycheck away from disaster will probably shape attitudes for years to come. Personal savings will continue to swell as households build a bigger nest egg to weather the slump and make up for lost equity, droopy retirement accounts, and the possibility of losing their job. This fundamental change in consumer behavior points to less economic activity, more inventory reduction, additional layoffs, and smaller corporate profits. When consumers save, the economy contracts. Consumer spending is seventy per cent of GDP, but consumers have suddenly stepped on the brakes. This is a real game-changer. Even if the credit markets are restored and the banks show a greater willingness to lend, there will be no return to the pre-crisis consumption-levels of the past; those days are over. The administration will have to provide more fiscal stimulus, jobs programs, state aid, and other forms of public relief to compensate for overcapacity and falling demand. Household balance sheets are so stretched that more disposable income will have to be devoted to paying down debt and increasing savings. Past consumption trends cannot be trusted to predict the future. It's a whole new ballgame. Household wealth has slipped $14 trillion since the crisis began. This includes sizable losses in real estate, investments and retirement funds. Home equity has dropped to 41 per cent (a new low) and joblessness is on the rise. When credit was easy, borrowing increased, assets prices rose and the economy grew. Now the process has shifted into reverse. Credit has dried up, collateral values have plunged, GDP is negative, and consumers are buried under a mountain of debt. Personal bankruptcies, defaults and foreclosures are all up. It will take years, perhaps a decade or more, to rebuild household balance sheets and restore the flagging economy. The consumer is running on empty and the chances of a robust recovery are nil. Notes: {1} {1} Alan Greenspan, "Inflation, The real threat to a sustained recovery", Financial Times (June 26 2009) http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/786355f2-61ea-11de-9e03-00144feabdc0.html {2} http://www.federalreserve.gov/FOMC/Beigebook/2009/ Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at fergiewhitney at msn.com http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney07032009.html 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/ From critical.montages at gmail.com Sat Jul 4 21:05:48 2009 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Sat, 4 Jul 2009 23:05:48 -0400 Subject: [R-G] =?iso-8859-1?q?Am=E9rica_Latina=3A_aprofundamento_ou_restau?= =?iso-8859-1?q?ra=E7=E3o=3F?= Message-ID: 04/07/2009 Am?rica Latina: aprofundamento ou restaura??o? Tr?s acontecimentos simult?neos refletem, em dire??es distintas, os dilemas latinoamericanos atuais: o golpe em Honduras, a derrota eleitoral dos Kirchner na Argentina e a escolha dos candidatos a presidente para as elei??es uruguaias. Os tr?s apontam para o tema da continuidade e aprofundamento dos processos de transforma??o que est?o vivendo grande parte dos pa?ses latinoamericanos ou a restaura??o conservadora, com o retorno da direita aos governos da regi?o. O golpe em Honduras ? que tem possibilidade de ser revertido pela rejei??o internacional e pelas mobiliza??es populares internas ? aponta para a tentativa do presidente Zelaya de obter um segundo mandato via referendo, para dar continuidade ao processo rec?m iniciado de transforma??es internas na contracorrente do neoliberalismo at? ent?o vigente no pa?s. O golpe, por sua vez, dado pela c?pula do Judici?rio, das FFAA e do Congresso, expressa a in?rcia das for?as conservadoras que sempre dirigiram a Honduras. Zelaya, filho desgarrado do Partido Liberal que, em rod?zio com o Partido Conservador, dirigiram por d?cadas ao pa?s, de forma praticamente harm?nica. Como sinal dos tempos e da perda de influ?ncia norteamericana, especialmente durante o governo Bush, a onda de novos governos no continente chegou ? Am?rica Central, atrav?s da Nicar?gua, de Honduras e, mais recentemente, de El Salvador. A direita, comandada pela imprensa olig?rquica ? similar ? que se estende a praticamente todo continente -, se precipitou e pode pagar um pre?o caro por isso. Zelaya termina seu mandato no fim do ano, j? havia afirmado que a consulta informal, caso levasse ? introdu??o da reelei??o, n?o afetaria seu mandato, que terminaria em janeiro de 2010. Confirmando que se pode tudo com as baionetas, o golpe dificilmente viabilizar? o governo que pretende se instalar. Resta saber se Zelaya retornar? enfraquecido, cumprindo o final do mandato seu capacidade de iniciativas, abandonando o referendo. Ou se sentir? fortalecido, retomando a consulta e punindo pelo menos alguns dos golpistas. Caso ocorra esta segunda hip?tese, o tiro ter? sa?do pela culatra para a direita e Zelaya poder? dar continuidade ao processo de transforma??es rec?m iniciado em Honduras. Se a ofensiva fracassa, como havia acontecido com as aquelas contra Hugo Chavez, contra Lula, contra Evo Morales e contra os Kirchner, se consolida a id?ia de que o contexto continental impede novos golpes militares, not?cia importante para os governos progressistas e, na ?rea, para o rec?m come?ado governo de Mauricio Funes em El Salvador, em particular. A derrota eleitoral do governo Kirchner se d? no marco da contraofensiva da direita, iniciada com a mobiliza??o do campo contra a eleva??o de impostos, no cen?rio dos ganhos monstruosos que, especialmente a exporta??o de soja, permitiu nos ?ltimos anos na Argentina. Aproveitando-se do erro do governo de taxar a grandes, m?dios e pequenos propriet?rios de maneira indiferenciada, favorecendo a unifica??o do campo sob a dire??o dos grandes exportadores sojeros, a direita conseguiu articular alian?a desses setores com a classe m?dia branca de Buenos Aires, colocando o governo na defensiva. As elei??es refletem essa mudan?a na rela??o de for?as entre governo e oposi??o, com o governo perdendo maioria no Parlamento e condenando a Cristina Kirchner a dif?ceis 2 anos e meio, alem de alentar a direita para a possibilidade de conseguir derrubar o primeiro dos governos progressistas eleitos na regi?o. No Uruguai, o candidato que mais diretamente expressa a possibilidade de aprofundamento da supera??o do modelo herdado por Tabar? Vasquez, ? seu ex-ministro da agricultura, Pepe Mujica, ex-dirigente tupamaro, que derrotou o candidato da prefer?ncia de Tabar?, o moderado Danilo Astori, ex-ministro da economia. Aqui, sendo favorito para ganhas as presidenciais, Mujica aponta para o aprofundamento das transforma??es come?adas no Uruguai, enquanto na Argentina se aponta para o risco de uma restaura??o conservadora e em Honduras, depende do desenlace da crise. Trata-se dos mesmos dilemas do Brasil nas elei??es presidenciais de 2010. Postado por Emir Sader ?s 05:29 From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Sun Jul 5 08:50:13 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Sun, 5 Jul 2009 23:50:13 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] The Money System is a Confidence Trick Message-ID: <20090705235013.7fbb3704.shimogamo@ashisuto.co.jp> by Arian Forrest Nevin, JD Banks loan us money they create out of nothing. Not only is this a scam, but it is outlawed by the Constitution, although our government allows this criminal activity. This activity is at the heart of our unsound money system, which is the direct cause of our nation`s current economic collapse. To reverse our economic decline we must have a sound and constitutional money system. "I thought that, as a scientific man, I ought to know something about economics. So I studied the money system for two years and could make nothing of it. Then, one day, the truth dawned on me. What I was studying was not a system, but a confidence trick." The conclusion that the money system is a confidence trick comes from "the father of nuclear fission" Nobel Prize winning chemist Frederick Soddy. A confidence trick is a scam, a racket, a rip off, a con. What makes the money system a confidence trick? Put most simply, money is created for private profit by banks rather than created for the common good by the government. Only the government of a nation should create money. The confidence trick that is the money system takes two forms. First, rather than simply print money, the government, when it wants more money than it has obtained through taxation, issues bonds. The Federal Reserve then creates new money that did not exist before and uses this money to purchase the bonds. Then the populace, through taxation, is forced to pay the interest on these bonds. This is how the National Debt was created. Rather than impoverishing the populace by forcing them to pay interest on bonds, the government could simply create money instead of having the Federal Reserve create money to purchase government issued bonds. Second, banks devised a subtle way to counterfeit money. Banks invented a separate and distinct form of money other than cash. Banks invented a kind of money which exists solely as entries in their computers. Over 99% of money exists in this form. Anytime a check, credit card, debit card, or money order is used, electronic bank money is being used. Whenever someone gets a loan from a bank the bank is in fact creating entirely new electronic money that did not exist before. Through this subtle form of counterfeiting banks have been able to take control of the money system. This confidence trick is played not only by US banks but by all banks the world over. The money system is the world`s longest running and most successful confidence trick. Not only is allowing banks to create money and charge us interest a confidence trick, but it is also illegal! The Constitution explicitly gives the power to create money to Congress and to Congress alone. It does not authorize Congress to allow private corporations to create money. Article I, Section 8, Part 5 of the Constitution of the United States gives Congress the power, "To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin". The Constitution is the highest law in the United States of America. No law passed by Congress can override the Constitution. It is illegal for banks to create money, and it is illegal for Congress to allow banks to create money. The only way banks could legally create money would be if an amendment to the Constitution authorizing money creation by banks were passed. There is no such amendment. Sadly the Constitution is not a self-enforcing document, and if the people do not force the government to follow its dictates the government is free to ignore the law without consequence. President Garfield stated, "He who controls the money supply of a nation controls the nation". Is it any wonder that against the will of the great majority of Americans the banks and Wall Street were able to get the bailout bill passed? The so-called bailout was nothing other than a massive transfer of purchasing power from the people to the banks and the acquisition of worthless debt and stock by the government at high prices from the banks. Banks were able to force this bill through because of the enormous power they wield from controlling the money system. The Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson, is a banker. He is the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, and he conducts government policy in accord with the interests of banks and not of the American people. The truth of the monetary system has long been withheld from the American people. We have been kept in the dark by the twin commandments put into effect through the influence and power of banks: we shall not have an honest money system, and we shall not examine the money system except under their direction. An honest, constitutional money system is the one thing banks will not stand for. The workings of the money system and the economy are always discussed in mysterious terms. People feel that it is something too complicated for them to understand. In fact, only falsehoods and false principles need to be discussed in mysterious terms. Any person of average intelligence can understand how the money system works. However, banks do everything in their power to keep people from understanding how the money system works, because if the majority of Americans ever did understand, then there would soon be a great call for the abolition of the unsound and dishonest monetary system and a call for its replacement with an honest and constitutional one. Never on television, radio, in newspapers, or in magazines is the truth of the money system discussed. The people are to be kept in the dark and ignorant. Only on the internet and in a few books is the truth of the monetary system discussed. Those who literally create money can certainly afford to direct the discourse regarding the money system in a direction favorable to their interests. Economists prophesize nothing but economic doom and gloom for us upon the horizon. This is true so long as we have a dishonest money system. As soon as it is replaced with an honest money system the way will be open to much greater prosperity than ever before. The worldwide economic crisis we face today is caused directly by the dishonest and unsound money system. There can be no liberty without economic freedom. There can be no economic freedom without an honest money system. The people must demand an honest money system. We must put such pressure on the government that they have no alternative but to execute the will of the people. Either we continue to pay billions and trillions yearly to be kept artificially poor or we demand honest US constitutional money. The choice is clear. Questions, Comments, or Submissions? Email Here: comments at nationaleconomy.net http://www.nationaleconomy.net/moneysystemisaconfidencetrick.html 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/ From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Sun Jul 5 20:14:28 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Mon, 6 Jul 2009 11:14:28 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Japan caught dumping US Treasury Bonds Message-ID: <20090706111428.b4adb638.shimogamo@ashisuto.co.jp> (Turner Radio Network) -- Two Japanese men arrested by Italian Police while trying to smuggle $134 Billion in U.S. Treasury Bonds concealed in suitcases, out of Italy into Switzerland, are employees of the Finance Ministry of Japan. Turner Radio Network has now confirmed the two men arrested by Italy were trying to secretly dump Bonds that were previously held by the nation of Japan. The men arrested have told Italian police they were ordered to move the Bonds by the government of Japan because the Japanese government has lost faith in the ability of the U.S. government to repay its debts. Despite assurances from Japanese Finance Minister Kaoru Yosano about Japan's "absolutely unshakable? confidence in the credibility of the U.S. dollar, it is now confirmed based upon the serial numbers of the Bonds, that the $134 Billion is part of the $686 billion of U.S. debt officially held by Japan. According to Italian Law Enforcement, authorities originally thought the men were part of the "Yakuza", a Japanese organized crime syndicate similar to the Italian Mafia, which lead officials to believe the Bonds were forgeries But after the men who were arrested were forced to remain in jail for more than a few days, they discarded their cover story and admitted to being employees of the Finance Ministry of Japan. Strangely, very few major media outlets have covered this story. Of the few media outlets that have covered it, one - Bloomberg Business News - reported the bonds were "fakes." But according to Italian authorities, that is a cover story developed by the U.S. government to avoid panic selling of U.S. Treasuries by other nations. Law enforcement sources in Rome claim the Italian government is ecstatic over the seizure because under Italian law, they get to keep forty percent (40%) of the smuggled bonds. The governments of both the US and Japan are trying to negotiate with Italy for return of the Bonds but because of the astonishing amount of money involved, Italy is refusing any negotiation at all. TRN has been told to expect to receive serial numbers from the bonds as proof they are real. In addition, our source claims he can obtain scanned images of some of those bonds as well. If we are given such information or images, we will report them publicly. UPDATE June 19, 2009 2115 HRS ET -- The Japanese men taken into custody by Italy have been released and they were allowed to take their "fake" Bonds with them! Authorities now say they do not know where the men went. Those same authorities have told the "Financial Times" of London that the Bonds were "most likely fakes." (Financial Times Story Here: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/82091ec2-5c2f-11de-aea3-00144feabdc0.html) Updated Commentary: This is the single biggest farce we've heard about in a long time. Does anyone actually believe that anyone would be transiting a national border with $134 Billion in "fake" Bonds concealed in a suitcase with a fake bottom? Does anyone actually believe Italian Authorities would ignore their own laws and release persons who violated Italian financial disclosure laws? Does anyone really believe that a bank or other entity would simply accept a US Treasury "Intergovernmental" Bond with a face value of either $500 Million or $1 Billion without ever calling the US Treasury to determine if the bonds were valid? The absurd explanation provided by the U.S. Government that the bonds were "fakes" would be laughable if it wasn't so pathetic. Clearly the government of Japan got caught red handed trying to dump U.S. Treasury Bonds because they no longer trust that the USA can pay its debts. When the issue blew up in their faces, everyone from Japan to Italy to the USA had to get together and lie about what was happening with the hope that other nations wouldn't start dumping U.S. Treasuries too. That is precisely what happened. Anyone who says otherwise is either lying or stupid. . . . . or thinks we're stupid enough to believe them! We have now entered the official "end game" for the United States Government. They are broke. Bankrupt. They have no hope of ever repaying their debts. Countries around the world know this and are starting to dump U.S. debt and U.S. currency because it will all become worthless very soon. There's no stopping it. There's no avoiding it. There's no way to patch things up to make this go away. The United States of America has been bankrupted by its own government. That government bears sole responsibility for the economic collapse that is coming. When the collapse happens, the American people - the most heavily armed population on Earth - will probably take up arms and overthrow the government by force. In our view, forcible overthrow is a fate the U.S. Government richly deserves. It would be very wise for those of you who still can, to consult with qualified financial people about how to get your assets out of the USA and your money OUT of U.S. dollars before you are all wiped out too. Time is running out. Japan is already trying to dump their U.S. holdings. You should too before everyone does at the same time. UPDATE - JUNE 20 1435 HRS ET -- The Turner Radio Network has obtained photos and video from the Guardia di Finanza (Italian Financial Police) showing the actual $134 Billion in U.S. Bonds, with coupons attached, which were caught being smuggled from Italy into Switzerland. The bonds were intercepted in Chiasso, Italy at the border of Switzerland. The Bonds were owned by the country of Japan since the early 1980's when printed bonds were still issued by the U.S. Treasury. Today, all such Bonds are done electronically. The paper bonds below were being smuggled into Switzerland by employees of the Japan Finance Ministry so they could be sold, at discount, under the anonymity of Swiss financial laws. If no one knew Japan was dumping US Treasury bonds, it would not cause a panic worldwide as other nations dumped their US Treasuries too. Japan was rudely surprised when the two employees of the Japan Finance Ministry were grabbed at the Italian border. Japan sent the $134 Billion in bonds to Switzerland because Japan has lost faith in the ability of the U.S. government to repay its debts and Japan wanted to sell the bonds at a discount off face value with the hope of recouping at least some of the money before the U.S.collapses economically. Those of you around the world who are holding U.S. Treasury notes would do well to consult with a qualified financial planner to see how quickly you can dump any U.S. Treasury Bonds and any U.S. Dollars you may be holding before the U.S. suffers the economic collapse which is now unavoidable. If you are left holding Bonds or Dollars, you will likely be financially wiped out when the US Government repudiates its debt because it simply cannot pay anymore. In the photo below, the piles of Bonds which appear to have a cash-like top have a face value of five hundred million dollars each ($500,000,000) and the smaller Bonds at the bottom right of the table are "Kennedy Bonds" with a face value of one billion dollars each ($1,000,000,000) The total face value of the bonds shown on the table below is one hundred thirty four billion dollars! U.S. Treasury Bonds grabbed by Italian Police at Swiss Border http://74.125.153.132/search?q=cache:XfMKzBTqko4J:www.turnerradionetwork.com/index.php%3Foption%3Dcom_content%26view%3Darticle%26id%3D59:employees-of-japan-finance-ministry-arrested-in-italy-trying-tosmuggle-134-billion-in-us-treasuries-in-suitcases%26catid%3D1:latest-news%26Itemid%3D50+Finance+Ministry+of+Japan+arrested+Treasury+Bonds%E3%80%80&cd=1&hl=ja&ct=clnk&gl=jp&client=firefox-a 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/ From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Mon Jul 6 05:35:39 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Mon, 6 Jul 2009 20:35:39 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] The Anti-Empire Report Message-ID: <20090706203539.83516f4e.shimogamo@ashisuto.co.jp> by William Blum www.killinghope.org (July 03 2009) Much ado about nothing? What is there about the Iranian election of June 12 that has led to it being one of the leading stories in media around the world every day since? Elections whose results are seriously challenged have taken place in most countries at one time or another in recent decades. Countless Americans believe that the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004 were stolen by the Republicans, and not just inside the voting machines and in the counting process, but prior to the actual voting as well with numerous Republican Party dirty tricks designed to keep poor and black voters off voting lists or away from polling stations. The fact that large numbers of Americans did not take to the streets day after day in protest, as in Iran, is not something we can be proud of. Perhaps if the CIA, the Agency for International Development (AID), several US government-run radio stations, and various other organizations supported by the National Endowment for Democracy (which was created to serve as a front for the CIA, literally) had been active in the United States, as they have been for years in Iran, major street protests would have taken place in the United States. The classic "outside agitators" can not only foment dissent through propaganda, adding to already existing dissent, but they can serve to mobilize the public to strongly demonstrate against the government. In 1953, when the CIA overthrew Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, they paid people to agitate in front of Mossadegh's residence and elsewhere and engage in acts of violence; some pretended to be supporters of Mossadegh while engaging in anti-religious actions. And it worked, remarkably well. {1} Since the end of World War Two, the United States has seriously intervened in some thirty elections around the world, adding a new twist this time, twittering. The State Department asked Twitter to postpone a scheduled maintenance shutdown of its service to keep information flowing from inside Iran, helping to mobilize protesters. {2} The New York Times reported: "An article published by the Web site True/Slant highlighted some of the biggest errors on Twitter that were quickly repeated and amplified by bloggers: that three million protested in Tehran last weekend (more like a few hundred thousand); that the opposition candidate Mir Hussein Mousavi was under house arrest (he was being watched); that the president of the election monitoring committee declared the election invalid last Saturday (not so)". {3} In recent years, the United States has been patrolling the waters surrounding Iran with warships, halting Iranian ships to check for arms shipments to Hamas or for other illegal reasons, financing and "educating" Iranian dissidents, using Iranian groups to carry out terrorist attacks inside Iran, kidnaping Iranian diplomats in Iraq, kidnaping Iranian military personnel in Iran and taking them to Iraq, continually spying and recruiting within Iran, manipulating Iran's currency and international financial transactions, and imposing various economic and political sanctions against the country. {4} "I've made it clear that the United States respects the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and is not at all interfering in Iran's affairs", said US President Barack Obama with a straight face on June 23. "Some in the Iranian government [have been] accusing the United States and others outside of Iran of instigating protests over the elections. These accusations are patently false and absurd." {5} "Never believe anything until it's officially denied", British writer Claud Cockburn famously said. In his world-prominent speech to the Middle East on June 4, Obama mentioned that "In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government". So we have the president of the United States admitting to a previous overthrow of the Iranian government while the United States is in the very midst of trying to overthrow the current Iranian government. This will serve as the best example of hypocrisy that's come along in quite a while. So why the big international fuss over the Iranian election and street protests? There's only one answer. The obvious one. The announced winner, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is a Washington ODE, an Officially Designated Enemy, for not sufficiently respecting the Empire and its Israeli partner-in-crime; indeed, Ahmadinejad is one of the most outspoken critics of US foreign policy in the world. So ingrained is this ODE response built into Washington's world view that it appears to matter not at all that Mousavi, Ahmadinejad's main opponent in the election and very much supported by the protesters, while prime minister 1981-89, bore large responsibility for the attacks on the US embassy and military barracks in Beirut in 1983, which took the lives of more than 200 Americans, and the 1988 truck bombing of a US Navy installation in Naples, Italy, that killed five persons. Remarkably, a search of US newspaper and broadcast sources shows no mention of this during the current protests. {6} However, the Washington Post saw fit to run a story on June 27 that declared: "the authoritarian governments of China, Cuba and Burma have been selectively censoring the news this month of Iranian crowds braving government militias on the streets of Tehran to demand democratic reforms". Can it be that no one in the Obama administration knows of Mousavi's background? And do none of them know about the violent government repression on June 5 in Peru of the peaceful protests organized in response to the US-Peru Free Trade Agreement? A massacre that took the lives of between twenty and 25 indigenous people in the Amazon and wounded another 100. {7} The Obama administration was silent on the Peruvian massacre because the Peruvian president, Alan Garcia, is not an ODE. And neither is Mousavi, despite his anti-American terrorist deeds, because he's opposed to Ahmadinejad, who competes with Hugo Chavez to be Washington's Number One ODE. Time magazine calls Mousavi a "moderate", and goes on to add: "It has to be assumed that the Iranian presidential election was rigged", offering as much evidence as the Iranian protestors; that is, none at all. {8} It cannot of course be proven that the Iranian election was totally honest, but the arguments given to support the charge of fraud are not very impressive, such as the much-repeated fact that the results were announced very soon after the polls closed. For decades in various countries election results have been condemned for being withheld for many hours or days. Some kind of dishonesty must be going on behind the scenes during the long delay it was argued. So now we're asked to believe that some kind of dishonesty must be going on because the results were released so quickly. It should be noted that the ballots listed only one electoral contest, with but four candidates. Phil Wilayto, American peace activist and author of a book on Iran, has observed: "Ahmadinejad, himself born into rural poverty, clearly has the support of the poorer classes, especially in the countryside, where nearly half the population lives. Why? In part because he pays attention to them, makes sure they receive some benefits from the government and treats them and their religious views and traditions with respect. Mousavi, on the other hand, the son of an urban merchant, clearly appeals more to the urban middle classes, especially the college-educated youth. This being so, why would anyone be surprised that Ahmadinejad carried the vote by a clear majority? Are there now more yuppies in Iran than poor people?" {9} All of which is of course not to say that Iran is not a relatively repressive society on social and religious issues, and it's this underlying reality which likely feeds much of the protest; indeed, many of the protesters may not even have strong views about the election per se, particularly since both Ahmadinejad and Mousavi are members of the establishment, neither is any threat to the Islamic theocracy, and the election can be seen as the kind of power struggle you find in virtually every country. But that is not the issue I'm concerned with here. The issue is Washington's long-standing goal of regime change. If the exact same electoral outcome had taken place in a country that is an ally of the United States, how much of all the accusatory news coverage and speeches would have taken place? In fact, the exact same thing did happen in a country that is an ally of the United States, three years ago when Felipe Calderon appeared to have stolen the presidential election in Mexico and there were daily large protests for more than two months; but the American and international condemnation was virtually non-existent compared to what we see today in regard to Iran. Iranian leaders undertook a recount of a random ten per cent of ballots and recertified Ahmadinejad as the winner. How honest the recount was I have no idea, but it's more than Americans got in 2000 and 2004. By what standard shall we judge Barack Obama? Many of my readers have been upset with me for my criticisms of President Obama's policies. Following my last two reports, more than a dozen have asked to be removed from my mailing list. But if you share my view that the numerous atrocities US foreign policy is responsible for constitute the greatest threat to world peace, prosperity and happiness, then I think you have to want leaders who are unambiguously opposed to America's military adventures, because those interventions are unambiguously harmful. There's nothing good to be said about dropping powerful bombs on crowds of innocent people, invading their land, overthrowing their government, occupying the country, breaking down the doors of the citizens, killing the father, raping the mother, traumatizing the children, torturing those opposed to all this ... Barack Obama has no problem with this, if we judge him by his policies and not his rhetoric. And neither does Al Franken, who's about to become a Democratic Senator from Minnesota. The former Saturday Night Live comedian would like you to believe that he's been against the war in Iraq since it began, but he's gone to Iraq four times to entertain the troops. Does that make sense? Why does the military bring entertainers to soldiers? To lift the soldiers' spirits. Why does the military want to lift the soldiers' spirits? A happier soldier does his job better. And what's the soldier's job? All the charming things listed above. Doesn't Franken know what these guys do? He criticized the Bush administration because they "failed to send enough troops to do the job right". {10} What "job" did the man think the troops were sent to do that had not been performed to his standards because of lack of manpower? Did he want them to be more efficient at killing Iraqis who resisted the occupation? Franken has been lifting soldiers' spirits for a long time. This past March he was honored by the United Service Organization (USO) for his ten years of entertaining troops abroad. That includes Kosovo in 1999, as imperialist an occupation as you'll want to see. He called his USO experience "one of the best things I've ever done". {11} Franken has also spoken at West Point, encouraging the next generation of imperialist warriors. Is this a man to challenge the militarization of America at home and abroad? No more so than Obama. Tom Hayden wrote this about Franken in 2005 when Franken had a regular program on the Air America radio network: "Is anyone else disappointed with Al Franken's daily defense of the continued war in Iraq? Not Bush's version of the war, because that would undermine Air America's laudable purpose of rallying an anti-Bush audience. But, well, Kerry's version of the war, one that can be better managed and won, somehow with better body armor and fewer torture cells. This morning Franken was endorsing Senator Joe Biden's proposal to send 5,000 NATO troops to close the Syrian-Iraq border, bring in foreign trainers for the Iraqi officer corps, and put Iraqis to work cleaning up the destruction of our invasion ... Now that Bush has manipulated us into the invasion, Franken thinks we have no choice but to ... stay until we crush the insurgents. It's a humanitarian excuse for open-ended American occupation. And it's shared widely by the professional political and pundit class who think of themselves as the conscience of the American establishment and the leadership of the Democratic Party." {12} I know, I know, I'm taking away all your heroes. But such people shouldn't be your heroes. You can learn to see through the liberal, Democratic Party apologists for the empire. Only a week ago, documents released by the Nixon Library in California revealed that five days before US and South Vietnamese troops made their surprise invasion of Cambodia on April 29 1970 - which elicited widespread, angry protests in the US, resulting in the fatal shootings by the National Guard of students at Kent State University in Ohio - President Richard Nixon got approval for the invasion from the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator John Stennis of Mississippi. Stennis told the president: "I will be with you ... I commend you for what you are doing". {13} Long live the Cold War President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras was overthrown in a military coup June 28 because he was about to conduct a non-binding survey of the population, asking the question: "Do you agree that, during the general elections of November 2009 there should be a fourth ballot to decide whether to hold a Constituent National Assembly that will approve a new political constitution?" One of the issues that Zelaya hoped a new constitution would deal with is the limiting of the presidency to one four-year term. He also expressed the need for other constitutional changes to make it possible for him to carry out policies to improve the life of the poor; in countries like Honduras, the law is not generally crafted for that end. At this writing it's not clear how matters will turn out in Honduras, but the following should be noted: the United States, by its own admission, was fully aware for weeks of the Honduran military's plan to overthrow Zelaya. Washington says it tried its best to change the mind of the plotters. It's difficult to believe that this proved impossible. During the Cold War it was said, with much justification, that the United States could discourage a coup in Latin America with "a frown". The Honduran and American military establishments have long been on very fraternal terms. And it must be asked: In what way and to what extent did the United States warn Zelaya of the impending coup? And what protection did it offer him? The response to the coup from the Obama administration can be described with adjectives such as lukewarm, proper but belated, and mixed. It is not unthinkable that the United States gave the military plotters the go-ahead, telling them to keep the traditional "golpe" bloodiness to a minimum. Zelaya was elected to office as the candidate of a conservative party; he then, surprisingly, moved to the left and became a strong critic of a number of Washington policies, and an ally of Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Evo Morales of Bolivia, both of whom the Bush administration tried to overthrow and assassinate. Following the coup, National Public Radio (NPR) showed once again why progressives refer to it as National Pentagon Radio. The station's leading news anchor, Robert Siegel, interviewed Johanna Mendelson Forman, of the conservative think tank, Center for Strategic and International Studies: Siegel: "There hasn't been a coup in Latin America for quite a while". Forman: "I think the last one was in 1983". Siegel did not correct her. {14} This is ignorance of considerable degree. There was a coup in Venezuela in 2002 that briefly overthrew Hugo Chavez, a coup in Haiti in 2004 that permanently overthrew Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and a coup in Panama in 1989 that permanently overthrew Manuel Noriega. Is it because the US was closely involved in all three coups that they have been thrown down the Orwellian Memory Hole? Notes: 1. William Blum, Killing Hope, chapter 9 2. Associated Press, June 16 2009 3. New York Times, June 21 2009 4. See Seymour Hersh, New Yorker magazine, June 29 2008; ABC News, May 22 2007; and Paul Craig Roberts in CounterPunch, June 19-21 2009 for descriptions of some of these and other anti-Iran covert activities. 5. White House press conference, June 23 2009 6. The only mention is by Jeff Stein in "CQ Politics" [Congressional Quarterly], online, June 22 2009, "according to former CIA and military officials". 7. Center for International Policy (Washington, DC) report, June 16 2009 8. Time magazine, June 29 2009, page 26 9. AlterNet.org, June 14 2009; Wilayto is the author of In Defense of Iran: Notes from a US Peace Delegation's Journey through the Islamic Republic (2009) 10. Washington Post, February 16 2004 11. Star Tribune (Minneapolis), March 26 2009 12. Huffington Post, sometime in June 2005, but it may no longer be there. 13. Washington Post, June 30 2009 14. NPR, All Things Considered, June 29 2009 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://killinghope.org/bblum6/aer71.html 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/ From barmy_basket at yahoo.es Mon Jul 6 10:39:17 2009 From: barmy_basket at yahoo.es (peripatetic) Date: Mon, 06 Jul 2009 18:39:17 +0200 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Japan caught dumping US Treasury Bonds In-Reply-To: <20090706111428.b4adb638.shimogamo@ashisuto.co.jp> References: <20090706111428.b4adb638.shimogamo@ashisuto.co.jp> Message-ID: <4A5228B5.4010202@yahoo.es> According Asianews, the timing of the arrest of Ted Turner may well be related to his coverage of this story: http://www.asianews.it/index.php?l=en&art=15648 06/30/2009: /Official U.S. sources continue to say //they //are fakes, but there is no news that American experts have inspected them in person. Arrested for another matter, the director of a U.S. radio who says the bonds are real and Japan was trying to sell in Switzerland, not trusting the ability of the United States to honour its debt./ Milan (AsiaNews) -- Four weeks have passed since American bonds were confiscated from two Japanese men who were travelling on a direct train to Chiasso, Switzerland, and while there has been clarification of some - very few -points, Italian authorities have remained silent on the rest of the episode. In addition, a strange coincidence in the timing of the arrest of a director of an internet radio who had made revelations regarding the incident ,increases the already strong oddities surrounding the case. This added to the revaluation of the fact that among the evidence seized there were "Kennedy Bonds", all points toward the authenticity of the items seized by the Guardia di Finanza (GdF) in early June. The major English-speaking newspapers ignored the story for a couple of weeks. They only started to report on it after the Bloomberg agency carried a story on 18 / 6, in which a spokesman for the Treasury, Meyerhardt, declared that the bonds, based on photos available on the Internet, were "clearly false." The same day, the Financial Times (FT) published an article whose title laid the blame for the (alleged) infringement at the feet of the Italian Mafia, despite the fact that the article failed to make even one possible connection with the episode in Chiasso. Nevertheless, the version of events as reported in FT was taken up by others as being "appropriate" (given that it is a very common clich? about Italy and it is a sequester that took place in Italy) and in the end "colourful." It's a pity that it goes against all logic: that the Mafia tried to pass unnoticed in its attempt to dump fake bonds amounting to 134.5 billion dollars and moreover were to "stung" a mere step from their gaol, is not very credible. Most recently last week, 25 / 6, the New York Times reported on the story in particular, the allegations of CIA spokesman, Darrin Blackford: the U.S. Secret Service carried out inspections, as required by the Italian judiciary, and found that they were fictitious financial instruments, never issued by the "U.S. government". It is not clear, however, how the checks mentioned by Blackford were carried out and whether they were also are carried out via internet. In fact according to official Italian sources the Commission of American experts, expected in Italy, have yet to arrive. Furthermore, the bonds were accompanied by a recent and original bank record. It is therefore unclear how the U.S. authorities can declare fake documentation that does not originate from the Fed or the U.S. Department of Treasury. On the contrary, claims in support of the bond's authenticity were made 20 / 6 on the Turner Radio Network (TRN), an independent radio station broadcast via Internet. On that date in a massive exposure, TRN stated that the two Japanese men arrested by the Guardia di Finanza (GdF) and then released in Ponte Chiasso were employees of the Japanese Ministry for Treasury. AsiaNews had also received similar reports: */one of the two Japanese arrested in Chiasso and then released is Tuneo Yamauchi, is the brother of Toshiro Muto, until recently vice governor of the Bank of Japan/*. On its website, the creator and presenter of the Radio, Hal Turner, had also claimed that his sources had revealed that the Italian authorities believe the evidence to be authentic and that the two Japanese officials are from the Japanese Ministry for Finance. They were supposed to bring the bonds to Switzerland because the Japanese government had apparently lost confidence in U.S. ability to repay its debt. Japanese financial authorities therefore were trying to sell a part of the securities in their possession through parallel channels ahead of an imminent financial disaster, thanks to the anonymity which, Turner said, is guaranteed by the laws of Switzerland. AsiaNews does not know to what extent Turner's revelations can be held as credible, given that in this case too, it is difficult to believe that $ 134.5 billion would pass unnoticed anywhere in the world. It seems far more logical to assume that the bonds, if authentic, were directed to the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, BIS, the central bank of central banks ahead of the issuance of securities in a new supranational currency. Turner had in any event added that as evidence to support his revelations he would have provided the serial numbers of the seized bonds. Before he could do so, however, was imprisoned. Hal Turner is the journalist who long ago first broke the news of a secret plan to replace the dollar, after a severe financial crisis, with a common North American currency, the Amero. In a dramatic phone call from inside the prison in which he is detained pending trial, relayed via internet, Hal Turner claims that his arrest is political and it is in relation to the securities seized in Chiasso, because the authorities are terrified by his revelations of the bonds' authenticity. Of course, the allegations made against him have to nothing to do with the story and thus an already intricate story becomes ever more complex. Turner maintains that he did not personally formulate the disclosure for which he has been imprisoned. Although it was clearly his responsibility to remain vigilant, it is also true that blogs from around the world and the U.S. themselves are full of threats and provocations. The coincidental timing, the unusual diligence and the details of his arrest arouse suspicions about the true motives of the American federal police. Indeed, this very arrest suggests that the evidence seized from GdF are truly authentic. One more element in favour of the bond's authenticity is found in the securities, which in the June 4 statement, the GdF termed "Kennedy Bonds" with photos provided. These photos reveal that the securities under discussion are not bonds but Treasury Notes, because they are securities that can be immediately exchanged for their worth in goods or services and because they are devoid of interest coupons. One side carries a reproduction of the image of the American president, the reverse side that of a spaceship. From confidential, usually well-informed sources, AsiaNews has learned that this type of paper money was issued less than ten years ago (in 1998), although it is difficult to know whether those seized in Chiasso are authentic. But the fact that the release of this particular State Treasury was not completely in the public domain tends to exclude the possibility of counterfeiting. It highly unreasonable to suppose that a forger would reproduce a State Treasury not commonly in circulation and of which there is no public knowledge. For this reason, it can be concluded that the 124.5 billion dollars divided in 249 bonds of 500 million each are authentic. These titles, although referred to as "Federal Reserve Notes" are actually bonds, because they accrue interest and are redeemable at maturity. But one question remains unsolved regarding them. It is somewhat hard to understand why the securities, which were from the outset indistinguishable from the original to the GdF, all have their coupons. Any ordinary investor, even a state, would have cashed in the interest coupon every year, so as not to lose purchasing power. http://webabuser.blogspot.com/2009/07/everything-suggests-that-american-bonds.html From suzannedk at gmail.com Mon Jul 6 11:25:00 2009 From: suzannedk at gmail.com (Suzanne de Kuyper) Date: Mon, 6 Jul 2009 19:25:00 +0200 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Japan caught dumping US Treasury Bonds In-Reply-To: <20090706111428.b4adb638.shimogamo@ashisuto.co.jp> References: <20090706111428.b4adb638.shimogamo@ashisuto.co.jp> Message-ID: Fantastic! Dumping U S Treasury Bonds. The first clear action that expresses the great contempt of millions of Asians for U S fiscal thievery. Suzanne suzannedk at gmail.com On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 4:14 AM, Bill Totten wrote: > > (Turner Radio Network) -- Two Japanese men arrested by Italian Police > while trying to smuggle $134 Billion in U.S. Treasury Bonds concealed in > suitcases, out of Italy into Switzerland, are employees of the Finance > Ministry of Japan. > > Turner Radio Network has now confirmed the two men arrested by Italy > were trying to secretly dump Bonds that were previously held by the > nation of Japan. The men arrested have told Italian police they were > ordered to move the Bonds by the government of Japan because the > Japanese government has lost faith in the ability of the U.S. government > to repay its debts. > > Despite assurances from Japanese Finance Minister Kaoru Yosano about > Japan's "absolutely unshakable? confidence in the credibility of the > U.S. dollar, it is now confirmed based upon the serial numbers of the > Bonds, that the $134 Billion is part of the $686 billion of U.S. debt > officially held by Japan. > > According to Italian Law Enforcement, authorities originally thought the > men were part of the "Yakuza", a Japanese organized crime syndicate > similar to the Italian Mafia, which lead officials to believe the Bonds > were forgeries But after the men who were arrested were forced to > remain in jail for more than a few days, they discarded their cover > story and admitted to being employees of the Finance Ministry of Japan. > > Strangely, very few major media outlets have covered this story. Of the > few media outlets that have covered it, one - Bloomberg Business News - > reported the bonds were "fakes." But according to Italian authorities, > that is a cover story developed by the U.S. government to avoid panic > selling of U.S. Treasuries by other nations. > > Law enforcement sources in Rome claim the Italian government is ecstatic > over the seizure because under Italian law, they get to keep forty > percent (40%) of the smuggled bonds. The governments of both the US and > Japan are trying to negotiate with Italy for return of the Bonds but > because of the astonishing amount of money involved, Italy is refusing > any negotiation at all. > > TRN has been told to expect to receive serial numbers from the bonds as > proof they are real. In addition, our source claims he can obtain > scanned images of some of those bonds as well. If we are given such > information or images, we will report them publicly. > > > UPDATE June 19, 2009 2115 HRS ET -- The Japanese men taken into > custody by Italy have been released and they were allowed to take their > "fake" Bonds with them! Authorities now say they do not know where the > men went. Those same authorities have told the "Financial Times" of > London that the Bonds were "most likely fakes." (Financial Times Story > Here: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/82091ec2-5c2f-11de-aea3-00144feabdc0.html) > > > Updated Commentary: This is the single biggest farce we've heard about > in a long time. Does anyone actually believe that anyone would be > transiting a national border with $134 Billion in "fake" Bonds concealed > in a suitcase with a fake bottom? > > Does anyone actually believe Italian Authorities would ignore their own > laws and release persons who violated Italian financial disclosure laws? > > Does anyone really believe that a bank or other entity would simply > accept a US Treasury "Intergovernmental" Bond with a face value of > either $500 Million or $1 Billion without ever calling the US Treasury > to determine if the bonds were valid? > > The absurd explanation provided by the U.S. Government that the bonds > were "fakes" would be laughable if it wasn't so pathetic. > > Clearly the government of Japan got caught red handed trying to dump U.S. > Treasury Bonds because they no longer trust that the USA can pay its > debts. When the issue blew up in their faces, everyone from Japan to > Italy to the USA had to get together and lie about what was happening > with the hope that other nations wouldn't start dumping U.S. Treasuries > too. > > That is precisely what happened. Anyone who says otherwise is either > lying or stupid. . . . . or thinks we're stupid enough to believe them! > > We have now entered the official "end game" for the United States > Government. They are broke. Bankrupt. They have no hope of ever > repaying their debts. Countries around the world know this and are > starting to dump U.S. debt and U.S. currency because it will all become > worthless very soon. > > There's no stopping it. There's no avoiding it. There's no way to > patch things up to make this go away. > > The United States of America has been bankrupted by its own government. > That government bears sole responsibility for the economic collapse that > is coming. When the collapse happens, the American people - the most > heavily armed population on Earth - will probably take up arms and > overthrow the government by force. In our view, forcible overthrow is a > fate the U.S. Government richly deserves. > > It would be very wise for those of you who still can, to consult with > qualified financial people about how to get your assets out of the USA > and your money OUT of U.S. dollars before you are all wiped out too. > Time is running out. Japan is already trying to dump their U.S. > holdings. You should too before everyone does at the same time. > > > UPDATE - JUNE 20 1435 HRS ET -- The Turner Radio Network has obtained > photos and video from the Guardia di Finanza (Italian Financial Police) > showing the actual $134 Billion in U.S. Bonds, with coupons attached, > which were caught being smuggled from Italy into Switzerland. > > The bonds were intercepted in Chiasso, Italy at the border of > Switzerland. > > The Bonds were owned by the country of Japan since the early 1980's when > printed bonds were still issued by the U.S. Treasury. Today, all such > Bonds are done electronically. > > The paper bonds below were being smuggled into Switzerland by employees > of the Japan Finance Ministry so they could be sold, at discount, under > the anonymity of Swiss financial laws. If no one knew Japan was dumping > US Treasury bonds, it would not cause a panic worldwide as other nations > dumped their US Treasuries too. Japan was rudely surprised when the two > employees of the Japan Finance Ministry were grabbed at the Italian > border. > > Japan sent the $134 Billion in bonds to Switzerland because Japan has > lost faith in the ability of the U.S. government to repay its debts and > Japan wanted to sell the bonds at a discount off face value with the > hope of recouping at least some of the money before the U.S.collapses > economically. > > Those of you around the world who are holding U.S. Treasury notes would > do well to consult with a qualified financial planner to see how quickly > you can dump any U.S. Treasury Bonds and any U.S. Dollars you may be > holding before the U.S. suffers the economic collapse which is now > unavoidable. > > If you are left holding Bonds or Dollars, you will likely be financially > wiped out when the US Government repudiates its debt because it simply > cannot pay anymore. > > In the photo below, the piles of Bonds which appear to have a cash-like > top have a face value of five hundred million dollars each ($500,000,000) > and the smaller Bonds at the bottom right of the table are "Kennedy > Bonds" with a face value of one billion dollars each ($1,000,000,000) > > The total face value of the bonds shown on the table below is one > hundred thirty four billion dollars! > > > U.S. Treasury Bonds grabbed by Italian Police at Swiss Border > > > > http://74.125.153.132/search?q=cache:XfMKzBTqko4J:www.turnerradionetwork.com/index.php%3Foption%3Dcom_content%26view%3Darticle%26id%3D59:employees-of-japan-finance-ministry-arrested-in-italy-trying-tosmuggle-134-billion-in-us-treasuries-in-suitcases%26catid%3D1:latest-news%26Itemid%3D50+Finance+Ministry+of+Japan+arrested+Treasury+Bonds%E3%80%80&cd=1&hl=ja&ct=clnk&gl=jp&client=firefox-a > > > TO POST A COMMENT, OR TO READ COMMENTS POSTED BY OTHERS, please click > on the word "comment" highlighted at the end of the version of this > essay posted at http://billtotten.blogspot.com/ > _______________________________________________ > Rad-Green mailing list > Rad-Green at lists.econ.utah.edu > To change your options or unsubscribe go to: > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green > From shniad at sfu.ca Mon Jul 6 13:40:40 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 6 Jul 2009 12:40:40 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Honduras Coup: the new Narco State In-Reply-To: <001101c9fe09$b873d710$f32b3060@dake001> Message-ID: <1442625052.252941246909240387.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Honduras Coup Chooses Path of Rogue Narco-State Posted by Al Giordano - July 4, 2009 at 9:57 am By Al Giordano This photo of Honduran coup ?president? Roberto Micheletti rallying his supporters, above, from yesterday?s New York Times includes a creative act of protest against it. In the lower left hand corner of the photo, there are two placards in the crowd that are not in Spanish, but in German: "Ein Reich, Ein Volk, Ein Stimme" and"Arbeit Macht Uns Frei". Field Hand DK points out in the comments section: ?The first was a prominent Nazi slogan (one Reich, one people, one voice); the second (work makes us free) was inscribed at the entrance to the Auschwitz concentration camp.? (Note: Not being a German-speaker, I can't confirm the commenter's translation, but another Field Hand, Lucidamente, now offers an alternative translation in the comments section that is similar but not an exact match with this one.) Which only goes to prove that employers can force their workers to attend a pro-coup rally but they can?t control what signs they hold. Now, on to today?s significant news out of Honduras: Last night, around 10 p.m. Tegucigalpa time, CNN Espa?ol interrupted its sports news programming for a live press conference announcement ("no questions, please") by coup ?president? Micheletti. There, he announced that his coup ?government? of Honduras is withdrawing from the Democratic Charter of the Organization of American States (OAS). The Friday night press conference was meant to preempt this morning?s OAS meeting in Washington (at which various heads of state, including Presidents Cristina Kirchner of Argentina and Rafael Correa of Ecuador deemed important enough to attend) where the OAS will surely expel the Honduras coup regime for its flagrant violations of said Democratic Charter. Thus, the late Friday night press conference to say ?You can?t fire us! We quit!? The Honduras coup?s behavior virtually assures that come Monday, the US government will define it as a ?military coup,? triggering a cut off of US aid, joining the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, PetroCaribe, the UN and the rest of the world in withdrawing economic support for the coup regime. (The US had already put all funds on "pause" this week, so the boycott has already begun and merely awaits formal moves to become permanent.) This is very significant because of Honduras? annual $3.5 billion budget, $2.3 billion ? 65 percent - comes from those foreign sources. This seemingly suicidal maneuver by the coup government can be partially explained by what I described yesterday as the ?shared hallucination? of those in the Honduras oligarchy?s ten owning families and those elites in their orbit. But something else is at work: Greedy people don?t just cast away 65 percent of their national budget unless they believe they can get it from other sources. One of the big backers of the coup d?etat has been an international terrorist network of ex-Cubans, who have financed the dirty work of jet plane bomber Luis Posada Carriles over the years and have set up business interests in Honduras. These forces are desperate now that Washington is making the moves to ease and end the embargo of Cuba. Investigative journalist Guy Jean-Allard reports, via TeleSur, that Ralph Nodarse ? ex-Cuban owner of Channel 6 in San Pedro Sula, Honduras ? and arms-and-drug trafficker Rafael Hern?ndez Nodarse are knee deep behind he coup-plotters in Honduras. The latter aided and abetted Posada Carriles to hide out in Panama in 2004. There was likewise a strong nexus between the Honduras government and military and the 1980s Iran-Contra drugs-for-arms-for-Nicaraguan-paramilitaries scandal, where much of the illegal covert US cocaine smuggling operation was headquartered during the Reagan and Bush Senior presidencies. The government of Venezuela has accused that former State Department official and anti-Castro ex-Cuban Otto Reich is involved with the current coup regime in Honduras. Reich, at State during the 2002 coup in Venezuela, was the US official that called ambassadors from throughout Latin America into his office when the coup was taking place to instruct them that the US supported the coup and expected the same from them (that move backfired when Latin American nations delivered the first-ever rebuke to the US via the OAS). He was also at State in the mid-1980s heading up Latin American operations and has been strongly linked to the cocaine-smuggling activities then. Those who think that when the US cuts off funds, as it will surely do in the coming days, that the sanctions will starve the Honduran coup regime into surrender, are forgetting that in this asymmetrical world there are non-government entities ? which is to say, organized crime, terrorist, and narco-trafficking organizations ? that seek a safe haven in Central America, so important in the route between the South American coca plant and the noses of North America. The historic overlap between the ex-Cuban terrorist networks and cocaine trafficking is well documented. Last night, ?president? Micheletti made it clear that his regime seeks to run a rogue state, unbeholden to the Democratic Charter of the OAS or international law. He is thus setting up an oasis that will prove irresistible to large narco-trafficking organizations as a protected base of operations, from whom he will extract the funding to make up the significant $2.3 billion shortfall caused by economic sanctions against his coup regime, plus additional ?tips? to line the pockets of all who share in his power structure. This opens up a new chapter not only in Latin American governmental history, but also in the drug war. It was clear that when Plan Mexico began its assault along the US-Mexico border that certain trafficking organizations would simply move to other geographic spaces through which to operate (and thus all the carnage and depravation of human rights cause by Plan Mexico would end up having zero impact stemming the flow of cocaine). The only question - to where? - has now been answered. Now enters the Honduras coup "government" in its bid to become the cocaine trafficking capital of the hemisphere, the new gangster regime. Update: This AP report sheds some light on the honesty or dishonesty of coup "president" Micheletti: Micheletti's government is so eager to find a friend that it announced it had been recognized by Israel and Italy ? surprising the governments of those countries. Italy withdrew its ambassador to protest the coup, and Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said: "All rumors about Israeli recognition of the new president are wholly unfounded." And contrary to Micheletti's assertion, Interpol on Friday released a statement saying it had not received any request to issue an arrest warrant for Zelaya. In other words, he's just making it up as he goes along, apparently unaware that in a world of globalized communications such false claims can be shot down rather quickly. Maybe he was too hasty in blocking Internet access in his own land? Update II: President Manuel Zelaya just broadcast an audio message to the people of Honduras, aired on Telesur, confirming that he returns tomorrow, Sunday, to his country, and urging the people to go to the international airport in Tegucigalpa to join him in his return (you can watch Telesur's livestream at this link, which has been showing frequent images of the massive marches from distinct points heading toward the airport already). Zelaya also stressed his appeal that the people arrive unarmed and subscribe to "nonviolence," even if coup forces turn violent against them. Update III: Telesur reports at 12:40 (hour Tegucigalpa) that the mass peaceful march against the coup is now just one kilometer from the airport, its destination. Update IV: Brazil Press Agency (Ag?ncia Brasil) estimates the crowd size of the anti-coup march to be"close to 50,000," and it's still a day before its culmination tomorrow. The television images certainly suggest a crowd of at least that size, too. The coup regime already has a new problem: whether try to enforce its "curfew" (suspension of constitutional rights) tonight as such a large group of citizens remains surrounding the airport in anticipation of the return of their president. (The Coup "Congress" just extended the state of siege a second time, now through Tuesday morning.) From shniad at sfu.ca Mon Jul 6 13:50:36 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 6 Jul 2009 12:50:36 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Calls grow to supplant dollar as global currency In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <407675420.257061246909836615.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/calls-grow-to-supplant-dollar-as-global-currency/article1207242/ Globe and Mail July 6, 2009 Calls grow to supplant dollar as global currency France joins China, India and Russia in calling for a new reserve standard on the eve of the G8 summit Karim Bardeesy T he call to find an alternative to the U.S dollar as the global reserve currency is gaining momentum as France joined calls by China, India and Russia for a review of the world's currency practices. French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde challenged the dollar's supremacy ?in a world that has changed because of the crisis and the growing role of emerging countries.? The questioning of the U.S. dollar as the key currency for central banks by a leader of a major European economy gives renewed life to the issue at this week's Group of Eight summit meeting in L'Aquila, Italy. The U.S. dollar has long served as the dominant medium of exchange, and tends to dominate the official money reserves that countries hold through their governments and at their central banks. In the first quarter of 2009, 65 per cent of the world's allocated foreign exchange holdings were held in U.S. dollars, according to the International Monetary Fund. That's the highest in seven quarters. The push for an alternative is being driven in large part by concern over the weakened state of the U.S. economy. The country is forecasting fiscal deficits for the next decade. That's leading large holders of U.S. debt such as China to worry that the U.S. dollar may not be as safe as it once was. In addition, the dollar has been volatile on international currency markets, and the U.S. is running ongoing trade deficits. Diversification would likely take years, because unwinding large reserve positions of U.S. dollars too quickly would devalue them. And despite concerns about the greenback, it has maintained its international appeal, in part because investors need the value of their U.S. dollar holdings to stay high. With the U.S. continuing to require willing lenders to fund deficits, the situation has become what top Barack Obama economic adviser Lawrence Summers once dubbed ?a kind of balance of financial terror.? That U.S. Treasury bills appreciated in the immediate wake of the financial crisis was proof of the dollar's strength, as ?people fled to a stable place,? said Paul Wachtel, a professor at New York University. Still, the risk of a move away from the greenback is not without precedent, said Shaun Osborne, chief currency strategist of TD Securities. ?The U.S. is a bit complacent about this. Most U.S. officials appear confident there will be no quick switch away from the dollar. But we have seen before, with the decline of the pound, that these things can happen quickly, in the space of years.? Recent comments may be as much about politics as economics. Large developing countries are seeking a greater role at the International Monetary Fund. China controls only 3.66 per cent of the votes at the body, despite being the world's third-largest economy. ?A little bit of nationalism, a little bit of searching for someone to blame for the economic crisis,? Prof. Wachtel said. ?Plus, it's a changing world: diversification of reserves might make sense.? Canada and Japan both reaffirmed their support for the greenback this week. ?It's an issue that we have not addressed, other than to say that in the midst of what is still a significant global recession, it's important that we aim for stability,? Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said on Friday. ?The stability has been based on the U.S. dollar as the global currency.? Whether and how this will actually come up at the G8 summit remains unclear. Russia is a G8 member, and China and India are set to join the discussions on the second day of the three-day meeting, but all are playing down the prospect of formal talks just yet. Chinese Vice-Foreign Minister He Yafei said yesterday: ?You may have heard comments, opinions from academic circles about the idea of establishing a super sovereign currency. This is all, I believe, now a discussion among academics. It is not the position of the Chinese government.? The Chinese central bank, the world's largest external holder of U.S. debt, reiterated its call for a new international reserve currency in a policy review published last week. It has proposed an International Monetary Fund-created unit called Special Drawing Rights as an alternative reserve currency. Regardless of what happens at the G8 summit, some analysts expect a diversification in large countries' currency practices. Alternatives like the euro, yen, Chinese yuan, and Special Drawing Rights all have drawbacks, said Benjamin Cohen of the University of California-Santa Barbara. ?A more fragmented currency system seems in the offing, with much competition and no money clearly dominant,? Prof. Cohen said. With files from Bloomberg News and Reuters ------------------ Washington Post June 24, 2009 Fading of the Dollar's Dominance Other Nations See Opening to Boost Their Currencies By Anthony Faiola Washington Post Staff Writer The days of calling the dollar almighty may be numbered. Since World War II, when the dollar eclipsed the British pound as the king of world currencies, the United States has reaped the rewards of its monetary strength. The greenback's sense of indestructibility allowed the U.S. government to borrow cheaply and gave rise to an era of rich American globetrotters toting the world's most easily convertible form of cash. But the financial crisis that started in the United States is dramatically intensifying the debate over the future of the dollar, and whether it can, or should, remain at the top of the financial food chain. Although a meaningful shift away from the dollar is likely to take years or more, some analysts believe that the debate is now reaching a tipping point. Last week, the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India and China -- whose governments are some of the world's largest dollar holders -- jointly declared the need for a "more diversified international monetary system," sparking a drop in the greenback on world markets. In recent months, China in particular has led a campaign for a new world monetary order, arguing that the financial crisis has exposed profound vulnerabilities in the U.S. economy and financial system. Those flaws, critics argue, show it is simply too risky for the world's central banks to rely largely on the dollar for their global reserves. At the same time, Beijing has taken unprecedented steps to increase the international role of its own currency, the yuan, to a level commensurate with China's relatively new status as a major economic power. In the coming weeks, the International Monetary Fund -- the institution charged with the monitoring and stability of the global economy -- will issue a vast amount of currency-like assets known as Special Drawing Rights, which some analysts see as a long-term substitute for the hordes of dollar reserves being held by central banks around the world. Some now envision that the dollar will fall from its recent levels of 60 to 65 percent of international reserves to less than 50 percent a decade from now. A diminishing of the dollar's global role has far-reaching implications for the United States. The value of the dollar versus other major currencies could markedly drop as it slips from supremacy, making millions of Americans overseas feel poorer while potentially fueling a new golden era for U.S. exporters as American goods become more cost-competitive. The U.S. government may also be forced to pay higher rates to investors when selling, for instance, Treasury bonds to raise cash -- making it far more costly in the future to cover the kind of massive stimulus spending the government is now undertaking. "The dollar's global status has allowed the U.S. to have a free pass on financing our deficit as opposed to countries like Brazil, who are punished by international currency investors for risky behavior," said Martin Weiss, author of the "Ultimate Depression Survival Guide." "But if the dollar is no longer the currency everybody wants or must have to continue doing business, that is going to be much, much harder to do." Despite the current campaign to lessen the dollar's role, analysts note that there has not yet been a major push by foreign governments or private investors to shed it. In fact, over the course of the financial crisis, the dollar -- which had been on a downward trajectory for months -- has actually strengthened against major currencies, including its closest rival, the euro. That is partly because even nations like China -- with the world's largest dollar-denominated reserves, at close to $2 trillion worth -- have shied away from dumping the dollar, fearing it could trigger a global run that would severely damage the value of their holdings. Additionally, other mighty currencies like the euro have lost their chance to claim the dollar's crown because their issuing nations are in even worse economic shape than the United States. In times of crisis, the dollar, as well as dollar-denominated U.S. Treasury bonds, are still seen as safe havens. "The U.S. had to screw something up to lose the dominance of the dollar, and you could argue that the U.S. starting a global financial crisis is a pretty big screw-up," said C. Fred Bergsten, director of the Peterson Institute of International Economics and a top economic official during the Carter administration. "But the Europeans haven't been able to take advantage of that to advance the euro immediately, largely because they've made some pretty big screw-ups themselves." That said, economists including Bergsten are now saying the end of the dollar's dominance appears increasingly inevitable. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, for instance, the British pound enjoyed a similar supremacy. It gradually lost that role as Britain's empire crumbled, was devastated by two world wars and saw the United States emerge as the world's dominant superpower. By the same token, economists see the current financial crisis, and the doubts it has raised about the U.S. economy, as accelerating the creation of a new economic order. The easy monetary policy embraced by the Federal Reserve to spark a recovery -- including zero-interest rates and the printing of cash to support stimulus spending -- is also working against the strength of the dollar. "The dollar may very well see periods of strength in the weeks and months ahead," said Douglas Rediker, director of the Global Strategic Finance Initiative at the New America Foundation. "But in the long run, I think it is clear that it will lose some of its hegemonic status." This has left room for rising nations such as China to seize a broader role in the global monetary system. Though the Chinese currency remains largely non-convertible -- meaning it cannot easily be used in international transactions -- Beijing has taken steps to sign currency exchange agreements worth $95 billion with South Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Belarus, Hong Kong and Argentina. Brazil and China announced in May that they are exploring a similar agreement. Though it may take years before such agreements have any real impact on the dollar, they are coming at a time when governments around the world may find another potential substitute for their dollar reserves: the IMF's Special Drawing Rights. The SDRs are a currency-like asset whose value is based on the dollar, the pound, the euro and the yen. They have been issued by the IMF, albeit in highly limited form, since the 1960s to aid nations in need of reserves. In April, however, world leaders including President Obama agreed at an economic summit in London that SDRs should now be used to help stabilize the balance sheets of nations struggling to combat the current crisis. As a result, the IMF is now set to "print" $300 billion worth of SDRs -- 10 times more than currently exist -- for distribution to nations around the globe. They will effectively be held as reserve deposits by each nation's central bank. Some, like Bergsten, have argued the SDRs' role should be taken a step further, allowing them to serve as a de facto global reserve currency. Bergsten has advocated, for instance, the idea of nations such as China "trading in" their dollars for SDRs, allowing for an orderly transition away from the greenback without causing a sharp fluctuation in the dollar's market value. "Like it or not, the dollar is going to lose some of its global status," Bergsten said. "So maybe it's time we just accepted that and figured out the best and most orderly way to make that happen." From shniad at sfu.ca Mon Jul 6 13:51:08 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 6 Jul 2009 12:51:08 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Biden says Israel has the right to attack Iran In-Reply-To: <2FFCE139C0464A7ABB22418A918CBE08@twubby.com> Message-ID: <169766800.257621246909868275.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-biden6-2009jul06,0,6241017.story Los Angeles Times July 6, 2009 Biden says Israel has the right to attack Iran The U.S. wouldn't interfere with a sovereign nation's actions, he says, even as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says such an attack would be destabilizing. Washington -- Vice President Joe Biden signaled that the Obama administration would not stand in the way if Israel chose to attack Iran's nuclear facilities, even as the top U.S. military officer said any attack on Iran would be destabilizing. Biden's remarks suggested a tougher U.S. stance against Iran's nuclear ambitions, but administration officials denied that. Instead, White House officials said, his televised remarks Sunday simply reflected the U.S. view that Israel had a right to defend itself and make its own decisions on national security. In an interview on ABC's "This Week," Biden also said the U.S. offer to negotiate with Tehran on its nuclear program still stood. Some thought the administration's approach might change in light of the Iranian government's harsh crackdown on protesters after the June 12 presidential election. Opponents of the ruling authorities contend the vote was rigged in favor of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "If the Iranians respond to the offer of engagement, we will engage," Biden said. Biden was asked whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was taking the right approach by indicating that Israel would take matters into its own hands if Iran did not show a willingness to negotiate by the end of the year. "Look, Israel can determine for itself -- it's a sovereign nation -- what's in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else," Biden replied. He added that this was the case, "whether we agree or not" with the Israeli view. Biden was then asked whether the U.S. would stand in the way if the Israelis decided to launch a military attack against Iranian nuclear facilities. "Look, we cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do," he said. Reminded that the U.S. could impede an Israeli strike on Iran by prohibiting it from using Iraqi airspace, Biden said he was "not going to speculate" beyond saying that Israel, like the U.S., has a right to "determine what is in its interests." In Jerusalem, the Israeli government had no comment on Biden's remarks. White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said Biden was not signaling any change of approach on Iran or Israel. "The vice president refused to engage hypotheticals, and he made clear that our policy has not changed," Vietor said. "Our friends and allies, including Israel, know that the president believes that now is the time to explore direct diplomatic options." Also Sunday, Navy Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he had been "for some time concerned about any strike on Iran." He also said that military action should not be ruled out and that a nuclear-armed Iran was a highly troubling prospect. Mullen said he worried about unpredictable consequences of an attack on Iran. "I worry about it being very destabilizing not just in and of itself but the unintended consequences of a strike like that," he told CBS' "Face the Nation." "At the same time, I'm one that thinks Iran should not have nuclear weapons. I think that's very destabilizing." Mullen said if Iran obtained a nuclear weapon, other countries in the Middle East could follow suit. That would open the door to a destabilizing proliferation of nuclear technology, Mullen said, adding that he discusses the subject regularly with his Israeli counterpart. Most experts think that wiping out Iran's nuclear program is beyond Israel's ability: Iran's facilities are scattered around the country. Associated Press From shniad at sfu.ca Mon Jul 6 13:51:42 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 6 Jul 2009 12:51:42 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Open letter of support to the demonstrators in Iran In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <620946357.257861246909902870.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Limes - Heartland Elections in Iran Open letter of support to the demonstrators in Iran This open letter (dated 24/06/09), signed by a number of international academics amongst whom Noam Chomsky and Juan Cole, is a letter in support of the demonstrations that are taking place in Iran following the controversial presidential elections. This morning Ayatollah Ali Khamenei demanded an end to the massive and forceful demonstrations protesting the controversial result of last week?s election. He argued that to make concessions to popular demands and ?illegal? pressure would amount to a form of ?dictatorship?, and he warned the protestors that they, rather than the police, would be held responsible for any further violence. Khamenei?s argument sounds familiar to anyone interested in the politics of collective action, since it appears to draw on the logic used by state authorities to oppose most of the great popular mobilisations of modern times, from 1789 in France to 1979 in Iran itself. These mobilisations took shape through a struggle to assert the principle that sovereignty rests with the people themselves, rather than with the state or its representatives. ?No government can justly claim authority?, as South Africa?s ANC militants put it in their Freedom Charter of 1955, ?unless it is based on the will of all the people.? Needless to say it is up to the people of Iran to determine their own political course. Foreign observers inspired by the courage of those demonstrating in Iran this past week are nevertheless entitled to point out that a government which claims to represent the will of its people can only do so if it respects the most basic preconditions for the determination of such a will: the freedom of the people to assemble, unhindered, as an inclusive collective force; the capacity of the people, without restrictions on debate or access to information, to deliberate, decide and implement a shared course of action. Years of foreign-sponsored ?democracy promotion? in various parts of the world have helped to spread a well-founded scepticism about civic movements which claim some sort of direct democratic legitimacy. But the principle itself remains as clear as ever: only the people themselves can determine the value of such claims. We the undersigned call on the government of Iran to take no action that might discourage such determination. Signed by: AGAMBEN, Giorgio, Universit? IUAV di Venezia, Venice ALAMDARI, Kazem, California State University, Los Angeles ALLIEZ, Eric, Middlesex Universtiy, UK AMSLER, Sarah S, Language and Social Sciences, Aston University, Birmingham ANDERSON, Kevin B, Professor of Sociology and Political Science, University of California, Santa Barbara ASAD, Talal, Graduate Center, City University of New York BADIOU, Alain, ?cole Normale Sup?rieure, Paris BALKAN, Nesecan, Hamilton College BANUAZIZI, Ali, Professor of Political Science and Director, Program in Islamic Civilization and Societies, Boston College BAYAT, Asef, Professor of Sociology and Middle East Studies, Leiden University BEHROOZ, Maziar, Associate Professor of Middle East History, San Francisco State University BENHABIB, Seyla, Eugene Meyer Professor of Political Science and Philosophy, Yale University, New Haven BEYER, Vera, Kunsthistorisches Institut der Freien Universit?t Berlin BIENIEK, Adam, Jagiellonian University, Chair of Arab Studies, Institute of Oriental Philology , Cracow, Poland BLIBAR, Etienne, Paris X, Nanterre, and University of California, Irvine BOCHENSKA, Joanna, Dept. of Kurdish Studies, Jagiellonian University, Cracow, Poland BOGDAN, Jolan, Dept. of Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths College, UK BOSTEELS, Bruno Bosteels, Cornell University BRAULT, Pascale-Anne, Professor of French, Dept. of Modern Languages, DePaul University BRUNO, Michael, Dept. of Philosophy, Lewis and Clark College, Portland, OR BRUSTAD, Kristen, Associate Chair, Dept. Of Middle Eastern Studies, University of Texas at Austin BURGE, Tyler, University of California, Los Angeles BURGERS, Jan-Willem, Australian National University BUTLER, Judith, University of California, Berkeley BUTT, Gavin, Senior Lecturer & Programme Leader in MPhil / PhD, CARDIN, Maryam, IUT of the University of Marne-la-vall?e CHOMSKY, Noam, MIT, Cambridge MA USA COHEN, Joshua, Stanford University COLE, Juan R. I., Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History, University of Michigan DABASHI, Hamid, Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature, Columbia University, New York DE CARO, Mario, Dept. of Philosophy, University of Rome DI LUCIA COLLETI, Laura, Conseillor Province of Venice DOGRAMACI, Sinan, University of Texas at Austin DOLEZALEK, Isabelle, Freie Universit?t Berlin DOMINIAK, Piotr, Chairman of ASK Association in Raciborz, Poland DORFMAN, Vladimiro Ariel, Duke Universtiy, Durham, North Carolina D?TTMANN, Alexander Garcia, Goldsmiths College EHSANI, Kaveh, Assistant Professor of International Studies, DePaul University EISENSTEIN, Zillah, Professor of Politics, Ithaca College ENGELMANN, Stephen, University of Illinois at Chicago EPSTEIN, Barbara, History of Consciousness Dept., University of California, Santa Cruz FALK, Richard, Professor of International Law Emeritus, Princeton University FARHI, Farideh, Dept. of Political Science, University of Hawai?i at Manoa FARNOODY-ZAHIRI, Nelly, UCLA FASY, Thomas M., Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York City FATIMA KHAN, Mahruq, Assistant Professor of Women?s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse FIELD, Hartry, Professor of Philosophy, New York University FORAN, John, Professor of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara FRIEDLAND, Roger, Professor of Religiou Studies and Sociology, UCSB GAJEWSKA, Katarzyna, University of Poland GANDJBAKHSH, Amirhosseing, Research Director, National Health Institute, Washington DC GANZ, David, Universit?t Konstanz, Germany GARRETT, Don, Dept. of Philosophy, New York University GASIOROWSKI, Mark, Political Science and International Studies, Louisiana State University GLOGOWSKI, Aleksander, Jagiellonian University, Cracow, Poland GODMILOW, Jill, University of Notre Dame GOLE, Nilufer, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris H?JEK, Alan, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University HALLWARD, Peter, Middlesex University, UK HASHEMI, Nader, Assistant Professor of Middle East and Islamic Politics HEGASY, Sonja, Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin HERRERA, Linda, Institute of Social Studies (The Hague) HIBBARD, Scott, DePaul University, Chicago HOEFERT, Almut, University of Basel IVEKOVIC, Rada, Coll?ge international de philosophie, Paris, Universit? Jean-Monnet, Saint-Etienne JIMENEZ, Maria, Universit? Paris Sorbonne, Paris IV KAPLINSKY, Raphael, Professor of International Development, The Open University, UK KESHAVARZIAN, Arang, Associate Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, New York University KHOSROVANI, Sahar, University of Maastricht KORBEL, Josef, School of International Studies, University of Denver KOWALIK, Tadeusz, professor of economics and humanities, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw KOWALSKA, Beata, Jagiellonian University, Poland KOZLOWSKI, Pawel, Professor of economics, Polish Academy of Sciences KUMAR, Victor, University of Arizona LARRIV?E, Pierre, Aston University, Birmingham LEMISCH, Jesse, Professor Emeritus, History, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, USA MARTINON, Jean-Paul, Dept. of Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths College, UK MASROUR, Farid, Dept. Of Philosophy, New York University MCFARLAND, Andrew, Political Science Dept., University of Illinois, Chicago MCINTYRE, Michael, International Studies, DePaul University, Chicago MEHDIZADEH, Hamidreza, Illinois Institute of Technology MEMMI, Paul, Paris Ouest Nanterre la D?fense MORUZZI, Norma Claire, University of Illinois at Chicago, Political Science, History, Gender and Women?s Studies MOSES, Claire G., Dept. of Women?s Studies, University of Maryland MOSHTAGHI, Nazgol, University of South Florida NAST, Heidi, DePaul University, Chicago NATCHKEBIA, Irina, Tbilisi University NOYAU, Colette, D?pt des Sciences du langage, CNRS, Universit? Paris-Ouest OBDRZALEK, Suzanne, Dept of Philosophy, Claremont McKenna College PATTERSON, Ian, Director of Studies in English, Queens? College Cambridge PETTIT, Philip, University Center for Human Values, Princeton University PHELPS, Christopher, Dept. of History, The Ohio State University PIRVELI, Marika, Szczecin University, Poland POTTER, Robert, Professor Emeritus, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA PR?VOST, Sophie, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Ecole Normale Sup?rieure, Paris PRINZ, Jesse, Professor of Philosophy, City University of New York PROUST, Jo?lle, Director of Research, Institut Jean-Nicod, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Ecole Normale Sup?rieure PSTRUSI?SKA, Jadwiga, Head of Dept. of Interdisciplinary Eurasiatic Research, Institute of Oriental Philology, Jagiellonian University, Cracow RAKOWIECKI, Jacek, Collegium Civitas, Poland RANCI?RE, Jacques, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris (St. Denis) REZAEI ,Ali, Dept. of Sociology, University of Calgary, Canada RIGGLE, Nicholas Alden, Philosophy, New York University ROMAN, Richard, University of Toronto ROSENTHAL, David M., Professor of Philosophy, Cognitive Science Concentration Graduate Center, City University of New York ROSS, Eric B., Visiting Professor of Anthropology and International Development Studies, George Washington University, Washington, D.C. SAHNI, Varun, Inter University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Ganeshkhind, Pune SANBONMATSU, John, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Dept. Of Humanities and Arts, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, MA SCHAEFER, Karin, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit?t M?nchen, Germany SCHELLENBERG, Susanna, Professor of Philosophy, Research School of the Social Sciences, The Australian National University, Canberra SCHIBECI, Lynn, (retired) Dept. of History, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico SCHIELKE, Samuli, Centre of Modern Oriental Studies, Berlin SCHRECKER, Ellen, Professor of American History at Yeshiva University, New York SCHWABSKY, Barry, Senior Critic in Sculpture (retired), Yale University SEDGWICK, Sally, University of Illinois, Chicago SHAHSAVARI, Anousha, Persian Lecturer, University of Texas at Austin SHEIKHZADEGAN, Amir, University of Freiburg SIEGEL, Susanna C., Professor of Philosophy, Harvard University, Cambridge SIMPSON, Dick, Head of the Political Science Dept., University of Illinois, Chicago SINGPURWALLA, Rachel, University of Maryland, College Park SOSA, Ernest, Rutgers University Philosophy Department SPERBER, Dan, Institut Jean Nicod, CRNS, Paris STEINSEIFER, Martin, Universit?t Giessen STUART, Jack, Minneapolis, MN Tabb, William K., City University of New York TAVAKOLI-BORAZJANI, Farifteh, Freie Universit?t Berlin, Institut f?r Iranistik TAVAKOLI-TARGHI, Mohamad, Professor of History and Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations, University of Toronto TISSBERGER, Martina, Freie Universit?t Berlin, Dept. of Educational Sciences and Psychology TOHIDI, Nayereh, Professor and Chair, Gender and Women?s Studies Dept., California State University, Northridge TOSCANO, Alberto, Goldsmiths College, UK UNGER, Peter, Professor of Philosophy, New York University VAHDAT, Farzin, Vassar College, New York VAN BLUEMEL, Emeritus Professor of Physics at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, in Worcester, MA VAN BRUINESSEN, Martin, Chair of Comparative Study of Contemporary Muslim Societies, Dept. of Theology and Religious Studies, Utrecht University VICTORRI, Bernard, Directeur de recherch? CNRS, Ecole Normale Sup?rieure, Paris WATZL, Sebastian, Dept. of Philosophy, Columbia University WHITE, Stephen, Dept. of Philosophy, Tufts University WINANT, Howard, Professor of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara ZIAI, Hossein, Director of Iranian Studies, UCLA Dept. of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, Los Angeles, CA ?I?EK, Slavoj, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia and the European Graduate School ZUK, Agnieszka, University of Nancy ZUPANCIC, Alenka, Institute of Philosophy of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts From shniad at sfu.ca Mon Jul 6 13:54:09 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 6 Jul 2009 12:54:09 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Avnery on the religious influence within the Israeli army In-Reply-To: <79585EEA7E374582816761D6AECE283F@twubby.com> Message-ID: <444872846.259471246910049629.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Uri Avnery 4.7.09 BANANAS NOT EVERY day, and not even every decade, does the Supreme Court rebuke the Military Advocate General. The last time this happened was 20 years ago, when the Advocate General refused to issue a proper indictment against an officer who ordered his men to break the arms and legs of a bound Palestinian. The officer argued that he considered this to be his duty, after the Minister of Defense, Yitzhak Rabin, had called for ?breaking their bones?. Well, this week it happened again. The Supreme Court made a decision that was tantamount to a slap in the face of the army?s current chief legal officer, Brigadier Avichai Mendelblit. The incident in question took place in Ni?alin, a village which has been robbed of a great part of its land by the Separation Fence. Like their neighbors in Bilin, the villagers demonstrate every week against the Fence. Generally, the army?s reactions in Ni?alin are even more violent than in Bilin. Four protesters have already been killed there. In this particular incident, Lieutenant Colonel Omri Borberg took a Palestinian demonstrator, who was sitting on the ground, handcuffed and blindfolded, and suggested to one of his soldiers ?let?s go aside and give him a rubber?. He ordered the soldier to shoot a rubber bullet, point blank. For those who do not know: ?rubber bullets? are steel bullets coated with rubber. From a distance, they cause painful injuries. At short range, they can be fatal. Officially, soldiers are allowed to use them at a minimum range of 40 meters. Without hesitating, the soldier shot the prisoner in the foot, although this was a ?manifestly illegal order?, which a soldier is obliged by army law to disobey. According to the classic definition of Judge Binyamin Halevy in the 1957 Kafr Kassem massacre case, the ?black flag of illegality? is waving over such orders. The prisoner, Ashraf Abu-Rakhma, was hit and fell on the ground. Veterans of the Ni?alin and Bilin demonstrations know that such and similar incidents happen all the time. But the Abu-Rakhma case was special for one reason: it was documented by a young local woman from a balcony near the crime scene with one of the cameras provided to villagers by B?tselem, an Israeli human rights organization. Thus the Lt. Col. committed an unforgivable sin: he was photographed in the act. Generally, when peace activists disclose such misdeeds, the army spokesman reaches into his bag of lies and comes up with some mendacious statement or other (?Attacked the soldier?, ?Tried to grab his weapon?, ?Resisted arrest?). But even a talented spokesman has difficulties denying something that is clearly seen on film. When the Military Advocate General decided to prosecute the officer and the soldier for ?conduct unbecoming?, Abu-Rakhma and some Israeli human rights organizations applied to the Supreme Court. The judges advised the Advocate to change the indictment. He refused, and so the matter reached the court again. This week, in a decision unusual for its severe language, the three justices (including a female judge and a religious one) found the ?conduct unbecoming? charge itself unbecoming. They ordered the indictment of both officer and soldier on a far more serious criminal charge, in order to make it clear to all military personnel that mistreating a prisoner ?is contrary to the spirit of the state and the army?. After such a slap in the face, any decent person would have resigned in shame. But not Mendelblit. The bearded and kippa-wearing brigadier is a personal friend of the Chief of Staff, Gabi Ashkenazi, and is expecting promotion to Major General at any moment. Recently, the Advocate General refused to indict a senior officer who asserted in court, while testifying on behalf of a subordinate, that it is right to abuse Palestinians physically. Ashkenazi owes a lot to his Advocate General, and for other reasons. Mendelblit has made a huge effort to cover up war crimes committed during the recent Gaza War, from Ashkenazi?s war plan itself to the crimes of individual soldiers. Nobody has been put on trial, nobody even seriously investigated. ON THE day the Supreme Court decision concerning Mendelblit was published, another brigadier also made the headlines. Curiously enough, his first name is also Avichai (not a very common name), he is also bearded and wears a kippa. In a speech before religious female soldiers, the Chief Rabbi of the army, Brigadier Avichai Rontzky, expressed the opinion that the army service of women is forbidden by the Jewish religion. Since every Jewish young woman in Israel is bound by law to serve for two years, and women perform many essential jobs in the army, this was a seditious statement. But nobody was really surprised by this Rabbi. Rontzky was chosen for this post by the former Chief of Staff, Dan Halutz. He knew what he was doing. The Rabbi was not born into a religious family. Indeed, he was quite ?secular?, a member of an elite army unit, when he saw the light and was ?reborn?. Like many of this kind, he did not stop halfway but went to the furthest extreme, becoming a settler and setting up a Yeshiva (religious seminary) in one of the most fanatical settlements. Rontzky is a man in the spirit of the person who appointed him. It will be remembered that, when asked what he felt when dropping a one-ton bomb on a residential area, Air Force General Halutz answered: ?a slight bump on the wing?. In a discussion about whether to treat a wounded Palestinian on the Shabbat, Rontzky wrote that ?the life of a goy is certainly valuable?but the Shabbat is more important.? Meaning: a dying goy should not be treated on Shabbat. Later he retracted. (In modern colloquial Hebrew, a goy is a non-Jew. The term has distinctly derogatory connotations.) The Israeli army has something that is called the ?Ethical Code?. True, the spiritual father of the Code, Professor Asa Kasher, did defend the atrocities of the ?Molten Lead? operation, but Rontzky went much further: he stated unequivocally that ?When there is a clash between?the Ethical Code and the Halakha (religious law), certainly the Halakha must be followed.? In a publication distributed by him, it was said that ?the Bible prohibits us from giving up even one millimeter of Eretz Israel?. In other words, the Chief Rabbi of the army, a Brigadier of the IDF, asserts that the official policy of the Israeli government ? from Ariel Sharon?s ?Separation? to the recent speech by Binyamin Netanyahu on a ?demilitarized Palestinian State? ? is a mortal sin. But the peak was reached in a brochure that the army rabbinate distributed to soldiers during the Gaza War: ?Exercising mercy towards a cruel enemy means being cruel towards innocent and honest soldiers. In war as in war.? That was a clear incitement to brutality. It can be seen as a call for acts that constitute war crimes ? the very same acts that his colleague, the Military Advocate General, has done everything possible to cover up. NEITHER OF the two bearded brigadiers would have remained in office for a single day had they not enjoyed the full support of the Chief of Staff. The army is a hierarchical institution, and full responsibility for everything that happens falls squarely and entirely on the Chief. Unlike his predecessors, Gaby Ashkenazi does not show off and does not speak in public frequently. If he has political ambitions, he is hiding them well. But during his term in office, the army has assumed a certain character, which is perfectly represented by these two officers. This did not start, of course, with Ashkenazi. He is continuing ? and perhaps intensifying ? a tendency that started long ago, and that has been changing the Israeli army beyond recognition. The founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, famously wrote in his book ?Der Judenstaat?, the founding document of the movement: ?We shall know how to keep our clerics in the temples, as we shall know how to keep our regular army in the barracks?they will not be allowed to interfere in the affairs of the state.? Now the very opposite is happening: the rabbis have penetrated the army, the army officers come from the synagogues. The hard core of the fanatical settlers, which is almost entirely composed of religious people (many of whom are ?reborn Jews?) decided long ago to gain control of the army from within. In a systematic campaign, which is in full swing, they penetrate the officers? corps from below - from the junior ranks to the middle to the senior ones. One can see their success in statistics: from year to year the number of kippa-wearing officers is growing. When the Israeli army came into being, the officers? corps was full of kibbutz members. Not only were kibbutzniks considered the elite of the new Hebrew society, which was based on values of morality and culture, and not only were they the first to volunteer for every national task, but there were also inbuilt ?technical? reasons. The nucleus of the army came from the pre-state Palmach. The Palmach companies constituted a fully-mobilized regular army, part of the underground military organization, the Haganah. They could exist and operate freely only in the kibbutzim, where their identity could be camouflaged. As a result, almost all the outstanding commanders in the 1948 war were from the Palmach, kibbutz members or close to them. These did everything to imbue the new Defense Forces with the spirit of a pioneering, moral and humanist citizens army, the very opposite of an occupation army. True, the reality was always different, but the ideal was important as an aim to strive for. As I showed in my 1950 book, ?The Other Side of the Coin?, our ?purity of arms? has always been a myth. But the aspiration to be an army with humanist values was important. Atrocities were hidden or denied, because they were considered shameful and dishonoring our camp. Nothing has remained of all this, except phrases. Since the beginning of the occupation in 1967, the character of the army has changed completely. The army that was founded in order to protect the state from external dangers has become an army of occupation, whose task is to oppress another people, crush their resistance, expropriate land, protect land robbers called settlers, man roadblocks, humiliate human beings every day. Of course, it is not the army alone that has changed, but also the state that gives the army its orders as well as its ongoing brainwashing. In such an army, a process of natural selection takes place. People of discrimination, with a high moral standard, who detest such actions, leave sooner or later. Their place is taken by other types, people of different values or no values at all, ?professional soldiers? who ?just follow orders?. Of course, one must beware of generalizing. In today?s army there are not a few people who believe that they are fulfilling a mission, for whom the Ethical Code is more than just a compilation of sanctimonious phrases. These people are disgusted by what they see. From time to time we hear their protests and see their disclosures. However, it is not they who set the tone, but types like Rontzky and Mendelblit. THAT SHOULD worry us very much. We cannot treat the army as if it was a foreign realm that does not concern us. We cannot tell ourselves: ?we don?t want to have anything to do with the army of a Moshe Ya?alon, a Shaul Mofaz, a Dan Halutz or a Gabi Ashkenazi.? We cannot turn our back on the problem. We must face it, because it is our problem. The state needs an army. Even after achieving peace, we shall need a strong and effective army in order to protect the state until peace strikes deep roots and we can set up a regional body along the lines of the European Union, perhaps. The army is us. Its character has an impact on all our lives, on the life of our state itself. It has already been said: ?Israel is not a banana republic. It is a republic that slips on bananas.? And what bananas! From shniad at sfu.ca Mon Jul 6 17:24:59 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 6 Jul 2009 16:24:59 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Biden gives sanction to an Israeli attack on Iran. Was it a gaffe or was it deliberate? In-Reply-To: <36CEB595FECB054CB55D7C9A8A6D14823CC7FFC5AC@KITE.wharton.upenn.edu> Message-ID: <996833615.360781246922699788.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://lynch.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/07/05/say_it_aint_so_joe Foreign Policy 07/05/2009 Say it ain't so, Joe Marc Lynch It's hard to tell exactly what Joe Biden was trying to say this morning on "This Week" with George Stephanopolous. But his remarks are being widely interpreted as a green light for an Israeli strike on Iran. If that isn't the case, Biden needs to issue a strong clarification immediately. If it is, then he has just committed the worst foriegn policy blunder of the Obama administration. Here's what Biden said: STEPHANOPOULOS: And meanwhile, Prime Minister Netanyahu has made it pretty clear that he agreed with President Obama to give until the end of the year for this whole process of engagement to work. After that, he's prepared to make matters into his own hands. Is that the right approach? BIDEN: Look, Israel can determine for itself -- it's a sovereign nation -- what's in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else. STEPHANOPOULOS: Whether we agree or not? BIDEN: Whether we agree or not. They're entitled to do that. Any sovereign nation is entitled to do that. But there is no pressure from any nation that's going to alter our behavior as to how to proceed. What we believe is in the national interest of the United States, which we, coincidentally, believe is also in the interest of Israel and the whole world. And so there are separate issues. If the Netanyahu government decides to take a course of action different than the one being pursued now, that is their sovereign right to do that. That is not our choice. STEPHANOPOULOS: But just to be clear here, if the Israelis decide Iran is an existential threat, they have to take out the nuclear program, militarily the United States will not stand in the way? BIDEN: Look, we cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do when they make a determination, if they make a determination that they're existentially threatened and their survival is threatened by another country. That sounds an awful lot like a green light -- especially when paired with the poorly sourced Times of London story suggesting that the Saudis had agreed to facilitate an Israeli airstrike (there doesn't seem to be anything to it beyond John Bolton's wishful thinking, but it helps fuel a crisis atmosphere). It's not obvious that it actually is such a green light -- but that's how it is being interpreted by Israelis across the spectrum and by the Arab media (few differences between the Saudi al-Arabiya and al-Sharq al-Awsat on the one hand, and al-Jazeera and al-Quds al-Arabi on the other side of the great Arab divide). If that's the case, and Israel takes up the offer, then the politics of the Middle East are about to take a sudden, potentially disastrous turn for the worse. An Israeli strike on Iran would almost certainly fail to seriously set back its nuclear program, and almost certainly would not lead the Iranian people to rise up against the regime (although one has to pause... has John Bolton ever been wrong about such a thing before?). It would almost certainly terminate the efforts of the reformist camp to challenge the results of the election and rally the Iranian public around the flag -- as attacks by the most hated foreign enemy of any country generally do even during times of turbulent politics (see: Iran, 1980). Does it really need to be said that such an attack would radicalize the region, and place a wide range of American interests at risk -- especially since Biden's comment will be cited forever as evidence that the attack had an American imprimatur? Even if the attack does not happen, Biden's comment will likely further inflame the regional atmosphere, while helping the Iranian hardliners, who will use it as evidence of malign American intentions, throwing away much of the value of Obama's carefully and appropriately nuanced response to the unfolding crisis. Look (to use a Bidenism), nobody could really object to Biden's statement that any state has the sovereign right to act when it feels existentially threatened. In fact, he may have just been trying to say the opposite of how this is being read --- that sovereign states have the right to defend themselves, but that the U.S. would also define its own national interests. But he had to understand how such a statement would be received, with the ink not even dry on John Bolton's ham-handed agitation for just such an American permission slip for such an attack. And he might have added to his entirely appropriate understanding of Israeli perceptions and concerns that the United States also has vital national interests at stake. An Israeli strike on Iran would likely throw all the progress in Iraq into grave danger, a reality of which American commanders in Iraq have routinely warned in public and private. That might not matter much to the Israeli government, but it matters a lot to the American government. The same for the negative impact it would have on efforts to achieve a two-state solution... something else which might suit Netanyahu just fine, but not the U.S. Why would Biden have made a statement which so radically undermines Obama's policy towards Iran? Maybe it reflects bad new advice coming from a new NSC adviser of vague portfolio. Maybe it's a clumsy attempt to ratchet up some pressure on the Iranian regime without actually doing anything, without regard to the spiral dynamics it could kick into gear. Or maybe it is just a major Biden gaffe, not a dramatic departure in the Obama administration's policy. That would still be bad, but would be salvagable. Either way, the administration urgently needs to come forward quickly with a restatement of its policy -- and make sure the Israelis and others in the region understand it clearly -- or else it risks paying some extraordinarily serious costs. UPDATE: a senior White House source tells me that this is being misreported, and points me to this from White House spokesman Tommy Vietor: The Vice President refused to engage hypotheticals, and he made clear that our policy has not changed. Our friends and allies, including Israel, know that the President believes that now is the time to explore direct diplomatic options, as with the P5+1." Good. This needs aggressive pushback though, because the regional media is overwhelmingly reporting the "green light" headline interpretation of Biden's remark. Time to flex those public diplomacy and strategic communications muscles, folks... LAST UPDATE (Monday morning): a variety of comments from assorted well-placed worthies have come my way over the last day, some online and others privately. Most suggest that Biden's comments were not meant to change U.S. policy, and that if anything he meant to distance the U.S. from any Israeli strike (though a few speculate that it was actually meant to strengthen the U.S. bargaining position ahead of the Moscow talks). If that's the case, then it is only that much more important to repeat that his comments are being nigh-universally presented in the Middle Eastern media (Israeli and Arab, at least) as a "green light." If that wasn't the intended signal, then the administration needs to recognize that its signaling has gone awry and clear it up before it's too late... From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Mon Jul 6 18:02:32 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Tue, 7 Jul 2009 09:02:32 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Where Economics Fails Message-ID: <20090707090232.5f58f146.shimogamo@ashisuto.co.jp> by John Michael Greer The Archdruid Report (July 01 2009) Druid perspectives on nature, culture, and the future of industrial society It's occurred to me more than once that we might be wise to set aside an annual weekend to mourn the death of Osiris or Persephone or Bladud the wind-god or some other divinity, as our pagan ancestors did, or as those Christians who still take the narratives of their faith seriously do each year on Good Friday. It might at least put a merciful end to the media's frantic and macabre efforts to bestow a belated sainthood on each new member of the dead celebrities' club, no matter how far from sanctity the trajectory of their lives might have been. Thus you'd be correct in guessing that I didn't put much time this past weekend into paying attention to the media furore over the death of Michael Jackson. I was, instead, busy with my usual research. While tens of millions of people spent the weekend glued to their TVs reviewing the catastrophic fall from grace of an undeniably brilliant cultural phenomenon that achieved unparalleled success, and then was brought down by a supertanker-sized load of unresolved inner conflicts heated to crisis by a disastrous mismatch between an extravagant lifestyle and faltering income - well, I suppose that's a fair description of what I was doing, too. Still, the decline and fall of industrial civilization, that troubled and dysfunctional superstar still wobbling across the historical stage, can't be tracked that effectively by taking in music videos or soundbite interviews. Instead, I spent the weekend reading through economics textbooks. "Thriller" is not exactly the word I'd use to describe these hefty tomes, but I'd recommend that anyone concerned with the future of our society ought to read at least one. This is not because current economic textbooks offer useful guidance to the challenges of our time. Quite the contrary; the world they describe is as imaginary as Oz, and rather less relevant to contemporary life. What makes them important is precisely that so many of the decision makers of our time treat this fantasy as reality. Understand current economic thought and you understand most of the mistakes that are dragging industrial civilization down to ruin. The Energy Information Administration (EIA), a branch of the US government, has become infamous in the peak oil scene over the last decade or so for publishing estimates of future petroleum production that have no relationship to geological reality. Their methodology, as described in EIA publications, was simply to estimate probable increases in demand, and then to assume that increased demand would automatically be met with a corresponding increase in supply. Quite a few peak oil writers have suggested some dark conspiracy behind this blithe disregard for the limits of a finite planet, but it takes only a few minutes' worth of reading to identify the real culprit as the standard notion of the law of supply and demand taught in every first-year economics textbook today. According to this model of the world, the amount of any commodity available in a free market is controlled by the demand for that commodity. When consumers want more of a commodity than is available on the market, and are willing to pay more for it, the price of the commodity goes up; this provides an economic incentive for producers to produce more of the commodity, and so the amount of the commodity on the market goes up. Increased production sets an upper limit on price increases, since producers competing against one another will cut prices to gain market share, and the willingness of consumers to pay rising prices is also limited. Thus, in theory, the production and price of a commodity are set by a shifting balance between the desire of consumers to buy it and the desire of producers to make a profit from producing it. What makes the theory so seductive is that within certain limits, and in certain circumstances, it works tolerably well. The problem creeps in when economists lose track of the existence of those limits and circumstances, and this, to a remarkable degree, is exactly what they have done. To be fair, they had good reason to do so, because during the three-hundred-year boom that created the industrial world following the successful harnessing of fossil fuels, the limits rarely applied and the circumstances were far more often present than not. Among the most important roots of the current crisis, in turn, are the hard facts that the limits have begun to come into play, and the circumstances no longer exist. Let's start with the obvious. Imagine that a plane full of investment bankers makes a forced landing in the Pacific close to a desert island. The island has no food, no water, and no shelter; it's just a bare lump of rock and sand with a few salt-tolerant grasses on it. As the bankers struggle ashore from the sinking plane, the need for food, water, and shelter on that island is going to be considerable, but even if each of the bankers have a suitcase full of $134 billion dollars in bearer bonds - like those guys who were caught trying to enter Switzerland a little while back - that need is going to go unfilled, until and unless a ship arrives from somewhere else. The lesson here is simple: economics doesn't trump physical reality. More generally, the theoretical relationship between supply and demand functions only when supply is not constrained by factors outside the economic sphere. The constraints in question can be physical: no matter how much money you're willing to pay for a perpetual motion machine, for instance, you can't have one, because the laws of thermodynamics don't take bribes. They may be political: Nazi Germany had a large demand for oil from 1943 to 1945, for example, and the Allies had plenty of oil to sell, but anyone who assumed on that basis that a deal would be cut was in for a big disappointment. They may be technical: no matter how much you spend on health care, for instance, sooner or later it's going to fail, because nobody's yet been able to develop an effective treatment for death. Economists have come up with various workarounds to deal with external factors of this sort, some more convincing than others. Another set of factors that can crumple up the law of supply and demand and toss it into the wastebasket, though, has received far less attention. These are constraints that we might as well call "ecological", and they unfold from the awkward fact that human economic activity is far less independent of the natural world than economists often try to pretend. The scale of this dependence is as rarely recognized as it is hard to overstate. One of the few attempts to quantify it, an attempt to work out the replacement costs for natural services carried out a few years back by a team headed by heretical economist Robert Costanza, came up with a midrange figure equal to around three times the gross domestic product of all human economic activity on earth. Out of every dollar of value circulating in the world's economy, in other words, something like 75 cents were provided by natural processes rather than human labor. What's more, most if not all of that 75 cents of value had to be there in advance in order for the production of the other 25 cents to be possible at all. Before you can begin farming, for example, you need to have arable soil, water, and an adequate growing season, as well as more specialized natural services such as pollination. These are nonnegotiable requirements; if you don't have them, you can't farm. The same is true of every other kind of productive work in the human economy: nature's contribution comes first, and generally determines how much the human economy can produce. It's for this reason that E F Schumacher, the maverick economist whose ideas are the launching pad for this series of posts, drew a hard distinction between what he called primary goods and secondary goods. Secondary goods are the goods and services provided by human labor, the ordinary subject of economic theory. Primary goods are the goods and services provided by nature, and they make the production of secondary goods possible. The difference between the two is very much like the difference between income and profit in a business: you have to have income in order to have profit, and if you neglect income while maximizing your profit, sooner or later you go bust. A failure to distinguish between primary and secondary goods is at the root of a great deal of current economic nonsense. It's usually possible, for example, to substitute one secondary good for another if the supply runs short or the price gets too high, and for this reason it's a standard assumption of economics - and one of the foundations of the law of supply and demand - that consumers can meet their needs equally well with many different goods. Yet this assumption does not apply to natural goods. In the world of nature, a different rule - Liebig's law of the minimum - applies instead: production is limited by the scarcest necessary resource. Thus if you have a farm and can't get water for your crops, it doesn't matter if you have excellent soil and all the other requisites of farming; you can't grow anything. In certain limited situations, to be sure, it's possible to substitute one primary good for another - for instance, to use low-grade iron ores such as taconite when the high-grade ores have been exhausted. Even when this can be done, though, a law of diminishing returns always applies. You can get iron out of low-grade ore, but the extraction process is less efficient and takes much larger inputs of energy. When energy is cheap, you can ignore this - and this is exactly what happened over the course of the 20th century, as the iron industry retooled itself to use steadily lower grades of ore and steadily larger inputs of energy - but that in itself simply passes costs onto the future, since the fossil fuels that provided the energy inputs are themselves subject to depletion, and to a law of diminishing returns. One way or another, the substitution imposes additional costs without providing any additional economic benefit. This same rule also applies to every other natural good. Consider the valuable service provided to the world's economies by the honeybees that pollinate most nongrain food crops. If we succeed in adding the honeybee to the already long list of the world's extinct life forms, it would doubtless be possible to replace their pollination services by other means, whether that took the form of huge pollinating machines rumbling across the fields or the simpler and probably more economical approach of migrant workers using little brushes to wipe pollen from a bag onto the stamen of every single flower. Note, though, that no farmer in his or her right mind would hire a thousand laborers with brushes instead of calling up the local beekeeper and arranging for a few hives to be left in the fields; substituting some other pollination method for bees would add a huge additional cost to farming, without yielding any additional benefit. I've come to think that the unrecognized difference between secondary goods, which can be readily replaced by other goods without additional cost, and primary goods, which cannot, is among the most important forces driving our current crisis. For the last three centuries, the industrial economies of the world have been using up every primary good that can be converted into secondary goods at extravagant and steadily increasing rates. Think of any good or service provided by nature - from topsoil to oceanic fish stocks, from the pollution-absorbing capacities of rivers to the storm-buffering properties of wetlands, from breathable air and drinkable water to the mineral stocks and fossil fuel reserves that keep the entire system running - and you've just identified something that's being used up rapidly by industrial societies, with no thought of the potential costs of substituting something else for it, much less of the hard fact that nothing we can possibly do can provide a substitute for some of them once they're gone. The mismatch between this hopelessly shortsighted approach and the unforgiving limits of nature is imposing a rising toll of substitution costs on industrial economies around the world. Of course there are other factors involved. Still, as I hope to show in a future post, the best explanation for the "stagflation" that beset economies and baffled economists in the 1970s was the unrecognized burden of substitution costs for a range of natural goods depleted or damaged during the previous decades. Equally, the economic dysfunctions that led central banks around 2002 to flood financial markets with cheap credit - a disastrous decision that ended up powering the boom and bust that landed us in the current Great Recession - were driven by mounting substitution costs for another range of natural goods that had been depleted or overused in the previous decades of prosperity. As peak oil adds a new round of substitution costs to those already in play, this same process is likely to have even more dramatic impacts on the future. _____ ?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 (2008). He lives in Ashland, Oregon. http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2009/07/where-economics-fails.html 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/ From critical.montages at gmail.com Mon Jul 6 22:06:30 2009 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Tue, 7 Jul 2009 00:06:30 -0400 Subject: [R-G] Iran Jews in Israel prefer Ahmadinejad Message-ID: Alas, Mr. Mousavi can't get any break. ;-) Yoshie Jul 6, 2009 23:58 | Updated Jul 7, 2009 2:34 Iran Jews in Israel prefer Ahmadinejad By CARRIE SHEFFIELD Despite unrest and violence following last month's presidential elections in Iran, some Jewish Iranians living in Israel and abroad say life in the Islamic republic is better under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad than it would be under challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi. At a conference of Iranian Jews in Jerusalem on Monday, leaders of the Mashadi Jewish community said that despite Ahmadinejad's blustery rhetoric against Israel, Iran is a safe place for Jews to practice their religion. "Ahmadinejad speaks badly about Jews, but he is preferable to Mousavi," said Shlomo Zabihi, a Mashadi rabbi. The current government is relatively stable and provides a safe environment for Jews, he said. Monday's event marked the first meeting of the Global Mashadi Jewish Federation, an umbrella organization of community and religious groups preserving the historical and cultural identity of Jews from Mashad, Iran's second largest city, with a population of about 2.5 million. During the 1979 Islamic Revolution, many Mashadi Jews fled to the United States, primarily New York City - where some 6,000 Jews with ties to Mashad now live. There are almost no Jews in Mashad today, though an estimated 25,000 still live in Iran, concentrated in Teheran. "They've found it very safe and pleasant, no problems," said Bahman Kamali, founder of the federation. "Actually, the regime during [the time of reformist president Mohammad] Khatami and the regime now have been very good with Jewish people. There has not been any problem." Kamali said Ahmadinejad's calls for the destruction of Israel were not the same as condemnation or encouragement of violence against Jews in the Diaspora. "There's a distinction between the two because Iranians, they respect the religions that have books, Christianity, Judaism," Kamali said. "They respect people freely going to the synagogues and praying there without any problems." He doesn't think the Jewish community in Iran will face persecution stemming from political unrest following the disputed elections. "I'm not concerned about that," said Kamali, who downplayed the political involvement of his group. "The purpose of this conference is not political. It's only our heritage, that we are proud of to be from Mashad, Iran, and we would like to preserve that." From realiteee1 at yahoo.com Tue Jul 7 02:51:08 2009 From: realiteee1 at yahoo.com (james m nordlund) Date: Tue, 7 Jul 2009 01:51:08 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Friends Digest Alerts: Peltier Medical Alert; etc.. Message-ID: <243206.82133.qm@web111512.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Additions to LP medical alert?? :) Sample letter, email, or talking points for calls?? :) Warden Bledsoe Warden for Lewisburg Prison, PA Email: LEW/EXECASSISTANT at BOP.GOV Subject: Concerning Leonard Peltier, #89637-132 Dear Warden Bledsoe, Hello.? As you may be aware, Leonard Peltier, #89637-132, has had a scare with prostate cancer.? He is now having blood in his urine and he desperately needs to have an oncologist examine him.? A general practitioner operating in the prison system is not sufficient; he needs to be seen by a specialist.? The urgency is due to his previous scare of cancer and his current, urgent, medical needs; only a specialist can determine the state of his health.? According to his medical he is supposed to receive an exam every three months, but according to Leonard he has only been seen once a year.? How can this be?? As everyone knows one examination can give you warning, anyone who has had a prognosis or scare with prostate cancer, that is, you need to see an oncologist and be examined regularly.? Again, Warden, please give Leonard Peltier the proper medical attention he has the right to.? Thanx.? Goodbye. Truly, ? Peltier Medical Alert?? :) Medical Alert Forwarded on Behalf of the Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee I received a disturbing call from Leonard today.? As we know, Leonard has had a scare with prostate cancer.? He is now having blood in his urine and he desperately needs to have an oncologist examine him. A general practitioner operating in the prison system is not sufficient; he needs to be seen by a specialist. Your support with letters and phone calls to the proper officials is greatly needed at this time.? The urgency is due to his previous scare of cancer. Only a specialist can determine the state of his health.? According to his medical he is supposed to receive an exam every three months, but according to Leonard he has only been seen once a year.? How can this be? As everyone knows one examination can give you warning, anyone who has had a prognosis or scare with prostate cancer, you need to see an oncologist and be examined regularly. He has never received proper medical attentions for his medical problems, unless this problem is addressed by his supporters he will not get this matter taken care of.? As we found when he did not have his diabetic supplies last year, until the outcry was so great. Then they could not deny him. Please ask the warden at Lewisburg Prison to give Leonard Peltier the proper medical attention he has the right to. Warden Bledsoe ~ Warden for Lewisburg Prison The prison number is: (570) 523-1251 Fax:? 570-522-7745 E-mail address: LEW/EXECASSISTANT at BOP.GOV Lets get him the treatment he deserves. Kari Ann Assistant Coordinator Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee contact at whoisleonardpeltier.info Time to set him free... Because it is the RIGHT thing to do. Friends of Peltier http://www.FreePeltierNow.org ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To subscribe,?? send a blank message to freepeltiernow-on at mail-list.com ? ? June 26th Statement from Leonard Peltier?? :) Forwarded on behalf of the Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee Greetings my friends and relatives, I want to start off this statement or speech or whatever you want to call it by saying again as I've said before thank you thank you thank you from the bottom of my heart for supporting me and for standing up for right wherever you are. I can't express to you in words how extremely grateful I am not just to the people of America but to the people all over the world who have supported the cause of Indian people and myself. I know a lot of you have given up a lot to help so many in my predicament. Daily I am made aware of political prisoners around the world. Many who have been killed or tortured or who knows what for trying to right the wrongs in their area, country or nation. I have been asked to make statements in support of other movement people around the world from time to time, South America, Europe and other places. People who love freedom, people who love the earth, people who love their family, people who love the freedom to make their own choice with their own resources, and all indigenous people- we share a common bond. The bond of brother and sister hood, the bond of believing there is a greater power than ourselves. And I don't mean some government power; I mean the greatest power in all the universe the Creator Himself. Read more of Leonard's message at Time to set him free... Because it is the RIGHT thing to do. Friends of Peltier http://www.FreePeltierNow.org From realiteee1 at yahoo.com Tue Jul 7 02:55:41 2009 From: realiteee1 at yahoo.com (james m nordlund) Date: Tue, 7 Jul 2009 01:55:41 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Read about, then talk about genocide in Honduras :) Message-ID: <343756.83596.qm@web111512.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> This Action, on Change.org, the url :) genocide in Honduras?? :) http://genocide.change.org/actions/view/genocide_in_honduras http://www.change.org/profile/189788/actions ? CDA Update on Coup in Honduras?? :) http://democracyinamericas.org/cda-reacts-provides-resources-regarding-coup-honduras June 30, 2009 Dear Friends: We write today about the coup in Honduras. On Sunday morning, Honduran soldiers stormed the presidential palace and forced the country's democratically-elected President, Manuel Zelaya, into exile in Costa Rica.? Following his forced departure, the Honduran National Congress named congressional leader Roberto Micheletti as the new president. World leaders have condemned the military coup and voiced support for Zelaya as the only recognized President of Honduras. Emergency meetings have been arranged by the Organization of American States, Central American Integration System, United Nations and the Bolivarian Alternative to the Americas (ALBA) to push for Zelaya's return to the presidency.? Meanwhile, thousands of protesters demonstrating in the streets of Tegucigalpa for Zelaya's return were met by soldiers with tear gas, water hoses, billy-clubs and gunshots.? The military has shut down local television and radio stations and cut signals for international news channels, such as CNN en Espa?ol and Telesur, in a media blackout that has drawn condemnation from international press freedom groups. President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton and other officials have repeatedly called the coup "illegal" and said that Zeyala is the only President that the U.S. will recognize. We released the following statement about the unfortunate events in Honduras: The Center for Democracy in the Americas deplores the coup against President Zelaya in Honduras, and supports efforts by the United States government, our allies in the region, and the OAS to restore the constitutional order in Honduras. The reaction by the U.S. government, its condemnation of the overthrow of the Zelaya presidency, and its continued firm stand in support of Mr. Zelaya as Honduras' president, are welcome indications that U.S. foreign policy toward the Western Hemisphere is continuing to move in the right direction. It is very important to the U.S. national interest that we pursue this new course with consistency and that we remain firm in our commitment to democracy, the rule of law, and the protection of human rights in Honduras. To make it easier to follow the unfolding events, we have set up a page on our website with relevant news articles, Administration statements and links to live reporting. You can access that page here: Center for Democracy in the Americas | PO Box 53106 NW | Washington | DC | 20009 CDA Reacts, Provides Resources re: Coup in Honduras. We will continue to follow developments and provide you with another update in a special section of this week's Cuba Central NewsBlast. - The Cuba Central Team From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Tue Jul 7 08:46:30 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Tue, 7 Jul 2009 23:46:30 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Frederick Soddy Message-ID: <20090707234630.46e36e0f.shimogamo@ashisuto.co.jp> Chapter 1 of National Economy: The Way to Abundance (2009) by Arian Forrest Nevin In the 1920s Frederick Soddy undertook the first and only scientific investigation of economics and the monetary system. Soddy was "the father of nuclear fission", winner of the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1921, discoverer of the existence of isotopes (in general, not of a specific isotope), discoverer of the cause of radioactivity, a professor of chemistry at Oxford University, and a Fellow of England's most prestigious scientific organization, the Royal Society. Without Soddy's discoveries we would never have developed nuclear power. All of these accomplishments pale in comparison to Soddy's economic and monetary discoveries. After winning the Nobel Prize Soddy went on to invent a scientific monetary system and the new science of National Economy - the science of wealth. With these inventions Soddy forever solved the problem of poverty and paved the way to national prosperity. Soddy's inventions and discoveries make it possible for everyone to work less and have more, to forever get out and stay out of debt, and to live better and longer lives. Today, Frederick Soddy is little remembered. When he is remembered, it is for his contributions to chemistry. His greatest achievements are almost completely unknown. Soddy's investigation is unique. Never before in history and never since has an investigation of the economic and monetary system been undertaken by a scientist of the physical sciences, let alone by an elite Nobel Prize winning scientist, one of the greatest scientists who has ever lived. Soddy set before himself the impossible task of discovering how to eliminate poverty and establish national prosperity - and he succeeded. In Soddy's search, his guiding question was: How can a nation - as opposed to an individual - become wealthy? Soddy's approach to the truth was fearless. He did not accept anything said by economists, banks, and financiers as true on its face. He started his own independent investigation from the ground up. Feeling that he must reach an understanding of our monetary system, Soddy spent two years studying what its advocates had to say about it. After two years of studying the monetary system he felt he "could make nothing of it". He felt this way until "one day the truth dawned on me. What I was studying was not a system but a confidence trick". With good reason, Soddy concluded the monetary system was a swindle, which depended on keeping people deceived for its successful operation. To replace the current dishonest monetary system, Soddy developed a new scientific monetary system. The end result of his investigation and efforts was the creation of an entirely new science, the science of wealth - National Economy, which explains why we do not produce the things we can make and do need and want, and how a nation, rather than an individual, can be made wealthy. In his investigation Soddy applied the physical sciences of chemistry and physics to economics. He gave a concrete scientific basis to economics. Soddy separated the subject matter of economics into the psychological - debt - and the physical - wealth. Soddy set out to discover how the current money system worked and how it should work; to discover how production and consumption could be maximized; and to find a physical definition of wealth. The product of his investigation was National Economy. National Economy is at root a social system and is the social counterpart to scientific discovery. It is the link between science and the human; the system that connects science and the social. Without National Economy we lack the ability to utilize science's discoveries fully. Soddy's great discovery was how to fully utilize scientific discoveries for human ends. As of now, we are not producing wealth at even one-fifth of our capacity to produce. What good are further scientific discoveries if we are not fully utilizing our current ones? Some discoveries are not used at all and most only partially at best. It is one thing to make a discovery and another to be able to implement it for mankind. Scientists make discoveries and leave it to others to utilize them. Soddy developed the social systems necessary for new advances to be produced, distributed, and used to the maximum extent possible. Soddy first published his discoveries in 1926 with the release of the book Wealth, Virtual Wealth, and Debt: The Solution of the Economic Paradox. This book was followed by Money Versus Man in 1931 and The Role of Money in 1934. Soddy expected the publication of his discoveries would have a great impact upon society. Soddy believed that since the days of Galileo, freedom of scientific thought and discovery had been won. However, he was to discover that in matters of money, economics, and finance freedom of thought had yet to be won. In these matters we are very much still locked in the dark ages. What today passes for economics is not really a science, and it is completely shielded from any real criticism. It is shielded by silence. The public is carefully guarded from any real knowledge of money, economics, and finance. In Galileo's day scientists were persecuted by the Catholic Church. Today we know persecution only brings attention, so scientists with inconvenient truths are simply ignored. Their discoveries are suppressed by silence. Over eighty years have passed since Soddy first published his discoveries. Today they remain unknown and unused. Apart from the silence of the press in economic matters, there is a second reason Soddy's ideas never became widely known or popular: they are extremely difficult to understand. In this work, Soddy's ideas are for the first time made accessible and clearly explained. In addition, his system, though complete in a rough form, needed much additional refinement and improvement. I have expanded, revised, updated, corrected, stripped away the inessential, and improved the system of National Economy. Further, National Economy is presented and linked to the systems that exist today. Many of the economic events we see today, such as the "mortgage meltdown" and "credit crunch", can be explained by the principles of National Economy. Most importantly, a practical application of National Economy to alleviate many of the ills created by our current monetary system is now possible. National Economy There are two kinds of knowledge. The first kind results from the study of nature. This kind of knowledge is real and does not change. This is the kind of knowledge acquired through the studies of physics and chemistry. In this domain humanity does not have any influence on the laws it is learning. Humanity can only use these laws if it acts in accord with them. You can only harness or dominate nature by obeying natural laws. The second kind of knowledge comes from human conventions such as the law. It is an artificial knowledge created by people and is modified by changes in society. We have advanced science and technology, but the human systems necessary to fully utilize them have not been advanced with them. We have cutting edge technology alongside a medieval monetary system. It is like having the technical knowledge of how to make cars and having a factory to make them, but being unable to do so because management does not know how to structure work or organize, motivate, and manage people to work together effectively or efficiently. Our civilization today is a scientific civilization, and we are thwarted from attaining anywhere near our full potential by out-of-date human systems. Any system can have a bottleneck or limiting factor. Simply put, the government, law, monetary system, and economic system have not kept up with scientific advances, and all are now bottlenecks strangling our production and consumption. Right now, we have a massive economic traffic jam. Production, exchange, and consumption are the activities of any economic system. Money is the means by which these activities can occur. Specifically money supports processes that enable society to generate equivalencies between these three activities, that is, translate the relative importance of these three activities against and within each other. Human activity is required for production, exchange, and consumption. Whenever there are multiple activities, there must be a mechanism by which these activities can interact. Money is the mechanism that allows us to weigh these activities relative to each other. The means of interaction between the three activities is a purely human convention called money. The real nature of money needs to be understood, so we can make use of it rather than be enslaved by it. Production and consumption are both physical. However, the payment and distribution systems are products of the human mind and are changeable. The changeable human system should match and be synchronized with the physically real system. Economics is comprised of both kinds of knowledge, natural and human. Production and consumption, which are the ultimate foundation of economics, are both physical. They are both wholly governed by natural law. The system of economic exchange and interaction among humans, the money system, is wholly a human convention. Ultimately, these human conventions sit on top of the physical systems for which they create equivalencies. Therefore, it is of the utmost importance that we have a complete and accurate understanding of the physical processes that underlie economics. Equally important is that the human economic conventions be in accord with the underlying physical reality. We have the physical ability to meet all human economic needs and desires. We are not fundamentally limited by our resources or technologies. We have time and time again shown, that as a race, we have the ability to overcome physical constraints. However, clearly all societies of the world have people that suffer from economic hardship. These hardships are imposed by the human economic conventions. Today, the physical processes underlying economics are not fully understood, and the human conventions built on top of these processes are hopelessly out-of-date and not in accord with the physical realities. Human conventions are strangling us economically. Today, in people's thoughts, there is a complete inversion of reality. The human convention of money is thought to be of primary importance, and the underlying physical reality to be of secondary importance. National Economy is as an attempt to discover the best that an individualistic society can offer economically if it were intelligently administered. National Economy is the science of wealth. The aim of National Economy is to make a nation wealthy, and continuously increase its wealth with time. Through the study of the physical realities underlying economics and of the human system that sits on top of the physical reality, National Economy seeks to develop the human system that will best utilize our potential. National Economy seeks to maximize the amount of production and consumption of a nation up to the limit of physical constraint, rather than the current limits imposed by human convention. In the study of National Economy lies the answer to how all manufacturing that has moved to other countries and all jobs that have been outsourced can be returned to America forever, how real wages can be increased dramatically, and how, at the same time, the people can have more leisure. In short, the study of National Economy provides the answer to how the nation can be made wealthier. The Map The age we live in is scientific. Daily, the dangers to our scientific civilization grow. Our civilization is in great peril caused by obsolete and false medieval ideas. Original and fearless scientific thought is needed to avert the dangers we face. Economic sufficiency is an essential foundation of all national progress. We have, today, the ability to create a nobler and more humane civilization. This book asserts that we have the capability to completely eliminate poverty, provide excellent medical care to all, increase leisure time, reduce working hours, be wealthier, provide every family with a decent home, afford to live and raise children on a single salary, eliminate the National Debt, eliminate all personal debt, and to produce almost everything we consume here in America. Not only could we do all this, but on top of it we have the capability to produce even more, if for no other purpose than to throw what we produced into a pit. The problems standing in the way of prosperity are an unsound and fraudulent money system and a lack of understanding of the physical reality underlying economics. Nothing could do more to improve the current state of affairs than instituting and maintaining an honest money system. What normally passes for economics is really the study of chrematistics. Chrematistics is the study of commerce, of wants and demands and of how they exchange for one another. Or simply put the study of buying and selling. It is a distinct and separate study from National Economy. National Economy is concerned with the production of wealth by humans to maintain and enrich their lives. For example, chrematistics will be concerned with such questions as, given the current level of demand, what will the price of an orange be if 100 oranges are available? What will the price be if fifty or 200 oranges are available? How many oranges should be made available for sale to maximize profit? Will the cost incurred by advertising be offset by an increase in demand caused by the advertising? Everything in chrematistics is about buying and selling from an individual standpoint, whether the individual is a person or an organization. Chrematistics could also be called Individual Economy. National Economy, on the other hand, is concerned with maximizing the production and consumption of the nation as a whole, rather than maximizing the profits of an individual. Chrematistics is the study of how the economic pie is divided and of the means to increase an individual or group's share of the pie. National Economy is the study of how to make the biggest and best economic pie. The goal of National Economy is to make a nation wealthy and to increase the wealth of the nation continuously over time. Accomplishing this aim requires the government to make several changes to the current unsound monetary system. All of these changes are simple. Many of the proposed changes are what the Constitution requires, but are today ignored by the government. To understand what changes need to be made and why the changes are necessary, the reader must know: (1) the fundamental change to society that science has brought about which allows for increased national prosperity, (2) what is preventing this gain from being realized, and (3) how this gain can be realized. www.nationaleconomy.net 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/ From shniad at sfu.ca Tue Jul 7 13:06:07 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Tue, 7 Jul 2009 12:06:07 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] 'This Is How They Tortured Me' In-Reply-To: <1C1D321B077F4184811DEEE02EC0C58A@twubby.com> Message-ID: <1781898352.577011246993567173.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://thetyee.ca/Books/2009/07/06/ResidentialSchools/?utm_source=mondayheadlines&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=060709 TheTyee.ca July 6, 2009 Review 'This Is How They Tortured Me' ? First Nations and the Pacific Northwest: Change and Tradition ? Jacqueline Windh and Alfred Hendricks ? Westfalisches Museum fur Naturkunde, Muenster (2005) By Christine McLaren Most of us know there was a time in Canada when aboriginal children where taken from their homes, their families and communities, and forced to attend residential schools. There, we have been told, children were beaten for speaking their own language, and many were physically and sexually abused by the priests and nuns that ran the schools. Most of us know that the lasting effects in many First Nations communities have manifested themselves as poverty, addiction and abuse. Canadians learned at least that much from Stephan Harper's apology one year ago to the survivors of those schools. But very few of us have looked into the eyes of one of those children now grown up, many of them now parents or grandparents, and heard them tell their stories -- the raw details of what really happened behind the doors of those schools. That is why Jacqueline Windh fought hard for her book, First Nations and the Pacific Northwest: Change and Tradition , to be released this month in Canada. The volume was originally published in Germany to accompany a gallery exhibit in Westfalian Museum of Natural History in Muenster. The first part of the book, by museum director Prof. Alfred Hendricks, explains historical facts about the First Nations of North America for the exhibition. The second part of the book, by Windh, delves into the deeply personal and disturbing stories of 16 residential school survivors from Vancouver Island, told in their own words. For some, it was the first time in their lives they'd talked about their experiences. The stories force the reader to imagine what it would be like to learn about suicide for the first time when a 10-year-old boy hangs himself in the basement of your school. Or for nuns to come into your room at night to rape you, or to strangle you and the other kids until you black out, just for entertainment. The stories force the reader to reflect upon how it would feel now, decades later, to see those same nuns in the grocery store of your tiny community. And then to go home to your family only to beat them and pass on the abuse you learned as a child, because it's the only thing you knew growing up. 'They were trained not to talk' Windh grew up in Ontario, and did not lay eyes on a First Nations person until she was an adult. Not until she was in her 30s, after having moved to Tofino, British Columbia, did Windh really get to know an Aboriginal person. She had known only vaguely about the residential schools and what went on there. Slowly, she developed friendships in the First Nations community, eventually dating a First Nations man, and began to learn about the dark history that shrouded the families she was meeting. It was years before she earned the trust and respect in the community necessary in order for people to open up and tell her their stories. Now, she says, many residential school victims are realizing it is time that people hear those stories so they can begin to understand the horror that lies in Canada's past, and how it has shaped the present. "People can have more empathy if they know the truth. If you're walking in downtown Vancouver and you see a drunken Indian passed out on the side of the road, instead of just thinking, 'Why don't they get a job?' you can have a little more empathy about the whole history that brought that person to that situation." While she originally set out to educate non-natives about the horrors of the residential school system through telling the stories, she quickly learned that many aboriginal people themselves, especially youth, were starved for information as well. What happened in the schools is rarely talked about, even in the family. "Their parents and grandparents who went to the residential schools were so severely abused that it's a thing they don't talk about. And they were also trained there not to talk. They were really trained not to talk about stuff, so they've been raised in this culture of not talking," says Windh. 'I just want a better life' The stories in the book are accompanied by portraits photographed by Windh. The last thing Canada needs, she believes, is another faceless Indian. One of these photos shows a man, Brian Lucas, not older than 50. He stands on a porch overlooking Tofino's shoreline and mountains, twisting a blue towel around his neck: "We were tortured by the Brothers, getting hit by a big stick four feet long and two inches wide. Thirty whacks on my bare ass, I couldn't even sit down, but I was still forced to sit down. Then I had to get another ten more because I smiled at my friend. I got my ear twisted because they said I wasn't listening. I had my hair pulled by the Sisters, four of them. They tortured me by putting a towel around my neck. This is how they tortured me, they made me black out. "I want my picture taken of me with a towel around my neck, to show what they put me through. It did something to my brain, that's why I'm always this way." Brian was five or six when he entered Christie Residential School in Kakawis on Vancouver Island. He has six children of his own now who, though not attending residential school themselves, live with the consequences while their father still fights to move on. "Nine of those Brothers and Sisters abused me -- physical, emotional, the works. Sexual, I seen them doing it right in front of me. It affected me, and made me say "Hey, that's all right for me to do too." I'm not ashamed to say it, that's where I learnt it from. "It is hard to live with. I have to see them still, in Tofino. Some of the Brothers and Sisters still live there. Right away I get scared when I see them, I feel "I want to do the same thing to you guys." But I know that's not going to help me. "Now I hear myself saying those same things to my own kids, 'You're stupid, you're never gonna learn anything.' "It's a tough life. There are triggers every day, right in front of me. It's hard to get away from it. I'm trying to teach my kids now, so they don't do the same things I did. I feel from my heart, trying to do the right thing so I don't hurt anybody. But I'm teaching them the same things I learnt at residential school, and now they are living it too. "I just want a better life. It's hard to live a good life when you have this inside of you." Time for healing running out Since October 2008, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a formal inquiry intended to give voice to and document the experiences of residential school survivors, has lay in shambles after the commissioners resigned over internal disputes. Earlier this month, however, the government welcomed new commissioners, promising the commission will be up and running soon. If done properly, Windh says, obeying the strict cultural rules she learned herself about communication within the First Nations community, the commission could begin on a large scale the healing that Change and Tradition has helped bring to one small community. But it needs to happen fast. "People are dying. Of the 16 people I interviewed, two of them have died already, and one of them is not doing very well at all and might not be with us much longer." She says the victims deserve to be heard. "Every Canadian should hear these to find out, I guess, the horror or what happened... There are so many things these days for us to think about being focused on, and we get so overloaded by information. But I think sometimes it's easier to understand something on the emotional level." "It's a way of honouring them, to just hear them. And for native people that's a really important thing. Just to be listened to." From shniad at sfu.ca Tue Jul 7 13:05:40 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Tue, 7 Jul 2009 12:05:40 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] The banality of evil In-Reply-To: <802D935267B4432C9990C1909340935E@twubby.com> Message-ID: <584578501.576791246993540763.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Toronto Star July 7, 2009 Robert McNamara, 93: Haunted by Vietnam war legacy Secretary of defence under Kennedy and Johnson was vilified for orchestrating U.S. role in conflict Thomas W. Lippman W ashington Post Washington ? Robert McNamara, the former secretary of defence whose record as a leading executive of industry and a chieftain of foreign financial aid was all but erased from public memory by his reputation as the primary architect of U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam, died yesterday at age 93. Diana McNamara said her husband died at his home in Washington. She said he had been in failing health for some time. McNamara was secretary of defence during the presidencies of John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. He directed a U.S. military buildup in Southeast Asia during the critical early years of a Vietnamese conflict that escalated into one of the most divisive and bitter wars in U.S. history. When the war was over, 58,000 Americans were dead and the national social fabric had been torn asunder. Before taking office as secretary of defence in 1961, McNamara was president of Ford Motor Co.. For 13 years after he left the Pentagon in 1968, he was president of the World Bank. He was a brilliant student, a compulsive worker and a skilful organizer, whose manifest talents carried him from modest circumstances in California to the highest levels of Washington. After his retirement from the bank in 1981, he maintained an exhausting schedule as director or consultant to scores of public and private organizations and was a virtual one-man think tank on nuclear arms issues. But more than 40 years after the fact, he was remembered for his orchestration of how the U.S. conducted its war in Vietnam, a failed effort to prevent a communist takeover of a weak and corrupt ally. For his role in the war, McNamara was vilified by harsh and unforgiving critics, who made much of the fact his middle name was "Strange," and his entire record was clouded. Even his son, as a Stanford University student, protested against the war while his father was running it. McNamara for many years declined to write his memoirs. In the early 1990s, he began to open up, telling Time magazine in 1991 that he did not think the bombing of North Vietnam ? the biggest bombing campaign in history up to that time ? would work but he went along with it "because we had to try to prove it would not work, number one, and (because) other people thought it would work.'' In his 1995 memoir, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam , McNamara said he and his colleagues were "wrong, terribly wrong" to pursue the war. He acknowledged he failed to force the military to produce a justification for its strategy and tactics, misunderstood Vietnam, and kept the war going long after he realized it was futile because he lacked the ability to turn Johnson around. He elaborated on Vietnam in the 2003 Academy Award-winning documentary The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara . He described how as a young man he had analyzed bombing operations under Gen. Curtis LeMay during World War II, and in that job, played a role in making the firebombing of dozens of Japanese cities "more efficient." As secretary of defence, McNamara was a key figure in such major crises as the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the Cuban missile confrontation with the Soviet Union. He changed the balance of nuclear forces in the world with the development of the multiple-warhead missile. McNamara's first wife, Margaret, died in 1981. He is survived by his second wife, the former Diana Masieri Byfield, whom he married in 2004, and three children. With files from Associated Press From shniad at sfu.ca Tue Jul 7 13:23:12 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Tue, 7 Jul 2009 12:23:12 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Zelaya holds US responsible if putschists continue in power in Honduras In-Reply-To: <2010099382.584711246994488267.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1509508992.585951246994592344.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> CANTV: Zelaya holds US responsible if putschists continue in power This is the only site where I saw it reported that President Zelaya is holding the Obama administration responsible if the country continues under military siege. His comments can be heard here as well. It is astounding that he was unable to land at the US air base, 50 miles north-west of Tegucigalpa. That base is a guest of the Honduran government, of which Zelaya is the constitutional head. http://cantv.radiomundial.com.ve/yvke/noticia.php?27969 As Zelaya headed for Managua, after failing to land at the Toncontin airport in Tegucigalpa, he spoke with TeleSur by phone. The president indicated that he would meet with the rest of the presidents of the OAS to se what solution they devise in view of the fact that obstacles were placed on the runway, and that he will have to seek other ways of entering the country beginning tomorrow, Monday. "Beginning tomorrow, the responsibility for this falls on the superpowers, especially on the United States," he said. "It must take immediate action. I have received calls today from diverse world figures, and in the coming minutes, we will give information about our next moves." "This is a barbarity, I condemn it before the international community. Someone has to bring order when an armed group assaults the government of a country, as these putschists did in Honduras." He added that "The United Nations or another organization has to have sufficient capacity [to respond] when a people is trampled." He regretted that the people were not able to break the military encirclement, because if they had, they would have removed the obstacles from the runway. Indic? que se reunir?n con el resto de los presidentes de la OEA para ver qu? soluci?n se toman en vista de que colocaron obst?culos en la pista, y que tendr? que buscar otras formas de entrar al pa?s a partir de ma?ana lunes. "A partir de ma?ana, la responsabilidad de esto recae sobre las potencias, especialmente sobre los Estados Unidos", indic?. "Debe tomar acciones inmediatas. He recibido llamadas hoy de diversas personalidades del mundo, y el los pr?ximos minutos informaremos de las pr?ximas acciones". "Esto es una barbarie, lo denuncio ante la Comunidad Internacional. Alguien tiene que poner orden cuando un grupo armado asalte el gobierno de un pa?s, como lo hicieron estos golpistas en Honduras". Asever? que "las Naciones Unidas u otra organizaci?n tiene que tener suficiente capacidad cuando un pueblo es atropellado". Lament? que la gente no hubiera podido romper el c?rculo militar, porque de haberlo hecho, ellos hubieran quitado los obst?culos de la pista. -- "If we do not bring an end to the capitalist system, it will be impossible to save the Earth." Evo Morales From shniad at sfu.ca Tue Jul 7 14:03:39 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Tue, 7 Jul 2009 13:03:39 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Honduran Coup Tries to Halt Advance of Latin American Left Message-ID: <1801735338.603631246997019926.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> New America Media July 2, 2009 Honduran Coup Tries to Halt Advance of Latin American Left By Roger Burbach The coup against Manuel Zelaya of Honduras represents a last ditch effort by Honduras ? entrenched economic and political interests to stave off the advance of the new left governments that have taken hold in Latin America over the past decade. As Zelaya proclaimed after being forcibly dumped in Costa Rica : ?This is a vicious plot planned by elites. The elites only want to keep the country isolated and in extreme poverty.? Zelaya should know, since his roots are in the country?s large, land-owning class, having devoted most of his life to agriculture and forestry enterprises that he inherited. He ran for president as the head of the center-right Liberal Party on a fairly conservative platform, promising to be tough on crime and to cut the budget. Inaugurated in January, 2006, he supported the US-backed Central American Free Trade Agreement, which been signed two years earlier, and continued the economic policies of neo-liberalism, privatizing state held enterprises. But about half way into his four year term, the winds of change blowing from the south caught his imagination, particularly those coming from Hugo Chavez?s Venezuela , the largest regional power fronting on the Caribbean . With no petroleum resources, Honduras signed a generous oil subsidy deal with Venezuela , and then last year joined the emergent regional trade bloc, ALBA, the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas . Inspired by Venezuela it now has Bolivia , Cuba , Nicaragua , Dominica and Ecuador as members. Simultaneously, Zelaya implemented domestic reform policies, significantly increasing the minimum wage of workers and teachers? salaries, while stepping up spending in health care and education. The upshot is that a reform-minded president supported by labor unions and social organizations is now pitted against a mafia-like, drug-ridden, corrupt political elite that is accustomed to controlling the Supreme Court, as well as congress and the presidency. It is a story often repeated elsewhere in Latin America, with the United States almost always weighing in on the side of the established, entrenched interests. The Honduran elites were outraged that a member of their class would carry out even modest reforms. They began to portray Zelaya as a demagogue, and demonized Hugo Chavez as trying to take over the country. When Zelaya announced that he would hold a plebiscite on June 28 to see if the country wanted to have the option in the upcoming November presidential elections to vote for the convening of a constituent assembly that would draft a new constitution, the political establishment would have none of it. They incorrectly claimed that Zelaya was trying to stand for re-election. In fact the possibility that a president might serve a second term could only emerge in a new constitution that would not be drafted until well after Zelaya left office in January, 2010. The elites did however have reason to fear a new magna carta, since this is the path that Chavez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia and Rafael Correa in Ecuador have used to draft new constitutions to begin transforming their countries political, social and economic structures. The political establishment decided to nip this process in the bud by quashing the plebiscite scheduled for Sunday, June 28. The Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional and the military refused to help distribute the ballots. Then Zelaya fired the head of the army, General Romeo Vasquez, and led workers and social movement activists to seize ballots stored at an air force base for distribution. On Sunday at 6AM, the day of the plebiscite, the military sent a special army unit to seize Zelaya in his pajamas and to deport him to Costa Rica . The next day the Supreme Court levied charges of treason against Zelaya, and the Congress elevated its president, Roberto Micheletti to be the interim president of the country. The rest of the Americas , and most of the world, reacted with outrage against the coup. The Organization of the Americas convened an emergency session and voted unanimously to call upon the coup makers to restore Zelaya to power. Regional organizations like the Group of Rio also denounced the coup, while the European Economic Union and the World Bank announced that they were suspending economic assistance to Honduras . Even the governments of Alvaro Uribe of Colombia and Felipe Calderon of Mexico felt compelled to denounce the coup. What explains this virtually unanimous opposition to the coup? Most of Latin America still remembers the dark days of the 1970s and 1980s when three-quarters of the continent?s population fell under military rule. Countries like Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil still bear the scars and traumas of this period, and do not want to contemplate any opening that would allow their militaries to begin interfering once again in the political sphere. The United States is also opposed to the coup, with President Obama denouncing it, saying it set a ?terrible precedent? and that ?We do not want to go back to a dark past? in which coups often trumped elections. He added: ?We always want to stand with democracy.? Many observers are suspicious of how solid the US stand against the coup is. Obama given his emphasis on multilateralism, may have had little choice, knowing that his predecessor George W. Bush had roiled Latin America when he rushed to endorse the last coup attempt in the region against Hugo Chavez in October, 2002. The State Department has taken a more tepid stance. When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was asked if ?restoring the constitutional order? in Honduras meant restoring Zelaya, she would not say yes. The New York Times reports that she did not take to the Honduran president when she met him on June 2 at the meeting of the OAS in Tegucigalpa . Zelaya annoyed her by asking her to a private room late at night to have her meet and shake hands with his extended family. In a more formal meeting Zelaya brought up his plans for the referendum on June 28 with US officials taking the position that it was unconstitutional and would inflame the political situation. Washington also has a very close relationship with the Honduran military, which goes back decades. During the 1980s the US used bases in Honduras to train and arm the Contras, Nicaraguan paramilitaries who became known for their atrocities in their war against the Sandinista government in neighboring Nicaragua . John Negroponte who became the czar of intelligence during the Bush administration after serving as US ambassador to Iraq , first achieved notoriety when he served as US ambassador to Honduras in the early 1980s and granted US approval to death squads run by a special Honduran military unit against domestic opponents. On Wednesday, the OAS meeting in Washington called for the restoration of Zelaya to office by Saturday, July 4. The head of the OAS, Jose Miguel Insulza of Chile , along with the president of the UN General Assembly Miguel d?Escota of Nicaragua , and Presidents Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and Rafael Correa of Argentina and Ecuador respectively have said they will accompany Zelaya on his return. But it is doubtful if he will be allowed to return by the coup leaders. For Micheletti and Vasquez, the Rubicon has been crossed and they cannot abandon power without suffering consequences. Any aircraft trying to descend with this list of dignitaries would require air-landing clearance by Honduran authorities and this would likely be denied. The key may well be whether the Obama administration is willing to bring inordinate pressure to bear on its historic allies or use its military air power to impose the deadline for Zelaya?s return. And if the external pressure gets Zelaya back in office, will he be allowed to get the vote for a constituent assembly that the country so badly needs to become a progressive society? Roger Burbach is author of ?The Pinochet Affair? and Director of the Center for the Study of the Americas (CENSA) based in Berkeley , California . From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Tue Jul 7 18:40:12 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Wed, 8 Jul 2009 09:40:12 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] The Free and the Dead Message-ID: <20090708094012.56413914.shimogamo@ashisuto.co.jp> Clusterfuck Nation by James Howard Kunstler Comment on current events by the author of The Long Emergency (2005) www.kunstler.com (July 06 2009) I was out on a big Adirondack lake in a canoe this weekend while the American economy was dying - but you wouldn't have known it for the fleets of giant power boats dragging children back and forth across the water on rubber tubes, and the giant camping vehicles crammed into every bare spot. How do people pay for these things, I wondered. For not a few, installment loans, no doubt - though that still begs the question. The sheer programming of American life runs wide and deep. We are, apparently, a people born to drag children behind hundred-and-fifty horsepower two-stroke engines, so that's what we do, no matter what is really going on in the world. Alas, mindless programming is the sort of thing that kills societies. Watching the summer panorama on an Adirondack lake is like reading a history of the post World War Two decades, because almost nothing on view there now existed before 1945 and we'll be stunned to see how swiftly it all terminates. The fantastic prosperity of these postwar decades killed the wildness of these once-remote lakes. Fortunes were made - like everywhere else in the USA - carving up the landscape and deploying graceless houses made of cheap, fabricated materials. All the diabolical genius brought to engineering the New Jersey and Long Island suburbs was eventually turned loose on the Adirondack wilderness, with predictable results. The lakes themselves, stuffed with all those sleek plastic power boats, are like the Long Island Expressway minus the painted lanes. The American victory over manifest evil in World War Two was so total that there was no one else left on earth to compete with in making and selling useful articles, at least for a while. And it produced a middle class so well-paid that it could express itself in a vast spewage of plastic and leisure across the land. The human race will look back on this society with wonder and nausea for whatever remains of its time on Earth. For at least twenty years, though, this way of life has been running on fumes, inertia, and promissory notes. The amazing thing is that these life-extension strategies worked, especially the past ten years when there was really nothing left besides a Ponzi structure of interlocked swindles and rackets. When the time comes when we do look back to understand what went wrong, I think we'll see that the Woodstock generation went off the rails in 1980, with the election of the actor, Ronald Reagan, who really established the idea that a society could benefit hugely just by lying to itself, or simply pretending. It wasn't "morning in America", of course. It was more like eleven-thirty at night, and the rest of the world had eaten our breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and we decided that inflating our national self-esteem was more important than paying attention to reality. That was when we became a something-for-nothing society - and, incidentally, it was also the take-off point for legalized gambling all over America (an "industry" based on the worship of unearned riches). And that was, coincidentally, the moment when we became a nation of dupes, grifters, marks, and suckers. Now, when I look around that Adirondack lake, I can easily imagine the time - not far off - when the motors cease to ring, and the big, white plastic ridiculous power boats vanish from the scene, and the houses along the shore de-laminate, or are plundered for their materials, and the sites they occupy return to nature, and the aroma of roasting hot dogs no longer wafts on the summer air, and the pastures and orchards run back from the shoreline up the slopes, with people laboring earnestly in them - rather than dragging children on plastic tubes around the water behind a boat that gets four miles to the gallon of gasoline. For those still capable of paying attention to our national predicament, the questions are: what happens from here ... and how does it happen? Over the last ten days, somebody shot the "Green Shoots" narrative in the head. There is no way the American economy can re-expand. This is a debt deflation like unto nothing the world has ever seen before. We've entered the really painful zone of the "work-out" where insolvency can no longer be denied. Things will be heard crashing every day - enterprises, households, assets, institutions, prospects, deals. No amount of stimulus, first, second, or beyond, will avail to stop this process. President Obama had better turn his efforts from pretending to re-start the revolving credit rackets to overseeing the comprehensive re-simplifying of American life. I think he has a few weeks to turn his rhetoric around before the political mischief begins for real, and the aggrieved classes start shooting things up and burning things down. These classes really do need something to hope for, and something to work at, and something to occupy their attention besides their grief over the massive losses in their lives. But none of that energy will be focused beneficially unless they hear the truth ... that there really is no going back to what was before. It's also vitally important to commence public hearings and official investigations of those who committed real crimes and malfeasances. Bernie Madoff has been salted away for two and a half lifetimes, but Henry Paulson is still at large after overseeing the creation of the biggest heap of fraudulent securities the world has ever known - and then betting against them in the swaps market, in effect shorting his own swindle - not to mention his misdeeds at the US Department of the Treasury. Why are those other Wall Street smoothies still enjoying their Hamptons villas while the foreclosed set up tents in the Sacramento Delta? Why are the government officials who failed so miserably at regulation still enjoying their salaries, perqs, and pensions while those not employed by a bloated government struggle to stay alive another week. And how many more weeks will go by before Michael Jackson is buried in the ground? _____ My new novel of the post-oil future, World Made By Hand, is available at all booksellers. http://kunstler.com/blog/2009/07/the-free-and-the-dead.html 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/ From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Wed Jul 8 03:01:06 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Wed, 8 Jul 2009 18:01:06 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] The Economic Evil Gripping Our Nation Message-ID: <20090708180106.9c5e2539.shimogamo@ashisuto.co.jp> by Arian Forrest Nevin, JD Fundamentally, only the national government of a country should create money. It should be created by the national government and paid into circulation in the first instance through government expenditures. As the science and technology of a people advance, so does their ability to produce the necessities and luxuries of life; therefore they are capable of producing more crops, houses, clothing, et cetera. As production increases, more money is necessary to distribute all the goods produced among the people of a nation. If the money system of our nation was directed by people of conscience and character, they would carefully monitor the growth of wealth production, and as it increased, they would increase the quantity of money by spending new money into existence in payment for some governmental activity. The amount of government spending that could be met by creating new money rather than through taxation would be small if the price level, that is, the value of money, were kept invariant. New money could only be issued as physical production increased; otherwise the purchasing power of all existing money would be diluted. For a nation, money is simply a medium of exchange, not a source of wealth. The objective of a monetary system that is operated honestly and scientifically is to keep the flow of money adequate to permit the distribution of all goods produced by the nation. If money is placed into circulation out of proportion to the goods produced, prices will rise and the purchasing power of money will be decreased. If the supply of money is too restricted then goods cannot be distributed and sold. This will result in excessive inventory, which in turn will result in reduced production, businesses closing down, and people being put out of work. The goal of an honest money system is neither to create too much or too little money, but to keep it in proper balance with production to allow for the distribution of all goods. Before money creation was privatized by banking corporations, anyone who created money and spent or lent it was guilty of counterfeiting. What counterfeiters are really doing is stealing from every single other person in the nation. By creating money a counterfeiter not only obtains purchasing power for himself, but also dilutes the purchasing power of the money possessed by everyone else. Stated differently, a counterfeiter is increasing the quantity of money without any regard to the production level of the nation. By increasing the volume of money in the nation the counterfeiter raises the price level in the nation, that is, the prices everyone must pay for goods. This of course means that the purchasing power of everyone else has been reduced for the benefit of the counterfeiter. When caught, counterfeiters were punished very severely, as counterfeiting is theft from every person who has any money, and that is a serious offense. Of course, when banks create money out of nothing on a scale unreachable for an individual counterfeiter, namely billions and trillions, then counterfeiting becomes a respected business and is not punished by the government. Nobel laureate, Frederick Soddy, spent years researching the causes of economic crises and how the prosperity of a nation could be increased. In his book Wealth, Virtual Wealth, and Debt (1926) he came to the conclusion that: "With adequate knowledge of the physical realities that dominate the economic affairs of peoples, the road is clear for unlimited progress and the attainment of universal peace and prosperity. The evils in the past that have paralyzed the very heart of nations lie patent and beyond concealment." The evil Soddy speaks of are the private money system which has usurped the national money system and caused the nation to sink into indebtedness and recession. The road "for unlimited progress" he speaks of is the fruit of science and technology, which we are frustrated from fully grasping by the private money system. http://www.nationaleconomy.net/economicevilgrippingournation.html 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/ From shniad at sfu.ca Wed Jul 8 11:30:57 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 8 Jul 2009 10:30:57 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] The Real News Network - Most Iraqis want US troops out now In-Reply-To: <206920343.714821247010123337.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <90489457.883791247074257644.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Most Iraqis want US troops out now Mike Tharp: Most Iraqis regard the US troops as occupiers, some Americans talk about staying longer http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=3971 From shniad at sfu.ca Wed Jul 8 11:34:25 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 8 Jul 2009 10:34:25 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Go ahead, Bibi - drop the bomb Message-ID: <189268103.885291247074465221.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KG08Ak01.html Asia Times July 8, 2009 THE ROVING EYE Go ahead, Bibi - drop the bomb By Pepe Escobar BANGKOK - Iran 's newly empowered administration of the "mullahtariat" is already reaping what it sowed. As far as the iron cross triumvirate - Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, President Mahmud Ahmadinejad and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) - is concerned, the foreign-orchestrated (as the regime describes it) "green revolution" has been smashed. But another light of the "green" variety now looms in the (gloomy) horizon. As far as the leadership in Tehran is concerned, the unclenched fists of the Barack Obama variety remain - at least for the moment - unwelcome. As Khamenei once again made it clear early this week, "The leaders of arrogant countries, the nosy meddlers in the affairs of the Islamic republic, must know that no matter if the Iranian people have their own differences, when you enemies get involved, the people ... will become a firm fist against you." Then top IRGC commander, Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, laid down the (new) iron fist law underneath the mullahtariat in unmistakable terms. The IRGC has literally taken over Iran , and not only in terms of security. This means "a revival of the [1979] revolution and clarification of the value positions of the establishment at home and abroad". What Iran and the world are now seeing is "a new stage of the revolution and political struggles, and all of us must fully comprehend its dimensions". 'Tonal differences' Right in the middle of the "new stage of the revolution" stepped infamously loquacious US Vice President Joe Biden. Biden told ABC TV, " Israel can determine for itself - it's a sovereign nation - what's in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else." And it does not matter whether the US agrees or not. Biden was careful to add, "There is no pressure from any nation that's going to alter our behavior as to how to proceed." This behavior - a reference to Obama's new "unclenched fist" policy towards Iran - is "in the national interest of the United States , which we, coincidentally, believe is also in the interest of Israel and the whole world." So Biden basically said two things. One: Obama's unclenched fist policy stays, regardless of the new iron-fist nature of Iran 's mullahtariat. Two: if Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu's government wants to attack Iran 's nuclear installations, it's their business, there's nothing Washington can do about it. The first assertion (drenched in wishful thinking) may be essentially true. The second one is nonsense. The fact that legions of US pundits v:shapes="_x0000_i1025"> felt obliged to reach Sisyphean heights to extol the "independence of US policy-making" from Israel when it comes to Iran speaks for itself. Critically, Biden was as ambiguous as it gets. He did leave a "green light" blinking - refusing to "speculate" on whether or not Israel would be granted overflight rights in Iraq - from the US , and not the "sovereign" Iraqi government - to attack Iran . The fact remains that Bibi's government does not need a green light from Washington to attack Iran - regardless of the White House and the Office of the Vice President having to go into frantic turbo-spin mode about "tonal differences" to quell green-light speculations. As unclenched fists go, Israel and Iran now seem to be locked in a cage match - regardless of Obama's self-styled "refereeing" positioning. Any intended or non-intended Biden-White House move to apply pressure on Tehran via an implicit, impending Israeli attack will cut no ice in Tehran . The regime is very much aware how the Israel lobby - in the US and the West in general - has evolved a very sophisticated campaign over the years to turn Iran's nuclear program into a global threat, and to depict the Tehran leadership as the new face of Nazism. The regime anyway knows it can count on the support of both Russia and China . And they also know how Israel's whole strategic doctrine is based on the fact it's the only (undeclared) nuclear power in the Middle East, and determined to remain so. And this is where nuclear power meets emigration. Emigration is the engine of the Zionist project. One just needs to search the Israeli press for the past few months to find the Israeli establishment itself stating it quite obviously: the real risk of a supposed Iranian bomb is not the threat of destruction, but to reduce the emigration of Jews to zero. The Obama administration seems to have realized that it's impossible to prevent Tehran from acquiring a nuclear capability by force. It also seems to have realized that to keep the illusion of a military option on the table amounts to a bald-faced lie. But that all leaves out of the box the real, supreme consequence of Iran becoming a nuclear power, at least in the eyes of the Iranian leaders: it would be the end of the American threat over the country. If pressured and cornered, Tehran , with the IRGC controlling the nuclear program, would go all the way. Israel , in this big picture, is just a minor detail. Two inescapable facts won't leave the table. One: Iran 's inalienable right to master the full, civilian nuclear cycle. Two: the only possible road map for a solution, which lies in the Obama administration persisting in unclenching its fist, trying to normalize relations with Iran , and trying to participate in the country's development along with Russia , China and India . There's no evidence Tehran is ready to accept the possibility - at least not yet. But they won't go away - as they have just proved, and the US and the European Union must imperatively meet them at the table. Imperfect as it is, with no tonal differences, this is the only, feasible green light at the end of the tunnel. 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. From shniad at sfu.ca Wed Jul 8 11:27:21 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 8 Jul 2009 10:27:21 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Lessons from the Humbling of General Motors In-Reply-To: <434254506.896711246390250943.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <26233372.881651247074041893.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> The B u l l e t ? Socialist Project ? E-Bulletin No. 229 ? June 26, 2009 Lessons from the Humbling of General Motors Sam Gindin Of all 20th century industries, it was the auto sector that best captured the sway of capitalism and the rise of American dominance. The assembly line showed off capitalism?s remarkable productive potential and the automobile flaunted capitalism?s consumerist possibilities. At mid-century, with Europe and Japan emerging from the devastation of war, 80% of the world?s cars travelled on North America roads. Pursuing the United States model became a common aspiration across the developed capitalist countries. In the seventy-seven years before the fateful events of 2008, General Motors (GM) was the largest of the large in the auto industry. As early as the 1920s, GM had pioneered the multidivisional corporation ? a form of corporate organization that allowed for both the centralization (of planning) and the decentralization (of execution) that was so crucial to facilitating the post-war omnipresence of global corporations. As late as the first year of the 21st century, Fortune ranked GM as the largest (by revenue) of all global corporations. The fruits of the assembly line did not, of course, flow automatically to those tied to it. That only came as workers organized to challenge GM?s unilateral power. The United Auto Workers (UAW) achieved its breakthrough, and inspired others, through the creative sit-down strikes and by introducing to this iconic industry the principle of industrial unionism ? a form of unionism representing the unskilled as well as the skilled and uniting workers across companies. In the growth years after the war, the proudest achievement of the UAW and then the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW), even to the point of trading off workplace rights, was winning what was essentially a ?private welfare state? ? a set of gains that brought workers not just wages, but the security of a range of benefits, of which health care and pensions were the most significant. One question posed by the humbling of General Motors in the current crisis is whether this represented a failure specific to GM and the U.S. auto industry, or speaks to the decline of U.S. manufacturing more generally and with it, American economic power. But an ultimately more important issue ? because it is so central to the challenging of U.S. power both at home and abroad ? is the extent to which the most recent losses imposed on the auto unions reflect a momentous defeat of the broader working class in both the U.S. and Canada. This leads to asking what then is to be done if this defeat is not to presage the terminal marginalization of unions as a social force. In the discussion to follow, one point in particular needs highlighting: limiting the analysis to specific issues and ignoring the wider context ? that is, the development of global capitalism as a social system ? won?t do. This is not a matter of ideology but of honestly confronting what we face. Partial analyses lead to incomplete solutions and incomplete solutions can in fact make things worse. It is the refusal to think in larger terms, typically in the name of being ?realistic,? which bears a good deal of the responsibility for why workers were left so vulnerable when the auto crisis hit and why they subsequently found themselves boxed into such narrow options. Escaping that debilitating trap ? which involves truly being realistic ? would mean learning to think and act in fresher, bigger, and more radical ways. This does not, of course, reduce basic workplace, bargaining and union issues to a secondary status. Rather, it emphasizes that these can advance working class struggles only if located within a larger strategy for social change. 1. Competition and Globalization The crisis of General Motors must be placed in the context of global competition. Global ?competitiveness? has been the greatest disciplinary force confronting workers (directly in the private sector, indirectly in the public sector): compete or you lose your job and livelihood; compete or our country won?t be able to afford its social programs. Competition, a fundamental of capitalism, implies winners and losers and a constant restructuring of not just work, jobs and communities, but of class relations. While competition destroys individual businesses, at the end of the day capitalists as a class emerge more powerful: the survival of the fittest means that some companies come out of the competition more robust than ever, better positioned to restore profits and investment, and able to take over the market shares of those driven out. For the working class, on the other hand, greater competition means something quite different. As the competition between companies is translated into competition among workers, workers are pushed to identify with their own employer, while undermining each other in the desperation to hang on to their jobs. Competition consequently fragments the working class; it erodes their one ultimate strength ? solidarity. We see this in the current auto crisis. The crisis has seriously weakened GM, put Chrysler into the hands of Fiat, and destroyed hundreds of auto parts companies. But at the end of the day there will still be an auto industry in North America that is more concentrated (fewer but larger corporations) and, in capitalist terms, stronger than it has been in recent years. But the workers in the industry will be less unionized, the unions that remain will have been made less effective, and worker expectations will be further lowered. In light of the high profile of the sector, the historic role of its key unions, and the depth of the current crisis itself, the outcome will clearly escalate pressures on other workers, both private and public. To that extent, the defeat of the auto workers does indeed threaten to become an historic class defeat. The increasing internationalization of capitalism ? ?globalization? ? intensifies competition. But how was it that the Japanese companies, once so far behind, came to be the ones moving to the front? It is not enough to assert that the Japanese were simply smarter; we need to appreciate the context in which this historic reversal occurred. An immediate question is why the Japanese industry was allowed into the U.S. and Canada while itself remaining virtually closed to outsiders. We need, that is, to bring some history of the development of globalization into the story. Though often viewed as inevitable, globalization in fact had to be made and not only General Motors but also the American state (remember GM CEO Charlie Wilson's statement in the 1950s? ?What's good for the U.S. is good for GM and vice-versa?) was at the center of this making. It is true that capitalists, driven by the goal of expanding profits and the pressures of competition, are disposed ? as Marx noted ? to ?go anywhere, settle anywhere.? But capitalist states, concerned to defend their own capital, have often tended to act as a barrier to globalization. While individual capitalists reached outward, in the pre-WWI era this occurred alongside drives to divide the world into national empires and, especially among emerging capitalist powers, attempts to protect their markets through tariffs. In the first half of the 20th century, this divisive nationalism went so far that a globalized capitalism seemed impossible: through World War I, the Depression, and World War II, global capitalism fell apart. The possibility of a global capitalism was only revived after the end of World War II. The American state ? conscious of these past failures, aware of its unique standing after the War, and acting in the interests of its own capital, set out to remake the world in a way that facilitated the making of a global capitalism. It was especially concerned to reconstitute capitalism in Europe and Japan, but to do so in a way that kept them open to American capital. As the U.S. integrated foreign capitalists into this project the U.S. essentially created new competitors. Consistency in pushing for the priority of the ?open-door? abroad implied that the U.S. move to an open door to imports and investment at home. In the particular case of Japan, the fact of the Cold War and the centrality of Japan to the penetration of capitalism into Asia, led the U.S. to accept a certain ?flexibility? in mutual international economic relations: Japan was permitted to restrict foreign investment, yet access foreign technology; maintain, into the mid-1980s, an undervalued currency; and allowed to restrict entry into its market, yet retain full access to the U.S. market (at the time, it should be noted, Japan was only a semi-industrialized country with a limited market for consumer goods). While still under U.S. occupation, the Japanese state and corporations had smashed the militant Japanese trade unions by the early 1950s, with the auto sector being a crucial battleground. By the 1970s, Japan ? with borrowed or bought technology and the competitive advantages of lower wages ? was making significant inroads into the U.S. auto market. Japan?s exports of small, fuel efficient and relatively inexpensive cars meshed with what U.S. consumers were looking for in a period of elevated energy prices and economic stagflation. When Japanese imports rose especially fast and the U.S. government moved to limit them, the Japanese corporations got the message and moved to directly produce inside the United States. The Japanese auto companies quickly proved that they could compete as effectively without the cost and so-called ?cultural? advantages of Japan; they could match or surpass the Detroit Three (General Motors, Ford and Chrysler) even while producing within North America. By the end of the century, they had captured half the U.S. and Canadian car markets and were serious challengers in trucks. Well before the ?Great Financial Crisis? that unfolded in 2008 and forced GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy, the Detroit Three were in serious trouble. 2. General Motors and Toyota The explanations of why GM in particular failed range from its complacency in light of past successes to the failures of its models in terms of styling, quality and price. Other explanations included faulting its size, which came with a degree of bureaucratization that hindered cooperation across departments and left GM?s responses to market changes too rigid; or blaming GM for giving in too easily to union demands and thus suffering from lower productivity and higher costs. Most recently, criticism has focused on GM?s short-term concentration on SUV?s and trucks and corresponding insensitivity to the emergence of the environment as a critical market factor. There is of course something to most, if not all, these criticisms. GM?s managerial capacities have certainly fallen short relative to companies like Toyota. Yet GM?s failures relative to Toyota should be placed in a wider context ? not least to avoid romanticizing Toyota and pointing to ?Toyotaism? as the solution. For all of Toyota?s impressive capitalist management techniques, the story of its relative success includes the following elements: In the early 1950s, when the UAW argued for smaller, affordable, fuel-efficient vehicles, GM?s response was that product decisions were a management prerogative; the union should stick to bargaining the price of workers? labour. It was the Japanese corporations that eventually brought such vehicles to North America, but this was less a matter of foresight than of necessity. The Japanese market, based on relatively low incomes and high gas prices, supported the development of a capacity to build small cars and in the 1970s and 1980s, the Japanese auto companies couldn?t compete technologically with the Detroit Big Three in larger, more sophisticated vehicles. For their part, the Big Three were ready to concede this low-profit end of the market, largely because any success here was seen as cutting into the large market in the U.S. for their own higher-profit larger vehicles. That tension over competing with your own model is certainly not something unique to GM; as one Japanese executive recently noted in reference to Toyota, ?What should worry it now is [that] Lexus and high-end customers may shift to driving a [lower-profit] Prius.? ( Bloomberg , June 10, 2009 ). Toyota ?s Prius represents less a commitment to the environment than an appreciation of the beneficial image of being environmentally conscious. Before the crisis hit, Toyota was selling 150,000 Prius cars in the U.S. but also building a new $1.3-billion plant in Texas to produce 200,000 heavy-duty Tundra pick-ups for personal as well as business use so as to cash in on the larger profits generated by such vehicles (some 10-fold in levels of profits in comparison to that of the Prius). As it turned out, Toyota had to mothball the plant when, like GM, it confronted the sudden collapse of the truck pick-up market. (Toyota?s 84 year old patriarch recently scolded the company president for ?being so anxious to boost sales and profits that he?d let Toyota emulate now bankrupt General Motors Corp. and Chrysler [in] becoming addicted to big, expensive cars and trucks?? Bloomberg , June 22, 2009 ). In China, in different circumstances, it has been GM not Toyota that led in emphasizing small car production. As the China Automotive Movement News reported, ?Toyota Motor has hit a pothole in China, where its failure to anticipate booming demand for small cars is depressing sales as rivals like General Motors report sharp gains? ( May 9, 2009 ). What passes for greater productivity at the Japanese transplants includes a greater repression of their non-union workforce: management flexibility at the expense of any worker flexibility, inhumane line-speeds, discarding injured workers who can no longer sustain the work-pace. Perhaps most significantly, the Japanese transplants in North America benefitted competitively from the uneven effects of the U.S. being the only developed country without socialized health care costs (we will return to this in the next section). As for GM, its emphasis on SUVs (sport utility vehicles) and trucks in the 1990s was precisely what it was being pressured to do by shareholders hungry for higher returns (this includes institutional investors like pension funds). U.S. consumers, their traditional bias for larger vehicles fortified by relatively low gas prices, were ready to pay big bucks for big vehicles and, as we?ve noted, all companies were only too happy to comply with ?the market.? This could of course not last forever, but the profits could be grabbed while they lasted ? and they lasted for over a decade. The plan was that as the market changed, the companies could make their transition to smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles. What they did not account for ? and this was the great failure of GM management ? was how suddenly and radically things could change. Ironically, by the time of the GM and Chrysler bankruptcies, studies generally confirmed that the quality gap with the Japanese transplants had become ?statistically insignificant,? ( Bloomberg June 22) and that the productivity gap was ?nearly erased? ( Harbour Report, June 5, 2008 ). What remained, however, was the continuing perception of that gap, GM?s inability to adjust in the face of the economic collapse, and Detroit?s well-publicized cost disadvantage relative to the transplants. 3. Labour and Legacy Costs In terms of wages, GM?s problems cannot be linked to any recent exorbitant wage gains by auto workers. The UAW made their great gains in the 1950s-60s. Since the end of the 1970s, they, like other workers, have generally been on the defensive. Productivity in the U.S. motor vehicle assembly, for example, has almost doubled since 1990 yet real wages have remained virtually constant and in the parts sector they have actually fallen by about 6% (U.S. Department of Labor). In any case, while imports from Japan originally had the advantage of lower wage costs, the Japanese assembly plants that came to the U.S. more or less matched the wages of the Detroit Three in order to avoid unionization. Where then is the problem? If we turn to total compensation (wages plus benefits), the cost problem is clarified. Such costs have in fact grown relatively rapidly. But the driving factor in this escalation of costs wasn?t primarily the gains negotiated in collective agreements. Rather, it was the extraordinary increases in costs for the same benefits. Inflationary pressures, in other words, didn?t come from auto workers but from the drug companies and private health insurers providing and profiting from these benefits. (This is more generally confirmed in a recent report by the President?s Economic Council of Advisors, which notes that once health care is excluded, the growth in overall worker compensation is surprisingly flat. See ? The Economic Case for Health Care Reform .?) Rising health care costs affect prices and sales. But if all companies faced the same costs, no company would be relatively disadvantaged. It is because the U.S. heath care system is overwhelmingly private that the impact of achieved benefits is so uneven. Even if the transplants were unionized and had the same benefits, their shorter histories in the U.S. and consequent lower number of retirees receiving health care benefits mean that the transplants would still have a competitive advantage over the U.S.-based companies. Though Canada?s health care system avoids this disadvantage, because the Canadian operations are integrated into the higher cost U.S. operations, the U.S. problem is also a Canadian problem. The gap here is stunning. At the end of the 1970s, GM had some 470,000 hourly workers and 133,000 retirees and surviving spouses. At the time of its bankruptcy, the workforce had decreased by over 85% (to 64,000) while the number of retirees had increased almost four-fold (to some half a million ) as GM became one of the largest health care consumer in the USA. From a ratio of fewer than 3 retirees per 10 active workers, GM had gone to 77 retirees per 10 active workers. This is hardly sustainable, especially when the Japanese transplants collectively ? Toyota, Honda, Nissan, and Subaru ? have less than 1000 retirees in the United States. (To some extent, the need for revenue to pay the high fixed costs of health care also pressured GM and others to sell vehicles at a heavily discounted price even if this meant selling at a loss). Pensions are a slightly different matter. Unlike health care, they are paid out of a stand-alone fund. Company payments are invested in stocks and bonds, and as long as the payments continue and the returns generated are high, there is no problem. But what seemed adequate during the stock market boom of the 90s changed quickly and dramatically when at ? the same time that GM was increasingly less able to set aside new monies ? the returns on the assets in the pension funds collapsed. Relative to GM?s falling workforce and shrinking market, the burden of both health care and pensions was all the greater. For workers, this dependence on their employers for health care and pensions ? as opposed to receiving them from the state as a right ? pushed them toward lobbying governments to support these corporations and, alongside this, vulnerable to government or corporate calls for concessions. Moreover, in trying to gain public support for their dilemma, auto workers found themselves relatively isolated since most workers didn?t get such benefits. It once could be assumed that the largest corporations would be around forever and so pension promises were safe. That era ? eclipsed by the intensification of competition over the past quarter century ? is gone. Even the biggest private companies can no longer guarantee workers their benefits. 4. Misdiagnosis: Reciprocity, Hollowing Out and U.S. Declinism When we consider what might be done, certain perspectives on the crisis lead to confused if not harmful strategies. The CAW, for example, has for some time put emphasis on calling for ?trade reciprocity?: where foreign-based corporations are accessing our markets, their home markets should in turn be opened to us. This sounds fair enough, but it misunderstands the nature of globalization. If Asian markets were in fact opened, this would do nothing for Canadian jobs. The auto companies would still be unable to ship from the U.S. and Canada and be competitive with Asian wages. On the other hand, if it is made easier for companies like GM to invest in Asia and organize their parts flows across that region, this would be beneficial to GM ? but hardly a solution for workers here. What is of special concern (since the policy itself won?t help) is the ideological content of focusing on trade reciprocity as a union strategy. The CAW was a leader in the earlier fight against free trade and still officially opposes it on the grounds that enforcing the property rights of corporations (the freedom to produce, move, and sell where they please) undermines our freedom as workers to shape our lives and societies. The demand for reciprocity, however, contradicts this position; calling for other countries to become more economically open further legitimates free trade. A related misconception lies in seeing the crisis in terms of the metaphor of an industrial ?hollowing out,? with whole industries moving abroad. It is easy to understand why, based on their direct experience, workers might see things this way. But the fact is that jobs are not only going but also coming in (though generally not coming to the same places that were left). This is especially so in the auto industry. The Detroit Three were investing in rural areas and the U.S. south even as they closed plants elsewhere. And the facilities that have undermined the Detroit Three have increasingly been new foreign-based investments ? assembly and parts plants that are now here, in the U.S. and Canada, rather than abroad. All this is better understood as a sweeping restructuring of the industry than its hollowing out: restructuring workplaces to make them leaner and more productive; outsourcing from the Detroit Three plants to the parts sector; restructuring relative market shares between U.S.-based and foreign-based companies; geographic shifts within North America; a more general transfer of jobs from manufacturing to services and within manufacturing to higher tech; restructuring toward less unionization and less effective unions; and restructuring expectations and class relations. One aspect of these domestic transformations is that it wasn?t imports that were causing the majority of job losses in the U.S. and Canada, but ? in addition to the loss of market share to the transplants producing domestically ? outsourcing to domestic suppliers and productivity gains due to speedup and the introduction of labour-saving technological-change. For example, in 1990-2005, U.S. output in the auto industry as a whole, including the transplants, increased by an average of 3.1% annually in vehicle assembly and 4.8% in parts (the latter benefitted form the outsourcing). But productivity in assembly (3.7%) grew faster than output and almost as fast in parts (4.4%). Thus overall employment fell. For GM alone, sales fell by some 10% over this period but employment fell by 2/3. The significance of the impact of productivity is especially clear in the computer equipment sector, where output increased by a remarkable 22% per year, yet with productivity growing even faster (28% annually), employment fell by an average of 5% annually ( Monthly Labor Review , Feb 2008 ). Seeing the problem in this way helps move us from feeling hopeless (there is no industry left), to taking on the possibility of unionizing companies that remain within North America and the communities we live in as workers. It also highlights the labour movement?s failure to share in the productivity explosion through, for example, a reduction of hours of work in higher-wage sectors. Most important, it forces us to address the core of the problem: as long as the restructuring of our lives is left to markets, competition, and profits ? as opposed to democratic planning to meet our collective needs and potentials ? life for working people can never be secure. A third misconception closely linked to the above is that the bankruptcies of GM and Chrysler, along with the financial crisis, signal the end of U.S. global leadership and its replacement by China, Asia, or Europe. The implication is that the U.S. is doomed to a period of economic decline and/or that this decline will lead to some dramatic and progressive response. Consider first the financial crisis. It certainly demonstrates how chaotic and anti-social capitalism is as an economic system. But if anything, it confirms U.S. leadership. The crisis was based in the U.S., yet posturing aside, no country and no investors saw fit to get out of dollars. The dollar generally was, in these times of trouble, the universal safe haven and the centrality of U.S. leadership within an interdependent capitalism remained clear. As for the auto sector, it is no longer the measure it once was of U.S. competitiveness. That has shifted to other higher tech sectors and the pervasiveness of U.S. business services, including ? despite the financial crisis ? finance services (for instance, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Citigroup still far outranked all other banks around the world in Mergers and Acquisitions services right through 2008, and indeed were joined by Morgan Stanley and Bank of America in world?s top five in 2009). U.S. companies remain an international force: GM, for example, remains a leader in the auto industries of Russia, China and Latin America. The investments of the Japanese companies in the U.S. do not reflect American decline but highlight the continuing importance of operating in the heart of the Empire because of the size of its market and the political limits of market penetration through imports (Toyota sells more vehicles in the U.S. than in Japan and over half of Honda?s global profits come from the U.S. market). If the auto industry isn?t as important as it once was, it does remain a crucial sector with vast inter-industry linkages, and in spite of the devastation its workers and communities have suffered, the U.S. auto industry remains in business. At home, GM may recover some of its lost market and production and, if not, that share will be picked up by Ford, Fiat or the transplants. And as mentioned above, both domestic and foreign-based companies will continue to invest in the U.S. and Canada and increase content here (as the transplants have, reluctantly at first, come to do with not only assembly plants but parts plants and a measure of research and development). The U.S., in short, is going through an historic crisis that will include a long period of continued pain. But there is little evidence to suggest that any other country is interested or capable of challenging American leadership. And a crucial part of the strength of U.S. capital and the U.S. state lie in the weaknesses of its labour movement, which provides, as this crisis has sadly shown, the U.S. elite with all the flexibility it needs to solve its problems on terms favourable to it. 5. Toward a Class Perspective A fundamental lesson of the auto crisis, crucial to all workers, revolves around the cost of not having an independent class vision. Independent, that is, from ?our? employers and the competitive logic of capitalism, and confident in the collective potential of workers ? union and non-union, employed and unemployed ? to build a society supportive of equality, solidarity, and the deepest democratization of every dimension of society, especially of the economy itself. This requires elaboration. In the case of health care and pensions, the threat was not only that the corporations would attack such benefits but especially that in the present economic environment they may simply be unable to live up to their promises. Turning to even more privatized options such as investing in stocks and mutual funds or hoping for constant inflation in home values, has proved no more secure (among other things, it is now also leading to retrogressive options like people deciding they have no choice but to increasingly work well past normal retirement age). If we want social benefits for ourselves, they will have to be provided to all , and done so through the state while winning this in turn rests on mobilizing the working class as a whole. Furthermore, given the needs of those losing their jobs, as well as those who never had company-paid benefits, and given the government?s readiness to throw around funds in a way that is generating more inequality, our expectations should be increased, not moderated. It is not enough (in the U.S.) to have an ?improved? health care system that falls short of every other developed country; or to just defend, especially in Canada, what we have without demanding an extension of health care to include pharmacare and dental care. The fundamental importance of a class perspective is equally important when it comes to organizing new workers into unions. As the auto experience has shown, hanging on to unionization in a falling subsection of the industry leads sooner or later to the non-union companies setting the standards for those who are unionized (it is not just the failure to unionize the transplants that is involved here; unionization of the parts industry is down from some 80% in the early 70s to the current levels of about 15% in the U.S. and 40% in Canada and this has been a factor in reinforcing outsourcing). The issue goes beyond building a broad alliance to bring about changes in the legal framework confronting unionization; this is crucial but will, in itself, be inadequate. Unless the vision and orientation of those already unionized is transformed, we are left with the limited extent to which unionization in fact represents an increase in independent working class strength, and it is unlikely that ?trying harder? will be successful. In auto, a central strategy going back to the fifties was to trade working conditions for wages and benefits. This ultimately weakened the union and now also makes it all the harder to unionize transplants; with the UAW and CAW increasingly unable to make a strong case for joining a union to address shop floor working conditions the transplants could keep unions out by more or less matching their compensation. (The driver of unionization has quite generally been workplace relations: workers reaching the point where their fear of challenging the employer is overcome by their determination to be treated with a measure of dignity and refusal to any longer tolerate arbitrary management decrees.) What is therefore needed to counter the present climate is a view of unionization that goes beyond adding members, to seeing the project as building the working class as a social force. Only such an orientation has the possibility of generating the energy, creativity, commitment, and readiness to undertake risks that have a chance of achieving breakthroughs (institutional risks such as opening the door to unions co-operating to bring new workers into the fold, and ? as both an invitation to unionization and gesture of solidarity ? providing support and services to workers independent of them having achieved a formal bargaining relationship). It is around jobs that the failure of having an independent vision has been most costly and where finding solutions is most intimidating. Both the UAW and CAW have, unlike in their early days, refused to raise any questions about the product being produced. In fact, in the name of job security the unions (and their members) generally defended the corporations against any criticism, such as that of corporate insensitivity to environmental impacts. This lack of independence from the corporations has cost workers not just in terms of its public credibility and leadership role on social issues but it has, in its short-sightedness, ultimately left auto workers less secure. Moreover, as the crisis unfolded and the jobs issue dominated all other considerations even more, the union ? absent any alternatives for defending jobs ? was left all the more vulnerable to the most damaging concessions. And even when corporations like GM and Chrysler were saved, most jobs were not, since a basic part of the corporate (and government) recovery strategy included the further decimation of the workforce. The only possible way out of this box lies in linking jobs to a vision of society not limited by corporate control over production. Suppose, for example, that auto workers ? those laid off and those still working ? called for expropriating any plant the companies no longer considered useful to profits, and placed those facilities within a public company with a mandate and plan to convert these plants to socially useful production. The Wall Street Journal has reported that even on its own, ?The auto-industry meltdown is forcing a transformation among automotive suppliers, which are slowly diversifying into more-promising markets such as medical devices and green energy,? ( June 15, 2009 ). But absent a determined national plan that creates the crucial social demand for such conversion, private corporations will (as the article goes on to show) only move in this direction sporadically. An obvious focus of any such plan might be addressing the pressing needs of the environment. The environmental crisis means that, through the rest of this century, we will need to transform everything about how we live, produce, consume and travel; homes will have to be modified, every machine and piece of factory equipment altered, the infrastructure of energy, transportation and cities rebuilt. All this means retaining and expanding manufacturing capacities and jobs. The failed alternative is to passively watch the capacities and jobs continue to fade away. The point is that an alternative vision would lead us away from focusing on saving the companies , to saving the industry?s productive capacities ? the skills of the workers and engineers and the productive capabilities of the equipment. Rather than trying to preserve a falling number of jobs at the car companies ? jobs which won?t come back ? we?d reach beyond the auto industry to a plan that included all the workers who will not return to auto and looked to new jobs that could address other pressing social needs. Rather than depending on corporations driven by profits and on becoming competitive, we?d turn to democratic planning . Rather than handing out money to a financial sector at the center of causing the global economic crisis, we?d be talking about nationalizing the banks ? not to fix them so they can return to business usual, but to act as a channel for distributing and investing society?s surplus in a democratic way. In short, the solution lies in workers coming to themselves as more than ?just workers? but part of a collective project to build a saner, egalitarian, sustainable, democratic and richer life for all. What is to be Built? But how do we get from here to there? How do we build the political capacities ? the understanding, confidence and organizational strength ? to move on? That unions need to develop closer ties among themselves and link up with other social movements goes without saying. It is, as well, clear that this is not just a matter of bringing together these parts ? each with their own limits ? but of transforming each of them. In the case of unions, it is crucial to note that ? as central a base as unions are to sustaining progressive change ? unions cannot themselves lead the process of radical change. Unions are organizations of workers with different politics that try to create unity around a set of primarily workplace-based ends; the daily administration of contracts and bargaining dominates union life. At their best, unions try to do more and stretch these limits. But the work of broader social change requires a separate organization, one with feet inside the unions but also outside, that identifies its primary task as building toward the possibility of transformative change: coordinating the widest possible popular education; developing grass-roots capacities and confidence to analyze, spaces to debate and strategize; and creating new structures through which segmented working classes can participate, socialize, develop unity, and act collectively. In previous periods of economic turmoil, workers developed new structures for fighting back and visions of moving beyond the narrow confines of capitalism. If we are to do more than hope for the crisis to be over so we can return to a capitalism that didn?t address our needs earlier, and more than passively watch as capitalism narrows our lives even further, then a new historical project must be placed on the agenda. This is the foremost challenge to the present generation of working class and socialist activists. ? Sam Gindin teaches political economy at York University, Toronto. Further reading: Herman Rosenfeld, ? The North American Auto Industry in Crisis ?, Monthly Review , June 2009. Rosenfeld?s analysis parallels, but goes into more current detail, on the crisis in auto; see especially the excellent section on alternatives. Greg Albo, ? Unions and the Crisis: Ways Forward? ?, Canadian Dimension , April, 2009. Albo provides a broader overview of the state of oppositional movements and an extremely useful reference point for the question of ways forward. For further analysis on the auto industry see the Socialist Project labour page and labour Bullets . See also current and back issues of Labor Notes for analysis and reports on struggles, and Gregg Shotwell?s outstanding articles on the SOS website ? Live Bait & Ammo . From shniad at sfu.ca Wed Jul 8 11:36:35 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 8 Jul 2009 10:36:35 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] 'No green light' for Iran attack Message-ID: <1954959606.886431247074595305.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/8139655.stm BBC News 8 July 2009 'No green light' for Iran attack The US has "absolutely not" given Israel a green light to attack Iran over its nuclear programme, President Barack Obama has said. His remarks followed weekend comments by Vice-President Joe Biden that the US would not stand in the way of Israel 's response to Iran 's nuclear ambitions. Meanwhile, US military chief Adm Mike Mullen said Washington should keep military options on the table. But he said he hoped dialogue with Tehran would prove productive. Clarification Speaking to CNN while on a visit to Russia , President Obama said the US would to try to resolve the Iranian nuclear issue "in a peaceful way through diplomatic channels." Vice-President Joe Biden had said in an interview with ABC TV on Sunday that " Israel can determine for itself... what's in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else". Asked whether the comment meant that Washington had given Israel the go-ahead for an attack, Mr Obama said: "Absolutely not." ? I worry a great deal about the response of a country that gets struck. It is a really important place to not go, if we can not go there in any way, shape or form ? Adm Mike Mullen Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff However, he did defend his deputy, who was accused of being gaffe-prone by rivals during the 2008 presidential election campaign. "I think Vice-President Biden stated a categorical fact which is we can't dictate to other countries what their security interests are," Mr Obama added. He added that the US also reserved the right to take "whatever actions" were necessary to protect itself, without elaborating what those were. At an event in Washington Adm Mullen, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, echoed the president's comments. "There is a great deal that certainly depends on the dialogue and the engagement, and I think we need to do that with all options remaining on the table, including certainly military options," he said. The US military chief said Tehran could have an atomic bomb within one to three years, which "would be potentially very destabilising" to the Middle East . But he said the potential consequences of an attack on Iran were of great concern and weighed heavily against launching any strike. "I worry a great deal about the response of a country that gets struck." From shniad at sfu.ca Wed Jul 8 11:37:18 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 8 Jul 2009 10:37:18 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Iraq a failed imperialist venture In-Reply-To: <420555907.659181247003563951.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <655350531.886871247074638245.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.thestar.com/comment/article/659106 Toronto Star July 2, 2009 Iraq a failed imperialist venture Haroon Siddiqui American troops were not welcomed with flowers in Iraq but their departure from cities and towns has been. Iraqis celebrated National Sovereignty Day Tuesday as U.S. troops were yanked out of populated centres and put into remote bases. In time, even that hidden presence will begin to grate on the Iraqis, just as a U.S. military base in Saudi Arabia had spurred Osama bin Laden and others. Yet this limited troop pullout is being hailed as a triumph. One is reminded of Richard Nixon's 1973 boast of "peace with honour" in Vietnam. The 1973 Paris treaty that led to the U.S. troop withdrawal was a face-saving formula. In Iraq, too, the U.S. has little choice but to get out. Not only did the Iraqi invasion and occupation prove the limits of military power, it also exposed how incapable America has become at nation-building. Its postwar incompetence was stunning. America plunged Iraq into chaos, shattered the infrastructure and destroyed the society, reducing human beings to their basest instincts. They turned on each other and found safety only in family, tribe, clan and sect. Shiites and Sunnis, who had lived together for ages, ethnically cleansed each other's neighbourhoods, which to this day remain separated by barricades, walls and checkpoints. Having unleashed the forces that put Iraq's three main communities at war with each other, the U.S. toyed with the idea of dividing the country into the Kurdish north, a Sunni centre and a Shiite south, much like the British had divided India in two in 1947. Having created the chaos, violence and jihadism, the U.S. said, in colonial fashion, it had to stay to curb the chaos, violence and jihadism. Having crippled the state, it had no choice but to prolong the occupation until the natives were ready to govern themselves. Iraq exhausted America more than the 1917-32 British invasion and occupation sapped the British. It also created killing fields on a vast scale. Yet Iraqis have been brushed out of the American narrative ? Iraq is free of Saddam Hussein, it is democratic, it is stabilized, it is this and it is that. There's nary a mention of how many Iraqis are dead (between 100,000 and 1.2 million, depending on who's counting), how many maimed (not known), how many displaced (4 million), and how many tortured with Saddam-like methods in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere (not known). Besides the damage to U.S. credibility, and not just in the Muslim world, the Iraq adventure empowered Iran far more than the U.S. would ever acknowledge. Finally, the quest for oil may also turn out to be a mirage. This week, Iraq's oil minister, Hussain al-Shahristani, a U of T graduate, put development rights up for international bidding. No more no-bid contracts for U.S. firms, unlike under the Bush-Cheney domain. Nor did George W. and Dick get what they wanted out of the Status of Forces Agreement. Passed by the Iraqi parliament last fall, it stipulates that all U.S. troops must be out by Dec . 31, 2011. No U.S. military operation can be carried out without Iraqi consent (a provision Hamid Karzai can only dream of). Iraqi soil cannot be used by the U.S. to launch a war on any neighbour (Iran). Iraq is the imperial adventure that both Stephen Harper and Michael Ignatieff, one a neo-con hawk and the other a liberal hawk, fully backed. A monumental failure in judgment, their common stance was, and remains, an affront to the collective will of Canadians. Haroon Siddiqui`s column appears Thursday and Sunday . From shniad at sfu.ca Wed Jul 8 11:38:09 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 8 Jul 2009 10:38:09 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] =?utf-8?q?Test_for_Obama_-_The_Pentagon_is_behind_the_coup_?= =?utf-8?q?d=27=C3=A9tat_in_Honduras?= In-Reply-To: <14690965.712301247009652149.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <2000311522.887691247074689755.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Axis of Logic 07/02/09 The test for Obama: The Pentagon is behind the coup d'?tat in Honduras - with or without the approval of the White House? By Eva Golinger. Translated into Englisy for Axis of Logic by Scott Campbell When President Manual Zelaya of Honduras was brutally kidnapped from the presidential residence in Tegucigalpa in the early morning hours of Sunday, June 28, the president of the United States, Barack Obama, was enjoying the peace and tranquility of the countryside at Camp David, the vacation residence for the U.S. head of state. While President Zelaya was beaten by Honduran soldiers and forced into an airplane without knowing its destination, President Obama ate breakfast amidst the relaxing calls of birds in the Maryland forest. And while the coup developed in Honduras yesterday, producing multiple human rights violations: the kidnapping and violence against the Foreign Minister of Honduras, Patricia Rodas; the brutality against and kidnapping of the Cuban and Venezuelan ambassadors in Honduras; and the illegal seizure of power by an illegitimate de facto government, President Obama was making a very, very difficult decision about the church that he and his family would attend over the coming years. Today's headline, "Obama chooses the same church at Camp David that George Bush went to," is more prominent in the U.S. media than this headline that also minimizes and manipulates the truth, "Ch?vez and allies back the overthrown president of Honduras." It's obvious, the choosing of the church which the Obama family will spend all their Sundays during the next four years is much more important than a coup d'?tat in a Central American country. Now one can understand as well why yesterday the statements from the White House about the coup in Honduras, made only by spokespersons and not directly by the president, were so ambiguous and measured. Obama not only was retired in the countryside with his family, but was also making high priority decisions about their future Sunday locale. He didn't have time to worry himself with matters far from his personal sphere. Coup? What coup? Obama was deciding about his own life and death, because according to a report in Time magazine, "in spite of Obama wanting to attend a congregation in Washington, later, after trying out various churches, he decided that it 'was uncomfortable' to be in a public place where 'the people' gathered around to see him." So, because of this, he urgently had to go to Camp David to isolate himself from his people. The point is that President Obama, in spite of being the actual Commander-in-Chief of the United States Armed Forces and the president of the empire, is not directly in control of the entire imperial machinery. Sources close to Washington have confirmed that the Pentagon, through the military mission (military group) of the United States in Honduras, has been working with the military coupists involved in the coup d'?tat against President Zelaya. The South Command carries out nearly 55 operations annually with the Honduran armed forces. The military mission in the U.S. embassy in Tegucigalpa finances the armed forces of Honduras with approximately two million dollars every year, and that does not include the millions of dollars that Washington provides through other cooperation programs with Honduras, and the large investment in the U.S. military base in Soto Cano, Honduras. Yesterday, members of the coupist congress in Honduras announced that they were in meetings the previous week with the U.S. ambassador in Tegucigalpa, Hugo Llorens. As well, one Honduran congressman stated that the ambassador wanted them to let the poll scheduled for last Sunday about future referendum for the calling of a Constituent Assembly to happen, because "later on we will be able to resolve the problem of constitutional reform, don't worry." But, according to the congressman, they didn't want to wait until November and allow Zelaya, together with the people, "to make decisions about the future of the country." It's true that the U.S. government has joined the forceful declaration by the Organization of American States condemning the coup d'?tat and demanding the immediate return of President Zelaya to power. But up to now, the spokespersons in Washington who have been speaking about the situation in Honduras have said that they are still not considering suspending economic and military aid to Honduras if the coupists refuse to observe the Inter-American Democratic Charter and democratic principles. Will it be a coup like that of Haiti in 2004, when they kidnapped President Aristide and brought him to exile in Africa before the world was aware of the brutal violation of democracy that was occurring in the Caribbean country? It was a U.S. plane that carried off Aristide, escorted by U.S. soldiers. And then, the U.S. government, together with the OAS, condemned the break up of democratic order. But instead of working for the return of Aristide to his legitimate position as president of Haiti, it supported a "transition period" during the following year. As well, it sent U.N. troops to Haiti to "guarantee peace and order" in the country. They are still there today. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) finances so-called "civil society" groups in Honduras with more than $50 million a year. The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the State Department also channel millions of dollars and strategic assistance to the principal political parties and political organizations in Honduras through the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute, and other agencies in Washington. Groups like Peace and Democracy, who yesterday openly backed the coup d'?tat in Honduras, receive part of this money originating from the self-labeled "promoters of democracy." Just as was the case in Venezuela, during the coup in April 2002, the U.S government financed those groups involved in the coup, and they continued financing them in spite of knowing of their plans for a coup. Perhaps there will be no smoking gun or direct evidence which proves the hand of Washington in the coup, but it is enough to demonstrate its complicity. U.S. Vice President Joe Biden once stated that President Obama will be subjected to an international test during his first year in office. Washington's condemnation of the coup d'?tat in Honduras has to be much stronger than a simple signature at the end of an OAS declaration. If it doesn't signal that it will suspend financial support to the coupist government in Honduras if it remains in power, the "change" that President Obama guaranteed with reference to the relationship between his administration and Latin America will become more like blackmail. Spanish original: ABN Translated for Axis of Logic by Scott Campbell, a member of Tlaxcala From shniad at sfu.ca Wed Jul 8 11:39:01 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 8 Jul 2009 10:39:01 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Langston Hughes: Let America be America Again In-Reply-To: <1977512817.705131247008790268.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1859016345.887921247074741290.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Let America be America again by Langston Hughes Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be the pioneer on the plain Seeking a home where he himself is free. (America never was America to me.) Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed-- Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one above. (It never was America to me.) O, let my land be a land where Liberty Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe. (There's never been equality for me, Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.") Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark? And who are you that draws your veil across the stars? I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart, I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars. I am the red man driven from the land, I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek-- And finding only the same old stupid plan Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak. I am the young man, full of strength and hope, Tangled in that ancient endless chain Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land! Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need! Of work the men! Of take the pay! Of owning everything for one's own greed! I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil. I am the worker sold to the machine. I am the Negro, servant to you all. I am the people, humble, hungry, mean-- Hungry yet today despite the dream. Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers! I am the man who never got ahead, The poorest worker bartered through the years. Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream In the Old World while still a serf of kings, Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true, That even yet its mighty daring sings In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned That's made America the land it has become. O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas In search of what I meant to be my home-- For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore, And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea, And torn from Black Africa's strand I came To build a "homeland of the free." The free? Who said the free? Not me? Surely not me? The millions on relief today? The millions shot down when we strike? The millions who have nothing for our pay? For all the dreams we've dreamed And all the songs we've sung And all the hopes we've held And all the flags we've hung, The millions who have nothing for our pay-- Except the dream that's almost dead today. O, let America be America again-- The land that never has been yet-- And yet must be--the land where every man is free. The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME-- Who made America, Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain, Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain, Must bring back our mighty dream again. Sure, call me any ugly name you choose-- The steel of freedom does not stain. From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Jul 6 09:31:04 2009 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:31:04 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: We must take back our land again, America! O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath-- America will be! Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies, We, the people, must redeem The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers. The mountains and the endless plain-- All, all the stretch of these great green states-- And make America again! From shniad at sfu.ca Wed Jul 8 11:40:40 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 8 Jul 2009 10:40:40 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Honduras: The Moment of Truth for the Obama Administration In-Reply-To: <733752691.663301247004063739.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1753812657.888801247074840668.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> MRZine July 7, 2009 Honduras : The Moment of Truth for the Obama Administration by James Cockcroft The military coup currently underway in Honduras is a hard coup accompanied by various vain attempts to make it appear soft and "constitutionalist." Behind the coup are diverse social, economic, and political forces, of which the most important is the administration of President Barack Obama. No important change can happen in Honduras without Washington's approval. The Honduran oligarchy and transnational corporations (banana growers, pharmaceutical manufacturers) are defending their interests, as they always have, with a military coup. US government officials knew, before the coup, the coup plotters' plans, in which they participated and continue to participate, no matter what differences may exist among them, the typical differences that are always found in such difficult circumstances, in this case owing to the strength of social movements that are advancing democracy and a constituent assembly. At the same time, various groups and individuals on the far right in the United States continue to promote military coups and "incidents" like the recent arrest of an old American couple accused of passing state secrets to Cuba, the arrest made just as the US Supreme Court refused to review the case of the Five Cuban Heroes unjustly imprisoned for conspiracy to commit espionage. The US far right sees Obama as "a socialist" in his domestic policy and "a traitor" in his foreign policy, for example, on Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, El Salvador -- and, logically, Honduras, for having allowed its entry into the ALBA. For that reason, people like Negroponte, Reich, and other former government officials are seen lying about the Honduran coup, apologizing for it. This far-rightist offensive in the United States is paralleled by that in Central America and other parts of what Jos? Mart? called Our America, where many voices and a significant part of the media are heard not only defending the fascist coup in Honduras but encouraging similar maneuvers in their countries. US military forces are present to coordinate or offer their support in all this, as evidenced in April 2002 in Venezuela and now from its base in Soto Cano, Honduras, which was formerly used in the dirty war against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua in the mid-1980s. The leader of the Armed Forces of Honduras, General Romeo V?sques, and the Commander of the Air Force of Honduras, General Luis Javier Prince Suazo, are graduates of the School of the Americas , established by the United States to train thousands of Latin American soldiers, some of whom became dictators during the dirty wars of the past century, which have continued to this today in countries like Colombia, Peru, and Mexico and are beginning to raise their head again by way of paramilitary forces in Venezuela and other countries. The ambiguity and contradictions in the statements of President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with regard to Honduras and its "illegal" military coup (can a military coup ever be "legal"?) reflect the complexity of US politics today. But there should be no surprise, as we have seen the reversals of promises made during the 2008 election campaign, exemplified by the continuation of torture of prisoners or the "captured," the suspension of habeas corpus and the possibility of detention without due process even in the case of US citizens, lack of transparency, the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and so on. The corpse known as the OAS showed a possible sign of new life with its vote against the coup in Honduras, but behind it is an attempt by the US government to hide its own role in the coup and to use the OAS as a weapon for a "negotiated" -- even armed -- solution, a la Haiti 2004 or Santo Domingo 1965 . The possibility of another scenario like those, albeit even more dangerous, exists now because the US military is much more powerful than any conceivable Honduran guerrilla civil-military resistance or insurrection, so far at least. Meanwhile, the Honduran fascists are consolidating their power on the ground, and Honduran social movements are resisting peacefully and heroically. In the rest of Our America, forces of the right, militarily and economically backed by the Obama administration, are trying to overthrow the ALBA and its member governments -- the government of Venezuela above all. It is a moral duty and political necessity for the other governments of Latin America and the world, starting with the most progressive, to remove the putschists from power, bring them to justice, and restore the democratically elected president, Manuel Zelaya. For the Obama administration, this is the moment of truth. James D. Cockcroft is rofessor via Internet at State University of New York. He is author of Mexico's Hope among numerous other publications. Visit his blog at < www.jamescockcroft.com/ >. The original article "Honduras: el momento de la verdad en la administraci?n de Obama" was published by Rebeli?n on 5 July 2009. Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi . From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Wed Jul 8 20:28:38 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Thu, 9 Jul 2009 11:28:38 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Dubai Is for Flamingos Message-ID: <20090709112838.2f9218a6.shimogamo@ashisuto.co.jp> by Negar Azimi Harper's Magazine Notebook (June 2009) The flamingos at Dubai International Airport had been in quarantine for five days and nobody knew what to do with them. Their handlers had gone missing, I heard, and there was great bewilderment about how to tend to their needs: what exactly they ate, the temperature to which they were accustomed. People said the birds were unhappy, fluffing their feathers and gravitating toward the edges of the enclosure like sulking children, or erupting into great fits of squawking that sent the airport personnel scurrying away. Natives of the Great Rift Valley, they were destined for The Lagoons, a seventy-million-square-foot development of residences, shopping centers, and offices set on seven interconnected islands of finely cultivated marsh ecology in the middle of the city. But the construction of The Lagoons, along with many other extravagant projects in Dubai, had been put "on hold", maybe for good. The story I heard - and Dubai is full of stories these days - was that the primary developer on the project was in jail, held on multiple charges of corruption and bribery. The long-legged waterfowl, dyed a deep mauve color for dramatic effect, waited in awkward limbo. Since the coming of the plunge, the Persian Gulf city of Dubai has been subjected to a windfall of press coverage chronicling its dramatic decline. Cocktail-party chatter once celebrated the spectacular rise of this "global hub", its multicultural can-do spirit and liberal-leaning ways. Now conversations over artfully carved morsels of cheese dwell on hubris and the inevitability of imploding bubbles. "It just had to end", one hears. "It was too big, too much, too fast". Heads nod in unison. Earlier this year, the Australian feminist and sometime Marxist Germaine Greer deplaned at Dubai International Airport for all of a four hour layover. Boarding one of Dubai's hokey green double-decker tourist buses, she traveled a typical route that took her from the tallest building in the world (the Burj Dubai) to a hotel shaped like a sailing ship (the Burj Al Arab) to a handful of malls, and proceeded swiftly to eviscerate the place. "For all its extravagant novelties and its masses of petunias, Dubai is a city with neither charm nor character", she wrote in a February issue of the Guardian. Some weeks later, her colleague Simon Jenkins described flying over Dubai in an airplane. He was no more generous, dismissing the city as "a festival of egotism with humanity denied", and concluding ominously, "The towers of Dubai will become casualties not of human greed but of architectural folly. Their lifts and services, expensive to maintain, will collapse. Their colossal facades will shed glass. Sand will drift round their trunkless legs. Animals will inhabit their basements." Animals! Imagine that. In part, Dubai invites such hysterical interpretations because it is nearly impossible to verify anything there. When the New York Times published accounts of 3,000 cars abandoned at the airport by panicked debt-ridden foreigners, officials insisted that the number was more modest: eleven. Three thousand or eleven? Who knows? The cars are but one example. No one seems to be collecting statistics in any systematic way. What is offered instead is a stream of perennially sunny press releases ("UAE Protects Workers' Rights", announced a piece in the Gulf News last year in response to a report by Human Rights Watch on the dire situation of laborers). And although rumors have always had a magical currency here, these days they have become Dubai's chief commodity. A cursory sampling: Thousands of businessmen have been locked up in prison for bad debts; come the end of the school year, half the expatriate population will abandon their strenuously air-conditioned palaces; the United Arab Emirates, famously tax-free, will soon impose an income tax on all its residents; neighboring Abu Dhabi will shift its border into Dubai in exchange for a $20 billion "bailout"; the posh Atlantis Hotel, perched on the tip of a man-made island shaped like a palm tree, has shut an entire wing due to low occupancy; the ruler of Dubai is dead; judging from the city's ubiquitous security cameras, there have never been so many people weeping in elevators; there are thirty-two purple flamingos languishing in Terminal 3 of the Dubai International Airport. "It's all lies", an acquaintance from the Executive Office, the ruler's consulting circle, told me defensively as we sat at a Starbucks in the Emirates Towers. "It is all coming from Abu Dhabi", said another EO employee, referring to the emirate's oil-rich cousin next door. And although I knew these individuals were unreliable narrators, I wondered if there weren't also glimmers of promise out there in the vast desert expanse that the journalist Jenkins had so happily left for dead. Long before the indoor ski slopes and marathon shopping festivals that made Dubai both a business-school case study and an inspired tourist trap, this spur of land was part of a vast trading empire that stretched from the ports of Zanzibar to China. Whatever it may have lost in consumer confidence, Dubai remains uniquely situated at the crossroads of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. And so I set out to talk to Dubai's residents, the little people who haven't yet headed for the hills, to see what they thought about the impending apocalypse. "Most of the England has been purchased by Iranians", says Mr Nouri, a thickly lashed sixty-something seated in the management office of International City, a sprawling housing development on the edge of central Dubai. We are in China - aptly, the most populous of the developments, which also include France, Greece, Italy, Morocco, Persia, and Spain. Mr Nouri, who works for an Iranian oil company and is shaped like a sweet potato, is suspicious of me and my queries. I have suggested that I am in the market to buy an apartment in England (whose architectural flourishes have all the character of a Ramada Inn), though I am also seriously considering Morocco. "Four years ago there was no one here. And the prices were almost twice as high. Now there are no parking spaces in the England." He seems satisfied with himself. Eventually he discloses that he is also an owner: "I bought myself and my daughters a second home here at a bargain". However, he concedes, "sometimes it smells in the England. But only when there is a strong breeze." As it happens, England is situated alongside a massive sewage-processing plant, a fact that has inspired more than a handful of persons to refer to this Olympic village as "International Shitty". "But it is getting better", he assures me. "They are working on it. Soon, the smell will be gone". At Mr Nouri's urging, I spend several hours after we part ways wandering around in the sun looking for an Iranian restaurant in China. (International City boasts an Afghan grocery in Greece, an Indian restaurant in Persia, and a dumpling cafe in Italy that is owned by an Iraqi. Still, cosmopolitanism has its limits: Dubai's large population of South Asians notwithstanding, there is no India.) It turns out China is vast. I settle on kebab in Turkey. Later, while strolling through the finely palazzoed streets of Italy, I find that a cup of sweet melon juice is the same price as my entire Chinese meal. That same day, I meet Mohsin, a Pakistani man with severely pomaded hair who runs a one-man real estate business in Dubai's Deira neighborhood and does a swift trade in homes in International City. A sort of Naipaulian antihero, he left his wife and children behind in Torrance, California, and seems to be plotting out a sweet enough existence in Dubai, where he caters to Nigerians and Iranians in the market for a second home. In spite of the general real estate downturn, he tells me, the Nigerians and Iranians, whose respective economies have been slower to feel the effects of the global crisis, are still buying in droves. As a result, he made more money in the first few months of this year than in the past five years put together. "Big money", he says, insisting on the "g". He holds up his hands as if indicating a fish yea big. "It's a buyer's market, so for me business is good. Dubai will bounce back. You wait and see". "We are the Burj AI Arab of chocolate", says Martin van Almsick. Just off the road to El Ain, a few kilometers from the densely zigzagging skyline that marks "downtown Dubai", is the world's first producer of camel-milk chocolate. Al Nassma, aptly located on a patch of desert where the only colors in sight are various shades of light brown, operates under the patronage of Sheikh Mohamed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai and the vice president of the UAE, and houses 3,000 of the finest camels from around the world. Van Almsick, the general manager of the farm, is a German-born chocolatier who once served as director of Cologne's chocolate museum. He is a sprightly, energetic man who fell in love with the East while reading Karl May novels as a kid. Like a box of Cracker Jacks in reverse, all the pocket editions of May's oriental tales, he tells me, had a bar of chocolate inserted within. "The newspapers write about Iraq and Afghanistan and all these sufferings, but people have had enough. They need chocolate! We all need it. It is something related to our childhoods", he says, biting into a piece of chocolate shaped like a camel. "And camel's milk has higher-than-average levels of vitamins B and C - iron, too". Al Nassma's flavors, all of which have a distinctly mineral flavor, include cocoa, date, macadamia nut and orange zest, and, the company's flagship, "Arabia" - a blend of honey, cardamom, and other spices. It is 10:30 am and I am certain this is not his first chocolate of the day. He continues, "What goes through your head when you hear the words 'goat milk'? Nothing, right? But say the word 'camel' and people's eyes light up. They are the most charming animals! And what's more, they are part of the local heritage. They have three sets of eyelids, you know. Because of the sand." Al Nassma, like International City, is faring well. Since its launch last October, van Almsick has attracted many customers, among them several luxury hotels in the region and the Saudi royal family. Soon you will be able to buy his chocolates from Harrods, in London. By now, we are sipping cups of camelicious cappuccino, a prototype in early stages. "This is a story that can only happen here", he tells me, a perfect halo of sunlight having suddenly illuminated his head of golden locks. "Chocolate is recession-proof. Maybe people can't afford big cars or yachts anymore, but these little pleasures are forever. There has never been a better time to eat chocolate." It is true that many people are leaving Dubai. The offices of Aries International immigration services are on the second floor of the Emirates Bank Building in Karama, a residential neighborhood - one of the city's oldest - along the Dubai Creek and filled with members of the city's white-collar South Asian community. The Aries reception area is a small, wincingly fluorescent-lit room, a perfect square, with a potted fern, four red plastic chairs, and a stack of faded oversized coffee-table books about Australia. I spy Australia: Images of a Timeless Land. Seated behind a desk surrounded by a plastic barrier is Aby, a petite Filipino woman wearing a complicated bright-green top and chatting away on the phone through an earpiece. She has one hand wrapped around a can of diet soda and the other poised for AIM chat. Seated before her are two men from Pakistan. Aby, who once dreamed of being a television newscaster like Christiane Amanpour, is very good at her job, which involves receiving visitors, answering phones, making appointments, and collecting heaps of CVs from people hoping to get work visas in Canada and Australia. Given the spike in layoffs these past months, demand for Aries's services has never been greater. Aby gets off the phone to address the two men standing before her. "You are both clients, right?" Blank stares. "Do you have file numbers?" More blank stares. "Mr Sumesh, Mr Ritesh, my name is Aby. I want to help you, but I need to know if you are already in our system." Finally, Mr Ritesh speaks up - in flawless, albeit non-sequitur, English. "I want to move to Canada". "Do you have a file number?" "Canada", he repeats. Another man comes in, looking vaguely expectant. "Who are you?" he asks Aby. "My name is Aby. A-B-Y. Please sit down and wait for your turn, sir". The queue is growing longer by the minute. Aby, who came to Dubai nine months ago from Manila, found her receptionist job on the Internet. "All they required was knowing how to use a computer!" She works eleven-hour days, seven days a week, but is happy simply to have a job. She even received a raise last month - in fact, everyone in this busy office did - bringing her salary to 3,000 dirhams a month. "I tell my colleagues we are so lucky. Things are bad here for many people. I heard they are capturing more jaywalkers on the streets just to make money. Maybe they will come and get me for saying these things. They will say, 'You are saying Dubai is going down'." She corrects herself, "But you know what? They are visionaries here." The Dubai World Cup, touted as the world's richest horse race, goes on as scheduled. Each year on a Saturday in the spring, thousands of people descend upon this patch, of grass in the desert to watch horses circle a magnificently fancy track. In the public section, where admission is free, the Sudanese, most of them northerners, turn out in the biggest numbers, followed by the Pakistanis, the Indians, and assorted others; together they partake of a Woodstock-sized group picnic. In what is referred to as the Apron View section, where tickets go for several thousand dirhams, droves of drunken expats, beet-colored from the sun and abundant booze, stumble about the lawns in pointy heels and hats shaped like birds and paisley suits and watch anything but the races. There is a champagne bar called The Bubble Lounge, a Style Arena in which an elaborate ladies' fashion competition is staged, and much slurred enunciation and giddy gyration to very bad house music. This year's race, I soon learn, should be tight, with a front-runner named Albertus Maximus and his closest competitor, an Argentine-bred horse named Asiatic Boy. I lean across a gaggle of Sudanese men in the public section, one of whom asks to borrow my pen. They are hunched over a red betting slip for which the winning prize is 60,000 dirhams. As the pen passes through twelve sets of hands, I ask them why they have come to the day's event. "We came for the lottery money", Hassan tells me. "The view", says Saeed. "To see the foreigners in their clothes", offers Magid. Later that evening, a locally owned and trained horse, jockeyed by a local man named Ahmad Ajtebi, races to a first-place finish. This has never happened before, and the cover of the Gulf News shows the wiry jockey, his arm outstretched in a victorious pose, with the headline: "Ajtebi The New Role Model for UAE Kids". A hero is born. On one of my last days in Dubai, I drive past The Lagoons, its entrance blocked by security and the scenic marshlands visible only from the adjacent highway. I have been thinking about the flamingos again. How long will they remain in the middle of delirious Dubai, locked in by the busy Sheikh Zayed Road on the one side and skyscrapers on the other? Will they ever go home? I call up Sama Dubai, the stateowned development firm that was in charge of The Lagoons project before it all came to a screeching halt. I am eventually referred to Kevin Hyland, a British-born flamingo specialist at Dubai's Wildlife Protection Office, who confirms that the real estate venture was supposed to have included flamingos, though they've never set foot in an airport. They're local birds - about 1,000 of them - and Hyland has been tending them since the 1990s, at their home in the Ras Al Khor Wildlife Sanctuary, which was to be one of The Lagoons' premier attractions. Nor have they been dyed purple but are instead a standard shade of pink. And if the new, grand lodgings envisioned for them fail to materialize, at least they are not in jail, where several executives of Sama Dubai have, in fact, been obliged to take up residence. Like flamingos everywhere, they cluck, squawk, and flutter, but these are not necessarily noises of complaint. I've come to think of them as stoic, strutting under the sun as they weather the interminable downturn. _____ Negar Azimi is a senior editor of Bidoun magazine. 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/ From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Thu Jul 9 03:00:48 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Thu, 9 Jul 2009 18:00:48 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Banks Do Not Keep Reserves Message-ID: <20090709180048.5fab5a6c.shimogamo@ashisuto.co.jp> by Arian Forrest Nevin, JD Contrary to widely held belief, banks, not the government, create money. It is also widely believed that banks practice "fractional-reserve lending". This is totally false. Banks do not keep reserves. Not only do banks not keep reserves it is impossible for them to do so. Money comes in two separate and distinct types. One type everyone is familiar with is physical, which is cash. The second type is purely electronic, and exists solely within a bank's computer. The kind of money created by commercial banks is of the second type, electronic. Most people believe that banks keep a "reserve" of cash to back the electronic money that they create. This is untrue and impossible. A reserve of money cannot be kept to back money. A reserve of oranges cannot be kept to back other oranges. Dollar bills cannot be backed by a reserve of quarters. A reserve of the same thing cannot be kept to back the very same thing. Money is money. Banks do not create money based on a reserve of money they keep. Banks create money based on a legal reference, not a reserve. Just as at Walmart there may be a sale where you "buy one and get two free". Walmart is using a reference that says if you purchase one then you get two more for free. There is no reserve. Similarly, banks reference a rule to determine how much money they can create. For any amount of money on deposit with a bank that bank is allowed to create 90% of that amount as new electronic money. So if I deposited $100 at Bank of America, then based on the legal reference banks use, Bank of America would be allowed to create $90 new dollars. As you can see there is no reserve involved in the process of money creation by banks. Banks are not legally required to keep any cash whatsoever. In fact, to meet the requirements of the legal reference banks can keep an account of electronic money with a Federal Reserve Bank. Banks do not need to keep any cash on hand. In practice, banks keep enough cash on hand to meet their customers' demands for withdrawals of cash. This is no different than any other operational stockpile kept by a business. McDonalds keeps enough french fries on hand so that they will not run out. All of the money that is supposed to be in a bank is there all of the time. One might then wonder, what is a run on a bank if all of the money is there? Quite simply, as there are two kinds of money, the total amount of money that exists at any given time is greater than the amount of either physical or electronic money individually. Thus, if everyone wanted to only possess one-dollar bills and not five or ten-dollar bills, this would be impossible because the total amount of cash is greater than the amount of one-dollar bills. Similarly, it is impossible for everyone to possess all of their money as cash at the same time, because the total amount of cash is less than the total amount of the two types of money. Banks have all the money they are supposed to have at all times. It is just that some of it is cash and some of it is electronic. At any given time an individual bank may have created the maximum total amount of money it is allowed to create. However, the aggregate of all banks will always have created less money than they could. For the past forty years banks have created nearly the maximum possible amount of money. On average, during the past forty years banks have created about ten billion dollars less than they were legally allowed to. In the past three months this amount has exploded. As of November 1st 2008, the amount of money banks are choosing not to create has gone from the average of about ten billion to over five trillion dollars. This is 56 times greater than what it has been on average for the past forty years. Yet at the same time we have a "credit crunch". Banks are quite capable of creating and loaning more money; they could lend over five trillion dollars. They simply choose not to. Source for numerical data: http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/data/EXCRESNS.txt Questions, Comments, or Submissions? Email Here: comments at nationaleconomy.net http://www.nationaleconomy.net/banksdonotkeepreserves.html 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/ From realiteee1 at yahoo.com Thu Jul 9 03:17:39 2009 From: realiteee1 at yahoo.com (james m nordlund) Date: Thu, 9 Jul 2009 02:17:39 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] WILPF July E-News: Care of the Earth :) Message-ID: <539117.39222.qm@web111502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Read about, and participate in, women activists/advocates around the world's Care of the Earth?? :) This Action, on Change.org, the url?? :) Care of Earth?? :) http://womensrights.change.org/actions/view/care_of_earth http://www.change.org/profile/189788/actions ? http://www.wilpf.org WILPF Burlington recently won an important victory: In June, the Vermont House of Representatives passed a resolution designating August 6, 2009 as "Nuclear Disarmament Day." It's great timing for such a triumph, since communities around the world will observe August 6, 2009 as an opportunity to press for the elimination of nuclear weapons and WILPF will be actively involved. The focus of this summer issue of the E-Newsletter looks at a range of environmental issues. While "care of the earth" is one of three program priorities for U.S. WILPF, one could argue that all our work for peace ultimately benefits Mother Earth. In the WILPF July E-Newsletter: A National Disarmament Day? Medical Insurance and the Planet Support "Mother Earth Day" WILPF's Environmental Working Group A Nuclear Power Renaissance? War vs. Earth A National Disarmament Day? Some 64 years have passed since the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on the civilian population of Hiroshima in 1945, resulting in 100,000 deaths. Now our nation has a President who's stated that as the only country ever to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to lead us to a world without nuclear weapons. Hard work by WILPF Burlington helped get the Vermont House of Representatives to pass a resolution designating August 6, 2009 as "Nuclear Disarmament Day." What can we accomplish next? What if the U.S. Congress declared August 6 a national "Nuclear Disarmament Day"? Read about the petition to make this happen and our plans for Hiroshima and Nagasaki Days (August 6 to 9). Take the Profit out of Health Insurance Marilyn Clement and Congressman John ConyersWhat are the environmental costs of private health insurance? Many claim it takes its toll on the environment by encouraging a medical approach to disease management and discouraging a public health approach to disease prevention. WILPF has long endorsed HR676, introduced by WILPF supporter Rep. John Conyers and now supported by 78 co-sponsors, which would extend Medicare to cover not just the elderly but everyone. In addition to supporting passage of HR676, we encourage you to check out the actions organized by Health Care Now to build grassroots momentum for a single-payer health care plan. WILPF's former Executive Director Marilyn Clement, currently head of Health Care Now, was recently recognized for the important work she's done on this issue. Read more about the connection between health insurance and a healthy planet here:? TO COME Photo caption: On May 7, Rep. John Conyers and many friends gathered to celebrate the achievements of Marilyn Clement, Executive Director of Health Care Now and former Executive Director of WILPF Is Mother Earth Day on Your Calendar? WILPF's Save the Water Committee Thinks it Should Be On April 22 this year, the United Nations unanimously adopted a Bolivian-led resolution to proclaim this day International Mother Earth Day. This? resolution is part of a growing movement to redefine people's relationship with nature by asserting that nature is not just an object to be appropriated and exploited for profit, but is rather a rights-bearing entity that should be treated with parity under the law. Read more about Mother Earth Day and plan for next year's celebration. WILPF International Environmental Working Group Did you know that 880 million people do not have access to decent sources of drinking water? Environmental sustainability is a key issue for International WILPF. Want to find out more about the international environmental working group? Check out its newsletters. Members tackling environmental issues are encouraged to join the group's listserv to learn about the work our sisters are doing in other Sections. A Nuclear Power Renaissance??? Proponents of nuclear power are gaining ground using the argument that it's not only safe, it's also "green." Disagree with this false logic? There's plenty you can do. WILPF members in Missouri, Massachusetts, Vermont and North Carolina are already opposing this so-called "nuclear renaissance." War Threatens the Planet Modern wars threaten our planet's ability to sustain life. Learn how your Representative voted on the current supplemental war appropriations bill on June 16. Send her or him your thoughts. You could include the URL for WILPF's May statement on Afghanistan. Support HR 2404 calling for an exit strategy in Afghanistan. Use Cap Wiz on the Friends Committee on National Legislation website and learn if your Representative is one of the 88 already co-sponsoring this bill. ????????? WILPF is a dues paying, membership organization. We rely on donations to carry out our work. Make your contribution to peace and justice today! JOIN WILPF! To join, click here! DONATE! Click here to support WILPF's peacebuilding! For more information, visit our website: http://www.wilpf.org WILPF envisions a transformed world at peace, where there is racial, social and economic justice for all people everywhere. WILPF Dove American mother's sons have died on foreign battlefields to support profiteers in their luxury living. --Jeanette Rankin, first female member of Congress and founding member of WILPF ???? Remember, your time and financial contributions are the bedrock of our organization. Please consider donating to WILPF, or give a tax-deductible donation to our sister organization, Jane Addams Peace Association, earmarked for the US Section.?? From suzannedk at gmail.com Thu Jul 9 06:32:23 2009 From: suzannedk at gmail.com (Suzanne de Kuyper) Date: Thu, 9 Jul 2009 14:32:23 +0200 Subject: [R-G] 'No green light' for Iran attack In-Reply-To: <1954959606.886431247074595305.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> References: <1954959606.886431247074595305.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 7:36 PM, Sid Shniad wrote: > > > http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/8139655.stm > > > > BBC News 8 July 2009 > > > > 'No green light' for Iran attack > > > > The US has "absolutely not" given Israel a green light to attack Iran over > its nuclear programme, President Barack Obama has said. > > > > His remarks followed weekend comments by Vice-President Joe Biden that the > US would not stand in the way of Israel 's response to Iran 's nuclear > ambitions. > > > > Meanwhile, US military chief Adm Mike Mullen said Washington should keep > military options on the table. > > > > But he said he hoped dialogue with Tehran would prove productive. > > > > Clarification > > > > Speaking to CNN while on a visit to Russia , President Obama said the US > would to try to resolve the Iranian nuclear issue "in a peaceful way through > diplomatic channels." > > > > Vice-President Joe Biden had said in an interview with ABC TV on Sunday > that " Israel can determine for itself... what's in their interest and what > they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else". > > > > Asked whether the comment meant that Washington had given Israel the > go-ahead for an attack, Mr Obama said: "Absolutely not." > > > > ? I worry a great deal about the response of a country that gets struck. It > is a really important place to not go, if we can not go there in any way, > shape or form ? > > > > Adm Mike Mullen Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff > > > > However, he did defend his deputy, who was accused of being gaffe-prone by > rivals during the 2008 presidential election campaign. > > > > "I think Vice-President Biden stated a categorical fact which is we can't > dictate to other countries what their security interests are," Mr Obama > added. > > > > He added that the US also reserved the right to take "whatever actions" > were necessary to protect itself, without elaborating what those were. > > > > At an event in Washington Adm Mullen, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs > of Staff, echoed the president's comments. > > > > "There is a great deal that certainly depends on the dialogue and the > engagement, and I think we need to do that with all options remaining on the > table, including certainly military options," he said. > > > > The US military chief said Tehran could have an atomic bomb within one to > three years, which "would be potentially very destabilising" to the Middle > East . > > > > But he said the potential consequences of an attack on Iran were of great > concern and weighed heavily against launching any strike. > > > > "I worry a great deal about the response of a country that gets struck." > _______________________________________________ > 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 critical.montages at gmail.com Thu Jul 9 07:17:29 2009 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Thu, 9 Jul 2009 09:17:29 -0400 Subject: [R-G] From Iran to China, Skipping Honduras Message-ID: As far as the Western mass media are concerned, they went from Iran (electoral conflict in an oil-rich country) to China (ethnic conflict in an oil-rich region), skipping Honduras (a coup d'?tat in an oil-poor country dependent on foreign aid and remittances* where the USG has a military base). Yoshie * "Honduras is the hemisphere's fourth-poorest country and directly finances nearly 20 percent of its budget with foreign donations and credit. . . . [Remittances represent] about 18 percent of the Honduran economy" (Will Weissert and Theresa Bradley, "Honduras Coup Costs Oil, Aid as Economy Stalls," AP, ). From shniad at sfu.ca Thu Jul 9 13:34:12 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Thu, 9 Jul 2009 12:34:12 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] It's Not Science Fiction... In-Reply-To: <1070474758.-195855080@org.orgDB.mail.democracyinaction.org> Message-ID: <924722976.1291051247168052348.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Donate | Calendar | Local Groups | Store July 9, 2009 As the media shines its spotlight on the death of one celebrity this week, so many other profound losses go unreported-particularly those civilians killed by unmanned US drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Since 2006, unmanned drone attacks have killed at least 14 Al Qaeda leaders and approximately 700 civilians--a 50:1 ratio of innocent victims to targeted enemies (watch Brave New Films' latest videos on civilian casualties and the impact of war on women ). Since the news isn't covering this, we need to be the media ourselves. Won't you write a letter to the editor? You can use our template or craft your own words of outrage to educate your community about drones and encourage others to speak out against their use and the tragedy and destabilization they bring to the region. Click here to get started (it will only take 3 minutes)! And spread the message to your online community! Tweet this: When Drones Attack ... http://twitpic.com/9pyqa or this: Is the US flaming extremism with its drones? http://bit.ly/BHfs7 or this: Generals agree...ground the drones! http://bit.ly/RB2ee Facebook status update: When drones attack...civilians die. http://twitpic.com/9pyqa This week also saw the death of war criminal Robert McNamara, who lied us into war in Vietnam. He later regretted masterminding our military involvement there, but that does nothing to heal the deep pain left in its wake. The death of seven more US soldiers in Afghanistan continues to highlight the futility of war and its horrific costs. Afghanistan and Pakistan are now Obama's wars, wars he will likely one day regret. Like Vietnam, they are wrong. Generals and other military officials, including David Kilcullen , former adviser to General David Petraeus, have spoken out against the US use of drones. "They've given rise to a feeling of anger that coalesces the population around the extremists and leads to spikes of extremism," Kilcullen said before the House Armed Services Committee. Yet the US State Department continues to deny the attacks and our tax dollars continue to fund them! Read more about what Generals, CIA and others have been saying about drones and stability in the region. We need to raise awareness about these inhumane, unjust military practices, funded by our taxes. Some of our brothers and sisters in the peace movement are putting not just their words, but their bodies, on the line to stop drones. On July 13, CODEPINK is partnering with other activists, including the illustrious Father Louis Vitale , to hold a Ground the Drones! vigil at the gates of Creech Air Force Base near Indian Springs, NV, where the drones are operated via remote control. To find out more click here and follow us on twitter and read our blogs ! Thank you for joining us in saying, loudly, "There's no place for drones or war in creating peace and dignity in our world!" Expanding our voices for peace, Blaine, Dana, Desiree, Farida, Gael, Gayle, Janet, Jean, Jodie, Johanna, Medea, Nancy K, Nancy M, Paris, Rae and Stacy P.S. Thanks to all of you who made calls and sent messages to get those arrested on their boat, 'Spirit of Humanity' out of Israel jails for trying to deliver aid to Gaza. Yesterday Viva Palestina-US arrived in Egpyt with a delegation of 200 Americans, including Vietnam Vet and peace activist Ron Kovic. Follow their trip here and be inspired to join our next trip to Gaza . Write a Letter to the Editor and tell the truth about drone attacks! Read our interview with Fawzia Afzal-Khan about the US flaming extremism in the Middle East Check out the Latest News & Videos on Pakistan Tweet this: When Drones Attack ... http://twitpic.com/9pyqa OR Generals agree...ground the drones! http://bit.ly/RB2ee CHECK OUT OUR ONLINE STORE FOR SUMMER SPECIALS! unsubscribe from this list From shniad at sfu.ca Thu Jul 9 13:41:45 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Thu, 9 Jul 2009 12:41:45 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] The only democracy in the Middle East: Israeli security forces to screen judges In-Reply-To: <642018414.1293111247168356166.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <564678210.1294251247168505717.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israeli-agents-to-screen-judges-before-appointment-1738070.html The Independent 9 July 2009 Israeli agents to screen judges before appointment Fury as security service gets veto over judiciary By Ben Lynfield in Jerusalem Israel's internal security service has been given a de facto veto over the appointment of judges in an unprecedented decision that has the country's embattled liberals up in arms. The move by the Judges Selection Committee on Friday is likely to make it harder for members of Israel's Arab minority and others with views that are not mainstream to become judges, according to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (Acri). Zahava Galon, a former MP of the dovish Meretz party, said the decision was "a scandal". She said: "We are turning into a kind of police state with Big Brother everywhere. A judge shouldn't have to pass the Shin Bet's tests. This is just something that isn't done." The selection committee's membership ? partly determined by the ruling coalition ? has become more nationalist and intent on limiting the power of the Supreme Court due to appointments made since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took office in April. Increasing the powers of the security service, the Shin Bet, were part of an attempt to erode the judiciary's ability to protect civil liberties and human rights in a country that lacked a constitution to defend them, Ms Galon said. The security establishment has always enjoyed wide powers but the Supreme Court was seen as a bastion of liberalism that counterbalanced that and helped define Israel as a democracy. Dan Yakir, the chief legal counsel for Acri, called the step "troublesome". But supporters of the change argue that it is necessary for "state security". Uri Ariel, a far-right MP newly appointed to the selection committee, said allowing Shin Bet to screen candidates was necessary because judges reviewed highly classified security information "and this can directly influence state security". "Until now, the clearance for judges was low even though they were seeing the most sensitive material. This was anomalous and inappropriate," he said. Mr Ariel said the screening would not apply to serving judges, only to new ones. The new policy was "experimental" and would be reviewed in a year. The Shin Bet's assessment is only a recommendation but it is thought unlikely that the committee would endorse those rejected by Shin Bet. "I have never encountered an incident in which the government didn't accept the Shin Bet's advice," said the human rights lawyer Michael Sfard, who is representing an Arab-Israeli whom the agency deemed inappropriate to serve as a mosque leader. Mr Sfard said he was "not surprised" by the move and that it fitted with the norm of the Shin Bet screening the appointments of high officials and educators in Arab schools. The difference in this case, he said, was that the agency's role was being openly acknowledged. The Shin Bet has asked for the power to screen judges in the past but has been rebuffed by the committee, which comprises judges and politicians. From shniad at sfu.ca Thu Jul 9 13:44:40 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Thu, 9 Jul 2009 12:44:40 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Scheer: McNamara's Evil Lives On In-Reply-To: <1493447583.940771247080369880.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <323055898.1295631247168680076.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090707_robert_scheer_july_8_column/ Truthdig July 7, 2009 McNamara's Evil Lives On The US killed 3,200,000 Vietnamese, excluding the South Vietnamese military. By Robert Scheer Why not speak ill of the dead? Robert McNamara, who died this week, was a complex man -- charming even, in a blustery way, and someone I found quite thoughtful when I interviewed him. In the third act of his life he was often an advocate for enlightened positions on world poverty and the dangers of the nuclear arms race. But whatever his better nature, it was the stark evil he perpetrated as secretary of defense that must indelibly frame our memory of him. To not speak out fully because of respect for the deceased would be to mock the memory of the millions of innocent people McNamara caused to be maimed and killed in a war that he later freely admitted never made any sense. Much has been made of the fact that he recanted his support for the war, but that came 20 years after the holocaust he visited upon Vietnam was over. Is holocaust too emotionally charged a word? How many millions of dead innocent civilians does it take to qualify labels like holocaust, genocide or terrorism? How many of the limbless victims of his fragmentation bombs and land mines whom I saw in Vietnam during and after the war? Or are America's leaders always to be exempted from such questions? Perhaps if McNamara had been held legally accountable for his actions, the architects of the Iraq debacle might have paused. Instead, McNamara was honored with the Medal of Freedom by President Lyndon Johnson, to whom he had written a private memo nine months earlier offering this assessment of their Vietnam carnage: "The picture of the world's greatest superpower killing or seriously injuring 1,000 noncombatants a week, while trying to pound a tiny backward nation into submission on an issue whose merits are hotly disputed, is not a pretty one." He knew it then, and, give him this, the dimensions of that horror never left him. When I interviewed him for the Los Angeles Times in 1995, after the publication of his confessional memoir, his assessment of the madness he had unleashed was all too clear: "Look, we dropped three to four times the tonnage on that tiny little area as were dropped by the Allies in all of the theaters in World War II over a period of five years. It was unbelievable. We killed -- there were killed -- 3,200,000 Vietnamese, excluding the South Vietnamese military. My God! The killing, the tonnage -- it was fantastic. The problem was that we were trying to do something that was militarily impossible -- we were trying to break the will; I don't think we can break the will by bombing short of genocide." We -- no, he -- couldn't break their will because their fight was for national independence. They had defeated the French and would defeat the Americans who took over when French colonialists gave up the ghost. The war was a lie from the first. It never had anything to do with the freedom of the Vietnamese (we installed one tyrant after another in power), but instead had to do with our irrational Cold War obsession with "international communism." Irrational, as President Richard Nixon acknowledged when he embraced d?tente with the Soviet communists, toasted China's fierce communist Mao Tse-tung and then escalated the war against "communist" Vietnam and neutral Cambodia. It was always a lie and our leaders knew it, but that did not give them pause. Both Johnson and Nixon make it quite clear on their White House tapes that the mindless killing, McNamara's infamous body count, was about domestic politics and never security. The lies are clearly revealed in the Pentagon Papers study that McNamara commissioned, but they were made public only through the bravery of Daniel Ellsberg. Yet when Ellsberg, a former Marine who had worked for McNamara in the Pentagon, was in the docket facing the full wrath of Nixon's Justice Department, McNamara would lift not a finger in his defense. Worse, as Ellsberg reminded me this week, McNamara threatened that if subpoenaed to testify at the trial by Ellsberg's defense team, "I would hurt your client badly." Not as badly as those he killed or severely wounded. Not as badly as the almost 59,000 American soldiers killed and the many more horribly hurt. One of them was the writer and activist Ron Kovic, who as a kid from Long Island was seduced by McNamara's lies into volunteering for two tours in Vietnam. Eventually, struggling with his mostly paralyzed body, he spoke out against the war in the hope that others would not have to suffer as he did (and still does). Meanwhile, McNamara maintained his golden silence, even as Richard Nixon managed to kill and maim millions more. What McNamara did was evil -- deeply so. From shniad at sfu.ca Thu Jul 9 13:43:43 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Thu, 9 Jul 2009 12:43:43 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa on Global Capitalism In-Reply-To: <300251915.1001081247087543714.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <88408884.1295151247168623521.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.democracynow.org/2009/6/29/ecuadoran_president_rafael_correa_on_global Democracy Now! June 29, 2009 Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa on Global Capitalism Why He Won?t Renew the US Base in Manta, Chevron in the Amazon, Obama?s War in Afghanistan, and More In a wide-ranging interview, we speak with President Correa about global capitalism, his decision not to renew the license for the US military base in Manta, the $12 billion lawsuit against Chevron brought by thousands of Amazon residents for toxic oil pollution, Ecuador?s relationship with Colombia, and his advice to President Obama: ?To learn more and come to better understand the region, and that [Obama] not let himself be taken along by the power of certain media outlets that are compromised with certain ideological fundaments, and that the heroes aren?t necessarily heroes, and the villains aren?t necessarily villains.? AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to our national broadcast exclusive, a wide-ranging discussion with Ecuador?s President Rafael Correa, who today is in Nicaragua, a meeting with Zelaya. Last week, President Correa was in New York attending the United Nations Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and Its Impact on Development. Correa was the only world leader to attend the conference. He spoke at the General Assembly last Thursday. And President Correa is an economist by training. He outlined the steps by which Latin America could free itself from relying on international financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The former finance minister of Ecuador was elected president in 2006, then reelected to a second term earlier this year. I interviewed President Correa on Thursday in the Ecuadorian mission here in New York. It was before the coup in Honduras. I began by asking him to comment on the absence of so many heads of state at the UN conference. According to press reports, Western diplomats said the conference was just a platform to attack capitalism. PRESIDENT RAFAEL CORREA: [translated] Well, if this is an attack on capitalism, I think it?s well deserved. Look at the problem it?s got us into. So I don?t understand those who say they?re not here because it might descend into an attack on capitalism. They must have a strong ideological bias, because certainly if they thought maybe there would be an attack on socialism, or had they thought it was going to be an attack on socialism, they would have been delighted to have come. AMY GOODMAN: Talk about why you think at this point capitalism should be criticized, what you think needs to happen now. PRESIDENT RAFAEL CORREA: [translated] Well, what we?ve undergone in recent decades worldwide has been totally insane, and all of this in function of capitalism. If you look at what was done with the workforce in Latin America, it was treated as a vulgar instrument for capital accumulation. Mechanism of exploitation were imposed, such as outsourcing, labor intermediation and the like. Efforts were made to destroy nation states, or at least to minimize nation states, especially in key areas such as the economy, on grounds that were closer to religion than to science, that everything would be resolved by the marketplace. I could speak at much greater length on this, but the results are plain to see: greater inequality in Latin America. We haven?t resolved the unemployment problem. Indeed, unemployment is higher than in previous decades. We haven?t resolved the problem of poverty. We?ve lost a great deal of sovereignty by implementing policies that didn?t answer to our international reality. And finally, we?re facing a crisis that we have not provoked, yet we are the main victims, the greatest crisis since the 1930s of last century, where there was a crisis in global capitalism. But it?s not been generated by factors external to the system, but by factors that are of the very essence of the system: exacerbated individualism, deregulation, competition and so on. This clearly shows us that something has to change. AMY GOODMAN: Ecuador is joining ALBA, the Bolivarian alliance, seen as an alternative to the whole push to expand NAFTA to Latin America. Why? Talk about what you?re doing now. PRESIDENT RAFAEL CORREA: [in English] Why not? [translated] Why not? We are friendly countries, sister countries. We coincide on many points of view. So why not take that step towards integration, and which, among other things, is moving forward much more quickly than other integration schemes that have made the mistake of wanting to include everyone so we are moving at the pace of those who don?t want integration? Those of us who have acceded to ALBA voluntarily want to see the integration of Latin American peoples. And it?s gone forward much more quickly than other integration arrangements. In any event, my answer is ?why not?? Why not join ALBA? Now I?ll tell you why. Just one piece of information to illustrate. At this time in the ALBA, we have 30 percent of all the votes in the Organization of American States. So we now have very specific weight in order to propose other points of view. For example, the Organization of American States?that?s just mentioned in the Organization of American States. But we could say something similar about the United Nations. That alone would justify our entering ALBA, but there are many additional factors. AMY GOODMAN: You are not talking about a free trade agreement with the United States, but you are with the European Union. Why? PRESIDENT RAFAEL CORREA: [translated] No, we?re not talking about a free trade agreement with the European Union; we?re talking about fair trade for development. And that?s how the agreement was originally posed. First, a block-to-block agreement between the European Union and the Andean community, with three pillars: a political dialogue, cooperation and trade. And this last one, trade, is understood as trade for development. Unfortunately, all of that has been deteriorating. Among the reasons, because two of the Andean community countries already have a free trade agreement with the United States, and I?m referring to Colombia and Peru. And they have very little to lose in the negotiations with the European Union. So, the first thing that collapsed was the block-to-block negotiation. And it?s clear that the emphasis was focused on the trade aspect. And I should also recognize that from the European Union, they tried to approach it as a free trade agreement, which has always been rejected by Ecuador. We?re interested in all three dimensions of the agreement: political dialogue, cooperation and trade. And within trade, we?re talking about fair trade, not the idea of free trade, which we see as simplistic, liberalizing everything. And we?re engaged in tough negotiations with the European Union on this. Now, in the event that we?re not satisfied with the agreements that result, then we simply won?t sign. But I reiterate, we?re not negotiating a free trade agreement with the European Union. AMY GOODMAN: The US contract with Ecuador over one of the largest US military bases in Latin America, Manta, expires later this year. You will not renew it. Why? PRESIDENT RAFAEL CORREA: [translated] Why renew it? Now, if you?d like, I would renew it with one condition: that they allow me to set up an Ecuadorian military base here in New York. If there?s no problem with foreign bases, then let?s reach an agreement on that. I think that everybody listening is going to find that impossible. And for us Ecuadorians, it also seems impossible, based on our outlook informed by sovereignty, at least with the current government, to have a foreign military base on our soil. AMY GOODMAN: You also recently threw out a US diplomat, Armando Astorga, calling him insolent and foolish and saying he treated Ecuador like a colony. PRESIDENT RAFAEL CORREA: [translated] Yes. I don?t know if you?re aware that, among other things, because of the dismantling of the state that Ecuador has suffered in recent years, but money for certain police units to operate, including certain intelligence units, police and military, was provided by the US embassy. Well, this itself is sufficiently serious. But it wasn?t even unconditional or spontaneous assistance. Rather, they would choose the directors of those police units. They had them take lie-detector tests at the US embassy. So those units answered more to the US embassy than to the Ecuadorian state. And we, in the exercise of our sovereignty, wanted to change the director of one of those units. Mr. Astorga, in a totally arrogant manner, sent a letter saying that we need to return or give back everything that the United States has given us?computers, automobiles and so on. Well, they should take it all back then. But Mr. Astorga would also have to leave the country, because we are no one?s colony. AMY GOODMAN: Mr. President, do you think President Obama represents something different to Latin America and specifically to Ecuador? PRESIDENT RAFAEL CORREA: [translated] Yes, I?m convinced that that is the case. Indeed, we?ve already begun very fruitful bilateral dialogues at a very high level, which never happened with the Bush administration. And not just that, there?s a question of building trust, and I think that President Obama offers trust. Personally, I think he is a transparent individual with the right intentions. So I think things are going to change in terms of foreign policy, US foreign policy, especially with respect to Latin America. AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you about President Chavez and his comments recently supporting the Iranian president Ahmadinejad. What are your views toward what?s happening right now in the disputed Iranian elections? PRESIDENT RAFAEL CORREA: [translated] We?ve spoken with our charg? d?affaires in Tehran, and he tells me that it?s an exaggerated reaction, because President Ahmadinejad won by too large a margin. We?re talking about at least six million votes. All the surveys show that he was the winner. So this reaction on the part of the opposition can?t be explained. Now, I don?t want to meddle in internal Iranian affairs, but a response of this sort vis-?-vis such a broad victory is somewhat suspect. In any event, it?s my understanding that the Council of Guard has ordered that the vote be recounted and so on. I would hope that things could be worked out peacefully and that a determination is reached as to who won that electoral contest. But I reiterate, the reports that we are getting from Tehran is that President Ahmadinejad?s victory is too broad, and therefore there?s no way to imagine that he could have lost or that he would have won by fraud. AMY GOODMAN: And the killings of a number of the protesters, do you condemn that? PRESIDENT RAFAEL CORREA: [translated] Well, one would have to see in what situation those deaths took place. We?re talking about a country of 80 million, in which there have been serious street protests. I am not familiar with the specific conditions in which the lamentable deaths have taken place. Everybody should lament their deaths and be in solidarity with the victims and their families. But obviously, if there?s protest and violence in a country of 80 million, it?s likely that such things can come to pass without that necessarily meaning repression, violations of human rights and so forth. But all the investigations should be undertaken to determine. AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you, Mr. President, about another violent crackdown, and it was in Peru against those in the Amazon who were protesting the opening up of the area to mining interests, that has ultimately led to the resignation of the prime minister. Do you condemn President Garcia for what happened in Peru? PRESIDENT RAFAEL CORREA: [translated] Well, I insist we are not going to meddle in the internal matters of any country. That will have to be worked out within Peru?s institutional framework determining the responsibilities that lie in this matter. AMY GOODMAN: Now, you know exploitation by large corporations in your own country. Tens of thousands of indigenous people have brought suit against Chevron, now ChevronTexaco. An expert appointed by the Ecuadorian judge has said that Chevron should pay $27 billion. Where do you stand on this? PRESIDENT RAFAEL CORREA: [translated] This is private litigation brought by social organizations in the Amazon region against this transnational corporation, Texaco Chevron. And there, the Ecuadorian government has nothing to do, in judicially speaking. Obviously, we have borne witness to the harm caused in the Amazon, and we?re in solidarity with those social organizations. But I reiterate, as the executive branch, we are not a party, and we cannot meddle in judicial matters. AMY GOODMAN: You have gone to the area, though, and shown support. What is the harm done? PRESIDENT RAFAEL CORREA: [translated] It?s terrible. The oil companies continue doing whatever they please. But at that time, it was really the law of the jungle. There was no processing of waste, of contaminated water. Everything was dumped in the rivers. There were pits created that were totally non-technical. If you go into the Ecuadorian Amazon and you stick your hand in the ground, what you get is oil sludge. They dumped the oil wherever with total impunity, because there was no oversight by the state. And these countries really did abuse the country. These countries have done in our country something they never would have dared to have done even by far in the United States. And it is time that they answer to the justice system. AMY GOODMAN: Have you heard about Shell settling with the Saro-Wiwa family, the Nigerian activist who was killed in Nigeria fourteen years ago? He was protesting Shell?s exploitation of the Niger Delta. And they just settled for something like $15 million to be paid to the family and the Ogoni people. Do you see that as a positive example? PRESIDENT RAFAEL CORREA: [translated] Well, of course. I?m not familiar with the case, but, of course, for these countries need to be held accountable for and answer for everything they?ve done, because I am indignant as a Latin American about the dual reality of certain transnationals. It?s not that they couldn?t have done it otherwise. The technology existed, the measures were available, to prevent environmental harm and so forth. But they didn?t want to do so, probably because we?re poor countries, so they consider that we?re inferior. But what they did in our country, they never would have dared to have done that in the United States. AMY GOODMAN: We return to our national broadcast exclusive, my conversation with the Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa. AMY GOODMAN: Now, indigenous people, campesinos , recently protested your policies around the issue of large-scale mining and opening up the region. You called them extremists and nobodies. PRESIDENT RAFAEL CORREA: [translated] I didn?t call them ?nobody.? I said they didn?t represent anyone. And the last elections gave [inaudible] right. The person who headed up the effort against mining won only four percent, and we won, by overwhelmingly so, in all the mining regions. And the areas with the greatest protests are in the province of Azuay. That?s where we have good, strong support. So, clearly the population trusts us. But three or four people are enough to make a lot of noise, to appear in the media, and so on. But, quite sincerely, they don?t have the popular backing or the representation. In any event, there are many contradictions on these kinds of positions. First, it?s not that we?re inaugurating mining in Ecuador. Mining goes back to the Preclassic Inca period in Ecuador. To the contrary, finally, we?re regulating mining in Ecuador?because it was a matter of total anarchy?with a very tough law that protects the state, that protects the environment, that protects society. Second, one of the main criticisms of the groups that oppose mining, or, as you put it, large-scale mining, is the environmental impact of mining. But this is where the contradiction comes up. Small-scale mining causes much more pollution than large-scale mining. So if that?s the reason why they oppose large-scale mining, there is a big contradiction there. And if you begin to analyze, some of these leaders?not all of them, but some?have their own interests in small-scale mining. So I would say, in general?indeed, we?ve carried out surveys?there?s more than 70 percent support for the new mining law, but as I say, three or four fundamentalists who take over a highway are enough to appear in the newspaper and for them to say that there?s opposition to such mining in Ecuador. AMY GOODMAN: President Correa, in the Wall Street Journal , there was just a piece talking about documents that the Colombian government uncovered on a laptop when Colombia raided Ecuador and killed a FARC leader, linking you to the FARC. What is your response? PRESIDENT RAFAEL CORREA: [translated] If they show that I have some connection to the FARC, then I?ll step down. It?s a big lie, and we have presented a denunciation through the Foreign Ministry. And if they don?t rectify that, we will take the appropriate legal actions. We are tired of such infamies, which are not based on facts. They?re based on interests that seek to treat certain governments which are their allies as superheroes and other governments as villains. So, we think that a daily newspaper should report the news, not play at geopolitics. In any event, the editorial?I think it was an editorial?is based on information that long ago was shown to be unreliable: supposed computers with supposed messages in which supposedly there is talk of a former member of the national government, not the president of the republic, negotiating with the FARC. Indeed, those computers also talk about?supposedly talk about the Workers? Party of Lula da Silva having ties with FARC, but they don?t say that. So, as I say, it?s really just a geopolitical game that they?re pursuing. And the woman who wrote the article recently admitted to RCN that she published that article resenting President Obama, because he called me to offer his support upon my reelection. And this is an extremely right-wing journalist who?s angry because he didn?t call Alvaro Uribe. Instead, he called Rafael Correa. That reflects the level of professionalism of the person who wrote that. AMY GOODMAN: How do you think peace can be achieved in Colombia, and do you think the US can play a role in that? I mean, the US has poured a tremendous amount of money into the war on terror there, into the war on drugs, so-called, so-called. What do think could achieve peace in Colombia? PRESIDENT RAFAEL CORREA: [translated] Einstein said if somebody time and again does something, or tries to do something, with the same negative results, and continues to insist on doing so, then he?s a fool. This strategy carried out, applied by the United States in Colombia has been a total failure. Drugs have not been eradicated. It could be that the FARC have been weakened. But quite sincerely, I don?t think there?s any military solution to the conflict with the FARC, but rather a political solution. And what they have accomplished in pursuing a military solution is extending the conflict to neighboring countries and destabilizing the region. Ecuador has about 700 kilometers of border with Colombia, and a lot of it is impenetrable jungle. Colombia?s strategy has been to attack the FARC from north to south. They have two military units in the south, but far from the border. We have thirteen. So, it seems to be a strategy to try to draw us into the conflict. So I hope that the United States and the Obama administration understand this, that as [inaudible] into drawing us in neighboring countries into this conflict, which is not our own, which pains us greatly, but it?s not ours, and that they carefully analyze the matter, whether the anti-drug strategy, despite the billions spent, has yielded no results and whether this conflict with the FARC has any military solution. AMY GOODMAN: Last two questions. One is, do you support President Obama expanding the war into Afghanistan and Pakistan? PRESIDENT RAFAEL CORREA: Can you say again, please? AMY GOODMAN: Do you support President Obama expanding the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan? PRESIDENT RAFAEL CORREA: [translated] Well, I?m a pacifist by nature. I would hope that the Afghanistan problem could be solved as quickly as possible. I also think the strategy there, as in Iraq, was totally mistaken, that the United States has a big problem on its hands that?s going to be very complex to resolve. But I?m practically convinced that it?s not going to be resolved by more war. AMY GOODMAN: And finally, your overall advice to the new President of the United States, President Obama, in how he approaches Latin American and, just overall, how he approaches the world? PRESIDENT RAFAEL CORREA: [translated] Well, I?m not accustomed to giving advice to those who haven?t asked for it. I would just want to wish President Obama the best of luck, and that he should bear in mind that just as he is a good person, there are many of us presidents in Latin America who are also good people. AMY GOODMAN: And is there one single message you could give to President Obama to improve relations with Latin America, what he could do? PRESIDENT RAFAEL CORREA: [translated] To learn more and come to better understand the region, and that he not let himself be taken along by the power of certain media outlets that are compromised with certain ideological fundaments, and that the heroes aren?t necessarily heroes, and the villains aren?t necessarily villains, that he should get to know the region better and get to understand the region a little better. AMY GOODMAN: President Correa, thank you very much. PRESIDENT RAFAEL CORREA: Thank you. AMY GOODMAN: Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa. He?s in Nicaragua today meeting with other Latin American leaders as well as the ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya over the coup in Honduras. Meanwhile in Washington, DC, President Obama is meeting with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe. From shniad at sfu.ca Thu Jul 9 13:43:33 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Thu, 9 Jul 2009 12:43:33 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] The US: How key decisions are made in the world's greatest democracy In-Reply-To: <887167702.1049781247093489542.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <68773427.1295081247168612997.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/05/AR2009070502770.html Washington Post July 6, 2009 Familiar Players in Health Bill Lobbying Firms Are Enlisting Ex-Lawmakers, Aides By Dan Eggen and Kimberly Kindy Washington Post Staff Writers The nation's largest insurers, hospitals and medical groups have hired more than 350 former government staff members and retired members of Congress in hopes of influencing their old bosses and colleagues, according to an analysis of lobbying disclosures and other records. The tactic is so widespread that three of every four major health-care firms have at least one former insider on their lobbying payrolls, according to The Washington Post's analysis. Nearly half of the insiders previously worked for the key committees and lawmakers, including Sens. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), debating whether to adopt a public insurance option opposed by major industry groups. At least 10 others have been members of Congress, such as former House majority leaders Richard K. Armey (R-Tex.) and Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), both of whom represent a New Jersey pharmaceutical firm. The hirings are part of a record-breaking influence campaign by the health-care industry, which is spending more than $1.4 million a day on lobbying in the current fight, according to disclosure records. And even in a city where lobbying is a part of life, the scale of the effort has drawn attention. For example, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) doubled its spending to nearly $7 million in the first quarter of 2009, followed by Pfizer, with more than $6 million. The push has reunited many who worked together in government on health-care reform, but are now employed as advocates for pharmaceutical and insurance companies. A June 10 meeting between aides to Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and health-care lobbyists included two former Baucus chiefs of staff: David Castagnetti, whose clients include PhRMA and America's Health Insurance Plans, and Jeffrey A. Forbes, who represents PhRMA, Amgen, Genentech, Merck and others. Castagnetti did not return a telephone call; Forbes declined to comment. Also inside the closed committee hearing room that day was Richard Tarplin, a veteran of both the Department of Health and Human Services and the Senate, where he worked for Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), one of the leaders in fashioning reform legislation this year. Tarplin now represents the American Medical Association as head of his own lobbying firm, Tarplin Strategies. "For people like me who are on the outside and used to be on the inside, this is great, because there is a level of trust in these relationships, and I know the policy rationale that is required," Tarplin said in explaining the benefits of having government experience. But public interest groups and reform advocates complain that the concentration of former government aides on K Street has distorted the health-care debate, and that it further illustrates the problem posed by the "revolving door" between government and private firms. "The revolving door offers a short cut to a member of Congress to the highest bidder," said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, which compiled some of the data used in The Post's analysis. "It's a small cost of doing business relative to the profits they can garner." Aides to Baucus and other lawmakers bristle at any suggestion of special treatment for former staff members. Baucus spokesman Scott Mulhauser said the senator "remains committed to working with a variety of stakeholders" as the Finance Committee attempts to come up with a bill this summer. "The senator and his staff meet daily with individuals, nonprofits and interests from across the health-care spectrum, and are proud that all interests are treated equally and that no one receives special treatment of any kind," Mulhauser said. "As a result, the Finance Committee has been praised by members of Congress and the media for its uniquely inclusive and transparent health-care reform process." The Post examined federally required disclosure reports submitted by health-care firms that spent more than $100,000 lobbying in the first quarter of this year. It used current and past filings to identify former lawmakers, congressional staff members and executive branch officials. The analysis identified more than 350 former government aides, each representing an average of four firms or trade groups. That tally does not include lobbyists who did not report their earlier government experience, such as PhRMA President W.J. "Billy" Tauzin, a former Republican congressman from Louisiana. Federal law does not require providing such detail. Overall, health-care companies and their representatives spent more than $126 million on lobbying in the first quarter, leading all other industries, according to CRP and Senate data. PhRMA led the pack in spending and employs 49 former government staff members among its 136 lobbyists, according to The Post's analysis. Dozens of other former insiders are employed as lobbyists by Pfizer, Eli Lilly, the AMA and the American Hospital Association, each of which spent at least $3.5 million on lobbying from January through March. The aim of the lobbying blitz is simple: to minimize the damage to insurers, hospitals and other major sectors while maximizing the potential of up to 46 million uninsured Americans as new customers. Although many firms have vowed to help cut costs, major players such as PhRMA, America's Health Insurance Plans and others remain opposed to the public-insurance option, a key proposal that President Obama has endorsed. Several major Democratic bills include such a plan, but Baucus's committee -- which is acting as the central broker in the debate -- has not committed to the idea. Instead, the Finance Committee has focused recently on private-insurance cooperatives and other proposals seen as more palatable to the insurance industry and centrist Democrats. More than 50 former employees of the committee or its members lobby on behalf of the health-care industry, records show. Deploying former government officials is a key strategy for pressing such positions on Capitol Hill, according to industry lobbyists, many of whom discussed the issue on the condition of anonymity. They say that legislative or administration experience helps ensure that policies considered by Congress do not imperil health-care interests, which account for about one-sixth of the U.S. economy. At the same time, these lobbyists say, a personal connection to lawmakers and their staffs does not guarantee success. "If anyone thinks hiring a former staffer for Baucus or [ Charles] Schumer or Blanche Lincoln is going to get them what they want, they are crazy," said one health-care lobbyist who used to work on the Finance Committee, referring to several key Democratic senators. "If we were being judged on that, a lot of us should be fired." William K. "Billy" Wynne, a former Baucus health counsel who now works for the Health Policy Source lobbying firm, said that "there's nothing insidious" about medical companies and groups hiring former legislative staff members. He also notes that he is subject to a two-year limit on contacts with Baucus's office. "The technical processes of the House and Senate are not intuitive or widely known," Wynne said. "Like with any service, people who have experience are going to be valuable to people who don't." Some trade groups and companies appear to emphasize hiring lobbyists with legislative or executive experience. Wellpoint, one of the world's largest insurance conglomerates, employs 11 lobbyists with government experience and three with none. One of its veterans is Stephen Northrup, who worked for several years for Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), including a year as his health policy director on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. "I think the experience on Capitol Hill gives you a better appreciation of the challenges that members and staff face," said Northrup, who began his Washington career as a lobbyist before entering government. "Every institution has its own rhythm. You need to understand when people need information." The personal and professional ties between lawmakers, their staffs and lobbyists are often complex. Consider the case of Tarplin and his wife, Republican lobbyist Linda Tarplin. The two worked on opposite sides of the Family Medical Leave Act debate in the 1990s, and each has held high-ranking HHS positions -- he for Bill Clinton and she for George H.W. Bush. Now they run their own health-care lobbying firms, drawing on their connections. Last year, Richard Tarplin's firm reported $650,000 in lobbying income and his wife's firm -- Tarplin, Downs and Young -- reported $3.5 million. "We have been in situations that are much more combative than this," Linda Tarplin said of the health-care fight. "Both Democrats and Republicans want health-care reform. The rub has always been they tend to get there in different ways." At least eight former HHS appointees have also crossed over into health-care lobbying, representing more than 25 companies with a stake in the reform legislation. Most were presidential appointees with high-ranking positions, such as the Tarplins. A few have also cycled back into government. Jack Charles Ebeler, a former Clinton HHS official, left his job as president and chief executive of the Alliance of Community Health Plans a few months ago to become senior adviser for health policy on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Financial disclosure statements show that Ebeler received consulting fees over the past two years from UnitedHealth Group, Academy Health, the Medicare Rights Center, the Center for Health Care Strategies and the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans. Ebeler declined interview requests by The Post. One of the most prominent examples of Washington's revolving door is Tauzin, who took the $2.5 million-a-year job as head of PhRMA in 2005 after shepherding a Medicare prescription drug plan through Congress. Uproar over the appointment led Congress in 2007 to pass a bill barring former members from bringing clients onto the House and Senate floors and from lobbying their friends in members-only gyms. The legislation also forbade direct lobbying contacts with former colleagues for a year in the House and two years in the Senate; efforts to enact a wider ban went nowhere. Tauzin and other lobbyists rebuff critics, arguing that it is unsurprising that those with experience on Capitol Hill should then draw on that background. "Is it a distortion of baseball to hire coaches who have played baseball? Is it a distortion of universities to hire from academia?" Tauzin asked rhetorically. "The bottom line is that people work in the fields in which they have experience. Somehow there are people who think that's unusual for politics, but I think it's pretty normal." Graphics editor Karen Yourish, database editor Sarah Cohen and research editor Alice Crites contributed to this report. From shniad at sfu.ca Thu Jul 9 13:45:03 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Thu, 9 Jul 2009 12:45:03 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Anti-union lobby fears 'Armageddon on Capitol Hill' In-Reply-To: <710585893.889211247074896451.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <513358193.1295731247168703459.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/anti-union-lobby-fears-armageddon-on-capitol-hill/article1210343/ Globe and Mail Report on Business July 8, 2009 Anti-union lobby fears 'Armageddon on Capitol Hill' Canadianized 'card-check' bill assailed by Republicans, Canadian executives BARRIE MCKENNA WASHINGTON ? A pitched lobbying battle between Big Business and Big Labour over legislation that would make it much easier for workers to organize is shaping up as the first major test of U.S. President Barack Obama's loyalty to the unions who helped elect him. And like the raging debate about reforms to U.S. health care, the Canadian experience has become a rallying cry for business groups that want the proposed legislation stopped in its tracks. At issue is the "card-check" bill, which would mandate automatic recognition of a union once half the members of a work force signed a membership card - a model that Canadian provinces have gradually been moving away from since the 1980s. The bill would also impose mandatory government arbitration of a first contract if an employer could not reach an agreement with its workers. Organized labour, led by the AFL-CIO, has hailed the legislation as a way to stop the long decline of union membership across the United States, enabling it to get a foot in the door at reluctant employers, such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Major U.S. businesses are warning that the legislation - known as the Employee Free Choice Act - would be an economic disaster for companies. Randy Johnson, senior vice-president of labour issues for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, warned yesterday of "Armageddon on Capitol Hill" if Congress were to move to Canadianize the U.S. labour laws. "We'll do whatever it takes to defeat the legislation, and we will defeat it," Mr. Johnson vowed. Several Canadian business leaders, including executives of Bank of Montreal, Canadian Tire dealers and a leading Toronto law firm, joined the fray at a gathering in Washington, where they implored Americans not to repeat Canada's mistakes by making it too easy for unions to organize. "In the interest of my Canadian clients, if Congress chooses to shoot itself in the commercial foot with this legislation, God bless you, because we're constantly competing against you," said Stewart Saxe, a labour relations partner at Baker & McKenzie in Toronto. Under current U.S. law, unions must first apply to the National Labour Relations Board and then wait 40 days for a secret ballot vote by workers - a delay that labour organizers have long argued allows employers time to intimidate workers into not joining a union. Most Canadian provinces have abandoned card-check rules, but still have significantly more permissive union organizing laws than in the United States. Most provinces, for example, require a certification vote within five to 10 days after a union applies for certification, and employers are limited in what they can say during that period. Those laws, and a history of greater union penetration in Canada, have resulted in sharply different workplace landscapes in the two countries. Roughly 30 per cent of Canadian workers belong to a union, including about 16 per cent of private sector employees. In the United States, union membership stands at about 13 per cent, with just 8 per cent in the private sector. In Quebec, which has card-check laws, unions have managed to gain a toehold at only one Wal-Mart store, in St-Hyacinthe; that outlet is the chain's only unionized store in Canada. Normand C?t?, Bank of Montreal's director of employee relations, said the bank is union-free and happy to keep it that way. "We like to communicate directly with employees," he said. Art Tarasuk, general counsel for the Canadian Tire Dealers Association, said unions made significant inroads at its stores when card-check rules were commonplace across Canada in the 1980s. Now, only six of its roughly 1,100 stores are unionized, down from more than 15 in the 1980s. Experts say the impact of Canadian card-check rules have been wildly exaggerated in the heat of the U.S. debate. "If you listen to opponents of the legislation in the U.S., you would think unions are going to emerge out of the mud and take over the economy," said Ann Frost, an industrial relations expert and associate professor at the University of Western Ontario's Richard Ivey School of Business. "I don't think card check will make a huge difference." She acknowledged that Canadian labour relations boards are typically more effective in stifling efforts by companies to intimidate workers seeking to unionize. Frank Reid, a professor of employment relations at the University of Toronto, said it's difficult to draw a clear link between Canadian laws and union rates, which he pointed out are declining in Canada. The U.S. bill is currently stalled in the Senate, where Democrats have a 60-40 vote majority, giving them the ability to override any delaying tactics by opposition Republicans. Even so, the Chamber of Commerce's Mr. Johnson expects that the bill, as drafted, will not be approved. He said efforts are under way to strike a compromise, possibly by moving to a Canadian-style system of quick certification votes, which has been endorsed by a clutch of employers, including Starbucks and Costco. From shniad at sfu.ca Thu Jul 9 13:48:39 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Thu, 9 Jul 2009 12:48:39 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] The latest terror threat (to the Olympics!) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <924313423.1297261247168919649.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.theprovince.com/opinion/editorial-cartoons/index.html The Province July 9, 2009 Editorial cartoon From suzannedk at gmail.com Thu Jul 9 14:10:35 2009 From: suzannedk at gmail.com (Suzanne de Kuyper) Date: Thu, 9 Jul 2009 22:10:35 +0200 Subject: [R-G] From Iran to China, Skipping Honduras In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: The practices of the world's wealthy for generations, if not millenia, has been to ignore the poverty stricken, but the world has a new paradyme, instant world-wide communication of the poverty-stricken and the amount of them in an nuclear world. It will soon be a seven billion human-kind, if not already. Mass communications of all kinds including the ancient ones educate profoundly, unquantifiably. Hondurans silenced are brothers of the slaughtered Uirguirs of China, the Canadian eskimo losing their lands to rising seas.When lower New York State, specifically Manhattan,is awash with sea water,Boston auto tunnels are flooded, the airport a lake, and Hawaii is slipping beneath the waves along with the Netherlands, the Canary Islands and Malta, the human abiltiy to ignore its minorities will vanish. They will be everyone. Us. Coming soon to a theatre near you. Suzanne suzannedk at gmail.com On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 3:17 PM, Yoshie Furuhashi < critical.montages at gmail.com> wrote: > As far as the Western mass media are concerned, they went from Iran > (electoral conflict in an oil-rich country) to China (ethnic conflict > in an oil-rich region), skipping Honduras (a coup d'?tat in an > oil-poor country dependent on foreign aid and remittances* where the > USG has a military base). > Yoshie > > * "Honduras is the hemisphere's fourth-poorest country and directly > finances nearly 20 percent of its budget with foreign donations and > credit. . . . [Remittances represent] about 18 percent of the Honduran > economy" (Will Weissert and Theresa Bradley, "Honduras Coup Costs Oil, > Aid as Economy Stalls," AP, > < > http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Honduras-coup-costs-oil-aid-apf-2453756509.html > >). > > _______________________________________________ > 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 shniad at sfu.ca Thu Jul 9 15:29:54 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Thu, 9 Jul 2009 14:29:54 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Operation Empire Shield In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1396419029.1339301247174994830.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.vancouversun.com/news/plans+deploy+unmanned+plane+along+border/1773402/story.html Vancouver Sun July 9, 2009 U.S. plans to deploy unmanned spy plane along B.C. border By David Karp A U.S. Customs and Border Protection Predator B drone. A U.S. Customs and Border Protection Predator B drone. Photograph by: Reuters, Files, Vancouver Sun; with files from Canwest News Service U.S. spy technology being tested high above the Canada-U.S. border could soon be in use along the B.C. border. Two Predator B aircraft are flying along the North Dakota-Saskatchewan border, with plans to run them all along the U.S.-Canada border, said Juan Munoz-Torres, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) spokesman from Washington, D.C. "Eventually, we would like to fly them all along the northern border, from Maine to Seattle," said Munoz-Torres. "We are probably going to do operations along the border. It's just a matter of time." Manned aircraft currently patrol the border. "We have a helicopter and we also have a Cessna. We look for other smuggling vehicles in the air," said Danielle Suarez, CBP senior patrol agent in Spokane, Wash. "We've seen an increase in people using aircraft to smuggle B.C. bud in here." Munoz-Torres said the camera capabilities of the Predator are identical to manned aircraft already in use -- the difference is that the Predator can fly for more than 20 hours without stopping, and requires a crew of only two people on the ground to operate it. In the latest thickening of the international boundary, an unmanned Predator B aircraft was launched last month under a Homeland Security mission code-named Operation Empire Shield , part of the post-9-11 push to secure U.S. borders with advanced technology. On June 20, the Predator, plus two CBP unmanned aircraft over North Dakota and Arizona, were all remotely piloted by a CBP crew at the agency's air and marine operations centre in Riverside, Calif. CBP says all performed "law enforcement missions" and streamed video of the events to the congressmen, government officials and police. The June test flights follow new U.S. border security measures unveiled last month, including passport requirements at land border crossings and a planned 45-per-cent increase in U.S. border guards along the northern frontier by fall 2010. A civilian version of the armed unmanned aircraft used by the military, the Predator typically flies at up to 250 knots at an altitude of 5,700 metres while carrying up to 1,360 kilograms of sensors for land and maritime surveillance, day or night. With files from Canwest News Service From shniad at sfu.ca Tue Jul 7 13:05:08 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Tue, 7 Jul 2009 12:05:08 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Toronto City Workers on Strike: Battling Neoliberal Urbanism In-Reply-To: <66B93FE91E404EE89BE770B66C5E14E0@twubby.com> Message-ID: <1135446300.576541246993508937.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> The Bullet ? Socialist Project ? E-Bulletin No. 232 ? July 2, 2009 Toronto City Workers on Strike: Battling Neoliberal Urbanism Greg Albo and Herman Rosenfeld On June 22nd, City of Toronto workers walked off the job leaving garbage uncollected, parks and recreation programmes shutdown, daycares shuttered and a range of services critical to city living suspended. Faced with some one hundred pages of contract demands and concessions, a stark break in the wage pattern already established for other city workers, administrators and politicians, and a major take-back on sick leave banks, the 18,000 members of Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 79 representing inside workers, and the 6,200 members of CUPE Local 416 representing outside workers, voted more than 90 percent in favour of a strike. CUPE Strike CUPE Local 79 - ?No Concessions? - City Hall, Toronto. These union members work in areas of public health, homes for the aged, parks and recreation, social services, as well as housing and legal services, road maintenance, snow removal, animal rescue, garbage and recycling collection and dozens of other community services. CUPE 79 President Ann Dembinski commented: ?We had two choices ? roll over and play dead or stand up and fight for our rights.? [1] The strike of Toronto city workers is an inspiring stand against the assault on unions that has been unleashed as the economic crisis has whipped across the world market. City workers are drawing a ?line in the sand? after so many unions have been badgered into concession upon concession, often with hardly a struggle and wholly conceding to the competitive agendas being set by employers. In terms of the CUPE collective agreement at stake, this is a strike for equity, justice and in defence of the rights city workers have fought for, along with other unions, over past decades. Toronto city workers have long been pace-setting for unions and workers in a variety of areas, particularly in relation to women workers, sexual diversity in the workplace and workers of colour. They have struggled to beat back the inroads of neoliberal urbanism over two decades of incessant efforts to contract-out municipal work, jack-up user fees for community programmes and commercialize city government and neighbourhoods. But make no mistake: the implications of this strike run far wider than the vast urban expanse of Toronto. A setback for public sector workers in Toronto at this time, when the capitalist classes have just imposed major defeats on the Canadian Auto Workers (following on the humiliation of the UAW in the U.S.) and the United Steelworkers, would have enormous consequences for the working class movement in Canada. The City Demands Concessions It is clear that the City of Toronto, under the leadership of Mayor David Miller, commonly seen as the leader of the progressive forces on City Council, has forced this strike. Miller commented as the strike began that public sector unions should not expect pay raises or no-concession contracts when private sector workers are facing rollbacks. ?The world has changed. We're simply not in a position to offer generous settlements at a time of worldwide recession, when our tax revenues are significantly down and our costs are significantly up.? [2] This is a breathtakingly ideological and political commentary. It smacks of the ?Third Way? turn of social democratic leaders in the 1990s, notably Tony Blair in Britain but extending to Bill Clinton in the U.S., as they came to adopt neoliberal policies to appease business leaders clamouring for a rollback of union power. [3] They claimed then, too, that globalization had changed the world and that old work-rules and wage norms were now anachronistic. It was exactly this thinking that marked the infamous turn to the right of the NDP government in Ontario under Bob Rae, with its central demand of public sector concessions to cope with a fiscal crisis from an earlier recession. Miller?s statement similarly targets public sector workers ? particularly the city?s ?blue-collar? workforce. They are to bear the burden of meeting the city?s financial shortfall while paying no heed to the capitalist classes that created the economic crisis or their growing incomes and wealth while those of workers have been stagnating. Indeed, the Miller regime has implemented policies to lower tax loads on commercial property and higher income households while shifting the tax burden onto residential property taxes and low-income users of community services. Toronto?s fiscal challenges do not reside with the wages of city workers. They emerge from the distributional and tax policies that the city has adopted, and the wider economic crisis of capitalism. In particular, the failure of governments to properly fund welfare while using ever more of municipal budgets to fund policing and security operations, and the incessant campaigns at ?branding? the city to subsidize business need closer scrutiny. Miller?s comments carry the stench of hypocrisy and fundamental class bias, an hypocrisy that takes in Toronto City Council and their management negotiation team. The City is simply refusing to bargain the kind of wage and benefit package given to other unionized and non-unionized city workers and, moreover, is demanding a series of concessions. All these contracts fall within the same collective bargaining cycle ? bargaining that has all taken place in the midst of an unfolding economic crisis. The city is refusing to offer its workers a settlement in line with the, more or less, 3 percent wage and benefit pattern ? without concessions ? already bargained with other municipal unions, such as the police, firefighters, hydro workers, Toronto Housing Corporation, Toronto Port Authority, the Toronto Parking Authority and Enwave. This pattern includes the 2.4 percent wage increase City Council voted themselves, and the retention of their own generous ?severance? packages. The city bargained these contracts knowing full well the financial challenges looming. They have no legitimate reason to deny the pattern to the 79 and 416 workers. The unions are also facing 100 pages of other concession demands, including a weakening of job security provisions gained in the last-round of negotiations, attacks on seniority rights, limits on transfer and promotion rights, a freeze on cost-of living, two-tiered wage implementation, and limits on seniority rights and the media hot-button issue of banked sickdays. The last issue has been taken up by city management and the corporate media as their central battle cry. It is standard practice for management to cherry-pick one issue out of many that it can use as a wedge to gain public support. The big ideological guns of the capitalist media, never missing an excuse to bash unions, have all weighed in ? the narrow-minded Marcus Gee of The Globe and Mail , the increasingly cranky Richard Gwyn of The Toronto Star , and the shrill editorial group at the National Post . [4] These media Cassandras are forever identifying a new economic model that is emerging, that governments are getting in the way of markets adapting, and that unions and workers are backward looking hindrances preventing the rest of us from enjoying the potential benefits. Indeed, this is exactly how Gee, Gwyn and the rest cheer-led capitalist globalization and financialization over the last decades ? the very processes behind the current economic wreckage and the crisis of the Toronto economy. [5] In hectoring Toronto workers to adapt to the latest new economic reality, they have fixated on sickdays as the ticking time-bomb destroying City of Toronto fiscal stability. They have portrayed sickdays, and their banking toward a modest severance upon retirement, as a particularly perfidious provision of CUPE City of Toronto workers. Sickday banks, however, are not uncommon in different work environments, particularly in local governments, school boards, and many private sector contracts. Other union contracts at the City of Toronto contain similar provisions. They often reflect a range of previously negotiated compromises: sometimes as a compromise over wage increases and worktime; at other times over attendance and especially in high stress, difficult jobs (such as garbage pickup and other outdoor work in Canadian winters); and, at still others, over retirement issues with the ?sicktime bank? figured in as an aspect of severance. As it stands, CUPE members can pool sickdays over the course of employment to a maximum of 6 months with 50 percent of these eligible for a payout (or a modest severance after long-time service of three months). Yet, the City and the anti-union ideologues in the bourgeois media have focused on this issue as some kind of outrageous privilege. Legitimate concerns about the management of sickdays can be negotiated at the bargaining table. CUPE spokespersons have said as much. But a compromise and negotiation over sickday provisions is really not the game being played by Mayor Miller, the political Executive of the City and senior managers. If it was, they could have gone after other city unions and contracts over the same issue at any time over the last year, in the context of bargaining other city contracts, in the context or not of surrounding economic turmoil. The real contest the city is engaged in ? and it can be seen in their endless press conferences, meticulous strike preparation, use of scab and contract labour, encouragement of strike-breaking as official city policy, efforts to continue a range of services ? is to force a bitter strike and mobilize public opinion to try to defeat the union. This would then widen the bargaining space for City management to demand further concessions on wages and pensions and re-establish the political space for contracting-out more city work and commercializing even more public services. In this effort, Miller has the support of senior city administration, the Toronto Board of Trade and other business associations and the right-wing of Council. Where the ?progressive? wing of Council (the alliance between the New Democratic Party grouping and a range of Liberals that constitute the political Executive for Miller and his key voting support) lines-up and divides is less clear. But none of this ?left? has been yet willing to speak out against Miller and line-up solidly with city workers, CUPE and the labour movement. This would, of course, mean challenging Miller?s view (and that of the media and the capitalist classes) that the ?world has changed? so that workers must bear the costs of the economic crisis, how the fiscal challenges of the city might be responded to and which social classes and interests should be advanced . Mayor Miller has chosen his side with the business classes and capitalist media of Toronto. How much longer can the so-called ?progressive? Councillors, often elected with union efforts, continue to sit on the sidelines? Workers Paying for the Crisis The City of Toronto workers? strike is evocative of the tough choices and struggles facing unions in North America in the wake of the economic crisis. Employers in both the public and private sectors have been demanding major concessions in pensions, wages, work rules and benefits. It is what lies behind the 12-week strike in Windsor by 1,900 municipal waste collection, road maintenance, daycare and by-law enforcement workers ? members of CUPE Locals 82 and 5432. The key struggle has been over demands by that City of Windsor to impose two-tier benefit structures on the union. Concessions and the insecurities of new and part-time workers figured prominently in the long and difficult strikes of transport workers in Ottawa and part-time teaching staff at York University over the last winter. Members of the Media Guild working at the Globe and Mail are similarly faced with a series of concessions demanded in pensions, wages and job security (following on the dramatic slashing in contracts in the newspaper industry in the U.S., especially in Boston and Chicago). CUPE Strike CUPE Local 79 - ?Fair Deal? - Old City Hall, Toronto. Each of these strikes and negotiations need to be understood in the particularity of the contracts and the fiscal stresses of individual local governments and institutions. But they also need to be assessed from the perspective of the labour market logic that has been integral to neoliberalism. Over the last two decades, the strategy of public and private sector employers has been to intensify the rate of exploitation and management control in workplaces to shift income and power to the capitalist classes to bolster profits. This logic has increased the incomes of the capitalist classes, especially incomes in the financial sector and the array of professional classes manipulating symbols and pushing paper, while holding stagnant the wages and incomes of the working classes, particularly the expanding numbers of immigrants and women employed in ?servant? occupations, and the working class population dependent upon income transfers. For local governments, the neoliberal logic has also entailed policies to lower tax levies on commercial property and businesses, an expansion of the range of development subsidies for property developers and businesses, and an increase on residential taxes, user fees and so on for working class citizens. It is this logic which has caused all the major cities of North America to display a sharpening of income inequalities and a deterioration of urban services. The counterpart has been the spectacle forms of development, and the high-end restaurants and leisure venues barricaded by security walls and guards, aimed at the so-called ?creative classes? (in substance, the lawyers, accountants, money dealers, property speculators and consultants providing a range of business services), whose incomes have been generously growing, have proliferated. The neoliberal labour market logic is, it needs to be emphasized, intensifying as the economic crisis unfolds. Rather than spelling its end, as so many fashionable commentators have been quick to contend as financial markets spiral out of control and free market policies are ideologically discredited, the capitalist classes and governments are by no means ready to abandon the neoliberal economic order and governance structures they have built up over the last two decades. These ruling class forces ? big city mayors among them ? have been setting about to reconstruct neoliberalism on new foundations. This is not an issue of this or that policy, this amount of state intervention as opposed to so much market activity, this regulatory measure as opposed to another. It is about class power and re-establishing the basis for extracting surplus value and profits from workers ? it is about neoliberalism as a particular form of class rule. This form of class rule has not been defeated. Financial capital is setting the agenda for its ?re-regulation? and framing the economic policy debate and the ?exit? from ?emergency? fiscal measures; industrial capital is restructuring its capital stock and re-working labour relations premised on the major defeat of industrial unions in both compensation and workrules; and the vast service sector capitals are not yielding any ground to re-establishing public planning capacities and services. The fact that renewed attacks on public sector unions in Canada is occurring now is no coincidence. Public opinion is particularly negative about strikes at this moment, given the crisis and most people?s concerns about their own jobs, workplace conditions and overall financial security. Private sector employers in alliance with capitalist governments have set the stage for a broader attack on working class incomes and power. The massive concessions wrung out of auto workers over the last months were critical. As with the attacks on city workers in Toronto, they were also justified on the basis that the auto workers were ?privileged,? that the world had changed and that union contracts were a barrier to restoring competitiveness. This crucial attempt to have workers pay for the economic crisis is now shifting to the public sector in Canada. Local government is where the fiscal crisis is most acute, social dislocation from the economic turmoil concentrated, and where public sector unions have their crucial strength and leverage in delivering the services necessary for urban daily life. The City Isn?t Working Because Capitalism Is Working Toronto Mayor Miller has ridden to power, from local councillor to mayor, in part by portraying himself as a friend of labour, often with significant efforts by public sector unions and the district labour council. Indeed, but two months ago the Mayor addressed a gathering organized by the Toronto Labour Council of some 1600 union stewards called to support labour-led alternatives to the economic crisis. The Mayor took the Labour Council pledge , while forming the City?s battle plans with its own unions, ?to stand together through this time of economic crisis.? But now the Mayor argues that ?we are living in a new world,? that the city?s coffers are empty, union concessions are on order, and the business agenda for meeting the economic crisis must be accepted. For a Mayor and City Council promoting Toronto as a ?creative city? to attract capital and the entrepreneurs building the ?new economy? as the development model, [6] the Mayor and the City of Toronto?s line of argument against city workers demonstrates a startling lack of creativity. The City has chosen to meet the fiscal challenges by demanding wage and other concessions and opening the political space for contracting-out. This is the most conventional of neoliberal responses (and from a macro-economic perspective one of the worst things to do in a crisis is to demand wage cuts, which can only make a bad situation worse). There is little effort to increase revenues, and in particular reverse some of the tax breaks given over to business interests during Miller?s terms in office; to take on short-term debt to finance recessionary revenue shortfalls (and debt to the tune of $834-million the city has been willing to take on to finance the purchase of streetcars); or to re-establish the ?new deal for cities? campaign to address inter-governmental fiscal imbalances. And there is no effort to actually explain the roots of the city?s fiscal impasse in the capitalist economic crisis, the financial power of Bay Street and the internationalization of capital that has gutted manufacturing capacity in the Toronto region. This would entail some real creative class struggle. Herein lies the contradiction at the heart of the ruling political regime in Toronto. While dependent upon the local union movement and progressive forces for much of their social base and electoral viability, Miller and the progressive wing of City Council has an alliance with ? and even greater fiscal and economic dependence upon ? major corporate and financial interests, including many of Canada and North America?s most powerful corporations. In this period of neoliberalism and overwhelming capitalist media (with Canada?s national media all concentrated in Toronto), there has been a complete fear of a business backlash and of the right-wing of City Council overturning some of the ?progressive? legacies which has made Toronto a ?liveable? city. This balance of forces in Toronto has legitimated, particularly under the Miller mayoralty, a kind of ?local corporatism.? Labour unions (and often the Toronto and District Labour Council) are incorporated into cross-class consensus institutions and campaigns such as the Toronto City Summit Alliance, initiatives around economic development, in lobbying for transit funding and so forth. Urban economic development agendas such as building a ?creative city? or a ?green economy? can encompass the social forces of capital and labour, and whole range of other social interests, in a deeply complex urban environment. Toronto, Inc. can take on a lot of different agendas. But such policy visions and agendas cannot transform the neoliberal urbanism that has formed the power structures, institutional norms and class and racial divisions that capitalist class forces and political leaderships in the City of Toronto are invested in. The economic crisis as refracted into the Toronto urban economy and politics is, however, straining these alliances and compromises. The reaction of Miller and other ruling forces in Toronto is to say the world has changed and the politics of the past is no longer possible. As in the political response to the wider economic crisis, this is giving rise to an attack on workers and unions as a fundamental premise for re-establishing capitalist power and profits. It should be clear to unions and other progressive social forces that these old alliances are no longer working to prevent further erosion of social services in the city, the undermining of unionized work, or the shifting of the tax burden to favour corporate interests. This realization can no longer be avoided. The city isn?t working because capitalism is working exactly as to be expected: to protect the interests of the propertied and the powerful and to ask workers and citizens to give up more so capital can continue to expand. Mayor Miller knows very well that this is the way the capitalist city works as much as in Toronto as in New York or Tokyo. What sometimes appears as a conflict of a particularistic militancy generated in local circumstances takes on a class struggle of more global concerns and ambitions. This is the case of the strike of City of Toronto workers. The garbage swelling in the parks and alleys of Toronto, and the polemical heat being generated over ?sickdays,? are deeply parochial concerns. But the political agenda at stake is the further breaking of union power in North America as a key measure to resolving the economic crisis on the terms of the capitalist classes. This struggle is moving from the private sector to the public sector; and the central obstacle in the way is public sector unions in Canada. It is crucial that the working class and labour movements in Toronto and Canada unite behind the struggle of CUPE 79 and 416. It is an imperative that the concession demands of the City of Toronto ? coming forward from a governing mayor, political executive and Council with nominal claims to progressive politics ? be defeated. This requires building massive new community-union actions in each ward of the city, and particularly where there has been union strength; calling the ?progressive? councillors on their silence in the strike and to help build these events; CUPE mobilizing its members across the province in defence of its municipal workers out on strike and opening up the negotiating process to its striking members; and the Toronto Labour Council re-convening a Steward?s Assembly to build strike support. Winning this strike will be a significant step toward stopping the momentum of union setbacks and contract reversals. The struggles of CUPE in Windsor and Toronto are directly linked to the struggles of GM, Chrysler and Air Canada workers with CAW. These struggles will help determine the fate of Ford workers now facing concession demands. Winning in Toronto might begin a process of developing a wider union fightback and a political reply to the crisis measures that are being implemented by business and governments in Canada and North America. [7] ? Greg Albo teaches political economy at York University, Toronto. Herman Rosenfeld is a union activist in Toronto. Notes 1. ? Outside Workers on Strike ,? 22 June 2009. 2. ?Time To Roll Back Council Pay Raise,? Toronto Star , 23 June 2009. See also: ??Frustrated? Miller Lashes Out at Unions for Delaying Talks,? The Globe and Mail , 30 June 2009. 3. Of course, elements of ?third way urbanism? have been evident in Toronto for some time: Stefan Kipfer and Roger Keil, ?Toronto, Inc.: Planning the Competitive City in the New Toronto,? Antipode , 34:2 (2002); Yen Chu, ? Time to Assess Toronto?s Mayor Miller ,? Relay , N. 13 (2006). 4. ?City is Falling off the Same Cliff as General Motors,? The Globe and Mail , 26 June 2009; ?Striking Workers? Sick Day Perks Strike a Nerve,? The Toronto Star , 26 June 2009; ?Toronto?s Delusional City Workers,? National Post , 23 June 2009. 5. A point made by CUPE Ontario leader Sid Ryan: ? In a Crisis, Bash the Workers ,? Toronto Star , 1 July 2009; and also Tom Walkom, ? Striking City Workers a Convenient Target ,? Toronto Star , 27 June 2009. 6. Creative City Planning Framework: A Supporting Document to the Agenda for Prosperity: Prospectus for a Great City (Toronto, 2008); Toronto Mayor?s Economic Competitiveness Advisory Committee, Agenda for Prosperity (Toronto, 2008). 7. For further reading: Greg Albo, ?The Crisis of Neoliberalism and the Impasse of the Union Movement,? Relay , N. 26, 2009; Herman Rosenfeld, ?The North American Auto Industry in Crisis,? Relay , N. 26, 2009. From shniad at sfu.ca Tue Jul 7 13:44:14 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Tue, 7 Jul 2009 12:44:14 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Excellent article on BDS by ABIGAIL B. BAKAN and YASMEEN ABU-LABAN In-Reply-To: <1631598767.111491246043340495.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <622063968.595771246995854061.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Article on BDS by ABIGAIL B. BAKAN and YASMEEN ABU-LABAN From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Thu Jul 9 19:21:42 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2009 10:21:42 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Can You Believe It? Message-ID: <20090710102142.0f63d4cf.shimogamo@ashisuto.co.jp> The Silly Series Number 1 by Vincent Vickers They kept it a profound secret. They said it was "not in the public interest" that the news should be broadcast. The fact remains, that I myself was present when the Great Logical Professor arrived here direct from Mars, and met the World's leading orthodox economist. "Well, boys said the Logical Professor from Mars, "Everything okay up here?" "Alas! Far from it", said our orthodox economist. "This world is in economic eruption! Wars and rumors of wars, millions of people unemployed, ill-fed, ill-clothed, suffering malnutrition and great poverty, and discontent everywhere!" "Oh", said the Martian professor. "I suppose, then, that you are finding it impossible to produce sufficient to feed your increasing population, and supply them with what they need for a comfortable life?" "On the contrary", said the orthodox economist, "we have wonderful machinery! We can produce far more than all the people need; in fact, we are actually destroying food." "You don't say", said the astonished professor, "Then there must be something wrong with your shipping and transport facilities - you can't carry the goods to the consumers". "Wrong again", said the orthodox economist. "We have to most up-to-date and ample transport, and marvelous ships - no, that is not what is wrong". "But what else can be wrong?" asked the Martian professor, lifting his eyebrows. "Well, you see", said out orthodox economist, "The poor people can't have the goods because they have not got enough money". "Money", said the professor from Mars. "What on this earth is that?" "Fancy you not knowing about money!" said the orthodox economist. "It was invented by Mankind for his own special benefit long before 1066, to make everything simple and easy for the exchange of one man's goods for another man's goods. It enables us to do away with the previous cumbersome procedure of barter. We do not have to lead a cow down Bond Street in order to exchange it for perfumes and jewelry; all we have to do is to exchange the cow for 'money' and then hand over the money for our other requirements. A wonderful invention, affecting the lives and happiness of all Mankind!" "So that is where the trouble lies!" said the professor. "Then, obviously, what you have got to do is to alter your money system, so as to enable these discontented millions of people to buy the things they need, and employ your unemployed!" "Oh, we must not do that", exclaimed the orthodox economist, with a shocked expression on his face. "We must not alter out ancient money system! No, that would never do!" "But why not?" said the professor from Mars. "Am I to understand that this invention has become a sort of 'religion' with rules and regulations that cannot be changed?" "Well", said the orthodox economist, gazing down rather sheepishly at his white spats, "I had not thought of it that way before, but you are right - it is a 'religion' with us. We call it 'Sound Finance!'" The big, thick lips of the professor slowly curled themselves into a Martian grin. Without a word, he clambered back into his rocket-apparatus and started off for home. And when he had reached a height of some eighty thousand meters, he looked down on the World, flapped his great ears, and laughed, and laughed, and LAUGHED. _____ Vincent Vickers was a Director of the Bank of England, a Director of the Vickers Limited, and a Deputy-Liutenant of the City of London. He had exceptional inside knowledge and experience of trading and banking. This knowledge convinced him that the present economic system is so dangerously unwise that he felt it his duty during the later years of his life to work whole-heartedly for its reform. In 1926 Vickers told the Governor of the Bank of England, Montagu Norman, that henceforth he would fight Montagu and the Gold Standard and the Bank of England Policy until Vickers died. And he did. Vincent Vickers died on November 3rd 1939 after a long illness. All the while he was sick he was working and writing on economic reform. Before his death Vickers started The Silly Series, which he intended to be a series of short humorous leaflets on economics. He never got beyond Number 1 before his death. Arian Nevin plans to continue The Silly Series started by Vickers. Questions, Comments, or Submissions? Email Here: comments at nationaleconomy.net http://www.nationaleconomy.net/sillyseries1.html 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/ From mstainsby at resist.ca Thu Jul 9 20:34:33 2009 From: mstainsby at resist.ca (Macdonald Stainsby) Date: Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:34:33 -0600 Subject: [R-G] Resistance to Enbridge Gateway Project Message-ID: <4A56A8B9.2090205@resist.ca> Summit aimed for informed decisions Published: July 08, 2009 6:00 AM Enbridge?s Northern Gateway pipeline proposal and the Alberta oil sands development as a whole were the targets of an All Nations Energy Summit held recently in Moricetown. Representatives of First Nations from the Athabaskan to Kitamaat were in attendance to voice their opinion about the tar sands and the destruction of their traditional lands. ?Were trying to bring together First Nations from along the pipeline and the tanker rote, as well as non-first nations communities to help learn more about the project itself,? explained Tara Marsden, co-organizer of the summit. There were a number of workshops and presentations from people directly affected by the development in the tar sands and the possible arrival of oil tankers on the BC coast. Marsden said one of the problems facing people in the affected regions is their lack of understanding the situation. Educating the public about the main issues around the pipeline and the tar sands was therefore a major priority for event organizers and speakers. ?Informed decision-making is a right for First Nations. We?re trying to inform and inspire people to have a say in developments like this.? She also noted this was one of the few such gatherings that has taken place in the Northwest. ?There have been coal-bed methane rallies and meetings that were very similar to this but it was focused only on the Northwest, but this is huge, we?re really bringing a lot of people together.? Saying organizers couldn?t have asked for a better turn out, Marsden predicted, ?I think that gong forward we may have some more gatherings on the coast now that we?ve had one here in the Interior.? Merran Smith, from Vancouver-based Forest Ethics, said the time is right for change and seeing the number of people at the summit showed they were headed in the right direction. ?There has been a couple hundred people who have come out to hear about not just the pipeline, but the whole story of the impacts, development and expansion of the tar sands, and all the risks involved with this pipeline,? she said. ?We?re at a cross roads. Are we going to chose to continue our addiction to oil? Or are we going to chose to start developing new forms of energy, green energy?? Smith stressed the fact that Europe has all ready leapt ahead of the world and is effectively taking action to lower their carbon foot print and invest in renewable energy. ?Already in Germany they have created a quarter of a million jobs in the green energy sector. Ontario, here at home, a number of months ago passed the Green Energy Act and has put the funding towards investing and getting the green energy sector off the ground, and they?re predicting 80,000 new jobs.? Representatives from the Athabaskan and Fort Chipawyan also spoke about their personal experiences. Lionel Lepine, member of the Athabaskan Chipawyan First Nations said he had been watching closely as development of the oil sands continued to grow at an unprecedented rate. ?If you go to Fort McMurray, Alberta today, you?ll notice that you have every race, colour and creed that you can think of located in that town. Ten years ago you wouldn?t see that, and they call it a boom town, I call it a doom town, because that town is going to fall apart one of these days.? During the summit one of Lepine?s main issues was what had happened to the land. Saying it had once been a plentiful land full of clean nutritious food and water, he said now it is a completely different story. ?If you take a fish from that lake, you are risking your life when you eat that fish. And when you eat the berries and eat the animals your taking a risk, whereas 10 years ago you didn?t have those risks, you use to be able to drink the water right from the lake. Now no-one would even think to drink it,? said Lepine. ?This is becoming a global issue fast,? he added. ?It?s not just going to be a First Nations issue, pretty soon every human being on earth will be affected by it.? http://www.bclocalnews.com/bc_north/northernsentinel/news/50145132.html From menecraj at shaw.ca Thu Jul 9 22:29:57 2009 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Thu, 9 Jul 2009 23:29:57 -0500 Subject: [R-G] GAZA SHALL NOT DIE 2010! Message-ID: <67EE9D2D4E1740F7A2CC005B9A50E97F@agingCHS072729> http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/ GAZA SHALL NOT DIE 2010! FIRST ORGANIZATIONAL MEETING Monday, July 13 Time: 7:30 p.m. Place: Brecht Forum Address: 451 West Street, between Bank & Bethune Streets, New York, NY 10014 Contact: NormFinkelstein at gmail.com EVERYONE WELCOME! ============= GAZA SHALL NOT DIE! Human Rights Watch has called the blockade of Gaza a "serious violation of international law." Its consequence, according to Sara Roy of Harvard University, "is undeniably one of mass suffering, created largely by Israel, but with the active complicity of the international community, especially the U.S. and European Union." When nations fail to enforce the law, when the world's leaders break the law, the people must act! Join thousands from around the world on 1 January 2010 as they converge on Gaza for a historic march to end nonviolently the illegal blockade. Will Israel shoot? The whole world will be watching. Stay tuned ..... From fentona at shaw.ca Fri Jul 10 10:34:56 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2009 09:34:56 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Shame on Canada, Coup Supporter Message-ID: http://thetyee.ca/Views/2009/07/09/ShameOnCanada/ Today: Friday, July 10, 2009 Shame on Canada, Coup Supporter Zelaya: Enemy of Canada? Why have we sided with the Honduran military? Mining profits. By Ashley Holly Published: July 9, 2009 TheTyee.ca For the first time in decades, the world's eyes are on Honduras, a tiny country many Canadians know for those little stickers on exported bananas and the surplus of coffee it floods onto the global market each year. The world is less aware of the ongoing role that the Canadian government and Canadian mining companies play in pushing many Hondurans further into poverty. Now that the world is watching, it's a good time to reveal these secrets. On Saturday, July 4, at the impromptu meeting of the Organization of the American States, Canadian Minister of State of Foreign Affairs for the Americas Peter Kent suggested President Jose Manuel "Mel" Zelaya not return to Honduras. It's an interesting stance for Canada to assume, considering that most of the international community has condemned the coup in Honduras. Moreover, following violent clashes between the military police and demonstrators awaiting Zelaya's return this past Sunday, Kent held Zelaya responsible for the deaths of two demonstrators by the military government. Prior to these comments, Canada had remained relatively silent on this issue. But while most other counties have cancelled their aid to Honduras in protest of the coup, Canada has not. Why is our democracy suddenly in the business of supporting a military coup? Capitalizing on hurricane devastation The answer begins with Canada's reaction to the last crisis in Honduras. -------------- next part -------------- In 1998, Hurricane Mitch swept through much of Central America and especially ravaged Honduras, where thousands of people were killed and millions were displaced. Already the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, Honduras was now struck with over $3 billion in damages, a loss of social services such as schools, hospitals and road systems. Seventy per cent of its agricultural crops were destroyed. Nothing so devastating had ever hit Honduras. Canada was quick to respond to the cries for help following Hurricane Mitch, with a 'long-term development plan'. Canada offered $100 million over four years for reconstruction projects. These grandiose aid packages made Canada look like a savior. However, attached to this assistance was the introduction of over 40 Canadian companies to Honduras to assess opportunities for investment. This hurricane offered a strategic economic opportunity for Canadian investment in Honduras. The Canadian government, as it officially stated this year, considers mineral extraction by Canadian mining companies one of the best ways to "create new economic opportunities in the developing world". Shortly after Hurricane Mitch weakened the Honduran state, Canada and the United States joined to establish the National Association of Metal Mining of Honduras (ANAMINH), through which they were able to rewrite the General Mining Law. This law provides foreign mining companies with lifelong concessions, tax breaks and subsurface land rights for "rational resource exploitation". 'We have lost everything' "They crave gold like hungry swine," Uruguayan journalist Eduardo Galeano has written of multinational mining firms. I thought of those words on a recent drive through the open pit San Andres mining project, recently sold by the Canadian company Yamana Gold to another Canadian company, Aura Minerales. When I'd finished my tour, I was convinced the social, economic, environmental and health costs of open pit mining practices far outweigh the supposed benefits, and that the resource exploitation practiced by certain Canadian companies is anything but rational. I got chills driving through the abandoned village of San Andres. What were once homes and schools had been bulldozed into mounds of crushed adobe and rock. Where ancient pine trees stood, there now were deep craters, accessible by the nicest highways I had seen in Honduras. But a local resident at the end of one of those roads told me: "We have lost everything." The mine had displaced him from his home, and he was now without clean water to drink or fertile land to sow. Currently, Canadian companies own 33 per cent of mineral investments in Latin America, accumulating to the ownership of over 100 properties. Export Development Canada contributes 50 per cent of Canadian Pension Plan money to mining companies, which offered upwards of $50 billion in 2003. Goldcorp alone has received nearly one billion dollars from CPP subsidies. Although EDC is responsible for regulating Canadian industry abroad, it has been accused of failing to apply regulatory standards to 24 of 26 mining projects that it has funded. In February 2003, nearly five hundred gallons of cyanide spilled into the Rio Lara, killing 18,000 fish. The mine in San Andres uses more water in one hour than an average Honduran family uses in one year. In that same year, mining companies earned $44.4 million, while the average income per capita in Honduras in 2004 was just $1,126USD. Zelaya's anti-mining stance: payment due As the man at the end of the road tried to explain to me, mining is not development for people who live around these mines. He speaks for thousands of others -- a base of support aligned with the ousted President Zelaya. In 2006, Zelaya decided to cancel all future mining concessions in Honduras. Which would appear to explain, at least in large part, why Canada stands virtually alone in the hemisphere in supporting the Honduran military's ousting of Zelaya. The Canadian government, and its friends in the mining industry, are using the coup as an opportunity to plant their feet deeper into the Honduran ground. In his role as minister of state for foreign affairs, Peter Kent once declared that "democratic governance is a central pillar of Canada's enhanced engagement in the Americas." Apparently, his instructions from Ottawa have been revised. Ashley Holly is a Canadian student conducting research in Honduras. From shniad at sfu.ca Fri Jul 10 12:00:51 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2009 11:00:51 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Only 33 per cent of Americans believe in evolution In-Reply-To: <66C0A15331514801820E3DFCFB856770@twubby.com> Message-ID: <2093030816.1569001247248851812.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.theprovince.com/technology/Science+beliefs+faltering/1776905/story.html The Province July 10, 2009 Science beliefs faltering Only 33 per cent of Americans believe in evolution Americans still value the nation's scientific achievements, but unlike most scientists, they often pick and choose which scientific findings they agree with, especially in the areas of climate change and evolution, according to a survey released yesterday. The survey found nine in 10 scientists accept the idea of evolution by natural selection, but just a third of the public does. And while 84 per cent of scientists say the Earth is getting warmer because of human activity, less than half of the public agrees with that. "The public and the scientists have very different views on many different issues, including the science of evolution and climate change," said Scott Keeter of the Pew Research Center. The centre conducted the wide-ranging telephone survey in collaboration with the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The research included responses from 2,533 scientists in the AAAS, and 2,001 public respondents. It found most Americans value the nation's scientific achievements, but not as much as they did a decade ago. Although 27 per cent of Americans said scientific advances are the nation's greatest achievement, that was down from 47 per cent in the group's May 1999 survey. The administration of Barack Obama has promised that science will lead health-care and climate-change policy, and has pledged to seek a cure for cancer, now the No. 2 killer of Americans. According to the survey, most scientists and the public agree it is appropriate for scientists to take part in political debate over issues such as stem-cell research. And even Americans who disagree with scientific conclusions think highly of scientists. More than two-thirds of those who say science conflicts with their religious beliefs still say scientists contribute significantly to society. From shniad at sfu.ca Fri Jul 10 12:00:33 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2009 11:00:33 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] A Muslim's murder: double standards, crude generalizations In-Reply-To: <641F9F39917F4522BDAF3233A2A354E8@twubby.com> Message-ID: <179841706.1568761247248833097.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Globe and Mail July 10, 2009 A Muslim's murder: double standards, crude generalizations Sheema Khan The stabbing death of Marwa al-Sherbini in a German courtroom will have ramifications in the months to come. Already, there is palpable anger in Egypt, where she was buried this week. That anger will most likely spread to other parts of the Middle East and South Asia and amongst Europe's Muslim minorities. The Egyptian blogosphere is filled with outrage - outrage at the vicious murder of a pregnant woman in a court of law and, most notably, at the lack of attention given to this hate crime by political institutions and European media. Many note the double standard: The ghastly murder of Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam in 2004 was used as a pretext to cast suspicion on Dutch Muslims, whereas Marwa's murder in Dresden last week is the work of a ?lone wolf,? an immigrant from Russia (and thus not ?really? German). The muted reaction to the killing of a woman, in the heart of Europe, for wearing her hijab, also galls. No need to imagine the outrage if a woman is killed for not wearing a hijab - just look to the visceral reaction at the killing of Mississauga teenager Aqsa Parvez in 2007. And while German authorities investigate whether Marwa's murder was a hate crime, they might also want to focus on the reaction of court security. As Marwa was being stabbed, her husband tried to intervene. A court officer, apparently assuming the man with the Middle Eastern features to be the attacker, shot Marwa's husband. He is now in critical condition. Many do not see Marwa's fate in isolation. The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance, in its 2004 annual report, said ?Islamophobia continues to manifest itself in different guises. Muslim communities are the target of negative attitudes, and sometimes, violence and harassment. They suffer multiple forms of discrimination, including sometimes from certain public institutions.? The London-based Runnymede Charity, in its 2004 report Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All, found that Muslims were seen by Europeans as the ?other? and as lacking in values held by Western cultures, that Islam was violent, aggressive and terroristic, and that anti-Muslim hostility was natural or normal. So, no surprise that European Muslims are increasingly seen as ?outsiders,? with a monolithic, rigid culture that's antithetical to that of Europe. Amidst sagging popularity and a recession, French President Nicolas Sarkozy redirected attention to the burka, saying it's not welcome in his country. Even Muslims who don't support the burka felt uncomfortable with Mr. Sarkozy's spotlight on their community. And so the double standards abound. As do the crude generalizations. When the perpetrator happens to be a Muslim, reports are sensationalistic, and Muslims, along with their faith, are cast in a negative light. In the Dresden case, the mirror reaction is happening in Egypt: All Germans are somehow complicit in Marwa's fate. In the wake of horrific violence, the primal instinct is to blame all, to cast suspicion on those we don't know. Yet, in the wake of such episodes, we must work even harder to bridge the gulf between what Dominique Moisi calls the culture of fear and the culture of humiliation. Otherwise, the perpetrators of hate will achieve their goal of driving people apart. As Mariane Pearl, the widow of Daniel Pearl, wrote: ?They try to kill everything in you - initiative, hope, confidence, dialogue. The only way to oppose them is by demonstrating the strength they think they have taken from you. That strength is to keep on living, to keep on valuing life.? Let's remember that the enemy is xenophobia, which can metastasize like cancer unless society is on guard against the pernicious tendency to view others as less human. We have seen the ugly spectre of racism at Keswick High School and in Courtenay, B.C. We have our own painful history of wrongs committed against ethnic groups and indigenous communities. Yet, the better part of the human spirit tries to overcome these dark episodes with the light of justice and restitution. Marwa's murder cannot be in vain. She took on her perpetrator in a court of law after he called her a terrorist. Some would say she lost. It is up to us to carry on the larger quest of fighting racism and building bridges, so her son - and all children - can grow up without fear and prejudice. sheema.khan at globeandmail.com From shniad at sfu.ca Fri Jul 10 13:08:54 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:08:54 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] YouTube - Rethink Afghanistan: Women of Afghanistan In-Reply-To: <272404254.1434731247192934646.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1534246684.1599541247252934707.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> YouTube - Rethink Afghanistan: Women of Afghanistan http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7jAT0FAGBc&feature=channel From shniad at sfu.ca Fri Jul 10 13:10:17 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:10:17 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Canada and Honduras In-Reply-To: <1605540154.679871247006000975.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1162838486.1600201247253017267.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/bullet234.html The Bullet ? Socialist Project ? E-Bulletin No. 234 ? July 7, 2009 Canada and Honduras By Yves Engler, yvesengler at hotmail.com Hostility to the military coup in Honduras is increasing. So is the Harper government's isolation on the issue. At Saturday's special meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS) Canada's minister for the Americas, Peter Kent, recommended that ousted President Manuel Zelaya delay his planned return to the country. Kent said the ?time is not right? prompting Zelaya to respond dryly: ?I could delay until January 27 [2010]? when his term ends. Kent added that it was important to take into account the context in which the military overthrew Zelaya, particularly whether he had violated the Constitution. Along with three Latin American heads of states, Zelaya tried to return to Honduras on Sunday. But the military blocked his plane from landing and kept a 100,000 plus supporters at bay. In doing so the military killed two protesters and wounded at least 30. On CTV Kent blamed Zelaya for the violence. This was Kent's most recent attack against Zelaya. In June Kent criticized Zelaya's plan for a non-binding public poll on whether to hold consultations to reopen the constitution. "We have concerns with the government of Honduras," he said a couple of weeks ago. "There are elections coming up this year and we are watching very carefully the behaviour of the government and what seems to be an attempt to amend the constitution to allow consecutive presidencies." With political tensions increasing in Honduras, two days before the coup the OAS passed a resolution supporting democracy and the rule of law in that country. Ottawa's representative to the OAS remained silent on the issue. Foreign Affairs took a similar position in the hours after Zelaya was kidnapped by the military. Eight hours after Zelaya's ouster last Sunday morning a Foreign Affairs spokesperson told Notimex that Canada had "no comment" regarding the coup. It was not until late in the evening, after basically every country in the hemisphere denounced the coup, that Ottawa finally did so. Canada , reports Notimex, is the only country in the hemisphere that did not explicitly call for Zelaya's return to power. Unlike the World Bank and others, Ottawa has not announced plans to suspend aid to Honduras, which is the largest recipient of Canadian assistance in Central America. Nor has Ottawa mentioned that it will exclude the Honduran military from its Military Training Assistance Programme. Ottawa 's hostility towards Zelaya is likely motivated by particular corporate interests and his support for the social transformation taking place across Latin America. From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Jul 6 09:31:04 2009 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:31:04 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: Central American country.=20 It is unlikely that Zelaya won brownie points from the large Canadian minin= g sector - including Breakwater Resources, Yamana Gold and Goldcorp that ar= e active in Honduras - when he announced that no new mining concessions wou= ld be granted.=20 Likewise, Zelaya's move earlier this year to raise the minimum wage by 60% = could not have gone down well with the world's biggest blank T-shirt maker,= Montr=C3=A9al-based Gildan. Employing thousands of Hondurans at low wages = Gildan produces about half of its garments in the country.=20 While the political instability in Honduras initially hit the company's sto= ck price, a Desjardins Securities analyst Martin Landry noted that in the l= ong term the coup could help Gildan if it leads to a more pro-business gove= rnment.=20 More broadly, the Harper government opposes Zelaya's gravitation towards th= e governments in the region leading the push towards a more united Latin Am= erica. A year ago Honduras joined the Hugo Chavez led Alba, the Bolivarian = Alliance for the People of Our Americas, which is a fast growing response t= o North American capitalist domination of the region.=20 Two years ago Harper toured South America to help stunt the region's recent= rejection of neoliberalism and U.S dependence. =E2=80=9CTo show that Canad= a functions and that it can be a better model than Venezuela,=E2=80=9D in t= he words of a high-level Foreign Affairs official. During the trip, Harper = and his entourage made a number of comments critical of the Venezuelan gove= rnment. In a coded reference to Chavez, Harper discussed a "Latin American = dictator."=20 Demonizing Chavez is part of Ottawa's attempt to block the leftward shift i= n the region. Supporting the coup in Honduras is part of the same plan.=20 (Yves Engler is author of The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy) From shniad at sfu.ca Fri Jul 10 13:09:54 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:09:54 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Democracy, Canadian-style In-Reply-To: <22867532.1395721247182123403.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1522951102.1599881247252994098.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.hilltimes.com/html/index.php?display=story&full_path=2009/july/6/ccce/&c=2 The Hill Times July 6, 2009 MP says d'Aquino's been Canada's 'unofficial PM for 15 years' When the CCCE talks, the government listens, say lobbyists and insiders. By Bea Vongdouangchanh When former deputy prime minister John Manley takes over as president-designate and CEO of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives on Oct. 19, he will be heading one of the most powerful blue-chip lobby organizations in the country with more than $800-billion in revenues. The CCCE has played an influential role in the country's fiscal, taxation, trade, energy, environmental, competitiveness and corporate governance issues for decades. When the CCCE talks, the government listens, say lobbyists and insiders. Outgoing CCCE president and CEO Thomas d'Aquino was Canada's "unofficial Prime Minister for the last 15 years" because of the amount of influence the lobby organization representing the country's largest businesses had over public policy, says NDP MP Pat Martin. But, lobbying insiders say it's more about the message, than the messenger. "I think they have almost absolute control and influence. Governments dance when they say, 'dance,' and they jump when they say, 'jump,' " Mr. Martin (Winnipeg Centre, Man.) told The Hill Times last week, adding that Mr. d'Aquino, who has served as the CCCE's head since 1981 has sometimes been "arrogant and smug because he knew damn well it didn't matter a hoot what anybody, any elected official said, he was going to get his way. You cannot compete with the kind of influence the CCCE has." Mr. Martin said that the Canadian Council of Chief Executives had a "scary amount of control over government policy, major government policies like deregulation, divesting of public interests." The CCCE, which began in 1977 under the name the Business Council on National Issues, is a "not-for-profit, non-partisan association composed of 150 chief executive officers and entrepreneurs of leading Canadian corporations from all major sectors and regions of the country" which collectively have $3.5-trillion in assets and revenues worth $800-billion. The CCCE's board of directors announced on June 25 that Mr. d'Aquino would end his 28-year run as the president and CEO and Mr. Manley, former Liberal deputy prime minister, would replace him?as president-designate on Oct. 19, and officially on Jan. 1, 2010. According to his biography on the CCCE's website, Mr. d'Aquino's leadership helped "play an influential role in shaping the direction of fiscal, taxation, trade, energy, environmental, competitiveness and corporate governance policies in Canada. ... He is acknowledged as one of the private sector architects of the Canada-United States free trade initiative, the North American Free Trade Agreement and of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America." International Trade Minister Stockwell Day (Okanagan-Coquihalla, B.C.) noted the upcoming change in CCCE's presidents in an official statement. "I want to extend my heartfelt thanks to Thomas d'Aquino for his leadership as president and chief executive of the CCCE. His contribution to public policy over the past three decades has led to positive and lasting results, both nationally and internationally. He has played a pivotal role in representing Canadian business interests. I look forward to continuing to work with him until the end of his mandate," Mr. Day said in a statement on June 26. "The CCCE is a key association of Canada's business leaders that plays an important role in providing expert advice to policy-makers across government on a wide range of business issues, such as Canada-U.S. commercial relations and global trade and investment liberalization." Lobbying insiders say the sheer size and demographics of the CCCE, governments should and do listen to what they have to say. Hill and Knowlton lobbyist Don Boudria, a former Liberal MP who represented the riding of Glengarry-Prescott-Russell, Ont., both in opposition and in government for 22 years, said it's "a stretch" to say the CCCE, or Mr. D'Aquino specifically was the "unofficial" government. "Governments should listen to organizations that create most of the wealth of this country, of course they should. Obviously this organization represents just that, so what they have to say is important. They're the ones who create so many of the jobs, so certainly it would be simply wrong not to listen to what these people have to say," Mr. Boudria said last week. "Any government that discounted what they had to say would be remiss in their duty, but that doesn't mean, of course, they're the pseudo or unofficial government. That's nonsense." Leo Duguay, a former Progressive Conservative MP who is a government relations consultant with the Rothwell Group, said Ottawa listens to the CCCE because it represents companies that have $800-billion in revenues. "If you take that number, it would be four times the Canadian budget so if I were in government and somebody came to me who had a credible message offering to solve problems, I'd be paying attention," Mr. Duguay said. Moreover, Mr. Duguay said apart from the size of the organization, governments listen to the CCCE because it offers "clear, credible" solutions to various problems facing the business sector. "I tend to think of codes, so just listen to this little code?message versus messenger, bias versus credibility, solution versus confusion. That's kind of what I think. It isn't so much the messenger, so much as the message, and it's the credibility, and it's the solutions that people offer," he said. "Every government that's been in power has listened to Tom d'Aquino because he brings a clear message of solutions that will help business run." Another lobbyist, who wanted to remain anonymous, said for the government, the Canadian Council of Chief Executives is a "one-stop shop" for policy advice. "They [the CCCE] look at economic systems holistically. They're sensitive to global realities. This association is probably well positioned to be a very strong strategic resource to decision makers, regardless of what stripe they are," the lobbyist said. "They do have a voice at the policy table, absolutely they do. But if you look at the organization, they're representing the creators of wealth in society for the most part." According to its lobby registration, the Canadian Council of Chief Executives is registered to lobby the federal government on more than 60 issues from pieces of legislation to policy proposals and regulations which include everything from international trade, health care, defence, pensions, Parliamentary reform, corporate social responsibility, a private member's bill on replacement workers, and the environment among numerous others. Mr. Boudria said the number of lobbying issues is an indication of how diverse the group is and why they are an important voice, rather than an indication of how influential and powerful they are on shaping public policy. Mr. Martin said however that the organization has been successful because Canadian governments have been run by "the two business parties" for which "the leading business lobbyists have been playing the tune for these guys to dance." Mr. Martin said many of Canada's laws have been designed to favour big business and the influence the council has is "bastardizing democracy" when it should be elected MPs who make the policies. "[Former prime minister Jean] Chr?tien and [former prime minister Paul] Martin and [Prime Minister Stephen] Harper, they just used their Cabinet as a focus group. They really listened to the lobbyists and met behind closed doors. That's who's really running the country, a half a dozen unelected people in the PMO, listening to Thomas d'Aquino and now John Manley, telling the country what it needs to do," Mr. Martin said. "It undermines democracy because the duly elected representatives like myself can't possibly influence the decision making nearly as much as this privileged [group]." Mr. Duguay said there is nothing wrong with listening to a variety of opinions, especially if they are coming from a large group that represents a significant portion of the population and the economy. "We're not talking about undue influence, we're talking about people who should be listened to, [just as] Pat Martin should be listened to," he said. Summa Strategies vice-president Tim Powers said however that the while the CCCE is still a large voice at the public policy table, its influence has declined since its major victory in the North American Free Trade debates. "That was their high-water mark," he said. "John Manley is a very credible guy, this will certainly help them get the attention they want. Manley's experience will also help the group how best to position themselves going forward if they want to regain the glory of the late '80s." Mr. Powers said that the council is one of many influential business associations, for example the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, led by former Progressive Conservative defence minister Perrin Beatty, the Retail Council of Canada, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business and the Canadian Manufacturers Association are equally influentially and "have their own degrees of heft. No one group dominates." Moreover, he said, "Certainly with this [Conservative] government and the [former Liberal Jean] Chr?tien government 'Main Street' has had arguably more success than 'Bay Street' in pushing policy. Tom d'Aquino's skill as an advocate was building a brand and the perception of a brand that allowed him to develop an aura of influence. Depending on your audience sometimes that is more important than anything else." For his part, Mr. Martin said he fears under Mr. Manley, the group will target pensions in a negative way. "I think they've got pensions in their cross hairs and god help Canadian workers if we let them succeed," he said. "They've pretty much declared war on pensions already. In the auto crisis they tried to vilify the very notion of pensions, calling them 'legacy costs' and blaming greedy pensioners for management's own sloth and ineptitude. I think that this is likely one of Manley's key marching orders as new head honcho of the CCCE." Others, such as the lobbying insider who did not want to be named, said Mr. Manley is an "inspired choice" to lead the organization. bvongdou at hilltimes.com From shniad at sfu.ca Fri Jul 10 13:11:43 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:11:43 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] "We Bring Fear" In-Reply-To: <2095662933.950981247081721208.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <2145233693.1600671247253103642.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Mother Jones June 17, 2009 "We Bring Fear" By Charles Bowden THERE IS A MAN DRIVING FAST down a dirt road leading to the border . A rooster tail of dust marks his passage. He is very frightened and his 15-year-old son sits beside him in silence. The boy is that way?very bright, yet very quiet. They are unusually close. The father has raised him as a single parent since he was four. The father and son are fleeing to the United States. Back in their hometown of Ascensi?n, Chihuahua, men with assault rifles are searching for them. These men are soldiers in the Mexican Army and intend to kill the father, and perhaps the son, also. As the man drives toward the border crossing at Antelope Wells, New Mexico, he thinks the soldiers are ransacking his house. No one in the town will have the guts to speak up. The man knows this absolutely. His name is Emilio Guti?rrez Soto and he is a reporter and that is why he is a dead man driving. He recalls how back when Carlos Salinas was president, the Mexican Army came to this same part of northern Chihuahua, beat up a bunch of peasants, tortured prisoners, and terrorized the community under the guise of fighting drug cartels . The peasants never filed any grievances because they knew any complaints would be ignored by their government. Or they would be disappeared. This is the kind of thing the reporter has understood since childhood but does not write and publish. Like the peasants, he knows his place in the system. It is June 16, 2008, and in two days he will have his 45th birthday, should he live that long. The military has again flooded northern Mexico, ever since President Felipe Calder?n assumed office in December 2006 with a margin so razor thin that many Mexicans think he is an illegitimate president. One of his first acts was to declare a war on the nation's thriving drug industry, and his favorite tool was to be the Mexican Army, portrayed as less corrupt than the local or national police. Now some 45,000 soldiers, nearly 25 percent of the Army, are marauding all over the country, escalating the mayhem that consumes Mexico. In 2008, more than 6,000 Mexicans died in the drug violence, a larger loss than the United States has endured during the entire Iraq War . Since 2000, two dozen reporters have been officially recorded as murdered, at least seven more have vanished, and an unknown number have fled into the United States. But all numbers in Mexico are slippery, because people have so many ways of disappearing. In 2008, 188 Mexicans?cops, reporters, businesspeople?sought political asylum at US border crossings, more than twice as many as the year before. This is the wave of gore the man rides as he heads north. He has tried to avoid this harsh reality. He has been careful in his work. His publisher has told him it is better to lose a story than to take a big risk. He does not look too closely into things. If someone is murdered, he prints what the police tell him and lets it go at that. If people sell or warehouse drugs in his town, he ignores it. Nor does he inquire about who controls the drug industry in his town or anywhere else. The man driving is terrified of hitting an Army checkpoint. They are random and they are everywhere. The entire Mexican north has become a killing field. In Palomas, a nearby border town of maybe 7,500 souls, more than 40 men have already been executed in the past year, and several more have vanished in kidnappings; a mass grave was discovered in May. Some of these murders are by drug cartels. Some of these murders are by state and federal police. Some of these murders are by the Mexican Army. There are now many ways to die. The high desert is beautiful, a pan of creosote with saucers of grass in moist low spots. Here and there volcanic remnants make black marks on the Earth and there is almost no water. Almost all the rivers flowing from the Sierra Madre vanish in the desert. But it is home, the place he has spent his life. The reporter may die for committing a simple error. He wrote an accurate news story. He did not know that was dangerous because he thought the story was very small and unimportant. He was wrong and that was the beginning of all his trouble. There are two Mexicos. There is the one reported by the US press, a place where the Mexican president is fighting a valiant war on drugs, aided by the Mexican Army and the M?rida Initiative , the $1.4 billion in aid the United States has committed to the cause. This Mexico has newspapers, courts, laws, and is seen by the United States government as a sister republic. It does not exist. There is a second Mexico where the war is for drugs, where the police and the military fight for their share of drug profits , where the press is restrained by the murder of reporters and feasts on a steady diet of bribes, and where the line between the government and the drug world has never existed. The reporter lives in this second Mexico. Until very recently, he liked it just fine. In fact, he loves Mexico and has never thought of leaving. Even though he lives about 20 miles from the border, he has not bothered to cross for almost 10 years. But now, things have changed. He knows about the humanitarian treaties signed by the United States and he thinks given these commitments, he and his boy will be given asylum. He has decided to tell the authorities nothing but the truth. He has failed to realize one little fact: No Mexican reporter has ever been given political asylum. Suddenly, he sees a checkpoint ahead and there is no way to escape it. Men in uniforms pull him over. He discovers to his relief that this checkpoint is run by Mexico's migration agency, and so, maybe, they will not give him up to the Army. "Why are you driving so fast?" "I am afraid. There are people trying to kill me." "The narcos?" "No, the soldiers." "Who are you?" He hands over his press pass. "Oh, you are the one, they searched your house." "I have had problems." "Those sons of bitches do whatever they want. Go ahead. Good luck." He roars away. When he stops at the port of entry at Antelope Wells in the bootheel of New Mexico, US customs ask, as they always do, what he is bringing from Mexico. He says, "We bring fear." THE PRIEST GOES to the fiesta to christen a child. The food is lavish, as is the rancho. There are many men of power there, men who have survived the life and now live large and feast on danger. One old man is the boss and he wears a very large gold crucifix encrusted with diamonds and a giant emerald. This gleaming treasure catches the priest's eye. The padre slips out and goes to the federal police and tells them of this convocation of narcotraficantes . He is a very good source for the police because he hears confession from the men in the life and then sells this information. The police hit the fiesta. They find a lot of cocaine and a million in cash. The priest gets the crucifix as his reward. The cops turn over the rest of the loot to the country's chief drug enforcement officer at the time. Later it is revealed that this man, Javier Coello Trejo, enforces the law against some cartels, but not the Gulf cartel, which pays him millions for such discretion. Years later, a long caravan of fine pickup trucks with darkly tinted windows takes up both lanes of the highway leading into Ascensi?n. There must be 20 or 30 vehicles rumbling into the isolated community of 18,000 in the Chihuahuan desert. The town is surrounded by dying farms, many of them abandoned because of drought and the low prices that came in the wake of the North American Free Trade Agreement. The Army has seized some of these farms and squats on them. People live off a few bars, some small stores, and the drug industry. At the moment the caravan arrives, the streets are empty and no one looks out a single window. There's a store security videotape of the caravan, but it is impossible to make out any faces behind the glass. Emilio will never know whom this convoy is guarding. He will never ask. Just as the Mexican Army stationed in the town will never record its arrival. Rumors say it is Joaqu?n "El Chapo" (Shorty) Guzm?n Loera, leader of the Sinaloa cartel whom Forbes recently named the 701st richest person in the world. But to investigate such matters is a fatal decision. Emilio and I are sitting in the sun somewhere in the United States of America as he tosses out the tales of the priest and the strange caravan of fine pickup trucks. He is hiding now with a man who has family and business interests in northern Chihuahua. If it were known he sheltered Emilio, the man's relatives would be kidnapped and possibly killed, his livelihood jeopardized. As we soak up the sun, Ascensi?n is in a state of siege. Four women have just vanished and are probably murdered. In October, a parcel containing four heads was delivered to the police station. The director of the bank and his wife have been kidnapped and then returned in bad shape. Also, the bank has just been strafed by machine-gun fire. In Palomas, a town that like Ascensi?n falls within the gravitational pull of the sprawling border city of Ciudad Ju?rez, the entire police force recently resigned, forcing the police chief to seek shelter in the United States. The town is dying. Few people cross from America to shop because of the violence. There is a gray cast to the children begging in the streets that suggests malnutrition. Work has fled?the people-smuggling business has moved because of US pressure in the sector and so the town is studded with half-built or abandoned cheap lodgings for migrants heading north. Also there is an array of narcomansions whose occupants have moved on. And there are eyes everywhere. I walk down the dirt streets tailed by pickups with very darkly tinted windows. The biggest restaurant in town for tourists closes every day at 6 p.m.?get home before dark. The Mexican Army is everywhere and can be ill tempered. Last year, I was with a friend who took a photograph of soldiers in Palomas a block from the US port of entry, and they came racing at us with machine guns. In April 2008, one of the generals in command of the state held a press conference. "I know that the media are sometimes afraid of us," he said, "but they should not be afraid. I hope they will trust us." As for reports of deaths at the hands of the military, the general added, "I would like to see the reporters change their articles. Where they say, 'one more murdered person,' they should instead say, 'one less criminal.'" Reporters were also issued a common explanation by Mexico's defense department: Yes, there would almost certainly be a spate of robberies and rapes committed by men in uniform but these were to be explained as the deeds of drug traffickers disguising themselves as soldiers to embarrass the Army. Any questions? EMILIO WAS ONE of eight children born and raised in Nuevo Casas Grandes, a small Chihuahuan city set against the Sierra Madre. His father was a master bricklayer, his mother a housewife. His childhood was poverty. He always wanted to be a writer and worked on the high school paper, a weekly printed on a mimeograph machine. The Army has a post in his town. One day, a very pretty classmate named Rosa Saenz turns up, her hair and skin coated with mud. Her breasts have been sliced with blades and she has been stabbed 50 times. She has been raped, also. Emilio sees her body in the back of a car in front of the police station, a vehicle dragged in as a monument to a quest for the truth. Two of her classmates are blamed for the murder. The police smash the testicles of one. The other flees and when he returns much later, he is kind of crazy. In the end, no one is charged with the crime. But everyone in the town knows the girl was raped and murdered by the Army. And no one in the town says anything about it. Emilio is 13 years old. This is part of basic Mexican schooling: submission. I remember once being in a small town when the then president of Mexico descended like a god with an entourage and massive security. The poor fled into their shanties until it was over. The streets emptied, and when the president did a staged stroll to greet his subjects there was no one standing on the sidewalks except party hacks. Mexican literature is rich with this obliteration of public self and sequestering of private self amid the security of family. The nation's Nobel laureate, Octavio Paz, etched this trait indelibly in The Labyrinth of Solitude . Emilio emerges from high school with average grades but a sharp mind in a country where curiosity can be a fatal trait. He learns photography and when he graduates at 18, he is hired by a small paper to take pictures. Soon he is a reporter. He explains the system in simple terms. Let's say a reporter earns $100 a week. Every Monday, a man comes who represents the police, the government, the political parties, and the drug leaders. He gives each reporter a sum that is three times his actual wage. This is called the sobre, the envelope. "Ever since I was a little kid," he continues, "I listened to my parents criticize bad government. We knew it was corrupt." "Corruption at the paper," he explains, "was subtle. The politicians would win over my boss with dinners and bags of money. The reporter on the beat would sometimes get pressure from the boss not to report certain things like the bad habits of politicians, the houses they own, the girlfriends. And it was understood that you never asked hard questions. The narcos also gave out money but I was always afraid of them. They own businesses and horses, buy ads, have parties with celebrities and you cover that, they would pay you to cover that, but you never mentioned their real business." He sees his Mexico as genetically corrupt. A corrupt Aztec ruling class fused with the trash of Spain, the conquistadors. This thesis helps him face the reality around him. "In Mexico," he says, "we operate in disguise. There is one face and under that is another mask. Nothing is up-front. The publisher wishes to perpetuate the system. But if it is clear you are taking bribes, you will be fired. You must take it under the table because if you talked about it openly that would affect the image." He is entering a bar one night when he sees a local mayor leaving with some narcotraficantes. The mayor pauses by the street, drops his pants, and pisses in the gutter. Emilio writes up the incident?minus the narcos; he is not an idiot?and puts it in the paper. He is young and he does not understand the rules about propriety. The next day he is called to the mayor's office. The mayor is at a big desk with a check ledger. He says, "How much?" He wants Emilio to publish a story saying his earlier story was a lie. Emilio does not take any money. He realizes later that this is a serious error because he learns that the mayor and the publisher are very close. "I quit and take a job in radio before something bad happens." He makes one report on how the drug counselor for the local schools was fired. He wonders on the air if the officials themselves are actually clean. He soon finds out because another local mayor is listening. The mayor has just gotten out of a treatment center in El Paso for cocaine addiction. He storms down to the radio station and offers the owner 10,000 pesos to fire Emilio. The owner obliges. EMILIO MOVES from paper to paper and eventually winds up at the Ascensi?n bureau of El Diario , a daily based in nearby Ju?rez. Emilio loves politics and develops Page 1 stories by dutifully interviewing politicians and publishing their inane answers. It is a wink to the readers?much like La Jornada , a left-of-center Mexico City paper that used to publish articles bought and paid for by the Mexican government in italics. Sometimes when a leading drug figure is arrested, usually as a show to placate US agencies, he interviews them also. He is hard driving, at least until his son is born. After that, he becomes cautious because he must think of his son and not give in to the dangers of ambition. Here is what a wise man knows: that certain people?the cartel leaders, the corrupt police, the corrupt military?these things cannot be written about at all. That other people should be mentioned favorably unless they are caught in circumstances so extreme that the news cannot be suppressed. Then, the blow is softened as much as possible. Nor are investigations favored. If someone is murdered, you call the proper authorities and you print exactly what they tell you. But you don't poke around in such matters. This is the reality of Mexican reporting, where a person is inside but outside, where a person knows more than the public but can only say what is known in code and this code had better not be too clear. He has mastered, he thinks, the rules of the game. He is clean; he avoids taking bribes. But he also ignores the fact that other reporters are taking bribes. He is not looking for trouble. When top military officials say if there are any rapes and robberies they will be the fault of narcotraficantes masquerading as soldiers, well, that is the way it will be reported. He will obey those instructions for a very simple reason. For three years, Emilio has been afraid he will be murdered by the Mexican Army. He has, to his horror, committed an error. And nothing he has done in the past three years has made up for this mistake. He has ceased reporting on the Army completely. He has focused on safe things such as fighting the creation of a toxic waste facility in the town. He has apologized to various military officers and endured their tongue-lashings. Still, this cloud hangs over him. He can remember the day he blundered into this dangerous country. I AM SITTING in the Hotel San Francisco in Palomas almost four years to the day from the moment Emilio Guti?rrez Soto destroyed his life. The small restaurant has eight tables; the walls host an explosion of plastic flowers screaming yellow, red, and pink. Carved wooden mallard heads spike out as hat racks for Stetsons. Music floats through the air, Bob Dylan singing "Knockin' on Heaven's Door." In the kitchen, short, dark women chop vegetables for salsa. Their movements are very slow and their faces blank. In the lobby are murals of an imaginary Sierra Madre in an imaginary Mexico. A huge buck stands in an alpine meadow, an eagle swoops down on a lake, a caballero in a sequined suit stares with love at a beautiful se?orita. Also in the lobby is a large statue of St. Francis and in his hands and at his feet are handwritten messages and offerings left by migrants. Just five blocks away, the poor plunged through the line and headed into El Norte?but none of the notes are very recent. The river of misery has changed course for the moment. The tile floor is the color of flesh. The notes whisper of a people in flight: "Father, help us all who pass as wetbacks. Help us Our Father. Bless us all who think of You, who trust in You. And I ask You to bless and help my mother, my father and me and my brothers and sisters and all of my family. In Your hands we place our good luck to pass ALIVE. Adios Our Father." Another note says: "Please I ask You with all my heart look after and protect my husband that he pass safely. Amen." A Bible lies open and someone has dropped this plea on the page: God bless us and protect us along the way Yonathan Manuel Tomaz Yumbo Graciela Norma Olinda Guide us on a good road and protect us. As I leave the Hotel San Francisco, Johnny Cash is singing, You can run on for a long time Run on for a long time Run on for a long time Sooner or later God'll cut you down Sooner or later God'll cut you down IT BEGAN for Emilio on January 28, 2005, when six soldiers came to La Estrella Hotel, a run-down boardinghouse for migrants across the street from the Hotel San Francisco, took food off people's plates, and then robbed the customers of their money and jewelry. Emilio got tipped off and so he phoned the local police chief. He called the Army also but as is their custom they refused to answer any questions. He filed a brief article about the incident, one of three he wrote during that period noting similar actions by the Army in the area. That is how he destroyed his life. Several days later, February 8, 2005, Colonel Filadelfo Mart?nez Piedra calls Emilio at home, explains that he is "the boss," and orders him to come immediately to the Hotel Miami in downtown Ascensi?n. The colonel says, "If you don't come, we'll come looking for you at home or wherever you are." So he puts his then-11-year-old son in his truck and goes there. He notices scores of ordinary soldiers around the hotel, and two vans full of elite troops who are bodyguards for the officers. He leaves his son in the truck and walks up to the colonel. It is a very cold night. In his mind, he is thinking, "What the fuck are these cabrones up to?" Soldiers swiftly surround him. The colonel says to another officer, "Look general, the son of a whore who has written all kinds of stupidities has arrived." Then the general, Alfonso Garc?a Vega, says, "So you are the son of a whore who is lowering our prestige. You son of a fucking whore, you are denigrating us and my boss. The minister in Mexico is extremely bothered by your fucking lies, idiot." Emilio tries to form words to excuse himself but he cannot. The general is in charge of Chihuahua. He is very short and his uniform is brilliant with gold trim. Emilio is very frightened and he says that he only writes what the officials or the victims tell him. The general says, "No, you have no sources for that information. You made it up. Just how much schooling do you have, asshole?" Emilio lies, and claims two years of communication studies at a university. The general explains that Emilio lacks an education equal to his own. To have a general speak to you is not something to be desired. They can hand out death like a party favor. The general suggests he should write about drug people. Emilio says he does not know any and besides they frighten him. "So, you don't know them and you fear them," the general bristles. "You should fear us for we fuck the fucking drug traffickers, you son of a whore. I feel like putting you in the van and taking you to the mountains so you can see how we fuck over the drug traffickers, asshole." The guards surround him, he can see his son in the truck about 15 yards away, and the boy looks very frightened. Then people walking past the hotel greet Emilio and he thinks this is what saves him from a beating. He grovels, apologizes profusely to the general. "You've written idiocies three times and there shall be no fourth. You'd better not mention this meeting or you'll be sent to hell, asshole." The colonel tells him he is under surveillance "and should not fuck up." Then, he is dismissed. He gets back in his truck and his son asks what is going on. He says, "They want to kidnap me." He drives aimlessly, and finally calls his boss at the paper who tells him, "This is serious. This is a problem." He decides his only chance at safety is making the threats known. He publishes a third-person account of the incident, and files a complaint with the public safety minister in Nuevo Casas Grandes who warns him, "You better think it over carefully because it is very dangerous getting involved with the military." But he is building a paper record to try to save himself. He files a complaint against General Garc?a Vega and Colonel Mart?nez Piedra and the soldiers with the National Commission of Human Rights. Three months later the state police begin an investigation that goes nowhere. The representative of the human rights commission proposes a conciliatory act between him and the military. The proposed act is never defined and Emilio knows there will be no reconciliation. So Emilio does not write anything unseemly about the Army again; he hears no evil and sees no evil. For example, on February 13, 2008, he notes in an unbylined story that "heavily armed commandos" (Emilio now estimates a convoy of 700 men and 100 vehicles) swept the area from Palomas down to Casas Grandes. In Ascensi?n they ransack the house of Emilio's friend, a guy who runs a pizza parlor. The friend is given the ley fuga , the traditional game of the military where they let you run and if you can dodge the bullets, you live. His friend is mowed down in the street in front of his home. That night 20 people vanish from the area and only one ever returns, a Chilean engineer who is saved by his embassy. The others simply cease to exist. But then memory can be a very short-term thing here. Within an hour or two of a killing, there is no one left to describe the murder. In a day, it is a dim memory. In a few days, it is beyond recall except when talking in private to the closest friends and family. This loss of memory is not because of cowardice. It is the wisdom that comes with survival. Emilio knows that the Mexican Army is the only force capable of carrying out a coordinated operation of this kind. In the story he mentions "armed commandos" sweeping the area, a term that to savvy readers means Army and to everyone else indicates a cartel action. That is how an honest reporter tries to avoid becoming a dead reporter. He puts it out of his mind. BUT THE ARMY has a long memory. After midnight, on May 5, 2008, Emilio awakens to a loud knocking on the door of his home. Fifty soldiers raid the house. Emilio screams, "Press, the press from El Diario ," and a soldier says, "Hands up, asshole. On the ground!" They tell him they are looking for guns and drugs, and separate him from his stunned son. When they leave, the commander advises him, "Behave well and follow our suggestions." On June 14, he steps out of his house and waters his small garden of squash, cantaloupe, watermelon, and cucumbers. He has a pear tree, also an apricot tree, and three rosebushes blooming pink and red. He is going to make his son breakfast, a task he enjoys. It is a Saturday. He notices five guys in a green pickup 70 yards away that look like soldiers and they are watching him. Then, they cruise slowly past him. A while later, they come back but this time in a white vehicle. And they park and watch his house. But there is a store down the block where the soldiers come to buy cocaine and so he thinks just maybe their presence has nothing to do with him. He is entering a place he will only recognize later: denial. After all, he has behaved properly. Local drug people have offered him money not to mention the tiendas selling cocaine. He's told them, "Don't worry. You don't have to pay me. I am not going to write about them." Besides, he knows the Army and the police are both involved, so whom is he going to inform? Instead, he's picked up extra money by writing publicity releases and selling ads for the newspaper. But he knows, "The hardest part of the job is survive on the salary. That is why the sobres exist." It has been years since he completely trusted anyone he works with. He goes inside and makes machaca with eggs for his boy. He tells his son that he is going to his office and that he should keep an eye on the house. He reads the papers at his desk, then goes three blocks to the police station to talk to a drunk the police have arrested, the usual small moments of a small-town newspaper. Outside, the green pickup is back. He leaves his office around noon and stops by a friend's welding shop. This time a white vehicle is trailing him. Now he is worried, so he and his friend go to a bodega, buy some beers, and return to the shop. There is a place nearby where people buy cocaine and he sees a soldier from the green pickup go in there and then come out. Emilio goes home, takes his son to church, and returns to his friend's shop. After a while he goes out to the bodega again and now the white car is back. Upset, he calls his friend, and tells him to come around to the back of the bodega. He escapes and his friend takes him back to his house. After church, his son heads to the plaza with friends. Emilio stays at his friend's and around eight o'clock a woman calls and says, "Emilio, I have to see you right now. Where are you? I can't talk over the phone." She comes over and tells him she is dating a soldier and the military people all talk about how they are going to kill him. She is crying. She says, "Emilio, you have to leave now. They are going to kill you." Emilio and the woman go to collect his son, then flee to a small ranch about six miles west of Ascensi?n. He is terrified. Later that night a friend takes him to his house. He wears a big straw hat, slips low in the seat. He sneaks into the house and gets vital documents. All day Sunday Emilio tries to think of a way to save his life and comes up with only one answer: flight. No matter where he goes in Mexico he will have to find a job and use his identity cards and the Army will track him down. He now knows they will never forgive his stories from 2005, that he cannot be redeemed. He tells his boy, "We are not going back to our house. The soldiers may kill me and I don't want to leave you alone." Monday morning he drives north very fast. He takes all his legal papers so that he can prove who he is. He expects asylum from the government of the United States. WHAT HE GETS is this: He is immediately jailed, as is his son. They are separated. He is taken to El Paso and placed in a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center run by Deco, Inc. He is deloused, given a blue jumpsuit, and set to work scrubbing floors for a dollar a day. He is denied bond, and no hearing is scheduled. Had he entered the United States illegally and then asked for asylum, he would be eligible for bond. But since he entered legally and asked for asylum at the port of entry he is kept in prison because the Department of Homeland Security declares that Emilio has failed to prove that he "would not pose a danger to the community." He remembers those moments he loved: making his son's breakfast, washing his son's clothes. Now he can do nothing for him. Emilio cries a lot. He remembers all those bribes, all those sobres, he refused for years. He thinks, "If I had taken bribes I wouldn't be here in prison." Instead, he is surrounded by 800 prisoners?Africans, Middle Eastern people, Indians, Russians, and of course Central Americans and Mexicans, swept up in the increasing ICE raids. "The Mexicans," he says, "are treated the worst. The staff curses us and calls us rats, narcos, and criminals. The work of the prison is done by the Mexicans and Central Americans. It is ironic?the illegals are arrested for working at real jobs in the US and then they get put in prison and are made to work for nothing." For a month, he cannot speak to his son. He is tormented by the fear that older boys might molest him. The prison officials refuse to tell him anything. Finally, he gets a 10-minute phone call. The boy says he is doing okay. Emilio tells him they will not be able to go back to Mexico. He can sense his son is bitter; he has lost his home, his friends, even his dog. Emilio wants to hug him and kiss him as he did each day at home. The prison is haunted by a Cuban ghost. Twenty years before, it is said, the man hung himself with a bedsheet. And now at night, sometimes all the showers come on, or the toilets are emptied of water. Prisoners say that security cameras see the Cuban in the library in the middle of the night reading. There are sounds of a guitar playing. The ghost is a message that tells Emilio what the prison can do to a man. Emilio's lawyer explains that asylum will be difficult, but allowing himself to be deported back to Mexico will be fatal. The lawyer says, "Maybe the United States does not want you but we know Mexico does not want you. Think of your son." He does. And after a few months, Emilio's son is released to friends in El Paso. He tells his father not to give up. He tells the press, "I really miss him and I miss my home too, but for me, my dad is more important. Because if something happens to him, I think that I would die. Because he is the only person I have and I love him more than anyone in the world." At the end of January 2009, nine days after President Obama is sworn in, Emilio Guti?rrez Soto is suddenly released. When they call him to the office, he assumes he is being shipped to another prison in the American gulag. His lawyer also had no indication of the release. He is reunited with his son. His first hearing is postponed, and it could be again, because the US government loves postponing such hearings in the hope that migrants will give up and go back home. Emilio cannot work because the US government has yet to give him a work permit. But Emilio is a creature of hope. He has faith in the new administration because "the race Obama belongs to has been enslaved. I think he shares this history of discrimination with Latinos. And he will realize the huge human rights abuses in Mexico. There are thousands of people like me here. There are thousands of abandoned homes in Ju?rez alone. If I am sent back to Mexico, I might live a day or a few years. The Army may kill me immediately or wait for my case to grow cold." In the meantime, Emilio sits in the sun and tries to teach me Mexico as it is today. "Mexicans," he explains, "know the Army is a bunch of brutes. But what is going on now is a coup d'etat by the Army. The president is illegitimate. The Army has installed itself. They have become the government. They are installed in all the state governments. They control the municipal police. They are everywhere but the ministry of education?after all, they are too illiterate to run that. The president has his hands tied and he has tied them." But there is another way of looking at the facts on that ground that is un-Mexican with its fetish of a pyramid of power going back to the Aztec emperors, and un-American with our conviction that every place is kind of like our nation only with unsafe water and spicy food. Maybe, the center no longer holds. In the last 10 years, since the death of Amado Carrillo Fuentes, head of the Ju?rez cartel and first among equals in the drug world, the industry has fragmented into independent baronies and smaller outlaw bands. Since the collapse of the PRI, the ruling party that lasted more than 70 years, Mexico's civil society has also fragmented, with power leaving the capital and recombining with the narcogangs. The Army, the largest gang, is not attempting to seize the bankrupt and withering state, but grabbing market share in a place whose two largest industries are supplying American drug habits and exporting millions of people. Cartels once imposed constraint of trade. But like soda-pop CEOs, the generals now angle to increase their share of the skyrocketing domestic drug market. And of course, the United States finances this move, via the M?rida Initiative, in the delusion that it is shoring up a republic south of the Rio Grande. We are staring into the future but using old prescription glasses. Murderous cholos on the corner in Ju?rez and troops marauding and robbing in the disguise of a Mexican drug war may be writing the future while President Obama and President Calder?n wander in their bunkers of power, and cling to the fantasies of the ancien r?gime. CARLOS SPECTOR , Emilio's lawyer, is a man on fire. He is 55, red haired, big, El Paso born, a Mexican American Jew. He has built an immigration practice. His childhood was divided between El Paso and Ju?rez. In his 20s, he moved to Israel under the Law of Return and lived on a kibbutz. But eventually, the border claimed him. He has been looking for a case like Emilio's for years, a case of a clean Mexican reporter seeking political asylum from the government of the United States. Now he thinks he has it and that he can make American law face the reality of Mexico. To gain political asylum, applicants must prove they have been persecuted or have a well-founded fear of persecution because of their political opinion or an "immutable characteristic" such as race, religion, or nationality. When it comes to people fleeing Mexico, the United States has quibbled with claims of immutability, telling Mexican cops running from the cartels that they should just stop being a cop, move to another part of Mexico, become a plumber. But Emilio can't hide from the Army. Those three stories he filed in 2005, the opinions therein, they created an immutable impression on the Army. After that he apologized. He ceased writing anything bad about the Army even when he witnessed them killing people in his town in February 2008. None of this helped. When the Army swept the area again a few months later, they came after him. Spector says, "The concept of revenge is part of the Mexican political system. Emilio has insulted the institution and it has an incredible memory. The only thing worse he could do, he has done also?to leave the country and denounce it from the US side of the border." Almost a month after his release, on February 20, 2009, Emilio held a press conference at the University of Texas-El Paso with Jorge Luis Aguirre, the creator of a website of gossip and news in Ju?rez who has also fled for his life, and Gustavo de la Rosa Hickerson, the supervising attorney for the State Committee of Human Rights in Chihuahua. They are forming an organization, Periodistas Mexicanos en Exilio, Mexican Journalists in Exile (PEMEXX?a play on PEMEX, the national oil company). They all say the same thing: that the Mexican Army is terrorizing the nation and killing people out of hand. Aguirre was on his way to the funeral of a reporter murdered in Ju?rez when he received a call on his cell phone saying he would be next. He promptly fled to El Paso. One reporter at the press conference asks him if he will also apply for asylum, and he answers that he has to think carefully about it since Emilio was jailed for seven months for doing so. And then Spector says, "This is precisely the reason we formed this organization. Jorge's fear is legitimate. This was part of the Bush administration's Guantanamization of the refugee process. By locking people up, especially Mexican asylum applicants, and making them, through a war of attrition, give up their claims. I've represented ten cops seeking asylum and not one of them lasted longer than two months. Emilio lasted seven months. On the basis of he had his son, and he knew he was going to be killed. There was nowhere that he could go." EMILIO GUTI?RREZ SOTO and his attorney Carlos Spector sit inside the sanctuary of the United States but the violence of Mexico never lets up. On Tuesday, March 3, four Mexican soldiers visit a friend of Carlos' in Ju?rez and hand him a photograph. He does not yet know it, but at that instant, Carlos moves from knowing Mexico to feeling its breath on the back of his neck. In the photo, Carlos is wearing a blue suit and entering the El Paso County Courthouse. The photograph was taken the previous Thursday. The soldiers say, "Your friend is a criminal and we are looking for him. Tell him to get ahold of us." Outside, more men wait in a Hummer. Carlos gets the call from his friend and falls into his new life. He spent half his childhood living in Ju?rez. He moves freely and easily in two worlds. And now this seamless web is slashed in half. He must think, he decides. So he drives to one of El Paso's many Starbucks and has a cup of coffee. He looks out the window and notices two Ford Expeditions full of men and then he remembers them behind him in traffic as he drove over. He leaves and in his rearview mirror he sees the men in the Expeditions. He executes a sharp U and suddenly he is behind the Fords. They bolt but not before he sees the Chihuahua license plates. He is learning new facts. His problem is representing Emilio Guti?rrez Soto. And his problem is real. His friend in Ju?rez flees with his family to a distant part of Mexico. And Carlos can no longer have the life he once enjoyed. He fortifies his house; he starts his car by remote control, standing at a distance. "It feels like an out-of-body experience," he says. He has joined his client and they live in a place beyond courts and laws and the illusions of the United States of America. He has become a Mexican, body and soul. Emilio says, "Carlos is now an exile, also." From gmeyerson at triad.rr.com Fri Jul 10 17:11:40 2009 From: gmeyerson at triad.rr.com (gregory meyerson) Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2009 19:11:40 -0400 Subject: [R-G] iran Message-ID: <6788689346464630f389ee65245eab9c@triad.rr.com> The Tragedy of the Left's Discourse on Iran By Saeed Rahnema View Online The electoral coup and the subsequent uprising and suppression of the revolting voters in Iran have prompted all sorts of analyses in Western media from both the Right and the Left. The Right, mostly inspired by the neo-con ideology and reactionary perspectives, dreams of the re-creation of the Shah's Iran, looks for pro-American/pro-Israeli allies among the disgruntled Iranian public, and seeks an Eastern European type velvet revolution. As there is very little substance to these analyses, they are hardly worth much critical review; and one cannot expect them to try to understand the complexities of Iranian politics and society. As for the Left in the West, confusions abound. The progressive left, from the beginning openly supported the Iranian civil society movement. ?ZNet, Campaign for Peace and Democracy, Bullet, and some other media provided sound analysis to help others understand the complexities of the Iranian situation (see, for example, here).? Some intellectuals signed petitions along with their Iranian counterparts, while others chose to remain silent. But disturbingly, like in the situations in Gaza or Lebanon, where Hamas and Hezbollah uncritically became champions of anti-imperialism, for some other people on the left, Ahmadinejad has become a champion because of his seemingly firm rhetoric against Israel and the US. Based on a crude class analysis, he is also directly or indirectly praised by some for his supposed campaign against the rich and imagined support of the working poor. These analyses also undermine the genuine movement within the vibrant Iranian civil society, and denigrate their demands for democracy, and political and individual freedoms as middle class concerns, instigated by western propaganda (a view shared by Khamenei, Ahmadinejad and his supporters). MRZine and Islamists The most bizarre case is the on-line journal MRZine, the offshoot of Monthly Review, which in some instances even publicized the propaganda of the Basij (Islamic militia) hooligans and criminals. The website has given ample room to pro-Islamist contributors; while they can hardly be considered to be on the left, their words are appreciated by the leftists editing the site. One writer claims that the battle in Iran is about "welfare reform and private property rights," and that Ahmadinejad "has enraged the managerial class," as he is "the least enthusiastic about neo-liberal reforms demanded by Iran's corporate interests," and that he is under attack by "Iran's fiscal conservative candidates." The author conveniently fails to mention that there are also much "corporate interests" controlled by Ahmadinejad's friends and allies in the Islamic Guards and his conservative cleric supporters, and that he has staunchly followed "privatization" policies by handing over state holdings to his cronies. During the 1979 revolution, the late Tudeh Party, under the direction of the Soviet Union, was unsuccessfully digging deep and looking hard for "non-capitalists" among the Islamic regime's elements to follow a "non-capitalist path" and a "socialist orientation." Now it seems that MRZine magazine is beginning a new excavation for such a breed among Islamists, not understanding that all factions of the Islamic regime have always been staunch capitalists. Azmi Bishara's imagined Iran In "Iran: An Alternative Reading" (reproduced in MRZine), Azmi Bishara argues that Iran's totalitarian system of government differs from other totalitarian systems in two definitive ways: Firstly, it has incorporated "such a high degree [of] constitutionally codified democratic competition in the ruling order and its ideology." Bishara does not explain however that these "competitions" are just for the insider Islamists, and all others, including moderate Muslims or the wide spectrum of secular liberals and the left are excluded by the anti-democratic institutions within the regime. The second differentiation Bishara makes is that "... the official ideology that permeates institutions of government ... is a real religion embraced by the vast majority of the people." He is right if he means the majority of Iranians are Muslim and Shi'i, but it is wrong to assume that all are religious and share the same obscurantist fundamentalist version as those in power. He also fails to recognize the existence of a large number of secular people in Iran, one of the highest percentages among Muslim-majority countries. He praises "such tolerance of political diversity," "tolerance of criticism," and "peaceful rotation of authority" in Iran. One wonders if our prominent Palestinian politician is writing about an imaginary Iran, or the real one. Could it be that Bishara has not heard of the massacres of thousands of political prisoners, chain killings of intellectuals, and silencing of the most able and progressive voices in the country? Doesn't he know that a non-elected 12-member conservative body (The Guardianship Council) only allows a few trusted individuals to run for President or the Parliament, and that the real 'authority,' the Supreme Leader, does not rotate, and is selected by an all-Mullah Assembly of Experts for life? The unelected Leader leads the suppressive apparatuses of the state, and since 1993 has created his own "Special Guards of Velayat" (NOPO) for quick suppressive operations. So much for tolerance and democracy. Bishara undermines the genuine massive reform movement and claims that "expectations regarding the power of the reform trend ... were created by Western and non-Western media opposed to Ahmadinejad...." Had Bishara done his homework, he would have learned about the massive campaigns led by large number of womens' organizations, the youth, teachers and select groups of workers. He warns us of "elitism" and of having an "arrogant classist edge," and implicitly dismisses these movements of "middle class backgrounds" and claims that "these people are not the majority of young people but rather the majority of young people from a particular class." It is unclear on what basis he makes the assertion that most of the youth from poor sectors of the society support Ahmadinejad. James Petras' message: freedom is not "vital"! One of the most shocking pieces is by the renowned controversial Left writer and academic, James Petras. In his piece "Iranian Elections: 'The Stolen Elections' Hoax," Petras conclusively denies any wrongdoings in the Iranian elections and confidently goes into the detail of the demographics of some small Iranian towns, with no credibility or expertise in the subject. The abundant facts pointing to massive electoral fraud speak for themselves, so I will not waste time refuting his evidence and 'sources,' but will rather focus on his analysis. The most stunning aspect of the Petras piece is the total absence of any sympathy for all the brave women, youth, teachers, civil servants and workers who have been so vigorously campaigning for democracy, human rights, and political freedoms, risking their lives by spontaneously pouring into the streets when they realized they were cheated. Instead we see sporadic references to "comfortable upper class enclave," "well-dressed and fluent in English" youth, etc.? Women are not mentioned even once, nor is there any recognition of their amazing struggle against the most obscurantist policies such as stoning, polygamy, and legal gender discriminations. Neither is there any reference to trade union activists, writers, and artists, many of whom are in jail. Instead, the emphasis is on crude class analysis: "[t]he demography of voting reveals a real class polarization pitting high income, free market oriented capitalist individuals against working class, low income, community based supporters of a 'moral economy' in which usury and profiteering are limited by religious precepts." Petras could not be more misguided and misleading. Of course this would fit well within the perceived traditional class conflict paradigm (with an added touch of imagined Islamic economics!). However, the reality is far more complex.? The Ayatollahs on both sides are "market-oriented capitalists," so are the leaders of the Islamic Guards, who run industries, control trade monopolies, and are major land developers. There are also workers on both sides. Failed economic policies, the rising 30% inflation rate, growing unemployment and the suppression of trade unions turned many workers against Ahmadinejad. The communiqu?of Workers of Iran Khodrow (auto industry) against the government's heavy-handed tactics, the long strikes and confrontations of the workers of Tehran Public Transport and the participation of workers in the post-election revolts, are all examples of opposition to Ahmadinejad by workers. It would also be simplistic to talk of the Islamists' 'moral economy,' when both sides have been involved in embezzlement and corruption, much of which was exposed during the debates fiasco in which they exposed each other. On the basis of his limited understanding of the situation, Petras declares that "[t]he scale of the opposition's electoral deficit should tell us how out of touch it is with its own people's vital concerns." Firstly, like many others he cannot distinguish among different groups and categories of this "opposition," and worse, is telling Iranian women, youth, union activists, intellectuals and artists, that their demands and "concerns" for political and individual freedoms, human rights, democracy, gender equity and labour rights are not "vital."? It seems he's telling the Iranian left: rofagha (comrades), if you are being tortured and rotting in prisons, your books are burned and you are expelled from your profession, don't worry, because the "working class" is receiving subsidies and handouts from the government! Professor Petras and those like him would not be as forgiving if their own freedoms and privileges were at issue.? The left has historically been rooted in solidarity with progressive movements, women's rights and rights for unions and its voice has been first and foremost a call for freedom. The voices that we hear today from part of the Left are tragically reactionary. Siding with religious fundamentalists with the wrong assumptions that they are anti-imperialists and anti-capitalists, is aligning with the most reactionary forces of history. This is a reactionary left, different from the progressive left which has always been on the side of the forces of progress. Zizek also misses an important point In a much admired and distributed piece, Slavoj Zizek, the prominent voice of the new left,? refers to versions of events in Iran. Zizek explains that "Moussavi supporters... see their activity as the repetition of the 1979 Khomeini revolution, as the return to its roots, the undoing of the revolution's later corruption." He adds "[w]e are dealing with a genuine popular uprising of the deceived partisans of the Khomeini revolution," "'the return of the repressed' of the Khomeini revolution." Zizek does not differentiate between the "partisans of Khomeini" during the 1979 revolution, and the non-religious, secular elements, both liberals and Left, who actually started the revolution and in the absence of other alternatives, accepted Khomeini's leadership. Lack of recognition of this reality, that sometimes draws us to despair, is a big mistake. Along the same line, Zizek, wrongly attributes all of today's movement to support for Moussavi: "Moussavi ... stands for the genuine resuscitation of the popular dream which sustained the Khomeini revolution." On this basis he concludes that "the 1979 Khomeini revolution cannot be reduced to a hard line Islamist takeover." To substantiate his point, Zizek refers to the "incredible effervescence of the first year of the revolution...." In fact much of the 'effervescence' of the first year, or before the hostage taking at the American Embassy, was because of the actions of the non-partisans of Khomeini; from the workers councils movement, to confrontations of Fedais and other left organizations in Kurdistan and in Gonbad, to the women's and university-based movements. It was a period when Khomeini and his supporters had not consolidated their power. After the hostage crisis and beginning of the Iran-Iraq war "the Islam establishment" took over. All these draws Zizek to conclude that "what this means is that there is genuine liberating potential in Islam." Zizek does not recognize that Moussavi is a conservative Islamist, and this "liberating potential" can hardly be applied to him. For sure, there exists a new breed of Muslim intellectuals, the likes of Mohamad Shabestari, Mohsen Kadivar, Reza Alijani, and Hassan Eshkevari, who believe in the separation of religion and state, and can be the champions of such liberating potentials, but definitely not the likes of Khomeini and Moussavi.???? There is no doubt that the Iranian 1979 revolution is an unfinished business and its main demands for democracy and political freedoms, and social equity have remained unfulfilled. But these were not Khomeini's demands, in the same manner that not all today's demands are those of Moussavi. What is happening in Iran is a spontaneous, ingenious and independent revolt by a people frustrated with thirty years of obscurantist tyrannical religious rule, triggered by electoral fraud but rooted in more substantial demands.? Much to the dismay of the clerical regime and their supporters inside and outside the country, the ever expanding Iranian civil society brilliantly seized the moment of the election to take strong steps forward. They have no illusions about the Islamist regime, or about their own capabilities. Their strategy is to gradually and non-violently replace the Islamic regime and its hegemony with a secular democratic one. This is a hugely significant, delicate and protracted confrontation.? It is essential that they get the wide-ranging effective support from the left in the West so that they don't fall prey to the misleading conception of the left not having concerns for democracy and civil liberties. Saeed Rahnema is Professor of Political Science at York University, Canada ? And now, the second one... Iran's Revolution By Mehrdad Samadzadeh View Online The massive protest movement that erupted in the wake of Iran's presidential election on June 12 took many by surprise. The vivacity and vigor with which millions of people took to the street to oppose the allegedly fraudulent re-election of President Mahmud Ahmadinejad is unprecedented in the entire history of the Islamic regime. Whether the charges of voter fraud as claimed by Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi, the other presidential contenders, are true or false are immaterial. What is relevant is that the controversy surrounding the election has given vent to a deep-seated popular resentment which is unlikely to disappear any time soon. For one thing, the movement which has taken shape around Mousavi, the reformist and pragmatic candidate, shows the potential to take on a broader dimension. It is against this current that soon after the election a statement issued by Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps warned: "?the argument over the election and the number of votes and the winner, have only been a pretext for generating insecurity and riot." There is some truth in what the statement reveals in so far as the words ?insecurity' and' riot' are translated as manifestations of a popular will for a major transformation in the country's political structure. This was echoed in one of the slogans chanted during the street demonstrations: "Mousavi bahaneh ast, hokomat neshaneh ast" (Mousavi is a pretext; the regime itself is the target). To be sure, Mousavi's promise of reform on the cultural front galvanized a large section of the population, especially women and the middle-class professionals, who have been chafing under thirty years of repressive clerical rule. But the initiative for so widespread a movement was undoubtedly theirs, with the added incentive that the worsening economic conditions in recent years have witnessed an unemployment rate of 20 per cent for male university graduates and 40 per cent for their female counterparts. By thus rallying behind Mousavi, the disenchanted middle-class led by its youth created an historic moment to press for change. It is this popular initiative that in the immediate aftermath of the election led to a national uproar, a situation which was beyond what Mousavi could envisage. As one protester told the Financial Times in a rather lighthearted manner: "Poor Mousavi, we took the easel away from his hands and gave him a gun". Today's Iran, with a nation in turmoil, is reminiscent of the revolutionary upheavals of the 1978-79 that brought down the Shah's regime, a phenomenon that has led many observers to wonder if the country is at the threshold of yet another revolution. This specter of revolution gains currency in light of the fact that the slogans on the streets of Tehran and other major cities have been directly targeting Ayatollah Khamenei, the supreme leader, who in his Friday prayer on June 19 almost unequivocally endorsed Mahmud Ahmadinejad's presidency. Rahbar-i ma ghateleh velayatesh bateleh (our leader is a murderer and his leadership is void) is now one of the main slogans chanted on the rooftops and on the streets throughout Iran. If unabated, the ongoing popular unrest could expand into a formidable political movement capable of putting an end to the Islamic regime altogether. Yet, others fear that with the intensification of government crackdown and the decline in revolutionary zeal the country may plunge into an abyss of political repression. The detention of hundreds of reformists, religious and political figures alike, and the closure of the dissident newspapers followed by the mass arrest of ordinary citizens in the days after the mass protest point to this direction. This is further indicated in a repeated call on the part of the political right for the arrest of Mousavi on charges of conspiracy. The most daunting of all came from Hossein Shariatmadari, editor-in-chief of the influential Kayhan newspaper and the supreme leader's media representative. In his editorial on Saturday July 4 he relentlessly lambasted both Mousavi and Mohammad Khatami for acting as ?America's fifth column' and ?committing horrible crimes', including ?the killings of innocent people' and ?causing riots'. He then went on to call for their trial upon arrest "in an open court in front of the people's eyes". Such threats may serve as a warning sign that preparations are well underway for a wave of Stalinist-style purge and the formation of a police state in which the ruling elite is none other than the supreme leader surrounded by a handful of top military commanders. Whatever the outcome, it all depends on how the balance of power on the levels of popular and elite politics is played out in the days or months ahead. This is a crucial factor in any assessment of the current political crisis in Iran. For, beneath the crisis lies a class war which is fought on cultural and ideological fronts. On one side of it, there are the ruling clerics who by virtue of their leading role in the 1979 Islamic Revolution have been transformed into oligarchs, thanks to their monopoly over the state and economy. On the other side, there is the defiant middle-class with women and the youth in the forefront venting out their frustration against a system that has denied them their basic rights and yet failed to deliver what the revolution stood for. The young men and women who have poured into the streets echo the voice of a new generation of middle-class which increasingly finds it difficult to reconcile theocracy with its social aspirations. They belong to the age of modern communication technology with secularly inspired demands that directly threaten to undermine the theological base of the current Iranian oligarchy upon which their claim to political legitimacy rests. This is precisely why the intransigent ruling clerics represented by the supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei and Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, the ideological architect of ?The Just Islamic Government', have been highly reluctant to concede to such demands, simply because any concession of this sort would mark the beginning of their demise. Yet, what we are witnessing in Iran is not a class war in its conventional sense. The power struggle between the competing factions of the clerical establishment over the nature of the Islamic government on the one hand, and the cultural divide between the Western-educated middle class and the religiously inclined lower-middle class and the poor on the other complicate the situation. While the middle class has the blessing of many moderate and disenchanted clerics outside the government, the power elite has the backing of many urban poor who make up the core of Ahmadinejad's electoral support. Given the deployment of the social forces in the equation between the two warring camps, it is unlikely that one could easily oust the other. Certainly, the state's apparatus of repression, including the die-hard supporters of Ahmadinejad, may find it increasingly difficult to stop the rising tide of a movement set off by a deep-seated hatred for the totalitarian nature of the Islamic regime. There is a limit to what violence can achieve, for in the end it will prove counter-productive, as the revolutionary experience of 1978-79 has shown. There are already reports indicating that support for Ahmadinejad is diminishing as fresh news of government brutalities against the detainees are spread. On the other hand, the cry for freedom by the middle-class has its own limitations to successfully lead a revolutionary movement. It has little to offer to the balk of the urban poor. As a Financial Times editorial noted on June 15, "Change for the poor means food and jobs, not a relaxed dress code or mixed recreation." Insensitivity to such concerns by the reform movement has given Ahmadinejad the upper hand to manipulate the working poor with his right-wing populist agenda. His self-projection as the protector of the poor and his concept of ?moral economy' versus free market were for the most part propagandist tools which only aim to undermine his political opponents. His ruthless suppression of organized worker unions and his pursuit of policies designed to privative important sectors of the economy for the sole benefit of the elite Revolutionary Guards Corps and the security officials speak for themselves. The artfulness of the reform leaders in combating this right-wing agenda will help neutralize if not completely win over a good section of the impoverished masses who are often incited to violence by the religious right against those who are seen as defiling the faith. This is of immense importance in the creation of a culture of resistance that brings people together for a common cause. Certainly, the poor and the underclass do not necessarily share a single political ideology. They too have an inherent desire for democratic rights, and are as such disposed to secular ideological influences which embrace social justice. Some raise doubt as to whether Mousavi is capable of playing such a unifying role. He may or may not. But the left-leaning intellectuals with a vision of social justice could extend their hands to their worse off compatriots by including their grievances in their program of action. After all, the Iranian middle-class has history on its side. Its demands, limited as they are, represent the will of a nation that looks forward to a society in which each and every section of its population will have an equal right. It is this dynamic aspect of the current movement that has led many unionized workers like the union of the autobus drivers in Tehran to join forces with the rest. The political assertion of the middle-class has also had its impact on the nature of the elite politics. It is for the most part seen in the deepening rift in the clerical establishment, a rift that has undeniably confronted the Islamic state with a crisis of legitimacy. While the hard line clerics who wield the state power are on the path to lose their legitimacy by further allying themselves with the military and security forces, their reformist opponents seeks theirs in voicing the popular sentiment. To a lesser degree, this latter movement is also true of some pragmatic clerics from within the conservative order. Sensing that their wealth and power are at stake with the collapse of the regime, they are on an expedition to restore the legitimacy of the Islamic state by persistently trying to forge a compromise between the two factions. In their effort to preserve the status quo, the go-between pragmatists are equally prompted by a fear that they too might be the target of a systematic purge, once the hard liners take full control. Their self-motive notwithstanding, the course of action pursued by the conservative pragmatists has distinctly brought them closer to the reform camp. Rafsanjani's campaign among the influential clerics of Qum soon after the election for the formation of a national reconciliation government, though unsuccessful, may serve as an indication that he cast in his lot with Mousavi. This would have meant a setback for the supreme leader, since the proposed government was to be entrusted with the task of overseeing a new election to be held within six months or a year. Likewise, in his recent visit to the families of those detained, while still urging for unity, Rafsanjani broke the silence by telling them of some sinister plots which have resulted in the current state of affairs. The announcement on June 29 by the Guardian Council that dismissed the charges of vote riggings has not necessarily brought a closure to the crisis surrounding the election. Nor has it dissuaded Mousavi to advance his political campaign, despite mounting pressures from various centers of power to isolate him. In fact, in a 25-page document released on Saturday July 4, Mousavi reiterated his refusal to accept the election result as he detailed specific irregularities and abuses carried out both before and during the election. Its repercussion was serious enough to draw the attention of the Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qum, the country's most influential body of clergy who in a statement issued on the same day not only denounced the re-election of Ahmadinejad as illegitimate, but also went so far as to reprimand the supreme leader for failing to adequately investigate complaints of vote riggings. The statement also strongly condemned the government's use of violence against peaceful protesters that resulted in the killings of 20 people and the arrest of countless others. Finally, it urged other clerics to speak out, and demanded the immediate release of all those detained in weeks past. Although, this body of independent clerics did not favor any one particular candidate, the message it delivered certainly placed it on the side of the reform movement. In the meantime, the chorus of Allah-o Akbar (Good is Great) continues to be heard from the rooftops in the middle of nights throughout Tehran and several other cities. In retrospect, this was a powerful slogan that ushered in the downfall of the Shah's regime. It now seems as if the chanting of Allah-o Akbar portends the demise of the very regime it once brought to power. It has a different sound and a different connotation; it is directed against Allah Himself. This clearly is a moment of disenchantment in contemporary history of Iran which is far more significant than what happened in 1979. Then it was a revolution looking backward even as it rid the masses of a truly oppressive regime and gave them a sense of national dignity. In contrast, the one we are now experiencing is a forward looking movement with an altogether different sense of national dignity. Painful as it may seem it is the only path humanity has open to it if only it must do away with all forms of authoritarian ideologies that privilege one section of society over all the rest. What seems very clear both then and now is the inability of the clergy to meaningfully engage with modernity in the specific context of Iran. The contradictions inherent in this engagement must surface sooner or later, and nowhere is this more vividly expressed than the kind of transformations that have occurred within the women population in Iranian society. The conditions of women throughout Islamic societies have often drawn severe criticism from feminist and women rights groups both in the West and the Islamic societies. One of the most spectacle changes that one witnesses in Iranian society over the past few decades is the increasing number of women who have availed of education. So much so that in today's Iran there is in fact a female intelligentsia that has decided to stand up for its freedoms and rights. There is all likelihood that a right wing backlash would make such women its first targets. The killing of Neda Agha Soltan may well be seen as a symbolic manifestation of such a backlash, a trend that had actually begun with the election of Ahmadinejad in 2005. One could hope that there is enough courage and support from all quarters to help the women's movement to resist the hidden patriarchal oppression of the conservatives often dressed up as religious diktats. After all, the next Iranian revolution belongs to women who alongside men will bring down the current authoritarian regime in Iran. It will be a color revolution no doubt, but one tainted with blood. Finally, the crowd in the coming revolution will consist of the same social forces which were present during the Constitutional Revolution of 1905-1909 and the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Each one is drawn to the revolutionary movement for its own specific reason and each try to stamp its own brand on it. As usual, there will be opportunists, defectors, foreign collaborators mixed with the crown. But the crowd for the most part are millions men and women, old and young, who love the revolution, even if it does not love them back. Toronto, July 2009 Mehrdad F. Samadzadeh ? And now, the third piece... Ahmedinajad and the anti-imperialism of fools By Farooq Sulehria View Online A columnist in the Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv told his readers on the day of election in Iran: "If you have friends in Iran, try to convince them to vote for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today. There is no one who will serve Israel's PR interests better than him." (12 June 2009) It seems Israelis haven't many Iranian friends. Or perhaps Israeli advice wasn't heeded. Hence election procedures were doctored and results slightly engineered, but not in view of Israel's PR interests. The holy rigging on June 12 was a celestial act to stave off Big Satan. This was nothing new?except for the mass demonstrations across Iran that followed. Ironically, the mass mobilizations have troubled some left progressives more than the Ayatollahs themselves. Declaring the mass mobilization a CIA-backed "color revolution," these Shari-progressives have sided with Mahmood Ahmedinejad. After all, he is an anti-American, anti-Israel--hence anti-imperialist. This over-simplified anti-imperialist description of Mahmood Ahmedinejad--based on purposely sensational statements--does not take into account: 1. That Ahmedinejad's re-election is not a break but a continuation of the regime. In Mohammad Khatami (president from 1999-2005), the Iranian regime found its Niktia Khrushchev. Ahmedinejad proved himself Iran's Leonid Brezhnev, who rehabilitated Joseph Stalin (though with one difference. Brezhnev rehabilitated Stalin?-minus the purges. Ahmedinejad reimposed the restrictions eased under Khatami's regime). ?? 2. That the Iranian regime's opposition to Israel is mere hypocrisy is historically self evident. Most blatant was the arms deal Iran contracted with Israel, behind the back of the Palestinians, during Iraq-Iran war. Support to Hezbollah or Hamas, reflects the regional political milieu. Support for Hezbollah and many other Shia groups (TNFJ in Pakistan for instance) is based on sectarian grounds. Hamas is an exception owing to a lack of viable Shia project in Palestine. Thirdly, owing to the strong solidarity prevalent across the Muslim world, every Muslim dictator vows to liberate "Palestinian brothers." Yet the Iranian government showed little concern for Afghani refugees. Badly treated for two decades in Iran, they were then forcibly expelled. Ironically, but justifiably, the Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv quoted a foreign ministry official's description of Ahmadinejad as "the best thing that ever happened to us." 3. That Iran lent tactical support to the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan (in order to rid itself of the hostile, anti-Shia Taliban on its eastern border) and Iraq (to get rid of arch-enemy Saddam Hussein), hardly moves of an anti-imperialist government. True, it was during the Mohammad Khatami's presidency that the USA occupied these countries, but this policy of collaboration has continued during Ahmedinejad's period. 4. That the Ayatollahs (along with the House of Saud, which supported and promoted Wahabist groups), by fostering and patronizing Shia groups in other Muslim countries, have divided the Muslim world along sectarian lines, thus undercutting working-class and resistance struggles. In fact this religious sectarianism has weakened the anti-imperialist forces. 5. That sections of left are now finding radical aspects about the Ayatollahs is recent. When this regime was established, the left all across the world was united in declaring it a reactionary regime. For the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, both the USSR and the USA constituted infidel enemies. 6. That the economic policies of this regime, like that of the pro-US Saudi dictatorship, serve the interests of imperialism. Iran applied for the WTO in 1996' talks started in 2005. Coincidently, Saudi Arabia became a WTO member in 2005. Not merely is Ahmedinejad's anti-Americanism, anti-Israel policy highly questionable but declaring him an anti-imperialist blatantly trivializes anti-imperialism. Anti-imperialism stands for -- as anti-imperialism should -- liberation. It is liberation for all the exploited, from all sorts of exploitation. Anti-imperialism includes national liberation, women's emancipation, democratization, political and economic empowerment, respect for religious minorities, and self-determination for oppressed nationalities. Anti-imperialism is freedom for all oppressed, from all oppression. In contrast, Ahmedinejad, or Osama ben Laden for that matter, offer an anti-imperialism that does not tolerate these values. Theirs is an anti-imperialism that chokes minorities, strangles smaller nationalities and reduces women to bodies-sans-minds hidden under thick burkas. One cannot be a liberator and an oppressor at the same time. The anti-imperialism that upholds Ahmedinejad as its poster boy does not solve this contradiction. We have seen this anti-imperialism in Afghanistan under the Taliban where it was reduced to the burka and massacre of minorities. Al-Qaeda is the non-state portrayal of this brand of anti-imperialism: bombings, kidnappings, hijackings. The anti-imperialism currently on display in the Muslim world is symbolic and not of substance. It signifies a new phase in the relationship between two estranged lovers, fundamentalism and imperialism. It is the product of the process run by imperialism in collaboration with fundamentalism, to eliminate genuine anti-imperialism in the Muslim world. In the Muslim world, it used to be radical nationalists, socialists and communists -- until they were eliminated -- who epitomized anti-imperialism. Nasser of Egypt, Sakarno of Indonesia, Mossadeq of Iran and Bhutto of Pakistan: all these names embodied anti-imperialism in the Muslim world for four decades. These towering personalities of the Muslim world did not fall from the skies. They were products of a radicalized period. Indonesia had the largest communist party (PKI) outside the then communist world. With PKI backing him, Sakarno dared host the Bandong Conference. Kassem in Iraq opted out of the Baghdad Pact because he knew the Iraqi Communist Party, the largest communist party in Arab world, supported him. Mossadeq dared nationalize oil, certain of support from Iran's Tudeh party. Having humbled pro-US military dictator Ayub Khan, the Pakistani masses voted the "socialist" Bhutto to power. It was this confidence that enabled Bhutto to run a relatively independent foreign policy, introduce land reforms and nationalization. This cream of the crop of the Muslim world, in a polarized cold war era, endangered the structures that imperialism had carefully built and ruthlessly maintained. This secular nationalist leadership and its communist backers had to be eliminated. Mossadeq was overthrown in 1953. The CIA removed this Iranian aristocrat, a direct descendant of Qajar dynasty, in collaboration with Iranian religious elements. The CIA spent five million dollars to help the pro-West mullahs rent a mob, restoring the Shah of Iran to the throne. Indonesia and Iraq underwent bloodbaths almost simultaneously. A military-mullah-CIA troika massacred a million people in Indonesia, with lists provided by the CIA. Soldiers in collaboration with young Nahdlatul Ulema's bearded volunteers unleashed a "jihad" against "red devils" across the archipelago. In Iraq, the Baath party did the dirty work (first in 1963, then 1967-68), since the religious elements commanded almost no support in a country striving for a socialist revolution. A decade later, an example was made out of Bhutto. A khaki-green mullah-military alliance, backed once again by the CIA, sent him to the gallows. Meanwhile, Anwar Sadaat effectively rolled back the Nasser-era process in Egypt by granting full freedom to the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Jihad. The case of Afghanistan is too fresh for memory to need much jogging: Osama was brought from Saudi Arabia to oust Dr Najib's secular government. In all these cases, there is a clear connivance between fundamentalism and imperialism. With radical nationalist leaders dead and communist or socialist parties eliminated, the political arena was wide open for Imam Khomeni, Osama bin Laden, Mullah Muhammad Omar or their local clones. What does the current quasi-anti-imperialist crop have to offer: occupation of a US embassy, an attack on the World Trade Centre, blasts in Madrid and elsewhere, the razing of Buddha statues? These acts of "anti-imperialism" might cause a temporary headache for the residents of White House and Empire's satraps in London, Paris and Berlin. But this headache is nothing compared to the frustration of Washington when radical nationalists dare to nationalize their countries resources, or carry out land reform. Incidentally, this is Washington's reaction not just for the Muslim world, but in Latin America and the Caribbean as well. An anti-imperialism that does not threaten to nationalize oil (Osama declares that oil is an asset owned by Arabs but opposes its common ownership), stand for land distribution or allow the working classes to organize trade unions -- such "anti-imperialism" does not bother the Empire. It is an anti-imperialism based on the repression of women, religious minorities, small nationalities, trade unions, peasant organizations, and political parties. Thus it actually functions to carry imperialism's needs: repression of the masses. It is countries that oppress their masses and lack trade unions and workers' parties that best suit multinationals. The so-called anti-imperialism of these religious forces thus actually serves imperialism in the current global scenario. It is, at best, the anti-imperialism of fools. ? From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Fri Jul 10 17:13:14 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Sat, 11 Jul 2009 08:13:14 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Mr Soddy's Ecological Economy Message-ID: <20090711081314.ebca8d0b.shimogamo@ashisuto.co.jp> by Eric Zencey, Op-Ed Contributor The New York Times (April 12 2009) INNOVATIVE and opaque instruments of debt; greedy bankers; lenders' eagerness to take on risky loans; a lack of regulation; a shortage of bank liquidity: all have been nominated as the underlying cause of the largest economic downturn since the Great Depression. But a more perceptive, and more troubling, diagnosis is suggested by the work of a little-regarded British chemist-turned-economist who wrote before and during the Great Depression. Frederick Soddy, born in 1877, was an individualist who bowed to few conventions, and who is described by one biographer as a difficult, obstinate man. A 1921 Nobel laureate in chemistry for his work on radioactive decay, he foresaw the energy potential of atomic fission as early as 1909. But his disquiet about that power's potential wartime use, combined with his revulsion at his discipline's complicity in the mass deaths of World War One led him to set aside chemistry for the study of political economy - the world into which scientific progress introduces its gifts. In four books written from 1921 to 1934, Soddy carried on a quixotic campaign for a radical restructuring of global monetary relationships. He was roundly dismissed as a crank. He offered a perspective on economics rooted in physics - the laws of thermodynamics, in particular. An economy is often likened to a machine, though few economists follow the parallel to its logical conclusion: like any machine the economy must draw energy from outside itself. The first and second laws of thermodynamics forbid perpetual motion, schemes in which machines create energy out of nothing or recycle it forever. Soddy criticized the prevailing belief of the economy as a perpetual motion machine, capable of generating infinite wealth - a criticism echoed by his intellectual heirs in the now emergent field of ecological economics. A more apt analogy, said Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen (a Romanian-born economist whose work in the 1970s began to define this new approach), is to model the economy as a living system. Like all life, it draws from its environment valuable (or "low entropy") matter and energy - for animate life, food; for an economy, energy, ores, the raw materials provided by plants and animals. And like all life, an economy emits a high-entropy wake - it spews degraded matter and energy: waste heat, waste gases, toxic byproducts, apple cores, the molecules of iron lost to rust and abrasion. Low entropy emissions include trash and pollution in all their forms, including yesterday's newspaper, last year's sneakers, last decade's rusted automobile. Matter taken up into the economy can be recycled, using energy; but energy, used once, is forever unavailable to us at that level again. The law of entropy commands a one-way flow downward from more to less useful forms. An animal can't live perpetually on its own excreta. Neither can you fill the tank of your car by pushing it backwards. Thus, Georgescu-Roegen, paraphrasing the economist Alfred Marshall, said: "Biology, not mechanics, is our Mecca". Following Soddy, Georgescu-Roegen and other ecological economists argue that wealth is real and physical. It's the stock of cars and computers and clothing, of furniture and French fries, that we buy with our dollars. The dollars aren't real wealth, but only symbols that represent the bearer's claim on an economy's ability to generate wealth. Debt, for its part, is a claim on the economy's ability to generate wealth in the future. "The ruling passion of the age", Soddy said, "is to convert wealth into debt" - to exchange a thing with present-day real value (a thing that could be stolen, or broken, or rust or rot before you can manage to use it) for something immutable and unchanging, a claim on wealth that has yet to be made. Money facilitates the exchange; it is, he said, "the nothing you get for something before you can get anything". Problems arise when wealth and debt are not kept in proper relation. The amount of wealth that an economy can create is limited by the amount of low-entropy energy that it can sustainably suck from its environment - and by the amount of high-entropy effluent from an economy that the environment can sustainably absorb. Debt, being imaginary, has no such natural limit. It can grow infinitely, compounding at any rate we decide. Whenever an economy allows debt to grow faster than wealth can be created, that economy has a need for debt repudiation. Inflation can do the job, decreasing debt gradually by eroding the purchasing power, the claim on future wealth, that each of your saved dollars represents. But when there is no inflation, an economy with overgrown claims on future wealth will experience regular crises of debt repudiation - stock market crashes, bankruptcies and foreclosures, defaults on bonds or loans or pension promises, the disappearance of paper assets. It's like musical chairs - in the wake of some shock (say, the run-up of the price of gas to $4 a gallon), holders of abstract debt suddenly want to hold money or real wealth instead. But not all of them can. One person's loss causes another's, and the whole system cascades into crisis. Each and every one of the crises that has beset the American economy in recent years has been, at heart, a crisis of debt repudiation. And we are unlikely to avoid more of them until we stop allowing claims on income to grow faster than income. Soddy would not have been surprised at our current state of affairs. The problem isn't simply greed, isn't simply ignorance, isn't a failure of regulatory diligence, but a systemic flaw in how our economy finances itself. As long as growth in claims on wealth outstrips the economy's capacity to increase its wealth, market capitalism creates a niche for entrepreneurs who are all too willing to invent instruments of debt that will someday be repudiated. There will always be a Bernard Madoff or a subprime mortgage repackager willing to set us up for catastrophe. To stop them, we must balance claims on future wealth with the economy's power to produce that wealth. How can that be done? Soddy distilled his eccentric vision into five policy prescriptions, each of which was taken at the time as evidence that his theories were unworkable: The first four were to abandon the gold standard, let international exchange rates float, use federal surpluses and deficits as macroeconomic policy tools that could counter cyclical trends, and establish bureaus of economic statistics (including a consumer price index) in order to facilitate this effort. All of these are now conventional practice. Soddy's fifth proposal, the only one that remains outside the bounds of conventional wisdom, was to stop banks from creating money (and debt) out of nothing. Banks do this by lending out most of their depositors' money at interest - making loans that the borrower soon puts in a demand deposit (checking) account, where it will soon be lent out again to create more debt and demand deposits, and so on, almost ad infinitum. One way to stop this cycle, suggests Herman Daly, an ecological economist, would be to gradually institute a 100-percent reserve requirement on demand deposits. This would begin to shrink what Professor Daly calls "the enormous pyramid of debt that is precariously balanced atop the real economy, threatening to crash". Banks would support themselves by charging fees for safekeeping, check clearing and all the other legitimate financial services they provide. They would still make loans and still be able to lend at interest "the real money of real depositors", in Professor Daly's phrase, people who forgo consumption today by taking money out of their checking accounts and putting it in time deposits - CDs, passbook savings, 401(k)'s. In return, these savers receive a slightly larger claim on the real wealth of the community in the future. In such a system, every increase in spending by borrowers would have to be matched by an act of saving or abstinence on the part of a depositor. This would re-establish a one-to-one correspondence between the real wealth of the community and the claims on that real wealth. (Of course, it would not solve the problem completely, not unless financial institutions were also forbidden to create subprime mortgage derivatives and other instruments of leveraged debt.) If such a major structural renovation of our economy sounds hopelessly unrealistic, consider that so too did the abolition of the gold standard and the introduction of floating exchange rates back in the 1920s. If the laws of thermodynamics are sturdy, and if Soddy's analysis of their relevance to economic life is correct, we'd better expand the realm of what we think is realistic. _____ Eric Zencey, a professor of historical and political studies at Empire State College, is the author of Virgin Forest: Meditations on History, Ecology and Culture (1998) and a novel, Panama (2001). Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/12/opinion/12zencey.html?_r=2&ref=opinion 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/ From shniad at sfu.ca Fri Jul 10 17:15:37 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2009 16:15:37 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] AIPAC and the US Colombia Free Trade Deal Message-ID: <27156697.1705101247267737340.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy July 10, 2009 AIPAC and the US Colombia Free Trade Deal Why is Colombia Buying Obsolete Israeli Fighter Jets? In 2007 Colombia awarded Israeli Aircraft Industries (IAI) a contract worth more than $150 million to upgrade its aging fleet of Kfir fighter jets. The first upgraded batch began arriving in June. But why is Colombia buying the package now? The influence of Israel 's lobby in the US Congress and the troubled fighter plane's history are key to understanding the deal. Israeli once depended on French Mirage jet fighters. They were critical in the Israeli attacks that started the Six Day War. When the French government imposed an arms embargo on 50 fighters Israel had already paid for in 1967, Mossad stole more than 250,000 blueprints (weighing 3 tons) of the Mirage III fighter from Switzerland 's Sulzer Engineering Corporation. Sulzer was building fighters under contract with Dassault. Israel then secured a license to build General Electric J79 turbojets and was soon test flying the Mirage based fighters. These would become the copycat Kfir fighter by September 1970. IAI attempted to sell the Kfir to Ecuador , a deal President Jimmy Carter killed in 1976. IAI held protests in front of the US consulate. President Carter provided the Israelis with an extra $285 million in economic aid as compensation, an unwarranted bonus since President Reagan later reversed the ban and allowed the Ecuador sale. The US again paid for Kfirs when Israel and its US lobby convinced the US Navy and Marine Corps to lease twenty five of the planes to simulate "adversary aircraft" in air combat training. US Navy pilots flying the Kfir found the GE powered fighter to be "sluggish" compared to the original Mirage?indicating IAI had failed in its attempt to join an existing engine to an existing airframe. But Kfir's export never relied on its utility as a weapon or deterrent. Rather political pressure from Israel 's lobby has been instrumental helping export Kfirs and many other weapons as Israel slowly rises to become a top five global arms exporter. But is the US again paying for Kfirs? Possibly. In 2008 Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos announced during a visit to Israel that the Kfirs purchase would be financed by a "war tax" Colombia began to charge in 2007. The US has provided Colombia with over $5 billion in military and police assistance, freeing up Colombia 's own defense budget for other priorities. Rival Venezuela 's modern Russian fighters vastly outclass the Israeli planes. Santos assured Colombia 's neighbors that the Israeli jets would be used for "internal security." But that is doubtful. Guerrillas such as the FARC don't have any air power or many high value target the Israeli planes are uniquely capable of striking. The Kfir upgrade must be seen mainly as a quid pro quo to provide business to Israel , which can then influence the US Congress to ratify the stalled bilateral US-Colombia free trade agreement (FTA). Colombia is eager for the foreign direct investment and growth potential of the FTA, while for the past fifteen years Israel has been trying to unload 140 of the obsolete Kfirs it retired from its own fleet in 1976. By paying off IAI and laying the groundwork for future Israeli weapons purchases, the Colombian government clearly hopes to win the support of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to help pass the FTA. It is currently stalled over Colombian human rights questions. AIPAC has lobbied for bilateral free trade between the US , Oman , and Qatar ?as ways to break the Arab boycott of Israel . The 1985 US-Israel FTA, which has cost $71 billion and 100,000 American jobs a year, was the first bilateral agreement ever signed by the US . According to former deputy director of research Martin Indyk, only AIPAC had the muscle to push such an unpopular and costly deal through Congress. AIPAC has been instrumental in shaping the trade policies that have led to monster trade deficits for the US : "The whole free trade agreement process was started with the US-Israel free trade agreement. Why? Because that was the only way the Clinton administration, no we're talking about the Reagan administration, could get it through Congress was with AIPAC?s help. And once they established the free trade agreement with Israel it became possible to get free trade agreements and that was the precursor to NAFTA and so on." AIPAC has not yet formally reported any lobbying for the US Colombia deal on its meager disclosures filed with the US House of Representatives. But if a major US media and lobbying push for passage of the Colombian FTA suddenly ignites later this year, it'll be a good indication to Americans that quiet and circuitous offshore weapons deals?indirectly financed by their tax dollars and tailored to influence the US Congress?have been successful. From shniad at sfu.ca Sat Jul 11 12:10:07 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Sat, 11 Jul 2009 11:10:07 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Bill Moyers Show Reveals Insurance Lobby's Secret Plan to Attack 'Sicko' and Michael Moore In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <264475401.1782211247335807290.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> De : "Michael Moore" < maillist at michaelmoore.com > Date : 10 juillet 2009 20:57:56 HAE Objet : Bill Moyers Show Tonight Reveals Insurance Lobby's Secret Plan to Attack 'Sicko' and Michael Moore Bill Moyers Show Tonight Reveals Insurance Lobby's Secret Plan to Attack 'Sicko' and Michael Moore Friday, July 10th, 2009 ALERT: We've just been informed that Bill Moyers, on his show later tonight, will expose for the first time the health insurance industry's secret campaign against Michael Moore and his film, "Sicko." It contains a stunning revelation and admission by a top health insurance executive -- the former head of publicity for CIGNA, one of the top health insurance companies in the country -- that the disinformation and attacks on Michael and the film were extensive and well-planned. Their job was to stop the movie from reaching a wide audience (and, more importantly, from having the widespread political impact the industry feared "Sicko" would have). Wendell Potter, former Head of Corporate Communications at CIGNA (which provides health insurance to nearly 70 percent of the Fortune 100 companies) admits that, in fact, "Sicko" "hit the nail on the head" and told the real truth about how much better people in other countries have it when it comes to their health care. The show airs tonight at 9:00 PM on PBS. (Check your local listings for exact times. Many areas show it on Saturday night, too.) You can check out the segment about Michael and "Sicko" here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mv1FwOCNoZ8 Be sure to tune into Bill Moyers Journal tonight at 9:00 PM for the full program. Check here for local listings (and rebroadcasts): http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/about/airdates.html If you get this email too late, their website will soon post the full show soon: http://www.pbs.org/moyers Finally, the truth comes out. From one of their own. Amazing. Yours truly, Webmaster MichaelMoore.com webguy at michaelmoore.com From shniad at sfu.ca Sat Jul 11 12:23:15 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Sat, 11 Jul 2009 11:23:15 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] =?utf-8?q?Film_festival_under_fire_for_scheduling_=E2=80=98?= =?utf-8?q?Rachel=2C=E2=80=99_inviting_mom?= Message-ID: <1735995816.1783441247336595508.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/38507/film-festival-under-fire-for-scheduling-rachel-inviting-mom/ JWeekly.com July 9, 2009 Film festival under fire for scheduling ?Rachel,? inviting mom ?The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival made a serious error in judgment in inviting Mrs. Corrie to the festival. She is a propagandist who is immune from responsibility for the causes she supports because it was her daughter, Rachel, who was accidentally killed. So her staged presence becomes a kind of emotional grandstanding, rather than pursuit of a deeper insight.? ? Israel Consul General Akiva Tor by amanda pazornik, staff writer Of the 37 films with ties to Israel in this year?s San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, one in particular has several prominent local Jewish leaders and activists outraged On July 25 and Aug. 4, the SFJFF will show ?Rachel,? a documentary that explores the controversial death of American peace activist Rachel Corrie at age 23. Festival organizers invited Corrie?s mother, Cindy, to a Q&A session following the July 25 screening. Local chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace, an Oakland-based group that supports Palestinian self-control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the American Friends Service Committee, a social justice organization of Quakers and others who have taken up the cause of the people of Gaza, signed on to help the festival promote ?Rachel? to their constituencies. Peter Stein, the film festival?s executive director, said that given his six years of experience with the festival, in addition to its 29-year run, the backlash ?certainly didn?t surprise? him. ?I was not na?ve that this was a controversial film,? Stein explained, noting that he has received a few phone calls and roughly 15 e-mails from those expressing discontent. ?I know there are many members of the community who would prefer if the festival stayed away from programming films on difficult topics or topics of passionate division of opinion. ?That being said, if we, as an arts organization, are going to remain relevant in our time, it really is part of our role to catalyze conversation, however uncomfortable it may be.? Jewish filmmaker Simone Bitton splits the focus of her 2008 documentary between Corrie?s work with the International Solidarity Movement (a Palestinian-led group committed to using nonviolent, direct-action methods and principles) and the investigation that followed her death in March 2003. Corrie, who was from Olympia, Wash., reportedly was killed by an Israel Defense Forces?operated bulldozer while protesting the destruction of Palestinian houses in Rafah, a city that shares a border with Egypt in the southern Gaza Strip. The film has been shown this year in at least seven festivals, including events in Berlin, Paris, Buenos Aires, New York and Toronto. While Cindy Corrie, who serves as president of the Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice (founded after Corrie?s death) appears briefly in the 100-minute film, reading an excerpt from a letter written by her daughter, it is her appearance at the film festival that has many up in arms. ?The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival made a serious error in judgment in inviting Mrs. Corrie to the festival,? Israel Consul General Akiva Tor said via e-mail. ?She is a propagandist who is immune from responsibility for the causes she supports because it was her daughter, Rachel, who was accidentally killed. ?So her staged presence becomes a kind of emotional grandstanding, rather than pursuit of a deeper insight.? The decision to include ?Rachel? at this year?s festival, which runs July 23 through Aug. 10, was based on several factors, Stein said. For one, he and SFJFF program director Nancy Fishman saw the documentary when it made its debut at this year?s Berlin International Film Festival and deemed the movie a ?worthwhile piece of filmmaking on an important subject matter.? Second, the pair shares a professional relationship with Bitton, having screened two of her films ? ?Mahmoud Darwich: As the Land is the Language? in 1998 and ?Wall? in 2005 ? at previous festivals. Bitton, who is Jewish and holds dual citizenship in Israel and France, declined Stein?s invitation to speak about ?Rachel? at the upcoming festival, citing traveling conflicts. The film, made available to j. on DVD, attempts to show both sides of Corrie?s mission and her death, weaving excerpts from her journal (read aloud by her fellow members of the International Solidarity Movement) with interview subjects who present varying accounts of her death. That?s not to say Bitton shies away from controversy. For example, the filmmaker showcases an Israel Defense Forces spokeswoman who calls Corrie?s death ?a regrettable incident? and claims the bulldozer never touched her, and then a Palestinian doctor who claims to have witnessed the incident, after which he says, ?The Jews have killed our friend Rachel Corrie.? As for Cindy Corrie?s presence and participation at the screening, Stein said it is customary for film festivals to encourage the subjects of documentaries or cast members of fictional films to engage in an open dialogue with the audience. ?Our plan is for me to be in conversation with her, then open it up to a Q&A,? Stein said. ?We?re not asking Cindy Corrie to make a speech. She?s viewing this as an opportunity to talk about the issues raised in the film. ?In some ways, it?s a credit to her that she may know she?s coming to face, if not a hostile audience, then certainly members who have a strongly different opinion on the events surrounding her daughter?s death, or Israeli and Palestinian affairs.? Though he hasn?t yet seen ?Rachel,? Rabbi Doug Kahn, head of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Relations Council, said the decision to invite Cindy Corrie is ?very problematic,? noting her presence would ?increase the likelihood that it will become a political forum.? Added Kahn: ?I called Peter within seconds of learning about the film and her appearance to let him know there would be significant criticism. All in all, it was an ill-advised decision. But it should also be looked at in the context of the overall festival program, which offers a tremendous array of films about Israel.? To Stein?s knowledge, no protests or boycotts of the documentary have been planned. He added that the festival is taking the appropriate measures to ensure guest safety at the film?s two screenings, in San Francisco and Berkeley. Stein was quick to point out that this is not the first time the SFJFF has shown controversial films. He recalled receiving criticism in 2005 when two conscientious objectors from the Israeli Army Reserve appeared in conjunction with the documentary ?On the Objection Front.? In 2006, the decision to invite Eva Mozes Kor, the subject of ?Forgiving Dr. Mengele,? was met with challenges because of her controversial views on forgiveness of Nazi perpetrators. Pro-Israel activist Natan Nestel of Berkeley voiced his disapproval for this year?s presentation of ?Rachel? in a lengthy letter to j., calling on the SFJFF board of directors to ?acknowledge the mistake? they made and ?cancel the anti-Israel propaganda event.? ?Corrie has become a hero of anti-Israel extremists,? Nestel wrote. ?Her story is not really about a young American activist who died of complex circumstances. It?s about promoting a hate-filled and glaringly one-sided anti-Israel agenda.? While Stein said he realizes some films and guest appearances can be ?polarizing,? he hopes audience members will ?take a step back to understand what the motivation and intentions are? with regard to the programming. ?Our Jewish community in the Bay Area,? Stein said, ?is big enough and strong enough to not only tolerate this difficult conversation and film, but grow stronger by them.? ?Rachel? screens 1:30 p.m. July 25 at the Castro Theatre, 429 Castro St., S.F., and 6:30 p.m. Aug. 4 at the Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison St., Berkeley. Cindy Corrie is scheduled to take questions following the July 25 show. Tickets and information: http://www.sfjff.org From shniad at sfu.ca Sat Jul 11 12:41:49 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Sat, 11 Jul 2009 11:41:49 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] What Arabs Can Do to Support Peace Message-ID: <1241797293.1785141247337709909.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-zogby/what-arabs-can-do-to-supp_b_229797.html Huffington Post July 10, 2009 What Arabs Can Do to Support Peace James Zogby In 1991, as part of its overall approach to post-Gulf War peace-making, the Administration of George H. W. Bush secured an Arab agreement to suspend their secondary boycott against companies doing business with Israel, in return for an Israeli commitment to freeze settlements. Three years later, in 1994, as Co-Chair of Builders for Peace, a US private sector initiative launched by then Vice-President Al Gore, I made the first of many visits to Israel/Palestine accompanying Mr. Gore, Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown or delegations of Arab American and American Jewish businessman. We had just arrived in Ben Gurion Airport and were heading to a meeting in Tel Aviv. I was riding with an American Jewish colleague, who, it turns out, had in the past, been a frequent visitor to Israel, but who had not been there in three years. As we approached Tel Aviv, looking at the city's night lights -- neon signs aglow, advertizing a broad array of products, my companion noted with delight "these signs are the first fruits of peace. Because of the boycott, many of these businesses weren't here three years ago. Now they are." The next day, we left our hotel in Jerusalem travelling north to Ramallah. On our way, we passed massive construction sites of new housing up and down the hills surrounding the Holy City, encapsulating tiny Palestinian villages now trapped in their shadows. "Are these new settlements?" I asked. "No," was the reply, "this is just an extension of Ramot"--pointing to another large aggregation of homes, on an entirely different hill. These were impressions. Here is the hard data. In 1991, Israel's per capita GDP was $14,000. Three years later, after the ending of the secondary boycott and Madrid and Oslo, Israel's per capita GDP had risen to almost $16,000. Palestinians did not fare as well. In 1991, their per capita GDP was $900. Three years later, new Israeli restrictions on Palestinian labor and continued control over all access to and egress from the territories, resulted in the Palestinian per capita GDP only increasing to $1,100. Meanwhile, at the beginning of 1991 there were 243,000 settlers in the West Bank and Jerusalem. By the end of 1994, they were nearing 300,000. (Note: most recent figures show Israel's per capita GDP at around $25,000, in contrast to a stagnant $1,300 for the Palestinians. And there are now almost 500,000 settlers in the occupied lands!) This history bears repeating if only to understand why some Arab states may be reluctant to offer new concessions to Israel in return for the same settlement freeze that was to have been implemented 18 years and 250,000 settlers ago. This being said, I believe that there are good reasons for the Arab side to find a careful but creative approach to elaborating on their 2002 and 2007 Arab Peace Initiatives. It is clear that the Obama Administration is making a real effort to press Israel to suspend all settlement construction -- using, at times, language not heard since the time of President Carter. In this context, positive Arab gestures should not be seen as a reward for Israel (which they have not earned and do not deserve), but rather as a sign of support for the US effort and as a further Arab commitment to peace-making. Secondly, it is clear from the frequent statements coming from the US, and now being echoed in Israel, urging Arabs to take new steps, that the pressure (both public and private) will not let up. Given this, a new Arab initiative can be useful and important, if only so as not to be boxed in and portrayed as presenting an obstacle to peace. Thirdly, up until now, with only the US and Israel doing the talking, the nature of the expected Arab response is being defined by them. Given all that has transpired in recent years and given, as well, current regional tensions, many of the ideas proposed may be viewed as problematic in much of the Arab world. Nevertheless, should the Obama Administration succeed in securing a complete and verifiable halt in all construction, a positive response, by those Arab states able to do so, would be in order, both to support the US effort, as well as to ensure that no further so-called "facts on the ground" are put in place. Stopping E1, before it starts, and aborting other expansion and "thickening" projects, are goals worth supporting. But the Arab gestures offered must be carefully considered, so as to be calibrated (not turning the Arab Peace Initiative on its head by providing recognition and normalization before peace) and conditioned on Israeli performance (unlike with the end of the secondary boycott, which produced benefits for only one side). While these limited steps may be taken by some Arab states, there are other avenues open to the Arab consensus that would both make clear their intentions to seek peace, while not inflaming their publics or compromising the only remaining leverage available to them. Here's what the Arab states could propose. First, there should be the insistence Israel meet the following initial conditions (all of which are either called for in the Roadmap and/or supported by the Obama Administration): a total freeze on all settlement construction; removal of outposts, internal check points and roadblocks; an end of the blockade on construction goods and other needed supplies to Gaza; and the beginning of serious negotiations with the Palestinian Authority. With these conditions met, the Arab League could authorize a representative delegation to participate with the Israeli and Palestinian teams in a series of Track II negotiations on critical issues of regional importance: water, energy, Jerusalem, refugee resettlement, and the establishment of an economic development fund/plan for a future Palestinian state. These talks and the plans they develop should run in tandem with the Track I Israeli-Palestinian, Israeli-Syrian and Israeli-Lebanese talks, and be implemented, as agreed by the parties, at times deemed appropriate to support the implementation of the Track I talks. Such an Arab consensus effort, complimentary to the more immediate and limited gestures made by some, will support US peace efforts, allowing the Arab States to define, for themselves, their elaboration of the Arab Peace Initiative, while making clear their intention to participate as full partners in a comprehensive Middle East peace. From shniad at sfu.ca Sat Jul 11 12:52:41 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Sat, 11 Jul 2009 11:52:41 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Imperial intervention and resistance in Afghanistan In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1480022869.1787111247338361437.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Imperial intervention and resistance in Afghanistan A short video history by John Rees, Stop the War Coalition http://stopwar.org.uk/content/view/1351/27/ From shniad at sfu.ca Sat Jul 11 17:20:43 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Sat, 11 Jul 2009 16:20:43 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Big pharma 'delaying' cheaper drugs In-Reply-To: <1315090530.1395911247182142065.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1962155047.1809261247354443921.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2009/jul/08/business-pharmaceticals-europeancommission The Guardian 8 July 2009 Big pharma 'delaying' cheaper drugs European commissioner unveils inquiry results and attacks industry for impeding generic drugs' entry to market European patients, taxpayers and national treasuries are being fleeced of billions of euros because of the big pharmaceutical companies' elaborate campaigns to delay the marketing of cheaper generic drugs, the European commission said. "There is something rotten in the state [of the pharmaceutical industry]," said Neelie Kroes, the competition commissioner, unveiling the findings of an 18-month inquiry into the pharmaceuticals sector . "Makers of original medicines are actively trying to delay the entry of generic medicines on to their markets." Kroes announced a formal investigation of the French company Les Laboratoires Servier for allegedly stifling competition for the heart disease drug Perindopril and she is believed to be on the brink of ordering another three investigations, including one into practices at GlaxoSmithKline. The investigation of the sector, which included raids on several of the biggest firms last year, showed that the major firms had struck at least 200 settlements with generics manufacturers, costing ?200m (?173m) and mainly aimed at restricting the marketing of generic drugs. A key tactic by big firms was to abuse patenting practices to play for time and wreck the chances of generics firms being able to compete, the commission found. A common practice was for the major companies to file a large number of patent applications across EU states for a single drug ? as many as 1,300? in what are known as "patent clusters". Another common option was for the major firms to sue generics companies and then stall the cases in court for several years. Kroes called for a new Europe -wide patent and a unified system of litigation to save time and money. "The lack of progress is very, very damaging," she said. "Vicious tactics are used to delay or prevent the entry of more affordable and innovative medicines into the market," said Monique Goyens, director general of the European Consumers' Organisation. "Millions of euros are spent in promotional activities, in legal disputes and settlement agreements instead of in the development of new medicines." The commission estimates generic drugs are 40% cheaper than their branded equivalents within two years of coming on the market, while it calculates that the drugs retail market in the EU is worth ?214bn a year. But while Kroes attacked the big firms' tactics, the commission appeared to tone down its criticism of the sector and spread the blame for the fact that drug prices are kept unnecessarily high. The trade body representing the major pharma companies in Europe, EFPIA said it feared the commission verdict would be worse. It said: "It demonstrated a welcome shift away from the emotive language of the [previous interim] report, with a better balanced, more holistic view of the issues facing the sector. The report failed to substantiate the initial allegation that patenting strategies dampened innovation or delayed generic entry illegitimately." Arthur Higgins, chief executive of Bayer Healthcare, said: "The report failed to substantiate the initial allegation that patenting strategies dampened innovation or delayed generic entry illegitimately. "Complex and divergent regulatory barriers are the primary cause of market-entry delay." From shniad at sfu.ca Sat Jul 11 17:27:49 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Sat, 11 Jul 2009 16:27:49 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] The Real News Network - USW president supports single-payer health care In-Reply-To: <1148015502.937591247079963767.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <921969703.1809831247354869431.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> The Real News July 8, 2009 United Steelworkers president supports single-payer health care Leo Gerard: I think we should fight for single-payer health care, fight for a principled position. http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=3961 From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Sat Jul 11 22:15:28 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2009 13:15:28 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] The Economic Thought of Frederick Soddy Message-ID: <20090712131528.09e263ec.shimogamo@ashisuto.co.jp> by Herman E Daly, Louisiana State University History of Political Economy Vol 12 No 4 (Winter 1980) Almost always the men who achieve these fundamental inventions of a new paradigm have been either very young or very new to the field whose paradigm they change. -Thomas S Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), page 89. I. Introduction Frederick Soddy (1877-1956) is best known as a pioneering chemist who collaborated with Rutherford in studying radioactive disintegration, predicted the existence of and coined the name for isotopes, and was a major contributor to the modern theory of atomic structure. For these achievements he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1910 and was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1921. He was a member of the Swedish, Italian, and Russian acadamies of science. During his career he held university positions at McGill, Glasgow, Aberdeen, and from 1919 onward, Oxford (Fleck 1957). Although an enthusiastic believer in scientific progress and in the possibility of a society in which the fruits of scientific knowledge would be shared by all, Soddy was acutely aware that history supported the view that science has proved as much a curse as a blessing to humanity. Nor could he accept the comfortable view that scientists have no responsibility for the uses to which their work is put. Even though others (bankers and economists) bore, in his view, a far greater burden of guilt for the misuse of knowledge, scientists could not plead innocent. The world's real problem was faulty economics, not faulty chemistry, and for the second half of his nearly eighty years economics replaced chemistry as the center of his intellectual life. Soddy realized earlier than most the theoretical possibility of atomic energy. Since his own work had contributed to the discovery that this vast energy potential existed, it was natural for him to ask, "what sort of a world it would be if atomic energy ever became available" (Wealth, page 28). His answer (written in 1926) was clear: If the discovery were made tomorrow, there is not a nation that would not throw itself heart and soul into the task of applying it to war, just as they are now doing in the case of the newly developed chemical weapons of poison-gas warfare ... If [atomic energy] were to come under existing economic. conditions, it would mean the reductio ad absurdum of scientific civilization, a swift annihilation instead of a none too lingering collapse [Wealth, page 28]. For Soddy, the problem was to change economic conditions in order eventually to make the world safe for atomic energy and other fruits of science. There must be something radically wrong with economic thought and institutions in order for the gift of scientific knowledge to have become such a threat. Soddy was thus led to a radical critique of economics. It is interesting that Soddy's concern about the destructive potential of atomic energy was considered extreme at the time. Another Nobel laureate, Robert A Millikan, commented: ... since Mr Soddy raised the hobgoblin of dangerous quantities of available subatomic energy [science] has brought to light good evidence that this particular hobgoblin - like most of the bugaboos that crowd in on the mind of ignorance - was a myth ... The new evidence born of further scientific study is to the effect that it is highly improbable that there is any appreciable amount of available subatomic energy for man to tap [Millikan, page 121]. Millikan, of course, turned out to be wrong, but the underlying faith that he went on to express is still held by many, namely that one may "sleep in peace with the consciousness that the Creator has put some foolproof elements into his handiwork, and that man is powerless to do it any titanic physical damage" (ibid). As R L Sinsheimer recently noted, "Scientific endeavor rests upon the faith that our scientific probing and our technological ventures will not displace some key element of our protective environment and thereby collapse our ecological niche" (Sinsheimer, page 24). It now seems evident that the only protective element the Creator put into his handiwork is man's capacity for moral insight and restraint, which is far from foolproof. With the benefit of hindsight we can see that Soddy was the true prophet and that the scientific establishment, represented by Millikan, was whistling in the dark.{1} Far from believing in providential "foolproof elements" built into creation, Soddy was convinced that the economic system contained built-in elements for assuring the destruction of creation, once science gave man the power. The key problem therefore was to discover and correct the errors in our economic thinking and institutions, a task which Soddy tackled with both moral fervor and the systematic logic of an experienced scientist. Perhaps the most intriguing thing about Soddy the economist is that he started his inquiry with a mind both highly intelligent and completely free from the preconceived paradigm of the orthodox economists, for whom he had an undisguised contempt. The contempt was mutual. With the significant exception of Frank Knight, to be discussed later, Soddy's work was ignored by economists. Unlike the American positional astronomer, Simon Newcomb, who also came to economics from the physical sciences, Soddy came as a critic, not a student, and remained an outsider. Newcomb liked economics, did not believe that his pre-World War One America was in mortal danger from an increasingly powerful but misdirected application of science, and wrote a fairly orthodox Principles of Political Economy (1885) which demonstrated that he had done his economics homework, and had earned the right to try to make economics just a bit more scientific. Soddy, on the other hand, considered economics a pseudoscience in need of a totally new beginning. John Ruskin, not Ricardo, Mill, or Marshall, was his inspiration. The not surprising consequence of this approach was that Soddy was and continues to be written off as a crank. In fact, Soddy's economics seems to have been something of an embarrassment to everyone but Soddy. The Times Literary Supplement (page 565), in reviewing his major economic work (Wealth, Virtual Wealth, and Debt) remarked that it was sad to see a respected chemist ruin his reputation by writing on a subject about which he was quite ignorant. Nor had the verdict changed thirty years and several books later, when in 1956 an obituary in Science lamented that, "Some ... knew him only as ... a 'crank' on the subject of monetary policy ... His fanatical devotion to schemes of this sort, derided by the orthodox economists, ... was surprising to many who knew him first as a pioneer in chemical science" (Russell, page 1069). This neglect of Soddy's economics is unfortunate because, although Soddy is admittedly unconvincing in his frequent attribution of war and all other evils to fractional reserve banking, he nevertheless has much to teach us, and in fact anticipated the recent contribution of N Georgescu-Roegen (1971) in providing economics with a partial foundation in thermodynamics, the physics of usefulness. The fact that Soddy might have learned more from economists than he did does not mean that economists have nothing to learn from Soddy. The approach here taken is to think of him somewhat as an intelligence from Mars which looked at economic issues in a different way, and to try sympathetically to understand him and render him intelligible to modern economists. In what follows I attempt to summarize and explain Soddy's critique of economics. II. The Neglected Physical Basis of Economics Soddy's basic philosophical approach to economics might be called materialism without reductionism. We must recognize the fundamental dualism of the material and the spiritual and resist "monistic obsessions" (Cartesian Economics, page 6). Economics occupies the middle ground between matter and spirit, between the electron and the soul: In each direction possibilities of further knowledge extend ad infinitum, but in each direction diametrically away from and not towards the problems of life. It is in this middle field that economics lies, unaffected whether by the ultimate philosophy of the electron or the soul, and concerned rather with the interaction, with the middle world of life of these two end worlds of physics and mind in their commonest everyday aspects, matter and energy on the one hand, obeying the laws of mathematical probability or chance as exhibited in the inanimate universe, and, on the other, with the guidance, direction and willing of these blind forces and processes to predetermined ends [ibid]. Soddy rejects the monism of "Ultra-Materialism": I cannot conceive of inanimate mechanism, obeying the laws of probability, by any continued series of successive steps developing the powers of choice and reproduction any more than I can envisage any increase in the complexity of an engine resulting in the production of the "engine-driver" and the power of its reproducing itself. I shall be told that this is a pontifical expression of personal opinion. Unfortunately, however, for this argument, inanimate mechanism happens to be my special study rather than that of the biologist. It is the invariable characteristic of all shallow and pretentious philosophy to seek the explanation of insoluble problems in some other field than that of which the philosopher has first hand acquaintance [ibid, page 7]. Yet a proper materialism must be one of the foundation stones of economics. In fact, "without phosphorus no thought" (Story of Atomic Energy, page 129) is an axiom that all philosophers and ethicists should be required to memorize. What mechanical science teaches economics is that life derives the whole of its physical energy or power, not from anything self-contained in living matter, and still less from an external deity, but solely from the inanimate world. It is dependent for all the necessities of its physical continuance primarily upon the principles of the steam-engine. The principles and ethics of human law and convention must not run counter to those of thermodynamics [Cartesian Economics, page 9]. The last sentence is very significant because it provides the basis for many of Soddy's criticisms of the economy as a presumed perpetual motion machine. For men, like other heat engines, the physical problems of life are energy problems. Pre-nineteenth-century man lived on energy revenue (sunlight captured by plants, the "original capitalists"). Present-day man augments this revenue by consuming energy capital (coal, the "stored sunlight of palaeozoic summers"). While man can use fuel-fed machinery to lighten labor, he can feed his internal fires only with new sunshine, or rather the energy of new sunshine as transformed through the good offices of the plant. Life thus depends on a continuous flow of energy, and hence the enabling requisites of life must partake of the nature of a flow rather than only a stock. There are limits to the degree that this flow can be stored for future use. A significant part of the requisites of life must come to us as a current flow or "revenue" that cannot in any physical sense be converted to a stock and indefinitely stored for later use. Like the manna which God sent to the Hebrews in the wilderness, the revenue is renewed daily, must be gathered in amounts sufficient for the day (neither too much nor too little), and breeds worms and becomes foul if accumulated too much in excess of current needs (Exodus 16: 17-20). Stocks of assets, to the extent that we can maintain them against the ravages of entropy, are aids and accessories in improving our ability to tap the energy revenue, but the revenue itself cannot be significantly increased, and it cannot be saved except to a limited degree. Indeed, the very maintenance of our accumulated stock of physical wealth against the destructive force of entropy requires the renewing power of the low-entropy "revenue" flow. True, nature has stored energy in coal, but it took geologic epochs of time, and we are only able to unstore it. Furthermore the "flamboyant period" of using up the capital stock of coal was perceived by Soddy as a "very passing phase", after which the constraints imposed by living on energy revenue would be more clearly seen and unmistakably felt. For Soddy the basic economic question was "How does man live?" and the answer was "By sunshine". The rules that man must obey in living on sunshine, whether current or palaeozoic, are the first and second laws of thermodynamics. This in a nutshell is "the bearing of physical science upon state stewardship". Wealth is for Soddy "the humanly useful forms of matter and energy" (The Arch Enemy, page 6). Wealth has both a physical dimension, matter-energy subject to the laws of inanimate mechanism, and a teleological dimension of usefulness, subject to the purposes imposed by mind and will. Soddy's concept of wealth reflects his fundamental dualism and his belief that the middle world of life and wealth is concerned with the interaction of the two end worlds of physics and mind in their commonest everyday aspects. That Soddy concentrated on the physical dimension in order to repair the consequences of its past neglect should not be allowed to lead one to suppose that he proposed a monistic physical theory of wealth, a misinterpretation which, we will see, was fostered by Frank Knight. III. The Major Confusion: Wealth Versus Debt The fundamental error of economics is the confusion of wealth, a magnitude with an irreducible physical dimension, with debt, a purely mathematical or imaginary quantity. The positive physical quantity, two pigs, represents wealth and can be seen and touched. But minus two pigs, debt, is an imaginary magnitude with no physical dimension: Debts are subject to the laws of mathematics rather than physics. Unlike wealth, which is subject to the laws of thermodynamics, debts do not rot with old age and are not consumed in the process of living. On the contrary, they grow at so much per cent per annum, by the well-known mathematical laws of simple and compound interest ... For sufficient reason, the process of compound interest is physically impossible, though the process of compound decrement is physically common enough. Because the former leads with the passage of time ever more and more rapidly to infinity, which, like minus one, is not a physical but a mathematical quantity, whereas the latter leads always more slowly towards zero, which is, as we have seen, the lower limit of physical quantities [Wealth, page 70]. The ruling passion of the age is to convert wealth into debt in order to derive a permanent future income from it - to convert wealth that perishes into debt that endures, debt that does not rot, costs nothing to maintain, and brings in perennial interest (Money Versus Man, page 25). No individual could amass the physical requirements sufficient for maintenance during his old age, for like manna it would rot. Therefore he must convert his non-storable surplus into a lien on future revenue, by letting others consume and invest his surplus now in exchange for the right to share in the increased future revenue. The revenue is "a river of perishable and consumable wealth, steadily flowing to waste whether consumed by human beings or by rats and worms" (Inversion of Science, page 24). But since future annual revenue is limited, there is a corresponding limit on the extent to which present surpluses can be exchanged for perennial streams of future revenue. Soddy emphasizes that the present surplus accumulation can never be changed into future revenue in any physical sense, but only exchanged for it under social conventions. Although it may comfort the lender to think that his wealth still exists somewhere in the form of "capital", it has been or is being used up by the borrower either in consumption or investment, and no more than food or fuel can it be used again later. Rather it has become debt, an indent on future revenues to be generated by future sunshine. "Capital", says Soddy , "merely means unearned income divided by the rate of interest and multiplied by 100'' (Cartesian Economics, page 27). Although debt can follow the law of compound interest, the real energy revenue from future sunshine, the real future income against which the debt is a lien, cannot grow at compound interest for long. When converted into debt, however, real wealth "discards its corruptible body to take on an incorruptible" (Money Versus Man, page 28). In so doing, it appears "to afford a means of dodging Nature" (page 24), of evading the second law of thermodynamics, the law of random, ravage, rust, and rot. The idea that people can live off the interest of their mutual indebtedness (Wealth, page 89) is just another perpetual motion scheme - a vulgar delusion on a grand scale. Soddy seems to be saying that what is obviously impossible for the community - for everyone to live on interest - should also be forbidden to individuals, as a principle of fairness. If it is not forbidden, or at least limited in some way, then at some point the growing liens of debt holders on the limited revenue will become greater than the future producers of that revenue will be willing or able to support, and conflict will result. The conflict takes the form of debt repudiation. Debt grows at compound interest and as a purely mathematical quantity encounters no limits to slow it down. Wealth grows for a while at compound interest, but, having a physical dimension, its growth sooner or later encounters limits. Debt can endure forever; wealth cannot, because its physical dimension is subject to the destructive force of entropy. Since wealth cannot continually grow as fast as debt, the one-to-one relation between the two will at some point be broken - that is, there must be some repudiation or cancellation of debt. The positive feedback of compound interest must be offset by counteracting forces of debt repudiation, such as inflation, bankruptcy, or confiscatory taxation, all of which breed violence. Conventional wisdom considers the latter processes pathological, but accepts compound interest as normal. Logic demands, however, that either we constrain compound interest in some way, or accept as normal and necessary one or more of the counteracting mechanisms of debt repudiation. {2} As Soddy put it, You cannot permanently pit an absurd human convention, such as the spontaneous increment of debt [compound interest], against the natural law of the spontaneous decrement of wealth [entropy] [Cartesian Economics, page 30]. The perpetual motion delusion of living on debt has arisen in the following way, Soddy says: Because formerly ownership of land - which, with the sunshine that falls on it, provides a revenue of wealth - secured, in the form of rent, a share in the annual harvest without labor or service, upon which a cultured and leisured class could permanently establish itself, the age seems to have conceived the preposterous notion that money, which can buy land, must therefore itself have the same revenue-producing power [Wealth, page 106]. If debt and money are the units of measure by which we account for and keep track of the production and distribution of physical wealth, then surely the units of measure and the reality being measured cannot be governed by different laws. Soddy's "acid test is that no monetary accountancy be allowed that could not be done equally well by physical counters" (The Arch Enemy, page 24). If wealth cannot grow at compound interest for long, then debt should not either. If wealth cannot be created ex nihilo then how can we allow money (debt) to be created ex nihilo (and just as easily destroyed)? Worse, how can we tolerate the fact that money is both created ex nihilo and lent at compound interest, while at the same time serving as a unit of measure for wealth which is incapable of either of those "conjuror's tricks"? This brings us to money, the topic which most occupied Soddy's attention. IV. The Monetary Flaw The main defect in the economic system was, for Soddy, the practice of fractional reserve banking whereby the private banking system was enabled to create money, thus appropriating what he called the Virtual Wealth of the community, which it then lent at interest. The concept of "virtual wealth" plays a key role in Soddy's analysis. Essentially it is the aggregate value of real wealth which individuals in the community voluntarily abstain from holding in order to hold money instead. In order to escape the inconvenience of barter everyone must hold money, which could be exchanged for real wealth, but is not. In Soddy's words, "This aggregate of exchangeable goods and services which the community continuously and permanently goes without (though individual money owners can instantly demand and obtain it from other individuals) the author terms the Virtual Wealth of the community" (Role of Money, page 36). If everyone tried to exchange his money holdings for real assets it could not be done, because all real assets are already owned by someone, and in the final analysis someone has to end up holding the money. So Virtual Wealth does not really exist as actual wealth over and above the value of real assets, which is why it is called Virtual. Yet people behave as if Virtual Wealth were real, because at an individual level money is easily exchangeable for physical assets. The phenomenon of Virtual Wealth must occur in a monetary economy, unless the money is itself a commodity that circulates at its commodity value. The value of each unit of money, or the inverse of the "price-index", is simply the Virtual Wealth divided by the total aggregate of money held. Soddy gives the following summary of the nature and importance of Virtual Wealth: Money is now a form of national debt, owned by the individual and owed by the community, exchangeable on demand for wealth by transference to another individual. Its value or purchasing power is not directly determined by any positive or existing quantity of wealth, but by the negative quantity or deficit of wealth, the ownership and enjoyment of which is voluntarily abstained from without the payment of interest, by the owners of the money, to suit their individual business and domestic affairs and convenience. The aggregate of this deficit is called the Virtual Wealth of the community, and it measures the value of all the money owned by the community, which is forced by the necessity of exchanging its produce to act as though it possessed this amount of wealth more than it actually does possess. The Virtual Wealth of a community is not a physical but an imaginary negative wealth quantity. It does not obey the laws of conservation, but is of psychological origin [Wealth, page 295]. Virtual Wealth varies with the size of population and national income and the business and payment habits of the community. It is only when Virtual Wealth is constant that we can equate the value of a unit of money to the ratio of Virtual Wealth to aggregate money held. Soddy believed that Virtual Wealth, though not constant, was far less variable than the money supply. Who benefits from Virtual Wealth? In a sense the whole community does, since it is the price of avoiding barter, or more precisely the price of avoiding the waste of a full commodity currency which uses costly resources (gold) to perform a function that could be performed by paper or by abstract accounting units. In another sense, Virtual Wealth is like seigniorage, the difference between the monetary value and the commodity value (cost of production) of the money token. With the advent of credit money the commodity value of the token becomes nil and seigniorage or Virtual Wealth is the full monetary value of the money issued - or rather the equivalent in forgone utility. The analogy with seigniorage suggests a further answer to the question of who benefits from Virtual Wealth. It is the issuer of fiat money, whoever first puts it in circulation, that gets the seigniorage. The ancient prerogative of the crown has been usurped, not by the modern State, the crown's legitimate heir, but by the private banking system, which "has corrupted the purpose of money from that of an exchange medium to that of an interest-bearing debt'' (Wealth, page 296). Moreover the very existence of the bulk of our money depends upon this debt never being liquidated. The very existence of money now becomes a source of private income, and the total money supply becomes a "concertina" expanding to fuel a boom, and contracting with debt repayment and default thereby reinforcing a slump. Soddy's concept of Virtual Wealth bears an interesting relation to the modern debate about whether fiat money is a part of the net wealth of the community. Pesek and Saving (1967) argue that it is, whereas others, such as James Tobin (1965), argue that it is not. Soddy says that fiat money is Virtual Wealth. Individuals voluntarily hold money balances rather than an equivalent value in real assets in order to escape the enormous inconvenience of barter. Virtual Wealth is the utility cost of holding money. The fact that the benefits are worth more than the costs does not make the costs disappear, and does not convert money into wealth. The social institution of money may be regarded as a form of collective patrimony in the same sense as an efficient legal code or an advanced technology. But the money commodity itself need not be, and in the case of fiat money is not, a productive asset. Indeed, the very advantage of fiat money is to free resources from being tied up in money so that more real assets may be produced with the resources. We count the extra real assets made possible by fiat money as a part of the aggregate wealth of the community, but not the paper chits themselves. Soddy's notion of Virtual Wealth is actually very close to what James Tobin terms the "fiduciary issue": The community's wealth now has two components: the real goods accumulated through past real investment and fiduciary or paper "goods" manufactured by the government from thin air. Of course, the nonhuman wealth of such a nation "really" consists only of its tangible capital. But, as viewed by the inhabitants of the nation individually, wealth exceeds the tangible capital stock by the size of what we might term the fiduciary issue. This is an illusion, but only one of the many fallacies of composition which are basic to any economy or society. The illusion can be maintained unimpaired as long as the society does not actually try to convert all of its paper wealth into goods [Tobin, page 676]. For Soddy, banks do not really make loans, because a loan implies that the lender gives up what the borrower receives. When a bank lends money it gives up nothing, creating the deposits ex nihilo up to the limit set by reserve requirements. {3} The real "lender" is the community at large whose money balances lose in purchasing power with the issue of new money. We know the new money will be spent and increase demand, because the borrower who gets it would not pay interest just to increase his idle balances. Prices are bid up since ex nihilo creation of money (demand) can increase much more rapidly than can the ex materia creation of new physical wealth (supply). But the more direct line of causation is simply that relatively constant Virtual Wealth divided by more pounds means each pound is worth less. Money should not bear interest as a condition of its existence, but only when genuinely lent by an owner who gives it up to a borrower. Banks are like counterfeiters who lend false money, accept their own false money in repayment and destroy it, but receive the interest in real money transferred to them by the rest of the community, and which is not destroyed. Banks create and destroy money with no understanding of the "laws that correlate its quantity with the national income" (Wealth, page 296). Also by continually changing the value of money as they create and destroy it, the banking system converts the pound sterling into a rubber yardstick, in effect making a mockery of all physical measurement standards, since "yards per pound" or "gallons per pound" become variable magnitudes, even though yards and gallons be fixed. At first sight it may seem odd that one who analyzes the economy with the concepts of physical science should focus so much on money, instead of real resources, matter, energy, and the rest. But, of course, it is precisely the fact that money seems to have escaped the laws of conservation and entropy that led Soddy to conclude that the flaw in the system must lie with the "conjuror's tricks" of modern bankers, who have been allowed to regard themselves as the owners of the virtual wealth which the community does not possess, and to lend it and charge interest upon the loan as though it really existed and they possessed it. The wealth so acquired by the impecunious borrower is not given up by the lenders, who receive interest on the loan but give up nothing, but is given up by the whole community, who suffer in consequence the loss through a general reduction in the purchasing power of money [Wealth, page 296]. A further contradiction arises from the interest-bearing national debt being used as collateral security by bondholders who borrow from banks. Banks create a deposit (new money) for the borrowing bondholder and charge him interest. The public is taxed to enable the government to pay interest on the bond to the bondholder who, in effect, passes the interest on to the bank. Soddy draws the conclusion that "taxes are thus paid to the bank for doing what the taxes were imposed to prevent being done, namely, the increase of the currency. Otherwise, there would have been no reason for the State to borrow at interest if it had not wished to prevent the increase of the currency" (Wealth, pages 195, 298). Soddy considers this the final reductio ad absurdum of the monetary system. V. Reform Measures Three basic reforms are suggested by Soddy to restore honesty and accuracy to the economic system: a 100 percent reserve requirement for banks; a policy of maintaining a constant price-index; and freely fluctuating exchange rates internationally. With a 100 percent reserve requirement banks could no longer create money, and that basic function, along with the seigniorage prerogative, or the ownership of Virtual Wealth, would be restored to the State, which would again become the sole "utterer" of money. Banks would have to exist by charging for their legitimate services, that is, those that do not require the creation of money. What principle is to govern the State in issuing money? Money is to be created or destroyed by the State as needed in order to keep the purchasing power of money constant. A price index will be devised by the National Statistical Authority. If the index has a tendency to fall over time, the government will finance its own activities by printing money. Alternatively it might lower taxes, or use the newly created money to redeem interest-bearing national debt. In other words deflation would be corrected by some form of money-creating government deficit. If the index shows a rising tendency the government will raise taxes (or issue interest-bearing national debt) and not spend the revenue. Inflation would be corrected by a money-destroying government surplus. Soddy makes an analogy between the price index and the governor on a steam engine. Both provide a mechanism of stabilizing feedback. The then existing system suffered from destabilizing feedback, since the money supply would expand during a boom and contract during a slump, thereby reinforcing the original tendency. Equilibrium in balance of payments with the rest of the world would be achieved by freely fluctuating exchange rates which would tend to establish a kind of purchasing power parity among currencies. International flows of gold and the consequent inflationary and deflationary pressures on national economies would thereby be eliminated, thus easing the task of keeping the internal purchasing power of the currency constant. Furthermore, the need for tariffs and other interferences with free trade designed to correct international payments imbalances, major causes of international conflict, would have been eliminated. Soddy's proposals have nothing in common with those of Silvio Gesell or Major Douglas, or other famous "monetary cranks". Soddy respected these men for raising important questions, but concluded that in their proposals for reform they were just as guilty of appealing to "conjuror's tricks" as were the orthodox money men. Far from advocating "funny money schemes", Soddy considered the existing canons of sound finance to be elaborate mystifications obscuring the most blatant "funny money" practices carried on in the interest of the bankers and their class, to the detriment of society. These socially dishonest though perfectly legal practices, along with the attempt to convert wealth into debt internationally and live off the interest received from other countries, plus the waning of the "flamboyant period" of energy capital consumption, of which "imperialism marks its final bid for survival" (Cartesian Economics, page 12), would lead inexorably to international conflict and to the misuse of the gifts of science in warfare. Reform of both economic understanding and the economic system in the light of physical and moral first principles is the sine qua non of a civilization capable of using knowledge for good rather than evil. "Let us have an end of the pretence that economics should not be concerned with morals" (Role of Money, page 214). As a minimum morality, economics must surely insist on a system of honest weights and measures underlying exchange; yet the current monetary system with its fluctuations in purchasing power subverts honest measure and gives a false accounting of the physical realities underlying the production and distribution of wealth. VI. The Relevance of Soddy's Economic Thought Today Soddy's insistence that the first and second laws of thermodynamics must be the starting point of economics (Role of Money, pages 4, 5) is a fundamental insight the relevance of which has grown as we have come to discover that neither the sources of low entropy inputs nor the sinks for high entropy waste outputs are infinite. Probably the most important economic treatise of the last forty years is Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen's The Entropy Law and the Economic Process (1971), which demonstrates that the economic process is entropic in its physical coordinates; that wealth is an open system, a structure maintained in the midst of a throughput that begins with the depletion of low entropy matter-energy and ends with the return of an equal quantity of polluting high entropy matter-energy back to the environment; that in contrast to the reversibility of mechanical phenomena, entropic phenomena are characterized by irreversibility, a fatal weakness of the mechanistic epistemology of standard economics; and that there is a critical asymmetry between our two sources of low entropy. The last point refers to the fact that solar low entropy (Soddy's revenue) is nearly infinite in total amount but strictly limited in its rate of flow to earth, whereas terrestrial low entropy (concentrated minerals in the earth's crust) is strictly limited in total amount, but can be used up at a rate of our own choosing. Economic development since the industrial revolution has been in the direction of ever less reliance on the abundant solar flow and towards dependence on the relatively scarce terrestrial stock. This is what Soddy called the "flamboyant period", destined to be short-lived. Evidently Georgescu-Roegen was unaware of the writings of Soddy on this subject, because he never cites Soddy. No one is more scrupulously honest and painstaking in citing the work of others than Georgescu-Roegen, and this omission is pointed out only to indicate the extent of Soddy's obscurity as an economist. Similar comments apply to Kenneth Boulding, {4} who has also related economics to thermodynamics, without mentioning Soddy, and to the present author as well. This omission is understandable because after all Soddy was a chemist not an economist, and his economic writings all bore titles indicating only the monetary nature of his economic work, or such uninformative titles as Cartesian Economics. Only the subtitle of the latter, "The Bearing of Physical Science Upon State Stewardship", gives any hint of the nature of his most important and original contribution to economics. But the fact remains that Soddy anticipated the basic insights of Georgescu-Roegen and Boulding regarding the relation of economics and thermodynamics, and deserves recognition as a pioneer in a line of thinking which I believe will one day be dominant. Soddy was also a pioneer in recognizing the moral responsibility of science, and in realizing ahead of others that new knowledge, while it might not be permanently "forbidden", can certainly be "inopportune" under existing social and moral conditions, even to the extent of being lethal to the civilization that made it possible (Sinsheimer, page 24). Was Soddy successful in his effort to discover the flaws in the economic system that corrupted the fruits of science and led to war? Would 100 percent reserves, a constant price index, and flexible exchange rates make the world safe for atomic energy? Is it true that whether science emancipates or destroys humanity depends on a "minor technical point in a banking system", as Soddy claimed (Inversion of Science, page iv)? One may reasonably doubt it. In fact it seems that at this point Soddy himself was "seeking the solution to insoluble problems in some field other than that of which the philosopher has firsthand acquaintance" - to recall his own jibe at the mechanistic biologists. But the fact that Soddy exaggerated the efficacy of his suggested reforms does not mean that his analysis is unimportant. Neither the specific proposals nor the reasoning underlying them can be fairly dismissed as those of an outsider or a monetary crank who just does not understand economics. {5} Flexible exchange rates have come into being already, and Soddy was arguing their virtues at a time when most economists were wedded to the gold standard. The new humility born of the theoretical anomaly of simultaneous inflation and unemployment and the demonstrated inability of orthodox "monetary cranks" to deal with persistent inflation could conceivably lead to a reconsideration of the constant price-index and 100 percent reserve requirements. Of course some of these policies have had other champions besides Soddy, some with very respectable academic credentials, such as Henry Simons and Irving Fisher (see Simons 1948 and Fisher 1935). It is curious that Irving Fisher never mentions Soddy in his writings on 100 percent money. Soddy, however, in a pamphlet written in 1943 refers to Fisher: "Some years later, after the great depression in the USA, an American economist, Professor Irving Fisher of Yale University, put forward a scheme which in its original form was practically identical [to Soddy's "pound for pound banking" plan] and which he termed 100% money" (The Arch Enemy, page 11). Soddy's plan was published in 1926, Fisher's in 1935. Soddy seems to regard the near identity of plans as an interesting and encouraging coincidence and in no way suggests that Fisher had copied or even been influenced by him. Although a great enthusiast for science and technology, Soddy could not share the popular obsession with unlimited growth. Even if continual economic growth were possible, it would at some point become senseless. On this point Soddy quotes John Ruskin, whom he greatly admired as an economist: "Capital which produces nothing but capital is only root producing root; bulb issuing in bulb, never in tulip; seed issuing in seed never in bread. The Political Economy of Europe has hitherto devoted itself to the multiplication ... of bulbs. It never saw or conceived such a thing as a tulip" (Money Versus Man, page v). Soddy held that "economic sufficiency is the essential foundation of all national greatness and progress" (Money Versus Man, page 12). But sufficiency means "enough" and growth beyond "enough" is just "seed issuing in seed never in bread". Soddy does not define "sufficiency", but it is clear that any definition must respect the limits of energy revenue from the sun as captured by plants, and the entropic limits on the possibility of storing up wealth for future use, as well as the teleological constraint implied by a defined (that is, limited) purpose from which low entropy matter-energy derives its value dimension, and thus becomes wealth. Not all matter-energy is capable of becoming wealth; only low entropy matter-energy has the physical potential for usefulness, for receiving the imprint of information and purpose. Since the entropy law says in effect that potential gets used up, then scarcity must increase over the long run. But what bothered Soddy was not the scarcity implications of entropy, since he believed that science could more than offset increasing scarcity for a very long time yet. The truly scarce factor for Soddy was not low entropy, but our ability to keep from blowing up scientific civilization with the increasing power that science made available. We persist in applying those powers toward the impossible goal of making the real world of matter-energy conform to the purely mathematical law of compound interest. This leads to debt cancellation, conflict, and war. Orthodox growth economics notwithstanding, the best evidence is that the earth is not growing at all, much less at a rate equal to the rate of interest. The attempt to pit an absurd human convention against a natural law is not only foolish, but highly dangerous. The absurdity of infinite growth has been the most carefully ignored anomaly in the paradigm of modern economics. As Soddy put it, If Christ, whose views on the folly of laying up treasures on earth are well known, had put by a pound at this rate, it should now be worth an Octillion, and Tariff Reform would be of little help to provide that, even if you colonized the entire stellar universe ... It is this absurdity which inverts society, turns good into evil and makes orthodox economics the laughing stock of science. If the consequences were not the familiar atmosphere of our daily lives they would be deemed beyond the legitimate bounds of the most extravagant comic opera [Inversion of Science, page 17]. A contemporary unsympathetic reviewer, economist A G Silverman, was at least forthright enough to face the issue and to attempt a reply: In criticism of the above theory, it may be asked how can the receivers of interest, if they live on this income, take advantage of the law of compound interest; and if they reinvest this "unearned" income why cannot the law of compound interest approximately hold for physical capital as well as debt [Silverman, page 277]? The first question is sensible but irrelevant because Soddy never suggested that one could take advantage of compound interest without reinvesting at least part of the interest income. The second part of the question, however, reveals that the questioner had no conception of the difference between physical and purely mathematical quantities, and must have made Soddy despair of ever communicating with economists. Perhaps by "approximately" Professor Silverman meant "for a limited time period". But then we must ask what happens at the end of that limited time period, and how long it is. Probably the most favorable review that Soddy got from an economist came from none other than Frank Knight, who began by confessing that Somewhat to the reviewer's surprise this book [Wealth, Virtual Wealth, and Debt] has proven well worth the time and effort of a careful reading. Surprising because, in general, when the specialist in natural sciences takes time off to come over and straighten out the theory of economics he shows himself even dumber than the academic economist, and because, in particular, Soddy's Pamphlet on Cartesian Economics which we read some years ago did not promise to set a new precedent in this regard [Knight, page 732]. Knight went so far as to call the book (page 732) "brilliantly written and brilliantly suggestive and stimulating". I would like to be able to appeal to the authority of Frank Knight to support my own favorable evaluation of Soddy's economics, but unfortunately our particular appreciations of Soddy conflict. Knight considers Soddy's practical theses concerning money to be "highly significant and theoretically correct" (ibid), a judgment with which I do not basically disagree, but consider a bit too kind, since Soddy certainly exaggerated the significance of his practical theses, however correct they may be. Concerning the physical basis of economics and the relation to thermodynamics, however, Knight is very negative (ibid): His effort to establish a conception of physical wealth, subject to a principle of conservation and interpretable in relation to physical energy, must be briefly dismissed. Knight's grounds for dismissal are opaque: Magnitudes of wealth and productive capacity ... change absolutely whenever a human being changes his (or her!) mind; and the mass-energy relations of mind-changes are as unimportant in this connection as they are obscure - if their very existence is anything but a metaphysical inference based on the monistic bias of the scientific intellect [Knight, page 732] Whatever that may mean, it is surely odd that anyone who read Cartesian Economics (recall the first two quotations in Section III above) could even obliquely accuse Soddy of "monistic bias". Furthermore Soddy had no theory of conservation of the value dimension of wealth (which may change with mental states), but only insisted that the physical dimension of wealth is subject to the laws of thermodynamics regardless of mind changes or financial conventions, and that this fact is not trivial. If the fact that magnitudes of wealth and productive capacity change absolutely whenever a human being changes his mind were the whole truth, then how easy it would be to make everyone wealthy - all we would need do to double wealth would be to change our minds! Then wealth could grow as fast as debt, since it would be free from its physical body. It would be quite unfair to accuse Knight of such simple-minded angelism, but it strikes me as equally unfair of Knight to treat Soddy as a simple-minded physical reductionist. It is true that Soddy emphasized the physical aspect of wealth in order to correct for its neglect by economists, a procedure which, if Knight's attitude is representative, Soddy was certainly justified in adopting. In view of the fact that Soddy's critique of money stemmed directly from his prior physical analysis, it is strange that Knight could so categorically reject the latter while enthusiastically embracing the former, although it is conceivable that one could arrive at the right monetary conclusions for the wrong physical reasons. Knight offers the following support for Soddy's views on money: In the abstract, it is absurd and monstrous for society to pay the commercial banking system "interest" for multiplying severalfold the quantity of medium of exchange when (a) a public agency could do it at negliglible cost, (b) there is no sense in having it done at all, since the effect is simply to raise the price level, and (c) important evils result, notably the frightful instability of the whole economic system [ibid]. Knight deserves much credit for having been the only reputable economist to have taken Soddy seriously, even though in my opinion he missed Soddy's main contribution. But then so did everyone else until now, when, in the light both of Georgescu-Roegen's masterly reuniting of economics with its physical base and of the current recognition of the critical importance of energy, the prior contribution of Soddy has become visible enough for anyone to see. Soddy was in many ways fifty years ahead of his time. Notes: 1. In fairness to Millikan it should be noted that in concluding his vigorous defense of science he did temper his optimism with the following caution: "I am not in general disturbed by expanding knowledge or increasing power, but I begin to be disturbed when this comes coincidentally with a decrease in the sense of moral values. If these two occur together, whether they bear any relationship or not, there is real cause for alarm" (Millikan, page 129). 2. This point has been forcefully made by biologist Garrett Hardin. See his (with Carl Bajema) Biology: Its Principles and Implications, third edition (San Francisco, 1978), page 257. 3. When a bank lends to A it forgoes the opportunity of making the same loan to B, so in that sense there is an opportunity cost in allocating the virtual wealth among borrowers, but there is no opportunity cost to the bank in acquiring the Virtual Wealth in the first place. 4. In fact, Boulding told me he was very much aware of Soddy the scientist, having slept through his chemistry lectures at Oxford, but knew nothing of his economic writings. As for sleeping through chemistry lectures, even the writer of one obituary tribute remarked that it would be idle to pretend that Soddy was a successful classroom teacher. 5. For such a dismissal see A G Silverman (1927). _____ The author is grateful for support from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund during the period in which this article was written. Helpful comments on an earlier draft were received from T Beard, W Campbell, E Cook, G Hardin, S Farber, G Smith, and an anonymous referee. The author, of course, is solely responsible for all contents of the article. References Irving Fisher. 100% Money. New York, 1935. Alexander Fleck. "Frederick Soddy". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 3 (1957): 203-16. Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen. The Entropy Law and the Economic Process. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1971. Frank H Knight. Review of Wealth, Virtual Wealth and Debt. Saturday Review of Literature, 16 April 1927, page 732. R A Millikan. "Alleged Sins of Science". Scribner's Magazine 87, no 2 (1930): 119-30. B P Pesek and T R Saving. Money, Wealth, and Economic Theory. New York, 1967. Alexander S Russell. "F Soddy, Interpreter of Atomic Structure". Science, 30 November 1956, pages 1069-70. A G Silverman. Review of Wealth, Virtual Wealth, and Debt. American Economic Review, June 1927, pages 275-78. Henry Simons. Economic Policy for a Free Society. Chicago, 1948. Robert L Sinsheimer. "The Presumptions of Science". Daedalus, Spring 1978, pages 23-35. Frederick Soddy. Science and Life. London, 1920. Frederick Soddy. Cartesian Economics. London, 1922. Frederick Soddy. Wealth, Virtual Wealth, and Debt. London, 1926, 1933. Frederick Soddy. Money Versus Man. New York, 1933. Frederick Soddy. The Role of Money. London, 1934. Frederick Soddy. The Arch Enemy of Economic Freedom (pamphlet). Oxford, 1943. Frederick Soddy. The Story of Atomic Energy. London, 1949. Times Literary Supplement, London, 26 Aug. 1926, page 565. James Tobin. "Money and Economic Growth". Econometrica 33, October 1965. 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/ From critical.montages at gmail.com Sun Jul 12 08:00:57 2009 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2009 10:00:57 -0400 Subject: [R-G] Iranian-Americans Rally in Front of White House to Demand "Complete Sanctions" on Iran (Together with Tom Tancredo) Message-ID: These "Iranian-Americans" are the Mojahedin (one of whose front groups the "National Coalition of Pro-Democracy Advocates" is as you can plainly see from its Web site ), Republicans, and their "useful idiots" who have been conned into taking the path of vatanforushi, the path of vendepatrias. -- Yoshie Iranian-Americans rally in front of White House By CHRISTINE SIMMONS ? 6 hours ago WASHINGTON (AP) ? Hundreds of protesters, many of them Iranian-Americans, marched from Capitol Hill to the White House on Saturday, most holding Iranian flags and chanting demands for the U.S. to take more action after Iran's disputed election. After marching through several blocks of downtown Washington, more than 200 people rallied in front of the White House. They shouted demands for President Barack Obama and leaders of other countries to "reject the sham elections, impose complete sanctions." They also shouted "death to Ahmadinejad," referring to the Iranian president whose disputed June 12 re-election prompted days of street protests in Iran. Some carried pictures of Neda Agha Soltan, a young woman who bled to death in a Tehran street. She became a symbol of the postelection protest movement after videos of her death by gunfire were posted online. Iranian-American organizations, such as the National Coalition of Pro-Democracy Advocates, and human rights groups organized the march and the rally in Lafayette Square across from the White House. Demonstrators said they wanted to show their solidarity with the protesters in Iran. They also wanted world leaders to suspend all political and diplomatic ties with Iran and demanded that the Iranian regime hold an election supervised by the United Nations. Reza Kamandar, who took part in the rally, said his brother was shot by a member of Iran's Revolutionary Guard earlier this week and died. The 43-year-old math teacher said he traveled from Houston to Washington "to support my people." "I'm here to tell Mr. Obama please, please take action. You need to take action right now," he said. "In Iran, they don't want this government." Yavar Moghimi, a 28-year-old who has many family members in Iran, said he participated in the rally to make sure Iran's disputed election "is not forgotten in the eyes of policy makers here" and remind them "there's tons of people who are political prisoners right now" in Iran. The crowd heard from several speakers, including former Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo. From shniad at sfu.ca Sun Jul 12 09:04:45 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2009 08:04:45 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Norman Finkelstein propose massive demonstration to end Israel's siege on Gaza In-Reply-To: <1534358311.1845381247410821908.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1608012566.1845401247411085577.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Demonstration to end Israel's Siege on Gaza A recent Youtube interview with Norman Finkelstein outlines plans for a demonstration involving 5000 internationals and 500,000 Palestinians marching on an Israeli checkpoint to impose International Law. Finkelstein suggests that honorary grand marshals for the event could be people like Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter, and Noam Chomsky. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClAHlumNO6I&NR=1 From shniad at sfu.ca Sun Jul 12 09:10:22 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2009 08:10:22 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] What did the CIA lie to Congress about, and where was Cheney? In-Reply-To: <1527284609.1711081247268781378.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1719603749.1845621247411422982.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2009/07/what-did-the-cia-lie-to-congress-about-and-where-was-cheney.html Los Angeles Times Blog July 10, 2009 What did the CIA lie to Congress about, and where was Cheney? Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee set off a political bombshell this week. In a leaked letter, they disclosed that CIA Director Leon Panetta -- four months after taking office -- learned that his agency had misled Congress about a special project. He canceled the program and scheduled closed-door meetings with the House and Senate Intelligence Committees the next day to brief them. Ever since, observers of the national security scene have been puzzling over the story. Aside from the disturbing -- but not particularly surprising news -- that someone at the CIA sat on this news for four months after getting a new boss, the question is: what classified program did Panetta close down? Early speculation rested on waterboarding, a technique the Bush administration used in interrogating terrorists. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had earlier accused the CIA of misleading her on use of the controversial practice. But President Obama has already banned waterboarding, so it's not something Panetta would need to shut down. Now, some are quoting the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh , who in March alleged that a secret army of CIA operatives reported to former Vice President Dick Cheney . In remarks he has not substantiated in print, Hersh talked about "a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office.... It's an executive assassination ring essentially, and it's been going on and on and on ." Cheney makes a convenient target. He's already enraged Democrats for suggesting that Obama's policies are making the United States more vulnerable to terrorist attacks. In fact, Panetta accused Cheney of hoping America would be attacked again, just to prove his point. As a result, some Republicans argue that the Democrats are just floating the Cheney rumor to deflect attention away from Pelosi's credibility on the issue. Others argue that there is less there than meets the eye. As one unnamed former intelligence official told the Washington Post, "This characterization of something that began in 2001 and continued uninterrupted for eight years is just wrong. Honest men would question that characterization. It was more off and on." If the nature of the program could be revealed, said the source, it would be seen as "no big deal." Either way, look for the guessing game to continue. -- Johanna Neuman From shniad at sfu.ca Sun Jul 12 09:09:30 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2009 08:09:30 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] The Real News Network - McNamara deceived LBJ on Vietnam In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1587164346.1845531247411370173.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> The Real News Network - McNamara deceived LBJ on Vietnam Paul Jay speaks to Garth Porter about former Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara who died Monday, July 6th. Porter says that documents he uncovered from the Lyndon B. Johnson library demonstrate that McNamara deceived LBJ over the Gulf of Tonkin incident. In spite of dubious reports that U.S. Navy ships were attacked by North Vietnamese fleet, "[McNamara] went ahead with drafting the strike order for the retaliation that night and actually [sent] that strike order without having basically consulted further with President Johnson about the situation that he now understood of real doubt on the part of the commander on the scene that they had been attacked." http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=3990 From mstainsby at resist.ca Sun Jul 12 12:56:18 2009 From: mstainsby at resist.ca (Macdonald Stainsby) Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2009 12:56:18 -0600 Subject: [R-G] The Real News Network - McNamara deceived LBJ on Vietnam In-Reply-To: <1587164346.1845531247411370173.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> References: <1587164346.1845531247411370173.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <4A5A31D2.4010805@resist.ca> I have a feeling LBJ wasn't too upset about it all. Not likely that this would have caused any rift. Sid Shniad wrote: > The Real News Network - McNamara deceived LBJ on Vietnam > > Paul Jay speaks to Garth Porter about former Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara > who died Monday, July 6th. Porter says that documents he uncovered from the Lyndon > B. Johnson library demonstrate that McNamara deceived LBJ over the Gulf of Tonkin > incident. From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Sun Jul 12 19:50:52 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Mon, 13 Jul 2009 10:50:52 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] The American Empire Is Bankrupt Message-ID: <20090713105052.422a29db.shimogamo@ashisuto.co.jp> by Chris Hedges {*} Truthdig (June 14 2009) This week marks the end of the dollar's reign as the world's reserve currency {1}. It marks the start of a terrible period of economic and political decline in the United States. And it signals the last gasp of the American imperium. That's over. It is not coming back. And what is to come will be very, very painful. Barack Obama, and the criminal class on Wall Street, aided by a corporate media that continues to peddle fatuous gossip and trash talk as news while we endure the greatest economic crisis in our history, may have fooled us, but the rest of the world knows we are bankrupt. And these nations are damned if they are going to continue to prop up an inflated dollar and sustain the massive federal budget deficits, swollen to over $2 trillion, which fund America's imperial expansion in Eurasia and our system of casino capitalism. They have us by the throat. They are about to squeeze. There are meetings being held {2} Monday and Tuesday in Yekaterinburg, Russia, (formerly Sverdlovsk) among Chinese President Hu Jintao, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and other top officials of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The United States, which asked to attend, was denied admittance. Watch what happens there carefully. The gathering is, in the words of economist Michael Hudson {3}, "the most important meeting of the 21st century so far". It is the first formal step by our major trading partners to replace the dollar as the world's reserve currency. If they succeed, the dollar will dramatically plummet in value, the cost of imports, including oil, will skyrocket, interest rates will climb and jobs will hemorrhage at a rate that will make the last few months look like boom times. State and federal services will be reduced or shut down for lack of funds. The United States will begin to resemble the Weimar Republic or Zimbabwe. Obama, endowed by many with the qualities of a savior, will suddenly look pitiful, inept and weak. And the rage that has kindled a handful of shootings and hate crimes in the past few weeks will engulf vast segments of a disenfranchised and bewildered working and middle class. The people of this class will demand vengeance, radical change, order and moral renewal, which an array of proto-fascists, from the Christian right to the goons who disseminate hate talk on Fox News, will assure the country they will impose. I called Hudson, who has an article in Monday's Financial Times called "The Yekaterinburg Turning Point: De-Dollarization and the Ending of America's Financial-Military Hegemony". "Yekaterinburg", Hudson writes, "may become known not only as the death place of the czars but of the American empire as well". His article is worth reading, along with John Lanchester's disturbing expose {4} of the world's banking system, titled "It's Finished", which appeared in the May 28 issue of the London Review of Books. "This means the end of the dollar", Hudson told me. "It means China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Iran are forming an official financial and military area to get America out of Eurasia. The balance-of-payments deficit is mainly military in nature. Half of America's discretionary spending is military. The deficit ends up in the hands of foreign banks, central banks. They don't have any choice but to recycle the money to buy US government debt. The Asian countries have been financing their own military encirclement. They have been forced to accept dollars that have no chance of being repaid. They are paying for America's military aggression against them. They want to get rid of this." China, as Hudson points out, has already struck bilateral trade deals with Brazil and Malaysia to denominate their trade in China's yuan rather than the dollar, pound or euro. Russia promises to begin trading in the ruble and local currencies. The governor of China's central bank has openly called for the abandonment of the dollar as reserve currency, suggesting in its place the use of the International Monetary Fund's Special Drawing Rights {5}. What the new system will be remains unclear, but the flight from the dollar has clearly begun. The goal, in the words of the Russian president, is to build a "multipolar world order" which will break the economic and, by extension, military domination by the United States. China is frantically spending its dollar reserves to buy factories and property around the globe so it can unload its US currency. This is why Aluminum Corporation of China made so many major concessions in the failed attempt to salvage its $19.5 billion alliance with the Rio Tinto mining concern in Australia. It desperately needs to shed its dollars. "China is trying to get rid of all the dollars they can in a trash-for-resource deal", Hudson said. "They will give the dollars to countries willing to sell off their resources since America refuses to sell any of its high-tech industries, even Unocal, to the yellow peril. It realizes these dollars are going to be worthless pretty quickly." The architects of this new global exchange realize that if they break the dollar they also break America's military domination. Our military spending cannot be sustained without this cycle of heavy borrowing. The official US defense budget for fiscal year 2008 is $623 billion, before we add on things like nuclear research. The next closest national military budget is China's, at $65 billion, according to the Central Intelligence Agency. There are three categories of the balance-of-payment deficits. America imports more than it exports. This is trade. Wall Street and American corporations buy up foreign companies. This is capital movement. The third and most important balance-of-payment deficit for the past fifty years has been Pentagon spending abroad. It is primarily military spending that has been responsible for the balance-of-payments deficit for the last five decades. Look at table five in the Balance of Payments Report, published in the Survey of Current Business quarterly, and check under military spending. There you can see the deficit. To fund our permanent war economy, we have been flooding the world with dollars. The foreign recipients turn the dollars over to their central banks for local currency. The central banks then have a problem. If a central bank does not spend the money in the United States then the exchange rate against the dollar will go up. This will penalize exporters. This has allowed America to print money without restraint to buy imports and foreign companies, fund our military expansion and ensure that foreign nations like China continue to buy our treasury bonds. This cycle appears now to be over. Once the dollar cannot flood central banks and no one buys our treasury bonds, our empire collapses. The profligate spending on the military, some $1 trillion when everything is counted, will be unsustainable. "We will have to finance our own military spending", Hudson warned, "and the only way to do this will be to sharply cut back wage rates. The class war is back in business. Wall Street understands that. This is why it had Bush and Obama give it $10 trillion in a huge rip-off so it can have enough money to survive." The desperate effort to borrow our way out of financial collapse has promoted a level of state intervention unseen since World War Two. It has also led us into uncharted territory. "We have in effect had to declare war to get us out of the hole created by our economic system", Lanchester wrote in the London Review of Books. "There is no model or precedent for this, and no way to argue that it's all right really, because under such-and-such a model of capitalism ... there is no such model. It isn't supposed to work like this, and there is no road-map for what's happened." The cost of daily living, from buying food to getting medical care, will become difficult for all but a few as the dollar plunges. States and cities will see their pension funds drained and finally shut down. The government will be forced to sell off infrastructure, including roads and transport, to private corporations. We will be increasingly charged by privatized utilities - think Enron - for what was once regulated and subsidized. Commercial and private real estate will be worth less than half its current value. The negative equity that already plagues 25 percent of American homes will expand to include nearly all property owners. It will be difficult to borrow and impossible to sell real estate unless we accept massive losses. There will be block after block of empty stores and boarded-up houses. Foreclosures will be epidemic. There will be long lines at soup kitchens and many, many homeless. Our corporate-controlled media, already banal and trivial, will work overtime to anesthetize us with useless gossip, spectacles, sex, gratuitous violence, fear and tawdry junk politics. America will be composed of a large dispossessed underclass and a tiny empowered oligarchy that will run a ruthless and brutal system of neo-feudalism from secure compounds. Those who resist will be silenced, many by force. We will pay a terrible price, and we will pay this price soon, for the gross malfeasance of our power elite. Links: {*} http://www.truthdig.com/about/staff/70 {1} http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_currency {2} http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13707 {3} http://www.michael-hudson.com/ {4} http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n10/lanc01_.html {5} http://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/facts/sdr.htm A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion. Editor, Robert Scheer. Publisher, Zuade Kaufman. Copyright (c) 2009 Truthdig, LLC. All rights reserved. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090614_the_american_empire_is_bankrupt/ 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/ From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Mon Jul 13 06:09:24 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Mon, 13 Jul 2009 21:09:24 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] California Dreamin' Message-ID: <20090713210924.06d7004d.shimogamo@ashisuto.co.jp> How the State Can Beat Its Budget Woes by Ellen Brown webofdebt.com (July 08 2009) "As goes California", says the adage, "so goes the nation". All eyes are therefore on the Golden State as it attempts to solve its $26 billion budget deficit. The world's eighth largest economy is not going quietly into that pit of debt and devastation that has devoured Third World countries whole. The State's voters have drawn a line in the sand against further tax hikes, while Democratic leaders have drawn a line at further cuts in services or selloff of public assets. State legislators are deadlocked, caught between the rock of tax ceilings and the hard place of debt limits. "Expect the best and accept nothing less", says another adage that typifies the attitude sometimes called "California dreaming". You create your own reality. Instead of trying to prop up an old model that has failed, you can dream up a new one. If anyone can come up with an original solution to the problem, Californians should be able to. But what? While waiting for developments, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has started paying the State's bills with IOUs ("I Owe You"s evidencing debt, technically called "registered warrants"). Hmm ... Pay the bills with IOUs. Not a bad idea! That was, in fact, the original innovation that got the American colonists out of their financial straits back in the 18th century, when they lacked the silver and gold used in the Old World for conducting trade. Money, after all, was just a medium of exchange, an acknowledgment of goods and services delivered or a debt owed. The notion that the government could pay in paper receipts was first hit on by the governor of the province of Massachusetts in 1691, when he needed money to fund a local war. The use of a paper currency had been suggested in an anonymous British pamphlet in 1650, but the proposal was modeled on the receipts issued by London goldsmiths and silversmiths for the precious metals left in their vaults for safekeeping. The problem for the colonies was that they were short of silver and gold. The Massachusetts Assembly therefore proposed a different kind of paper money, a "bill of credit" representing the government's "bond" or IOU. The paper money of Massachusetts was backed only by the "full faith and credit" of the government. Other colonies followed suit with their own issues of paper money. Some were considered government IOUs, redeemable later in "hard" currency (silver or gold). Others were issued as "legal tender" in themselves. They were "as good as gold" in trade, without bearing debt or an obligation to redeem the notes in some other form of money later. The new paper money not only made the colonies independent of the British bankers and their gold but actually allowed the colonists to finance their local government without taxing the people. Colonial assemblies discovered that provincial loan offices could generate a steady stream of revenue in the form of interest income by taking on the lending functions of banks. The same solution was employed in other countries later. When Argentina's government workers were faced with massive layoffs, their unions persuaded six state governments to pay them instead with state bonds or IOUs in small denominations. The IOUs could then be used to pay for state services and taxes, and everyone in the local economy accepted them in trade. There's Just One Problem ... Why couldn't California do the same thing? The problem with calling its IOUs "legal tender" today is that the ruse violates the US Constitution. Article I, Section 10, says, "No State shall ... coin money [or] emit bills of credit". The Cornell University Law School Annotated Constitution {1} gives this definition: "Within the sense of the Constitution, bills of credit signify a paper medium of exchange, intended to circulate between individuals, and between the Government and individuals, for the ordinary purposes of society". US Supreme Court cases are cited from the 1830s, in which "interest bearing certificates, in denominations not exceeding ten dollars, which were issued by loan offices established by the State of Missouri and made receivable in payment of taxes or other moneys due to the State, and in payment of the fees and salaries of state officers, were held to be bills of credit whose issuance was banned by this section". That all seems pretty clear cut, until you read a bit further. Article I, Section 10, also says that no State shall "make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts". When was the last time any State paid its bills only in gold and silver coin? The States could argue that the Constitution needs to be updated. They could make some other compelling arguments. The States agreed to give up their right to issue their own currencies because they delegated that power to Congress. Article I, Section 8, enumerates among the powers given to Congress, "To coin Money [and] regulate the Value thereof". Scholars continue to argue about the meaning of "to coin money", but the Constitution clearly gives no entity except Congress the power to create money and regulate its value, and Congress failed to properly husband that authority. It issued coins, but it allowed privately-owned banks to issue "banknotes", which soon made up the bulk of the nation's money supply. Bankers, not Congress, thus "regulated the value" of the currency, through the laws of supply and demand: the more notes they created, the smaller the value of each. In 1913, Congress went so far as to allow a privately-owned central bank called the Federal Reserve to issue its own Federal Reserve Notes and call them the exclusive national paper currency. These notes were then lent to the US government, at interest. Today, however, Federal Reserve Notes compose only about three percent of the money supply (M3). The other 97% is issued by private banks in the form of loans. "Bank credit" is created simply by entering numbers into the accounts of borrowers, as many authorities {2} have attested. One of the most clear statements of this process came from Graham Towers, Governor of the Bank of Canada from 1935 to 1955, who acknowledged: "Banks create money. That is what they are for ... The manufacturing process to make money consists of making an entry in a book. That is all ... Each and every time a Bank makes a loan ... new Bank credit is created - brand new money." Congress has not only reneged on its agreement to create the national money supply, but it has refused to front the funds to bail out California from its relatively modest $26 billion budget shortfall. Californians are justifiably upset, since Congress hardly batted an eye before earmarking some $700 billion in bailout money for the private banking system, and the Federal Reserve has committed trillions more for that dubious purpose. Nearly ten times {3} the sum needed by California was allotted to bailing out AIG, a private insurance company; and half {4} the sum needed by California went to pay off the gambling debts of AIG to Goldman Sachs, a single bank. California underwrites a substantial portion of the federal government's budget, sending a dollar in tax revenue for every eighty cents it gets back. Yet the federal government has even rejected California's request for a loan guarantee, which could have saved the State hundreds of millions of dollars in interest. The clear message is, "You're on your own". Creative Problem Solving The situation looks pretty dire, but it may just need some thinking outside the box. The law does not allow the States to issue "bills of credit", but it does allow them to create another form of money called "checkbook" money. All a State has to do is to form its own bank. Quoting again from the Cornell University Law School Annotated Constitution: "Bills issued by state banks are not bills of credit; it is immaterial that the State is the sole stockholder of the bank, that the officers of the bank were elected by the state legislature, or that the capital of the bank was raised by the sale of state bonds". If private banks can create credit on their books, so can the world's eighth largest economy. Indeed, there is longstanding precedent for this approach. The State of North Dakota has owned its own bank for nearly a century. North Dakota is one of only two States (along with Montana) that are not currently facing budget shortfalls {5}. North Dakota has beaten the Wall Street credit freeze by generating its own credit. By law, ever since 1919 the State's revenues have been deposited in its own bank, the Bank of North Dakota (BND) {6}. Using the "fractional reserve" lending scheme open to all banks, these deposits are then available to be used as the "reserves" for creating many times their face value in loans. Other banks in the State do not see the BND as a threat, because it partners with them and backstops them, serving as a sort of central bank for North Dakota. BND's loans are not insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) but are guaranteed by the State. If California followed suit, it would not need to meet the FDIC's capital requirements but could designate state-owned property (parks, buildings and so forth) as its capital base. Applying the "multiplier effect" by which capital is lent and relent many times over, this base could then generate hundreds of billions of dollars in "credit". The State could deposit its revenues in the State bank and pay its payroll through it, generating an even larger deposit base for making new loans. Enough credit could be generated to allow the State not only to meet its short-term budget needs but to buy back its outstanding bonds (or debt). Bond interest {7} and redemption costs on California's General Fund for the current year are estimated at nearly $5 billion - about twenty percent of the budget shortfall. All of that money could be saved in interest, since the State would be paying interest to itself. The State could do more than just chase the wolf from its door. It could generate enough credit to engage in the sort of economic "stimulus" being undertaken by the federal government. It could create jobs for the 11.5% of the State's population that are currently unemployed, augmenting the tax base and supplying the incomes necessary to prop up the languishing housing market. Loans for income-producing projects (transportation, energy, housing) could be repaid with the profits generated by the funded projects. And if some of the newly-issued loans were not paid back, they could simply be refinanced. The federal government has been rolling over its loans ever since 1835, the last time the federal debt was actually paid off (under Andrew Jackson). In boom times, this approach could result in unwanted inflation. But today the economy is suffering from a serious shortage of money, because virtually all of our money comes from bank loans, and bank lending has dried up. Since neither the federal government nor the Federal Reserve has stepped in to fill the void, the States must do it themselves; and like the 18th century colonial governments, they can do it by taking over the lending functions of banks. California's taxpayers and legislators are doing the right thing digging in their heels and drawing the line at further austerity measures. California is being watched not only by the nation but by the world. We the people did not precipitate this credit crisis; the banks did. We should not have to pay for the damage with increased taxes or decreased services or our public parks and parking meters. Like the American colonists, we can replace the old model with something better. If California legislators act quickly, they can have a State-owned bank up and running before their 45-day IOUs run out. With today's new online banking possibilities, the State would not even need to invest in a "brick and mortar" building. The whole business could be done by computer. Weary legislators trying to agree on a budget could all shake hands and go home, without budging an inch from their respective platforms. They could have it all, and so could we the people. Links: {1} http://www.law.cornell.edu/anncon/html/art1frag93_user.html#art1_hd282%3Cbr%20/%3E {2} http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/newdeal.php {3} http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2008/11/aig-bailout-is-now-at-250-billion.html {4} http://solari.com/blog/?p=3371 {5} http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=711 {6} http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/state_bank_option.php {7} http://www.dof.ca.gov/budgeting/budget_faqs/documents/CHART-K1.pdf _____ Ellen Brown developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt (2007), 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 (1998), Nature's Pharmacy (1998), co-authored with Dr Lynne Walker, and The Key to Ultimate Health (2000), co-authored with Dr Richard Hansen. Her websites are www.webofdebt.com and www.ellenbrown.com. (c) Copyright 2007 Ellen Brown. All Rights Reserved. http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/california_dreamin.php 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/ From shniad at sfu.ca Mon Jul 13 10:57:54 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 13 Jul 2009 09:57:54 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Full Spectrum Dominance In-Reply-To: <1897174130.1892721247445168771.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <954481169.54631247504274518.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> The Real News July 6, 2009 Full Spectrum Dominance Pt.1 http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=3966 William Engdahl on his book Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order July 7, 2009 Full Spectrum Dominance and Iran Pt.2 http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=3972 Was the recent uprising in Iran a "colored revolution," a genuine movement for democracy - or both? F William Engdahl is an economist and author and the writer of the best selling book "A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order." Mr Engdhahl has written on issues of energy, politics and economics for more than 30 years, beginning with the first oil shock in the early 1970s. Mr. Engdahl contributes regularly to a number of publications including Asia Times Online, Asia, Inc, Japan's Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Foresight magazine; Freitag and ZeitFragen newspapers in Germany and Switzerland respectively. He is based in Germany. Multipart or Related Episode http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=33&Itemid=74&jumival=407 From shniad at sfu.ca Mon Jul 13 10:58:17 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 13 Jul 2009 09:58:17 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] The Real News Network - Honduran coup resistance growing In-Reply-To: <232773436.689841247007116655.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <423054430.54811247504297734.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Honduran coup resistance growing http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=33&Itemid=74&jumival=408 From shniad at sfu.ca Mon Jul 13 10:58:07 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 13 Jul 2009 09:58:07 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] (Honduras) Shame on Canada, Coup Supporter In-Reply-To: <756640084.1402351247183223283.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <590479223.54731247504287273.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://thetyee.ca/Views/2009/07/09/ShameOnCanada/ TheTyee.ca July 9, 2009 Shame on Canada, Coup Supporter Why have we sided with the Honduran military? Mining profits. By Ashley Holly For the first time in decades, the world's eyes are on Honduras, a tiny country many Canadians know for those little stickers on exported bananas and the surplus of coffee it floods onto the global market each year. The world is less aware of the ongoing role that the Canadian government and Canadian mining companies play in pushing many Hondurans further into poverty. Now that the world is watching, it's a good time to reveal these secrets. On Saturday, July 4, at the impromptu meeting of the Organization of the American States, Canadian Minister of State of Foreign Affairs for the Americas Peter Kent suggested President Jose Manuel "Mel" Zelaya not return to Honduras. It's an interesting stance for Canada to assume, considering that most of the international community has condemned the coup in Honduras. Moreover, following violent clashes between the military police and demonstrators awaiting Zelaya's return this past Sunday, Kent held Zelaya responsible for the deaths of two demonstrators by the military government. Prior to these comments, Canada had remained relatively silent on this issue. But while most other counties have cancelled their aid to Honduras in protest of the coup, Canada has not. Why is our democracy suddenly in the business of supporting a military coup? Capitalizing on hurricane devastation The answer begins with Canada's reaction to the last crisis in Honduras. In 1998, Hurricane Mitch swept through much of Central America and especially ravaged Honduras, where thousands of people were killed and millions were displaced. Already the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, Honduras was now struck with over $3 billion in damages, a loss of social services such as schools, hospitals and road systems. Seventy per cent of its agricultural crops were destroyed. Nothing so devastating had ever hit Honduras. Canada was quick to respond to the cries for help following Hurricane Mitch, with a 'long-term development plan'. Canada offered $100 million over four years for reconstruction projects. These grandiose aid packages made Canada look like a savior. However, attached to this assistance was the introduction of over 40 Canadian companies to Honduras to assess opportunities for investment. This hurricane offered a strategic economic opportunity for Canadian investment in Honduras. The Canadian government, as it officially stated this year, considers mineral extraction by Canadian mining companies one of the best ways to "create new economic opportunities in the developing world". Shortly after Hurricane Mitch weakened the Honduran state, Canada and the United States joined to establish the National Association of Metal Mining of Honduras (ANAMINH), through which they were able to rewrite the General Mining Law. This law provides foreign mining companies with lifelong concessions, tax breaks and subsurface land rights for "rational resource exploitation". 'We have lost everything' "They crave gold like hungry swine," Uruguayan journalist Eduardo Galeano has written of multinational mining firms. I thought of those words on a recent drive through the open pit San Andres mining project, recently sold by the Canadian company Yamana Gold to another Canadian company, Aura Minerales. When I'd finished my tour, I was convinced the social, economic, environmental and health costs of open pit mining practices far outweigh the supposed benefits, and that the resource exploitation practiced by certain Canadian companies is anything but rational. I got chills driving through the abandoned village of San Andres. What were once homes and schools had been bulldozed into mounds of crushed adobe and rock. Where ancient pine trees stood, there now were deep craters, accessible by the nicest highways I had seen in Honduras. But a local resident at the end of one of those roads told me: "We have lost everything." The mine had displaced him from his home, and he was now without clean water to drink or fertile land to sow. Currently, Canadian companies own 33 per cent of mineral investments in Latin America, accumulating to the ownership of over 100 properties. Export Development Canada contributes 50 per cent of Canadian Pension Plan money to mining companies, which offered upwards of $50 billion in 2003. Goldcorp alone has received nearly one billion dollars from CPP subsidies. Although EDC is responsible for regulating Canadian industry abroad, it has been accused of failing to apply regulatory standards to 24 of 26 mining projects that it has funded. In February 2003, nearly five hundred gallons of cyanide spilled into the Rio Lara, killing 18,000 fish. The mine in San Andres uses more water in one hour than an average Honduran family uses in one year. In that same year, mining companies earned $44.4 million, while the average income per capita in Honduras in 2004 was just $1,126USD. Zelaya's anti-mining stance: payment due As the man at the end of the road tried to explain to me, mining is not development for people who live around these mines. He speaks for thousands of others -- a base of support aligned with the ousted President Zelaya. In 2006, Zelaya decided to cancel all future mining concessions in Honduras. Which would appear to explain, at least in large part, why Canada stands virtually alone in the hemisphere in supporting the Honduran military's ousting of Zelaya. The Canadian government, and its friends in the mining industry, are using the coup as an opportunity to plant their feet deeper into the Honduran ground. In his role as minister of state for foreign affairs, Peter Kent once declared that "democratic governance is a central pillar of Canada's enhanced engagement in the Americas." Apparently, his instructions from Ottawa have been revised. Ashley Holly is a Canadian student conducting research in Honduras. From shniad at sfu.ca Mon Jul 13 10:58:51 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 13 Jul 2009 09:58:51 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Ghost of Marx haunts China's riots In-Reply-To: <1091649723.943601247080804330.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1853369869.55221247504331127.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/KG08Ad02.html Asia Times July 8, 2009 Ghost of Marx haunts China's riots By Jian Junbo SHANGHAI - The weekend violence that has left 156 people dead and more than 816 injured in Urumqi, capital of northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, is the latest example of growing conflicts between China's majority Han ethnic group and ethnic minorities. At the heart of the escalating problem are China's antiquated policies towards its ethnic minorities - a raft of Marxist measures that are now pleasing neither the ethnic Han, nor the minorities. As China's gargantuan economy has advanced, former leader Mao Zedong's vision of political and economic equality between Han and non-Han has gradually been undermined. The end result could be seen on the bloody streets of Urumqi. On Sunday, more than 300 ethnic Uyghurs - mostly Sunni Muslims - staged a protest in Urumqi's People's Square to demand an investigation into a June 26 brawl at a toy factory in Shaoguan, Guangdong province. Riots began when police began to disperse protesters, soon spreading across the remote city of 2.3 million people. Groups of rioters broke down guardrails on roads, torched automobiles and beat Han pedestrians. The mob attacked buses and set fire to a hotel near the office building of the Xinjiang Regional Foreign Trade Commission, according to the state-run Xinhua News Agency. Hundreds of cars, shops and homes were smashed and burned during the violence, Xinhua said. China Central Television on Monday aired images of Uyghur protesters attacking Han men and women, kicking them on the ground and leaving them dazed and bloodied. Images were shown of smoke billowing from vehicles as rioters overturned police cars and smashed buses. As of Monday evening, at least 156 people were found dead and more than 800 others injured, including armed police officers, the Xinjiang Public Security Department said. More than 50 dead bodies were found in back streets and alleys, officials said, adding grimly that the toll may rise. Official statistics did not give any breakdowns to show how many Uyghur protesters were killed. A spokesperson for the World Uyghur Congress (WUC), a United States-based organization of pro-independence Uyghurs in exile, told Voice of America that police opened fire on protesters. The Chinese government has blamed the WUC for masterminding the violence. Xinhua said "the situation was under control" by Monday morning; police had shut down traffic in parts of the city and arrested over 1,000 protesters. Among those detained were at least 10 of the most prominent figures who fanned the unrest on Sunday, the Xinjiang Public Security Department said. But on Tuesday, over 200 Uyghurs, mostly women, staged a new protest in Urumqi in front of foreign reporters and it was reported that in the afternoon Urumqi Han residents began to counter-attack on Uyghurs. The women demanded the release of their families arrested during Sunday's violence. The foreign reporters had been organized by authorities to visit post-violence scenes, where protesters engaged in a tense stand-off with police, Hong Kong media said. The Xinjiang government that evening warned that "hostile elements" were plotting to stir up violence in other Xinjiang cities such as Yining and Kashgar. "We deeply regret the loss of life" in Urumqui, US State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said. "We call on all sides for calm and restraint." United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon also called for restraint. He told a press conference on Monday: "Wherever it is happening or has happened the position of the United Nations and the secretary general has been consistent and clear: that all the differences of opinion, whether domestic or international, must be resolved peacefully through dialogue." According to Xinhua, a government statement claimed the violence was "a pre-empted, organized violent crime. It is instigated and directed from abroad and carried out by outlaws in the country." In a televised address on Monday morning, Xinjiang governor Nur Bekri accused the WUC led by Rebiya Kadeer - a former businesswoman now living in the United States - of fomenting the violence via telephone and the Internet. "Rebiya had phone conversations with people in China on July 5 in order to incite ... and the Internet was used to orchestrate the incitement," read the statement. Kadeer's spokesman, Alim Seytoff, told the Associated Press from Washington that the accusations were baseless. "It's common practice for the Chinese government to accuse Ms Kadeer for any unrest in East Turkestan and His Holiness the Dalai Lama for any unrest in Tibet," he said. East Turkestan is the name of the state Uyghur pro-independence groups and militants wish to create in Xinjiang. One the exile groups, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, is listed by the Chinese government and the UN as a terrorist organization. The WUC denies any connection with the East Turkestan Islamic Movement. The violence in Urumqi echoed last year's unrest in Tibet. In March 2008, a peaceful demonstration of monks in the capital of Lhasa erupted into riots that spread to surrounding areas, leaving at least 22 dead. The Chinese government accused the Dalai Lama of orchestrating the violence. The Dalai Lama denied the charge. Whether the riots were instigated by pro-independence activists or not, the fact remains that violent conflicts are easily stirred up by the mutual distrust between the Han people and ethnic minorities. Internet rumors were also involved. The brawl in the Shaoguan factory on June 26 was started by a post on an Internet website that claimed at least two female Han workers were raped by Uyghur migrant workers, many of whom work at the factory. In response to the allegation, Han workers stormed into dormitories of the Uyghur workers. In the ensuing battle, two Uyghur were killed and many workers from both sides injured, according to local police. Authorities later arrested a Han worker for uploading the rape rumor to stir up trouble. The end of class-struggle identity The increasingly frequent conflicts between Han and other groups indicate the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP's) policy toward ethnic minorities has become ineffective in maintaining harmonious relations between peoples. For the past 60 years, the stated aim of the CCP's policy has been to maintain national unity and stabilize civil society. The communist government considers all ethnic groups to be Chinese, but encourages all ethnic groups, especially minorities, to keep and develop their traditional cultures. The government has even helped minorities with only a spoken language create their own writing system. The idea that all people in China belong to the "great family of Chinese" is not the invention of the communists. This attitude began with the founding father of modern China, Dr Sun Yat-sen, and was supported by early Chinese enlightenment thinkers such as Liang Qichao and Hu Shih. In the era of chairman Mao Zedong, the ethnic policy was dictated by his class-struggle doctrine, by which all Han and non-Han working people shared one common identity - socialist labor. The term "labor" meant they were also the owners of the country - constitutionally and ideologically. Capitalists, land owners, serf owners and other "exploiters" - regardless of their ethnic origins - were the enemies. This policy successfully surpassed ethnic differences and constructed a shared identity for all working people. To an extent, this policy under Mao united all ethnic groups in the "class struggle" against the "oppressors". It also made the former elites of ethnic minorities diehard enemies of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The working poor of China's ethnic groups gave much support to the CCP government, and accepted their new socialist identity. Han and non-Han people became equal economically and politically, and the idea of ethnicity was gradually faded out by the idea of class. The concept of a common class, which gave equality to all people in the same class regardless of their ethnicity, surpassed the idea of ethnic identity and forestalled ethnic conflict. But when the class-struggle doctrine was practiced to the extreme particularly during the Cultural Revolution between 1966 and 1976, it gave the Red Guards - consisting of mostly Hans - the ground to attack China's cultural and historical heritage - Han as well as ethnic - in the name of the revolution. These attacks tremendously hurt the feelings of ethnic minorities. After the Cultural Revolution, apparently as some form of compensation, the Chinese government began to award some privileges and preferences to ethnic minorities. For example, the tough one-child policy applies only to Han couples. Accordingly, the birth rate and population proportion of the Han are decreasing, compared to other ethnic groups. Meanwhile, privileges have been granted to ethnic minorities for employment and education opportunities. To boost economic growth, the government in recent years has poured much money into ethnic minority areas. Many Han are upset at what they see as discrimination. In the aftermath of the Shaoguan brawl, Guangdong party secretary Wang Yang visited and consoled the injured Uyghur workers, but allegedly ignored the injured Han workers. This angered the Han workers and increased their suspicion of the government's policy. Even as ethnic groups, such as the Uyghurs, complain they are being exploited or discriminated by the Han, many Han accuse the government of doing the same. In the end, as China's economy advances, political and economic equality between Han and non-Han is being undermined. The wealth gap is expanding between the Han, who in general live in rich areas, and those ethnic minorities who live in relatively poorer areas. The economic inequality between different regions is also a case between Han and non-Hans. Although this imbalance of economic development is due to many factors, it's easy for minorities to feel exploited by the Han. As the influence of Marxism as the dominant ideology is diminishing in China, the sense of political equality is also abating. Today, common people aren't really considered the owners of the country, and laborers are no longer a respected class. Capitalists have become the government's guests of honor. In China, political equality based on class equality has collapsed. For the past 60 years, this idea of class equality was a basis on which all common people, including minorities, could maintain an identity as one member of the Chinese political community. Now, the economic and political marginalization of ethnic minorities is destroying the foundation of some ethnic groups' Chinese identity. At the same time, this marginalization is deeply misunderstood by many of the majority Han ethnic group. The shared identity of the Chinese - as socialist labor - is gradually falling to pieces. The resulting riots in Urumqi may be just the start of something much, much bigger. Dr Jian Junbo is assistant professor of the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University, Shanghai, China. From shniad at sfu.ca Mon Jul 13 11:19:52 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 13 Jul 2009 10:19:52 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Obama in Africa Message-ID: <1538825674.67771247505592838.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/in-africa-obama-remains-diplomatic-on-oil-and-guns/article1215704/ Globe and Mail July 12, 2009 Obama remains diplomatic on oil and guns Oil is an increasingly crucial U.S. interest in Africa . The U.S. aims to obtain 25 per cent of its oil imports from Africa within the next five years, up from 15 per cent today. An offshore oil discovery in Ghana has boosted its appeal as a source of oil for the U.S. Some estimates suggest that Ghana 's total oil reserves could be up to 10 billion barrels. Geoffrey York Accra, Ghana ? B ehind all the inspirational words and ?Yes we can? sound bites of Barack Obama's first presidential visit to sub-Saharan Africa, questions are lingering about two key issues that formed a tacit subtext to his visit: oil and military bases. Mr. Obama's visit on the weekend to Ghana , so early in his presidential term, is the latest sign of Africa's mounting strategic importance to Washington . The continent is a growing source of U.S. oil supplies and a crucial battleground for the U.S. fight against Islamic radicals, who are increasingly powerful in Somalia and North Africa . Ghana itself is an emerging source of oil and a possible site for ?forward operating bases? in the U.S. anti-terrorism campaign. But both subjects have sparked so much controversy and resistance from Africans that Mr. Obama was careful to use diplomatic language when he talked of oil and guns. In a little-noticed paragraph of his major Africa policy speech in Accra on Saturday, the President offered ?technical assistance and logistical support? to help Africa fight against terrorists and war criminals. He made it clear that his new administration would continue to expand the Pentagon's controversial Africa Command ? an initiative by his predecessor, George W. Bush, to bolster U.S. military activity in Africa . ?When there is genocide in Darfur or terrorists in Somalia , these are not simply African problems ? they are global security challenges, and they demand a global response,? Mr. Obama told a special gathering of Ghana 's parliament. Promising to ?strengthen African capacity? to deal with security threats, Mr. Obama defended the growing role of the U.S. Africom military command, despite widespread suspicions that it is aimed at boosting American power on the continent. ?Let me be clear: Our Africa Command is focused not on establishing a foothold on the continent, but on confronting these common challenges to advance the security of America, Africa and the world,? he said. Luc Gnago/Reuters A vendor sits in his street kiosk selling U.S President Barack Obama memorabilia in Ghana 's capital Accra this week. In his budget request for 2010, Mr. Obama has proposed a significant rise in spending on Africom. By some estimates, his plan would double the Africom budget. In addition, the Pentagon is pouring guns and equipment into Somalia ? at least 40 tons of arms and munitions so far ? to help the beleaguered government in its battle against Islamic militants who have threatened to win control of the country. The Pentagon is also active in North Africa and West Africa , with counterinsurgency operations and the training of local armies to fight terrorists, along with air raids on alleged terrorists in the Horn of Africa. Total U.S. security assistance to Africa has ballooned from about $100-million annually to $800-million annually over the past decade. The Africa Command, set up under the Bush administration in 2007, is currently based in Germany , but is widely rumoured to be searching for a base in Africa . If not a full-scale base, it could be satisfied with smaller airfields or other sites. The Africom commander, General William Ward, has hinted that he wants new military sites in Africa , although he called them ?infrastructure nodes? to indicate that they would be smaller than a full-scale base. ?Given the lack of infrastructure within Africa and the island nations, our sustainment infrastructure, forward-operating sites and en-route infrastructure are vital,? Gen. Ward told a U.S. Congressional committee this year. ?I endorse upgrade projects supporting these key infrastructure nodes.? A recent report in Ghana said the United States is looking for ?rapid airlift facilities? in Africa, including the potential use of an existing airport in northern Ghana . Ghana already has an ?exercise reception facility? to help U.S. troops in any ?crisis response? in the region. Oil, meanwhile, is an increasingly crucial U.S. interest in Africa . The country aims to obtain 25 per cent of its oil imports from Africa within the next five years, up from 15 per cent today. Much of this is already coming from Nigeria , but instability and corruption in Nigeria have made it a risky source. An offshore oil discovery in Ghana has boosted its appeal as a potentially safer source of oil for the United States . Its early production ? forecast at 100,000 barrels a day in 2011, and possibly 500,000 barrels a day by 2014 ? would not be enough to compete with the bigger African producers. But some estimates suggest that Ghana 's total oil reserves could be up to 10 billion barrels. Mr. Obama briefly mentioned Ghana 's oil in his speech on Saturday, saying that the oil discovery ?brings great opportunities? for the country. But he urged it to diversify its exports so that its economy is not dominated by a few commodities. ?Oil cannot simply become the new cocoa,? he said. While oil and military bases may not have been central to Mr. Obama's official agenda in Ghana, his visit will help him to build goodwill in Africa, which could prove useful if the United States needs African oil and bases in the future, Ghana-based analyst Kofi Bentil said. From shniad at sfu.ca Mon Jul 13 11:22:20 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 13 Jul 2009 10:22:20 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Our IDF - Gideon Levy in Ha'aretz In-Reply-To: <1816459042.1809151247354355256.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <617106598.68951247505740513.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1098053.html Ha'aretz 06/07/2009 Our IDF By Gideon Levy Combat is the best, my brother, as the famous bumper sticker reads. It's a good thing we have Shayetet 13. Operating at the crack of dawn - or was it before nightfall? - the daring naval commandos fearlessly took control of a rusty, rickety, unarmed boat bobbing in the middle of the sea. That's exactly why we have a naval commando force - to take control of ships offering humanitarian aid. Behold, the guardian of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps. The military correspondents reported on the incident with an amazement that only they can muster. But even they could not provide a fig leaf for the operation: The Israel Defense Forces has once again used its power to overcome the weak; the navy has once again acted like pirates. The Arion was abducted in the framework of protecting Israel's security for all eternity, blah, blah, blah. Soldiers, journalists and news consumers automatically refrain from asking questions. The navy captured another ship carrying symbolic aid, as if its passengers were Somali pirates. These were people of conscience from various countries carrying toys and medicine. This was not the navy's first daring operation of this kind, nor will it be the last. When there are no hostile aid ships on the horizon, the navy takes control of wretched Gazan boats, using water hoses or firing at its passengers - poor fishermen who only want to make a living at sea. This is the main activity unfolding off Gaza's shores. A navy outfitted with the best arsenal in the world is hunting surfboards. One of the best-armed forces in the world is chasing children, examining old people's documents and entering bedrooms to make arrests. We ought to pay close attention to what preoccupies our military. While defense officials hold discussions on buying the F-35 combat jet at $200 million per plane, the IDF is mostly busy with miserable, pointless police work that befits an occupation army. It is engaged in ludicrous and useless policing in a "war" against people equipped with some of the most primitive weapons in the world. In the dead of night, soldiers in elite and not-so-elite units break into the homes of Palestinians, some of whom are guilty of no crime, and needlessly awaken and frighten women and children. Their comrades spend their service standing at checkpoints, occasionally shooting and killing needlessly. Other soldiers chase after children throwing stones or Molotov cocktails and shoot at them. "A huge terrorist attack" that was thwarted near the security fence in Gaza a month ago was to be carried out by "a force" that numbered eight Palestinians, some of them mounted on mules. The mule-rider's brigade - these are the forces against us. We saw it, of course, during Operation Cast Lead, the war that provoked almost no opposition. As reported last week by the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch, our drones bombed helpless Gaza residents, killing a few dozen, including children. Our jets and helicopters, among the most sophisticated in the world, are bombing residential neighborhoods. They may be preparing for an operation that fires the imagination in Iran, but meanwhile they are circling the Gaza sky as if it belonged to them. If that were not enough, we now have the most advanced system of all: female soldiers who are lookouts trained to shoot live fire after completing "precedent-setting training." The army newspaper Bamahane reported it with great enthusiasm: "This is the first time female soldiers will shoot automatic gunfire from within a W.R., noted the C.O. of the T.B," whatever those initials mean. In simpler language, it means that 19-year-old girls are playing with joysticks in an air-conditioned room and "taking down" people. This then is the great progress of the "people's army" to train women to kill, while their comrades, soldiers and Border Police, are routinely sent to shoot live fire at unarmed demonstrators at Bil'in and Na'alin. This, for the most part, is the IDF's balance sheet. This is what largely preoccupies the best, most moral army in the world. Pilots who have never fought in an air battle and soldiers with no army against them now spend most of their time maintaining the occupation in a kind of pathetic combat, and they are our protective shield. When the day of reckoning comes, we will remember this. From shniad at sfu.ca Mon Jul 13 11:58:17 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 13 Jul 2009 10:58:17 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Chomsky: Season of Travesties: Freedom and Democracy in mid-2009 In-Reply-To: <954084461.83901247507558586.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1132582828.86761247507897212.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.zmag.org/zspace/commentaries/3922 Z Magazine July, 10 2009 Chomsky: Season of Travesties: Freedom and Democracy in mid-2009 June 2009 was marked by a number of significant events, including two elections in the Middle East: in Lebanon, then Iran. The events are significant, and the reactions to them, highly instructive. The election in Lebanon was greeted with euphoria. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman gushed that he is "a sucker for free and fair elections," so "it warms my heart to watch" what happened in Lebanon in an election that "was indeed free and fair ? not like the pretend election you are about to see in Iran, where only candidates approved by the Supreme Leader can run. No, in Lebanon it was the real deal, and the results were fascinating: President Barack Obama defeated President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran." Crucially, "a solid majority of all Lebanese -- Muslims, Christians and Druse -- voted for the March 14 coalition led by Saad Hariri," the US-backed candidate and son of the murdered ex-Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, so that "to the extent that anyone came out of this election with the moral authority to lead the next government, it was the coalition that wants Lebanon to be run by and for the Lebanese -- not for Iran, not for Syria and not for fighting Israel." We must give credit where it is due for this triumph of free elections (and of Washington): "Without George Bush standing up to the Syrians in 2005 -- and forcing them to get out of Lebanon after the Hariri killing -- this free election would not have happened. Mr. Bush helped create the space. Power matters. Mr. Obama helped stir the hope. Words also matter." Two days later Friedman's views were echoed by Eliott Abrams, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign relations, formerly a high official of the Reagan and Bush I administrations. Under the heading "Lebanon's Triumph, Iran's Travesty," Abrams compared these "twin tests of [US] efforts to spread democracy to the Muslim world." The lesson is clear: "What the United States should be promoting is not elections, but free elections, and the voting in Lebanon passed any realistic test....the majority of Lebanese have rejected Hezbollah's claim that it is not a terrorist group but a `national resistance'...The Lebanese had a chance to vote against Hezbollah, and took the opportunity." Reactions were similar throughout the mainstream. There are, however, a few flies in the ointment. The most prominent of them, apparently unreported in the US, is the actual vote. The Hezbollah-based March 8 coalition won handily, by approximately the same figure as Obama vs. McCain in November 2008, about 54% of the popular vote, according to Ministry of Interior figures. Hence by the Friedman-Abrams argument, we should be lamenting Ahmadinejad's defeat of President Obama, and the "moral authority" won by Hezbollah, as "the majority of Lebanese...took the opportunity" to reject the charges Abrams repeats from Washington propaganda. Like others, Friedman and Abrams are referring to representatives in Parliament. These numbers are skewed by the confessional voting system, which sharply reduces the seats granted to the largest of the sects, the Shi'ites, who overwhelmingly back Hezbollah and its Amal ally. But as serious analysts have pointed out, the confessional ground rules undermine "free and fair elections" in even more significant ways than this. Assaf Kfoury observes that they leave no space for non-sectarian parties and erect a barrier to introducing socioeconomic policies and other real issues into the electoral system. They also open the door to "massive external interference," low voter turnout, and "vote-rigging and vote-buying," all features of the June election, even more so than before. Thus in Beirut, home of more than half the population, less than a fourth of eligible voters could vote without returning to their usually remote districts of origin. The effect is that migrant workers and the poorer classes are effectively disenfranchised in "a form of extreme gerrymandering, Lebanese style," favoring the privileged and pro-Western classes. In Iran, the electoral results issued by the Interior Ministry lacked credibility both by the manner in which they were released and by the figures themselves. An enormous popular protest followed, brutally suppressed by the armed forces of the ruling clerics. Perhaps Ahmadinejad might have won a majority if votes had been fairly counted, but it appears that the rulers were unwilling to take that chance. From the streets, correspondent Reese Erlich, who has had considerable experience with popular uprisings and bitter repression in US domains, writes that "It's a genuine Iranian mass movement made up of students, workers, women, and middle class folks" - and possibly much of the rural population. Eric Hooglund, a respected scholar who has studied rural Iran intensively, dismisses standard speculations about rural support for Ahmadinejad, describing "overwhelming" support for Mousavi in regions he has studied, and outrage over what the large majority there regard as a stolen election. It is highly unlikely that the protest will damage the clerical-military regime in the short term, but as Erlich observes, it "is sowing the seeds for future struggles." As in Lebanon, the electoral system itself violates basic rights. Candidates have to be approved by the ruling clerics, who can and do bar policies of which they disapprove. And though repression overall may not be as harsh as in the US-backed dictatorships of the region, it is ugly enough, and in June 2009, very visibly so. One can argue that Iranian "guided democracy" has structural analogues in the US, where elections are largely bought, and candidates and programs are effectively "vetted" by concentrations of capital. A striking illustration is being played out right now. It is hardly controversial that the disastrous US health system is a high priority for the public, which, for a long time, has favored national health care, an option that has been kept off the agenda by private power. In a limited shift towards the public will, Congress is now debating whether to allow a public option to compete with insurers, a proposal with overwhelming popular support. The opposition, who regard themselves as free market advocates, charge that the proposal would be unfair to the private sector, which will be unable to compete with a more efficient public system. Though a bit odd, the argument is plausible. As economist Dean Baker points out, "We know that private insurers can't compete because we already had this experiment with the Medicare program. When private insurers had to compete on a level playing field with the traditional government-run plan they were almost driven from the market." Savings from a government program would be even greater if, as in other countries, the government were permitted to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical corporations, an option supported by 85% of the population but also not on the agenda. "Unless Congress creates a serious public plan," Baker writes, Americans "can expect to be hit with the largest tax increase in the history of the world -- all of it going into the pockets of the health care industry." That is a likely outcome, once again, in the American form of "guided democracy." And it is hardly the only example. While our thoughts are turned to elections, we should not forget one recent authentically "free and fair" election in the Middle East region, in Palestine in January 2006, to which the US and its allies at once responded with harsh punishment for the population that voted "the wrong way." The pretexts offered were laughable, and the response caused scarcely a ripple on the flood of commentary on Washington's noble "efforts to spread democracy to the Muslim world," a feat that reveals impressive subordination to authority. No less impressive is the readiness to agree that Israel is justified in imposing a harsh and destructive siege on Gaza, and attacking it with merciless violence using US equipment and diplomatic support, as it did last winter. There of course is a pretext: "the right to self-defense." The pretext has been almost universally accepted in the West, though Israeli actions are sometimes condemned as "disproportionate." The reaction is remarkable, because the pretext collapses on the most cursory inspection. The issue is the right TO USE FORCE in self-defense, and a state has that right only if it has exhausted peaceful means. In this case, Israel has simply refused to use the peaceful means that have been readily available. All of this has been amply discussed elsewhere, and it should be unnecessary to review the simple facts once again. Once again relying on the impunity it receives as a US client, Israel brought the month of June 2009 to a close by enforcing the siege with a brazen act of hijacking. On June 30, the Israeli navy hijacked the Free Gaza movement boat "Spirit of Humanity" -- in international waters, according to those aboard -- and forced it to the Israeli port of Ashdod. The boat had left from Cyprus, where the cargo was inspected: it consisted of medicines, reconstruction supplies, and toys. The human rights workers aboard included Nobel Laureate Mairead Maguire and former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, who was sent to Ramleh prison in Israel - apparently without a word from the Obama administration. The crime scarcely elicited a yawn - with some justice, one might argue, since Israel has been hijacking boats travelling between Cyprus and Lebanon for decades, kidnapping and sometimes killing passengers or sending them in Israeli prisons without charge where they join thousands of others, in some cases held for many years as hostages. So why even bother to report this latest outrage by a rogue state and its patron, for whom law is a theme for 4th of July speeches and a weapon against enemies? Israel's hijacking is a far more extreme crime than anything carried out by Somalis driven to piracy by poverty and despair, and destruction of their fishing grounds by robbery and dumping of toxic wastes - not to speak of the destruction of their economy by a Bush counter-terror operation conceded to have been fraudulent, and a US-backed Ethiopian invasion. The Israeli hijacking is also in violation of a March 1988 international Convention on safety of maritime navigation to which the US is a party, hence required by the Convention to assist in enforcing it. Israel, however, is not a party - which, of course, in no way mitigates the crime or the obligation to enforce the Convention against violators. Israel's failure to join is particularly interesting, since the Convention was partially inspired by the hijacking of the Achille Lauro in 1985. That crime ranks high in Israel and the West among terrorist atrocities -- unlike Israel's US-backed bombing of Tunis a week earlier, killing 75 people, as usual with no credible pretext, but again tolerated under the grant of impunity for the US and its clients. Possibly Israel chose not to join the Convention because of its regular practice of hijacking boats in international waters at that time. Also worth investigating in connection with the June 2009 hijacking is that since 2000, after the discovery of apparently substantial reserves of natural gas in Gaza's territorial waters by British Gas, Israel has been steadily forcing Gazan fishing boats towards shore, often violently, ruining an industry vital to Gaza's survival. At the same time, Israel has been entering into negotiations with BG to obtain gas from these sources, thus stealing the meager resources of the population it is mercilessly crushing. The Western hemisphere also witnessed an election-related crime at the month's end. A military coup in Honduras ousted President Manuel Zelaya and expelled him to Costa Rica. As observed by economist Mark Weisbrot, an experienced analyst of Latin American affairs, the social structure of the coup is "a recurrent story in Latin America," pitting "a reform president who is supported by labor unions and social organizations against a mafia-like, drug-ridden, corrupt political elite who is accustomed to choosing not only the Supreme Court and the Congress, but also the president." Mainstream commentary described the coup as an unfortunate return to the bad days of decades ago. But that is mistaken. This is the third military coup in the past decade, all conforming to the "recurrent story." The first, in Venezuela in 2002, was supported by the Bush administration, which, however, backed down after sharp Latin American condemnation and restoration of the elected government by a popular uprising. The second, in Haiti in 2004, was carried out by Haiti's traditional torturers, France and the US. The elected President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was spirited to Central Africa and kept at a safe distance from Haiti by the master of the hemisphere. What is novel in the Honduras coup is that the US has not lent it support. Rather, the US joined with the Organization of American States in opposing the coup, though with a more reserved condemnation than others, and without any action, unlike the neighboring states and much of the rest of Latin America. Alone in the region, the US has not withdrawn its ambassador, as did France, Spain and Italy along with Latin American states. It was reported that Washington had advance information about a possible coup, and tried to prevent it. It surpasses imagination that Washington did not have close knowledge of what was underway in Honduras, which is highly dependent on US aid, and whose military is armed, trained, and advised by Washington. Military relations have been particularly close since the 1980s, when Honduras was the base for Reagan's terrorist war against Nicaragua. Whether this will play out as another chapter of the "recurrent story" remains to be seen, and will depend in no small measure on reactions within the United States. From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Mon Jul 13 17:54:20 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Tue, 14 Jul 2009 08:54:20 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Mr Obama: Resign Now Message-ID: <20090714085420.6493eefe.shimogamo@ashisuto.co.jp> With Democrats Like Him, Who Needs Dictators? by Ted Rall rall.com (May 28 2009) MIAMI - We expected broken promises. But the gap between the soaring expectations that accompanied Barack Obama's inauguration and his wretched performance is the broadest such chasm in recent historical memory. This guy makes Bill Clinton look like a paragon of integrity and follow-through. From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Jul 6 09:31:04 2009 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:31:04 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: pledges real and implied. So timid and so owned is he that he trembles in fear of offending, of all things, the government of Turkey. Obama has officially reneged on his campaign promise to acknowledge the Armenian genocide. When a president doesn't have the 'nads to annoy the Turks, why does he bother to show up for work in the morning? Obama is useless. Worse than that, he's dangerous. Which is why, if he has any patriotism left after the thousands of meetings he has sat through with corporate contributors, blood-sucking lobbyists and corrupt politicians, he ought to step down now - before he drags us further into the abyss. I refer here to Obama's plan for "preventive detentions". If a cop or other government official thinks you might want to commit a crime someday, you could be held in "prolonged detention". Reports in US state-controlled media imply that Obama's shocking new policy would only apply to Islamic terrorists (or, in this case, wannabe Islamic terrorists, and also kinda-sorta-maybe-thinking-about-terrorism dudes). As if that made it OK. In practice, Obama wants to let government goons snatch you, me and anyone else they deem annoying off the street. Preventive detention is the classic defining characteristic of a military dictatorship. Because dictatorial regimes rely on fear rather than consensus, their priority is self-preservation rather than improving their people's lives. They worry obsessively over the one thing they can't control, what Orwell called "thoughtcrime" - contempt for rulers that might someday translate to direct action. Locking up people who haven't done anything wrong is worse than un-American and a violent attack on the most basic principles of Western jurisprudence. It is contrary to the most essential notion of human decency. That anyone has ever been subjected to "preventive detention" is an outrage. That the President of the United States, a man who won an election because he promised to elevate our moral and political discourse, would even entertain such a revolting idea offends the idea of civilization itself. Obama is cute. He is charming. But there is something rotten inside him. Unlike the Republicans who backed Bush, I won't follow a terrible leader just because I voted for him. Obama has revealed himself. He is a monster, and he should remove himself from power. "Prolonged detention", reported The New York Times, would be inflicted upon "terrorism suspects who cannot be tried". "Cannot be tried". Interesting choice of words. Any "terrorism suspect" (can you be a suspect if you haven't been charged with a crime?) can be tried. Anyone can be tried for anything. At this writing, a Somali child is sitting in a prison in New York, charged with piracy in the Indian Ocean, where the US has no jurisdiction. Anyone can be tried. What they mean, of course, is that the hundreds of men and boys languishing at Guantanamo and the thousands of "detainees" the Obama Administration anticipates kidnapping in the future cannot be convicted. As in the old Soviet Union, putting enemies of the state on trial isn't enough. The game has to be fixed. Conviction has to be a foregone conclusion. Why is it, exactly, that some prisoners "cannot be tried"? The Old Grey Lady explains why Obama wants this "entirely new chapter in American law" in a boring little sentence buried a couple past the jump and a couple of hundred words down page A16: "Yet another question is what to do with the most problematic group of Guantanamo detainees: those who pose a national security threat but cannot be prosecuted, either for lack of evidence or because evidence is tainted". In democracies with functioning legal systems, it is assumed that people against whom there is a "lack of evidence" are innocent. They walk free. In countries where the rule of law prevails, in places blessedly free of fearful leaders whose only concern is staying in power, "tainted evidence" is no evidence at all. If you can't prove that a defendant committed a crime - an actual crime, not a thoughtcrime - in a fair trial, you release him and apologize to the judge and jury for wasting their time. It is amazing and incredible, after eight years of Bush's lawless behavior, to have to still have to explain these things. For that reason alone, Obama should resign. Copyright 2009 Ted Rall http://www.uexpress.com/printable/print.html?uc_full_date=20090528&uc_comic=ru 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/ From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Tue Jul 14 06:09:21 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Tue, 14 Jul 2009 21:09:21 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] The Wealth of Nature Message-ID: <20090714210921.7be10d5e.shimogamo@ashisuto.co.jp> by John Michael Greer The Archdruid Report (July 08 2009) Druid perspectives on nature, culture, and the future of industrial society Last week's Archdruid Report pointed out that modern economic thought, through its lasting difficulties in coming to terms with the dependence of human economic activity on the world of nature, has played a very large role in backing industrial civilization into its present difficulties. It probably would have been wise, though, to point out that the word "modern" here is being used in a historical sense, for these difficulties date straight back to the beginning of economics as a distinct field of study. Adam Smith, who set the whole ball rolling with his The Wealth of Nations (1776), started that book with the following sentence: "The annual labor of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessities and conveniences of life". It does not seem to have occurred to Smith that the annual labor of a nation would be utterly useless without the natural raw materials, goods, and services - in the language suggested in last week's post, the primary goods - that enable labor to be done at all, by making human life possible in the first place and by providing all that labor with something to labor on. Certainly it has occurred to very few of his successors. The classic example is David Ricardo, who remains an influential figure in economics, not least because his theories - he was a vocal proponent of free trade, and provided what are still the standard arguments in its favor - proved to be highly useful to the British Empire in its time, and of course to the American empire in ours. Ricardo is famous for, among other things, building a significant part of his economic theories on the claim that land retains its "original and indestructible" economic value no matter what economic use is made of it. This is an odd claim. Even in the early 19th century, when Ricardo originally made it, plenty of people could have set him straight. Bad farming practices that led to soil sterility were known in Ricardo's time, and so was the impact of industrial pollution - though of course we have gotten much better at both since then. It may be relevant that Ricardo was born and raised in London, as far from the realities of agricultural life as you could get in his time; it is at least as relevant that his theories show the habit of dodging inconvenient facts for what look uncomfortably like ideological reasons - his arguments in favor of free trade, for example, only work if you grant the unstated assumption that international trade and its supporting infrastructure cost nothing in terms of labor, materials, or money, and also dodge the extent to which control of the transport routes and exchange processes determine who profits from the trade. What is far more interesting, though, is that his definition of land prefigured the way that natural resources have been treated by most economists ever since. This is as true of radical economists as of their capitalist rivals; recent proponents of "green socialism", for example, might want to reread Marx, who explicitly rejected the idea that the "free gifts of nature" could have any value at all. (The disastrous mistreatment of the environment common under Marxist regimes in the 20th century was not accidental, but a natural outgrowth of Marxist theory.) Nearly the only concession made to the ecological dimensions of economics in the mainstream, and it's a fairly recent one, is the concept of "externalities" - the recognition that if somebody does something that fouls the environment, other people may suffer a loss of economic value as a result, and might deserve compensation for that. Now of course this is true, and Garrett Hardin's famous essay "The Tragedy of the Commons" (Science, 1968) built on that insight to remind us that a society that permits the advantages of ecological abuse to go to individuals, while the costs are shared by the whole society, is effectively subsidizing the destruction of its environment. Still, both the "externalities" argument and the structure Hardin built on it miss the central issues raised by the interface between environment and economics. Both tacitly accept Ricardo's fantasy of invulnerable land as the normal state of affairs, apply it to the entire environment, and then focus attention on the exceptional situation when somebody does manage to make land (or some other environmental resource) less valuable. Let's take a closer look at the land whose value Ricardo considered "indestructible". He was talking primarily about land as an economic factor in agriculture, and so shall we. What he apparently did not realize, but ecologists have shown in exact detail since his time, is that fertile land suitable for growing crops does not simply happen. Like anything else of value, it must be made, and once made, it must be maintained; the only difference is that the laborers that make and maintain it do not happen to be human beings. Soil suitable for crops, after all, is not simply rock dust. A large part of it - sometimes more than half - is organic matter, some living, some dead but not yet wholly decayed, some dissolved into organic colloids complex enough to give analytical chemists sleepless nights, and all of it is put there by the activity of living things over long periods of time. Energy and raw materials flow through soil, uniting bacteria, fungi, algae, worms, insects, and many other living things into one of the most intricate ecosystems on Earth. Plants participate in and depend on this bewilderingly complex world; they draw water and mineral nutrients from it, and cycle leaves and a wide range of chemical compounds back into it. The farmer who wants to grow crops is attempting to extract wealth from the underground ecosystem of the soil. She can ignore that, and simply plant and harvest with no attention to the needs of the soil, but the soil will be depleted of nutrients in a few years and her crops will fail. Alternatively, she can replace nutrients with chemical fertilizers, predators with pesticides, and so on; if she does this she will have to use steadily larger doses of chemicals to get the same yields, and when the chemical feedstocks run out - as they eventually will - she will be left with soil too sterile and pest-ridden to grow much of anything. If she wants to fulfill Ricardo's promise and hand the land on to her grandchildren in the same condition that it came from her grandparents, she will have to provide the things the soil needs for its long-term health. Put another way, she will have to barter with the soil, giving it the things it will accept in exchange for crops. This is the premise of organic agriculture, of course. It's a premise that has proven itself over millennia, in the Asian farming regions that inspired the organic pioneers of the early 20th century to devise a more general way of doing the same thing, and over decades, in the farms now using organic methods to get yields roughly comparable to those of chemical agriculture. The organic approach has many dimensions, but one may not have received the importance it deserves. To an organic farmer, land is not a commodity that can be owned but a community with which she interacts, and that community has its own economy on which the farmer's own economy depends. Imagine, to develop this concept into a metaphor, that our farmer got crops, not from the fields, but from a village of some indigenous tribe near her home. The inhabitants of the village are deeply conservative, and their own economy follows traditional patterns not subject to change. If the farmer wants crops, she must find out what the villagers are willing to take in exchange for them, and that will be determined by the internal dynamics of the village economy: what is already produced in surplus amounts, what is scarce, what is desired and what is detested by the villagers. Her relations with the village, in other words, would be exactly the same in outline as those of an organic farmer with her land. The same thing is true of every other form of economic activity, though the dependence on nature may be less obvious in some cases than in others. Behind the human activities that produce secondary goods lie nonhuman activities that produce primary goods - the biological cycles that yield soil fertility, crop pollination, and countless other things; the hydrological cycles that put fresh water into reservoirs and taps; the tectonic processes in the crust that put economically useful metals and minerals into veins in the rocks; and, of central importance just now, the extraordinarily complex interplay of biological and geological processes that stored away countless billions of tons of carbon under the earth's surface in the form of fossil fuels. Conventional economics assumes that these things get there by some materialist equivalent of divine fiat. This misstates the situation disastrously. Primary goods are produced by an exact analogue of the way that secondary goods are produced: raw materials are transformed, through labor, using existing capital and energy, to produce goods and services of value. The difference is simply that all this takes place in the nonhuman world. Human beings do not manage the production of primary goods, and the disastrous results of trying to do so suggest that we probably never will; on the other hand, in at least some cases - maltreated farmland is a good example - we can interfere with the production of primary goods, and suffer the consequences. E F Schumacher's insight, that goods produced by nature are the primary goods in any economy, and those produced by human labor are secondary goods, thus needs to be extended further. There is also a primary and secondary economy. The cycles of nature that produce goods needed by human beings constitute the primary economy, while the process by which human beings produce goods is the secondary economy. The secondary economy depends utterly on the primary in at least two ways. First, as discussed last week, something like three-quarters of all economic value in today's world is produced by nature - that is, by the primary economy - and only around a quarter is produced by human labor. Second, even that quarter is made directly or indirectly from primary goods, and cannot be made at all if the necessary primary goods aren't there. This is why the attempt to replace a depleted natural resource with something else always involves substitution costs: human labor must be brought in to replace some part of the work previously done by nature, and the costs of that part of the work thus end up having to be paid out of the secondary economy. We have become so used to thinking of economics as a matter of human labor that it's probably best to point out that what are sometimes called "primary industries" - farming, mining, and the like - belong to the secondary economy, not the primary one. The primary economy consists wholly of those nonhuman processes that yield economic goods to human beings. Thus a farm and the crops grown on it are part of the secondary economy, while the soil, water, sun, and genetic potential in the seed stock that make the farm and its crops possible are part of the primary economy. In the same way, a mine is part of the secondary economy, while the slow geological processes that put ore in the ground where it can be mined are part of the primary economy. If you examine any human economic activity, you'll find behind it natural processes that make that activity possible; those processes are the inputs from the primary economy that make the secondary economy possible. Thus Adam Smith's dictum cited earlier badly needs reformulation. The product of the natural environment of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessities and conveniences of life; the annual human labor is simply the energy input required to turn some of that product into forms useful for human beings. The wealth of nations, it turns out, is ultimately the wealth of nature, and the sooner the value of natural cycles and primary goods is taken into account, the better chance our descendants will have of avoiding the self-defeating habits that are pushing modern industrial system down the long road to collapse. To do so, however, will require a clear sense of the difference between value and price, or to put matters another way, between wealth and money - the theme of next week's post. _____ ?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 (2008). He lives in Ashland, Oregon. http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2009/07/wealth-of-nature.html 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/ From shniad at sfu.ca Tue Jul 14 11:05:35 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Tue, 14 Jul 2009 10:05:35 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] This Land Was Our Land In-Reply-To: <4A5CA9F7.7090406@uregina.ca> Message-ID: <1062373640.425721247591135988.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.opednews.com July 12, 2009 This Land Was Our Land (apologies to Woody) by Ed Ciaccio This land was our land, but now it's their land, From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Jul 6 09:31:04 2009 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:31:04 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Jul 6 09:31:04 2009 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:31:04 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: They stole this land from you and me. The Wall Street banksters and corporate cronies, The weapons makers, the Congress phonies, The liars and lobbies, and radio ranters, They stole this land from you and me. This land was our land, but now it's their land, From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Jul 6 09:31:04 2009 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:31:04 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Jul 6 09:31:04 2009 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:31:04 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: They stole this land from you and me. In halls of Congress, where Corporate Tools lurk, To serve their masters, while all us fools work To feed our families, they count their campaign checks. They stole this land from you and me. This land was our land, but now it's their land, From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Jul 6 09:31:04 2009 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:31:04 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Jul 6 09:31:04 2009 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:31:04 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: They stole this land from you and me. A bleeding soldier, dying in foreign sands Wonders why she was sent to far-off lands, As Exxon's profits set all-time records. They stole this land from you and me. This land was our land, but now it's their land, From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Jul 6 09:31:04 2009 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:31:04 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Jul 6 09:31:04 2009 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:31:04 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: They stole this land from you and me. A young man dies in an E.R. ward, Health care payments were too high to afford. Insurance CO's jet to the Caymans. They stole this land from you and me. This land was our land, but now it's their land, From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Jul 6 09:31:04 2009 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:31:04 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Jul 6 09:31:04 2009 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:31:04 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: They stole this land from you and me. The native people have always known how Their land was stolen, so what we feel now Is the cost of "progress" for corporate rulers Who stole this land from you and me. This land was our land, but now it's their land, From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Jul 6 09:31:04 2009 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:31:04 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Jul 6 09:31:04 2009 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:31:04 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: They stole this land from you and me. From shniad at sfu.ca Tue Jul 14 11:54:19 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Tue, 14 Jul 2009 10:54:19 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] The Real News Network - McNamara's mindset, Part 2 In-Reply-To: <0F24A19839A34BF1A34E6B96F5B103C4@twubby.com> Message-ID: <1593737544.451351247594059542.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=3996 The Real News Network - McNamara's mindset, Part 2 Paul Jay speaks to Gareth Porter, Investigative Historian and Journalist about Robert McNamara's deception of former president Lyndon B. Johnson. In this second part of the interview, Porter discusses the documents that served a smoking gun for McNamara's deception over the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Porter says it was not just McNamara. Lyndon B. Johnson's national security advisers in general were pushing and "maneuvering" him and "going so far as deprive him of the information that he really needed to make an informed decision about the use of force. They were desperate to get him involved in a war. The relevance of this is that today we have a president who, like Lyndon B. Johnson, is a neophyte in foreign affairs... he was very dependent on his national security advisers. He was reluctant to completely countermand their positions and advice. He was afraid that without their support he would be portrayed as weak and as someone who was not willing to do what was necessary to defend U.S. power and interests." From shniad at sfu.ca Tue Jul 14 13:12:21 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Tue, 14 Jul 2009 12:12:21 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Iraq: What We Leave As We Withdraw In-Reply-To: <1147613607.233391247524722487.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <978350727.499841247598741637.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/06/30-3 CommonDreams.org June 30, 2009 Iraq : What We Leave As We Withdraw by Jodie Evans Not long after the statue of Saddam fell in Firdos Square, several CODEPINK women and I returned to Iraq. We'd first visited in February during the time Bush proclaimed, "The game is over" and announced his plans for "shock and awe." We'd learned then how much Iraqis loved Americans and did not want our disrupting their country; they asked us to let them deal with Saddam because the change had to come from within or it could be a disaster. We fell in love with Iraq and felt totally safe there, taking cabs in the wee hours of the morning, walking at 2 a.m. on the Tigress and driving to many parts of the country. Returning a few months later, however, we found the country devastated. Bustling markets were empty, the streets were those of a ghost town. Electricity was rare if at all and gas lines were miles long. U.S. soldiers in Humvees sped down the streets with an embarrassing arrogance. Jerry Bremer had just arrived and had issued 100 edicts that infuriated every Iraqi. The story on the street was that it only took Saddam a month to get the country back in shape after the Gulf War, thus, impatience and anger toward the U.S. were growing. Over and over, we heard from Iraqis, "We had one Saddam and now we have hundreds." We were in Iraq to see how to support women in the transition, going to meeting after meeting of how they were going to be included. Zainab Salbi from the non-profit peace group Women for Women International (W4WI) was in many of those meetings with us, including a reception that Bremer threw inside the Coalition Provisional Authority, now the Green Zone. Her father was Saddam's pilot and her mother had sent her to the U.S. to marry out of concern for her safety. I talked to Zainab a few days ago to learn about her most recent trip to Iraq. "In six years they have destroyed Iraq," her eyes teared as she began to tell me what she found. She used the image of a pen trying to balance on the tip of her finger to describe Iraq now: balancing but very unstable. Since she was there last it is a bit safer. Women who had been in exile and hiding for four years were starting to reemerge. But more than 70 percent of the women are not sending their daughters to school. I asked her about the women from the Bremer reception, 20 women have been killed and most others are gone. When I asked about Baghdad, she asked which one. "There are two distinct Baghdads, the red one and the green one," she said. "And they do not relate. On the red side, they call the Americans the 'friendly other side'. The Embassy/Green Zone is another city within a city, now one-fourth of Baghdad, she explained. It was built for 5,000 employees and already people are having to double up, it has burst past 5,000. Most of those who live there are not Iraqi but Ugandan, Peruvian, Burmese, etc. They cannot leave the Green Zone, so they have no idea about what is outside the walls. She overheard a conversation about a car bomb while she was inside and learned three soldiers were killed. She wondered why do the United States sends people to Iraq to get double pay and hazardous benefits when they are not even going outside the walls. U.S. soldiers were still a part of Baghdad while she was there. People are still living without electricity but it has gotten a bit better, something like two hours on and three hours off, she said, this change has helped to engender the window of calm she experienced. It was still spring and she felt like the flowers of Iraq was beginning to bloom again. There was more hope because less violence, but the country still is very fragile. There is nothing made in Iraq for sale. Not even those fantastic cucumbers we loved so much on our drives through the country. Bremer had created a five-percent flat tax for imports in one of his edicts, so Iraqi can't produce anything. It will always be cheaper to bring in products from the from outside. No other country would ever allow such a thing. The Bremer policies were made to destroy Iraq from the inside out. I asked Zainab about her grandfather's house, a beautiful home on the Tigres River where she had held her first classes for W4WI there six years ago. She has since closed W4WI because it became too dangerous, in the meantime it had become a torture den then a brothel. This turned the conversation to trafficking, which she said is horrendous. Most of the girls in prison are between the ages of 12 to 18. They were kidnapped, taken to Syria or surrounding countries, trafficked and when they got sick or too old were brought home to the authorities. Because they didn't have the right papers they were put in jail. Midwives also told her of a huge increase in abortions resulting from the prostitution. Just six years ago, only the old and very religious were covered, women were employed everywhere and Baghdad University was bustling with young women. Now it is bleak. Zainab was able to go uncovered but it is still mandatory for the Iraqi women. Most businesses she visited had no women working, not to say they did not try, but they're just fired within days. Some older women were able to keep their jobs but young women have no way in. She said the university was very sad with much less women. Women, young women have been sent back to the dark ages. She too can't find the way to affect the gridlock of people believing it is over. The U.S. has not taken responsibility to restore the country it destroyed. Iraqis need us to hold those responsible who have done this to them and to leave them to rebuild from the shambles. She left our conversation with this: "It basically looks like we do own it and have created our own kind of hell out of it." Jodie Evans is the co-founder of CODEPINK Women for Peace and environmental, peace and justice activist for more than 30 years. From shniad at sfu.ca Tue Jul 14 13:12:57 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Tue, 14 Jul 2009 12:12:57 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Solomon: Escalation Scam: Troops in Afghanistan In-Reply-To: <1197399410.192731247519838266.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1341220325.500261247598777230.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/commentaries/3923 Escalation Scam: Troops in Afghanistan By Norman Solomon Zspace: July 11, 2009 The president has set a limit on the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. For now. That's how escalation works. Ceilings become floors. Gradually. A few times since last fall, the Obama team has floated rising numbers for how many additional U.S. soldiers will be sent to Afghanistan. Now, deployment of 21,000 more is a done deal, with a new total cap of 68,000 U.S. troops in that country. But "escalation" isn't mere jargon. And it doesn't just refer to what's happening outside the United States. "Escalation" is a word for a methodical process of acclimating people at home to the idea of more military intervention abroad -- nothing too sudden, just a step-by-step process of turning even more war into media wallpaper -- nothing too abrupt or jarring, while thousands more soldiers and billions more dollars funnel into what Martin Luther King Jr. called a "demonic suction tube," complete with massive violence, mayhem, terror and killing on a grander scale than ever. As war policies unfold, the news accounts and dominant media discourse rarely disrupt the trajectory of events. From high places, the authorized extent of candor is a matter of timing. Lots of recent spin from Washington has promoted the assumption that President Obama wants to stick with the current limit on deployments to Afghanistan. Soon after pushing supplemental war funds through Congress, he's hardly eager to proclaim that 68,000 American troops in Afghanistan may not be enough after all. But no amount of spin can change the fact that the U.S. military situation in Afghanistan continues to deteriorate. It would be astonishing if plans for add-on deployments weren't already far along at the Pentagon. Meanwhile, the White House is reenacting a macabre ritual -- a repetition compulsion of the warfare state -- carefully timing and titrating each dose of public information to ease the process of escalation. The basic technique is far from new. In the spring and early summer of 1965, President Lyndon Johnson decided to send 100,000 additional U.S. troops to Vietnam, more than doubling the number there. But at a July 28 news conference, he announced that he'd decided to send an additional 50,000 soldiers. Why did President Johnson say 50,000 instead of 100,000? Because he was heeding the advice from something called a "Special National Security Estimate" -- a secret document, issued days earlier about the already- approved new deployment, urging that "in order to mitigate somewhat the crisis atmosphere that would result from this major U.S. action . . . announcements about it be made piecemeal with no more high-level emphasis than necessary." Forty-four years later, something similar is underway with deployments of U.S. troops to Afghanistan. Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Tuesday that no limit has been set. Speaking to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, he sounded an open-ended note: "There is not a ceiling on troop levels in Afghanistan." Mullen's comment was scarcely reported in U.S. media outlets. It has become old news without ever being news in the first place. The war planners in Washington are bound to proceed carefully on the home front. News of further escalation will come "piecemeal" -- "with no more high-level emphasis than necessary." Norman Solomon, co-chair of the national Healthcare NOT Warfare campaign, is the author of many books including "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death." For more information, go to: www.normansolomon.com From: Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives From shniad at sfu.ca Tue Jul 14 13:12:30 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Tue, 14 Jul 2009 12:12:30 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] The Illusion of Withdrawal in Iraq In-Reply-To: <35365074.233111247524690823.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <208518881.500001247598750910.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/6037 codepink June 30, 2009 Moving Chess Pieces: The Illusion of Withdrawal in Iraq by Janet Weil Today, all U.S. troops must be withdrawn from Iraqi cities, including U.S. bases in Baghdad, according to the Status Of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between the U.S. and Iraq. The Iraqi government will also take legal responsibility for the actions of U.S. troops and have legal jurisdiction over American soldiers who commit crimes off-base and off-duty, and the SOFA will grant permission to U.S. troops for military operations, as well as ban the U.S. from staging attacks on other countries from Iraq. While it may seem like a step forward toward ending the six-year occupation of Iraq, the Pentagon is doing what it can to dodge or play down these SOFA stipulations. In recent weeks, it has been re-classifying bases and troops, hiring ?corporate security? mercenaries, and preventing Iraq from having jurisdiction over those actions. It'll get away with it too, as Congress never ratified the SOFA, and because many are justifying further occupation under the banner of keeping Iraq secure. Leading up to the June 30th deadline, the Pentagon has been playing shell games with bases and with soldiers. City limits have been modified to exempt bases from the agreement and soldiers who have moved out of cities are now encircling them. As Erik Leaver points out in his article ? A Withdrawal in Name Only ,? three thousand troops stationed at the FOB Falcon, located within Baghdad, will not be moving, because Iraqi and American military officials simply decided it wasn?t within the city limits. And thousands of troops in bases sleeping outside the cities will continue to serve in ?support? and ?advisory? roles in the day. And while troops may be moving out of the cities, they are not moving out of the country just yet. The military has been expanding and building new bases in rural areas to accommodate the movement of soldiers, and Congress just passed a bill that includes more funding for military construction in Iraq. In reality, only 30,000 troops have left Iraq since September last year and 134,000 troops still remain. But the 132,000 military contractors in Iraq are the real loophole. How do they fit into the withdrawal plan? How many of them will stay past June 30th? Or past 2011? Military contractors have been used extensively in the War in Iraq to evade legal accountability and hide the true cost ? and body count ? of the war. In fact, mercenaries may be on the rise and will spark additional violence in the country. Arab-American journalist Dahr Jamail points out the violence in Iraq has largely been quelled because the U.S. has paid Iraqi resistance fighters to keep the peace, and the increase in violent resistance in May and June is due to many fighters losing their paychecks from the US government . In his blog, MidEast Dispatches, Jamail writes: ?Attacks against U.S. forces are once again on the rise in places like Baghdad and Fallujah, where the Iraqi resistance was fiercest before so many of them joined the Sahwa (Sons of Iraq, also referred to as Awakening Councils) and began taking payments from the U.S. military in exchange for halting attacks against the occupiers and agreeing to join the fight against al-Qaeda in Iraq. Daily we are watching Sahwa members leave their security posts." He further explains that many Iraqis are rejoining the resistance in protest of losing their paychecks and increasing government attacks, and thus, have stopped targeting al-Qaeda. Instead of continuing to pay these resistance fighters, the U.S. plans to replace some soldiers and Marines in Iraq with mercenaries -- private U.S. contractors and corporations. This new occupying force will continue to alienate Iraqis and delay any real Iraqi independence. But despite working all the loopholes, the U.S. never officially committed to playing by the rules of an Iraq withdrawal, anyway. In 2007 and 2009, members of Congress including then-Senator Hillary Clinton believed the SOFA should have been ratified by Senate to be legitimate. During the 2008 presidential campaign, Clinton urged Obama to sign on to her legislation that would have required Bush to bring the SOFA to Senate first. Obama, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, never agreed to do so. But once Clinton dropped her opposition to Obama?s unanimous selection as the Democratic presidential nominee, and was rewarded by being chosen as Secretary of State, she put her SOFA principle aside and now supports an agreement that only one country ? Iraq ? has ratified. The U.S. Senate's role in ratifying bilateral agreements has been nullified, a development that should worry all who have been concerned about a ?unitary executive? and an increasingly weakened Congress. Even in Iraq, withdrawal plans have been undermined. The Iraqi parliament planned to ratify the SOFA under a national referendum this month. But recently the Iraqi cabinet decided to reschedule to align with the national parliamentary elections in January 2010. The SOFA is widely unpopular and seen as legitimizing the US occupation until 2011. If it goes to a vote, it will likely be defeated. So Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other Iraqi leaders have colluded with both the Bush and Obama administrations to subvert the will of the Iraqi people. If by July 31 however the Iraq SOFA is not referendum-ratified or a 12-month cancellation notice issued, it will expire. If it expires, the U.S. will be in Iraq without legal authorization and U.S. forces may be subject to lock down until the matter is resolved. Under these conditions, U.S. troops will no longer have the bilateral protections ? effectively left in a legal and political limbo. Ultimately, the Pentagon must stop playing chess games to slow down a real withdrawal. And our leaders in the White House and Congress ? who just passed another $70 billion for the war ? must take real leadership to end this war, including withdrawing all our troops, ending the use of military contractors, stop funding any permanent bases in Iraq, and allowing the Iraqi people the space to reclaim their country. Janet Weil is a CODEPINK staff member based in San Francisco. Her nephew is preparing to be deployed to Afghanistan in November. From suzannedk at gmail.com Tue Jul 14 14:07:06 2009 From: suzannedk at gmail.com (Suzanne de Kuyper) Date: Tue, 14 Jul 2009 22:07:06 +0200 Subject: [R-G] This Land Was Our Land In-Reply-To: <1062373640.425721247591135988.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> References: <4A5CA9F7.7090406@uregina.ca> <1062373640.425721247591135988.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: The our's and their's stuff is really about saying that some big bad entity stole the pricelss from the helpless. That is not the real way it happens at all. This kind of writing feeds those who want pityand/or reasons to remain the victim. suzannedk at gmail.com On Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 7:05 PM, Sid Shniad wrote: > http://www.opednews.com > > July 12, 2009 > > This Land Was Our Land (apologies to Woody) > > by Ed Ciaccio > > > This land was our land, but now it's their land, > From coast to coast, a most unfair land. > From the redwood forests, to the gulfstream waters, > They stole this land from you and me. > > The Wall Street banksters and corporate cronies, > The weapons makers, the Congress phonies, > The liars and lobbies, and radio ranters, > They stole this land from you and me. > > This land was our land, but now it's their land, > From coast to coast, a most unfair land. > From the redwood forests, to the gulfstream waters, > They stole this land from you and me. > > In halls of Congress, where Corporate Tools lurk, > To serve their masters, while all us fools work > To feed our families, they count their campaign checks. > They stole this land from you and me. > > This land was our land, but now it's their land, > From coast to coast, a most unfair land. > From the redwood forests, to the gulfstream waters, > They stole this land from you and me. > > A bleeding soldier, dying in foreign sands > Wonders why she was sent to far-off lands, > As Exxon's profits set all-time records. > They stole this land from you and me. > > This land was our land, but now it's their land, > From coast to coast, a most unfair land. > From the redwood forests, to the gulfstream waters, > They stole this land from you and me. > > A young man dies in an E.R. ward, > Health care payments were too high to afford. > Insurance CO's jet to the Caymans. > They stole this land from you and me. > > This land was our land, but now it's their land, > From coast to coast, a most unfair land. > From the redwood forests, to the gulfstream waters, > They stole this land from you and me. > > The native people have always known how > Their land was stolen, so what we feel now > Is the cost of "progress" for corporate rulers > Who stole this land from you and me. > > This land was our land, but now it's their land, > From coast to coast, a most unfair land. > From the redwood forests, to the gulfstream waters, > They stole this land from you and me. > _______________________________________________ > 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 shniad at sfu.ca Tue Jul 14 17:09:33 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Tue, 14 Jul 2009 16:09:33 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Washington and the Coup D'etat in Honduras: here is the proof In-Reply-To: <1857118205.612201247612929816.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <719180625.612581247612973937.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=88601 Washington and the Coup D'etat in Honduras: here is the proof by Eva Golinger The State Department had previous knowledge of the coup. The State Department and US Congress financed and advised the Honduran actors and organizations which participated in the coup. The Pentagon trained, financed, and armed the Honduran army which perpetrated the coup and which continues to repress the honduran people. The US military presence in Honduras, which occupies the military base at Soto Cano (Palmerola), authorized the coup with its tactical complicity and refusal to withdraw military support to the honduran forces. The US ambassador to the United States in Tegucigalpa, Hugo Llorens, coordinated the expulsion of president Manuel Zelaya, together with the Subsecretary of State Thomas Shannon and John Negroponte, who actually works as a consultant to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Jul 6 09:31:04 2009 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:31:04 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: spoken of the "two parties" involved and the need for "dialogue" to restore the constitutional order, legitimating in this way the coupsters. The State Department has refused to certify legally the events in Honduras as a "coup", it has not suspended nor frozen financial support or trade with the country, nor has it taken steps to pressure effectively the de facto regime. Washington manipulated the Organization of American States to increase the time devoted to debate what needed to be done and in this manner did not support the immediate return of president Zelaya to power, as part of a strategy to legitimate the de facto government and wear down the honduran people, who continue to resist the coup. Secretary of State Clinton and her spokespersons stopped speaking of the return of president Zelaya to power and later designated Costa Rican president Arias as a mediator, and have now referred to the dictator who assumed power illegitimately during the coup, Roberto Micheletti, as an "interim president". The strategy of "negotiating" with the coupsters was imposed by Obama's government as a way of discrediting president Zelaya--holding him responsible for provoking the coup--and legitimating the coupsters. United States congressional representatives--democrats and republicans--organized a visit by representatives of the coupsters to Washington, and received them with distinction at a variety of institutions in the US capital. In spite of the fact that republican senator John McCain coordinated the visit of the coupsters to Washington through a lobbying organization called the Cormac Group, actually Bill Clinton's lawyer and close friend of Hillary, Lanny Davis, was contracted as a "lobbyist" to gain public acceptance of Washington for the de facto government in Honduras. Otto Reich and venezuelan Robert Carmona-Borjas, former lawyer to dictator Pedro Carmona during the coup in Venezuela in April 2002, helped from Washington to set the stage for the coup against president Zelaya in Honduras. The planning team for the coup in Honduras designated by Washington also included a group of US ambassadors recently named to central american countries, experts in the destabilization of the cuban revolution, and also Adolfo Frank, formerly in charge of USAID for Cuba. No one can doubt the involvement of Washington in the coup in Honduras against president Zelaya that began this past june 28. Many analysts, leaders, as well as presidents, have denounced it. Nonetheless, the majority concur that the administration of Barack Obama had no role in the honduran coup, holding responsible in its place remnants of the government of George W. Bush and the hawks who continue to walk the hallways of the White House. The evidence demonstrates that yes, it is certain that the hawks and the usual suspects of coups and sabotage in Latin America have participated this time, and there also exists ample proof of the role of Obama's government as well. Eva Golinger Rebelion From shniad at sfu.ca Tue Jul 14 17:15:16 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Tue, 14 Jul 2009 16:15:16 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Lanny Davis Now Lobbying In Support Of Honduran Coup In-Reply-To: <2141621997.610211247612672790.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1726884690.615351247613316355.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/07/lanny_davis_now_lobbying_in_support_of_honduran_co.php TPM Muckraker July 14, 2009 Lanny Davis Now Lobbying In Support Of Honduran Coup By Zachary Roth It seems like just yesterday that Lanny Davis was making the rounds of every news outlet that would have him, talking up Hillary Clinton's bid for the White House -- and/or pushing the Reverend Wright story . Not too long after, the former Clinton White House counsel popped up to do damage control for hawkish Democratic congresswoman Jane Harman over the AIPAC leak story. And now the hardest working conservative Democrat in show business has a new gig: lobbying against the Honduran leader recently deposed in a military coup. The Hill reports that Davis has been hired by the Honduran branch of CEAL, the Latin American equivalent of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, to urge US lawmakers to support, rather than oppose, the military removal of President Manuel Zelaya, Honduras's democratically elected president. Of course, thanks to his close ties to the current Secretary of State -- who met with Zelaya yesterday -- Davis could be particularly well placed for the job. But the Fox News contributor said he had no plans to set up a meeting between Clinton and the current and former Honduran government officials with whom he's working. Although last month Zelaya was taken from his bed by the military and forcibly removed from the country, Davis portrayed his work for the coup's supporters as all about law and order: Davis said the business group wants to restore order to Honduras, which has been in upheaval since the country's military ousted Zelaya on June 28 after he tried to alter the constitution. "This is about the rule of law. That is the only message we have," Davis said, adding that Zelaya "was acting unconstitutionally and illegally" when he pushed for a voter referendum to change presidential term limits. The Central American nation's other branches of government opposed his move, and his decision to ignore them led to his ouster. Already, Davis has lined up meetings between Senate and House foreign relations committee aides and current and former high-level officials with the Honduran government For by no means the first time, Davis finds himself lined up with Republicans, who have charged that, since the coup, the Obama administration has offered "one-sided support" to Zelaya, an ally of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez. Hey, a guy has to make a living. From shniad at sfu.ca Tue Jul 14 17:14:08 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Tue, 14 Jul 2009 16:14:08 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Chavez: US Government Giving Oxygen to Honduran Coup In-Reply-To: <4A5CB47A.9070808@sfu.ca> Message-ID: <97666896.614561247613248489.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Venezuelanalysis.com July 13th 2009 Chavez: US Government Giving Oxygen to Honduran Coup by Kiraz Janicke Caracas, July 13 2009, (Venezuelanalysis.com) - Speaking during his weekly television show, Hello President, on Sunday, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called on United States President, Barack Obama to withdraw all support for the coup government in Honduras that deposed the democratically elected president Manuel Zelaya on June 28. Although the Obama and secretary of state, Hilary Clinton have made comments condemning the ouster of Zelaya, the US government has thus far refused to legally recognize the coup as a "coup", maintained diplomatic ties with the illegitimate coup government in Honduras, and continued to send millions of dollars in aid. "Obama withdraw your soldiers from Honduras, withdraw all support for the coup plotters, freeze their bank accounts, withdraw their visas so that this government falls immediately," the Venezuelan head of state said. "If the US government truly doesn't support the coup, it would withdraw all of its troops from the military base at Palmerola," he added. Chavez argued that it is imperative that his counter-part in the White House take a clear position on Honduras, and that this represents a test for Obama, who promised a shift away from previous US president George Bush's interventionist foreign policy approach. "Don't deceive the world with a discourse that contradicts your actions," he warned Obama, "demonstrate that it's true that you are disposed to confront the imperialist hawks, if not, its better that you go away, because you will end up worse than Bush." US-backed talks aimed at promoting "dialogue" between Zelaya and coup president Roberto Micheletti, mediated by Costa Rican president Oscar Arias ended last week without resolving the crisis. During apress conference on Friday, Chavez slammed the US initiative of promoting dialogue with the coup government as a "crass error." "A dialogue with who? With these usurpers? The same people who are now persecuting the Honduran people? Those who have killed people?" he questioned. "This would constitute a trap for democracy, a danger and a serious error, not only for Honduras, but for the whole American continent," he said. Fortunately Zelaya walked out of the trap rapidly Chavez said, but lamented the fact that Micheletti was received in Costa Rica as if he were a legitimate head of state. Through these types of measures the US government is "giving oxygen" to the de facto government of dictator Roberto Micheletti, Chavez continued on Sunday. "The aim of imperialism, the continental bourgeoisie and the media is to draw out the game...What the immoral coup plotters in Honduras are trying to do is wear out the people of Honduras, wear out the constitutional president Manuel Zelaya, and his government which is in exile, some of whom are prisoners or have gone underground," he added. "Then there are elections in Honduras in November," Chavez explained, "this is what the game is...we will not recognize any government that emerges, including from elections that this coup government carries out." "They want to close the path to democratic transformation because they are afraid of democracy and popular power, which is waking up and shaking Central America, South America and the Caribbean." Chavez emphasised the necessity of protesting in the streets, "like the people of Honduras," and building a solidarity movement around the world in order to defeat the coup. "The situation in Honduras is explosive... this coup government will not be able to govern, the Honduran people won't be governed by a tyrant like Roberto Micheletti, this coup plotter will not be able to take forward any kind of economic project," he said. Honduras is paralysed Chavez said, "There are no classes, the factories are closed, the people are in the street, the farmers have left their tractors and taken to the highways, blocking commerce in Central America, there is hardly any fuel. Honduras is a country on the verge of exploding." "There are soldiers that have refused to repress the people, it's only that they haven't come out [against the coup government], but it shouldn't surprise anyone, if a military current pronounces against the actions that have been carried out against president Zelaya," he declared. Despite military repression Honduras has entered its third week of protest against the military coup demanding the return of the democratically elected president. President of the United Workers Federation in Honduras, Juan Barahona, confirmed that protests are continuing this Monday, Venezuelan Radio YKVE Mundial reported. "We are going to continue until the coup plotters abandon the power they have usurped," Barahona told thousands of people who rallied in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, in a massive show of resistance to the coup government on Saturday. Xiomara Castro, wife of the ousted Zelaya also spoke at the rally, which then marched to the Toncontin international airport to commemorate the death of 19-year-old Isis Obed Murillo, shot by the military on July 5 as he protested the coup. Chavez also condemned the murder in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, of Roger Iv?n Bados, a popular leader and left-wing activist. Quoting Barahona, Ch?vez stated that unknown assailants killed Bados, a leader of the People's Bloc and the National Resistance Front against the coup. He explained that this killing was part of the selective repression being carried out against political and social movement leaders in Honduras by the coup government. From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Tue Jul 14 19:31:17 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2009 10:31:17 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Wobble Time Message-ID: <20090715103117.ad21bd71.shimogamo@ashisuto.co.jp> Clusterfuck Nation by James Howard Kunstler Comment on current events by the author of The Long Emergency (2005) www.kunstler.com (July 13 2009) The cat coming out of the bag this week - a frazzled, flaming, rabid, death-dealing cat - is the news that Goldman Sachs will announce impressive second-quarter profits, and set aside $18 billion or so for employee bonuses averaging $600,000 per head (though, of course, not evenly distributed among them). There probably are not fifty-three people in the USA who can explain how this development figures in with last fall's bailout gift from the US treasury, or the $13 billion GS received on the backside of US gift payments to the failed AIG insurance company, plus the reams of necrotic securitized debt paper rotting in the back of the GS vaults. This is a company playing with the fire of world history. It brings back the question, which has loomed dimly at the margins of America's collective consciousness, as to whether we can get through the long emergency ahead without going through a wringer of domestic political convulsion. At this rate, sooner or later, anything identified with wealth could become a target for the wrath of the unemployed and foreclosed. The first rock that flies through an East Hampton window, or the first firebomb tossed into the lobby of Goldman Sachs Manhattan headquarters could ignite a chain of events that shoves all economic policy out of the political arena and quickly divides everyone at the center of power into armies out for blood. What the nation - including President Obama - can't seem to get through its head is that the USA has entered a period of epochal economic contraction. Instead of growth, as measured in conventional econometrics, we can only expect (in the best case) transformation to a different economy within the limits of real contraction. The president has got to stop promising renewed growth. While this would affect the perceived "standard-of-living" as measured in things like shopping mall sales and vehicle miles driven, it would not necessarily mean diminished "quality-of-life". It would mean different ways-of-life for a lot of people - for instance, young adults who had expected lifetime employment as corporate executives but who, instead, find themselves ten years from now working at farming. We have an awful lot to get real about. A genuine reorganization of the US economy seems beyond the ken not just of all US politicians but of the entire US news media and business leadership. A wonderful example last week was the idiotic press conference by General Motors marketing chief, Bob Lutz, who thinks he can revive the American Dream with electric cars. (By the way, this is pretty much the same thinking I encountered at the Aspen Environmental Forum among the Green celebrities.) From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Jul 6 09:31:04 2009 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:31:04 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: were produced on a mass basis, they would crash the electric grid - assuming that the masses could afford to buy them, which assumes a lot. We simply don't have the electric generating capacity to run even one-quarter of the current car fleet on volts, and building the necessary nuclear or coal-fired power plants in five years is also an absurdity. (Don't expect wind, solar, biomass, or anything else to pick up the slack.) If electric cars were produced as just a niche product for the elite (for example, Goldman Sachs employees), they would soon provoke the resentment of the non-elite left to the mercy of the oil markets. Anyway, America's motoring dilemma has gone beyond the issue of how we power the cars - and even beyond the insanity of blindly maintaining our extreme car dependency per se. The continuation of Happy Motoring now hinges on two other big quandaries: (1) the likelihood that there will be far less capital available for car loans, and (2) the likelihood that there will be far less government money for road maintenance. The problem of Peak Oil - and the prospect of price-jackings and shortages - is just the cherry on top. By the way, for practical purposes Bob Lutz of GM is an employee of the US taxpayers now, since the US owns sixty percent of the "new" General Motors, so he must be considered a spokesman for national policy. Since a transformation of the US car fleet to electric vehicles is absurd, what would be an appropriate response to profound economic contraction? How about walkable communities connected by public transit? Why is that not a focus of the "new" General Motors? In 1941 the company made the transformation from cars to armaments in a matter of months; why can't it produce the rolling stock for a renewed passenger rail system? Or trams? Is this not enough of a crisis? The answer is that there is no leadership in this direction. If President Obama declared this to be a policy objective, and stuck to it for more than one business day, he could drag the sleepwalking American public in this direction, and the rest of national leadership in government, business, and media with it. This kind of thing is what prompts casual observers to wonder if the president is a cynical shill for business as usual, or a victim of the worst conventional thinking with no real vision, or just another clueless sleepwalking bozo with a charming veneer. In circles that pass for "progressive" these days, the natives are getting restless. Their agitation seems pretty inchoate for the moment - still resting on vague, poorly-defined wishes for "change". These vague promptings need to be focused on specific action that is realistic within the context of comprehensive contraction and transformation. A big piece of this would be the recognition that our suburban sprawl economy is dying, and that we now have to bend our efforts to reorganizing American life on the most fundamental physical terms. We have to inhabit the landscape differently, move around it differently, generate food out of it differently, and make things on it again. Whatever remaining real capital there is in the system can't be squandered on cash bonuses for Wall Street employees. I'm not ready to capitulate to cynicism. There is something in the political wind this summer. I think events will force Mr Obama to assert some real leadership and take the national debate on our predicament in another direction, even if it is an uncomfortable direction for him and everybody else. Despite the massive disappointment being expressed by so many Obama voters these days, I believe the president will redeem himself before long. Attorney General Eric Holder announced over the weekend that he will commence an investigation into the Bush regime's misconduct with terrorism suspects. His department is capable of running more than one investigation at a time. Why doesn't President Obama direct him to open an investigation of Goldman Sachs's behavior in the area of securities fraud, insider trading, and misuse of goverment funds? Without an official inquiry into financial misconduct of this company, and others, I believe public anger will overwhelm any attempts to transform our contracting economy and the president's ability to manage it. _____ My new novel of the post-oil future, World Made By Hand, is available at all booksellers. http://kunstler.com/blog/2009/07/wobble-time.html 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/ From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Wed Jul 15 03:14:53 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2009 18:14:53 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] From Sunshine State to Subprime State? Message-ID: <20090715181453.050d6d67.shimogamo@ashisuto.co.jp> The Sun Could Shine Again on California by Ellen Brown webofdebt.com (July 13 2009) Four Wall Street banks, which received $15 to 25 billion each from the taxpayers, have rejected California's IOUs because the State is supposedly a bad credit risk. The bailed out banks would seem to have a duty to lend a helping hand, but they say they don't want to delay an agreement on further austerity measures. State legislators are not bowing quickly to the pressure, but what is the alternative? In the latest twist to the California budget saga, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and JPMorgan Chase (which each got $25 billion in bailout money from the taxpayers) and Bank of America (which got $15 billion) have refused California's request for a loan to tide it over until October. Until the State can get things sorted out, it has started paying its creditors in IOUs ("I Owe You's" or promises to pay bearing interest, technically called registered warrants). Its Wall Street creditors, however, have refused to take them. Why? The pot says the kettle is a poor credit risk! California expects to need to issue only about $13 billion in IOUs through September, and all its Governor has asked for in the way of a loan from the federal government is a guarantee for $6 billion. Total loans, commitments and guarantees to rescue the financial sector and stem the credit crisis have been estimated at $12.8 trillion {1}. But California has not been invited to the banquet. The total sum California needs to balance its budget is $26.3 billion. That is about the same sum given to Citigroup, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan in bailout money; and it is only about one-tenth the sum given to AIG, a mere insurance company. Corporations evidently trump States and their citizens in the eyes of the powers controlling the purse strings. California has a gross domestic product of $1.7 trillion annually and has been rated the world's eighth largest economy. Its 38.3 million people are one-eighth of the nation's population and a key catalyst for US retail sales. When the California consumer base falters, businesses are shaken nationwide. If AIG and the other Wall Street welfare recipients are too big to fail, California is way too big to fail. Fitch Rating Agency has downgraded California's municipal bonds to junk bond status, triple B. Why? AIG and Lehman Brothers had A ratings right up until they declared bankruptcy. California has never defaulted on its bonds, and it cannot arbitrarily decide to default; the State Constitution mandates that debt principal and interest must be paid as promised. California bonds lost their triple A rating only when the municipal bond insurers (Ambac and MBIA) lost theirs. It was these insurers, not the State of California, that got into hot water gambling in derivatives. The State Attorney General has opined that California's IOUs are valid and binding obligations of the State. In rejecting them, however, Wall Street may have ulterior motives. A lower credit rating can justify investors in demanding higher interest rates. The interest offered on the IOUs is substantially lower than the interest banks can get on triple B rated municipal bonds. There may be deeper motives than that. Considering the enormous importance of the California economy to the country, and the relatively small sum it needs in loans, the refusal to support the State financially seems highly suspicious, especially when much more has been given to less creditworthy private institutions. The banks say they want to keep the pressure on California legislators to work it out among themselves, but what does that mean? The options are even higher taxes, even more cuts in services, or even more fire sales of public assets; in short, the sort of austerity measures expected of supplicants reduced to Third World debtor status. State legislators are understandably reluctant to crawl into that debt pit. Governor Schwarzenegger has refused to approve higher taxes, while Democratic leaders say further cuts in services could leave some Californians starving in the streets. The Sun Could Shine Again on the Sunshine State There is an alternative to that dark future, and perhaps it is to keep the public from waking up to it that arms are being twisted to accept the new burdens quickly. If Wall Street and the Feds won't extend credit to California on reasonable terms, the State could simply walk away and create its own credit machine. California could put its revenues in its own state-owned bank and fan these "reserves" into many times their face value in loans, using the same "fractional reserve" system that private banks use. Many authorities {2} have attested that banks simply create the money they lend on their books. Congressman Jerry Voorhis, writing in 1973, explained it like this: "[F]or every $1 or $1.50 which people, or the government, deposit in a bank, the banking system can create out of thin air and by the stroke of a pen some $10 of checkbook money or demand deposits. It can lend all that $10 into circulation at interest just so long as it has the $1 or a little more in reserve to back it up." President Obama himself has acknowledged this "multiplier effect". In a speech at Georgetown University on April 14 2009, he said: "[A]lthough there are a lot of Americans who understandably think that government money would be better spent going directly to families and businesses instead of banks - where's our bailout?, they ask - the truth is that a dollar of capital in a bank can actually result in eight or ten dollars of loans to families and businesses, a multiplier effect that can ultimately lead to a faster pace of economic growth". If private banks can leverage deposits into multiple amounts of "credit" on their books, a state-owned bank could do the same thing, and return the profits to the public purse. One State already does this. North Dakota boasts the only state-owned bank in the nation. It is also one of only two states (along with Montana) that are currently able to meet their budgets {3}. The Bank of North Dakota {4} was established by the legislature in 1919 to free farmers and small businessmen from the clutches of out-of-state bankers and railroad men. By law, the State must deposit all its funds in the bank, and the State guarantees its deposits. The bank's surplus profits are returned to the State's coffers. The bank operates as a bankers' bank, partnering with private banks to lend money to farmers, real estate developers, schools and small businesses. It makes one percent loans to startup farms, has a thriving student loan business, and purchases municipal bonds from public institutions. North Dakota is not suffering from unemployment or feeling the pinch of the economic downturn. Rather, it sports the largest surplus it has ever had. If this isolated farming State can escape Wall Street's credit crisis, the world's eighth largest economy can do it too! To sign a petition that will go electronically to Governor Schwarzenegger and to elected officials in your State, click here: http://www.change.org/actions/view/help_the_terminator_save_california You could also try faxing this article or a letter to Governor Schwarzenegger at 916-558-3160. See http://gov.ca.gov/interact#contact. Links: {1} http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=armOzfkwtCA4 {2} http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/newdeal.php {3} http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=711 {4} http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/state_bank_option.php _____ Ellen Brown developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt (2007), 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 (1998), Nature's Pharmacy (1998), co-authored with Dr Lynne Walker, and The Key to Ultimate Health (2000), co-authored with Dr Richard Hansen. Her websites are www.webofdebt.com and www.ellenbrown.com. (c) Copyright 2007 Ellen Brown. All Rights Reserved. http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/sunshine_state.php 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/ From realiteee1 at yahoo.com Wed Jul 15 03:42:10 2009 From: realiteee1 at yahoo.com (james m nordlund) Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2009 02:42:10 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Keep women's care in healthcare reform :) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <873999.71591.qm@web111514.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> This Action, on Change.org, the url??? :) womens care = healthcare?? :) http://healthcare.change.org/actions/view/womens_care_healthcare http://www.change.org/profile/189788/actions ? Urgent: Senator Hatch targets Planned Parenthood?? :) URGENT: Senator Orrin Hatch is lying in order to cut women ? and Planned Parenthood ? out of health care reform, no matter the cost to millions of people.Tell Senator Hatch he is wrong. Tell him American women can't be fooled. http://www.ppaction.org//campaign/protectwomenshealth09pporg We've been deeply concerned that women would be the first targets in health care reform and now it's happened. Yesterday, anti-choice Senator Orrin Hatch launched an attack on Planned Parenthood and the U.S. senators who were trying to help women. Earlier this week, Senator Mikulski of Maryland, joined by four other senators, offered an amendment to make sure that preventive care for women ? like birth control and cancer screenings ? is included in health care legislation. The amendment also made sure women and their families can still see the doctors and nurses they trust. The amendment passed, and it was a strong victory for women's health. And now the other side is trying their best to take it away. Within hours, Senator Hatch and his allies started spreading lies. Their aim: to cut millions of women ? and Planned Parenthood ? out of health care reform. Their method: to mislead the media and Americans about what the amendment actually does. Instead of telling the truth, he claimed that it mandates abortion coverage in an attempt to drum up opposition. This is an outright lie ? and we need your help to fight back. http://www.ppaction.org//campaign/protectwomenshealth09pporg Senator Hatch and his allies have made themselves clear. They believe that providing trusted and essential health care to millions of Americans is less important than pushing their anti-choice ideology. They are wrong. Women's health matters ? it matters to me and I know it matters to you. Let's show him just how wrong he is ? take a moment right now to sign a petition to Senator Hatch. http://www.ppaction.org//campaign/protectwomenshealth09pporg It is truly outrageous. Senator Hatch and his anti-women's health allies are willing to sacrifice the health care of so many women, men, and families for one reason ? to undermine women's ability to get preventive and primary reproductive health care. The fact is that without genuine access to care, women's health is in jeopardy. You and I know that, and that's why we won't accept health care reform that cuts out reproductive health care and women's health providers like Planned Parenthood. Please, sign your name and make sure Senator Hatch gets the message. http://www.ppaction.org//campaign/protectwomenshealth09pporg This isn't the first attack on women's health and Planned Parenthood since the health care reform debate began ? and you can bet it won't be the last. Thank you for standing strong with us today, and please bear with us as we communicate with you frequently on this critical struggle. Sincerely, http://www.plannedparenthood.org/ Cecile Richards, President Planned Parenthood Federation of America visit plannedparenthood.org ? 2009 Planned Parenthood? Federation of America Privacy Policy From shniad at sfu.ca Wed Jul 15 11:57:02 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2009 10:57:02 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Canadian counterinsurgency manual reflects US-Canada "synergy" In-Reply-To: <938174661.629661247614847875.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <359599005.811371247680622824.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/2770 The Dominion July 11, 2009 The Future of Warfare Canadian counterinsurgency manual reflects US-Canada "synergy" by Anthony Fenton Capping a sweeping transformation that began in the late 1990s, the Canadian Forces recently issued their first counterinsurgency (COIN) operations doctrine, which will help Canadian soldiers prepare to fight the wars of today and the "foreseeable future," alongside its chief ally and the sole global superpower, the US. In development since 2005, the COIN manual was authorized by Chief of Land Staff Lt. Gen. Andrew Leslie in the waning days of the Bush administration. It was not formalized for another two months?six weeks after the inauguration of President Barack Obama. Obama's administration has sent clear signals, through political appointments and holdovers (such as Defense Secretary Robert Gates), that the US military and national security apparatus' transformation toward fighting smaller, "irregular wars" begun under Bush will continue apace. Only a week before Bush left office, Gates, together with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the Director of USAID, Henrietta Fore, co-signed the US Government Counterinsurgency Guide . Neo-conservative historian Eliot Cohen, who oversaw the Guide's creation, wrote in its introduction: Insurgency will be a large and growing element of the security challenges faced by the United States in the 21st century...Whether the United States should engage in any particular counterinsurgency is a matter of political choice, but that it will engage in such conflicts during the decades to come is a near certainty. This Guide will help prepare decision-makers of many kinds for the tasks that result from this fact. According to Lt. Gen. Leslie, the Canadian Army is "at the cutting edge" of Western armies readying themselves to fight 21st-century wars. "The paradigms of the past based on the Cold War have changed a great deal. We have demonstrated beyond any doubt that we can adapt our doctrine and training quickly in order to meet scattered, complex operations focused on counterinsurgency missions," Leslie told a Senate defence committee meeting in March. Shifts in Canadian policy adhere closely to those of her allies, like the US, the UK and other NATO partners. These governments are at the forefront of institutionalizing COIN principles and practices in military culture, across the "whole-of-government," and, eventually, within the "whole of society." Based on the "comprehensive approach," the Canadian COIN manual represents a synthesis of two recent US Army Field Manuals: Counterinsurgency (FM 3-24); and Stability Operations (FM 3-07). In 2007, after over one-and-a-half million downloads, the US Army COIN manual was published in print by the University of Chicago Press and received wide media coverage. The subsequent US Army Stability Operations Manual , published in early 2009, has also been widely distributed. By contrast, the Canadian manual is not yet publicly available. A copy of the Canadian COIN manual was obtained by The Dominion from the Department of National Defence. Writing in the Canadian Military Journal last fall, Leslie defined the comprehensive approach as the "ability to bring to bear all instruments of national and coalition power and influence upon a problem in a timely, co-ordinated fashion." This definition aligns with that of the US Army, as found in the Stability Operations Manual : A comprehensive approach...integrates the co-operative efforts of the departments and agencies of the United States government, intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations, multinational partners, and private sector entities to achieve unity of effort toward a shared goal. The concept of "unity of effort" is drawn from classical counterinsurgency theory and doctrine. In 1966, John J. McCuen wrote in The Art of Counter-Revolutionary War that, "Unity of effort...is extremely difficult to achieve because it represents the fusion of civil and military functions to fight battles which have primarily political objectives." As the Canadian manual foregrounds, today's insurgencies remain inherently "a political problem." "The nature of operations today and in the future will resemble the Three Block War construct?one that demands that soldiers interact with many different players other than their own armed forces, and undertake non-traditional tasks," wrote Leslie in the Canadian Military Journal . In October 2003, Hillier made the Three Block War scenario "a guiding concept for the Canadian Army." Hillier's support for the Three Block War was one of the reasons he was selected to be Chief of Defence Staff in 2005. According to then-Prime Minister Paul Martin, "[Hillier] advocated a concept called the 'three-block war,' to describe the [military's] mission...This was not a rejection of our peacekeeping tradition, but a revision to suit tougher times, and I supported it." Martin's government dovetailed the Three Block War approach with the broader institutionalization of the "whole-of-government" (or 3D: Defence, Development, Diplomacy) foreign policy approach in its International Policy Statement of 2005. This trajectory has continued, with minor modifications, under the minority Conservative governments of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. That Canada should shift its foreign and defence policies in concert with the US comes as no surprise given their close historical relationship, even if the level of integration is often downplayed by the mainstream media. "No two militaries are more closely united than those of the United States and Canada," said US Ambassador to Canada David Wilkins in 2007. With counterinsurgency practices and principles on the rise under the Obama administration, an increasing level of "COIN-synergy" exists between the two militaries. "We are learning from others. I happen to know General David Petraeus, who is very good man. You will find that some of our recent philosophies closely match his and those of the US Army and our friends and allies," Lt. Gen. Leslie told the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence in March. Gen. Petraeus is likely the person who contributed the most to the resurrection of a new "counterinsurgency era" in the US. He oversaw the drafting of the US Army Counterinsurgency Field Manual in 2005 and 2006, and supervised its implementation during "the surge" in Iraq in 2007. As Commander of US Central Command, Petraeus currently oversees both the Iraq and "AfPak" wars. Many followers of Petraeus have risen to prominence within Obama's cabinet; others have gone on to become "experts" in private think-tanks and appear regularly in the US media as proponents of counterinsurgency war. Petraeus visited Calgary this week for a "social" meeting with Canada's top military brass. Partly a public relations exercise, the meeting saw Petraeus and Canadian Chief of Defence Staff Walt Natynczyk, who once served in Iraq at the same time as the US general, donning cowboy hats as they attended the Calgary Stampede. There, according to Petraeus, they discussed "the way forward for the next two years" in the COIN fight in Afghanistan. Petraeus was subordinate in rank to Natynczyk when the Canadian general was Deputy Commander of the Multi-National Corps in Iraq in 2003-04. At the same time, Petraeus commanded a small number of Canadian soldiers in Iraq on a low-key NATO mission to train Iraqi soldiers, according to declassified documents obtained by The Dominion via Access to Information. The clearest embodiment of COIN's institutionalization and the Canada-US "comprehensive approach" can be found in the US Army and Marine Corps COIN Center. Established at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in 2006 by Petraeus and US Marine General James Mattis, it was from the COIN Center that the US Army Counterinsurgency Field Manual (FM 3-24) was drafted. The COIN Center's pamphlet describes its purpose as "facilitat[ing] the development of a culture that enables us to more effectively adapt as a whole government when called upon to deal with future COIN or COIN-like threats." Canada is identified in the pamphlet as a key COIN-partner of the US in the "COIN SITREP reports" that Lt. Col. Daniel Roper, Director of the COIN Center, publishes periodically. "Each country needs to institutionalize it in a way that works for them," Roper told The Dominion . "But I see some pretty impressive collaboration at the inter-agency level in Canada, with people of cross-functional expertise trying to grapple with some issues; some similar things that we're doing." Since General Leslie signed off on the COIN manual last December, the COIN Center and Canada have collaborated on more than 20 exchanges, including "COIN Leader Workshops" and "COIN Integration" meetings. Members of the Canadian Expeditionary Force Command (CEFCOM) met with the COIN Center for discussions about "US-Canada COIN synergy" five days after Leslie wrote in his issuing order for the new COIN doctrine that it is "complementary to our allies." In April, the US COIN Center "visited military installations and think-tanks in Canada to inculcate the Canadian military establishment with COIN doctrine and best practices." During one presentation with top officials from Prime Minister Harper's government, the COIN Center found that "policy advisors were most interested in how the merits of [Canada's new Afghan COIN] strategy could be explained to the Canadian public and Canadian political leadership." Figuring out ways to sell the COIN campaign to a skeptical Canadian public has been a key aim of the Canadian government and military, and Canada's COIN manual emphasizes the goal of "creating and maintaining the legitimacy of the campaign." One of the central figures steering the Canada-US COIN-synergy is Lt. Col. John Malevich, who joined the COIN Center in November 2008 by way of a newly created exchange program between the two countries. He is currently the Deputy-Director of the COIN Center and recently gave a series of COIN lectures in Canada. Reached via telephone upon his return to Ft. Leavenworth, Malevich told The Dominion that the biggest assets that he brings to the COIN Center are his scholarly background in asymmetric warfare and first-hand COIN experience in Afghanistan. Prior to joining the COIN Center, Malevich was a member of the Strategic Advisory Team?a team of military advisors set up by General Hillier to provide direct advice to top Afghan cabinet ministers. He was later seconded to the Afghan Independent Electoral Commission, where Malevich says he "came up with their operations plan and their security plan" for the presidential elections scheduled for August 2009. "When I speak, these guys give me a pretty good respect and they're pretty grateful to have this help...they're very grateful to have Canadians among them and grateful for the contribution we've made in Afghanistan," said Lt. Col. Malevich of his colleagues at the COIN Center. Col. Roper, who says he's been to Canada "four or five times" to discuss COIN, told The Dominion that by having Malevich "institutionally embedded" in the COIN Center, "The Canadian Army benefits from having a full-time person working in here with full access to everything we've got and recognizing [when] he stumbles upon something here that, hey, he knows somebody in the Canadian Army that might benefit from that; he can very quickly share that information." Invoking Gen. Charles Krulak, the US marine who coined the term "Three Block War" and who, in 1997, predicted the importance of "transnational movements" to 21st-century warfare, Roper said that today, "what we're looking at are transnational insurgencies." Partnering as closely as possible with key allies like Canada is seen as crucial to conducting what some COIN experts call "global counterinsurgency." According to Malevich, one of his key roles is "bringing [US COIN] expertise up to Canada and bringing it into the Canadian military culture." Such a level of COIN integration has never been undertaken before, and it is difficult to foresee the possible implications for Canada's military culture, which inevitably spills over into broader society. "The better the people understand the pros and cons and the risks [of COIN], the more informed a decision they can make," says Roper. In her introduction to the University of Michigan Press edition of the US Army Stability Operations Manual , Janine Davidson acknowledges that, ?[There] are those who see the new doctrine as another dangerous step on the slippery slope toward imperialism.? Davidson dismisses those critics, writing that they "seriously misunderstand the purpose and role of military doctrine"?because the military doesn't set the policies that send them to occupy other countries. On the other hand, influential COIN advocates such as Eliot Cohen have argued that the US needs to establish an "Imperial Army," the likes of which Canada is increasingly becoming appended to. Anthony Fenton is an independent researcher and journalist based in Pitt Meadows, B.C. This article is based on a book he has been researching and writing with Jon Elmer. Fenton can be reached at fentona at shaw.ca From shniad at sfu.ca Wed Jul 15 11:57:23 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2009 10:57:23 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] You'd never know from media reports that most Brits want troops out of Afghanistan by year's end In-Reply-To: <949036686.628411247614699380.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <542439769.811581247680643123.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> The Guardian 13 July 2009 Our wartime propaganda You'd never know from media reports that most British people want troops withdrawn from Afghanistan by the end of the year Seumas Milne From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Jul 6 09:31:04 2009 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:31:04 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: u'd never know that most British people want troops withdrawn by the end of= the year and only a minority have supported the US-led campaign for years.= =20 The BBC in particular seems to have almost entirely abandoned any attempt a= t neutral reporting of what is actually going on. Instead, its newsreaders = and presenters sternly warn that "Britain's resolve is being put to the tes= t" and speculate, surreally, about what might happen if public "support" fo= r the war "were to weaken" (last Friday's 10 o'clock TV news and Newsnight = programmes).=20 In the circumstances, it would hardly be surprising if public opinion had b= een turned after what has been a barrage of state war propaganda, as embedd= ed Kiplingesque reporting from the Helmand frontline, military parades and = a new Armed Services Day have been used to try and translate sympathy for B= ritish troops into support for foreign wars.=20 But it hasn't happened. Today's ICM poll for the Guardian and the BBC's New= snight shows 56% want all British troops out of Afghanistan by the end of t= he year, and 60% by 2011, against 36% who want them to stay until "they are= no longer needed".=20 That was interpreted by the Guardian's headline writer today as "public sup= port for war is firm, despite deaths" =E2=80=93 on the assumption that the = sharp increase in British casualties might have been expected to trigger a = further drop in public backing for the eight-year-old Afghan occupation, an= d because opposition to the war had fallen from 2006.=20 But given the media's increasingly intense emotional focus on British soldi= ers' deaths during the current offensive =E2=80=93 today's Daily Mirror lea= ds on last Friday's fallen " band of brothers " and the Sun on Gordon Brown= 's " this war is our patriotic duty " =E2=80=93 I would have expected the o= pposite. In fact, the only time there was majority support in Britain for t= he Iraq war was during the initial months of attack and occupation, when Br= itish troops were seen to be in action and in greatest danger.=20 But, even if support for withdrawal is slightly down from last November's 6= 8% , 62% still believe British forces are either making no difference in Af= ghanistan worse or making it worse =E2=80=93 and 47%, against 46%, say they= oppose the "British military operation" outright. And interestingly, given= what New Labour used to claim about social attitudes to the Iraq war, some= of the strongest opposition to the war comes from working class people.=20 Of course, British public hostility towards the Afghanistan occupation is m= irrored in most countries in the world (in the US it is pretty evenly divid= ed). Even in Afghanistan itself, where polling under conditions of foreign = military occupation would be expected to be skewed towards the occupier, a = recent BBC-sponsored poll in February found a majority saying they want for= eign troops withdrawn within one to two years and negotiations with the Tal= iban (pdf) .=20 But, hey, what does public opinion in either country count in a war for dem= ocracy? From shniad at sfu.ca Wed Jul 15 11:58:18 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2009 10:58:18 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Brave British Boys Promoting Democracy in Iraq In-Reply-To: <1553057209.553751247605685541.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1581134902.812161247680698900.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/news/article-1199375/Video-shows-British-Army-officer-screaming-hooded-Iraqi-civilians.html#ixzz0LGmrKWMj&D Daily Mail 14th July 2009 Video shows British Army officer screaming at hooded Iraqi civilians By Daily Mail Reporter [The video is at the bottom of the linked page.] Shocking images of the abuse of Iraqi civilians by British soldiers were shown for the first time yesterday at the start of a public inquiry into the death of Baha Mousa. Detainees say troops made them scream in pain in an 'orchestrated choir' and dance like Michael Jackson. The men were scalded with boiling water, urinated on, kicked, punched and hooded while in British military custody, the hearing chaired by retired Court of Appeal judge Sir William Gage was told. Corporal Donald Payne, who was jailed for inhumane treatment in 2007, is seen swearing at prisoners who are being forced to hold 'stress positions' Gordon Brown ordered the full judicial inquiry into Mr Mousa's death after a ?10million court martial in September 2006 failed to identify the soldiers responsible. Corporal Donald Payne, formerly of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment, became the first member of the Armed Forces to admit a war crime when he pleaded guilty to treating civilians inhumanely. In April 2007 he was jailed for a year in a civilian prison and sacked from the Army. Six other soldiers were later cleared of any wrongdoing in relation to the charges. In his opening address yesterday, Gerard Elias QC, counsel to the inquiry, said the treatment of other detainees and the Ministry of Defence's role would be considered. He added: 'We propose to follow the chain of command from the soldier on the ground up as far as it leads us, with a view to establishing who knew what, who did not know and - where appropriate - who ought to have known.' A one-minute video showed six hooded Iraqi men groaning and whimpering in pain as they were forced to squat with their knees bent and their hands outstretched in agonising 'stress positions' while Payne screamed abuse at them. Inquiry officials refused to reveal the origin of the video, which is thought to have been filmed by a colleague of Payne's, but said it would be dealt with later in evidence. It was shown at Payne's court martial, but has never been made public. The footage shows him apparently calling one detainee a 'f***ing ape' at a British military base. The men were made to stand with their backs against the wall of a bare room, their legs bent and their arms tied with plastic handcuffs. As they slipped down the wall, unable to sustain the agonising squat position, Payne stood over them, shouting: 'Get up, get up!' Hotel receptionist Mr Mousa, 26, died within 36 hours of being taken into custody in Basra, southern Iraq, on September 14, 2003. The widowed father-of-two received 93 injuries, including a broken nose and ribs. A post-mortem found he died from asphyxia, possibly caused by the stress positions. Mr Mousa was seen struggling with Corporal Payne and a second soldier as they tried to restrain and handcuff him, shortly before his death on September 15. Mr Elias said the inquiry would hear evidence that some of the hotel worker's injuries were inflicted deliberately, and were not simply the result of the struggle. He said: 'It has been suggested that Baha Mousa's head was banged on the floor or wall as this was happening, but statements to this inquiry now suggest perhaps a greater degree of deliberation than has hitherto been described.' Mr Elias detailed abuses the men said soldiers from the Queen's Lancashire Regiment inflicted on them. He said: 'The detainees were hooded with hessian sandbags, they were placed in stress positions - postures causing physical discomfort or pain without necessarily causing physical injury. Catalogue of injuries: Baha Mousa died while in the custody of British troops [ Link to photo: http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/07/14/article-1199375-05AEFA7A000005DC-223_233x423.jpg or http://tinyurl.com/m8rczz ] 'They were prevented from sleeping-they were subjected to loud noises. There is evidence that they were not properly fed or watered.' Some said their hands were burned with scalding water and one claimed he was 'made to dance in the style of Michael Jackson', the inquiry was told. Mr Elias claimed the screams of the detainees in the temporary detention facility (TDF) could be heard by passers-by, adding: 'There was shouting, moaning, even screaming coming from the TDF during the detention, according to some witnesses. 'And the inquiry will hear scandalous accounts of an orchestrated choir of victims' reactions.' Hooding and stress positions are among the so-called 'conditioning methods' used to soften up prisoners before interrogation. They were banned by the Government in 1972, following allegations of the abuse of IRA suspects in Northern Ireland. The then Prime Minister Ted Heath said they would never be used again. But Mr Elias said the hearing, which is being held in London, would examine claims that soldiers used them in Iraq with the approval of their superior officers. Controversially, Attorney General Baroness Scotland has said soldiers who appear as witnesses to the inquiry will not have their evidence used against them in any future criminal proceedings. Mr Mousa's family and colleagues are expected to give evidence in September. The hearing continues. Critics question the need for an inquiry into Mr Mousa's death, which has already been examined by a court martial and a High Court case. They fear the hearing, which cost ?3.5million to set up, will find little or no new evidence but will cost taxpayers tens of millions of pounds. The Ministry of Defence has already agreed to pay his family compensation. Gerard Elias QC warned Mr Mousa's death could be a recruiting sergeant for insurgents and put soldiers at risk of revenge attacks. Therefore, he said, the incident must be seen to be investigated in a 'comprehensive, fair way'. [ Click on http://tinyurl.com/myd3bn and go to bottom of page for video. ] From shniad at sfu.ca Wed Jul 15 11:57:55 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2009 10:57:55 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Showdown in 'Tegucigolpe' In-Reply-To: <1353962671.621881247613943060.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <869332046.811891247680675646.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/07/11-4 Foreign Policy in Focus July 11, 2009 Showdown in 'Tegucigolpe' by Stephen Zunes One of the hemisphere's most critical struggles for democracy in 20 years is now unfolding in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa (nicknamed "Teguci golpe " for its long history of military coup d'?tats, which are called golpes de estado , in Spanish). Despite censorship and repression, popular anger over the June 28 military overthrow of democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya is growing. International condemnation has been near-unanimous, and the Organization of American States has suspended Honduras, the first time the hemisphere-wide body has taken so drastic an action since 1962. In a reversal of many decades of U.S. support for right-wing golpistas in Latin America, the Obama administration has denounced the coup. However, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, rather than backing the largely nonviolent popular uprising for Zelaya's unconditional return to power, has instead been pushing for the country's legitimate ruler to compromise with the very forces which illegally exiled him from the country and have been violently suppressing his supporters. The United States is now offering support for mediation efforts to be led by Costa Rican president Oscar Arias. The Obama administration tried to discourage the exiled Honduran president from his attempt this past Sunday to return to his country and has apparently succeeded, for the time being, in preventing him from trying again. Clinton pressed this point on Tuesday in pushing for mediation, arguing that it would be a "better route for him to follow than attempt to return in the fact of the intractable opposition of the de facto government." Clinton also said, "Instead of another confrontation?let's try the dialogue process." What this ignores is that while the coup plotters have no legitimate standing, the Honduran people have a constitutionally guaranteed right to rebel under such circumstances. According to Article 3 of the Honduran constitution: No one owes obedience to a government that has usurped power or to those who assume functions or public posts by the force of arms or using means or procedures that rupture or deny what the Constitution and the laws establish. The verified acts by such authorities are null. The people have the right to recur to insurrection in defense of the constitutional order. What the Obama administration apparently fears is that if it allows the burgeoning pro-democracy movement to take its course, it may end up with a similar outcome to what transpired in Venezuela in 2002 ? following a similar coup against that country's left-leaning president, Hugo Ch?vez. Within days, a popular movement had forced right-wing elements of the military and their wealthy civilian allies to step down. Ch?vez returned to govern and emboldened by such a popular outpouring of support, he moved the country further to the left. The United States could help such a movement succeed if it wanted to. If the Obama administration chose, the United States could impose strict economic sanctions on Honduras that would, combined with ongoing strikes and other disruptions, grind the economy to a halt and force the illegitimate junta in Tegucigalpa to step down. Unfortunately, while there's no evidence suggesting that the United States was responsible for the coup, there appear to be reasons the Obama administration may not want the coup plotters to suffer a total defeat. Zelaya's Significance Despite being a wealthy logger and rancher from the centrist Liberal Party, Zelaya has moved his government well to the left since taking office in 2005. During his tenure, he raised the minimum wage and provided free school lunches, milk for young children, pensions for the elderly, and additional scholarships for students. He built new schools, subsidized public transportation, and even distributed energy-saving light bulbs. He also had Honduras join with Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Cuba, and three small Caribbean island states in the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), an economic alliance challenging the neoliberal orthodoxy that has dominated hemispheric trade in recent decades. None of these are particularly radical moves, but it was nevertheless disturbing to the country's wealthy economic and military elites. More frightening was that Zelaya had sought to organize an assembly to replace the 1982 constitution written during the waning days of the U.S.-backed military dictator Policarpo Paz. A non-binding referendum on whether such a constitutional assembly should take place was scheduled the day of the coup, but was cancelled when the military seized power and named Congressional Speaker Roberto Micheletti as president. Calling for such a referendum is perfectly legal under Article 5 of the 2006 Honduran Civil Participation Act, which allows public functionaries to perform such non-binding public consultations regarding policy measures.Despite claims by the rightist junta and its supporters, Zelaya was not trying to extend his term. That question wasn't even on the ballot. The Constitutional Assembly would not have likely completed its work before his term had expired anyway. Yet the Obama administration is implying that the country's legitimate democratic president somehow shared responsibility for his illegal overthrow. The initial White House response was rather tepid, initially failing to denounce the coup, simply calling upon "all political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms, the rule of law and the tenets of the Inter-American Democratic Charter." Similarly, Clinton insisted the day after the coup that "all parties have a responsibility to address the underlying problems that led to yesterday's events." When asked if her call for "restoring the constitutional order" in Honduras meant returning Zelaya himself, she didn't say it necessarily would. Similarly, in a press conference on Tuesday, State Department spokesperson Ian Kelly evaded reporters' questions as to whether the United States supported Zelaya's return. This places the United States at odds with the Organization of American States, the Rio Group, and the UN General Assembly, all of which called for the "immediate and unconditional return" of Zelaya. There are serious questions as to whether Clinton can be trusted to make a clear stance for democracy, given her traditionally pro-interventionist position on Latin America. As a senator, she argued that the Bush administration should have taken a more aggressive stance against the rise of left-leaning governments in the hemisphere, arguing that Bush has neglected such developments "at our peril." In response to recent efforts by democratically elected Latin American governments to challenge the structural obstacles that have left much of their populations in poverty, she expressed alarm , saying, "We have witnessed the rollback of democratic development and economic openness in parts of Latin America." Though no doubt aware that U.S. policy toward leftist regimes in Latin American in previous decades had included military interventions, CIA-sponsored coups, military and financial support for opposition groups, and rigged national elections, she argued that "We must return to a policy of vigorous engagement." The United States and Honduras The United States certainly has a history of "vigorous engagement" in Honduras, actively supporting a series of military dictatorships from 1963 through the early 1980s. Though military rule formally ended by the end of 1982, the weak civilian presidents who followed in the subsequent decade served only at the pleasure of Honduran generals and the U.S. embassy. John Negroponte, who later served as George W. Bush's ambassador to Iraq and the United Nations, as well as his Director of National Intelligence (DNI) was the U.S. ambassador to Honduras during this period. During the 1980s, thousands of U.S. forces were sent to Honduras to train Honduran security forces as well as train and support the rightist Nicaraguan contras , which were engaged in a series of cross-border terrorist attacks. The CIA organized, trained, and equipped a special military unit known as backed Battalion 316, bringing in Argentine counterinsurgency experts as advisors on surveillance and interrogation. These advisors had been part of the "dirty war" in their country during the 1970s, in which more than 10,000 people were murdered. Honduran armed forces chief Gen. Gustavo Alvarez Martinez personally directed the unit with strong U.S. support, even after acknowledging to Negroponte that he intended "to use the Argentine method of eliminating subversives." Though Alvarez' personal involvement in large-scale human rights abuses were well-known to State Department and other U.S. officials, the Reagan administration awarded him the Legion of Merit for "encouraging the success of democratic processes in Honduras." Former Honduran congressman Efra?n D?az told the Baltimore Sun , in reference to U.S. policy towards human rights abuses in his country, "Their attitude was one of tolerance and silence. They needed Honduras to loan its territory more than they were concerned about innocent people being killed." Under Negroponte, CIA officers based in the U.S. Embassy frequently visited a secret prison where captured dissidents were routinely tortured. It was one of a number of facilities to which U.S. officials had regular access that were off-limits to civilian Honduran officials, including judges looking for victims of kidnapping by right-wing paramilitary units. Despite this history, including revelations of his role in covering up for such human rights abuses, Negroponte had little trouble on Capitol Hill during the Bush administration. Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), then the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, praised Negroponte for having "served bravely and with distinction," and for bringing "a record of proven leadership and strong management." Representative Jane Harman (D-CA), then the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, praised him as "a seasoned and skilled diplomat, who has served with distinction," saying he was a "smart choice" to become the first DNI. This enthusiastic support for Negroponte among leading congressional Democrats, despite his well-documented role in human rights abuses while U.S. ambassador to Honduras, is indicative of how little regard the majority party in Congress cares about democracy in Central America. The Legacy Today The legacy of U.S. support for repression in Honduras is very much part of recent events. The leader of the June 28 coup, Honduran General Romeo V?squez, is a graduate of the notorious School of the Americas, a U.S. Army training program nicknamed "School of Assassins" for the sizable number of graduates who have engaged in coups, as well as the torture and murder of political opponents. The training of coup plotters at the program, since renamed the "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation," isn't a bygone feature of the Cold War: General Luis Javier Prince Suazo, who played an important role in the coup as head of the Honduran Air Force, graduated as recently as 1996. Former members of Battalion 316 were involved in the coup as well. Unfortunately, while far more knowledgeable of recent history than most recent presidents, Obama doesn't seem willing to apologize, much less make amends, for U.S. complicity in supporting repression in Latin America. I am writing this article en route to Chile, where the United States played a major role in the downfall of another democratically elected leftist leader, Salvador Allende, back in September of 1973. Just five days before the coup in Honduras, Chilean president Michelle Bachelet visited President Obama in Washington. When asked by Chilean reporters whether he was willing to apologize for the U.S. role in bloody 1973 coup and its aftermath, Obama brushed off the suggestion by saying, "I'm interested in going forward, not looking backward." Meanwhile, U.S.-armed and trained security forces have violently dispersed largely nonviolent demonstrators protesting across the country, including shooting into a crowd of demonstrators near the airport on Sunday, killing two. Rather than acknowledge the widespread popular opposition to their illegitimate rule, the Honduran junta, like its authoritarian counterparts in Iran, have instead tried to blame outsiders for the unrest, in this case Cuba and Venezuela. Yet the Honduran people, like the Iranians, don't need outside agitators or foreign funding in order to resist. This isn't about geopolitics but about democracy. Unfortunately, backers of the rightist junta in Honduras, like backers of the rightist regime in Iran, are repeating fabricated stories of outside interference to discredit a genuine home-grown pro-democracy movement. What may be at work in these U.S. and Costa Rican-led mediation efforts is some kind of deal where Zelaya can return, but under conditions that would preclude a constitutional assembly, any challenges to oligarchic interests, or any further efforts to promote economic justice. Similar kinds of pre-conditions were forced upon the deposed Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, prior to U.S. assistance in his initial return from exile in 1994. How much the junta leaders are willing to compromise will depend on what is going on outside the meeting rooms. One factor would be the ability of the pro-democracy movement to organize, think strategically, expand their ranks and maintain a nonviolent discipline. Fortunately, the rebellion thus far has been largely nonviolent, which would be far more effective in such circumstances. For various historical reasons, Hondurans don't have the same kind of history of armed revolution as their neighbors. Even during the dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s? while the country's immediate neighbors Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua experienced major armed insurrections ? the armed Honduran revolutionary movement was quite small and never had much of an impact. By contrast, civil society organizations engaged in strategic nonviolent conflict have grown dramatically in recent years, including peasant organizations, indigenous and Afro-Honduran movements, human rights monitoring groups, environmental groups, women's groups, an anti-militarization movement, and student groups, as well as three major labor federations. A series of strikes, blockages of major highways, and land seizures occurred over the past year as civil society became increasingly mobilized. The second factor which could tip the balance is how firmly the United States comes down in support for democracy. Obama has at times been clear in his support for the legal process, declaring , "We believe that the coup was not legal and that President Zelaya remains the democratically elected president there." Recognizing larger implications of this stance, he added, "It would be a terrible precedent if we start moving backward into the era in which we are seeing military coups as a means of political transition rather than democratic elections." Still, it was a full week before the United States announced it would slash aid to Honduras, and there have been no imminent signs of tougher sanctions. Unlike most Latin American countries, the United States has not withdrawn its ambassador from Tegucigalpa. The United States, which hosts a U.S. Southern Command task force at the Soto Cano Airbase, 50 miles northwest of Tegucigalpa, exerts enormous influence on Honduras. Therefore, the pressure pro-democracy forces in the United States can bring to bear upon our government may prove as crucial as the efforts of brave pro-democracy forces within Honduras. Copyright ? 2009, Institute for Policy Studies. Stephen Zunes is a professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco and a Foreign Policy In Focus senior analyst. From shniad at sfu.ca Wed Jul 15 11:56:23 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2009 10:56:23 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Seeing Obama as Norwegians See Him In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1473224243.810921247680583736.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> CommonDreams.org July 8, 2009 Seeing Obama as Norwegians See Him by George Lakey I just returned from a research trip to Norway where the people I interviewed often brought up the topic of our new President. The first was Kristin Clemet, the director of a conservative think tank. "This spring on a delegation to Washington I was struck again," she said, "by how different the political spectrum is in Norway from your country. Here, Obama would be on the right wing." I checked her view with others -- academics, politicians, activists all over the Norwegian spectrum -- and all but one agreed. In Norwegian terms, our President's positions are very conservative. When Norway hit a major financial crisis in the early '90s (from a real estate bubble and speculating banks), the Norwegians decided against bail-outs. Three of the biggest banks were simply taken by the government, their senior management fired, their stockholders sent packing. The government nursed the seized banks back to health over time while the economy made a quick recovery. The other troubled banks were left to declare bankruptcy or find new capital. Norway's action sent a clear message to the banks: mismanagement and greed don't pay. The result is that today its own financial sector is clean and only needs to deal with the impact of other countries' disasters. Norway's strategy was very far from Obama's bank-friendly game plan. When Norwegian oil was discovered, the country decided not to risk putting their new treasure in private ownership. Norwegians were therefore able to lead the world in environmental responsibility and to avoid boom/bust impact on their seacoast cities. Most important, Norway has been stashing the oil profits in a public, socially responsible "Pension Fund" that will support the Norwegians' famously high living standard for many generations to come. Half a century ago Norway already had a universal health care system that is simplicity itself. There's a single payer (the government) and minimum red tape, something like Medicare but for everyone and better. The entire political spectrum supports this. By contrast, Obama says he backs the failed U.S. private insurance scheme and his team is wobbling on his own modest proposal to add a public option. So I would have to say to thoughtful Republicans: even if you don't like the Nordic blend of capitalism and socialism, with its virtual abolition of poverty, free university education, and enlightened environmentalism, you're only confusing the issue when you try to label the President with the "S"-word. You may think his policies are wrong, but in Norway even conservatives would say the Democrats and Obama don't go nearly far enough. George Lakey, formerly Eugene M. Lang Visiting Professor for Issues in Social Change at Swarthmore College, is now directing a research project there. Author of seven books, he founded Training for Change. Glakey1 at swarthmore.edu . From shniad at sfu.ca Wed Jul 15 11:59:03 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2009 10:59:03 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] How the Israel Lobby Took Control of U.S. Foreign Policy In-Reply-To: <1614577673.515331247600712025.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1645978632.812511247680743515.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://criminalstate.com/blog/ How the Israel Lobby Took Control of U.S. Foreign Policy Jeff Gates July 14th, 2009 In the early 1960s, Senator William J. Fulbright fought to force the American Zionist Council to register as agents of a foreign government. The Council eluded registration by reorganizing as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. AIPAC has since become what Fulbright most feared: a foreign agent dominating American foreign policy while disguised as a domestic lobby. Israelis and pro-Israelis object when they hear that charge. How, they ask, can we so few wield such influence over so many? Answer: it?s all in the math. And in the single-issue advocacy brought to bear on U.S. policy-making by dozens of ?domestic? organizations that now compose the Israel lobby, with AIPAC its most visible force. The political math was enabled by Senator John McCain whose support for all things Israeli ensured him the GOP nomination to succeed Christian-Zionist G.W. Bush. McCain?s style of campaign finance reform proved a perfect fit for the Diaspora-based fundraising on which the lobby relies. Co-sponsored by Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, this change in federal election law typifies how Israeli influence became systemic. ?McCain-Feingold? raised the amount (from $1,000 to $2,300) that candidates can receive from individuals in primary and general elections. A couple can now contribute a combined $9,200 to federal candidates: $4,600 in each of the primary and general elections. Primary elections, usuall low-budget, are particularly easy to sway. Importantly for the Diaspora, this change also doubled the funds candidates can receive without regard to where those contributors reside. A candidate in Iowa, say, may have only a few pro-Israeli constituents. When campaign support is provided by a nationwide network of pro-Israelis, that candidate can more easily be persuaded to support policies sought by Tel Aviv. Diaspora-based fundraising has long been used by the lobby with force-multiplying success to shape U.S. foreign policy. Under the guise of reform, John McCain doubled the financial resources that the lobby can deploy to elect and retain its supporters. Fulbright was Right The influence-peddling process works like this. Candidates are summoned for in-depth AIPAC interviews. Those found sufficiently committed to Israel?s agenda are provided a list of donors likely to ?max out? their campaign contributions. Or the process can be made even easier when AIPAC-approved candidates are given the name of a ?bundler.? Bundlers raise funds from the Diaspora and bundle those contributions to present them to the candidate. No quid pro quo need be mentioned. After McCain-Feingold became law in 2003, AIPAC-identified bundlers could raise $1 million-plus for AIPAC-approved candidates simply by contacting ten like-minded supporters. Here?s the math: The bundler and spouse ?max out? for $9,200 and call ten others, say in Manhattan, Miami, and Beverly Hills. Each of them max out ($10 x $9,200) and call ten others for a total of 11. [111 x $9,200 = $1,021,200.] Imagine the incentive to do well in the AIPAC interview. One call from the lobby and a candidate can collect enough cash to mount a credible campaign in most Congressional districts. From Tel Aviv?s perspective, that political leverage is leveraged yet again because fewer than ten percent of the 435 House races are competitive in any election cycle (typically 35 to 50). Additional force-multipliers come from: (a) sustaining this financial focus over multiple cycles, (b) using funds to gain and retain seniority for those serving on Congressional committees key to promoting Israeli goals, and (c) opposing any candidate who question those goals. Jewish Achievement reports that 42% of the largest political donors to the 2000 election cycle were Jewish, including four of the top five. That compares to less than 2% of Americans who are Jewish. Of the Forbes 400 richest Americans, 25% are Jewish according to Michael Steinhardt, a key funder of the Democratic Leadership Council. The DLC was led by Jewish Zionist Senator Joe Lieberman when he resigned in 2000 to run as vice president with pro-Israeli presidential candidate Al Gore. Money was never a constraint. Pro-Israeli donors were limited only by how much they could lawfully contribute to AIPAC-screened candidates. McCain-Feingold raised a key limit. The full impact of this foreign influence has yet to be tallied. What?s known, however, is sufficient to apply the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Of the top 50 neoconservatives who advocated war in Iraq, 26 were Jewish (52%). Harry Truman, a Christian Zionist, remains one of the more notable recipients of funds. In 1948, he was trailing badly in the polls and in fundraising. His prospects brightened dramatically in May after he recognized as a legitimate state an enclave of Jewish extremists who originally planned to settle in Argentina before putting their sights on Palestine. That recognition was opposed by Secretary of State George C. Marshall, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the bulk of the diplomatic corps, the fledgling Central Intelligence Agency and numerous distinguished Americans, including moderate and secular Jews concerned at the troubles that were certain to follow. Not until 1984 was it revealed that a network of Jewish Zionists had funded Truman?s campaign by financially refueling his whistle-stop campaign train with $400,000 in cash ($3 million in 2009 dollars). To buy time on the public?s airwaves, money raised from the Israel lobby?s network is paid to media outlets largely owned or managed by members of the same network. Presidents, Senators and Congressmen come and go but those who collect the checks rack up the favors that amass lasting political influence. The U.S. system of government is meant to ensure that members of the House represent the concerns of Americans who reside in Congressional districts?not a nationally dispersed network (a Diaspora) committed to advancing the agenda of a foreign nation. Federal elections are meant to hold Senators accountable to constituents who reside in the states they represent?not out-of-state residents or a foreign government. In practical effect, McCain-Feingold hastened a retreat from representative government by granting a nationwide network of foreign agents disproportionate influence over elections in every state and Congressional district. Campaign finance ?reform? enabled this network to amass even more political clout?wielding influence disproportionate to their numbers, indifferent to their place of residence and often contrary to America?s interests. This force-multiplier is now wielded in plain sight, with impunity and under cover of free speech, free elections, free press and even the freedom of religion. Therein lies the perils of an entangled alliance that induced the U.S. to invade Iraq and now seeks war with Iran. By allowing foreign agents to operate as a domestic lobby, the U.S. was induced to confuse Zionist interests with its own. -- Jeff Gates 1429 N. La Rosa Dr. Tempe, AZ 85281 480-994-1492 (off) 928-978-4568 (cell) www.criminalstate.com From shniad at sfu.ca Wed Jul 15 12:03:50 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2009 11:03:50 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Study: Tel Aviv University part and parcel of the Israeli occupation In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1339272133.815131247681030708.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10652.shtml Study: Tel Aviv University part and parcel of the Israeli occupation Report, SOAS Palestine Society, 9 July 2009 As part of Tel Aviv's centenary celebration, the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London hosted a Tel Aviv University Special Lecture Series from January to March 2009. Taking place in the midst of Israel's war on Gaza -- which had already mobilized SOAS students to organize a number of activities in solidarity with Gaza, including the first student occupation in the UK -- students and a number of lecturers expressed their opposition to the lecture series. The student union overwhelmingly passed a motion criticizing the lecture series' attempt to whitewash Tel Aviv's colonial past and present and called for the end of SOAS's collaboration with Tel Aviv University (TAU) in hosting the series on the grounds of its role in giving key legal, technological and strategic support for maintaining and expanding Israel's colonial occupation. The School's Director, Professor Paul Webley, opposed the cancellation and defended the continuation of the lecture series by invoking a prerogative of freedom of speech and citing the pedagogic value of diversities of opinion. Conspicuously absent in the Director's defense was any engagement with the nature and scope of TAU's research portfolio. In response to the director's failure to acknowledge the serious implications of collaboration with TAU that undermined the reputation, integrity and fundamental ethical principles of SOAS, the SOAS Palestine Society prepared a briefing paper for him and the Governing Body outlining TAU's intensive, purposive and open institutional contributions to the Israeli military. While the signatories of the briefing paper recognized the importance of freedom of speech, they were also keenly aware of the need to uphold the rights of the oppressed and expressed that no right reigns absolute over the fundamental right to life. It is precisely therefore that it is wholly untenable that partnerships with institutions facilitating, advocating and justifying ongoing war crimes can be legitimized with recourse to an ideal of academic freedom. The briefing paper presented irrefutable evidence of TAU's deep investment in the facilitation and prosecution (at both the material and conceptual level) of what amount to war crimes. Along with many other examples of expansive institutional culpability, it identified the leading role played by TAU in developing an explicit military doctrine of "disproportionality" calling for the targeting of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians and civilian infrastructures. All of the data assembled and clearly sourced in the briefing paper is publicly available and widely known both at TAU and to the wider Israeli public. Indeed, TAU's valorization of its contributions to the military is an emphatic feature of its domestic public image, repeatedly underlined by university president Zvi Galil and celebrated in public relations campaigns. It is in part for this reason that demonstrating the complicity of TAU in the commissioning and enabling of ongoing war crimes is a relatively straightforward task. At the same time, this transparency discloses the extent to which the institution's overt roles in illegal and oppressive military programs go unchallenged, which reflects troubling patterns of acquiescence across Israeli academia and reveals the degree of mobilization obtaining in wider Israeli society. When the SOAS director and the Governing Body of the school were confronted with the evidence in the briefing paper and the repeated demand to cancel the lecture series was made once again, the school's response was that: "[N]either SOAS as an institution nor the governors as a group have decided to take a stand on the issue of continuing to work with TAU and ... it is unlikely that they would do so. Whatever the sympathies of individual governors may be, it would be virtually impossible and inappropriate for SOAS to take a political stand of this nature with regard to an individual academic institution or group of institutions in a particular country. This would go against the basic principles of academic freedom to which SOAS is legally and constitutionally bound." This response utterly -- and most likely willfully -- ignored the evidence implicating TAU's role in death, destruction and oppression and stands testimony to the abject failure of educational institutions such as SOAS to place even minimal pressure on TAU to dissociate itself from oppression, illegality, and war-craft. Yet even this failure of omission, casting a shadow on the ethical integrity of scores of academic institutions such as SOAS, is translated into a far more serious failure of commission when universities offer themselves (their institutional reputations along with those of their faculty and studentship) as partners in the production and projection of an occlusive image of TAU as an unproblematic center of higher learning. This failure cannot be glossed over by recourse to notions of academic freedom or assertions about the pedagogic value of diversities of opinion unless these principles are elevated to an absolute status, absolving academia itself from an entire field of ethical responsibility. SOAS has previously lived up to such ethical responsibilities when challenged to do so. In 2005, the institution responded to revelations about its holdings in weapons industries on the part of the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) by immediately divesting from these companies. In doing so, SOAS implicitly recognized the need to fully dissociate itself from institutions profiting from war and producing its technologies. TAU's overt privileging of military research and development, its institutional primacy in the authoring and propagation of illegal military doctrines and its celebratory self-definition as a "front line institution" in the production of Israel's "military and technological edge" makes its embrace at SOAS a betrayal of the ethical principles upheld in 2005. Undoubtedly, SOAS's collaboration in the production of a celebratory public image of TAU and the oppressive and criminal activities fostered, facilitated and celebrated by that institution signals a profound disregard for the consequences of such institutional partnerships on SOAS's integrity and ethical reputation as an institution. Perhaps this should not come as a surprise given that the restructuring of universities into profit-orientated organizations in much of the western world, and in the UK in particular, means that university managements perform and conform with the interests of the powers that be more than ever before. The boycott, divestment and sanctions movement that is gaining rapid support across many campuses in the UK remains the only effective tool to confront collaborating universities and demand the boycott of Israeli academic institutions involved in the perpetration of war crimes. Download the full study [PDF] From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Wed Jul 15 20:30:32 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Thu, 16 Jul 2009 11:30:32 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Why Goldman Sachs Is the Greediest ... Message-ID: <20090716113032.21db9a2a.shimogamo@ashisuto.co.jp> ... and Most Dastardly of the Wall Street Pigs by Jim Hightower AlterNet (May 22 2009) No doubt you're going to feel terrible about this. Top executives of Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street powerhouse, are in a pout about how they're being treated by you and me - that is, the public. These execs are used to being revered as financial geniuses, but having taken a $10 billion bailout from us taxpayers last fall, they're now widely viewed as ... well, as welfare recipients. Like other welfare checks, the big one that Washington doled out to Goldman Sachs came with some strings attached, causing the chieftains to get all huffy. Especially galling to these princes of privilege is the limit on salaries and bonuses that bailed out banks are allowed to give to those in the executive suites. Thus, Goldman recently threw a little hissy fit and haughtily declared that it will pay back our $10 billion to get the blankety-blank government out of its private business. Bold move! At last, Wall Streeters are reasserting their rugged, free-enterprise ethic, right? Uh, not exactly. What Goldman officials fail to mention is that they'll still be clinging to several other lifeboats floated to them by those skinflint meanies in Washington. For example, when insurance giant AIG was given some $200 billion last year to save it from total collapse, $12 billion of it was actually a pass-through payment to Goldman Sachs. Best of all, this quiet handout did not come with any of those nasty restrictions on executive pay - so Goldman is happily hanging onto this backdoor subsidy. Then there's another $28 billion that was slipped to these hardy free-marketers in the form of special low-interest loans guaranteed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation - a subsidy that Goldman's chief financial officer concedes is vital to its survival. Far from foregoing this government underwriting, the bankers say they expect to ask for $7 billion more of it. Additionally, Goldman has taken many more billions' worth of low-cost loans from Federal Reserve funds. How many more billions? The Fed and the bank say this is "proprietary" information, not for public disclosure, even though it is public money. So, while these golden ones are loudly repudiating the $10 billion public subsidy they took from us, they are coyly retaining at least forty billion of our dollars to stay afloat - a tidy sum that does not include any restrictions on pay levels. Coincidentally, Goldman has since announced that it is setting aside nearly $5 billion to be distributed at the end of the year as compensation for its executives, including payments for outlandish bonuses for those at the top. Saying that such-and-such is the greediest bunch of bankers on Wall Street is like someone claiming to have the biggest hairdo in Dallas - the competition is fierce. But that's quite a head of hair atop Goldman Sachs. Well, sniff the executives, we merely play the game according to the rules we're given. Sure, and the Mafia plays its game strictly according to Hoyle. The difference is that the Mafia must actually break the rules, while Wall Street simply hires lobbyists and politicians to write the rules. Indeed, Goldman Sachs has been nicknamed "Government Sachs" by its rivals, for it always seems to have at least one of its top officials strategically placed inside government to bend federal financial rules to its benefit. In the 1990s, for example, two Goldman foxes - Robert Rubin and Larry Summers - were inside the Clinton administration henhouse, where they helped craft the deregulation scams that enriched their former banks, before the scams caused the crash of our economy. Following that crash, up stepped Hank Paulson, who had been Goldman's CEO before George W plucked him off the Street to run the very bailout that has now deposited so much of our money in his bank. With Bush's demise, Hank is gone, but not Goldman. That sly Goldman Fox from the Clinton years, Larry Summers, is back, this time in Barack Obama's henhouse, where he's top economic advisor. Not surprisingly, our gold keeps flowing to Goldman Sachs - but don't expect the bankers to be grateful to you. _____ Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the new book, Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With the Flow (Wiley, March 2008) He publishes the monthly "Hightower Lowdown", co-edited by Phillip Frazer. To find out more about Jim Hightower, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com. (c) 2009 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved. http://www.alternet.org/story/140166/ 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/ From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Thu Jul 16 03:20:59 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Thu, 16 Jul 2009 18:20:59 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Is Larry Summers Taking Kickbacks ... Message-ID: <20090716182059.417dcd63.shimogamo@ashisuto.